100 words music reviews
I don’t know if Doon Kanda’s music sounds more like a crude, AI-generated amalgam of all the clubs in Berlin, or a rave for deep sea creatures. His artwork is certainly a grotesque mix of the two. *snaps fingers* You know what Doon’s art is like? It’s like if a 12th century sacrilegious nightmare was […]
“Landing bolts” is a skating term that means executing a trick perfectly with both feet on the bolts of the board. Hagop Tchaparian uses the skate aesthetic, but his debut album is frayed, not clean. He is concerned with the gravity of thought before pumping blood; Bolts sets up its bold techno ambushes with considerable […]
re.sort would be appropriate waiting room music in a distant utopia—I figure a truly perfect world is not a place with no need for waiting rooms, but a place where people do not rush and can accept the more prosaic interactions. I also figure that contained, momentary utopias are what resorts attempt to be. Sora […]
It’s hard to escape the imperious darkness of this album. The opener could soundtrack dead souls squeezing past each other to order some mead in a purgatorial nightclub. Mabe Fratti, through carefully layered textures, creates an atmosphere of medieval tension that is constantly in touch with both chaos and reflection. The Guatemala-born, Mexico City-based cellist […]
Among her remarkable qualities, Loraine James has added prolificacy. Her first full-length project of the year, Whatever the Weather, emphasised a profound respect for tone and sensation. This follow-up, arriving as the beauty of WTW has been digested, is a work of parallel depth, but the focus has shifted from the process of an album, […]
Jockstrap had an EP out a couple years ago—the fantastic, but altogether unsettled Wicked City. While the duo’s experimentalism has since been ironed, edged, ILYJB nevertheless emerges with oddities of epic proportions. Moments of tender enlightenment burst through the jagged cracks: the tracklist is technically sharp in the vein of a classical song cycle, soft […]
Two Sisters doesn’t march to the beat of a procession—Davachi conjures her own, singular atmosphere. Her nameless solemnity, drawn from centuries-old influences, gives rise to a kind of occult fear. The record manages to outlive fashion by incorporating such rich, untouched histories and arranging them below a spacious drone. The organs, for which the composer […]
Plastic Beach is about capability: what can be held in the hands and what can only ever be reasoned with in the abstract. While nature can be held in the hands, it has been undermined as a conceptual anchor that prevents a certain idea of capitalist progress. Streams of rubbish have lined our shores since. […]
A stylised, sharp, mid-century album cover will often precede a dry, synth-pop experience—it’s the go-to aesthetic for the scene. However, Grotto Terrazza has the eccentricity to angle away from formula and towards his own voice. Kalte Köstlichkeiten is tight, engaging, and sincerely bizarre. There are so many words to call it: drum machine punk, chipmunk […]
100 words music reviews 