Quirke Configuration OT

Slightly distant and cold but soulful and danceable. That slightly distorted vocal loop and bassy groove on “Undetermined” seduces me immediately, it’s beautiful

(And then there’s “Scratched Glue”, a bonus track which is completely different, jackhammer-like cold hypnotic repetition. I like it too but it’s definitely a drastic change!)

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

:zoviet*france: The Gate Is Open

:zoviet*france: at their cleanest, most minimal and droniest, with a few nature recordings here and there too, all subtle and understated. I wish it were available in an affordable format, but it’s a welcome return!

▷ RYM

Bruno Duplant Le jour d’après

An equally pleasant and haunting multilayered ambient track with a lot going on.

When I hear city bells I think of my grandparents’ house in a small countryside town. I think most listeners here would pick up on something that sounds familiar to them; could also be the piano, seagulls or broken record player; but then the superpositions and eerie drones here makes it sound like it’s all part of a damaged memory, or an altered reality. Yes, everybody’s familiar with hauntology now, but Duplant pulls it off really well and in a way that doesn’t sound like other artists! It’s not just the complexity and impeccable sound design but also the constant tension and changes in the composition. Music for searching, being submerged with contradictory emotions and getting lost.

Thanks to velocifish for the discovery!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Mr. Fingers Leev Ur Mynd

Yeah, this isn’t new ground but it’s a fine spacey, futuristic deep house album (colder at the beginning, more emotional in the second half) that makes me happy and warms my heart; the deep house pioneer hasn’t lost it.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Magogaio / Sadness Magogaio / Sadness

A blackgaze rainbow! Sweet hooks over howling noise, metal growls and pretty female vocals (Magogaio) or angry electrified screams (Sadness), sometimes electronic elements too, stylistically this combines and switches genres all over the place and it’s a split but I still feel like it’s cohesive in a sense? And the songwriting is good. It also feels like you’ve come to see a metal show and after a while they just drop the costumes and theatrics and play shoegaze because that’s what feels right at the moment.

Thanks to burpworm for the discovery!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Leif Elggren / souRce research / Matmos RGB [an audio spectrum]

Concept album based on primary colours: after a sparse black introduction, each artist plays a different colour-inspired track. Elggren’s red is brooding and electric, souRce research’s green is relaxed and a bit psychedelic, Matmos’s blue is agitated and rhythmic. All three are then played together.

Thanks to QuietWyatt for the discovery!

▷ RYM

purity://filter ҽɱραƚԋყ ρυɾɠҽ (empathy purge)

Hardcore hallucinogenic beat bullet hell
For me this is less about the beats or melodies themselves than the psychedelic feel, like there’s a paradoxical void/calm at the heart of the dizzying chaos

(The artist’s wife also made an album and both have matching covers! vertigoaway ZeRAi.3_conduit-V3RS3 {verti_dx} — it’s similar but more chaotic, sometimes jarring, I can’t get into it as much to be honest)

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Nourished by Time The Passionate Ones

Not sure what to say about this one sorry, it’s good r’n’b and I played it a lot

Thanks to Mathilde for the discovery!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

平沢進 (Susumu Hirasawa) 救済の技法

Futuristic 90s Japan synths and beautiful melodies; I’m late discovering Susumu Hirasawa but I can hear why this is a classic, I’m looking forward to discovering his other works! (I just got Music Industrial Wastes 〜 P-Model or Die as well)

▷ RYM

Perila Intrinsic Rhythm

Dark, delicate, introspective and slightly mysterious sound pictures. I love mineral ambient (and I like that this one is longer than most too, I want to spend time with these sounds)

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Seefeel Sol.Hz

Seefeel’s 90s albums progressively from dream pop × ambient techno loops to warm ghostly crepuscular beats and finally dark ambient, signing one of my favourite albums of all time in the course (Succour (later expanded in Rupt + Flex: 94–96, which is definitely worth picking up if you love it as much as I do)). If their self-titled was an interesting foray into another, glitchier sound (kudos to them for trying something else), it didn’t quite measure up to their earlier works.

This though? It’s a gem. There’s a definite similarity to Succour, but it’s rising back up from the depths, with a more futuristic sound. At first it’s slow going, but it reaches beautiful heights. Listen at night.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Lionel Marchetti Atlas (97 phénomènes…)

A nine-part, 12- or 15-hour exploration of the cosmos with two robots, from very close observations of humans on Earth to the solitary drones of outer space, taking detours to surreal, introspective and paradoxical places. Atlas took the artist thirty years to complete and holds no end of surprises (even as a fan who has listened to a bunch of his other works, this stands out as different). It’s not something you’ll get to the end of easily, and that’s part of the point: the vastness of it all. It’s an album you need a bookmark for, and the characters and soundscapes may stick with you just like with a good long novel or series.

This really deserved a nicer release, like a beautiful box set! It deserves more attention in any case, this is an important and cruelly overlooked work.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

RNG Party Games Backspace Bouken

Pretty cool little typing dungeon game to play with my cool mechanical keyboard! There’s something relaxing and satisfying about mapping a dungeon, it’s one of the reasons why I loved the Etrian Odyssey games, I should try and find more sometime

(One gripe about Backspace Bouken is that you can’t save whenever you want and can’t even return to a previous save point, but the whole thing is pretty short anyway)

▷ Itch.io
▷ Steam
▷ Glitchwave

Senking Senking

I’d heard other records by Senking but I’d missed this one and it’s probably one of his best! The same kind of very minimal and austere beats but in an aquatic half-dark ambience, it’s gorgeous.

Thanks to Raevolt for the recommendation!

▷ Discogs
▷ RYM

Date of Birth Planet Dob

Cool summery futuristic chillout (or “super lounge”) beats from Japan. It’s also a strange PS1 video game!

(In a similar vein but poppier: Cymbals Sine, which I already recommended two years ago and is still a great album to my ears but now feels weird to play as I associate it with the time I discovered it, which was basically hell. The album helped me get through it at the time, and I’m doing a lot better now, but… I’m not sure I can hear it as it really is. That’s life I guess?)

Thanks to vtvcc for the recommendation!

▷ RYM

SHXCXCHCXSH ......t

Anxious, beautiful techno beats in short psychedelic patterns; more about atmospheres and effects than anything you could dance to. Exploring surreal, alien territories.

Thanks to Accidia1 for the recommendation!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

arai tasuku Sin of Children

Melancholy nightmarish fairy tales with porcelain dolls and music boxes in a dark industrial city. Can be a good recommendation if you like Kikuo!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Hadoque Ultros

Got this because it seemed like an interesting metroidvania with beautiful psychedelic visuals, hoping the time loop mechanic wouldn’t be too annoying; it turned out to be more than that and a real gem.

Ultros starts out in a pretty standard way for the genre, only in an intensely colorful, psychedelic organic world centered around a mysterious sleeping entity which starts a new cycle every time the chamber of a sleeping guardian is destroyed. After a few cycles of playing like this though, doubts started to creep in; I learned about the ecosystem of the environment, noticed that destroying everything was seriously annoying one of the inhabitants (who didn’t seem to be a bad person) and wasn’t sure what to do about it. And then, out of the blue while I was exploring the Sarcophagus, I found something that allowed me to play the game in a completely different way!

From that point on, instead of killing all the creatures who’d hurt me, I could take a pacifist path leading to another ending; and so, instead of fighting, I began gardening. Gathering seeds, feeding animals, splicing plants. A much slower gameplay, but perhaps even more satisfying when I saw the result of my efforts changing the world around it, making it more alive!

A good part of the game has to do with experimenting to understand how the world works; the most important mechanics will be explained directly by one of the characters but many others will be left for you to find out with the tools you get (I did consult a guide at times). Ultros kept me on my toes; I spent most of my playthrough not being sure I would succeed, not knowing if I didn’t miss something important or understood all the rules of this strange world. It all worked out in a beautiful way in the end.

Now, this game isn’t for everyone; it’s not really difficult but requires a lot of patience if you want to take the nonviolent path. That’s in part because the very mechanics of the game feel organic, not just the aesthetics (did I mention even the menu sounds are kinda wet? yeah, that was weird at first). I spent a while fiddling with my tools, digging for compost at the other end of the map, trying to find out how to make my plants grow the right way on tricky sections. It was slow-going, trial-and-error, but also rare for me not to make any progress at all at the end of a session. I liked spending time in this world. Losing some of your gained abilites at each new cycle (including the double jump) can also be frustrating; I was mostly okay with these quirks, which became less of an issue as I progressed and didn’t seem completely gratuitious either (the game wants you to think about balance and uses for each thing you find, not just accumulate all the power and resources for yourself). Keeping the double jump wouldn’t have hurt though. Perhaps my only other real complaint would be the narration, which was mostly abstruse bits scattered here and there; I know I missed some but couldn’t really connect the dots to understand the story, and the ending scene felt abrupt. That said, if you’re a patient player who loves exploring psychedelic environments and cares more about experimentation than pure thrill, I highly recommend Ultros! It’s a special and unusual experience, full of wonder.

▷ Steam
▷ Glitchwave

Genesis Owusu Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge

Hey, so it is possible to make a good album about the current political shitshow we’re living in! Nothing new stylistically for Owusu but it’s very good; I think I’d like to see him live sometime.

📺 “Stampede”
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

ファントムシータ (Phantom Siita) 少女の日の思い出 (Girlhood Memories)

Hanging out and dancing with your group of girl friends, drinking strawberry milk in one of the Castlevania castle rooms where a skeleton is playing jazzy piano and bats are dancing too 🦇

Thanks to Owl for the discovery!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Boards of Canada Inferno

Tomorrow’s Harvest felt like a slow, progressive introduction; signs and anxiety before the inevitable cataclysm, solastalgia. (While a favourite of mine soundwise and thematically, I had to admit it lacked the highlights of their best records.) With its title and pre-release posters, I expected Inferno to be a sequel and their darkest album yet — not downtempo with lots of vocals and a Hare Krishna sample!

But this is a great listen, and while mostly chill and more retro than any of their other works (some might say almost cheesy), it has depth. Similar in Geogaddi in a couple of ways, only instead of an initiation to paganic/esoteric rituals, it evokes spirituality/religion, with death and the afterlife as recurring themes and a darker undercurrent. I’m still wondering what a truly dark and pessimistic BoC album could have been, but I don’t think we’re worse off with this one!

(I just wish they’d asked The Designers Republic to do the cover art, that kerning and cover layout are just not good)

▷ Warp
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM
▷ Unofficial Wiki

Nnedi Okorafor Who Fears Death

One of the worst covers on my bookshelves, but this was a great read! Seamlessly bridges the gaps between folklore, magic and just enough sci-fi to situate the story in the future. A chosen one’s adventure in the desert, about womanhood, differences, the weight and power of traditions. (Also takes place in a part of the world which I don’t get to read too often about, or at least not in a good way)

Oscar Jerome The Spoon

Vesperal, chill, seductive and consistently interesting blend of soul, jazz and electronic elements. I like music that sets up an easy, pleasant pattern and then plays over it in unexpected ways like that.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

HVL Nonlinear

The overall aesthetic is close to, say, Skee Mask, but with more straightfoward and faster techno beats; some acid and space / futuristic accents too. Quite a bit of variety. Great for reading.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

LinLin Disco Inferno

This isn’t dark ambient either!

The RYM review by electricity is good, I don’t have much to add to it; “BLACC*” is the one that keeps drawing me in with its sense of urgency, but there are plenty of good surprises after that — the synthpop “Cœur de pirate” is another favourite!

📺 “BLACC*”
▷ RYM

Kinnara : Desi La YR SEX IS COMPLEX

Long loop-based rhythmic glitch/ambient industrial tracks by a queer black artist living in Japan! Takes an uncommon approach to these genres as it doesn’t feel cold and mechanical but bright and expressive. Really cool stuff.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ Official website (I wish more music artists had actual websites with cool content like this!)
▷ RYM

Florrie Experiments

Very typical early 2010s electropop, but some of the best I’ve heard in this genre! Most people’s favourite is the super upbeat “I Took a Little Something” but I have a sweet spot for the more unassuming “What You Doing This For?” with its strings, slight bitterness and echo-like repetition at the end of each line, it’s simple but works so well.

▷ RYM

Abrams Blue City

Feels like riding a massive wave — heavy but really chill. Play loud. Unwind. It does one thing but does it perfectly.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Morgane Caussarieu Visqueuse

Sacré trip celui-là. Très prenant, très riche, éprouvant. C’est un roman qui suit une sirène (ou approchante) débusquée entre deux guerres dans un marais en Franche-Comté par un type atroce qui la séquestre, sauf que ledit type se trouve aussi avoir une fille (handicapée) qui adore les films d’horreur et est émue de voir une créature fantastique en vrai !

C’est pas une lecture facile, la première partie du roman est rude jusqu’à l’horrible (la faute à cet Arsène, ses viols et sévices à répétition — c’est le défaut du livre à mon avis, j’aurais préféré que l’autrice dose un peu), j’ai même eu envie d’abandonner par peur que ce ne soit aussi glauque jusqu’au bout. Mais j’ai bien fait de persévérer parce que ça bouge beaucoup après ce huis clos ! Le roman n’est pas sans humanité ni sans espoir, il y a une exploration intéressante de l’identité, de l’agentivité, de ce que c’est que l’horreur, des rapports humains quand on s’approche des marges ; avec une dimension queer aussi, sous-jacente par nature et plus manifeste vers la fin.

L’écriture est très belle (notamment les descriptions très tactiles du marais au début, déplaisantes mais impressionnantes), le roman est agrémenté de belles illustrations de l’autrice, j’en suis ressortie remuée (en bien comme en mal). Avec l’envie d’en lire d’autres de l’autrice, tout en ayant un peu peur de m’y lancer de peur de ce que je pourrais y trouver. Ça tombe bien, elle a aussi écrit un livre sur les loup-garous (Vertèbres), un sur les vampires (Dans tes veines) et elle compte continuer sur cette lignée. Et elle est tatoueuse aussi !

Dycide Mond

Aquatic deep techno like Luigi Tozzi, Voices from the Lake etc, but darker, more ambient, with tracks that feel like rising up to the surface and watching the stars in the night sky.

Thanks to burpworm for the discovery!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Christophe Charles + Kozo Inada i[ ]

Like listening to the physical forces in our urban environments — rumbling and tectonic, electric, other?; all neatly layered over translucent strata of urban sounds. Pretty captivating.

▷ RYM

Grischa Lichtenberger Spielraum / Allgegenwart / Strahlung

There’s something fierce and beautiful about these. Not quite techno but close to it, rhythmic, loop-based, galvanizing but haunting too.

The first part (Spielraum — Invisible Freedom) is based on precisely engineered beats and textures, the second part (Allgegenwart — Invisible Presence) has more unsettling atmospheres, the third part (Strahlung — Invisible Force) more melodies as the tension decreases. The artist has extensive liner notes with more art + philosophical and historical inspirations on his website explaining how each part is linked to our changing relations with technology through history, not an easy read but it’s worth checking out!

▷ Grischa Lichtenberger
▷ Raster Media
▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

V/A [+ambién] Fantología I

Discovering the +ambién label; this is a good compilation if you’re into the melodic side of ambient or the more electronic side of art pop! And although it’s less abrasive/experimental, you might also like it if you like PAN’s Mono no Aware. The idea behind it is interesting as well:

“Struck by a particularly chaotic and unstable 2024 in the entire region, our compilation approaches the idea of hauntology (fantologia) from a fresh perspective; focusing not on the phantoms of past glories of a society in decadence that so insistently haunt the global north, but by the spectre of failed statehood, instability, and the vanishing ghost of promised futures which will never come to be. Meditating on, and eternally coming to terms with the perpetually compromised future of a society precariously balanced on the edge of disaster. And learning to accept it, to love it, to be it.”

How well this concept translates into the music, honestly — I wouldn’t have guessed it. But some tracks do have a bit of a there/not there feeling. (And I think I can partially relate to the idea — I couldn’t have lived a happy life in the past, the idea of a desirable future seems destroyed, both leaving a void or an impossibility. But that’s just my story and not theirs; I would be interested in reading more from the artists!)

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Ty Farris No Cosign Just Cocaine 3

One of the most straightforward rap albums I’ve heard recently and it’s solid, not sure what else to say, I’ll let others review this.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

João MS Everything Speaks of Itself

Light, fluid, strange. Beats and glitches in suspension in an ambient solution. Or: like Autechre on sedatives?

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Lunatic Calm Metropol

Is that really big beat? ... I guess it is. But it’s the angriest I’ve heard this genre get, crossing over to breakbeat and further, closer to electro-industrial than to any of the big names. All in a very 90s style but it still sounds angry and badass in the 20s, rusty metal and chemicals and all, with some pretty damn good rhythms! And the quieter and more minimal passages are just as good (right now listening to “It Evolves on Its Own” with its cheeky guitar groove before things get saturated and dirty again).

Thanks to Phivium for the discovery!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Missy Misdemeanor Elliott Supa Dupa Fly

Somehow I don’t think I’d ever listened to Missy Elliott before, despite her being so famous when I was a teenager. Better late than never!

▷ RYM

Christophe Charles Undirected / Dok

I’ve long been familiar with Oval’s Dok, but had never heard this one. More vaporous and ambient, it feels like the grids and structures have been removed (the dissonances that rubbed me in opposite directions too) and the sounds are now like gases floating in rooms. A bit of everything, electronics, field recordings, glitches, metallic sounds; it might be a good idea to listen to Oval’s Dok first as it has a clearer focus but I like this one as much, perhaps a little bit better!

▷ RYM

Earth House Hold Glory Be

Deep house dissolved into ambient dub. A pure feel-good album — narcotic with bright plumes floating inside.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

NikNak Sankofa

Quiet afrofuturistic ambient/turntablism inspired by comic books. Like seeing only the backgrounds and action lines of an action story, with all the characters and dialogue blanked out.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Hinode Tapes Hinode Tapes

Low-key blissful experimental ambient jazz, with loops and uncommon rhythms. Great if you like The Necks, perhaps ECM Records, or at a stretch if you imagine Maruja doing a very quiet ambient album.

Their second one, Kiki Mori, is also worth getting, shorter and darker with Japanese spoken word on one track.

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert Everything Everywhere All at Once

I’d been wondering about the multiverse. Wouldn’t it be like a hyper-Library of Babel? Like, I don’t know but the difference between one universe and another could be so tiny no human could detect it, like the way a single particle somewhere behaves (or whatever the tiniest possible difference is, if there even is such a thing). Or it could be that each universe has different physical constants, resulting in nearly all them being formless, devoid of life as we know it. Or something like that.

Perhaps it’s only meaningful to think about our own personal “what ifs” anyway. (Multiverses are more fun than time travel for imagining another world, but what about good old magic? Like, cast powerful air magic at the Earth to reverse climate change, summon dragons so they destroy data centres, burn a bunch of other stuff and take over.)

Human “what ifs” are the point here of course. I love how this film seems ultra-maximalist, each second of this is impressive (I thought at some point it might be the highest-budget film I’ve ever seen, but apparently it wasn’t even that expensive!) and yet it just tells a family story, and it’s open to interpretation. In a sense I can’t even call it a surprising film, but it’s an effective idea done right and it was a joy to watch. Also the bilingual dialogue is a good idea!

To be honest, when I come up with a story, I don’t want it to be set in the world we live in; I want it to be someplace adjacent, because the real world is too much of a downer. I feel like my favourite “what ifs” are just a little bit further away. In a hypothetical next life, I would like to be a dryad or a mermaid and live in a beautiful peaceful planet where people are nicer to each other and live in harmony with nature. Doesn’t matter if there is no next life, I can still dream about it.

▷ Letterboxd

Parteum Raciocínio quebrado

I don’t understand a word but I really like these beats! Super cool and danceable
Brasilian fans in the reviews compare him to MF DOOM, I wouldn’t have thought about it since both have very different flows but okay

▷ RYM

Iron T Hawk Father Can’t You See I’m Burning?

An hour of prog rock/post-hardcore with squeaky vocals and it’s not even too much; it’s emotional, balanced, often catchy, with cool saxophone bits and flows so well it’s almost an hour-long suite. I’m surprised this hasn’t made a bigger impact but what do I know?

Thanks to Hazamelis for the discovery!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Aurat Khaar

EBM / dance industrial is always cool, the first track here is such a banger and I like the female vocals too

Thanks to Mathilde for the recommendation!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Ophir Opus Operatum

Sometimes it pays off to listen to something with no listed genres and no information, just because of the cover!

This takes paths between tribal ambient, electro-acoustic experimentation and post-rock; the backdrop is a kind of nocturnal, melancholic yet tense atmosphere that gives an air of mystery, but each track takes a different approach from there, sometimes with vocals, sometimes with organ or saxophone or dissonant strings. If this sounds like a band trying to find their marks, maybe it is, but it works!

▷ RYM

Horror Inc. A Soundtrack for Strange Times

Briefly Eternal is a classic I would recommend to practically everyone (jazzy microhouse with dramatic, melancholic, noir vibes, about death, released on Perlon).

And this is a long, worthy follow-up. Less dark but still moody, takes its time to explore, has some excellent grooves (I first listened to it while reading and had to stop because I was too into the rhythms). Slept on because it was only released as a limited 4-vinyl box, but you can find rips on Soulseek!

▷ Discogs
▷ RYM

Toni Geitani Wahj

Beautiful solemn, dramatic songs with a hybrid production articulating classical instruments and electronic darkness. All sung in Arabic.

Thanks to Ryukyu for the discovery!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM

Simogo Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Mazes within mazes, seen through broken mirrors. I loved the story and non-linear narration here, which made the whole game feel more and more labyrinthine and touches on subjects I haven’t seen often in games! Also, plenty of cool puzzles. The answers are usually 1847, 1963 or 2014. Which doesn’t mean there are no surprises.

▷ Steam
▷ Glitchwave

Cio d’Or Polar Q

Minimal, pulsating bass, bubbles, organic sounds, underlying anxiety. It’s about climate change. These elements were always present in Cio d’Or’s work, but here they’re given a different kind of focus; if you want the other end of her spectrum, try Ur / Uhr!

▷ Bandcamp
▷ RYM