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Giuseppe Ielasi - Aix (12k)
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Track:Untitled
A few steps in an empty gym, an organ chord, some pouring water, and we're off... Aix is a slight departure from the Italian artist's, Giuseppe Ielasi, previous release on 12k, August. The latter is a work of restraint ambiance with electronically treated acoustic instrumentation, which was a perfect fit for Taylor Deupree's minimal label. While the former album, the one we're concerned with in...
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Arovane - Tides (City Centre Offices)
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With only five albums and a handful of EPs and even some 7-inchers, Berlin-based Uwe Zahn, signed off from producing music altogether, with the last track on Lilies (City Centre Offices, 2004), titled Good Bye Forever. But Arovane's music doesn't age. In fact, it is one of those rare occurrences where it gets better and better as time passes. Today, as part of my Nostalgic Flashbacks series, I wis
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Robert Logan - Inscape (Slowfoot)
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This morning I'm a little bit on edge. In part because of continuous wet and cold weather that makes my bones and muscles ache. In part because of Robert Logan and his new release on Slowfoot titled Inscape. As I commute to music on my way to work, disturbing images flicker behind my eyelids: abandoned places, dark hallways, churning factories of the unknown. The industrial percussion grinds aw...
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Ametsub - The Nothings Of The North (Progressive Form)
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Artist:Ametsub
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Album:The Nothings Of The North
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Track:Snowy Lava
On some level, I'm a little surprised that no one is talking about Ametsub as much as I am. And I'm not just hyping up this Tokyo-based Japanese artist. Even Ryuchi Sakamoto has allegedly proclaimed, "I love this album. I have become a fan". Meanwhile, I've been listening to Ametsub's music since his debut release three years ago, Linear Cryptics (Progressive Form, 2006). For me, the discovery ...
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Harmonic 313 - When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence (Warp)
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When Mark Pritchard first released EP1 (Warp, 2008) under his newly refreshed moniker, Harmonic 313, I got extremely excited about his comeback. After all, I'm a huge fan of his output under a number of aliases, the most favorite being Harmonic 33 and Global Communication. The EP stepped up in bass, and dropped down to 8-bit sound, falling somewhere between abstep (abstract dubstep), electro an...
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Windy & Carl - Songs For The Broken Hearted (Kranky)
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Windy Weber & Carl Hultgren have been releasing minimal ambient and experimental post-rock music since the late 90's. The catalog of this Michigan based husband-and-wife duo spans an eclectic selection of notable labels such as Icon, Ochre, Darla, Brainwashed, and of course, Chicago-based Kranky Records. Songs For The Broken Hearted is Windy & Carl's fourth release on Kranky (being signed to the l
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Hildur Guðnadóttir - Without Sinking (Touch)
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Artist:Hildur Guðnadóttir
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Album:Without Sinking
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Track:Erupting Light
It is dark, dense, and brooding. The sky is gray. Winter is refusing to leave. Wind becomes the rhythm; dissonance - the melody. In the delicate hands of the Berlin-based (but Icelandic by birth) Hildur Guðnadóttir, the cello whispers and moans. Perhaps it's grieving for an uncertain future, perhaps accepting a buried past. The voice of sorrow seeps through the trembling fingers and saturates e.
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The Refractors - 8 Year Sleep (Dynamophone)
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Album:8 Year Sleep
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I first discovered The Refractors through their hand packaged and physically painted copy of All Colors Run EP, which they self released in 2008 and were kind enough to send over. I say "discovered" not because I want to take any credit for finding them before they got picked up by San Francisco based Dynamophone Records, but because stumbling upon this duo was a real pleasure, as it is wheneve...
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Alva Noto - Xerrox Vol.2 (Raster-Noton)
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Alva Noto returns with a second installment in his five-part planned Xerrox series. On this follow up to Xerrox Vol. 1 (Raster-Noton, 2007), Carsten Nicolai turns up the volume in static electricity working with the concept of copying sounds. A copy of a copy of a copy in digital format may be flawless, so what does Nicolai do? For this feat, Nicolai along with Christoph Brünggel created a "sam..
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Lulu Rouge - Bless You (Music For Dreams)
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When I posted the Headphone Commute's Best of 2008 list, I received a lot of emails that amounted to "You forgot Lulu Rouge!" What? Lulu who? Yes, I'm sure there was an album that I missed in 2008 (I missed hundreds of them). But with enough pokes in the same direction I was tempted to find out. And yes, I will admit: I did miss Lulu Rouge, because certainly this act belongs on HC's Best of 200...
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Lissom - Nest of Iterations (Dragon's Eye)
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Artist:Lissom
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Album:Nest of Iterations
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Track:Downpour
Descending down a steep slope, I slowly enter a cavern populated with dripping stalactites, swinging wind chimes, and wondering whispers. The dark atmosphere soaks up the humidity of a distant buzzing organism and spews it out through DSP filters and control voltage modulated synths. Through repetitive patterns, nested recursion, and looped iterations, Lissom experiments with data-structure-pre...
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Jega - Geometry (Planet Mu)
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Here's a brief history of Planet Mu, which is very much relevant to Jega. Planet Mu was born in 1995, and was originally setup as a sublabel of Virgin Records, on which it initially planned on releasing music by µ-Ziq (Mike Paradinas), and similar artists. The experimental electronic genre that initially was vultured upon by the major labels never took off in the United States, and Virgin gave..
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Rival Consoles - Helvetica (Erased Tapes)
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Album:Helvetica
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Track:Helvetica
From the label that brought you majestic modern classical music from Icelandic rising star, Ólafur Arnalds, comes a new installment in emotional... wait... what's this? My expectations for melodramatic orchestral stabs are shattered by explosive drums and drilling breaks. Completely unexpected and incredibly welcome, Rival Consoles catches me off guard with his cinematic progressions, which are..
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Bersarin Quartett - Bersarin Quartett (Lidar)
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Artist:Bersarin Quartett
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Album:Bersarin Quartett
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Track:Oktober
From the very few opening notes, I know that I'm in for a treat. As the album progresses, I get wide-eyed, and instead of paying attention to details [I know I will be coming back for more later], I spend time researching, tracing the steps that led me to accidentally miss this album, and calling all my friends to tell them about Bersarin Quartett. It's like I missed an entire year, while the s...
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