Issue 101
We have British Electric Foundation on the front of this month's Electronic Sound and an exclusive blue vinyl seven-inch boasting two previously unreleased Martyn Ware tracks to accompany the issue.
Birdy Island
Bandcamp – Electronic album of the year 2021. Swirling layers of OST-style sound design, dreamy choir vocals and traditional Chinese folk combine across eight dynamic and transportive tracks on Birdy Island, the latest album by Beijing-based producer/artist, Howie Lee. On Birdy Island Lee's intricate brand of traditional pan-asian exploration meets experimental bass weight sound via stripped-back UK Grime sonics and ceremonial taoist music. "Morphing Chinese traditional music with bass, Chicag…
Images Of Goo
*300 copies limited edition* Images Of Goo is what Munich sound bricolageurs Leo Hopfinger aka LeRoy (head of Das Hobos, H, Spiritual Emojis and others) and Cico Beck aka Joasihno (active member of The Notwist, Aloa Input, Spirit Fest and others) call their first musical dialogue in album format. It is equally a dialogue with the elements of their sonic repertoire of echo variations and sonic shadows from the percussive instrument box. In their sum, a Wunderkammer of a panaudic, which can be app…
Mysterium, Incubus et Terror. Music inspired by Edgar Allan Poe stories
Edgar Allan Poe’s power to inspire artists of various different mediums and styles has been a significant factor of his enduring popularity, as has the man and the mystery himself. Whilst the academia hauntings of M.R. James and the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft have experienced something of a renaissance in recent times, E.A. Poe has always been a lingering presence. His meandering stories featuring such things as the onset of plague in a quarantined complex, troubles at sea, a murderer preyi…
Pity By One All Good Treasure
*300 copies limited edition* LA Timpa snagged our attention with his exceptional debut ‘Equal Amounts Afraid’ for O___o?,and an acclaimed follow-up for Rabit’s Halcyon Veil, which eventually led to a guest spot on SpaceAfrika’s cult lightning rod ‘Honest Labour’ and a remix for Tricky. After letting the dust settle, hereturns with a new collection of songs mired in rawly sublime melancholy, turning existentialreflections into a richly evocative sort of chamber pop akin to Arthur Russell jamming …
Movement of Multiple Points
Keisuke s_d_ latests works on the Japanese label otonezumi-kohboh, "Multiple Mysteries", a truly finesse experimental spooky footwork Ep, and "Machapuchare", a drone masterpiece inspired by the supposed thrills of climbing Machapuchare, prepare us on his next release: “Movement of Multiple points”. In this new Pampsychia Keisuke is bringing from Japan a mind-blending rhythm synthetic excursion. All tracks are made and used in max/msp to create a broken system that allows control and uncontrol. T…
Stock Fantasy Zone
Tip! Originally conceived as a mock live bootleg for Turn Us Alias 2020 (Macao’s Saturnalia festival online edition), Stock Fantasy Zone is the new album by Babau dedicated to the unearthly delights of unconscious reticular motion, wacky 2D shredding and daily side quests. Directly from inside the Stack, finally imagine a zone where all activities are possible but purposeless, all primary objectives are achieved without even moving and the game-logic has finally disappeared leaving back a virtua…
Reincanto/Real Bwoy
As part of the first batch of tapes of 2022/23, Artetetra is presenting a split featuring two éminences grises of minimal but highly imaginative audio storytelling. Kinked and Señor Service, who fully deserve the title of bedroom superstars, use their screens and musical tools as gateways and magic wands to dissolve the listener into uncertain and nebulous musical worlds, creating the clever illusion of a narrative. But remember, it's just an illusion! Pure audio préstidigitation for children an…
Trans Zimmer & The Djs
Artetetra is honored to present a journey through music with Trans Zimmer & The DJs' debut album. A dense, musical-like jewel of midi composition and arrangement. For this self-titled album, the film composer "Trans Zimmer" teamed up with production crew "The DJs" and together disassembled a number of orchestral compositions through their sharp sound design craft and absurd, whimsical lyrics. The DJs selected 11 of their favorite arrangements and got down to the midi grind, pouring over every si…
Illmatrix
Rainbow Island is a quartet born in Rome in 2013. Since its foundation the band confirmed themselves as skilled explorers of virtual dub, deranged non-narrative storytelling and manipulations of digital riddim music in between fourth and fifth worlds. Audacious and dynamic polydimensional dwellers, Rainbow Island are the most up-to-date sonic guide to our complex contemporaneity and, after the LCD Jiāng swims in “Crystal Smerluvio Riddims” culminating in the Bobblers direct encounters of “Dances…
Moonbuilding Sprung 2023
Tip! Tip! Tip! Having successfully navigated the difficult second issue, Moonbuilding returns with a dazzling Issue 3. Edited by former Electronic Sound commissioning editor Neil Mason and published by Colin Morrison’s Castles In Space label the new (Spring Has) Sprung issue stars the unstoppable Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, who also provide an exclusive CD of previously unreleased tracks. As well as a truly bumper chat with Warrington-Runcorn big chief Gordon Chapman-Fox, we pr…
Die Wiederholung der Geschichte der amerikanischen Heimatlosigkeit
raster is pleased to reissue this early work of Grischa Lichtenberger, remastered and for the first time in physical format.
Faith In Strangers
2023 pressing on gold vinyl, edition of 500 copies. Double LP version. Faith in Strangers was written and recorded between January 2013 and June 2014, and was edited and sequenced in late July of 2014. Making use of on an array of instruments, field recordings, found sounds and vocal treatments, it's a largely analog variant of hi-tech production styles arcing from the dissonant to the sublime. The first two tracks recorded during these early sessions bookend the release, the opener "Time Away" …
Devon Folklore Tapes Volume V: Ornithology (2x10")
Twin Ten-Inch Gatefold Edition Contains 2x 10" Records & 12page Research Booklet & Download Code Housed in manilla hand stamped & numbered paper sleeve // First released in 2013 as a limited-run cassette of just 30 copies, Ornithology has been expanded and refurbished for glorious double vinyl as part of the Folklore Tapes Archival Reissue series. Fluttering out into the world at the end of last year, this upcycled package offers a welcome revisitation of dark avian power, with Mary Arches’ cree…
Industrial Folklore Tapes Volume Three - Film As Fabric
Numbered limited edition of 250. The third Industrial Folklore Tapes release is constructed from live recordings of a performance tilted ‘Film as Fabric’ by Mary Stark, which examines relationships between textile practice and filmmaking. From 2012-2016, Mary’s studio practice and numerous performances took place in Rogue Artist Studios at Crusader Mill in Manchester, formerly a production site of machinery for the cotton industry and a garment works. The performance has been enriched by explora…
Theo Brown And The Folklore Of Dartmoor
Limited to 300 numbered copies. Gatefold sleeve with booklet & obi. Some copies also contained an A3 poster & badge. Theo Brown and the Folklore of Dartmoor is the sixth volume in the Devon Folklore Tapes Series. The album provides acousmatic soundscapes for fourteen Dartmoor tales collected by the late Devon folklorist Theo Brown, whose spirit and research guided the project throughout. Initially released as a limited-run box-set in 2014, this long-awaited second edition contains all the origin…
The Beat My Head Hit
Huge Tip! Where Ben Vida’s music has previously explored the sound of text at the outer register of electronic composition, here, in collaboration with the Yarn/Wire quartet and the vocalist Nina Dante, the voice and the words it works to inhabit are placed back at the time-scale of a song. There is a familiarity to this music’s combination of restrained melody and heightened atmosphere. It feels, softly, like it’s made by a band: piano, percussion, voice. A composition kept aloft and even by it…
Reality Gates
Soave Records dusts off in limited edition the psych/synth album by Doctor Steven T. Birchall recorded in 1973 in Indiana, U.S.A. with the following equipment: VCS-3 (The Putney) by EMS, Ampex MM-1000 16 trk, dbx noise reduction, SpectrasSonics Console, Studer A80 Recorder, Eventide Clockworks, Instant Phaser, Cooper Time Cube, EMT Reverb. The absolutely penetrating high tones of the opening track 'Music Of The Spheres' announce us that we are on board, passengers in the hands, or perhaps better…
Il Suono delle Api / La Vibrazione del Cosmo
An absolutely stunning effort from one of the great journeymen of Italian experimentalism, Walter Maioli's 'Il Suono delle Api / La Vibrazione del Cosmo', issued by Villa Lontana Records, is electroacoustic music at its absolute, vibrant best. Pressed in two extremely limited editions on black and transparent vinyl and laden with rich tonalities, deep drones, and hypnotic arpeggiations, it's a truly mind-melting, free-standing sonic world that encounters Maioli at the top of his game.
Nothing Blues
*200 copies limited edition* Nothing Blues – LA-based musician, NTS resident and label founder Nick Malkin's record – presents seven vignettes of exactly that: nothing blues. Continuing in his signature vein of jazz-tinged, “live-band ambient” work with releases on Geographic North and Soda Gong, this record sidesteps his previous urban nocturnes and instead presents the listener with music made for solitary, homebound introspection. It's daylit and stalled, plateaued and simply present. It's li…