experimental
Album Reviews: Nadah El Shazly -‘Laini Tani’: The evocative voice of Cairo’s leftfield scene delivers a soul-searching stunner.
Where is Egyptian-born, Montreal-based producer, vocalist, composer, Nadah El Shazly likely to be heading with her second solo album ‘Laini Tani’ (out now on One Little Independent)? From a starting point in the Egyptian capital’s only Misfits cover band to a debut album, ‘Ahwar’ which placed her at the centre of the Cairo leftfield scene, …
Album Review: Trá Pháidín – ‘An 424’: Dynamic and distinctive experimental post rock from the illusive Galway collective.
So let’s get philosophical. In the mid-fifties Guy Debord developed the idea of ‘Psychogeography’, the influence a place has on its inhabitants, their attitudes, values and how they go about their day to day. If you put that into a pop music perspective could you imagine Joy Division without Manchester, Bjork from anywhere but Iceland, …
Premiere: A.M. Boys go to ‘Space Times Six’, new album Present Phase out today
Back in 2022, A.M. Boys—the project of New Yorkers Chris Moore and John Blonde—released their impressive debut album Distance Decay. After a while away, the pair resurfaced earlier this year with news of a follow-up. It’s called Present Phase; we’ve been listening to it for a little bit and it’s arguably even better than its …
Album Review: Disk Musik – A DD. Records Compilation; Beautifully broken sounds from the Japanese fringe.
In the cultural afterglow of Japan’s postmodern early ’80s, Disk Musik emerges as both an endnote and a revelation—a window into a scene too strange and insular to ever fully cross over, yet too fascinating to ignore. Originally released as one of the final statements from the cult cassette label DD. Records, the compilation has …
Track/Video : Experimental beats explorer I Am Fya previews her ‘Homeland’ album with the pounding power of ‘i2i’.
It’s seems like quite a while since we’ve had any recorded output from Manchester’s electronic experimentalist I Am Fya. Well over a year ago she delivered The Sun Will Kill Me, a breezy, warm hearted slice of electro-pop which echoed with a trip-hop undercurrent. Framed by I Am Fya’s prolonged stay in Barbados with her …
Album Review: Penelope Trappes – ‘A Requiem’: Resonant, deeply fulfilling ambient songs which need to be heard.
Penelope Trappes recognises she makes music goes deep and once described her approach as “digging up the underworld with visual motifs, and a mystical, gothic darkness that symbolises my struggles”. Now after over a decade of excavation, through four albums and inspired side projects, the Australian, now Brighton- based, experimental musician reveals that there is …
Album Review: Nick Storring – ‘Mirante’: A unique percussive and orchestral panorama from the Canadian multi-instrumentalist.
Delving into the musical potential of the humbucker pick-up and other electro-mechanical instruments, getting inspired by ghost towns in Ontario, recording a whole album from a pedestrian bridge near to his home and composing for a new instrument, the halldorophone, Nick Storring is the archetypal, restless experimenter. He’s driven by the ‘what if’ and the …
Album Review: T. Gowdy – ‘Trill Scan’: Inspired Early music and darkwave alchemy.
It was a question of time before Canadian producer/audio-visual artist T.Gowdy’s background filtered through to his engrossing electronic music and that time is now. Gowdy’s new album ‘Trill Scan’, his third for Constellation, with its ethereal vocal harmonics and sinuous acoustic instrumentation makes careful sonic connections with college years spent as a professional choral singer …
Album Review: Joni Void – Every Life Is A Light : The Montreal sound artist delivers a new experimental-pop touchstone.
Pinning, hash-tagging, mood-boarding, even crisply describing Joni Void’s music gets no easier. Maybe the role Void plays is as a post post-sampling, cut & paste collagist or re-imaginer of the already re-imagined? Perhaps experimental glitch artist, sonic mind-scrambler or underground sound documentarian sums up other dimensions of their singular approach? Probably the best that can …
Album Review: Cluster Lizard – Herts
The pulse of the path. In a massive heartbeat, daring waves rise one after another. The unbreakable tide of the lightning dance, where life and death collide in the eternal vibration of consciousness. In previous centuries, Ukrainian warriors invented an audacious macabre ritual called Herts, a courageous death dance. Before the battle, a few ruthless …