First Light from Igama is proper ambient. Pretty beatless, this is a mood piece that revels in a sense of weightless drifting. Igama says “The sounds were strongly influenced by travel throughout North America, Hawaii, and Berlin.” The chimes that permeate the tracks sound from further East but it’s still a delightful track.
We had Breathe With Me from Good Lee a couple of days ago. Here’s another couple of tracks from the Minute of Peace album .
Afterglow opens softly with kalimbas plucked and offering an otherworldly experience. But it builds from that into something more substantial but still ethereal, with half vocals, mainly pitched up in a style I often loathe but here fits just right. The beats are set back but insistent which makes this the antithesis of downtempo wallpaper music. Beautiful stuff.
Timebox is a more upbeat affair but with some backwards sounds for that slightly disorientating air that accompanies the majority of the tracks on the album.
If you fancied checking out the whole album, it’s EUR10 on Bandcamp
Finally, a new tune from the reformed Orbital. And if that’s too backwards looking a new tune from bl1p.
I think this is the first new tune released by Orbital since their reformation after a break of some 4 years. Copenhagen is very… Orbital. A chopped vocal that harks back to days gone by, not least Halcyon. The tune has peaks and half-stops. Again, all very Orbital. Built for a live show this will be great in an arena or club. In the sanctity of my kitchen, it’s just too Orbital by numbers.
Orbital perform their only UK indoor shows of 2017 at O2 Apollo Manchester on Dec 1st & Eventim Apollo London on Dec 2nd. Tickets on sale now:
Dec 1st, O2 Apollo, Manchester: gigst.rs/Orbital & bit.ly/2u5SU3o
Dec 2nd, Eventim Apollo, London: metropolism.uk/OrbitalBand & metropolism.uk/OrbitalTM
bl1p provides the new, new tune with Vibes My Dood which is a throwback title. But there’s something very Orbital about this track. The keyboard rave stabs are very reminiscent of some of Orbital’s early moments. It’s by no means stuck in the past, with its combinations of rave stabs and bass buzz very much looking to the future.
And breathe. Back at the weekend. Been a week of rushing around the country, so I’m in the mood for something… I was going to say unchallenging, but that would be to downplay this lovely track from Good Lee. Breathe With Me is chilled, yes, but also intricate and inventive. Very much the Bonobo it wants to be.
From the debut album ‘Minute Of Peace’ by Good Lee.
Out 09/07/2017 on @primeluci.
Ireland’s Inner Freak finishes the working week with the light drum and bass of Chemical Bomb. An inventively skippy track that wears its drum and bass credentials lightly, focusing more on sonic inventiveness than aggressive beats. As the sample says, “I don’t need to kill anyone.”
Maderasi and Qiao Zhi are from India and the US respectively but they share a common techno thread.
Maderasi gives us Adventures in Time & Space, which has a low key bottom end start. It eventually revs itself up to something more structured and focusing on the bass line. The melody line is saved cleverly to later on in its 9 minute course. It claims an element of minimalism but it’s way better than that dull genre.
Qiao Zhi also starts from the bottom end. Hardly surprising with a track called Zombie. This has quite a soundtrack feel to it. There’s a central hypnotic loop of impending techno doom as the Zombies relentlessly advance. This track is taken from the Flashback EP.
A slightly spooky track from Australia’s Acuarion today. Incisions sits somewhere between chill, IDM and horror soundtracks. This turns out to be a rather fine place to base yourself. The track is pretty chilled, never hurries unduly. But it does have an underlying bass quake and buzz that leaves you that bit unsettled.
