SOUL FEEDING: a list-with-review of the best releases of the month, selected by our editors.
Artist: 33EMYBW
Album: Arthropods
Label: SVBKVLT
Arthropods is a relevant album not just for 33EMYBW and for SVBKVLT but also for the modern cutting-edge club scene itself which often looks at China as a point of reference. Cinematic and forward-thinking the record promotes its own alternative dimension which is both alien and bottomless. A validation of the extreme sonic and hi-tech visual imaginary pursued by the label.
Artist: 72-HOUR POST FIGHT
Album: 72-HOUR POST FIGHT REMIX
Label: La Tempesta International
The debut album of 72-HOUR POST FIGHT, out via La Tempesta International, reveals the attempt at dealing with an auditory delirium, cutting it into the shape and conventional length of tracks, without trivializing nor misrepresenting its nature.
Starting from (but not restrained by) downtempo and ambient undertones, the music encompasses hip-hop percussion and free-jazz triggers for a 30-minute time, blurring the border between improvised playing and sober narrative.
Artist: AQXDM
Album: Infrared
Label: Houndstooth
With each track sounding like an evolving organism, Infrared is carefully and skillfully designed in every tiny sonic detail, and yet it doesn’t sound overthought nor devoid of a pulsing heart. These tracks slap hard, and they have a palpable expressive urgency. AQXDM have found their place, let’s hope they’re here to stay.
Artist: Carla dal Forno
Album: Look Up Sharp
Label: Kallista Record
Look up Sharp, as a whole, gravitates towards Carla’s delightful and lonely voice and skeletal, haunting bass-lines that openly pay homage to Seventeen Seconds-era’s The Cure. It is a meditative and introspective expression, calibrated with a slow, trance-inducing pace. From the first half all the way through the second, everything seems to be whispered in a gentle yet urgent and melancholic manner. On top of that, we get a sophisticated switch to so-called ‘ethereal wave’.
Artist: Eartheater
Album: Trinity
Label: Chemical X
Moving on from her previous heavier and more bashful IRISIRI, with this melted and vivid electronic music Eartheater now shows how her music can even find new and current declinations in a distended and floating sound, between art pop and alternative r&b. Syncopated drums, angel-like voices and chaotic overlaps provide this record with arousing shades and a fresh touch, making it flow like a river in flood.
Artist: FAUSTO MERCIER
Album: FULLSCREEN
Label: Genot-Center
FULLSCREEN proves FAUSTO MERCIER is a world-class alchemist and architect: as the title implies, the devotion owed to every sonic detail is incredible. Each sound, however briefly it surfaces, is rendered with alarming clarity – distinct, yet entangled. It’s like deep listening for web fiends. There’s barely time to process the fullness of what you’re up against before it mutates into something else entirely.
Artist: Howie Lee
Album: 天地不仁 Tiān Dì Bù Rén
Label: ///
天地不仁 Tiān Dì Bù Rén explores Chinese both natural and artificial environment trying to capture the feeling of being abandoned by it, through the darker shades of low frequencies pushed into the background layers. Along with the fear and disorientation that are provided, if the atmosphere is not continuously gloomy, it is tense and stressed out by tinkling strings and whistling woodwinds, which often resonate uncomfortably shrill.
Artist: Klahrk & Kattie
Album: It’s All Overkill
Label: ///
The true quality of the It’s All Overkill lies the ability to perfectly balance experimentation and catchy song-writing. Klahrk & Kattie dance and mix carefree on the wall that separates pop EDM and niche electronic music. But there is more! They also make it seem as if these two different worlds only divided by an extremely thin line.
Artist: Lanark Artefax
Album: Corra Linn
Label: Numbers.
Picking up where he left after Whities 011 (also known as Touch Absence), with Corra Linn Lanark Artefax inserts himself even more firmly into the long tradition of braindance-y breaks, pumping new blood into its veins while evoking some of the best experiences of the genre.
Artist: Sabiwa
Album: DaBa
Label: Chinabot
DaBa is at the same time minimal and a spree of musical references. Sabiwa strips a lot of genres such as trip-hop, harsh noise, musique concrète, and ambient, all while tiptoeing the line between traditional and experimental categorizations; but there are no sound hyperboles. She is a clean and precise mixer virtuoso: delivering extremely strong emotions even through minimal sound.
Artist: Special Request
Album: Offworld
Label: Houndstooth
Blending Detroit cosmic yearning, rave tragic euphoria, and pop immediacy, Offworld is a fascinating album both for those who went through the 80s and 90s, so they can relive certain sounds and atmospheres; and for those who weren’t there, so they can fantasize about the Golden Age they didn’t experience.
Artist: Tunes Of Negation
Album: Reach The Endless Sea
Label: Cosmo Rhythmatic
What emerges once again is the universal nature of Shackleton’s music. It defies spatiotemporal connotations, as if coming from an outer-world. Austere and seductive at the same time, listening to it feels like a ritual for rebirth that disrupts every known point of anchorage. Psych? Prog? New age? Experimental? Kosmische music? Avantgarde? None, just Shackleton at the top of his game doing what only he can do.
Artist: Various Artists
Album: pɹnsqɐ
Label: ABSURD TRAX
What makes pɹnsqɐ so cohesive is the overall quality and the ability of putting all artists on the same level. The whole work is not only an amazing music release but also serves as a unique spotlight for lesser know producers. We’re confident that after listening to it you’ll find yourself cruising on Soundcloud for days in search for more music by all the featured names: the perfect chance to dive into the real underground.
Artist: Various Artists
Album: No~one Is an Island
Label: BCAA
No~one Is an Island brings together a dynamic array of musical approaches and styles while managing to feel (mostly) cohesive and genuinely linked. While the compilation works with many of the contemporary tropes in avant-electronics (deconstructed ASMR & field recordings, crudely auto-tuned vocals, mutating waves of granular synthesis, club weirdness), it avoids becoming derivative or too on-trend.
