Category: Now Playing

NOW PLAYING: Vetiver, ‘The Errant Charm’

August 5th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Vetiver, The Errant Charm (Sub Pop, 2011)

A Short Review: From the rave-up riffs of “Ride Ride Ride” to the windswept strings and simmering synthetic textures of “Soft Glass,” Vetiver’s fifth album acts as a fitting bridge between the dog days of summer and the first sepia-toned signs of fall. More than just another slab of pleasant but predictable folk music, it makes a strong case for starting to consider Andy Cabic one of indie rock’s most consistent, and sorely overlooked, songwriters.

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes

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NOW PLAYING: Dark Day, ‘Window’ (Reissue)

July 7th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Dark Day, Window (Dark Entries, 2010)

A Short Review: What happens when a sorely overlooked no-wave pioneer (DNA’s Robin Crutchfield) indulges his inner paranoid android alongside metronomic melodies and the sort of synths that once drove German pop songs and quirky Volkswagen commercials. And if you snag a limited vinyl pressing, you’ll also be treated to a special ‘zine’: Crutchfield’s Darker Days As I Recall Them, 24 pages of detailed liner notes and lyrics.

Available At: Amazon · Dark Entries · Insound · iTunes

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NOW PLAYING: Tropic of Cancer, ‘The Sorrow of Two Blooms’

June 28th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Tropic of Cancer, The Sorrow of Two Blooms 12” (Blackest Ever Black, 2011)

A Short Review: FACT’s deputy editor (Kiran Sande) launched Blackest Ever Black last fall as a means of “[reestablishing] electronic music as a poetic, provocative and emotionally inquisitive force…art, as opposed to engineering.” As clinical as all that sounds—hell, it might as well be the abstract of someone’s Philosophy 401 paper—Tropic of Cancer’s first BEB 12” features everything we love about minimal synth music, from soot-slathered melodies to keys that caress your neck like a patient serial killer. Bleak and strangely beautiful; hopefully a harbinger of things to come.

Available At: Amazon · iTunes

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NOW PLAYING: Noveller, ‘Glacial Glow’

June 27th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Noveller, Glacial Glow (Weird Forest/Saffron Recordings, 2011)

A Short Review: The alliterative title of Sarah Lipstate’s latest solo album sums its sleeping pill approach up perfectly. Which means that, yes, Glacial Glow is a guitar-guided journey into the center of the sun, basking in delicate drone tones and riffs that ripple like wave pools in a water park at midnight.

Allusions to everything from early Growing records to latter-day Earth ring out throughout the night, but the windswept world Lipstate’s created here is entirely her own.

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes · Other Music

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NOW PLAYING: Dalglish, ‘Benacah Drann Deachd’

June 5th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | One comment

The Artist/Album: Dalglish, Benacah Drann Deachd (Highpoint Lowlife, 2011)

A Short Review: Anyone who has fond memories of IDM’s heyday will get something out of this oil-spraying, machine-massaging look at what the appliances in your house do after dark. Beats get broken up into binary code, synths hits your speakers like sheets of static, and unexplained flying samples maintain a suffocating sense of dread.

If someone ever figures out how to translate Philip K. Dick’s fiery prose for the screen again, this’d make a suitable soundtrack, right down to song titles that look like they were spit out of Autechre’s hard drive.

Available At: iTunes

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NOW PLAYING: Chris & Cosey, ‘Songs of Love & Lust’ (Reissue)

May 26th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Chris & Cosey, Songs of Love & Lust (Conspiracy International, 2011)

A Short Review: “This is seduction!” wrote one reviewer when this moonlit masterpiece emerged from C & C’s music factory in 1984. That pretty much nails it, especially now that Chris Carter’s personally remastered the record and pressed it to a limited slab of gray vinyl. For some reason, this record makes us want to wear leather pants in the middle of summer, all while declaring, “Synth-pop is dead! Long live synth-pop!” This is a good thing; a very good thing.

Available At: Amazon · iTunes

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NOW PLAYING: Mist, ‘House’

May 26th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | One comment

The Artist/Album: Mist, House (Spectrum Spools, 2011)

A Short Review: The fourth release from John Elliott’s new vanity label is a side project sojourn with Radio People’s Sam Goldberg. Best experienced as a maroon-flavored double LP, House justifies its hefty import-only price tag with a multi-tiered suite of torrential drone tones, saw-toothed synth waves, and passages that actually warrant using the word “epic” with a straight face. Kinda like Elliott’s everyday role in Emeralds, only a little more fluorescent and fluid around the edges.

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes

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NOW PLAYING: Four Tet, ‘Rounds’

May 25th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Four Tet, Rounds (Domino, 2003)

A Short Review: Declare a dude’s quilt-like productions “folktronica” and this is what he does in return: send his samples spiraling through space in the hopes of hitting us square in the head (the silver bells and scenery-chewing rhythm section of “She Moves She,” the adrenaline shot loops of “Spirit Fingers”) and heart strings (the steam-pressed minor keys of “My Angel Rocks Back and Forth,” the plaintive piano lines of “Unspoken”). And as the sun sets alongside Kieran Hebden’s version of a “Slow Jam,” we’re presented with a playful mix of shimmering chords, snappy beats, and freshly squeezed squeaky toys. All of which make perfect sense in the beautifully strange world he created across Round’s blank canvas.

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes

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NOW PLAYING: Conrad Schnitzler, ‘Ballet Statique’ (Reissue)

May 15th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Conrad Schnitzler, Ballet Statique (M=Minimal, 2011)

A Short Review: Germany’s fairly new M=Minimal imprint continues to mine only the finest material from Conrad Schnitzler’s sprawling back catalog. This particular LP is more than three decades old, yet it still hints at everything from the break-driven head rush of drum ‘n’ bass (“Zug”) to the more experimental side of new-school acts like Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never (“Electric Garden” sounds like the progressively insane ramblings of a Kraut-rock keyboardist).

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes

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NOW PLAYING: Julian Lynch, ‘Terra’

May 4th, 2011 | File Under: Now Playing | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Julian Lynch, Terra (Underwater Peoples, 2011)

A Short Review: Springtime melodies tailor made for magic mushroom mornings, with enough classically trained curve balls and subterranean synth lines to keep things interesting. A few parts even remind us of Elliott Smith without the emotional baggage.

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes · Other Music

Posted in: Now Playing

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