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Πέμπτη 15 Απριλίου 2010

DJ Delay Presents Brass Wires & Bass by DJ DELAY/VARIOUS on MP3 and WAV at Juno Download

DJ Delay Presents Brass Wires & Bass by DJ DELAY/VARIOUS on MP3 and WAV at Juno Download

HELIOS - Unleft

HELIOS - Unleft by Boomkat
UNSEEN
CD // £8.99
HOME LISTENING / MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT
Released: Apr 2010
Catalogue Number: UNSEEN001

HELIOS - Unleft, UNSEEN

On Unleft, Keith Kenniff collects previously unreleased Helios material recorded between 2000 and 2009, sequencing the resultant tracks as a self-contained album. The resultant fifty minutes plays out as a wonderfully varied sequence that focusses on melodically resonant electronic music. You'll hear some of the compositional techniques Kenniff has become known for at work, cutting a tuneful, glitched-up swathe through opener 'Convivium', while the crunchily filtered, slow-core beats of 'Friedel' and 'Distance' channel a hazy, opiated quality. Taking this a little further, the creaking deep bass and beautiful electronic post-rock of 'Cross The Ocean' is touched by the influence of Boards Of Canada, something that could also be said of the downtempo, beat-heavy ambience of 'Bounce Dive', though there's a more playful and openly tuneful quality to Kenniff's music compared to that of the Brothers Eoin, something highlighted by the airier, brighter productions of the Portlander's music. There's also a pronounced cinematic quality to all this, and you can well imagine Kenniff being recruited to score a film at some point down the line, especially given beautifully crafted, acoustic guitar-driven pieces like 'South Tree' or the upbeat, piano-heavy 'The Morning Room', both of which showcase this side of his output very strongly.

More by HELIOS

Τετάρτη 14 Απριλίου 2010

JOHANN JOHANNSSON - And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees

JOHANN JOHANNSSON - And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees
Type by Boomkat
CD // £7.99
HOME LISTENING / MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT
Released: Apr 2010
Catalogue Number: TYPE064CD

JOHANN JOHANNSSON - And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees, Type

You might be surprised by the number of film soundtracks Jóhann Jóhannsson has completed over the course of his career. While his hugely popular and influential catalogue of work for labels like Touch and 4AD tends to dictate how we think about his music, the volume of documentary, short and feature film scores he's penned is prolific to say the least. Even his most widely celebrated work to date, Englabörn, was conceived as a theatre soundtrack. It's surely a testament to the standalone power of this man's output that despite so much of his material having been designed to accompany other people's projects, it's still so much a part of the modern classical canon in its own right. This incredible album for Type was composed as a soundtrack for Marc Craste's award winning animated film Varmints, and draws on the signature elements of Jóhannsson's compositional style: utterly jaw-dropping widescreen orchestration, beatific choirs and the most finely crafted electronic backdrops imaginable - all colluding for some of the most intoxicating and unashamedly beautiful music you'll hear this year. It doesn't take Jóhannsson long to delineate the tone of what's to come, establishing an introductory theme for strings, backed with lyrical piano keys and a soundscape of seabirds and thunderclaps emerging from the mix in the latter stages. After these evocative, scene-setting beginnings comes a burst of celestial melodrama through 'City Building's choral passages, giving an indication of the lofty, unearthly extremes this composer has a penchant for. Within a matter of moments the more abstract and textural leanings of 'The Flat' take us somewhere entirely different, flooding the track with phased, airy noise atmospheres and weightless plumes of strings. 'Rainwater' continues to sew processed electronics into the fabric of the music, reminding you that this is after all an artist who has shared a label with the likes of Fennesz. The recurrent rumbling of deeply ingrained background static only reinforces how cinematic this music is - there's a tangible sense of place and (at the risk of sounding a bit pompous) mise-en-scene, but even beyond that, the album follows a kind of undulating structure that's very much in-keeping with the notion of a beginning-middle-end narrative; you can feel the music slipping into a sombre, minor-key mode by the end of 'The Gift', entering into the desolation of 'Dying CIty', with its processed field recordings and lone voices. 'Escape', with its dark-ambient drones and broad solo cello strokes only reinforces the suggestion of peril, but by the album's final leg glimmers of optimism creep into the denouement, first imbuing 'Inside The Pods' with a magisterial, reverberant grandeur and then reaching outright jubilation over the course of the end theme - a dose of euphoric crescendo that could only have come from the same part of the world as Sigur Rós. The music on this album has already been awarded first prize for 'Best Original Score' at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, and for our money is the finest thing he's done since his debut. Jóhannsson's just on exceptional, moving form here - miss out at your peril.

More by JOHANN JOHANNSSON
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Δευτέρα 12 Απριλίου 2010

MATTHEW HERBERT - One One

150

by boomkat

ELECTRONIC

CD

This is the first in an impending trilogy of new albums from Matthew Herbert. With One Club and the intriguingly titled One Pig set to follow over the coming months, One One sets out its stall as an oddly conventional solo outing from this modern-day master of the concept album. While we've become accustomed to Herbert's tendency to theme his records (whether it be the cuisine-based romp of Plat Du Jour to the self-explanatory Bodily Functions), One One proves to be a far more by-the-books affair. For this release, Herbert plays, produces - and perhaps most notably - sings everything himself. Apparently this wasn't always easy to get through. In the press-release this seasoned, often flamboyant performer talks about his struggles with nerves: 'At times it took dressing in a black tuxedo and half a bottle of wine to get over the nerves. I didn't know how to play many of the instruments when I started. This is a really personal and honest record.' Each track takes its name from a city, as if it were a kind of world tour taking in such exotic destinations as 'Singapore', 'Valencia', 'Milan' and, er, 'Tonbridge', yet despite the air miles implied by these track titles, the record is designed to portray a single day in the life of a single man. Perhaps because of this theme the record has a very intimate feel - something compounded by Herbert's voice, which often has the feel of inner-monolgue style, half-whispered narration. Of course, the production is outstandingly good, as underlined by the deep-bass and jazzy timbres of opener 'Manchester', or the ramshackle, sample-jostling thud of standout 'Dublin', which sounds much as you'd imagine a Robert Wyatt record produced by Timbaland might. A detailed, yet often very downbeat, introspective collection, One One comes as a natural reflex reaction to the last Matthew Herbert Big Band album (There's You And There's Me), which featured a mind-boggling 2000 samples and 350 contributors. Here, Herbert's music is at its most intimate - he's as much a songwriter on this record as he is an electronic producer, begging the question: where to next? Happily, to find out we need only wait until June, when the next release in the trilogy is slated to arrive.
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