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 […]
I’m able to remember back to simpler, more innocent times, when the tithing was strong, the jerkins were well-fitted, and an Ox only cost a small drawstring bag of silver coins. Alio Die remembers this bygone era well, and he made a beautiful album about it. Aura Seminalis is a compositional translation of Renaissance life—dramatic, […]
“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
‘Broken Gargoyles’ sounds as though it came from the underbelly of a Lingua Ignota record. The subterranean, off-the grid experience de-places the entire album, so that it is not certain enough to attach to any specific plane, even hell. Though the poetry (much from German expressionist Georg Heym) is often about human suffering, Diamanda Galás […]
‘Sons Of’ would look magnificent over anything from shuffling film of microscopic plant cells to stock footage of a helicopter drifting through the Tokyo skyline. It corresponds gracefully to all forms of experience, material or immaterial, with an understanding glow. In doing so, it implies a nature to dance and a dance to nature. There’s […]
Wu-Lu’s South London is being gutted: the vibrance that gave it a life is now filtered through unforgiving pipes of amoral opportunism. However, ‘LOGGERHEAD’ is a lone howl, not a rallying cry. It is the second storm that followed the first. The instruments embody this anxious, angular self-reflection, but Wu-Lu’s vocal performances are often swallowed […]
100 words music reviews 