A star is born – I am very sure that Chris Ward aka Tropics will become the new star in the electronic/ambient/shoegaze/IDM scene. He will release his first EP on Planet Mu in October. Prelisten here and a few more Tropics tracks here.
Download the title track ‘Soft Vision’ here (MP3): click
Very nice video as well with wonderful floating girls in white blouses filmed artistically and ambitious. And a useless misplaced white wolf at the end of the video. But focus on the girls:
After Tekkon Kinkreet and Heaven’s Door this is the third time Andy Turner and Ed Handley produce a soundtrack for a Michael Arias film. It’s only a short film but the music sounds actually really good. An obviously huge Plaid fan (user name ‘ThePlaided’) ripped the tracks from the film and put them on youtube.
The whole film (in Japanese) is available here. This is all nice Andy and Ed – still await Scintilli, though.
Once a year I review drum’n'bass records. This years recommendation is Klute’ 6th album ‘Music For Prophet’ – the 4th on his own label ‘Commercial Suicide’ and the best since the great ‘Lie Cheat Steal / You Should Be Ashamed’. Worth listening:
Posthuman continue to release their tracks on different labels – from B12 over Handsette Recordings to Uncharted Audio and now the new full lenght album ‘Syn Emergence’ will be released on the London based imprint Balkan Vinyl.
Anyway, the preview of ‘Syn Emergence’ sounds great. I already like the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ parts (assuming the tracks in the preview are played in the rigth track list order).
One of the best albums this year – so far. The ‘mighty’ Black Dog with a reprise to Brian Eno’s ‘Music For Airports’ which reminds me very much to the atmospheric sounds of ‘Silenced’ a superb but rather unknown album from tbd. ‘Music For Real Airports’ is best described on the Soma news site: ‘Anyone who travels by air will have been puzzled by the way that airports tend to reduce us to worthless pink blobs of flesh, the human equivalent of the bags on the conveyor belt. Yet despite the frustration of being in that atmosphere, some of the best of human nature is revealed, alongside some of the very worst. Airports make for great “people watching”’. The artistic intent of Music for Real Airports is therefore to examine the nature of airports and to explore what they could be.’
Anodyne supported Autechre during their last tour in Ireland and surprised the IDM audience with a full lenght after 14 years of silence. It seems to be a hype as everyone talks about this release despite the weak track play statistics on Anodyne’s aka Colin N Cloughley’s myspace site
Lusine – Lucky Numbers: The Ghostly International EP’s
One of my favourite tracks in 2009 was Lusine’s ‘Two Dots’ feat. the beautiful and pristine voice of Vilja Larjosto. ‘Lucky Numbers’ is a collection of his early EP’s, B-sides etc. Good stuff here is a teaser.
And here the fantastic ‘Two Dots’ track&video from 2009.
The Fall – Your Future Our Clutter – Domino Rec.
I loved Mark E.Smith’s work at the beginning of the 90’s very much. All the albums he produced for Phonogram (Extricate, Shift-Work and especially Code:Selfish) were awesome but I didn’t follow The Fall’s …ehmm… ‘carrier’ until the surprising ‘Von Südenfed’ collaboration in 2007. And the new album ‘Your Future Our Clutter’ is devastating good.
Milwaukee-based Erik Kowalski drops a new album called ‘Night on Tape’ containing 20 previously unreleased tracks from his recording archive which is available from the Attack9 store here. Good that these tracks didn’t get lost somewhere.
His masterpiece ‘Whole Numbers Play the Basics’ from 2002 is still unreachable but after a long break he starts over with this second release in 2010 and I hope he continues. Btw the first 2010 release was a digital re-issue of Casino Versus Japan’s self-titled first album from 1998.
The album has already leaked and that’s the way it goes these days. But there is no point to be upset about it as it also offers opportunities – as long as it is good quality. I was a bit unsure after the first tracks have leaked, the track ‘Natural Selection’ didn’t really blow me away honestly. But I couldn’t resist to listen to the leaked album and I was relieved that the album as a whole is another fine piece of music.
Good quality always wins! So I just ordered the CD version. But not the regular one. There is a very limited Rough Trade 3CD edition box containing an extra UNKLE mix CD beside the regular album and the instrumentals. If you like that click here but be quick it’s limited to 300 copies.
