London Odense Ensemble : Live At Jaiyede Jazz Festival

When you’re as tight, forward-thinking, and exploratory as London Odense Ensemble it’s hard not to keep striking while the iron’s hot. The five-piece fusion/cosmic jazz collective is made up of Danish musicians Jonas Munk(guitar), Martin Rude(bass), and Jakob Skøtt(drums); as well as London-based Tamar Osborn(saxophone, winds) and Al MacSween(keyboards). A fruitful recording session back in […]

zakè and City of Dawn : Ash

There’s a kind of musical alchemy when Zach Frizzell (zakè) and Damien Duque (City Of Dawn) come together. I first heard these two back in 2020 as Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea(along with Marc Ertel.) Their Azure Vista Records debut Liberamente was a breath of fresh air; blankets of sonic warmth and sublime tones […]

zakè : Orchestral Tape Studies II

I’m always enthralled by the work of zakè. The ambient/new age composer has spent the last several years building a catalog of forward-thinking, thoughtful, and intellectual albums. Records that accumulate beautifully orchestrated sound collages and sonic realms that put you, the listener, in a state of contemplative and meditative bliss. Using electronics to create both […]

Extreme : Six

If you weren’t an awkward headbanging teen in the late 80s then you wouldn’t understand. To be a fan of hair metal was to suffer through a cavalcade of lousy dime a dozen rock bands. Most, you’d hear about once and then they’d disappear in a haze of White Rain. It was a constant process […]

Lightning Dust : Nostalgia Killer

Lightning Dust started as the electronic/pop side project of Black Mountain members Amber Webber and Joshua Wells, but after 2016s IV, Webber and Wells left the Canadian psych/prog behemoth permanently so they could concentrate on other things, including Lightning Dust. The band released the excellent and more Gothic-tinged Spectre in 2019, the same year that […]

Hawksmoor : Telepathic Heights

James McKeown’s electronic music project Hawksmoor goes deep. McKeown’s sound is dense, heady, and pulls from the best that the early German electronic scene had to offer. Combining the warmth of analog via Moogs, Modular synthesis, guitar, and bass with a rhythmic backbone that feels more implied through mood, Hawksmoor makes the kind of music […]

Queens of the Stone Age : In Times New Roman

Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has had a pretty rough decade or more. Starting clear back in the early 2010s with a surgery that nearly killed him, then working his way into a very ugly and public battle with ex-wife Brody Dalle of the Distillers. Add in the death of friend and […]

Horned Relic Self : Column Of Shadow

The latest to rise from the crypt over at Library Of The Occult is a curious one. A drone-heavy, haunted Berlin School affair from a project called Horned Relic Self. Not much information about who’s responsible for these haunted sound excursions, but when it’s this good you can forgive a few details missing. Column Of […]

Rupert Lally : Multitudes

Swiss-based, UK-born composer Rupert Lally seems to be able to do anything. Now an established author, Lally has been putting out thoughtful and engaging electronic music for some time. I personally discovered him with his releases via the great UK electronic label Spun Out Of Control. Albums like The Prospect, Where The Dark Speaks, Maniac’s […]

Protomartyr : Formal Growth In The Desert

Detroit’s Protomartyr have been leading the way in the modern post-punk movement, starting with their debut album, 2012s No Passion All Technique. Each album improved and evolved the sound, which consisted of jagged guitars, a solid rhythm section, and lead singer Joe Casey’s poetic lyricism delivered in the voice of a soothsayer booming society’s doomed […]