There’s a point about two minutes into the third track off of LOFT’s most recent EP and departt from mono games where a shimmering chord rises from the stuttering and thundering surface of the track. In most writing about LOFT aka Aya Sinclair’s work, this “stuttering and thundering” is described as the producer’s tendency towards “experimentalism.” That is a claim I will not dispute. The more I listen to “sSLABicks,” however, the more I’m convinced that LOFT has turned everything on its head. The more I listen, the more I feel comforted by what might seem to be the chaotic mess of percussion ..read more

Erased Tapes have done it again. The ‘it’ is to breathe life into another unusual, original, poignant contemporary classical group - and to righteously deliver their music our ears, where it belongs! There was Nils Frahm; there was A Winged Victory for the Sullen; there was Penguin Café Orchestra; etc… Now there is Shards: a twelve-member experimental choral group led by Kieran Brunt. Their recently released debut album Fine Sounds is in turns disquieting and comforting, minimal and cinematic, digital and analogue; Brunt’s desire to play, to experiment, unconstrained, is transparent at every ..read more

There are a lot of weird DJ/producer names floating around these days (I’m looking at you, DJ fart in the club). However, in my mind, the king of them all is AMAZONDOTCOM. That being said, I don’t want their name to get all the attention. Their most recent EP, Mirror River, is excellent. It has everything you want out of contemporary electronic music: blips, bloops, blops, squeaks, bird calls and water droplets. Nevertheless, at its core, I think “Leopard’s Dream” has the same appeal as an old school house track. It’s got one interesting, juicy little riff that massages your brain for four mi ..read more

In his latest release “Arrecife” Tomás Novoa bops us steadily, patiently through a blissful soundscape of his own unique construction. If you had to paint that landscape, it would most definitely look like the artwork above. The effect is blissfully estranging – not dissimilar to the experience of listening to Jon Hopkins or Nicolas Jaar. We are treated to intimate textures; at times the beat rests on a bedrock of intimate crackling, elsewhere subtle peripheral whispers paint space. The breathy primary vocal sample seems to beckon us, as a soft heartbeat-like thud underpinning the track gra ..read more

Sgrow is an electronic duo consisting of Vilde Nupen and Kristoffer Lislegaard. They hail from Oslo. And they have hailed down upon us a new piece of electronica: a manic, galloping track that rushes past your ears like you are racing through a freaky sci-fi landscape in a convertible with the roof down.  It’s a soundscape that is hard to tie down; they seem to have the same problem, because on their website they cite as musical inspirations "Tim Hecker, Vince Staples, Kelela, Holy Other, Little Dragon and Aphex Twin.” On facebook they add to that list "Four Tet, FKA Twigs, Björk" … and many ..read more

After his debut EP Fragmentos (where he worked with the likes of rising star Bad Gyal), Ilimitado finds British-Columbian producer Florentino continuing to develop his hybrid sound and working with a new cadre of up and coming artists, like Brazil’s MC Bin Laden. The sounds are eclectic and reference reggaeton, cumbia and baile funk as much as they do UK bass and grime.  Although every track on this EP deserves a mention, I want to draw particular attention to Latigo, the only track without a listed vocalist. Over the course of four minutes, a looming, atmospheric melody trades places with ..read more

With simple instrumentation – a reverberating, uncluttered guitar pattern – and a minimal rhythmic scaffold –  a muted strum on the off-beat – Arran George is not trying to hide behind effects here. This track is an exercise in control and sparsity, but not for sparsity’s sake; at one point he even briefly backs up his vocals with sweet layered vocals, a frictionless unearthly choir – blink and you’ll miss it. I bet Arran George is tired of being compared to Bon Iver. Here we go again. The airy vocals sit in a similar range, and the melody feels decidedly Iver-eque. His lyrics feel somehow gr ..read more

I’m sure that at some point I’ll post more about Oakland-based party/label Club Chai and their founders, 8ulentina & Foozool (who have some very noteworthy recent releases). Recently, however, they put together a remix of one of the most iconic songs from Bollywood blockbuster Dhoom 2 for London DJ Manara’s Ultimate Spice Mix charity compilation for Restless Beings, an international human rights organization.  As a person of Indian origin who spent innumerable hours watching Dhoom VHS’s in his grandmother’s house, I can’t help but lose my mind when I hear a remix of “Crazy Kiya Re” that’s ..read more

Since I first heard this song, I haven’t been able to get the infectiously catchy chorus out of my head. I find myself singing it over and over again. My neighbors probably think I’m going through a difficult breakup. I half expect one of them to come knocking on my door, proffering a cookie: “it’s okay honey, sometimes people just aren’t compatible”. For context, the lyrics in the chorus are, “One of us wants what the other can’t give”. Actually, the lyrics are, “One of us, one of us wants   One of us, one of us wants   One of us, one of us wants what the other can’t give.” Like an effect ..read more

Andrzej Frelek is the co-founder of METICO nightclub in Warsaw, turned electronic producer of inventive electronica under the name Lensk. Recently he released his second EP, Apophenia (Lost Time) via JEROME. His sounds are eclectic - sometimes glitchy and ambient, elsewhere rooted in the club. Apophenia opens on a track called “Interlude”. (I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a track called “Interlude” so much.) Found sounds and intimate textures create a surreal spaciousness, as regular percussive clicks intermingle with blasts of white noise like jets of steam from an exhaust. Meanwhile ..read more