The new four-track release by Cycom, titled Isotope, packs in a compressed set of drum’n’bass that despite some occasional asides for moody filigree tends to favor of spare, hard beats — and at a time when more florid d’n’b has long since become standard TV-advertising and cop-show background music, that’s a gesture worth applauding. Isotope [...]
This is a list of the 5 most popular Disquiet Downstream entries on free recommended MP3s from last month, September. They’re listed in descending order:
Composer David Stutz’s quasi-Gregorian a capella musical accompaniment to Neal Stephenson’s novel Anathem (disquiet.com).
Two DJ sets by Wobbly (aka Jon Leidecker) of mixes from his appearance at a recent Cluster concert, [...]
For the second time this week, a long dependable but also relatively quiet netlabel has released something of note. A few days ago, it was Yoyo Pang!, which celebrated its one-year anniversary with yet another in its series of single-song issuances, a presentation of lightly digitized guitar by Ann Deveria (disquiet.com). Just yesterday it was [...]
Great news. Not only is there a new release on the very occasional Yoyo Pang! netlabel, but it’s a delightful layering of acoustic guitar, understated percussion, and light digital effects that only make themselves fully apparent as the nearly seven-minute track draws to a close. Yes, that’s “track,” as in singular. Yoyo Pang! releases excellent [...]
There is a balance of songness and sound, of an experimentalist’s emphasis on texture and a composer’s on tone, that makes Elisa Luu’s Floating Sounds (Phantom Channel) one of the most immediately awarding and arresting netlabel releases of the year thus far.
The track sure to garner the lion’s share of initial listening is “Starry Night” [...]
The name Kalte is utilized by two Toronto-based musicians, Deane Hughes and Rik MacLean, who traffic in dramatic electronic sounds. Their album The Lanthanide Series, from the excellent Stasisfield netlabel, collects five instrumental tracks that are quite distinct from each other, including the opening drone of “Shallow Approach” (MP3) and the swaying noise of “Bremsstrahlung” [...]
It’s rare for static buzzing to get as downright rollicking as “Adrenaline State,” a recent single by Hourglass Drops (aka N. Pavlov) on the tibprod.com netlabel. The track has all the hallmarks of white-noise music-making: the between-channels fuzziness, the hints of radio-interference chatter, and that crackling pre-digital warmth that practically smells of frayed wiring. But [...]
The Piop EP credited to Anton on the bumpfoot.net netlabel is comprised of the sort of nursery-rhyme electronic pop melodies that bring to mind the less aggressive work by Aphex Twin. Of the set’s seven tracks, especially promising are the second (”Sinetune I,” MP3), its lead tune plucked out as if on a cellphone keypad, [...]
First a few seconds on electric guitar, which quickly fades. Later a deep hum surrounding a ringing piece of serrated metal. Then more guitar, tinged with feedback that comes close to matching the texture of the metal. Later on, single notes from what sounds like an acoustic guitar, plucked in the darkness, and then subsumed [...]
Recent links added to the site’s disquiet.com/elsewhere catalog:
Sound-art- and installation-friendly art galleries twentygoto10.com (San Francisco), diverseworks.org (Houston), and irmamoerchgallery.com (Copenhagen).
Musical acts Clay Chaplin (music.calarts.edu/~cchaplin), Ryan Peoples (ryanpeoples.wordpress.com), Adam Schabtach (programming on the Automaton cellular-automata project, studionebula.com), Chris Randall (interface design on Automaton, analogindustries.com), Christopher Abad (the-mathclub.net), David Stutz (composer of the music to Neal [...]