Plutonic Rainbows

An absolutely beautiful three track EP I discovered last summer - even though I've only just got around to posting it on here. This recording takes all the haunting melancholia found in the vaporwave genre - conjuring memories of long-forgotten shopping malls from the 1980s.

Beautiful new work from this famed German composer. His signature sequencer patterns are very much in evidence but he also adds some haunting vocal samples and soaring keyboards to tracks such as 'Back To The Future'. This is an excellent album for those who are looking for a good introduction to an artist whose work spans four decades.

London-based dance music empire Lobster Theremin release what seems to be the first 7” amid their impressive back catalogue of sub-label encompassing contemporary electronics. Restitution just also happens to be not just one 7”, but a triple pack of them featuring productions from the relatively unknown HLLW. Based in Denmark, HLLW crafts ‘twisted techno, effervescent electro, speedy electronica and machine music’, a post-Warp heyday homage to the futuristic outlook of the '90s rave era. Thunderous kick drums set the scene with the A1 before the collection of tracks moves into more dubbed out, polyrhythmic atmospheres.

Nice reissue of 90s ambient electronics.

Epic ambience from Heavenly Music Corporation, originally recorded for a Japanese ambient radio station that plays music 24 hours a day and is programmed around current tidal movements. Basically it ticks all the right boxes and is a huge 'recommended' from all here.

Somewhat of a forgotten champion of the 90s ambient scene, Kim Cascone also worked as assistant music editor for the surrealist films of David Lynch. Taking his HMC moniker from the Fripp & Eno collaboration, the project began after his industrial-tinged group Poison Gas Research began to break away in the early 1990s.

Lunar Phase was conceived specifically for the Japanese satellite radio station St. Giga, a channel devoted to relaxation through sound and the furthering of mental well-being. This archival reissue comes recommended not only to fans of Astral Industries or HMC fanatics but to anybody with a taste for the extraordinary. Bird calls, rhythmic meanderings and synth programming to make you grin from ear to ear at the mere fact that you’re alive.

Incredible sonics from this Belgian artist on the highly-cited Ekster label. This vinyl-only release is limited to 500 copies. A showcase for beautiful sound design.

New EP from the Blackest Ever Black label. This release created by some mysterious artist who dwells 'somewhere under London' consists of five dark, brooding visions that conjure the fading ecstasy of post-rave walks home at 5am. Highly recommended.

Order from Blackest Ever Black.

This week I had a chance to listen to the new William Basinski album, A Shadow In Time. It follows his usual style for faded electronics and uses a saxophone (to somewhat curious effect) on the David Bowie tribute track. If you have never heard Basinski before, I suggest checking out 'The Disintegration Loops' first. You'll definitely get a feel for his work with those albums.

The album is available from Friday on vinyl and compact disc. The vinyl features an exclusive mix.

Great EP of very solid tracks from this promising Belgian artist. You can pick up a copy at Boomkat.

Blinding first volley of ambient grime feels by Belgium’s Sky H1, crystallising one of 2016’s most striking entries with Motion for Bill Kouligas and Visionist's PAN X Codes imprint.

If you’ve had an ear to PAN's recent NTS shows or frequent the likes of Berlin’s Creamcake or London’s Bala Club, it’s possible that you’ve at least seen her name, if not been wowed by Air - a pensile, elegiac wonder rent in noctilucent chorals and arcing Autechrian pads - which heads and opens up the emotional floodgates of Sky H1’s debut EP.

With a vaporous construction inversely proportional to its emotional gravity, Air outlines a sense of melancholic catharsis mutual to music by Elysia Crampton, Visionist or Holy Other; expressing a struggle between states of melancholy and joy that stem from a personally turbulent period which perfuses the rest of the record.

Where many other producers are currently playing out hyper-violent beat-em-up scenarios, the more reserved Motion indulges a plangent lushness to aching affect; oscillating nervous percussion and agonised choral cadence in Hybrid with glassy soft and weightless chimes in Night/Fall/Dream imbued with the pink rawness of freshly picked scab skin, before she finds an impish sort of rave diva spirit in Tell Me, and the final couplet, Land and Think I Am beautifully nail a sort of R&B blessed with baroque posture and ambient aura.

It’s all inarguably up there with the best, most addictive new music we’ve heard in 2016, and hugely recommended if you know what’s good.

I enjoyed this new album but it's far from his best ambient work. Having lived with the iOS app edition for a few days, it quickly tires. The main problem with 'Reflection' is that the actual sounds Eno has chosen to program into the algorithm that produces what you hear are pretty uninspiring.

21st century Brian Eno has a very peculiar idea of what constitutes a beautiful sound. The actual textures and atmospherics don't do an awful lot for me and are, dare I say it, old-fashioned. They are the sort of sound he was producing back in his Koan period.

I appreciate that he's trying to let a machine dictate what happens but he could have given it better sounds to play with. While I applaud his desire to bring generative music to the fore, nothing on 'Reflection' even remotely comes close to the beautiful sounds on albums like 'Thursday Afternoon' (1985) and 'The Shutov Assembly' (1992).

Ironically, the instruments he used on Shutov Assembly (I'm guessing late 80s Korg Series, Roland D50 and Yamaha DX7 all treated and maniplulated) sound more modern and futuristic than the (largely) uninspiring sounds on 'Reflection'.