SOUL FEEDING: a list-with-review of the best releases of the month, selected by our editors.
Artist: Andy Stott
Album: It Should Be Us
Label: Modern Love
In an era when experimental music has embraced extremes, Andy Stott continues to exhibit a balanced, intentionally limited approach. Perfect for malfunctioning car-radio listening, It Should Be Us finds him rocking his heels further into the muddy ground he’s made home.
Artist: Croatian Amor & Varg2™
Album: Body Of Carbon
Label: Posh Isolation
Body Of Carbon is an explosive khaleidoscope of different sounds and influences, but it’s profoundly cohesive in its mood and energy. Futuristic visions and primal impulses coexist harmoniously in what can be described as the perfect soundtrack for a dark ritual performed in a deserted skyscraper.
Artist: Dirty K
Album: Panorama
Label: Genome 66.6 Mbp
With Panorama Dirty K gives away the paranoid gaze on behalf of a greater openness towards spontaneity, as well as warmer tones and Chinese traditional music. But what is not missing is an outstanding sound design that does not even by accident end up in the comfort zone.
Artist: Ecco2k
Album: E
Label: YEAR0001
E is ultimately an outstanding album, substantial both in quality and quantity, consistent with itself and with Ecco’s path so far. A a poetic declaration of an extraordinary artist.
Artist: FKA Twigs
Album: MAGDALENE
Label: Young Turks
With MAGDALEINE FKA twigs performs a small miracle, reaching an uneasy balance between content, narrative richness, melodic expressiveness and sound research. It is probably her best work so far, and for sure one of the best albums of the year.
Artist: Lee Gamble
Album: Exhaust
Label: Hyperdub
A further confirmation of the pivotal role played by Lee Gamble in the present experimental electronic scene. Exhaust is a remarkable sound essay that will leave you wanting for the next and final segment of this amazing project.
Artist: Malibu
Album: One Life
Label: UNO
One Life is movingly personal, and we’re all glad to let ourselves be infused with her tenderness, sorrow, fervour or whatever Malibu wants the songs to convey. It is almost instinctive to us to let ourselves go along with the artist’s feelings and emotions, which is never given for granted.
Artist: O.L.I.V.I.A
Album: Modo Avión
Label: AGVA Records
O.L.I.V.I.A’s Modo Avión can find by itself the access, throughout the tiny holes of the people’s emotional shell, to the most hidden melancholic emotions and touch them. In a society in which communication is lowered to sending GIFs a work with so much to communicate as this album is godsent.
Artist: Steven Warwick
Album: MOI
Label: PAN Records
Offering a journey, as the press release goes, through “interior worlds and personal architecture”, MOI pushes the limits of playfulness and extravaganza, feeling at the same time intimate in the name of an oxymoronic serious lightness, or light seriousness. A kaleidoscopic work to jump into.
Artist: TNGHT
Album: II
Label: Warp Records / LuckyMe
After all these years, TNGHT returns with II in a totally different musical landscape since their break, bringing back their old sounds and adding some new shades to the body of work that made them famous.
Artist: Ultrademon
Album: Chamber Music
Label: Soft Architecture
As Ultrademon attempts at drifting apart from club music, which is barely mentioned in scattered sub-bass, industrial techno clanging pitches and some EDM euphoria, Chamber Music encapsulates the research of timbre and inclinations that sound doomed and victorious at the same time.
Artist: Various Artists
Album: HyperSwim
Label: Hyperdub
HyperSwim is a good cross-section of the current state of the label. If its first releases basically looked at dubstep and related styles, over the years the spectrum has definitely widened towards more influences. Nevertheless, you can feel the input of so many different artists, but at the same time find common roots in the post-dubstep universe.
