Pan Germany レコード& CD

Review: Marina Herlop's latest album Pripyat is a striking addition to the intersection-canon of effected sound, piano and voice. Every track on the album, from 'abans abans' to the choral version of 'miu', recalls glitching piano swirls, high-intoned wail-songs, and references to every electronic-musical microgenre from lowercase to footwork to Carnatic Konnakol. For us, it's giving Bjork, chiptune and Principe, styles which are somehow all exhaled in the same breath - though maybe we should stop trying to draw too many comparisons, as Herlop brings them all neatly together in an impressive seven-track move that clearly defies overt categorization.

Review: Shanghai-based, Malaysian-born artist Tzusing offers us a future-facing and experimental techno record that also serves as a meditation on "China's complicated history of patriarchal heteronormativity, and how these archaic double standards continue to dominate the culture in pervasive, often invisible ways." It is packed with dancefloor highlights after a deep-thinking cultural monologue to start with. Hard and funky drums, twisted sonics, manic uptempo bangers and wheezing voices and downtempo rhythms all combine into something utterly unique.