Will Ryan
Zomby, ‘With Love’ – Album Review
Zomby’s fourth full-length, 'With Love,' is a monolithic, daunting and unwieldy hour and a half of music. It’s one of the more ambitious projects to emerge from the vibrant, ever-changing landscape of U.K. dance music in a while, not to mention one of the most diverse and all-encompassing electronic releases in recent memory.
Austra, ‘Olympia’ – Album Review
Toronto has proven a reliable source of goth-tinged electronic exports in recent years. The electro-punk-turned-dance-pop duo Crystal Castles is the most shining example. Last year’s 'Trust' full-length was an exercise in zero-frills gothic rave. And then there’s Austra.
Gold Panda, ‘Half Of Where You Live’ – Album Review
For better or worse, Gold Panda has always been defined by his predecessors. His 2010 Ghostly debut, 'Lucky Shiner,' was an excursion in basement, patchwork house music, techno and downtempo, drawing from electronic heavyweights like Four Tet, Pantha Du Prince, Flying Lotus and the Field. But Gold Panda cut through the noise because there was an obvious beating heart and busy mind at the center of
Boards of Canada, ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ – Album Review
It’s been long enough since U.K. electronic music pioneers Boards of Canada’s last album, 2005’s 'The Campfire Headphase,' that the duo has achieved classic status. BoC haven't been part of the cultural conversation for nearly a decade, but in a year fraught with heavyweight comebacks, theirs is one of the most graceful to touch down. The announcement of their fourth LP, 'Tomorrow’s Harvest,' was
Camera Obscura, ‘Desire Lines’ – Album Review
Scotland’s Camera Obscura write songs about love, and they do it well. Their newest full-length, ‘Desire Lines,’ is their fifth album overall and first since 2009’s excellent ‘My Maudlin Career.’ On that record, the group continued to refine the muscled-up indie-pop formula they introduced on 2006’s ‘Let’s Get Out Of This Country,’ adding even lusher production and a more pervasive use of strings.
Mount Kimbie, ‘Cold Spring Fault Less Youth’ – Album Review
Mount Kimbie arrived with the post-dubstep (a short-lived descriptor) class of 2010, along with the likes of Parish and James Blake. Their full-length debut for Scuba’s Hotflush imprint, 'Crooks & Lovers,' split the difference between experimental woodblock strains of U.K. bass and skeletal dance-floor garage and dubstep. Their sound was organic and minimal, even in a time when dubstep (still
Baths, ‘Obsidian’ – Album Review
Baths’ 2010 debut, ‘Cerulean’ was a sparkling gem of post-’Los Angeles,’ stumble-hop beat wizardry, combining liquid, ornate production with a kind of aching emotional sensitivity. Will Wiesenfield’s falsetto fell somewhere between contortionist R&B and secular choir boy. ‘Cerulean’ was mainly interested in showcasing immaculate and creative beatscapes, and the vocals more often than not took
Various Artists, ‘After Dark 2′ – Album Review
Whew. It’s hard not to feel like the last 18 months of activity related to the Italians Do It Better label has all been leading to this moment. So let’s recap. In late December of 2011, a two-hour, 36-track ambient and instrumental record called 'Themes For An Imaginary Film' and credited to Symmetry arrived semi-mysteriously on iTunes
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Dirty Beaches, ‘Drifters/Love Is The Devil’ – Album Review
On 2011’s 'Badlands,' Dirty Beaches frontman Alex Zhang Huntai was playing a character. He was acting the part of prototypical greaser on a dirt bike, spinning lone-wolf yarns over gritty abandoned-ashtray landscapes -- a mixture of tense Suicide-esque electronic repetition and cracked Lynch-ian dream molds. The results sounded like little else from the previous half-century, and even if Huntai di
Jenny Hval, ‘Innocence Is Kinky’ – Album Review
The first words on 'Innocence Is Kinky' are “That night / I watched people f---ing on my computer / Nobody can see me looking anyway.” The Norwegian singer-songwriter Jenny Hval’s second full-length under her own name is full of sexual and bodily imagery. It’s paired with a kind of lacerated, bruised mixture of noise, ambient music, punk rock and folk, along with a fractured, inverted songwriting