100 words music reviews
Okada Takuro was in a folk-rock band once—Mori Wa Ikiteiru were distinctly less interpretive, but possessed the same life-affirming curiosity as its leader’s solo work. Betsu No Jikan, Takuro’s first album in two years, contains six tracks, each a puddle with elegant rain dripping down upon it at shifting tempos and with fresh textures in […]
Arms and Sleepers’ early records were abundant in personality, despite not pushing many boundaries. The music moved with unpredictable and astral rhythms, out of which industrial sounds shot up sprightly. But that engaging quality has generally eroded and ‘former kingdoms’ marks a sharp decline. It is an album of inevitabilities: never less than tolerable, never […]
This 2002 compilation of Abfahrt Hinwil’s short-lived electronic existence is a sprawling, metallic opus of ambient dance music. As one Discogs reviewer types: ‘(S)trictly digital romance’. This record, put on wax for the first time in May of 2020, exhibits prismatic sonic bursts that are perhaps no more mysterious than the beating steel heart of […]
Brooklyn-based composer OHYUNG follows the ambient tradition of producing broad, lengthy work marked by subtle changes. On ‘to fill the quiet!’ we hear an alloy of crackling ripples sat in between stunning diaphanous structures that move with the patient repetition of a swing. Flow is the 114-minute album’s most important component. It dictates the enormous […]
Exiting the club through a mountain range, Loraine James’ alter ego quickly attains a soaring ambience. ‘Whatever the Weather’ is not a complete departure from her previous work, rather an amplification of her gorgeous, soft possibilities. The cover, sun rising over an ice-cap, poignantly expresses the visceral glimmer of the record, visualising the effects that […]
100 words music reviews 