Search results: kranky

Review: Michael Grigoni and Pan•American's latest collaboration is a series of contemplative reflections on the isolation, fractures and uncertainties that define today's world. The album delves into the emotional landscape shaped by political divisions, personal solitude, and the lingering aftereffects of the pandemic. Through its fusion of folk, country, bluegrass, and blues elements, paired with a modern, ambient atmosphere, the sound is both rooted in tradition and forward-looking. Tracks like 'Sun Morning Sun' and 'Silver Streams' carry a sense of quiet introspection, while 'Black River Song' and 'Mirage/Afternoon' showcase the duo's ability to merge organic instrumentation with spacious, textured soundscapes. The album's exploration of personal and collective experience creates a reflective space, asking listeners to pause and engage with the complexities of modern life. A musical journey that speaks to the heart of the American experience, offering an emotional response to an uncertain future.

Review: Over his 25-year career, this veteran composer has crafted transcendent soundscapes that resonate with cinematic depth, making his music a perfect fit for storytelling on screen. Shards, a seven-track album released via Kranky, compiles selections from scoring projects like Infinity Pool, The North Water, Luzifer and La Tour. Tim Hecker's journey into film and television scoring feels like a natural evolution of his artistic vision. The haunting 'Sunset Key Melt' features celestial tones and layered textures, creating a spacey ambiance that is sure to impress. In contrast, 'Morning' begins as a serene piano melody, disrupted by unsettling feedback that blurs the line between beauty and unease. Each track balances traditional composition with experimental sound design, resulting in a collection that is both eerie and enchanting. This album reveals how seamlessly Hecker's soundscapes translate to visual narratives and the warm, tactile vinyl experience just seems to underline that even further.

Review: Canadian composer Hecker's movement into scoring for film and television has been a natural progression over the past 25 years and now the artist has perfectly aligned his sound with motion pictures and film. Perhaps not fully intentional by Tim but most fans point to him as an artist whose music evoke emotions that equal the power of what a film could create. Known for his transcendent soundscapes that push ambient music into unclassifiable realms, Hecker collects a series of compositions originally created for projects like Infinity Pool, The North Water, Luzifer and La Tour. While some pieces were left unused in the final productions, their standalone presentation here showcases Hecker's ability to evoke vivid atmospheres. The seven-track EP, released via Kranky, includes the hauntingly beautiful 'Sunset Key Melt', where celestial chimes echo amidst layered, dense melodies. It exemplifies Hecker's knack for crafting spacey, droning soundscapes. Meanwhile, 'Morning' begins as a delicate piano piece before unsettling feedback disrupts its serenity, blending traditional composition with experimental textures. Shards reflects a late-career revelation: Hecker's immersive sound design translates seamlessly to visual storytelling. His work on Arctic psycho-chiller The North Water and supernatural horror Luzifer underscores his ability to merge ice-cold atmospheres with emotional depth. This EP is both eerie and ethereal, showing why Hecker's style is so compelling.

Review: Jacob Long's fourth full-length LP for Kranky hears the artist otherwise known as Earthen Sea expand his repertoire to an almost full reimagining, taking to the now longstanding Earthen Sea moniker from the fresh incarnation as a "piano trio", rather than a solo production effort. Though we gather this might not genuinely be the case, all it took was a simple shift in self-imagining to fashion a completely different take on a still so far meditative sound. Here elements were chopped and resampled, then layered with bass, drums, percussion and additional keys; the result is a fusion of live band acoustics and downtempo loops, sculpted into nine smoke-and-mirror dubs of fractured jazz, soft-focus noir and trip hop dust.

Review: Only Hinting, the full-length debut record by Detroit duo Clinic Stars, both refines and redefines their pitch-perfect fusion of downer-pop balladry and featherweight shoegaze. Recorded and produced at the band's home studio, the album was created across 2022 and 2023, patiently layering FX and spatial depths to give each song a swirling, subconscious undertow. Between its burring washes of electric guitar crunch, its subtle electronic backbones, and its more quiescent moments of acoustic stripped-backness, we wouldn't have guessed that this one was a debut at all.

Review: Belong's latest offering, Realistic IX, presents a mesmerizing journey through acid-washed landscapes of sound. Michael Jones and Turk Dietrich craft an heavily processed sonic experience, where bleached guitars, hypnotic drums, and buried vocals coalesce to create shifting gradients of haze and hypnosis. Melodies ebb and flow, sometimes surfacing before submerging into feedback-laden currents. Despite a 13-year hiatus since their last Kranky release, Common Era, Belong's synergy remains undiminished. Their commitment to motorik drone and liminal emotion evolves on Realistic IX, offering a tactile and unreal exploration of sound. Tracks like 'Souvenir' showcase distant vocals shrouded in dissonance, while 'Image of Love' introduces drum machine work and reverberated melodic changes. Overall, Realistic IX is a shimmering comeback for Belong, capturing the band's enigmatic allure and pushing their sonic boundaries with finesse.

Review: Clinic Stars' debut album Only Hinting is a melancholic swirl of downer-pop and shoegaze, crafted by Detroit duo Giovanna Lenski and Christian Molik. Having spent 2022 and 2023 recording at their home studio, they layered each track with dense FX and deep reverbs, creating an emotional undertow that envelops every song. Tracks like 'I Am The Dancer' spiral with strummed guitar swells, while 'Remain' pulses with gated reverb, and the greyscale melancholy of 'Isn't It' drips with dreamy, aching nostalgia. The album is as much about escape as it is about longing. Though the duo cite their industrial surroundings as a key influence, the songs themselves feel as if they're trying to transcend these confines, soaking in the romance of distance and detachment. Previous EPs 10,000 Dreams and April's Past offered a similar slowcore haze, but Only Hinting takes this aesthetic further, blending melody and ambience until they become indistinguishable. There's a delicate balance between lightness and weight, a constant tug-of-war between floating and sinking. The guitars drift, vocals melt into the background, and the production feels both expansive and intimate, stretching across shadowy cityscapes. With this debut, Clinic Stars have created a deeply immersive sonic landscape that lingers long after it fades out. Available to pre-order now, Only Hinting will be released on LP format later this year.

Review: Loscil, the moniker of Canadian sound designer Scott Morgan, released his debut album Triple Point in 2001, now available on vinyl for the first time. An ambient dub concept album inspired by thermodynamics, Triple Point explores soundscapes that evoke the principles of heat and entropy. Tracks like 'Hydrogen' and 'Ampere' build from muted beats and looped synth melodies, creating an atmosphere that is clinical and stark. Morgan's talent for arranging sound is evident as he layers samples to produce a sense of intricate, microscopic processes. 'Pressure' and 'Vapour' show his ability to craft immersive environments, though the overall minimal approach. Fans of experimental electronic music will appreciate Loscil's meticulous sound design and the album's conceptual depth.

Review: Windy & Carl's album Consciousness encapsulates the duo's exploration of ambient and drone music with a warmer, more pastoral feel compared to their previous works. Absent are the vague dread and claustrophobia, replaced by buoyant soundscapes that evoke sense of tranquility. The song titles themselves, such as 'The Sun' and 'Elevation,' reinforce this lighter tone. 'The Sun' opens the album with simple yet direct electric guitar chords, setting the stage for the serene journey ahead. Even tracks like 'Balance (Trembling)' touch on darker shadings but quickly transition to glowing, comforting tones. Tracks like 'Elevation' and 'The Llama's Dream' contribute to the dream-like atmosphere of the album, with shimmering tones and ethereal vocals adding to its hallucinatory quality. 'Resolution' concludes the album with a final, contemplative note. Consciousness shows Windy & Carl's dedication to perfecting the drone. While there may not be a major departure in style, the album is commitment to crafting immersive sonic experiences. For fans of ambient and drone music, Consciousness is another great album to have and enjoy.

Review: Few recording artists have aligned the quantity and quality of their releases as well as New Zealand singer/guitarist Roy Montgomery has in 1995. Beginning with Kranky's release of the soundtrack for an imaginary film That That Is...Is (Not) by Roy's duo Dissolve early in the year, a series of superb albums and singles have been issued by a variety of labels across the world. Each one of them is a must have. Most recently, the Drunken Fish label released a collection of pastoral drones entitled Scenes From The South Island, singles have appeared on the Roof Bolt and Gyttja labels, and further singles are scheduled with Ajax, Siltbreeze and others. Temple IV is the first solo recording by Roy Montgomery on Kranky; the album was recorded by Roy on a four-track tape deck and then thickened up with monophonic moog. The tracks thereupon are thick with interwoven guitar lines and Moog drone, inspired by the Guatemalan rain forests and the mysterious ruins of the temple and ruins Roy visited there. The long overdue recognition of Montgomery as a crucial figure in New Zealand's musical history as a member of The Pin Group, Shallows and Dadamah, is now augmented by his new recordings. Temple IV will serve to extend and deepen that appreciation.