techno
Barney Harsent
Kosua was released only last month, but its journey began two years ago when George Thompson, aka Black Merlin, released Hipnotik Tradisi, a beautiful and captivating document of his travels through Indonesia, seamlessly blending field recordings, found sounds and studio experimentalism.Around the same time, he was preparing for a trip to Papua New Guinea, which was to result in profound relationship with both the place and the people that inhabit it – most notably the remote Kosua tribe, whose name graces this album, available on vinyl and download, via Bandcamp. The bond that Thompson Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“That’s what we fucking do!” So says Maxim at the concert’s very end, surveying the sweating, raving carnage of 4,500 souls before him. One of The Prodigy’s two frontman, he stands still finally, after spending the rest of the gig pacing and rushing up and down the lip of the stage like a caged panther. We all know what he means. He means that his band have wrung us out, taken us to a fervour of devil-may-care limb-swinging derangement. The Prodigy always bring the party and, yet again, 28 years into their career, they wreak havoc in a way very few bands of any age or era can.The stage Read more ...
theartsdesk
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why. Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brillianceBob Dylan - More Blood, More Tracks ★★★★★ The fourteenth volume in the Bootleg Series is a keeperBrad Mehldau Trio - Seymour Reads the Constitution! ★★★★★ Prolific improvising pianist creates the apotheosis of the piano trioThe Breeders - All Nerve ★★★★★ Kim and Kelly Deal - plus Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Eight long years, Robyn fans have been waiting. Crazed tweets screamed #releasehoneydammit into the ether for weeks as the Swedish songwriter teased her new music.Comeback single and certified summer earworm “Missing You” was the first song Robyn wrote for the album, but there was a time when she didn’t know if she’d ever make another record. What began as a breakup song soon took on feelings of bereavement after Christian Falk, her friend, collaborator and La Bagatelle Magique bandmate, died, after a short period of illness.So Robyn isolated herself in the studio for a year, making lo-fi Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When he was asked about the first Orbital album since 2012’s Wonky, Paul Hartnoll said that he was torn between writing a really aggressive, Crass-type album and going back to the rave sensibilities of the early 1990s. Monsters Exist may well have some of the former, especially in the atmospheric “The Raid”, but it’s still largely a disc of hands in the air, trancey techno. However, at times like this, a bit of coming together with big smiles is as good a way as any to stand up to those who would divide and impose their obnoxious ideas on us all.Recent single “PHUK” is bouncy rave tune that Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The long career of New York electronic duo Suicide finally came to an end upon the death of their vocalist Alan Vega in 2016. They had not, however - and to say the least – been very prolific in decades. Their reputation rests almost entirely on their first two albums, most especially their debut. But what albums those are. Their primitive synthesizer drone-rock’n’roll still casts a giant shadow 40 years on. It is, then, surely a fool’s errand to release a set entirely consisting of Suicide cover versions. Yet that’s what Many Angled Ones have done – and with partial success.Many Angled Ones Read more ...
Owen Richards
It took Soulwax 12 years to release 2017’s From Deewee, a triumphant one take clash of live drums and electronic wizardry. It’s taken less than 12 months for their follow-up; at their current rate, we can expect another release sometime next weekend. As described in an opening voice-over, this is an “essential mix” equivalent to a mixtape, originally created for a BBC Radio 1 session. However, instead of putting together their favourite songs, the band decided to write and record original material over a two-week period – but is this enough time to create a worthy successor?The songs are Read more ...
joe.muggs
Ryuichi Sakamoto has conquered underground and mainstream with seeming ease over four decades, never dropping off in the quality of his releases. Indeed his most recent projects, following his return to public life after treatment for throat cancer in 2014-15, are among his best. The async album was rightly listed by many, including theartsdesk, as one of 2017's best; the async remodels remixes showed him absolutely keyed in to the electronica zeitgeist, and Glass, his live collaboration album with Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto is a worthy addition to the duo's extensive Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The welcome to Glasgow audio-visual artist Robbie Thomson’s performance engenders a hefty sense of anticipation. It’s almost nervousness-inducing as we’re handed ear-plugs and warned about how very loud it’s going to be. Then, walking into the main hall from the bar, all is gloom. From 1849, for a century-and-a-half, this venue was a church and attached school, its claim to fame a dismissive mention in Jane Eyre. But this evening the stained glass windows are blacked out, blocking the evening sun. In the centre of the old building is a Faraday cage beside which, on a raised podium, Thomson is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There have been reports that as many as 50% of vinyl-buyers don’t actually listen to it. They keep records as a token of affection for the artist in question. This seems curious but, then again, most young people don’t own turntables and the idea is anathema to the way they consume music. However, while there’s a healthy market in reissues and older artists, the most cutting edge music imaginable is appearing on plastic. Check out our Vinyl of the Month! All musical life is reviewed below. You won’t find a more thorough and expansive set of monthly record reviews: theartsdesk on Vinyl is a Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Throughout their career, James Ford and Jas Shaw have proved themselves to be nothing if not versatile. From the subtly swirling psychedelia of Simian, to the various dancefloor shapes they’ve thrown as Simian Mobile Disco.On their last album, 2016’s Welcome to Sideways, the pair presented a collection of tracks that showed talented producers being talented at production. It was an engaging enough listen, but felt, at times, punishingly functional. Of course, in many ways, that’s dance music’s raison d'être – the clue’s in the name and the feet are on the floor. It’s the rhythm, the pulse, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s a regular problem with techno albums. The DJ-producers who make them are usually so deeply embedded in club techno that when it comes to making a long-form collection, leaving the dancefloor and showcasing variety, they’re incapable. What, to them, sounds like a sonic adventure, to the rest of us sounds like a series of four-to-the-floor bangers that, after a couple, grows quickly monotonous, however good they’d have sounded at 3am in strobe-strafed Belgian warehouse darkness.Holland-living Brit Oliver Way, however, has some success evading this particular curse. Way, after all, has Read more ...