Excellent first half year for you electronic music lovers out there. The Black Dog, Thom Yorke, Autechre, Boards of Canada etc. all came up with new fantastic releases and there is even more in the pipe. Gold Panda will release’ Half Of Where You Live’ but I am not so sure after the disappointing Trust EP. I am more excited about Zomby’s new double album ‘With Love’. CD1 has already leaked and it’s a killer (half-)release with a mixture of very different styles. The two drum’n'bass tracks Overdose and 777 are massive – the best d’n'b tracks in ages!

Coming back to the present. I am currently enjoying Jon Hopkins ‘Immunity’ very much. I knew him for his collaboration work with Brian Eno and the soundtrack for ‘Monsters’ which was good but not remarkable. That changed with ‘Immunity’, teaser of this excellent album here:

Interesting new project by Dylan Richards aka King Cannibal, who was known for decent drum’n'bass or dubstep releases on Ninja Tune. I am not really a big fan of Ninja Tune with some exceptions like its founders Coldcut and Amon Tobin. Since moving to Berlin Richards’ sound is influenced by glacial Germanic techno which makes ‘Kill the Lights’ a listening pleasure under his new moniker House of Black Lanterns. A lovely dark sound with ambient-dub-techno-IDM soundscapes, some of which remind me to early stuff from The Black Dog., e.g. in track 6 Never Sleep Again.

Listen to the whole album.

Boards of Canada just announced a new album called ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’. The album will be released on 10/06/2013 and hopefully dropped a bit earlier as with some other WARP releases in the past (Plaid, Autechre).

The promotion for this album is excellent with some mysterious 12″, radio snippets, Youtube clips, Soundcloud hints and even a commercial on Cartoon Network revealing new album details and number sequences which finally build the password for the Tomorrow’s Harvest microsite (click here).  Even the source code of this website hides a number string – I couldn’t find out where it is, though.

—— / —— / —— / —— / XXXXXX / ——

Anyway, the code is cracked already so enter the password 699742628315717228936557813386519225 to get to the Tomorrow’s Harvest promo video.

If you don’t want to put in all the numbers here is the direct video URL. Alternatively it’s shared on Youtube already a hundred times or so – see below after the track list.

Tracklist according to Bleep’s microsite:

Gemini
Reach For The Dead
White Cyclosa
Jacquard Causeway
Telepath
Cold Earth
Transmisiones Ferox
Sick Times
Collapse
Palace Posy
Split Your Infinities
Uritual
Nothing Is Real
Sundown
New Seeds
Come To Dust
Semena Mertvykh

M83’s Anthony Gonzalez used to work together with Joseph Trapanese already on ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming’ (see my review from 2011) and they came together again to create a superb soundtrack for the science fiction film Oblivion starring Tom Cruise. Trapanese collaborated already with Daft Punk for the Tron Legacy soundtrack which I also like very much. By the way, Daft Punk have announced a new album titled ‘Random Access Memories’ due to be released in May.

Coming back to Oblivion. Oblivion to me is a weird mixture from Moon, Star Wars, Independence Day, Logan’s Run and a bit of Demolition Man (well, yes just a bit). The film is dominated by the soundtrack, Gonzalez & Trapanese’s music is always very present. But this may be because I listened to the soundtrack before I watched the film so I was very focused on the music.

Listen to Star Waves which wonderfully combines the leitmotif with some Slowdive-esque sound and the beautiful title song Oblivion feat.Susanne Sundfør.

The Black Dog will drop a series of new releases this year starting with ‘The Return Ov Bleep EP’, a nice acid-house-techno 4-tracker which has just been released on their own Dust Science imprint. But this EP might not reflect what the guys plan to release in May with their new album called ‘Tranklements’ preceded by a series of EP’s called ‘Darkhaus’. None of the Darkhaus tracks will appear on Tranklements so I am really excited about the new album and EP’s. Darkhaus Vol.1 starts great with two versions of ‘Council Flat Emptiness’ and a superb mix by LB Dub Corp aka Luka Slater. Tranklements is described as a body of work created as 16 unique and individual tracks. Each one is its own little object, something we’ve created to externalise, explain and express the world we find ourselves in. I expect no less than an epic release!

What happened to me? Whilst listening to The Return Ov Bleep and writing this news I scanned my tbd collection and started immediately listening to some great old tbd stuff like the Babylon singles (I am happy to own both CDs) and the incredible live tapes from a Toronto concert in 1997. I suppose the older I get the more sentimental I feel.

Lusine – The Waiting  Room – Critics are not so good for this album for whatever reason. Well, I know it better:

Apparat – Krieg und Frieden – Another masterpiece from Quedlinburg born Sascha Ring. Krieg und Frieden is a mesmerising beautiful theatre score. Lighton and A Violent Sky are simply genius.

TM404 – TM404 – Andreas Tilliander aka Mokira creates drone-techno tracks from 80’s Roland drum machine and synthezizers. Still fresh.

Applescal – Dreaming In Key – A young Dutch producer, first time he crossed my path. Good review on Pitchfork.

Autechre – Exai – Two hours of madness, I will simply need more time to get into ‘Exai’ like I did with the superb ‘Quaristice’ from 2008. It grows.

Many, many excellent releases in February. This is current rotation list:

Atoms For Peace – Amok – As assumed in my December post already this is a great follow-up of Thom Yorke’s genius solo album ‘The Eraser’. One of the best releases this year so far.  The single ‘Default’ is the best track, here the B-side ‘What The Eyeballs Did’:

Ochre – National Ignition – Maybe not Ochre’s best record to date but IDM lovers and Ochre followers -like me- will enjoy it.

The Asphodells – Ruled By Passion, Destroyed By Lust – Allround talent Andrew Weatherall (I loved all the Two Lone Swordsmen stuff) with a superb album which partly reminds me to one of the best breakbeat records ever: ‘How To Operate With A Blown Mind’ from Lo-Fidelity Allstars. Where is tha Lo-Fi CD, I need to listen to it again.

My Bloody Valentine – mbv – Oh my god, more than 20 years since ‘Loveless’ Kevin Shields returns with a fantastic album simply called ‘mbv’. When I first heard ‘Soon’ from ‘Loveless’ I felt in love with MBV – one of the best shoegazing albums ever. ‘Loveless’ almost ruined Creation Records, whilst ‘mbv’ was self-released by Kevin Shields – and I really like ‘mbv’. Where is that damn ‘Loveless’ CD too?

Synkro -  Acceptance EP – Synkro is Joe McBride from Manchester and I haven’t heard from him so far. ‘Acceptance’ is a really beautiful ambient EP and I am very sure to hear from this guy again. Looking forward to Synkro’s future releases.

Soundtracks are my passion. And when Mogwai produces a soundtrack I prick my ears. The cool thing about Mogwai’s soundtrack to the French TV series “Les Revenants” is that the guys produced the tracks before they started filming (read the interview here). The soundtrack actually sounds like a proper Mogwai  album and not like a typical score collection. The mixture of Mogwai’s multiple guitars, the piano, cello and string arrangements works perfectly. I hope they will play a few of the songs live during their next tour as I really enjoyed Mogwai in Frankfurt as part of the “Hardcore Will Never Die..” tour in 2011.

I haven’t got the clue whether the series is worth watching but the music is great. It’s not Mogwai’s first soundtrack, I loved “The Fountain” soundtrack and the film which combines one my favourite director Darren Aronofsky, genius Clint Mansell and Mogwai.

When did I start to love Yo La Tengo? Well, I guess it was 1993 when Painful came out. I am big fan since then and I didn’t miss a single release, I even ordered ‘The Sounds Of The Sounds Of Science’ CD directly from the YLT website 10 years or so ago just to have some new YLT stuff, even though this wasn’t a proper album release. But I never got the chance to see them live. Until now. One of the four concerts in Germany will be in Frankfurt on 11th of March and I already got tickets, yeah…

Fade is not the best YLT album ever, in fact some tracks remind me to good old ‘Painful!’. But ‘Fade’ is probably the best since ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out’. Still my favourite is ‘Electr-O-Pura’, though.

The Youtube videos will be available outside Germany only. Or use IP hiding proxies.

Congratulations Mr. Pawlowitz aka Shed.

The Killer is the +spatze.com record of the year 2012.

The album as a whole works perfectly for me (see also my post from 1st of August this year) but is has some outstanding and massive tracks as well like ‘Ride On’, ‘You Got The Look’ and ‘Day After’. The latter was also +spatze.com track of the year 2012. The Killer is a true masterpiece and epic release.

The runners-up are:

2. Rone – Tohu Bohu
3. Starkey – Orbits
4. Lukid – Lonely At The Top
5. Phon.O – Black Boulder