Tags: Experimental Ambient

Review: Four Tet's Live at Alexandra Palace London 24th May 2023 captures the boundless energy of a live performance that effortlessly blends his signature electronic sound with the intimacy of a live setting. The opener 'School Green Romantics' builds slowly, layering intricate beats and subtle melodies, before escalating into a full-bodied rhythm that really commands attention. Tracks like 'Tides' take on a new life in this setting, with their intricate textures expanding and contracting, creating an immersive atmosphere that pulses with anticipation. Throughout, Four Tet's control over the crowd is palpable, using his deep knowledge of rhythm and melody to take listeners on a journey. A mesmerising live experience in every sense.

Review: In the 70s and 80s, nothing was as revolutionary as the synthesiser. Electronic sounds became essential for forward-thinking adverts, with TV producers and advertisers seeking music akin to 'Tubular Bells,' Tomita, and Jean Michel Jarre. Music libraries like De Wolfe, Bruton, Parry, and Chappell swiftly adapted. Bob Stanley's new album, 'Tomorrow's Fashions,' compiles advertising jingles, TV themes, and space exploration tracks with ambient beats from that era. Despite being 40-50 years old, the music feels fresh, featuring jazz veterans like Brian Bennett and John Cameron embracing synthesizers. This electronica predated new age and ambient music, influenced pop, early Human League, Warp Records, and has been sampled by MF Doom and Kendrick Lamar.

Review: Four Tet's live performance at Alexandra Palace delivers an immersive experience that blends intricate electronic soundscapes with undeniable dancefloor energy. The set opens with a subtle, hypnotic groove, gradually building in complexity and intensity as live drums and layered synths take centre stage. As the performance evolves, tracks like 'Sing' and 'Love Cry' explode with energy, effortlessly weaving between deep, ambient textures and vibrant, pulsing rhythms. The live setting offers a fresh dimension to the material, with each track feeling more expansive and dynamic. This is an exhilarating performance, showcasing Four Tet's ability to transform his recorded work into an electrifying live experience.

Review: A fascinating new long-player from Justin Robertson under his new Five Green Moons alias, marking another new stylistic turn for the Mancunian DJ and producer, whose main remit is house music to most. Moon 1, by contrast, is not "Justin at the house controls", but rather him delving into "his roots, digging around through the likes of P.I.L, Gang Of Four, On-U-Sound, Current 93, Coil, Sabres Of Paradise and all manner of post punk echoes", a "haunted ballroom of memories", in the artist's own words. Our glossing of Moon 1 is that this is probably the best post-punk come dubstep crossover record you'll hear in 2024, though it does also cross over into wonky beats and monologuing ambi-trance on occasion too. The record moves increasingly mauve-psychedelic as it progresses, with 'Everything's A Song In A Sound World' paring back its off-the-top vocal slogans for a purer exercise in rattling psyche-dub and 'I See All And I See Nothing' admitting to the contradiction of humility and quixotism in the same fret-slid breath.

Review: Dreamlogicc and SW are two standouts in the outlier world of leftfield house music, and they find a perfect home on the equally out-there label that is Kimochi. This is the first time they have been on the same bit of wax (though both have been here many times as solo artists) and hopefully, it won't be the last. There is plenty of unusual rhythm work here with wonky grooves that are enriched with a world of superbly futuristic sound designs. All of these hard to define cuts are serious curveballs that bring a great element of WTF to any set, so do not sleep and add them to your arsenal ASAP.

Review: Nothing was as new and exciting as a synthesiser in the 70s and 80s. For forward-thinking adverts in particular, electronic sounds were essential. TV producers and advertisers sought to use music akin to "Tubular Bells," Tomita, and Jean Michel Jarre and so music libraries like De Wolfe, Bruton, Parry, and Chappell quickly adapted. Compiled by Bob Stanley, new album 'Tomorrow's Fashions' features advertising jingles, TV themes, and space exploration tracks with beatless ambience from that very era. Despite being 40-50 years old, the music feels fresh and finds jazz veterans like Brian Bennett and John Cameron embracing synthesizers. This electronica predated new age and ambient music, and also influenced pop, early Human League, and Warp Records as well as being sampled by MF Doom and Kendrick Lamar.

Review: Ilian Tape have tapped up Jichael Mackson here for a double album of expressive and forward thinking electronic sounds. The atmosphere generally futuristic and intriguing, with tracks like 'Shangri La' riding on gentle breakbeats amongst air pads, 'Banana Jazz (Quartett)' is a high speed and live sounding jazz-breakbeat workout, 'A Jichalicious Something' is dubby and IDM inflected lushness and 'Good Morning Sunshine' is an interplanetary trip with distant cosmic pads and organic piano chords soothing mind, body and soul.

Review: Having already caused a stir with their various solo releases, old friends Klein Zage (real name Sage Redman) and Joey G (Joe Gillick) have decided to join forces on an EP inspired by their time living together in South London. While the EP is musically varied, there's a sonic coherence to the three original tracks thanks to the presence of Redman's spoken word vocals throughout. We're particularly enjoying the deep, emotive beauty of 'A Little Dissonance', though punchy, shuffling and spacey opener 'Folks Not Guys' pushes it close. Over on the flip we're treated to a trio of remixes: Ariel Zetina's intense, trippy and high-tempo take on 'Folks Not Guys', Local Artist's warming and rolling, Rhodes-sporting 'Disco Dub' of the same track, and DJ Python's pleasingly weird, mind-mangling version of 'A Little Dissonance'.

Review: Albertan experimenter Dylan Khotin follows up last year's full-length with an equally impressionistic two-tracker and logical successor, 'Alterac Acid/Mornings II'. Both tracks here are curious digi-Balearic offerings, with spacious episcopies of sound cast across meandering landscapes once seemingly trawled by space invaders and/or deep-cosmos probes. A nearly aimless acid line unfurls across the A-side, locking things into a nice stasis, before a more subdued, dare say clipped stab-womp drives the action of the B-track, which hardly so much as teases its drum line, nor avails itself of a need to even use drums at all (at points) to compel the listener into a driven, awestruck state of bliss.

Review: Space Drum Meditation is back with a reissue of Four Tusks, a 12-track odyssey of dreaded sonics and trepidatious treks through augmented wildernesses. Their debut album and seventh reissue on the eponymous label, the duo of Eddie Ness and Liem were once fixtures of the house musical landscape at large, yet only with SDM did they turn their hands to demurer experimental soundscapes, informed by the "tribal" gloom and etherics of an electro-auxed rainforest. Throughout Four Tusks, we hear the sleeker, pantherine side of their catalogue, with ritualistic drumming heard well-melded into many a grim, cowled and rattling texture, all glued by the faint but here still oppressive sound of rain, not to mention vapour steaming off the megaphylls.

Review: Returning, Dream, the sophomore album from Jack Wyllie's Paradise Cinema, blends the rhythmic intensity of African percussion with ambient textures and electronic influences. Created in London with contributions from Dakar and Sydney, the album draws inspiration from the Many Worlds theory of quantum physics, where each decision branches into new possibilities. This concept mirrors the album's abundant rhythmic diversity, led by hand drums like the tama, sabar, and surdo, played by Khadim Mbaye, Tons Sembe, and Laurence Pike. Wyllie's use of woodwinds, reeds, and synthetic layers creates a lush soundscape. The title track, 'Returning, Dream', revolves around hypnotic flute loops and ritualistic rhythms, while 'Tide' recalls Steve Reich's minimalism with delicate metallic chimes and dizzying, ecstatic patterns. 'Night Search' blends saxophone skronk with North African tonalities, invoking the trance-like riffing of the Master Musicians of Joujouka and the spiritual heights of Pharoah Sanders. 'A Morning In The Near Future' is mellow and meditative, while 'Nowhere, Home' offers a noirish, Blade Runner-esque atmosphere. Wyllie's Returning, Dream is a bold, genre-blurring journey that merges global rhythms with innovative soundscapes.

Review: Gidge's acclaimed album Autumn Bells is now a full decade old and to mark that, the Dutch label Atomnation is releasing a deluxe box set edition with a 60-page photo book by band member Ludvig Stolterman, a poster, the original double album, and a bonus nine-track vinyl featuring alternative edits and demos on transparent vinyl. Gidge is the Swedish duo of Stolterman and Jonatan Nilsson and they are known for ethereal, ambient music deeply influenced by the Nordic forests of their youth. The reissue highlights the duo's emotionally immersive sound and features unreleased tracks like 'Untitled Piano' and reworked versions of fan favourites that blend natural soundscapes with subtle rhythms and haunting melodies.

Review: Originally part of an exhibition curated by Elysia Borowy last September, Scott Grooves' contribution to After The Dance transcends the dancefloor, exploring experimental expressionism in visual arts and electronic music. Critiquing capitalist culture and drawing from afrofuturism, his work prompts reflection on consumerism and futuristic themes. The CD release features deep ambient pieces that caccaompnied six thought-provoking installations: Sweet Dreams Anakin, Foot Work, Vinyl, For All-Dee People, Yellow Sun Bricks, and Found Sound. It shows another side to the deep house don's work and is just as essential.

Review: Titled after Marvin Gaye's soulful 'After the Dance,' Detroit producer Scott Grooves delved into a realm beyond the dancefloor with his contribution to an exhibition by Elysia Borowy in September last year. It showcased six installations that explore experimental expressionism in visual arts and electronic music. Grooves' work critiques capitalist culture and draws from afrofuturism, creating a captivating dialogue on consumerism and futuristic themes across six thought-provoking installations: Sweet Dreams Anakin, Foot Work, Vinyl, For All-Dee People, Yellow Sun Bricks and Found Sound. These pieces challenge viewers to reflect on modern humanity, bridging the gap between observer and artwork and now the deeply absorbing, cathartic ambient music from the show arrives on CD.

Review: Since delivering his debut album on PNN a decade ago, Matt Kent AKA Matt Karmil has proved adept at adapting the club-focused sound of his EPs to the long-playing format - as his inspired and wonderfully atmospheric sets for Idle Hands and Smalltown Supersound prove. He continues this notable run of form on this Studio Barnhus released set, crowding ultra-deep, dusty grooves in opaque chords, cut-up sample snippets, lo-fi crackle, hazy ambient textures and nods towards a myriad of ear-pleasing electronic styles and sounds. Highlights are plentiful, with our picks being the dubby, mind-altering late-night hypnotism of 'Still Something There' and the becalmed, meditative ambient deepness of superb closing cut '15 Mins' (which, confusingly, is just 13 minutes long).

Review: Sometimes we get some wonderfully enigmatic notes with new releases and this is one of them. Rather than share them all, enjoy this one line - "Protecting the past by projecting it into the future, preserving identities, encouraging conversations across generations, and above all, safeguarding the island of Procida's vast intangible cultural heritage from extinction." Now you can ponder the meaning of that while getting lost in a collection of global grooves that span dub, downtempo, ambient jungle, Balearic and more with plenty of humid atmospheres, whimsical melodies and a general sense of mystic aura that will keep you coming back for more.

Review: This six-track release from the Musci archives offers up sounds that blend traditional instruments with synthesisers and electronics. It comes with remixes by Cut Hands and Nokuit and highlights the work of Roberto Musci, an Italian ethnomusicologist who has been active since the mid-80s. Musci's music gained renewed interest following the 2016 Tower of Silence compilation and got praise from legends like the late Ryuichi Sakamoto. It's dense, challenging, and unlike much else you will hear this year.