Review: Occupying a wildly cosmic position alongside artists such as Space Lady, Bruce Haack - AKA The Captain- is a bonafide Canadian electronic music legend, albeit a name that often goes unsung, or at least under-referenced, in conversations about groundbreaking synthesised sounds. Born in 1931, and active since the mid-1950s, his is a story we cannot even come close to doing justice here, touching upon indigenous pow-pow rituals, peyote, time studying at New York's Juilliard School, and an approach to making music that rejected any kind of restriction in favour of open exploration. The latter certainly rings true on Captain Entropy, a record that seems to have one foot in the formative days of rock & roll, and another tethered to some one-man spaceship, freewheeling through the universe on a mission to develop new ideas into tangible things people can listen to.
The Queer Art Of Slowness (feat Sasha Wilde) (2:48)
Dual (feat Alex McKenzie, Memory Play & Sasha Wilde) (4:36)
Quantology (2:02)
How Do I Know What I Want When Everybody Is Telling Me I Should Want What I Dont Have (feat Memory Play) (6:18)
Laying On The Floor Staring Up At Dust In The Air (1:31)
Breathing Room (feat Laura Misch) (3:57)
Language Couldn't Say (feat Laura Misch) (3:07)
Pataphysical (feat Laura Misch) (3:23)
Wildest Imagination (feat Laura Misch & Marysia Osu) (4:21)
Review: El Hardwick's sophomore album, Process of Elimination, explores illness as a pathway to personal and anti-capitalist transformation. Rooted in their experience of chronic illness after years of pushing their body beyond its limits, the album reflects Hardwick's journey toward healing through mysticism and natural remedies. Turning away from the need for a formal diagnosis, Hardwick embraced a process of self-rewilding, rejecting capitalism and gender norms to reconnect with their body and the earth. Musically, Process of Elimination combines lush, dubby soundscapes with cosmic experimentation. Tracks like Dual feature sparse synthesiser tones alongside woodwinds and double bass, creating a spacious environment for Hardwick's spoken-word reflections. Collaborations with musicians such as Alex McKenzie and Laura Misch bring a range of organic textures to the album, enhancing its sense of natural exploration. The album shifts between ambient meditations and more rhythmic moments, with highlights like 'Quantology' and the IDM-tinged 'How Do I Know...?' revealing a balance between introspection and forward momentum. Hardwick's process is further mirrored in their personal journey of coming out as trans non-binary, which they describe as another form of elimination, moving beyond binary definitions. Ultimately, Process of Elimination is a powerful reflection on healing, acceptance and the reclaiming of energy, inspired by thinkers like Silvia Federici and Donna Haraway, and enriched by contributions from London-based artists and friends.
Review: Don Harriss had a superb run of seven albums from 1987 to 2000 and then stopped work. Thankfully his legacy lives on with this reissue of his debut long player from 1987. It is a majestic work of new age bliss that now makes its first-ever appearance on vinyl. It is something of a low key ambient masterpiece with transportative sounds that bring real depth of emotion. If you listen closely you might be able to join the dots between this and the soundtracks of some cult 80s and 90s video games but if not simply sit back and sink into the lush layers of soothing sound.
Review: IDM powerhouse and still-fresh Brainfeeder signee Hakushi Hasegawa returns with Mahogakko, the latest mindmelter to paint the perpetually morphogenic work of art that is their... ahem... music. Once again, this is a broad set of bad-apple, black MIDI-influenced compositions, all of which push the sonic limit to the floating point of timeline-breaking cacophony, verging on sugar-rushing ideasthetic noise. Imagine an alternate universe of techno-faeries all aflutter in some forest grotto out of conscious sight; despite meaning well and maintaining a vivid glee, this pixie-hive's demeanour defaults to a wild, puckish, erratic and swarming fever, to the point of grave danger for the human visitant. We hold this image firmly in mind, as it concurs with the news of Hasegawa's recent grand gestural face reveal, after which interpretations of their music will never be the same. A thoroughly dynamic record, Hasegawa is unafraid of the contrast between loud and quiet, in a totally singular fashion that bucks the expectation usually laid at the feet of electronica artists. Every sound here, from 'Boy's Texture' to 'Forbidden Thing (Kimmotsu)', is as machine-elven, fidgeting and hyperrealistic as would be expected, yet also unexpected, of today's zeitgeist, that of TikTok-dancing phantasmagorias and disgust-threshold broaching cute slime aesthetics. Everything is so crisp and glossy that the sonic metal deployed in its making sound to have far surpassed their liquidus points, not long before having been strained into a kind of magick philtrum set aside for the braving of fatal fairy realms and fatal fairy realms alone.
Review: Brainfeeder looks back to Japanese hybridist Hakushi Hasegawa's first album Air Ni Ni here and reissues it on limited grey marbled vinyl. Although on the surface it might be thought of as pop, get in between the beats and you will find a challenging record that fused everything from bubblegum pop to breakcore, prog jazz to video games and much more besides. The record first came in 2019 and remains astonishingly diverse and new in the way it mashes up traditional genre boundaries and draws on alt-rock. Fans of label head Flying Lotus are sure to love it as is anyone who heard it first tie round.
Review: Russell Haswell brings Deep Time, marking his sixth release on Diagonal following a productive 2024, which included the 4x12" compilation 13, on top of a UK-wide tour. Deep Time spans a vast influential range, reflecting Haswell's diverse background in computer music, black metal, noise, techno, and improvisation. Deep Time explores all from geopolitical tension to the incomprehensible scale of time itself, drawing sublime inspiration from his solo trips to the Scottish Hebrides and the rock formations glimpsable there. Album highlight 'Unconformity' references James Hutton's geological discovery and its connection to the Earth's history, with typography for the album sleeve designed by MuirMcNeil.
Russell Haswell - "Heavy Handed Sunset (Autechre Form Conversion)"
Viviankrist - "Creatures"
Powell Tillmans - "Stairwell"
NHK - "Binah"
Russell Haswell - "Hypersonic"
Review: Diagonal celebrates its 13th anniversary with a 4x12" release, highlighting both long-time label artists and notable collaborators. LP1 kicks off with a dark, atmospheric remix of Russell Haswell's 'Heavy Handed Sunset' by Autechre, transforming their 2016 version into something more intense. Label boss Powell joins forces with Turner Prize winner Wolfgang Tillmans for a quirky pop experiment, while NHK and Viviankrist deliver moments of striking beauty. Russell Haswell's nod to Cybotron rounds out the set, embodying the boundary-pushing, eclectic spirit that Diagonal has championed for over a decade.
Review: It's been a busy time for Hawksmoor, with the critically acclaimed Telepathic Heights album arriving last year and a re-release of the stunning Saturnalia landing on Library of the Occult earlier in 2024. Now we have a brand new studio collection waiting to be explored, and it's every bit the record fans will have been hoping for given the track record here. Owing plenty to seminal German electronic acts such as Cluster, Neu!, Michael Rother, Can, and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, there's also plenty here rooted in more melodic synth schools of music alongside the ambient work of Brian Eno and more. The result is something that sounds at once modern and old, timeless yet out of time. A work of extraordinary talent and just a little bit of genius, we'd say it has been worth the wait but the remarkable thing here is just how prolific Hawksmoor seem to be.
Review: In light of the first new Haxan Cloak material in a good ten years, we're being gifted the opportunity to comb back through Bobby Krlic's back catalogue and fill in any missing pieces. Krlic is reissuing his back catalogue on his own label, Archaic Devices, which is a fine reminder to drift into the poised majesty of his debut album. Building on the promise of the earlier EPs Observatory and the limited CDr from 2009, this was when we started to comprehend the full scope of Krlic's charged world building. Roundly defined by his tense violin and cello cast in solemn spatial chambers, this album has lost none of its power in the decade since its release.
Review: Ten years on, Excavation has lost none of its power. It's a fitting time to reflect on the last The Haxan Cloak album as we prepare to digest the first new material from Bobby Krlic since, and a return into the complex folds of this album are more than enough to get us excited. Originally released on Tri Angle, now Krlic is putting the album out on his own Archaic Devices and putting paid to some of the astronomical second hand prices. Draped in finely textured, gauzy atmospherics and deathly rhythm pulses, this is a journey into the depths of imagination, where industrial, ambient and the avant-garde collide and test your mettle, but with its clear-sighted intentions it's also an album you can latch onto and continually draw more understanding from. A modern masterpiece, to be sure.
Review: RECOMMENDED
It's two exceptional albums in two for Yoshinori Hayashi, with the Tokyo-based producer's sophomore long player upping the ante on almost every level. Exceptional musicality, epic vision, tangible playfulness and plenty of dancefloor potential, this is one multifarious release to say the least. Not that we we didn't also love Ambivalence, the previous LP.
Pulse of Defiance is a beast unto itself, though, with so much worthy of discussion it's hard to know where to begin. Perhaps at the end, with the spatial, futurist jungle vibes of 'I Believe In You'. Or at the beginning, and the soft pianos and plodding downbeats of 'Collapse'. Betwixt those two you've got seductive jazz ('Twilight'), dubby techy techno ('Touch'), rude boy bass breakbeats topped with psyche accents ('Go With Us'), and galactic ambient symphonies ('Frequency'). That's really just for starters, too.
Review: Labyrinthe! stands as a singular achievement in Pierre Henry's illustrious career, showcasing his ability to craft music even when deprived of his usual sonic resources. The sounds for this piece were supplied by GRM collaborators, each bringing their own unique qualities and textures. Despite not being his own material, Henry's distinct voice and musical vision quickly come to the forefront. Through this intricate soundscape, Henry constructs a maze of audio, focusing intently on the development and manipulation of the sounds provided. His clarity of purpose and deliberate approach is evident throughout, as he shapes the contributions of others into something unmistakably his own. The piece is built upon the interplay of disparate elements, all meticulously woven together into a cohesive sonic journey. Henry described Labyrinthe! as a collaborative venture, a fusion of 58 sound fragments from seven different composers, forming a work that feels both expansive and tightly intertwined. His harmonic sensitivity ensures that the diverse sources never clash but instead create a complex, interlocking sound world. Labyrinthe! is a brilliant testament to Henry's mastery of electroacoustic composition and his remarkable ability to turn limitations into creative triumphs.
The Horse's Pelvis Is A Lyre (feat Jali Bakary) (4:31)
The Horse Is Prepared (5:45)
The Horse Is Quiet (3:23)
The Horse Is Submerged (feat Evan Parker) (6:55)
The Horse Is Put To Work (8:38)
The Rider (Not The Horse) (8:44)
The Truck That Follows The Horses (3:59)
The Horse's Winnings (3:30)
The Horse Has A Voice (feat Theon Cross) (3:13)
The Horse Remembers (3:41)
The Horse Is Close (1:54)
The Horse Is Here (feat Danilo Perez) (3:47)
Review: We all know that Matthew Herbert is a far out sonic experimenter who will look to make music with and from anything. But this project might be his most outlandish and extraordinary to date. It starts with him looking for the largest possible animal skeleton to explore though music. He settled on a full size horse and from that made flutes from its thigh bones and bows from ribs and hair. Gut strings stretched over the pelvis feature in the mid-section and even more bizarre than that is the fact he travelled to ancient cave paintings of horses in Northern Spain to record reverb at their door. Brilliantly bonkers as ever.
Review: While awaiting the release of her album Pripyat, Catalan composer and producer Marina Herlop found herself feeling emotionally unmoored and uncertain about her music career. During this period, she visualised herself as a gardener tending to her inner landscape by expelling negative emotions through purple weeds. This imagery became the foundation of this record which is filled with her warmest, most positive sentiments. With experimental touches still present, Herlop's voice shines with hope and energy while weaving intricate acoustic instrumentation and electronic elements. Nekkuja is a celebration of perseverance and creativity that blends abstract sounds with themes of growth, light and renewal.
Review: Guitarist and composer Patrick Higgins moves out of his comfort zone for a high concept record that pushes boundaries in many directions. As emotionally charged as it is expansive, the title track itself premiered at Monom Studios, Berlin, on a 75 surround speaker setup, giving some idea as to how bold and high spec the ideas are behind the collection as a whole. Versus has plenty of fingers on live instrumentation, but it's also concerned with totems of electronic production - the seamless interweaving of musical textures and layers, free improvisation and an appreciation for bridging styles within and between tracks themselves. Avant garde, ambient, experimental, and installation-worthy stuff from a true great, these are less tracks and more sonic moments contributing to a wider, singular work that's good enough to fully immerse you.
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