“Nicely ominous” — perhaps no other phrase can so well sum up the conflicting emotional effects of a well-crafted drone. Those words were part of a comment a few days ago, responding to a track by Hoist at soundcloud.com/hoist.
Appropriately titled “Bleakscape,” the track is a lightly meandering, slowly circulating drone that doesn’t so much progress [...]
The electronically enhanced, endlessly looping cello of Ted Laderas, aka Ooray, makes regular appearances as part of the Disquiet Downstream series of recommended MP3s. His latest, “Marzo,” makes a somewhat surprising but nonetheless welcome departure from his by now formalized approach to thick, reverb-drenched walls of cello-derived sound, which often come to take the appearance [...]
Website URLs are not unlike vanity license plates. You can tell a lot from how an individual chooses to label him- or herself. URLs do no have the attendant cheese factor of personalized license plates, because there are no non-vanity URLs; there is no “F38BC” nor “43HLJ2″ of URLs. In the world of music, even [...]
Derrick Hart may have titled his recent five-song EP Fall Asleep to This, but it starts with a short, sharp, seriously pulse-quickening bang. The album opens with an abrasive bit of noise-making (“When Someone Loves You No More,” MP3). At a total of 23 seconds, it’s harsh and loud and startling enough to get your [...]
Another treasure from ubu.com: the 1993 album by Bernhard Günter, Un Peu de Neige Salie. Well, four of the original album’s five tracks, judging by various discographic reference sources. Günter is a major micro-sonicist, and these tracks exemplify his detail-oriented approach, even if one of them is, by his own explanation, a real career anomaly. [...]
Major congrats to Philly-based outward-bound hip-hop and soul-cutup producer WHY?Arcka, aka Shawn Kelly, who has completed his 26-track series of free downloads, Exhibits A – Z, which he launched last year at arckatron.bandcamp.com.
Each entry in the Exhibits series takes a few brief snippets of familiar songs and creates something new out of these little [...]
Back in the heady days of fusion, and later on repeat during the heights of acid-jazz, texture was perhaps the discernible feature distinguishing depth from froth. The rough, saliva-tinged exaltations of Miles Davis kept his electric-era work grounded — in contrast with the high-tone lounge music of his third-generation descendants. On the fifth and penultimate [...]