I’m starting with this article a periodical review of the most important releases for electronic music. Given the wide range of sub-genres that are included in this category, expect to find a selection of heterogeneous styles and approaches to music. All of the albums that are mentioned in this digest, however, are characterized by something unique and particularly interesting, which made the LP stand out from the mass.
This first episode features five albums that were selected among those released in the first two weeks of the year.
As far as geography is concerned, we have one band from Australia (Two People), one from South Africa (Yugen Blakrok), and three from England (Funky DL, Teeth of the Sea and Ladytron).
Enjoy the article and stay tuned for the future episodes of the Electronic Music radar!
“First Body”, by Two People
If someone asked me which was the most original and intriguing electronic release of the first months of 2019, I would have no doubts. And the fact that I’m talking of a debut LP is still more exciting. My answer, in fact, would be First Body, the debut full-length album from Phoebe Lou and Joey Clough, a duo of Australian musicians that work under the name of Two People.
First Body provides the listeners with a special kind of electronic music that gently moves towards dreamy pop, whilst still maintaining a sense of suspension and fragility. And despite it was conceived and recorded by following a strict DIY approach, from a sonic perspective the LP is impressive and extremely rewarding. Lou and Clough have found the perfect balance between intimacy, elegance, and obscurity.
This is maybe the softer electronic music that we will hear in while, but it’s absolutely enjoyable and, as I said, it’s really one of the best things I encountered so far. You can go here and read my review of the album.
“Dennison Point Instrumentals”, by Funky DL
Another interesting and fairly experimental record that we could enjoy in the first months of the year was released by the English artist Funky DL. The LP, called Dennison Point Instrumentals, was conceived over the simple but effective idea to manipulate Funky DL’s recent record Dennison Point by removing the vocals and retouching some of the original breaks and backing choruses.
The result is a style of electronic music that’s quite eclectic and original. Many call it trivially as “instrumental hip hop”, but the reality is that Dennison Point Instrumentals sits on the border between electronic and jazz music, and it contains really many elements of interest.
As a matter of fact, the changes operated onto the original material, together with the removal of the vocal lines, made this LP to acquire a value and a musical “sense” that are completely separated from the starting album. Magically, the apparently simple operation that was conducted by Funky DL allowed his music to overcome the static boundaries between genres and, at the same time, to give new life to his songs. Brilliant.
“Anima Mysterium”, by Yugen Blakrok
Being this one a blog that has never explored in depth the world of hip hop, it may seem curious enough to find in this article, one after another, two exponents of this genre of music. But when you come across an interesting and hypnotic record like Anima Mysterium by South African rapper Yugen Blakrok, you can not remain indifferent.
The beats and the lyrics that animate the 12 tracks of the album are mesmerizing, suggestive and deeply immersive. You’ll find yourself moving at the pulsating rhythm of the songs, while the mind is captured by the intriguing spoken rhymes, which typically accentuate the cadence of the drums creating a unique and homogeneous flow of impressive beauty.
I’ve published a dedicated review of the LP, you can read it from here.
“Wraith”, by Teeth Of The Sea
Wraith, which is the fifth LP from the London experimental trio named Teeth Of The Sea, is one of the most unclassifiable albums among those that were released so far in 2019. On the other hand, even the description that the three musicians give of their music doesn’t help us so much: “Taking on board influences like Morricone, Eno, Delia Derbyshire, Goblins, and the Butthole Surfers, we have arrived at an incendiary sound that marries the aural enlightenment of an avant-garde sensibility with the reckless abandon of trashy rock & roll“.
This description may sound a bit too convoluted, but certainly, the songs of Wraith present really many different components: there is a base of electronic music, but also psychedelic rock, jazz, noise and flashes of metal. What really matters, though, is that the band has developed a very beautiful, particular and extremely original style music.
I have published a dedicated review of the LP, you can find here some more details about this impressive record.
“Ladytron”, by Ladytron
I’m very happy to conclude this first digest about electronic music with one of my favourite bands of all time. Ladytron, from Liverpool, had really left a deep mark in the electronic scene of the early 2000s, but then they slowly came out of the radar. This year the band interrupts a hiatus of 8 years and they’re back with a new album, the sixth full-length record of their discography, which is named as the band.
Ladytron won’t become the most significant LP of the band’s career, but it’s, in any case, an appreciated comeback from a group of musicians who wrote one of the most important pages in the history of UK’s electronic music.
I’ve published a dedicated review of the LP, you can read it from here.
I’m collecting the best songs of the year in a dedicated playlist, called THE ELECTRONIC MUSIC RADAR. It features a compilation of songs taken from the albums that were mentioned above, and it’s going to grow with time as soon as new good tracks will be released and selected.
I remember very well that many years ago I was definitely a fan of Ladytron’s music, but every time I checked with my acquaintances it seemed that, at least in my circle of contacts, I was the only one to know this band. This is just to say that in my opinion, these guys from Liverpool have never achieved the success and popularity that they deserved, at least outside the boundaries of the English electronic scene. As a matter of fact, their music has always been truly original and unique: not only they crafted a brilliant mix of many different styles of electronic music (electro-pop, synth-pop, EDM, darkwave) but they also managed to give to it a nice retro feeling.
Year after year, I slowly lost sight of the band and, to be honest, I was fairly surprised when I discovered that they were still active and that there was a new record on the shelves. Investigating a little deeper I realized that it was not just my fault if I lost track of Ladytron since the band had effectively entered a period of hiatus after their 2011’s album Gravity the Seducer. Their new LP, which is named after the band, basically signs their official comeback after many years of silence.
For everyone who was already a fan of Ladytron’s music, the new album doesn’t bring any dramatic change or surprise, if not perhaps for the fact that the atmospheres are, at times, a little gloomier than what we had in Gravity the Seducer. In this respect, Ladytron may appear at first sight as closer to the early works of the band rather than what they were playing before the hiatus. At the same time, however, the new songs lack the impetuousness and abrasiveness that characterized the first phase of their career. This is compensated by an increased maturity of style, and an overall sense of elegance that clearly reflects the fact that in these years the musicians have grown, not only musically.
For those who don’t know the band or missed their golden age, which for me is the period included between 2002’s Light & Magic and 2005’s Witching Hour, it’s sufficient to know that this music is absolutely different from anything you heard until today: a fascinating interpretation of electro-pop which mixes delicacy and aggression, angelic voices and engaging rhythms.
Ladytron is not the best LP of the band’s discography, but it’s still an appreciated comeback from a group of musicians who wrote an important page in the history of UK’s electronic music.
My overall rating for the LP is 7/10. In my opinion, the LP suffers the unbalance between the most beautiful songs (Deadzone, The Animals, The Island, Far From Home), and those tracks which seem less effective and particular.
Ladytron is available on Bandcamp and it can be streamed also from Spotify.
Songs from Ladytron are featured in ELECTRO POP (the playlist with the best electro-pop songs of the last couple of years) and also in The ELECTRONIC MUSIC Radar, which is the selection of the best electronics songs released in 2019. Enjoy!
I’ve always felt a special interest in Matthew Dear and, to be truly honest, much has to do with his warm and particular voice, which reminds me of the unforgettable Peter Steele, who was the lead singer, bassist and composer for the gothic metal band Type O Negative before his premature departure in 2010. To some extent, the music composed and interpreted by Matthew Dear could be considered precisely the equivalent in the world of the electro-pop of what Type O Negative represented for metal: avant garde music but at same time accessible to the casual listener, an innovative spirit and a pioneeristic approach, and songs that may appear lighthearted and catchy but which hide many different levels of interpretation. In short, we’re dealing with authors who consider their music as a medium, and not as the ultimate goal of their work.
On the other hand, it’s not by chance that a strong attention is put on Dear’s singing because, as a matter of fact, his music to date has been extremely eclectic and varied and his voice, in the end, is the only element which seems to link together the entries of an extremely heterogeneous discography. And as a further confirmation, even in Bunny, which is Matthew Dear’s new album, the vocal component is the most interesting part.
“Bunny’s Dream“, the opening track of Matthew Dear’s new LP
Without Dear’s beautiful and fascinating voice, many of the songs of the album would lose dramaticallty their interest, and this is somehow a certain sign of change if we consider in comparison the content and the value of his previous releases, and in particular the beatiful 2010’s Black City, which is probably the highest point of Matthew Dear’s career in electronic music.
Musically speaking, Bunny offers a very particular style of electronica which oscillates between pop and punk, with also a few inserts of dub. In such a little chaotic ensemble of sounds and influences, however, there are a couple of songs which stand out from the mass and give luster to the entire work.
Sometimes the beauty of music hits you suddenly and through unexpected forms. A few days ago I had one of this experiences when I came across to an album from a formation that was completly unknown to me, called Fröst. I didn’t know what to expect from the album and its release notes, in true honesty, were a little ambiguous and not exactly evocative: “For fans of the likes of Broadcast, Silver Apples and Kraftwerk together, Frost create angular and electronic music by blending Motorik and hypnotic radiophonics into neatly wrapped often bilingual pop structures“.
Fortunately enough, good music uses a language that is typically more immediate and emotional than certain artificially complex and cryptic descriptions. And in the end, as soon as I started listening to the songs of Fröst’s debut abum, named Matters, the quality and beauty of this work cancelled in a few seconds all the doubts and the uncertainty that I had at the beginning. Also because if there is one single thing that Fröst’s music demonstrates unequivocally is that true beauty often lies in simplicity.
There are very few and also basic ingredients in the songs of Matters: we have catchy bass lines, electronic drums that are limited to a few sounds and which never deviate from elementary “motorik” four beats signatures, delicate touches of synths and, on top of that, an angelic voice that sometimes sings in English and sometimes in French. What is absolutely brilliant, instead, is the originality – and the class – that the artists have shown when combining together these simple elements. So, if I wanted to describe their music with the same simplicity of their sound, I would say: catchy and singable melodies transported into low-fi electronic music. As simple as that, but extremely satisfying to hear.
Fröst is a Brighton-based collaboration between French-Swedish sound artist and vocalist Johanna Bramli and synth player and producer Steve Lewis. Both artists have a fairly interesting past both as soloists and as members of other formations, but I am led to think that their collaboration for the album Matters is probably, so far, one of the most important stages of their career. The naturalness with which the songs of Matters develop one after the other is really impressive and this musical marriage beteween the two artists is something magical. It’s as if these two musicians were really born to play together: their music is extremely effective and complete, from all points of view.
French-Swedish musician, composer and sound artist Johanna Bramli
Musically speaking, the strongest element of the album is for sure the melodic sensibility of the composers. The songs of Matters are actually simple and extremely linear in their structure, but they are never trivial or boring. When you hear the album you feel like you’re listening to melodies that you have always known, even if it’s not the case. And the beauty of these musical motifs is much stronger because of the lightness and the elegance of the arrangements, which are never exaggerated or out of context.
Last, but not least, it’s really satisfying and laudable that there are no gap fillers in the album. Each track has its reason to exist and, although clearly there is a group of songs that are more exciting and engaging than the others, the album in its entirety is really one that you can listen again and again, in perpetual repeat, without interruptions.
In summary: Matters is definitely an important and promising debut from a formation that has just appeared in the scene of electronic music. I really hope that the collaboration between Bramli and Lewis will continue in the next years and this won’t result as only one temporary stage in their careers.
The album is available on Bandcamp and it can be streamed also from Spotify.
Here we are again talking about the best electronic music albums of the year. With respect to the first episode which was published on last April, the list has expanded and it now features ten albums. The first two positions of the chart remains unchanged, but there are interesting new entries in the other positions on the list.
Arrived at this point of the year, the following collection of records represents a good summary of the state of electronic music in 2018 and we must say that the one which emerges is an extremely positive picture: there are young artists entering the scene with innovative and experimental works but also already established artists that demonstrate to have still the willingness and the curiosity to experiment new expressive languages.
Let’s see which are the ten best electronic albums of 2018 so far. An in the time which remains until the end of the year we’ll discover if there are new albums which will contend the place to those who are today in the chart. In this respect, if you arrived here through a search engine, please check in the electronic section of the blog if there is any update of the list. Enjoy!
#1) SKYGGE, “Hello World”
(Electro Pop)
Benoit Carré is a French singer, composer, musician and actor. He has written songs for some of France’s biggest stars, and in the recent times he collaborated with Sony’s Computer Science Laboratories in Paris to produce the pioneering album “Hello World”, which he released under the pseudonym of SKYGGE (“Shadow” in Danish)
Hello World, the experimental work by SKYGGE, was fully reviewed in a dedicated post when the album entered the Best New Music section of the blog. The album is the result of a research project in which scientists were looking for algorithms to capture and reproduce the concept of musical “style”. After a number of initial prototypes, a first group of electronic music artists joined the research team and at some point they took control of the process, and the scientific project became a music project. These artists were invited and coordinated by Benoit Carré (aka SKYGGE) and their work became the beautiful Hello World.
The album is based on the idea to feed computer machines with sounds and melodies selected by every artist as input. Deep learning algorithms are then applied in order to allow the artificial intelligence module to elaborate and refine musical elements that are stylistically similar to the initial ones, but “new”.
From a musical point of view, the album is strongly influenced by European electronic music and in the end it results in an excellent collection of modern and forward thinking electronic tracks. And it’s not by chance that after many months, the album is still a the top of the electronic chart.
#2) Jenny Wilson, “Exorcism”
(Electro Pop, Art Pop)
Jenny Wilson is a Swedish singer-songwriter. She founded and played with First Floor Power until 2004, when she left the band to go solo. Since then she has released five LPs.
Exorcism, which is the fifth and newest LP released by Swedish Pop artist Jenny Wilson, tells in music the terrible story of a sexual assault that the songwriter experienced a few years ago while clubbing. This element by itself could guarantee for the album a deeper element of analysis and interpretation with respect to the typical electro-pop album, but the reality is that the feelings of tension, disturbance and anguish that are spread all-over the tracks of the record are evident and may be perceived even by the casual listener who doesn’t know the full story which is behind the album.
The artist, however, managed to tell her painful story without ever making the music monotonous, didascalic and depressing. On the contrary, Exorcism features a collection of extremely interesting, varied and intriguing songs that disseminate their load of insecurity and alienation in an absolutely subtle way and, because of that, the result is extremely sharp and effective.
#3) Floex and Tom Hodge, “Portrait of John Doe”
(Experimental, Modern Classical)
Tom Hodge‘s collaborative relationship with Czech producer Tomas Dvorak, a.k.a Floex, began with a chance meeting in Berlin. After a series of initial experiments in making music together, H0dge and Floex have been working on A Portrait of John Doe, an album collaboration created with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Tomáš Dvořák is a composer and graphic artist from Czech Republic who works under the moniker of Floex. Despite his relatively young age, Dvořák’s discography is already rich of a good number of interesting albums where he blends together heterogeneous genres like classical music, electronic and jazz, showing great technique and a notable musical sensibility, Three years ago Dvořák started a collaboration with English composer and musician Tom Hodge and their efforts resulted in the release of Portrait of John Doe, recorded with support of the renowned Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Portrait of John Doe is an incredible album. It has unique and extravagant arrangements, it’s conceptual and “forward thinking”, but, most important, it’s absolutely nice and joyful to listen. To some extent, I feel it’s destined to leave a strong mark in the experimental and avant-gard electronic music scene. The album is filled with many hints and references from modern classical music. There are clear hints and references to both the orchestral and electronic works by Philip Glass, and we have rarified and haunting atmospheres like those we find in some of the works of Bela Bartok and Dmitrij Šostakovič.
Portrait of John Doe is an ambitious record that was done very well, plenty of surprises and absolutely innovative. This music is really different from everything you’ve heard in the recent times and it really deserves the time (and the effort) that are necessary to enjoy its crystalline beauty without too many distractions and interruptions.
#4) Go Dugong, “Curaro”
(World and Cosmic Electronic)
Go Dugong is the solo-project of italian electronic producer, Dj and graphic artist Giulio Fonseca.
Electronic music, together with Jazz, is pheraps one of the genres of music that is intrinsically more open to the idea of fusing together different influences and styles. And practically every year I happen to listen to a record that succeeds, more than any other, to amaze me for the originality with which different musical elements are combined together in such a natural and fluid way that the final result is something new and exciting, and much more than the mere superimposition of the original building blocks.
Last year I felt this with Shikantanza, the beautiful album by French electronic collective Chinese Man. In 2018, the moment of wonder and revelation occurred when I launched in my music player the first songs of Curaro, i.e. the new album by Go Dugong, which is the solo-project of the Italian electronic producer Giulio Fonseca. I didn’t know what to expect at first and I was absolutely surprised to hear such a masterful blending of chillout, trip hop, sensual dub, world music, dance beats, tribal sounds and ethnological field recordings.
Curaro is really one of those records that is made to let your mind travel into distant worlds and remote enivornments, but conceived and performed by having in mind a clear and winning characteristic: the absolute enjoyability of the single tracks.
#5) Carpenter Brut, “Leatherwave”
(Synthwave)
Franck Hueso, better known by his stage name Carpenter Brut, is a French synthwave artist from Poitiers. He started writing music as Carpenter Brut with the intention of mixing sounds from horror films, metal, rock, and electronic music
The world of music is plenty of cases of metalheads that at some point diverted their attention to electronic music. As a matter of fact, metal and electronic share many elements in common and although it is not just as easy as to replace guitars with synthesizers, the transition from one genre to the other has been experienced many times, typically from metal to electronic and in a few cases in the opposite direction. Last year, just to give an example, we celebrated the beautiful last album by Ulver: they started as a black metal band and arrived to produce one of the best synth-pop albums ever released.
Franck Hueso, better known by his stage name Carpenter Brut, is another artist that at some point in time moved away from heavy metal in order to pursue a career in electronic muisc. After a number of EPs and one live record he eventually released his debut full-lenght album, Leather Teeth, which offers to the listener a curious but intriguing old-fashioned kind of synthwave.
The LP is very particular: initially it may leave you a little perplexed because the use of the typical sounds and instruments from the 80s is so blatant and pervasive than the album seems a little anachronistic. After the initial impact, however, we’re captured by the melodies and the nice rhythms of the songs, which are sometimes frenetic and other times more relaxed. The fastest songs are the ones I liked the most, but in general the whole album is definitely interesting and enjoyable, as well as curious and fun.
#6) Justice, “Woman Worldwide”
(Alternative Dance, Nu Dance, Electronic Rock)
Justice is a French electronic music duo consisting of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay. known for incorporating a strong rock and indie influence into its music and image.
Justice have taken the good habit of publishing a live record after each studio album and this year, after the conclusion of the Woman World Wide tour, which promoted the release of their 2016’s studio album Woman, the band as published a new live album, called Woman Worldwide (or WWW).
This live album is fantastic in the sense that it mixes in a exciting and always surprising way all the hits that the band has released so far in their career, and the mixes are so good that most of the songs seem even better than their original versions. Predictably the songs of their early works prevail definitely on the others. Justice early works shine with a special light of beauty and as a matter of fact, by mixing together old and new songs, the latter gain in beauty and look much more enjoyable that their corresponding studio versions.
All of Justice’s live LPs, including the most recent one, provide us with an opportunity to enjoy a beautiful and exciting ride into electronic music. They also make me think about what this band could have become without the desire of producing that sort of electronic vintage rock style which has eventually anesthetized their music in recent years.
#7) Pola Rise, “Anywhere But Here”
(Electro Pop)
Polish singer and composer Paulina Miłosz, working under the pseudonym of Pola Rise, appeared for the first time musically in 2014. Since then she has performed with various artists and in 1038 she released her first solo album, “Anywhere But Here“.
Anywhere But Here is the debut album from a new electro pop artist from Poland, Paulina Miłosz, who operates under the stage name of Pola Rise. She published a number of singles from 2014 and eventually got a record deal with Warner Music Poland, which supported the publication of her full lenght work.
Her style of electronic music oscillates between pieces of clear experimental nature with notes of avant-garde, and more delicate and catchy songs, which in my opnion are also the ones that better highlight the qualities of this young artist. Anywhere But Here is particularly interesting because of the way in which it is able to give that “indie” feeling to a set of songs that, in their essence, result quite linear and without any particular dynamic development.
The album offers the listener a nice collection of musical sketches, interesting and enjoyable to hear, gifted by a “light” touch make them the perfect companion for many moments of our days.
#8) Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Async-Remodels”
(Experimental)
Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese musician, singer, composer and record producer, based in Tokyo and New York. In 2017 the artist released is nineteenth solo studio album, “async“, which became the source of inspiration for the remix album “async – remodels“
My relationship with remix albums is generally positive, especially when there is a collection of pieces that manages to be appreciated even without the prior knowledge of the original material. Async Remodels belongs for sure to this category of albums: it collects the work of a group of talented electronic artists who took the challenge to confront themselves with the complex and profound songs of Ryuchi Sakamoto‘s latest solo LP, Async, released in 2017.
The idea to manipulate and alter the music of a legend of music like Sakamoto offers many possibilities, but it also exposes to big risks. To make this even more complicated, it’s important to remember that most of the tracks of Sakamoto’s last work were the result of a profound analysis that the Japanese artist made about the meaning of music: these songs were in fact the product of a conceptual exercise aimed at measuring the boundaries between the organic and the synthetic elements of music.
Listening to the remixes included Async Remodels we must recognize that many of the artists who were called to contribute not only accepted the challenge but they managed, in most of the cases, to give their personal contribution to Sakamoto’s analysis and, sometimes, they enriched the songs with new and original elements. In this respect there are some tracks of the album, such as those by Alva Noto, Electric Youth and Jóhann Jóhannsson (R.I.P.), which are evidently a step higher than the others. In the end, however, it’s the average level of the record that’s very good, making the LP one of the most interesting things happened this year in electronic music.
#9) Moby, “Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt”
(Trip Hop)
Richard Melville Hall, better known by his stage name Moby, became in the 90’s one of the most important dance music figures worldwide, helping bring the music to a mainstream audience both in the UK and in America. “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt” is Moby’s fifteenth studio album.
In more than 25 years of career, American musician and producer Moby has explored different regions of the electronic world, from ambient to dance, with also a few episodes where he engaged with punk and rock (and his most recent rock releases may be also downloaded for free). But beyond the willingness to face different musical challenges, in all of these explorations Moby has always tried to give his own special contribution to the different genres he was playing with.
Moby’s latest album, Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt, is clearly inspired by the sounds and dynamics of trip-hop, and the result is definitely good. As a matter of fact, Moby has enriched the relative ease of listening of trip-hop with a special dedication to songwriting and a great attention to the details.
The album in its entirety results in equal parts enjoyable and interesting to listen to, there are no evident missteps and the music, in the end, is both familiar and original. On the negative side the LP missing a really memorable song, one of those tracks with an unforgettable line and chorus. It is no coincidence, thus, that the most catchy refrain is that of the song Like A Motherless Child, which is based on a popular tunes from the past.
#10) tUnE-YaRds, “I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life”
(Experimental, Electro Pop)
Singer and percussionist Merrill Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner are today the two permanent members of tUnE-yArDs, an art pop project which has arrived to the fourth LP of an interesting discography.
Merrill Garbus, the US singer and songwriter who operates under the moniker of tUnE-YaRdS, never showed so far any lack of creativity and inventiveness. Indeed, from the beginning of her career she has maintained a minimalist approach to the choice of instruments and music styles almost as if she had the fear of covering, with an excess of effects and instruments, the essence of the motives and the ideas she was transforming into music. And even if this approach maybe precluded the largest audiences, i.e. those that are typically less corageous and less prepared to go beyond those well-established and conventional musical styles, she has still managed however to leave her mark within the indie scene of the last decade.
tUnE-YaRdS’ last album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, sees longtime collaborator Nate Brenner become an official member of the project, with the duo confirming more or less the same approach of Garbus’ previous releases. Electronic hypnotic beats remain in fact the baseline over which we enjoy Garbus’ eclectic and thrilling vocal lines. The musical performance is not always up to the experimental ambitions of the duo, but where the desire to explore manages to find an adequate sonic vehicle, their songs can offer a very pleasant escape from the monotony of our routines.
Now that we are at the height of summer it’s time to refresh our charts with the best albums of the year. Today we speak of the glittering world of electro pop; here we could enjoy a couple of new interesting entries after the first episode that was published a few months ago.
Let’s discover the updated list of the best electro pop albums of 2018. And, as usual, you’ll find at the end of the article the link to my Electro Pop playlist on Spotify.
#1) “HELLO WORLD” by SKYGGE
Benoit Carré is a French singer, composer, musician and actor. He has written songs for some of France’s biggest stars, and in the recent times he collaborated with Sony’s Computer Science Laboratories in Paris to produce the pioneering album “Hello World”, which he released under the pseudonym of SKYGGE (“Shadow” in Danish)
Hello World, the experimental work by SKYGGE, was fully reviewed in a dedicated post when the album entered the Best New Music section of the blog. The album is the result of a research project in which scientists were looking for algorithms to capture and reproduce the concept of musical “style”. After a number of initial prototypes, a first group of electronic music artists joined the research team and at some point they took control of the process, and the scientific project became a music project. These artists were invited and coordinated by Benoit Carré (aka SKYGGE) and their work became the beautiful Hello World. The album is based on the idea to feed computer machines with sounds and melodies selected by every artist as input. Deep learning algorithms are then applied in order to allow the artificial intelligence module to elaborate and refine musical elements that are stylistically similar to the initial ones, but “new”. From a musical point of view, the album is strongly influenced by European electronic music and in the end it results in an excellent collection of modern and forward thinking electronic tracks. And it’s not by chance that after many months, the album is still a the top of the electro pop chart.
#2) “EXORCISM” by Jenny Wilson
Jenny Wilson is a Swedish singer-songwriter. She founded and played with First Floor Power until 2004, when she left the band to go solo. Since then she has released five LPs.
Exorcism, which is the fifth and newest LP released by Swedish Pop artist Jenny Wilson, tells in music the terrible story of a sexual assault that the songwriter experienced a few years ago while clubbing. This element by itself could guarantee for the album a deeper element of analysis and interpretation with respect to the typical electro-pop album, but the reality is that the feelings of tension, disturbance and anguish that are spread all-over the tracks of the record are evident and may be perceived even by the casual listener who doesn’t know the full story which is behind the album. The artist, however, managed to tell her painful story without ever making the music monotonous, didascalic and depressing. On the contrary, Exorcism features a collection of extremely interesting, varied and intriguing songs that disseminate their load of insecurity and alienation in an absolutely subtle way and, because of that, the result is extremely sharp and effective.
#3) “ANYWHERE BUT HERE” by Pola Rise
Polish singer and composer Pola Rise Paulina Miłosz, working under the pseudonym of Pola Rise, appeared for the first time musically in 2014. Since then she has performed with various artists and in 1038 she released her first solo album, “Anywhere But Here”.
Anywhere But Here is the debut album from a new electro pop artist from Poland, Paulina Miłosz, who operates under the stage name of Pola Rise. She published a number of singles from 2014 and eventually got a record deal with Warner Music Poland, which supported the publication of her full lenght work. Her style of electronic music oscillates between pieces of clear experimental nature with notes of avant-garde, and more delicate and catchy songs, which in my opnion are also the ones that better highlight the qualities of this young artist. Anywhere But Here is particularly interesting because of the way in which it is able to give that “indie” feeling to a set of songs that, in their essence, result quite linear and without any particular dynamic development. The album offers the listener a nice collection of musical sketches, interesting and enjoyable to hear, gifted by a “light” touch make them the perfect companion for many moments of our days.
#4) “I CAN FEEL YOU CREEP INTO MY PRIVATE LIFE” by tUnE-YaRdS
tUnE-yArDs is the music project of New England native Merrill Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner. tUnE-yArDs have released this year the fourth LP, which interrupts a period of 4 years since their previous full-lenght work.
Merrill Garbus, the US singer and songwriter who operates under the moniker of tUnE-YaRdS, never showed so far any lack of creativity and inventiveness. Indeed, from the beginning of her career she has maintained a minimalist approach to the choice of instruments and music styles almost as if she had the fear of covering, with an excess of effects and instruments, the essence of the motifs and the ideas which she was transforming into music. And if this approach may have precluded her the largest audiences, she still managed to leave her mark within the indie scene of the last decade. In tUnE-YaRdS‘ last album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, longtime collaborator Nate Brenner has become an official member of the project, and the duo confirms more or less the same approach of Garbus’ previous releases. Electronic hypnotic beats remain in fact the baseline over which we enjoy Garbus’ eclectic and thrilling vocal lines. The musical performance is not always up to the experimental ambitions of the duo, but where their desire to explore new paths for music manages to find an adequate sonic vehicle, their songs succeed in offering us a very pleasant escape from the monotony of our routines.
#5) “BORN BACKWARDS” by Sequin
Since 2013 Sequin has become the solo project of Portuguese singer Ana Miró. Her first album “Penelope” was released in April 2014. In 2018 Sequin released “Born Backwards”, her sophomore album, produced by Xinobi.
Sequin is the solo project of Ana Miró, a Portuguese singer and electronic producer who has been also the lead vocalist for other two music projects (Jibóia and Heats). In Sequin’s bandcamp page the music composed by Ana Miró is desdribed as “electro pop” and “naive electro”. I believe however that these tags, by themselves, don’t reflect in full the special feeling that emerges from the delicate and intriguing songs of Born Backwards, which is the second album of original songs from Miró, after her debut work Penelope. The sytle of Sequin may be described as a minimalistic version of Bat For Lashes, with evident influences from both pop and club music. The most relevant characteristic of the album is for sure the warm and engaging voice of Ana Miró, who gives depth and charm to the simple and catchy electronic rhythms of her songs.
If you liked this article, you will for sure enjoy “ELECTRO POP“, the playlist I created on Spotify with the best and latest Electro Pop, Synth Pop, and Indie Electronic. Follow it, enjoy it, and spread the word!
This blog has been relatively silent for a few weeks, let’s now come back to a more regular production of charts, reviews, playlists and mixtapes!
The first quarter of the year has now passed and we can start having some solid charts with the best releases for each genre. Today I’m going to present you the best Electronic albums that were released in the first three months of the year. And it’s quite interesting to realize that one third of the selected LPs are debut works from two relatively young artists. The list is then completed by a the new work by a veteran of Electronic music, a remix album, an experimental duo of art pop musicians and, last bat not least, the first electronic album produced with the contribution of artificial intelligence. Not bad, you just have to read and listen!
For everyone who arrived here through a search engine, please consider that this list was published on April 2018 and there may be newer charts available in the Electronic section of the blog. Enjoy!
#1) Hello World by SKYGGE
(Electro Pop)
Benoit Carré, the French pop musician best known as SKYGGE, has led a group of electronic artists to realize “Hello World”, the first album composed with the contribution of artificial intelligence
Introduced as the first mainstream music album composed with artificial intelligence, Hello World tells the story of a group of electronic music artists guided by French pop artist Benoit Carré (also know as SKYGGE) who joined a research project in which scientists were looking for algorithms to capture and reproduce the concept of musical “style”. The result of this effort is a collection of 15 electronic songs which, well beyond the experimental concept that lies behind, are absolutely interesting and pleasing to listen to.
From a musical point of view, the album is strongly influenced by European electronic music and it is easy to recognize in many songs the contributio from well known artists such as Stromae, the Belgian DJ and producer who’s got public attention in the last ten years ago with a number of catchy electronic songs. Thanks to the contributions of so many artists and thanks to this innovation given by artificial intelligence, the LP is gifted by an impressive variety and freshness of the songs and, in the end, it’s definitely a solid and intriguing collection of modern, catchy but also forward thinking electronic tracks.
Here in this blog, Hello World was also included in the higly regarded category of the Best New Music.
#2) Leather Teeth by CARPENTER BRUT
(Shyntwave)
French electronic music artist Franck Hueso, better known by his stage name Carpenter Brut. To date he has released three EPs and, in 2018, the original album “Leather Teeth”, which is his debut LP.
The world of music is plenty of cases of metalheads that at some point diverted their attention to electronic music. As a matter of fact, metal and electronic share many elements in common and although it is not just as easy as to replace guitars with synthesizers, the transition from one genre to the other has been experience many times, typically from metal to electronic and in a few cases in the opposite direction. Last year, just to give an example, we celebrated the beautiful last album by Ulver: they started as a black metal band and arrived to produce one of the best synth-pop albums ever released.
Franck Hueso, better known by his stage name Carpenter Brut, is another artist that at some point in time left his passion for heavy metal and started producing an intriguing and old-fashioned version of synthwave. After a number of EPs and one live record he eventually released his debut full-lenght album, Leather Teeth.
The LP is very particular, initially it may leave you bewildered by the use – so blatant and pervasive to be almost anachronistic – of the typical sounds and instruments from the 80s. After this initial impact, however, we’re captured by the melodies and the nice rhythms of the songs, sometimes frenetic and other times more relaxed. The fastest songs are the ones I liked the most, but in general the whole album is definitely interesting and enjoyable, as well as curious and fun.
#3) Anywhere But Here by POLA RISE
(Electro Pop)
Paulina Miłosz, the Poland Electronic artist better know with her stage name Pola Rise. She published in 2018 her first debut LP, “Anywhere But Here”.
Anywhere But Here is the debut album from a new electro pop artist from Poland, Paulina Miłosz, who operates under the stage name of Pola Rise. Since 2015 she started releasing a number of singles and eventually got a record deal with Warner Music Poland, which supported the publication of her full lenght work.
Pola Rise’s style of electronic music oscillates between pieces of clear experimental, nature with notes of avant-garde and improvisation, and more delicate and catchy songs, which in my opnion are also the ones that better highlight the qualities of this young artist. This album is particularly interesting because of the way in which it is able to give that “indie” feeling to songs that, in their essence, result quite linear and without any particular dynamic development. These are musical sketches, interesting and somehowe engaging, and composed with a light touch that manage to make them very easy to enjoy but, at the same time, destined to leave impercettible traces after the listening.
#4) Async-Remodels by RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
(Experimental, Ambient)
Japanese multi-faceted artist Ryuichi Sakamoto released in 2017 his nineteenth solo studio album, “async“. “Async Remodels” contains eleven reworks of async’s original tracks, composed and performed by producers such as Jóhann Jóhannsson, Alva Noto, Fennesz, Cornelius, Oneohtrix Point Never, Electric Youth, and Arca.
My relationship with remix albums is generally positive, especially when there is a collection of pieces that manages to be appreciated even without the prior knowledge of the original material. Async Remodels belongs for sure to this category of albums and in fact the LP presents the work of a group of very good artists who took the challenge to confront themselves with the complex and profound songs of Ryuchi Sakamoto‘s latest solo LP, Async, released in 2017.
The idea to manipulate and alter the music of a legend of music like Sakamoto offers many possibilities, but it also exposes to big risks. To make this even more complicated, it’s important to remember that most of the tracks of Sakamoto’s last work were the result of a profound analysis that the Japanese artist made about the meaning of music: these songs were in fact the product of a conceptual exercise aimed at measuring the boundaries between the organic and the synthetic elements of music.
Listening to the remixes included Async Remodels we must recognize that many of the artists who were called to contribute not only accepted the challenge but they managed, in most of the cases, to give their personal contribution to Sakamoto’s analysis and, sometimes, the enriched the songs with new and original elements. Some tracks, such as those by Alva Noto, Electric Youth and Jóhann Jóhannsson (R.I.P.), seem to be a step higher than others, but in the end it is the average level of the record that’s very positive, making the LP one of the most interesting things happened this year in electronic music.
#5) Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt by MOBY
(Trip Hop)
Richard Melville Hall, better known by his stage name Moby, became in the 90’s one of the most important dance music figures worldwide, helping bring the music to a mainstream audience both in the UK and in America. “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt” is Moby’s fifteenth studio album.
In more than 25 years of career, American musician and producer Moby has explored different regions of the electronic world, from ambient to dance, with also a few episodes where he engaged with punk and rock (and his most recent rock releases may be also downloaded for free). But beyond the willingness to face different musical challenges, in all of these explorations Moby has always tried to give his own special contribution to the different genres he was playing with. Moby’s latest album, Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt, is clearly inspired by the sounds and dynamics of trip-hop, and the result is definitely good.
As a matter of fact, Moby has enriched the relative ease of listening of trip-hop with a special dedication to songwriting and a great attention to the details. The album in its entirety results in equal parts enjoyable and interesting to listen to, there are no evident missteps and the music, in the end, is both familiar and original. On the negative side the LP missing a really memorable song, one of those tracks with an unforgettable line and chorus. It is no coincidence, thus, that the most catchy refrain is that of the song Like A Motherless Child, which is based on a popular tunes from the past.
#6) I can feel you creep into my private life by tUnE-YaRdS
(Experimental, Electro Pop)
Singer and percussionist Merrill Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner are today the two permanent members of tUnE-yArDs, an art pop project which has arrived to the fourth LP of an interesting discography
Merrill Garbus, the US singer and songwriter who operates under the moniker of tUnE-YaRdS, never showed so far any lack of creativity and inventiveness. Indeed, from the beginning of her career she has maintained a minimalist approach to the choice of instruments and music styles almost as if she had the fear of covering, with an excess of effects and instruments, the essence of the motives and the ideas she was transforming into music. And even if this approach maybe precluded the largest audiences, i.e. those that are typically less corageous and less prepared to go beyond those well-established and conventional musical styles, she has still managed however to leave her mark within the indie scene of the last decade.
tUnE-YaRdS’ last album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, sees longtime collaborator Nate Brenner become an official member of the project, with the duo confirming more or less the same approach of Garbus’ previous releases. Electronic hypnotic beats remain in fact the baseline over which we enjoy Garbus’ eclectic and thrilling vocal lines. The musical performance is not always up to the experimental ambitions of the duo, but where the desire to explore manages to find an adequate sonic vehicle, their songs can offer a very pleasant escape from the monotony of our routines.
Let’s review in this entry of the blog the most interesting Electro Pop albums that we had the pleasure to listen in the first days of 2018. This short list consists of very heterogeneous artists: from the conceptual work of SKYGGE to the indie approach of Pola Rise and tUnE-YaRdS, up to the innovative and elegant sounds of BØRNS. Different styles but with the same result: very enjoyable and catchy songs that were born to accompany the best moments of our days.
Note to the readers: an updated edition of the chart has been already published in the blog, check it out!
Number 1
HELLO WORLD by SKYGGE
Hello World, the experimental work by SKYGGE, was fully reviewed in a dedicated post when the album entered the Best New Music section of the blog. The album is the result of a research project in which scientists were looking for algorithms to capture and reproduce the concept of musical “style”. After a number of initial prototypes, a first group of electronic music artists joined the research team and at some point they took control of the process, and the scientific project became a music project. These artists were invited and coordinated by Benoit Carré (aka SKYGGE) and their work became the beautiful Hello World. The album is based on the idea to feed computer machines with sounds and melodies selected by every artist as input. Deep learning algorithms are then applied in order to allow the artificial intelligence module to elaborate and refine musical elements that are stylistically similar to the initial ones, but “new”. From a musical point of view, the album is strongly influenced by European electronic music and in the end it results in an excellent collection of modern and forward thinking electronic tracks.
Number 2
ANYWHERE BUT HERE by Pola Rise
Anywhere But Here is the debut album from a new electro pop artist from Poland, Paulina Miłosz, who operates under the stage name of Pola Rise. She published a number of singles from 2014 and eventually got a record deal with Warner Music Poland, which supported the publication of her full lenght work. Her style of electronic music oscillates between pieces of clear experimental nature with notes of avant-garde, and more delicate and catchy songs, which in my opnion are also the ones that better highlight the qualities of this young artist. This album is particularly interesting because of the way in which it is able to give that “indie” feeling to songs that, in their essence, result quite linear and without any particular dynamic development. These are musical sketches, interesting and somehowe engaging, and composed with a light touch that manage to make them very easy to enjoy but, at the same time, destined to leave impercettible traces after the listening.
Number 3
I CAN FEEL YOU CREEP INTO MY PRIVATE LIFE by tUnE-YaRdS
Merrill Garbus, the US singer and songwriter who operates under the moniker of tUnE-YaRdS, never showed so far any lack of creativity and inventiveness. Indeed, from the beginning of her career she has maintained a minimalist approach to the choice of instruments and music styles almost as if she had the fear of covering, with an excess of effects and instruments, the essence of the motives and the ideas she was transforming into music. And even if this approach maybe precluded the largest audiences, i.e. those that are typically less corageous and less prepared to go beyond those well-established and conventional musical styles, she has still managed however to leave her mark within the indie scene of the last decade. tUnE-YaRdS’ last album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, sees longtime collaborator Nate Brenner become an official member of the project, with the duo confirming more or less the same approach of Garbus’ previous releases. Electronic hypnotic beats remain in fact the baseline over which we enjoy Garbus’ eclectic and thrilling vocal lines. The musical performance is not always up to the experimental ambitions of the duo, but where the desire to explore manages to find an adequate sonic vehicle, their songs can offer a very pleasant escape from the monotony of our routines.
Number 4
BLUE MADONNA by BØRNS
BØRNS is the stage name for Garrett Clark Borns, an American singer and songwriter who aroused considerable interest a few years ago with his debut album, Dopamine, which presented an extremely innovative, creative and enjoyable version of electro pop. On 2018 he came back with his second LP, Blue Madonna, which showcase once again his very special voice (he’s an intense user of the falsetto technique) but also his capacity to move with ease between glam pop and more atmospheric and articulated songs. Compared to the debut album, the new LP seems to have lost a part of immediacy and accessibility, two elements that had contributed to the success of Dopamine. The songs of Blue Madonna are less immediate and direct than before and perhaps – at first – the impression can be of a less enjoyable collection of tracks. On the long distance, however, the album will for sure gain in profundity and longevity.
In the special case of this album, before speaking of the music it’s useful to introduce the concept behind it. The official notes that come with the record explain that Hello World “is the first mainstream music album composed with artificial intelligence. Its goal is to show that AI can be used to create new, compelling music, generating fresh musical material of all sorts: melodies, harmonies, timbre, rhythms and the like“. We also learn that Hello World started as a research project in which scientists were looking for algorithms to capture and reproduce the concept of musical “style”. After a number of initial prototypes, a first group of electronic music artists joined the research team and at some point they took control of the process, and the scientific project became a music project. These artists were invited and coordinated by French pop artist Benoit Carré, who operates under the stage name of SKYGGE.
Was this introduction necessary to appreciate the album? Partly yes and partly not. The reality is this disc collects 15 songs which, beyond the experimental concept that lies behind, are absolutely interesting and pleasing to listen to. There is certainly an element of novelty and experimentation that emerges from the tracks of Hello World, but these are fundamentally much closer to conventional electronic music than the initial notes can lead one to believe. And it is no coincidence, then, that many songs from this record are already populating the various playlists that are on the web (including mine), meaning that the value of the songs, at the end, doesn’t require the full understanding of the experiment that was carried out. Understanding the role that the technology had for this project is still important, however, because it highlights how many of the melodies that we listen to (not only on this album) are actually the result of models and processes that can be reproduced with computer algorithms. Without going into details, basically the mechanism developed for Hello World is based on the idea to feed computer machines with sounds and melodies selected by every artist as input. Deep learning algorithms are then applied in order to allow the artificial intelligence module to elaborate and refine musical elements that are stylistically similar to the initial ones, but “new”.
From a musical point of view, the album is strongly influenced by European electronic music and it is easy to recognize in many songs the contributio from Stromae, the Belgian musician who came to wide public attention almost ten years ago with a number of catchy electronic songs.
In the end, the most interesting characteristic of the album is not the technological history we told at the beginning, but the pleasant variety and freshness of all the songs included in the album. This is really a well done collection of modern and forward thinking electronic tracks. What were the specific leves of contribution from humans and computers are not clear to me at the moment, but if these are the results we are clearly on the right track.
The album was officialy released on January 12, 2018.
Carrying on the long journey through the best musical publications of the past year, we arrive to the important chapter of electronic music, which is by large one of the most heterogeneous but at the same time one that always manages to give us great surprises and which usually brings with it an healthy dose of experimentation.
The judgment that I had made in my head about 2017 was of a fairly irregular year. Alongside some periods that have been positive and rich of interesting releases, there were others which resulted extremely flat, with very few if not even no significant album. But when I found myself assembling and selecting the top 10 albums of the year, I had to recognize that in absolute terms, the one which has just ended was an extremely good year for electronic music.
Let’s see then which are the ten best electronic music records published in 2017, ranked from the bottom to the top.
Number 10
WHAT IF by Hauschka
We start this list of the ranked albums with an LP that was really hard to classify. It’s included in the electronic category beacause of a greater assonance with the genre, but to be honest in this musical work there is really a lot more than just electronics. Therefore, defining What If as a simple electronic album is somehow a limitation and it could be also misleading for some listeners.
German pianist Volker Bertelmann, who’s the man behind the stage name Hauschka, is mostly known for his compositions for prepared piano, i.e. a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects on or between the strings (in this case scraps of aluminum, ping-pong balls and other household items). On his new album, which is the eighth of his career, Hauschka plays the prepared piano in combination of other keyboards instruments such as a Yamaha’s high-tech player piano and a 1970s-vintage Roland analog synthesizer, and such a blending of new and old Technologies is used by the artist to generate singular but still accessible pieces of modern music. The real peculiarity of this author is that he transforms the piano into a mechanical instrument: a source of sounds which are at times delicate and sometimes disturbing. The result is a combination of multiple layers of minimal and introspective music which manage to evoke different and sometimes contrasting feelings.
Number 9
PLUNGE by Fever Ray
Danis singer and producer Karin Dreijer has always created works that lie on the thin border between traditional music and experimentation and this happens both when she plays with her broter in the electronic duo The Knife and when she frees all his creative spirit in the solo project named Fever Ray. Her new album Plunge – which arrived as a surprise in last October – makes no exception.
Plunge is the second album from Fever Ray and it follows the debut LP that was released more than six years ago. From listening to her record it is clear that during this time the Swedish artist has acquired further courage and confidence in her own talents. First, we recognize a greater variety of styles and references in the songs of the album, but we can also appreciate – much more than in the debut work – her beautiful voice, which today is much less hidden under layers of effects and alterations.
Plunge is definitely an interesting and engaging album, perhaps with the only limit of challenging the listener to go through extremely different genres and styles. Basically, aside to some more accessible tracks we find a series of much more experimental songs, not always at the same level of the others.
Number 8
WORLD EATER by Blanck Mass
Blank Mass is the electronic solo project by the English DJ and producer Benjamin John Power, who is mainly known for being one of the two founders of the experimental duo Fuck Buttons (where he plays together with Andrew Hung). World Eater is the new album released by Blank Mass, and the third in the discography of this music project (there are actually a number of other releases as EPs and soundtracks).
For those who are familiar with the earlier work by this artist, both when he plays alone or within the Fuck Buttons, you know what to expect: a sonic attack with mesmeric repetitions and industrial inserts. And this record, in fact, is no exception. The album contains seven interesting tracks that move between noise and experimentation, all seasoned with a good dose of sonic violence.
A particular aspect of this album is that Power tried to work with a limited set of electronic tools, trying to focus the development of his songs with a small number of effects. And the result is very interesting and enjoyable to listen.
Number 8
UNUNIFORM by Tricky
Conceived in Russia and produced in Berlin (his new adopted capital), the new LP by English trip-hop master Tricky is maybe one of the more claustrophobic and dark of the thirteen records in his discography, as indeed announced by the same album cover. The production notes tell us about an artist that embarked into a journey to confront his legacy: history, family – even death itself. And in all of this, he found the strangest, least familiar thing – peace.
The LP has received mixed reactions from the critics and surely it doesn’t have much to do with the early masterpieces of the artist. But these were other times, for Tricky and for us too. And if it remains always a great pleasure to brush up the great successes of this artist and play them to brighten a special moment of the day, it is however Tricky’s last album the one that can play the soundtrack of our times.
Number 7
SOIREE DELUXE by Tape Five
Last year we’ve seen a clear resurgence of high quality electro-swing and it is not by chance that we have in this chart, one after the other, two worthy representatives of this musical genre. German collective Tape Five claim to be the co-inventors of the electro-swing and Soiree Deluxe is the 6th studio album of the project.
Beyond the bold statements from the band, it is beyond doubt that these guys have found the perfect recipe to mix together virbant electronic beats with swing jazz, bossa nova, reggae and other multiple influences. The album is a collection of refreshing tracks that are enriched with marvellous performance from very skilled musicians (mostly horn sections and singers). A special positive characteristic of the album is the high number of very good tracks that you will find inside. Very rarely I find myself liking so many tracks from a single work, and this is one of these few cases.
Number 5
THE BURNING SPIDER by Parov Stelar
Parov Stelar is the stage name for Marcus Füreder, an Austrian musician, producer and DJ which gained popularity and success in the electronics industry as one of the pioneers of “electro-swing”. In his productions he mixes with great skill disparate elements from house music, dance and even some fragments of jazz. It’s worth saying that Parov Stelar is Austria’s most successful international artist and won 7 Amadeus Austrian Music Awards. His unique sound, his specific approach to music production and the unorthodox combination of musical genres soon made him the star of an uprising scene.
In the last years he released a number of good and captivating albums, almost one every year. The album he published in 2017 is named The Burning Spider and it is another great collection of enjoyable and variegated electro-swing tracks together with more conventional dance-pop tracks.
Number 4
OKOVI by Zola Jesus
Nika Roza Danilova, better known with her stage name of Zola Jesus, represents one of those artists who, although gifted of a fantastic voice that could have guaranteed her a brilliant career in pop or rock, decided instead to devote herself to the world of experimentation and avant-garde, which is definitely more challenging from an artistic point of view view but at the end of the day gave her a fame which is definitely minor than what she would have achieved – presumably – with mainstream music. The association with the case of Bjork is almost immediate. But if the Icelanding singer has shifted with the years towards an increasingly extreme, conceptual and essentially less immediate style of music, with Zola Jesus – fortunately I would say – we’re apparently going through a different process. Her beautiful latest album, in fact, has the capacity to hit us directly to the heart for passion and immediacy, in a way that’s quite unique in her discography. Experimentation, in this case, really seems devoted for transmitting the profound message that the artist wants to convey, rather than to represent a mere stylistic tool or a way to elevate – artificially – the artistic quality of her offer.
Okovi, which is Zola Jesus’ fifth album, arrives three years after her previous LP and represents the result of an experience of isolation and retreat into her hometown in Wisconsin.
Number 3
SAVAGE SINUSOID by Igorrr
I was expecting this album for ages. And when it arrived, it delivered. Igorrr is a unique project, led by one of those musical innovators who appear once every generation. And the last album produced by Gautier Serre and his supporting musicians, Savage Sinusoid, is simply a masterpiece of experimentation and electronic madness.
There is no way to properly capture Igorrr’s sound and style by just words, the best you can do – if you’re not familiar with the production from these crazy Frenchmen – is to visit their bandcamp page and start exploring their rich discography. If this is not your first encounter with the band, you already know what to expect with Savage Sinusoid.
There is however some evolution with the previous works, in particular for what concern the level of experimentation they do with the basic elements of the songs. In the early works of their discography you could see that the starting point of the song (whether it was an harpsichord sonata by Scarlatti or a popular Balkan dance) was just the beginning of an exploratory journey that could eventually lead to something really different. In their last album, the amount of experimentation seems a little bit reduced and the original baselines are more present throughout each of the songs, giving even more diversity to the different tracks of the album.
From a technical point of view the album is “sample free”, meaning that everything you listen in the album has been played or generated for the purpose of the disc. You really need to see the “making of” videos on YouTube to understand how Igorrr play and record their songs. Alternatively, the official video for the song Cheval gives an hint on their unique style.
In summary… this is not music for everyone: it requires mental opening, curiosity and sense of wonder to go beyond the chaos. Listened with the right spirit, Savage Sinusoid can certainly provide the strongest emotions of all the records mentioned in this ranking.
Number 2
SHIKANTAZA by Chinese Man
Since the first moment I played this album on last February, I realized that this was going to be a long-term companion throughout the year. And now that we turned into 2018, it’s no surprise that Shikantaza, the last release by the electronic collective Chinese Man, is well within the top three positions of the Electronic Chart.
With this album, the French trip-hop-influenced rap collective has realized a woderful and perfectly balanced mix of funky, groove, hip-hop and many other fragements of musical genres and ethnic references. The are a few songs that stand out for their brilliance and creativity, but at the end it is the average level of all the tracks which leave us speechless.
Shikantaza is an album made to be listened and listened again, this is one of those albums that you can easily play in the background during your day for hours and hours and never get tired of listening to it. But sometimes you will find yourself turning up the volume and dancing alone like a fool, captured by one of the many vintage rhythms that punctuate the entire disc.
Number 1
THE ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CAESAR by Ulver
It’s not easy to categorize the music from Ulver, the Norwegian experimental musical collective that is nowadays approaching 25 years of activity. If their early works explored the realms of black and folk metal, with the passing of time they have initiated an incredible and ambitious exploration of other musical genres, including ambient, electronica, and neoclassical. In 2017, with their last work named The Assassination of Julius Caesar, the band is experimenting with synthpop and EDM. The result is brilliant, as if the four Norwegians were long-term and celebrated artists of this genre and not the neophytes of this type of music as they are in reality.
The album manages to combine an incredible fluidity of sounds with a unique and truly elegant musical elegance, something that’s really challenging and not easy to achieve with electronic music.
Maybe the best way to indicate how brilliant and fantastic is this album could be to check the positive reviews that The Assassination of Julius Caesar received within the metal world. It is really unfrequent to have a band that abandons its starting musical genre in such a radical way, but without leaving any resentment and disgust in a community that is so rigid and sometimes intransigent like that of heavy metal – which I also belong to, in some way.
With a few weeks of delay with the respect to the official release date (end of October 2017) I came across to this incredible album by Icelandic composer Biggi Hilmars. But as soon as I started listening to the first tracks of Dark Horse, it became immediately clear to me that I was in front of one of the most interesting records of the year – and not only in pop music.
The name of Biggi Hilmars is probably not among the best known of today’s music scene, but this musician has however already achieved a certain consideration not only as a pop artist but rather as a composer of music for film scores and trailers for both television and commercials.
Icelandic by birth, but international by nature, Biggi has lived and worked in London, Reykjavik, Paris, Berlin, New York and Los Angeles. His film work includes the music score for ‘Beeba Boys’ the crime thriller written and directed by Academy Award Nominee Deepa Mehta, the official movie trailer for ‘I Smile Back’, starring Sarah Silverman and music for the trailer for Thomas Vinterberg’s 2015 movie ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ starring Carey Mulligan. Recent commissions include the original score to Thomson Holiday’s ‘Moments’ advertising campaign, recorded at Abbey Road Studios with the London Chamber Orchestra. Biggi has also recently composed for Apple, Skoda, IBM, Mercedes Benz and Chevrolet, to name but few. (from the artist’s webpage)
Dark Horse, Biggi Hilmars’ third release as a solo, seems to summarize in a single disc most of the artist’s production and styles, floating in an unstable balance between commercial, classical and meditative music. But beyond the many influences and mixes of styles that generated the album, what’s really important at the end is that the songs on this record are absolutely beautiful, poetic, delicate and elegant in a way that is really difficult to find today. From a musical point of view, the 10 tracks of this album flow on a main vein of timeless melodies, on top of which there are delicate musical arrangments and ejoyable vocals. Everything is graced by an excellent production that managed to enhance the individual elements of the pieces but without affecting consistency and pleasure of the album as a whole.
That’s really one of the most lovely releases of the last months, a precious gem that shines with elegance and simplicity in an increasingly chaotic music scene.
The album can be streamed and acquired on the artist’s bandcamp page.
Lounge, Chillout and Downtempo are musical genres where the difference bewteen valuable works and commercial / low-quality albums is absolutely relevant.
You’ll find here a selection of the three best discs of 2017, choosen among the many albums I had the opportunity to hear throughout the year. In addition, you can enjoy a nice 40 minutes mixtape with the best tracks from these LPs. Enjoy!
Number 3
OUT OF TIME by Hugo Kant
Historically, France has always produced excellent musicians and producers of electronic music, and beyond the stage name of Hugo Kant there is Quentin Le Roux, who’s definitely one of the most interesting and eclectic artists of the current French electronic scene. Out of Time, the album released this year by Hugo Kant, confirms all the positive things we had the possibility to appreciate in his music since the initial works he published since 2011.
Whether he explores electro pop sounds or he decides to plunge into the mazes of downtempo and hip hop, Hugo Kant’s music remains always classy, never exaggerated or excessive. His production belongs to that school of French electronic artists with an innate melodic and expressive vein, and those who know absolutely when it’s time to stop adding sound layers or effects to avoid weighing down the songs.
One thing that Kant’s music is certainly rich in is the variety of instruments and influences. All of these elements, however, are here at the complete service of the pleasantness and fluency of the songs. Out of Time hosts in fact a number of very good and delicate songs that may be the perfect background for reflection and meditation, and the record also succeeds in the difficult task of telling us something new about a genre that absolutely needs some innovation.
Another valuable element of this album is the use made by the author of numerous jazz and cinemaitc influences. Nothing completely original, of course, but the blend that has been developed by Monsieur Le Roux is definitely interesting and he managed to stand out from the average level of the downtempo albums which we heard in 2017.
Number 2
MIGRATION by Bonobo
Migration, the sixth electronic album in the career of British DJ Simon Greenby (a.k.a. Bonobo), was the first electronic album to be awarded this year in this blog. And even after many months since its release on last January, now that we find ourselves gathering all the notes that were written throughout the year for defining the best works of the year, the qualities of this work remain all unchanged.
Probably today Bonobo is one of the best artists in the downtempo sub-genre. His works are emotive, passionate, intricate but delicate, with a special attention to every detail. And it’s a real pleasure to get lost within the intriguing musical harmonies that permeate the work. The music of bonobo does not want to be revolutionary or even conceptual. The recipe in this case is the classic one: pure and simple downtempo with myriads of ethnic influences, occasionally enriched by vocal elements.
The musical style of Bonobo does not make it suitable as background for a party or a celebration. Rather, here we are faced with a kind of electronic music that’s definitely more suitable for reflection, concentration, and spiritual journeys.
Number 1
DAWN CHORUS by Hidden Orchestra
On top of this mini-chart we find Scottish composer and producer Joe Acheson, the creator of the “imaginary orchestra” named Hidden Orchestra. As we learn from for the project’s website, all the tracks feature a wide variety of guest musicians who recorded their contributions separately. The single pieces are then combined by Acheson to create an imaginary ensemble that doesn’t really exist.
Dawn Chorus, the third and last work from Hidden Orchestra, is a concept album dedicated to put into music all the field recordings that Joe Acheson did in the last 8 years in the early hours of the day. From the artist’s bandcamp page:
Hidden Orchestra’s Dawn Chorus is built around a collection of birdsong and other field recordings captured over many years in diverse locations around the UK and abroad. Rich in detail and character, these snapshots intertwine with bass, drums, percussion and eclectic instruments – including piano, electro-harp, zither, Turkish mey and cello – for an emotive and transporting listen that Acheson describes as “a kind of personal audio diary, time capsule or memoir”.
Each track on the album is set to a different one of Acheson’s dawn chorus recordings, these magical snippets of nature providing effects both percussive and melodic, and sparking evocative journeys. Album opener “First Light” features the first ever full dawn chorus that Acheson recorded, on a 5am walk in December 2009 amid a blanket of crisp snow.
The beauty of this record lies in the fact that the environmental recordings are not simply an additional layer put in the songs to give a naturalistic feeling. On the contrary, all the songs develop around these magical atmospheres and manage to create soundscapes and harmonies of absolute quality, slow, medidative, but never dull or boring. This is definitely one of the most particular and interesting albums of the year. Not easy to approach, given its particular structure, but certainly full of emotions and moments of great musical poetry
A completely unexpected masterpiece arrived on late November. Rest, the new LP by British / French singer and actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of legendary singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg) is a little gem of contemporary pop, a collection of lovely, poetic and emotional short pieces which leverage the skills of all the artists who collaborated for the record (Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Paul McCartney and Owen Pallet) but which also showcase the impressive talent of Sebastian Akchoté, the man behind the mixer and who also composed most of the tracks.
The talent of Charlotte Gainsbourg as a singer emerged more or less a decade ago, when in the timeframe of just 3 years she released a couple of incredible albums (5:55 and IRM) which received both critical acclaim and good commercial success. After a relatively weaker passage (2011’s Stage Whisper) and the participation to the provocative Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac movie, she’s now back with a new album which seems to summarize in one single place all the best things she’s ever done in music so far.
The influence of Gainsbourg’s famous musical parents, both Serge and mother Jane Birkin, has been a constant in her music, but on Rest, she seems less daunted by her lineage, and she begins to bend it to her own ambitions. (AV Club)
Rest is an album that develops its full potential after repeated listens, which allow you to appreaciate the delicate and dark atmospheric layers of sounds on top of which the beautiful voice of Charlotte is free to float.
The album was released on November 17, 2017.
Recommended songs: Deadly Valentine, Ring-a-Ring O’ Roses, the title track Rest, and Lying with you.
You can now find all the songs which were selected and mixed so far in the three volumes of Guerino’s CRESTS OF WAVES mixtapes in a single Spotify playlist.
You’ll listen to the best Indie and Pop artists of the year and you’ll enjoy the best tracks from their recent LPs. Check this out periodically since new songs will be included in the anthology as new volumes of the mixtape series will be shared.
As I had the chance to comment in a recent post, the last couple of months have been really great for indie pop and therefore I hadn’t any trouble in assembling a new mixtape for the CRESTS OF WAVES series. For the new readers of the blog, this is the series of periodical compilations which present the best songs released in the last few months. I’ve mixed here great successes within indie and electro pop but I also included some tracks from lesser known artists, who don’t look absolutely bad beside their most famous colleagues.
This issue of CRESTS OF WAVES features songs from the last albums released by Arcade Fire, Lana Del Ray, The Horrors, The National, The War On Drugs, Tori Amos, and Waxahatchee.
Enjoy this compilation, the third of the series, and as usual scroll down below the widget for some additional information on the songs and the artists.
The song which opens the mix is the nice and joyful Holding On by The War On Drugs, the American indie band which released on last August their fourth album, A Deeper Understanding. This is probably one of the most brilliant works from the band and shows an impressive care for the details on both lyrics and sounds – something that may be related to their passage to a major music label (Atlantic Records). Started as a rock band with a clear “Americana” style (“Springsteen plus reverb”, said many critics), the band has managed year after year to craft a unique blend of synth pop over rock constructions, and the result is great.
Second song of the playlist comes from Out in The Storm, the second marvellous album produced by Waxahatchee, the indie music project formed in 2010 by the American singer and songwriter Katie Crutchfield. Hear You, the track selected for the mix, displays all the excellent songwrting skills achieved by the artist in her last work. This is definitely one of the most exciting album of the year for its genre, and it’s not by chance that this project was featured also on the previous issue of the mixtape.
Next song in the playlist is Something To Remember Me By, which is one of the tracks included in the recent album released by The Horrors. “V”, the fifth from the English band, has been one of the most impressive releases of the last few weeks mostly because of the high number of good tracks that are collected in the LP. This band has an incredible capacity to sound “commercial” but keeping at the same time a style and creativity that are typical of the best groups. The album arrived a few days after I released the last update of the indie pop chart, but in the feature we’ll see that The Horrors will quickly scale positions and settle down onto the highest places of the rankings.
Even if this shouldn’t ever happen, the consideration that I had initially of the last work from the Canadian indie rockers Arcade Fire was inevitably affected – negatively – because of the strange and controversial marketing campaign which has accompanied the launch of their new and fifth album, Everything Now. Anyway, leaving aside strange communications tactics and fake news, I must admit that their new LP features a number of good songs and therefore, even if the album doesn’t match the best peaks they have reached in the past, there are still some songs that are worth to be included in the playlist.
Sleep Well Beast, the seventh album by American indie art rock The National, was one of the highly anticipated and most awaited albums of the year, and after its release it’s possible to say that the expectations where confirmed. Born as college rockers and post-punk revivalists, the guys from Cincinnati developed a unique musical style where delicate melodies and intimate atmospheres dominate over every other element. This characteristic is fully represented by The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness, the song selected for the playlist and which was also one of the singles used by the band for promoting the new album.
The final part of the playlist indulges in more melancholy and delicate tones, and this change of atmosphere is announced by the fantastic voice of Tori Amos, the legendary and world acclaimed American singer-songwriter who published on last September the 15th studio album of her career, named Native Invader. The LP is impregnated – as usual – with Amos’ fantastic voice and enriched by the delicate and heartbreaking melodies she play on the piano. Cloud Riders, the song selected for this mixtape, was also the first single shared from the album.
One could really say this time that the compilation closes “in beauty”. Summer Bummer, the last song of the mix, was selected from Lust for Life, which is the fifth studio LP by the american pop singer (and model) Lana Del Rey. The album is a collection of superb songs, simple but emotional little poetic pieces, with atmospheres that are somehow a little less melancholic than in her previous productions. Lana Del Ray’s songs have been always enlighted by superb melodies, and this is definitely confirmed in her last production.
These are the two previous editions of the mixtape series.
S.B.G. 