Back catalogue: Balearic/Downtempo

Review: Seth Haley begun has career as Com Truise with a bang, releasing two superb albums on Ghostly International in as many years. Curiously, it's taken him five years to conjur up album number three, the typically spacey, melodious and intergalactic Iteration. As you'd expect, his usual musical reference points - Vangelis's Blade Runner soundtrack, early synth-wave, skewed lo-fi boogie, late night radio instrumentals - are all still much in evidence, as his is passion for dusty old synthesizers, cheap drum machines and ear-pleasing melodies. In effect, it's business as usual, though when the music is this cheery, tuneful and atmospheric, it would be churlish to complain.

Review: Helios is back with a new album that comes here on CD. He is rather a mainstay of the Ghostly label and someone adept at going deep into immersive worlds of ambient sound, though has always manage to evolve his signature style across his various long players. This one is all about minimal ambient electronics laced with instrumentation. It is his third long player on Ghostly following Veriditas and then Domicile in 2020 - and is a bit of a hark back to his earlier electro-acoustic roots. These are lush sounds with lively leads that unfurl slowly and meaningfully with plenty of emotion.

Review: A Pale Fire, Goldmund, Mint Julep and Helios are just a few of the pies that American composer and multi-instrumentalist Keith Kenniff has their fingers in. The latter, an ambient project started in 2004 with 'Unomia', has received critical acclaim, their formal music training and unique approach to the genre garnering quite the following in the late 2000s. Since then, Helios has been consistently putting out projects, all the while still working on Goldmund and more - 'Espera' feels like it's what Kenniff does to unwind from his busy schedule. It's a deep sigh, a breath of fresh air as a sunbeam bursts through the clouds. Single 'Intertwine' is heavily inspired by the lo-fi hip-hop boom of the 2010s, the gentle rolling percussion, swaying synths and muted snares are meditative and nostalgic. 'Lineoa' takes a more upright approach, a spacious composition and orchestral elements cradle a gentle guitar riff, as blown-up flutes and uplifting strings evoke Eric Barones work on 'Stardew Valley'.

Review: A Pale Fire, Goldmund, Mint Julep and Helios are just a few of the pies that American composer and multi-instrumentalist Keith Kenniff has their fingers in. The latter, an ambient project started in 2004 with 'Unomia', has received critical acclaim, their formal music training and unique approach to the genre garnering quite the following in the late 2000s. Since then, Helios has been consistently putting out projects, all the while still working on Goldmund and more - 'Espera' feels like it's what Kenniff does to unwind from his busy schedule. It's a deep sigh, a breath of fresh air as a sunbeam bursts through the clouds. Single 'Intertwine' is heavily inspired by the lo-fi hip-hop boom of the 2010s, the gentle rolling percussion, swaying synths and muted snares are meditative and nostalgic. 'Lineoa' takes a more upright approach, a spacious composition and orchestral elements cradle a gentle guitar riff, as blown-up flutes and uplifting strings evoke Eric Barones work on 'Stardew Valley'. This version is pressed on a beige and blue gradient vinyl, a picturesque disc that imitates the dusk on the album cover.

Review: Dylan Khotin-Foote is the Vancouver talent who is now very much at home on Ghostly. Back in 2020 he served up his post-rave, post-techno, post-ambient fusion album Finds You Well and now comes an equally new take on drone and ambient across 11 new tracks. The artist's unique hazy downtempo is heightened here by a first ever vocalist appearance - that is Montreal-based Tess Roby who lends a subtle sense of humanity and extra soulful layer that helps bring the tunes alive like never before. Though slower than before, this is another sublime offering from Khotin.

Review: Canada may not shout as loud as the US, UK or Germany when it comes to electronic music, with the exception of Richie Hawtin perhaps, albeit frequently assumed he's American, and is actually part-British. Nevertheless, the larger North American state has a truly remarkable legacy in house, techno, ambient, and synth-y odds and sods.

It's proof the apple never falls far from the tree, given proximity to some of the bonafide birthplaces of those sounds - Chicago and Detroit. Edmonton's Khotin is indicative of the difficult to define tones that emanate from the Maple Leaf and its people. So much texture, pouring with emotion, and fundamentally born of new ideas, or at least different ways of thinking. Release Spirit, his third album on Michigan's Ghostly International, is thoughtful, intelligent, downtempo electronic stuff, crafted with love and attention to detail.

Review: Esteemed solo electronic producer Lusine (Jeff McIlwain) is known best for his rich, sizzling, and heavenly production edges, all of which he brings to the more experimental corners of the genre. Now he returns with his 9th full-length record, Long Light, marking twenty years since he first joined the Ghostly International roster. Though his past work has been more experimental, this LP continues a more recent throughline of McIlwain's interest in more pop-oriented song structures, remaining texturally brilliant while channelling straightforward, rapturous beat-backbones, and enlisting the help of Asy Saavedra, Sarah Jaffe, and Sensorimotor collaborators Vilja Larjosto and Benoît Pioulard.

Review: Released at the height of chillwave, 'Dive' was a staple of early-2010s YouTube algorithm downtempo. While relatively few people were aware of Tycho before then, the artist (real name Scott Hansen) had already been working for nearly 20 years as a musician and graphic designer under the ame ISO50, which later led to sonic-visual mastery of 'minimal' in all its forms. Something between prog, electronic and washed out, the album struck a nerve among the net-nestled young, serving as one of the earliest examples of a kind of opiate music that would go on to influence the taste of a generation.