Ghostpoet – Shedding Skin (2015)

Ghostpoet - Shedding Skin (2015)

Ghostpoet - Shedding Skin (2015) When everything it’s obsessively boring and irreversible predictable, Ghospoet find his way and manage to deliver – once again – something fresh and genuinely enjoyable. Where conformity ends there Ghospoet kicks in!
Ghostpoet (born Obaro Ejimiwe, on January 18 1983) debuted as singer and musician in June 2010 with first EP entitled “The Sound of Strangers” on Brownswood Recordings and was later featured in The Guardian’s “New Band of the Day”.
His first single “Cash & Carry Me Home” was released on 24 January 2011, followed by the debut album on 7 February 2011, Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam. The single “Survive It” was launched in Rough Trade East Record store, on London’s Brick Lane on 9 May 2011.
Ghostpoet was among the nominees for the 2011 Mercury Prize, but the winner of the prize was PJ Harvey.
The second album called “Some Say I So I Say Light” was released on 6 May 2013. The first single “Meltdown” premiered on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show on 20 March 2013.
Ghostpoet via Soundcloud hosted a remix contest for three of his songs from “Some Say I So I Say Light”, but somehow I missed the submission deadline… Anyway, I do only weird hardcore stuffs…far off the mainstream. Read more Ghostpoet – Shedding Skin (2015)

Venetian Snares – My Love Is A Bulldozer (2014)

Venetian Snares – My Love Is A Bulldozer (2014) Aaron Funk, better known as Venetian Snares had reinvented breakcore and set the stage for many other artists such as UndaCova, Xanopticon, Enduser and Datach’i.
He debuted on a record label in 1999 with the EP “Greg Hates Car Culture” released on History of the Future. Prior to this, he self-released material on cassette tapes as early as 1992. Funk was quite prolific, releasing sometimes up to eight recordings per year, for different labels including: History of the Future, Isolate/DySLeXiC ResPonSe, Addict, Zod, Distort, Sublight, Low-Res, Planet Mu and Hymen.
He is making electronic music often in odd and numbered time signatures (mostly 7/4) and combining different sounds and styles from IDM to trip-hop and dark ambient with twisted off, intense breakcore beats. Read more Venetian Snares – My Love Is A Bulldozer (2014)

How to Destroy Angels – Welcome Oblivion (2013)

How to Destroy Angels – Welcome Oblivion (2013)

How to Destroy Angels – Welcome Oblivion (2013) Traveling with Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Mariqueen Maandig and Rob Sheridan again. The long anticipated debut album finally it’s here and we’ve got 13 steps to go on, 13 levels of exploration, 13 ways to drowning and surfacing back to the light. Eventually.
About this Reznor’s post Nine Inch Nails project I wrote in details last year when they released their second EP entitled “An OMen”, so, if you’re interested in the full story of the bang, go back an read it HERE. Although, not really surprisingly, “An Omen” made it to my list of favorite releases of 2012 and it was definitively one of the most interesting musical experiments of the last year, a bold and ingenious method to leave the past behind, but staying true to themselves and digging into the wilderness and unknown of the future. Read more How to Destroy Angels – Welcome Oblivion (2013)

Matryoshka – Laideronnette (2012)

Matryoshka – Laideronnette (2012)Very chill, very trippy, sounds like shattered from a dream and feels like heroin. Rhyming was unintentional and regarding the heroin, I never experienced it, so, probably my perception it’s at least false. And then again this music it’s smooth, floating, heaven-like. I’ve never been in heaven as well, so, I might be wrong again. The music it’s beautiful. We all have a different perception of beauty, but this is really nice. Quite cinematic, smoothly layered and smartly chilled, merging Trip Hop with Dream Pop, and Glitchy IDM with classic music, the Japanese Matryoshka creates a very comfortable and restorative ambiance with their minimalist, but nicely flowing music. The duo it’s made of Sen responsible with the instrumentals while Calu it’s the female vocalist. She’s angel-like singing reminds me mostly of Julee Cruise (probably best known for “Falling”, the theme song for the cult U.S. television series Twin Peaks). They are based in Tokyo, Japan, and this album was released on 12-12-2012 by Virgin Babylon Records, perhaps this is their second album, but my Japanese it’s pretty rusty and I did not manged to dig out any further useful information about them. Read more Matryoshka – Laideronnette (2012)

How To Destroy Angels – An Omen (2012)

How To Destroy Angels – An Omen (2012) Six new tracks, $5 download in MP3 or lossless format. There is no CD release for this EP, and the 12″ 180-gram vinyl it’s already sold-out. This is the second EP by Mariqueen Maandig, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Rob Sheridan, while their long expected debut album probably will be released next year. Post-Industrial? Sort of, but not quite. How To Destroy Angels it’s an extremely slippery something, not related to any genre or style, but incorporates different musical elements from experimental Trip-Hop to Post-Rock and Post-Industrial explorations. Far away from the contorted and furious expression of anger so typical for Nine Inch Nails, but in some moments similar to the spirit of the 2008’s “Ghosts” series, How To Destroy Angels are in the search for new, unexplored paths, virgin, untouched areas of the music. Quite a temerarious task for 2012, isn’t it? But Reznor once again proves that everything it’s possible with inspiration and boldness. Read more How To Destroy Angels – An Omen (2012)

Naive – Illuminatis (2012)

Naïve-Illuminatis-2012 Might sound a cliche, but Naïve delivering a colourful sonic journey where powerful Metal riffs are merged with subtle sonic textures; contorted, dark and tensioned moments are combined with smoothly sparkling, melodious hooks and build-ups. It’s like a constant struggle of good and evil, light and shadow, noises and melodies. Trip Hop Metal? Eventually. Labels are unnecessary. But to have an idea, this is sound like an explosive mixture of Deftones and Prong with Massive Attack and Sneaker Pimps. Pounding IDM, hypnotic Trip Hop, dark Alternative Metal, and Industrial flavored noisiness are smartly colored with subtle texture, addictive grooves, mysterious electronic layers and at the bottom line they are all equal ingredients of the unique universe reveled by Naïve. “Illuminatis” it’s an addictive journey, it’s something Magic in there, feels a dream from which you don’t want to wake up. Read more Naive – Illuminatis (2012)

Cats Park – Face the Future, EP (2012)

“Face the Future” came like a glass of water in the middle of the desert. In a world preoccupied to be the loudest, the fastest, the most distorted and the most contorted, where everybody is in such a hurry and nobody actually care about anything and anybody, Cats Park disconnected me for several minutes from this whole madness. Although songs like “Time To Quit” have their own flavor of (urban) madness. But generally speaking, this made me feel easy, easy like a Sunday morning. 🙂 “Face the Future” was my little getaway from the present. Read more Cats Park – Face the Future, EP (2012)

Archive – With Us Until You’re Dead (2012)

Archive – With Us Until You’re Dead (2012) Some years ago, I was sitting in a bar, licking my drink, when something hit my ears: “Pray to God I think of a nice thing to say, But I don’t think I can so fuck you anyway…” I said, wow! Asked the bartender who are these guys, he actually didn’t knew, but searched on the playlist and told me: Archive. Fuck! So, I dig them out and I had one of the most wonderful surprises of that windy and rainy autumn, I had five albums to knock myself off. That song, “Fuck U” was from their “Noise” album released in 2004. Archive was formed by Darius Keeler and Danny Griffiths in 1994 from the ashes of the UK breakbeat act, Genaside II. Together with the female singer Roya Arab and the young rapper Rosko John, they released their first album “Londinium” on Island Records in 1996, a gloomy mix of dark Trip Hop and Electronica in a similar vein to Massive Attack, flavored with their the sounds of their roots of Breakbeat and Hardcore. Peter Gabriel was quoted as saying, “Londinium was one of my most favourite albums of the year.” In 1997 Roya Arab was replaced by Suzanne Wooder and two years later they released their second studio album, entitled “Take My Head”, a more Pop and melody oriented material with a smoother approach of Symphonic Trip-Hop. Read more Archive – With Us Until You’re Dead (2012)

Sneaker Pimps – Becoming X (1996)

23 consecutive weeks on the US Billboard 200, “Becoming X”, the debut effort by the project Sneaker Pimps released on August 19, 1996, still, after 15 years, sounds fresh and percussive. Hits like “6 Underground”, “Spin Spin Sugar” or “Tesko Suicide” have some particular charm, their vibe still breathing. Chris Corner and Liam Howe find a particular blending of Downtempo and Dub, Trip-Hop and Electronica, mysterious textures and bursting Rock explosions, combined hard beats and glitching samples with cutting Rock guitars, smooth Jazz pianos and floating girl vocals. Sometimes Gothic, other times gloomy, slow, but alive and dynamic, quite hypnotic, but striking, Sneaker Pimps and their debut album is another mandatory piece to collect. This is a trip, take care who you’ll become. Read more Sneaker Pimps – Becoming X (1996)

Nitin Sawhney – Last Days Of Meaning (2011)

Nitin Sawhney made 9 studio albums, for which he has been nominated for a Mercury Music prize, won a MOBO, 2 BBC Radio 3 awards and a Southbank show award, amongst 15 others. He has scored over 40 films for cinema and television, with an Ivor Novello nomination for best score leading to his recent much acclaimed Orchestral music to the BAFTA nominated BBC series “The Human Planet”, Mira Nair’s recent film “The Namesake”, two film scores for live performance by the London Symphony Orchestra and a biopic about Jean Charles De Menezes. He worked with Sting, Cirque Du Soleil, Shakira, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Taio Cruz, Imogen Heap, Anoushka Shankar and many others and he also has been a regular Dj with London club “Fabric”. He’s quite a busy guy. Read more Nitin Sawhney – Last Days Of Meaning (2011)