Love and happiness with: Boogrov – Тепло #Downtempo #Chill

•July 26, 2020 • Leave a Comment

No ambient for Sunday. Instead, some Muscovite chill with Boogrov.

Boogrov is Andrey Bugrov from Moscow. The track is Тепло, taken from the Свет EP. IT’s a lo fi house and downtempo experience. The title means warmth. And that’s what it’s all about. With a sample about love and happiness this wraps you in a cashmere embrace. It’s soft, warm, snuggly.

The track starts with a piano line so horizontal it doesn’t even bother to get up from the sofa. It simply invites you to join in. There’s a bit of surface crackle for a full on analogue experience. The beats are are a little glitched and future house but without ever becoming distracting. The mood is loving and kind. As romantic as anything.

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Posted in downtempo

The onward march of techno with: HA|XO – Austerlitz #Techno #Acid #Electronic

•July 25, 2020 • Leave a Comment

No slacking simply because it’s Saturday. Get yerself up and about with this martial techno tune from HA|XO.

HA|XO is from Paris, France but there’s no French house here. This is some dark Berlin techno and some Dutch Acid. The track is Austerlitz from the Tresor Youth EP. It’s six minutes of welcome assault and battery.

Austerlitz is probably most famous as the site of what is widely regarded as the greatest victory achieved by Napoleon. The Grande Armée of France defeated a larger Russian and Austrian army. The battle occurred near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire (modern-day Slavkov u Brna in the Czech Republic). For the track it offers dark clouds of beats that come scudding by in a menacing fashion. Then the acid starts in staccato bursts. The whole thing is a bit of headspin with psychedelic synths floating around adding to the grandeur of the experience. This would be a total immersion experience in a club. Fabulous techno tune. Blow your mind here. Savour the victory later.

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Bass dark Friday with: Johnny Haag – The Levitator #Moog #Bass #Synth

•July 24, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Friday should be a lift into the weekend. Not today. A day redolent with the promise of bad stuff.. Scratchy eyes from too little sleep. One of those ready to pick an unnecessary fight days. Here’s Johnny Haag with The Levitator to provide the soundtrack.

Johnny Haag is from Portland Oregon. His background is in the bass but these days he’s into deep analog synths and beats. The track is the Levitator. It’s a bit of a misnomer since it’s such a bass heavy track it’s not levitating anywhere. This track doesn’t sit easily in the usual genres. It has a bit of a 70s electronic funk feel. But focused on sleazy bass synths and funky rock beats. It’s a bit leather jacket blaxploitation. It’s flick knives and short brutish fights. A total soundtrack piece that revels in all things dark and sleazy. It’s the sound of late night neon strips. Coffee going cold. Chilled winds. Stakeouts in cars. The darkness of the small hours before the dawn. Brilliant.

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Techno time with: Ayhan Akca – Hayat Zor #Techno #Melodic #Electronic #NewMusic

•July 23, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Time for pre-Friday techno with Turkey’s Ayhan Akca.

Don’t really know anything about Ayhan Akca other than I think he’s based in Istanbul. The track is Hayat Zor, which I think translates as ‘life is hard’. Which is a bit of a surprise as the track is one of those pumping, uplifting melodic tracks that makes you think things can only get better. It has firm beats but not too forward in the mix. Most of the track’s focus is on the synth piano and the surrounding joyful noise. There are regular peaks for added frisson. Lift yourself up towards the weekend.

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Changing and keeping with: Hugo Marsh – Keep #Downtempo #Ambient

•July 22, 2020 • Leave a Comment

It’s hump day in a tough week. Can’t be doing with anything too upbeat. Not enough energy for that. Hugo Marsh provides something more soothing and a bit ambient downtempo on Keep.

Hugo Marsh is from London and his work revolves around experimentation. That means a bunch of unfinished tracks. The featured track, Keep, is from the album Seedlings. This is a concept album in which he says, “I take some of my unfinished tracks and ideas, and turn them into a record.” You’d not know Keep was unfinished. It’s become a lovely hazy ambient piece.

Flickers of chip tune flirt around the edges of creaky clattery beats in a downtempo IDM style. But holding those disparate elements together is a gentle ambient fairground synth that rises and falls. Gives the whole thing a lovely meditative or contemplative air. It’s all very hazy and a bit woozy. A sleep deprived lullaby for better days. Until the rain comes to wash things away.

From the album Seedlings

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Coronahouse with: Miqui Brightside – 19 More Days #DeepHouse #House ##Electronic

•July 21, 2020 • Leave a Comment

You can’t escape the influence of covid-19 on music. Artists are referencing it everywhere. Here’s a Spanish take on things from Madrid-based producer  Miqui Brightside. He’s inspired by artists such as Flume, Cashmere Cat and Jamie xx. The style is therefore very much in future beats with a polished and very melodic production. But it manages to add an extra layer of depth that some of that ilk can’t quite manage.

19 More Days starts with a BBC News sample about Spanish lockdown. An early leader in the devastation of covid-19 we looked on from the UK with little real understanding of what was to come for us. The tune is an instrumental one allowing you to place whatever emotion you want on it. For me there’s anxiety and jitteriness in the high end synths, but also hopeful elements from the ever advancing beats and the pace of the track. Miqui Brightside says of the track, “I gave it this title because it’s the amount of days that we were supposed to have left in Spain to come back to the streets and to come back to our lives when the first house arrest happened due to the virus.” The tune is the hope that this too will pass.

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It’s Monday, be happy with: WNMK – Blue Stones #Chill #LoFiHouse #Electronic

•July 20, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Happiness is WNMK’s Blue Stones. It’s lofi bouce and chillstep beats make it a prefect start to hte week.

WMNK is a London-based producer that makes, “psychedelic instrumental tracks.” Blue Stones is part of the Flowers & Blue Stones EP. It’s a chill track with a spring in its step. A bouncy house track with a bit of a hip hop beat. It’s gloriously, wilfully disrespectful of genre boundaries. And therein lies its strength. It’s a happy gamboling frolic through the colours of the rainbow. Synth parp cheerfully and beats pitter patter alongside. It’s a sweetened version of a five year old with a massive sugar-rush. But without the resultant tantrum and comedown.

And there’s a video

Flowers & Blue Stones EP

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Ambient Sunday with: Trova x Dashii, La Claud, and Prospect Lux #Ambient #Drone #Chill #Lounge

•July 19, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Ambient Sunday runs the gamut of ambient drone, chill and lounge with artists Trova x Dashii, La Claud and Prospect Lux.

Trova x Dashii take on big themes of life and death. If you’re going to do that you’d better deliver. No point in life simply fizzling out. Trova is Emmanuel Hernandez from Carolina, Puerto Rico and Dashii from Southern California. The Life And Death EP is the result of their collaboration. The title track is a hazy, droney kind of thing. It sort of fuzzes into existence like a slowly breaking dawn. There’s a widescreen drama to its gently unfolding tones and the deep strings. But it also contains ominous undertones of decay making it a largely unsettling piece until it disappears into the unknown.

Life And Death (track)

Life And Death EP

Next. La Claud is a Neapolitan musician and producer. The track is Mandalay taken from her About Vega album. It’s a lovely mood piece. All dreamy IDM and jazz hop elements. Even adds a touch of exotica to things. An almost mythical quality. The piece has an almost lounge feel with the xylophones but without every quite disappearing into whimsy. It’s a complex subtle track despite its seeming simplicity. An utter delight to heart and head.

From the album About Vega

And so to Prospect Lux. He’s NYC native songwriter/producer Michael Spivack who is the composer for Amazon Prime web series “The Other F Word.” Sadly, means nothing to me. But this track does. Sharp Triangle is the tune from an EP of the same name. And it’s nothing of the sort. Its got a lovely sense of internal melody as the phases and phrases rise and fall. Never sharp or angular. It uses a clattery, almost IDM, set of beats that keeps it grounded. The synths try to fly off into the wild blue yonder but never quite manage it despite their iridescent colours.

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Techno triple with: Karolinski, D-Moniq, and Marcovits #Techno #MelodicTechno #AmbientTechno

•July 18, 2020 • Leave a Comment

A triple bill of melodic techno this morning from Karolinski, D-Moniq, and Marcovits.

Karolinski (Karoline Hegrenes) comes from a rural background just outside Bergen, Norway. But she’s moved to Oslo. Her first offering I’m a supergirl 01 in 2018 is now followed by I’m a supergirl 02. It’s all very tempting to reach into her background to say this is full of pristine snow and fir woods. But that is really what it sounds like. It’s a delicate set of ambient techno sounds with a soft dubbiness which simultaneously manages a lovely precision. It’s all organic as much as it is machine music. Beats are far off in the distance. And in among the machine sounds are filtered vocals giving it an otherworldly feel. Really rather delightful.

Bandcamp

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D-Moniq is from Minneapolis, Minnesota. But he explains, “I am originally from Russia, but came to the US to go to college. As the 4 years came to an end I felt that it was the right time to compile an LP of tracks that I have been working on.”

The LP is Last Ride and the track I’m featuring is Wish Fulfillment. It’s a melodic techno track but with a dark centre. The vocal is sampled from a podcast on eco-socialism. This adds to the music to give the whole thing a balance between dystopian despair and a tiny touch of optimism. The beats and bass are dark but every so often a synth appears in epic or hopeful mode to remind us that perhaps all is not lost. And that things are darkest before dawn.

Wish Fulfillment

Taken from the album Last Ride

Finally, Marcovits. The track is Eterno, taken from Tour De Traum XIX from which we featured Happy Medium the other day.

This is more leftfield melodic techno. There are beats and peaks and things but this is rather more a headphones or home listening experience. It’s a complex layered track. There are lots of things going on all of which vie for your attention. And if that makes it sound a chore it isn’t. They’re all assembled in such a way as to bring maximum joy. Beats batter away in awkward shapes but in the foreground synths rise and fall in pleasing peaks. And in the middle distance all the interesting shapes writhe for all eternity.

Tour De Traum XIX

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Keep watching the skies with: Sebastian G Clarke – Frequent #Electronic #NewMusic #Techno @sebclarkemusic

•July 17, 2020 • 2 Comments

Keep watching the skies. Keep listening. That was a sample from a film. I forget what. But it’s apt for the title track from Sebastian G Clarke’s new Frequent EP.

I often listen while looking at the sky and especially the clouds. Loved meteorology. And at this time of year the swallows wheeling around. This morning they’re moderately high. About 150-200ft. A humid sort of low pressure day. And this track is the perfect accompaniment.

I assumed Sebastian G Clarke was his real name. Wrong. Daniel Sampson, it appears. Not sure why you’d change it to that. But no mind. Frequent is part of a three track EP. And it’s delightful. It is four and a half minutes of meditative electronics that sits somewhere between melodic techno and deep house while being part of neither. It has a smooth, melodic and dreamy air. The beats are there but don’t rush to the front. That space is reserved for an almost parping synth that holds the melody as a constantly shifting set of emotional tones. Just lovely.

Buy here.

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Frequent EP

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