Juno Recommends Experimental October 2021

Review: Nenad Markovi? cooks up some more of his magisterially slow and seductive sounds for the Sahko label outta Finland. Using his trusted tools he opens up on 'Iz Usta,' with a balmy vibe, dreamy pads and percolating beats all finished off with distant bird calls. It goes on for nearly ten minutes and makes great use of every single second. A real epic. On the flip is 'Danasananas,' another super slow workout that gets you in raptures with its gently jostling drum work and aqueous effects.

Review: "Romanticism, witchcraft, and necromancy, drifting in an ocean of sentiments." So says Kashual Plastik of this compilation, which seems to transcend not just genre but years, or more accurately from what we can hear, centuries. It's not often you'll find us completely stuck for words, but we are when presented with a track like 'Sommerzeit Erntezeit' by Kirschstein & Agnes Beil. Think woozy sea shanty meeting folklore fireside anthem with waves of synth dropped on top, slowly finding a peculiarly familiar, hypnotic rhythm.

It's just one example from a huge, 31-track collection that refuses to sit anywhere immediately recognisable. This is a place where traditional, avant-garde, ambient, dramatic, chilled out, ancient, and modern collide. One minute it feels like you're in a remote Bulgarian mountain village, the next a future-focused experimental music festival, bathed in the soft blues of spotlights amid some overtly conceptual performance.

Review: If you've ever set foot in either Iceland or the Faroe Islands then this startlingly beautiful, incredibly intelligent dance-not-dance album will make perfect sense. While the beats are certainly capable of moving floors early on, there's a serenity and a bliss here that can only come from people who have grown up around spectacular barren vistas. Places where things aren't, as much as where they are.

Quiet but commanding, BAFTA-winning composer olafur Arnalds, known for his minimalist piano stylings, complements the electronic ends introduced by Janus Rasmussen of the excellent Bloodgroup band. Together, they create tracks that are hypnotic, precise, and full of timbre. Fans of Innervisions, All Day I

Dream, and other deep, wave-y, floaty, house-y affairs shouldn't sleep on this, because we're not expecting anyone else to.

Review: JD Twitch's archival label Optimo Music Archive is back for a second release, this time with a fully remastered 2021 edition of this 1993 gem. It came at a time when acid music had been hugely popular and seemingly every avenue had been explored. Until, that was, this record arrived from future Optimo ally Khan alongside Kerosene. It was recorded in a Brooklyn kitchen and is a sublimely syncopated album of hypnotic rhythms that are in constant but subtle flux. Muted acid lines that weave in and out and rubbery kick drums that root you to the groove. The record still sounds beamed back from the future today, more than 25 years on.

Review: In partnership with VRrOOm, the City of Paris and under the patronage of UNESCO, French electronic legend Jean-Michel Jarre played an epic gig on New Year's Eve to see in 2020. It was a trailblazing live-streamed concert set in the virtual environment of Paris's famous Notre-Dame. The artist himself was actually playing in his nearby studio while his avatar was projected into the cathedral. The setlist took in some of his classics from the cult Oxygene album as well as material from his newest record Electronica and a few special reworks.

Review: If life came down to 'Bar Solitude' then we'd at once be in a lot of trouble and a truly easy going place. Airports aside, drinking in bars on your own is a mixture of frustration and hope. Sean La'Brooy makes the very phrase feel like it couldn't do more to invite you in, and pick up the tab. A jazz-inflected slice of late night ambience.

In all honesty the rest of the EP doesn't let track four down. You can pick between the wet shuffles of 'Triplet Falls', the pseudo acid house beauty that is 'Northcote Winter Solstice', the deep and timbre-filled immersive dive that is 'Thank You For Everything' (in the running for best use of guitars with synth on a chill out track), or either the post-rock or glittering chimes of 'Splash'. The point being it's all going to go your way.

Review: Bryn Jones was nothing short of an enigma. The UK producer managed to ensure his work would always be regarded as a collector's item while simultaneously ensuring very little chance of success outside the farthest flung reaches of the experimental electronic and noise communities. Putting out over 90 original albums for 32 labels in his time under the Muslimgauze moniker, all of which were very limited releases, his ideas were as impressive as the inspiration was staunchly political.

Not that you would necessarily be able to tell from the tracks themselves. Taking elements of Middle Eastern, Arabesque, dub, industrial, and percussive electronica, his work is born from deep dives into Muslim culture and history, and the finished results were wildly ahead of their time - atmospheric, musically adventurous, hypnotic and, more often than not, unarguably danceable. Such is the case here.

Review: RECOMMENDED
Amon Tobin and Ninja Tune is always going to be a combination that produces very impressive results, and in the case of Out From Out Where that's nothing short of an understatement. Taking a break from its new techno direction, this is more along the lines of what the label used to be more focused on, delivering a wild ride through various iterations of electronic noise, touching on hip hop, disco, drum & bass, Arabesque and so much more besides.

Opening on the very rave-y dnb driver 'Back From Space', it's not long before the intensity eases, giving way to the darker, 115BPM breakbeats of 'Verbal' take hold. And by that point you're hooked. Cue a relentless stream of incredibly deep, atmospheric and effective tracks that call to mind the likes of Kruder & Dorfmeister, Coldcut and other luminaries of varied synthesised stuff.

Review: Shuttle358 is the moniker of Californian producer Dan Abrams, a chap who clearly understands what 'sound art' should sound like. Back in the early-2000s he was forging ahead of most contemporaries working within electronica by releasing a stream of veritable statements of intent about the use of laptops as actual instruments, making beautiful, often serene tracks that felt resolutely human despite the kit they were made on being fundamentally non-organic.

Chessa picks up where he last left off, but then rockets into the stratosphere, living up to both artist and label name in the process. This isn't simply a case of getting back in the saddle, mind. Yes, we can safely say this is ambient territory. And the work does feel born from person, not machine. But things are more detailed and less stripped and pared back, offering bold nuances within his trademark spatial refrains

Review: Deux Filles was not a band of two girls, as their name might suggest, but rather film soundtrack composer Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker. Both men were part of an early incarnation of The The and took the concept so far as to dress as women for the over. They even reportedly played a gig in full female attire before later being outed. Musically, they managed to lay down an enchanting sound that offers up a unique take on Gallic pop, Brian Eno-style ambient and European leaning prog rock. This is the band's first album since the early 80s and it comes on nice blue wax.