It’s been a long time since Brian Molko and co started their journey as Placebo, in that time they have earned something of a reputation as a band which, more than most, divides people into different camps – there is the dedicated fanbase and the similarly dedicated anti-Molko naysayers, put off by the man’s infamous androgyny and vocal mannerisms. But there’s a third group, as there is with any band – those who, like myself, have mostly been passed by the band’s five albums up to now. When it comes to Battle for the Sun, the first group will buy it, the second will not. But what about the third, the floating voters, so to speak? Will the much-touted diverse instrumentation and new direction of this album draw them into the fold? Continue Reading

Almost an exercise in redundancy, A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island is scarcely psychedelic at all, but what it is is a “soundtrack” to accompany the works of artist and cartoonist Pete Fowler, known for his work with Super Furry Animals. Assembling  a variety of presumably hip and largely underground musicians (but also including SFA’s own Gruff Rhys) is all very well, but when the compositions sound so similar and you could never distinguish which is by whom, that reduncancy begins to become apparent, and that’s on top of the simple fact that most people don’t know anything at all about Fowler’s Monsterism Island concept anyway. Continue Reading

Will electronica make a comeback at the end of the decade? It seems that having gone organic in the 00s with folktronica, many electronica artists have been second-guessed recently by folk artists (from Bon Iver to Iron & Wine) augmenting their music with pro-tooled trickery. With the likes of Grizzly Bear being signed to Warp it seemed that these artists had the critical and commercial edge: vocal-led music, however abstract, was having more traction with listeners and reviewers – underpinning their haunted mood pieces with harmonies and (albeit fragmented) song structures. Meanwhile the likes of Animal Collective, who had been long lumped with the freak folk set – despite apparently seeing themselves as sonic collagists as opposed to a ‘proper’ band – have had an impact on electronica. Caribou, once of Manitoba fame, found a wider audience with his ‘Andorra’ album, which embraced the infectious, polychromatic psychedelics and West Coast harmonies of Panda Bear and Avery Tare. Continue Reading

The situation regarding this re-release is a little confusing, as I alluded to in my review of Kleerup’s new EP Hello Holla not long ago – but suffice it to saythat if you’re interested in getting hold of Kleerup’s stuff, this is the release to be getting your hands on. In fact, this release is quite substantially different in tracklisting to the previous version of the album, so even if you have the old one you might want to consider rebuying, even in these cash-strapped times in which we live. Continue Reading

Been keeping up with Mexico City’s emerging electronica scene? No, me neither. Apparently Camilo Lara is one of its lynchpins, and you can well believe that upon hearing this album. Instituto Mexicano del Sonido, as they are known in their homeland, are founded on his interest in scratchy electro beats as well as his towering and oft-referenced collection of vinyl records. Those are presumably the source of some of the sounds, especially on tracks like opener “Cumbia” that are heard on this, MIS’ third album to date. I’m not sure what the significance of the title is, given that “soy” means “I am”, accordingly to my admittedly fairly weak grasp on Spanish… Continue Reading

Continuing the long tradition of confusing the hell out of people by including non-English characters in their band name, The Dø have also produced probably the weirdest album I’ve heard in a long time, which takes the form of A Mouthful. Given that the album takes in quite a wide range of styles, and feels quite exhaustive by the end of its 52 minute length, it’s rather an apt title, and it’s fair to say that unless you’re a seasoned explorer of eclectic, left-field music, this will prove a little tough to swallow. That said, there are still at least one or two gems here even for the most straight-and-narrow potential listeners – this partnership of Frenchman Dan Levy and Finn Olivia Bouyssou Merilahti have their fingers in multiple pies, but there’s something for everyone even if the whole selection can be a bit sickly if absorbed together. Continue Reading

When I read that five-piece rocktronica band VETO were “the biggest thing to come out of Denmark since Hans Christian Andersen”, I immediatelyd dropped the great man’s complete works and hastily shoved Crushing Digits into my PC’s disc drive. Given that the last piece of Danish music I heard was the excellent triple-EP set by Tina Dico, the prospect of hearing something new from that part of the world – even something so clearly different – was enticing.

Opener “Blackout” quickly dispelled any hope of finding any evidence for the album supposedly being influenced by progressive rock, instead displaying a penchant for pulsing synthesizers, mid-tempo beats and mildly melodramatic, slightly echoed vocals. The album continues more or less in this vein, but it doesn’t get as old as quickly as you might assume. Instead, VETO display quite a knack for starting with a basic template for their songs and gradually bulding on it with additional background percussion, increasingly frantic vocals and the odd digital beeps and blips to furnish the sound. Also, rather than just letting this cycle go on and on, they are willing to slow things down and mix things up before returning to a song’s main theme. This is brash, propulsive electronica built sturdily upon tried-and-tested rock songwriting templates. Continue Reading

Rone is the project of French musician and sound designer Erwan Castex and this is his first full length release. Spanish Breakfast is a mix of light playful electronica that is comparable to indie acts like Lali Puna, Broadcast, Mum, etc, and more intense deep house/minimal techno such as Pantha Du Price, Lindstrom, Ricardo Villalobos. It’s more of a headphone, home listening album than it is a club-ready rave-up, it can be chilled and playful with some nice and interesting details, but at the same time there are tracks that can be intense, with busy percussion flurries and chest-busting bass, and a lot of the time this happens in the same song. Continue Reading

This first EP from Swedish electronica posterboy Andreas Kleerup is a little baffling. Not because of the music it comprises, but because of the timing of its release. Kleerup’s self-titled debut album was released in Sweden last year, and a new version of it with an altered tracklisting is being released elsewhere, including in the UK, in May. Hello Holla includes one track which is available on both versions of the album (’Tower of Trellick’), one which will be available only on the new version (’Iris’), one which is a new altered and instrumental version of a track which is on both album versions (’3AM’) and another track which isn’t available anywhere except on this EP – and that’s your lot. Continue Reading

When I eventually got through to Svein Berge, one half of Norwegian electronica titans Röyksopp, he informed me that he was standing in his house in Norway, looking at the snow out of the window, and eating a chocolate bar. “Can’t complain about that?” I asked; he concurred. About to release their rather excellent third full-length album Junior, things are looking good for Röyksopp. I talked to Svein about the themes behind the album, about the duo’s female vocal and lyrical collaborators, very specific percentages and about what they’re up to next. Continue Reading

I’d just finished mildly mocking Bon Iver’s Auto-Tune ballad ‘In the Woods’ from his recent Blood Bank EP, when Fever Ray’s Vocoder-heavy debut album landed in my inbox with a mechanical clunk. Fever Ray is Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of Sweden’s much admir’d avant-electro outfit The Knife, whose Silent Shout topped many a 2006 end-of-year list including the likes of Pitchfork.  Continue Reading

I find myself unable to look at the name Avrocar without wishing to reach for a glass of creamy yellow Advocat goodness. In Tesco’s the other day I nearly bought a bottle of the phlegm like intoxicant, such is the subliminal power of their name. Google it though and you actually get a more thrilling appellation – a Canadian flying saucer designed during the Cold War, a genius name for this band. The music fits the name, a wonderful blend of textured, electronic pieces that would make an ideal soundtrack as you buzzed in your saucer, shoving anal probes up a farmer’s backside and meaty chunks out of his herd of cows. Continue Reading

The Marches plural are a gang often featuring vocals courtesy of Briana Nadeau but revolving around the singular Richard Conti. A Chicagoan transplanted to Los Angeles, his classical training is much in evidence with quality sax and piano work – something he feels the need to stress in the liner notes as “NOT sampled”. What they/he have/has cooked up is a genre-bending and without doubt innovative mix of poppy electronic stylings and dark jazzy soul. It takes in everything from Air style dreamy harmonies via Motown rhythms to swinging speakeasy blow-outs. Flaring brass and crunching synths alternate – in verse/chorus within as well as between tracks. Continue Reading

renfro are an experimental electronica outfit with a peculiar style all to themselves – their sound is of electronics and systems breaking down, populated as it is by throbbing repetitions and crispy pops and clicks as if produced by still-connected circuit boards and children’s toys liberally doused in fuel and set aflame. The pace is often languid, the songs often long and meandering, framing quiet, introspective and even slightly effeminate vocals – and yet somehow this is all deeply affecting and engaging. With so much music, we seem to find ourselves waiting and idling on a moneyshot chorus moment in songs that hang determinedly from their hooks. renfro (not uniquely, of course) reject this kind of songwriting and, consequently, we find ourselves listening intently despite, or even because of, the fact that we know there will not be a conclusive epiphany moment. Such is life. Continue Reading

Your Ear Knows Future is the sophomore effort from Baikonour – aka Brighton’s French-born Jean-Emmanuel Kreiger – a veritable one-man band whose debut For the Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos was a heady blend of space rock and electronica. Where that first record was indebted to prog and Krautrock, Your Ear Knows Future’s only noticeable change in direction is the additional demployment of 80s indie textures. After a rumbling, would-be ominous ‘Intro’, the opener ‘Shikarettes & Khukuris’ bursts into life with a reverbed guitar strum that recalls prototype shoegazers A.R. Kane (the band for whom the term ‘Oceanic’ was coined) quickly subsumed by Baikonour’s familiar take on psychedelia. Most of the tracks are underpinned by this New Order/Jesus & Mary Chain jangle but all revert to a default prog vacuity: all Celestial Synths (TM), steady crescendos and other cod-mystical devices. Continue Reading

Chairlift may have the coolest creation story ever. Yes, even better than all that seven days stuff. Formed in 2005, the band originally got together to make background music for haunted houses, which sounds like a pretty good agenda to work to. Continue Reading

James Yuill hails from London and blends folk, electronica and pop into a rather beautiful landscape of sound. There’s plenty of artists currently ploughing this furrow, but Yuill makes it seem a more joyful world to live in. Apart from an identity crisis, he tells us a bit about how it all started…

For people out there that have never heard of you. Give us three reasons why they should…
Because I’ve had four number ones, my 1986 album ‘Slippery When Wet’ sold in excess of 26 million copies and it set the record for the most weeks for a hard rock album at #1 on the Billboard 200… oh no… wait that’s Bon Jovi… there’s no reason why people should have heard of me.

Can you recall the moment when you first decided you wanted to become a musician?
I think it was when I heard Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ for the first time… I knew I wanted to play rock guitar! My aspirations have changed slightly as I’ve grown up.

Where do your songs come from? What’s your inspiration?
I’m not really sure where they come from… my subconscious I guess. I just sit down and sing whatever comes into my head… the first verse done, I then try and work out what I’m on about then steer/force the rest along a similar path.

Name your Top 5 records.
Difficult, but it would have to be…
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
4hero – Creating Patterns
Tasmin Archer – Great Expectations
Jackson and his Computer Band – Smash

What was the first gig you ever played and was it a success?
The first gig in public was at the tunbridge wells forum with my school band. it was a success…but success isn’t always easy on the ear, as we proved.

What one piece of criticism has stuck in your mind and was it justified?
That I have a weedy voice (courtesy of Time Out). I think it was justified.

What one thing has caused you to waste your free time in the past 6 months?
Waiting for MySpace to load/sort it’s problems out.

If you weren’t making music, what do you think you’d be doing?
Audio forensics… long story.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
I once spent a night loading lorries at a factory in North West London. It was a long night shift and apart from an hour break in the middle there was no let up. The parcels would come down this conveyer belt directly into the back of the lorry and if you weren’t fast enough they would build up jam the main package artery. Eventually the break came, but the canteen wasn’t serving food, so all i could have was a Sprite and then back to work. It was also deafening so after one night I never went back. I didn’t even get paid for that night!

We’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
The theme is people who died too young:
Nick Drake – Time has Told me
Jim Morrison – People are Strange
Jimi Hendrix – Little Wings
Janis Joplin – Move Over
Jeff Buckley – Dream Brother

James Yuill on Myspace

Moshi Moshi are well known for putting out great music created by great bands. Their singles label reached trendsetter status a long time ago, and their album catalog is equally strong. This release from James Yuill, entitled ‘Turning Down Water For Air’ goes a long way to re-enforce the previous statement, itself containing 12 tracks of heartfelt electronica that is very easily accessible and produced to an incredibly high standard. Continue Reading

NYC is Kieran Hebden’s (aka Four Tet) fourth collaboration with veteran jazz drummer Steve Reid and while I won’t pretend that I have heard the other three, the word in the blogosphere is that this is the most equal of their partnerships, with Hebden given much more license to stamp his mark on the record. Certainly fans of Fridge and Four Tet would be foolish to overlook this, a beautiful and intensely atmospheric mini-album. Although I didn’t have the cover artwork to hand at the time of writing it is impossible to listen to NYC and not picture a seething, rain-lashed megatropolis. It’s a murky, cavernous record easily redolent of old Scorcese films: steam rising from man hole covers, pimps lurking in shadows, dealers dealin’ (to borrow from Bobby Gillespie). The percussive energy and gently building tensions and atmospherics make it less wilfully difficult than such jazz-electronica collaborations might lead you to expect. Continue Reading

By now we all should know the genius that is Tom Jenkinson, aka pusher of squares, and by now it has become almost a given that whatever he releases is going to be taking music in a new direction such is his unrivalled ability (have you seen that man play bass! It’s beyond comprehension), and his determination to make music that shifts the map. Along with Aphex Twin, Squarepusher is definitely one of the pioneering forces behind electronic music in the last 10-15 years.

‘Just a Souvenir’ is, as expected, a mish mash of styles that all seem to gel into a twisted cohesion. “This album started as a daydream about watching a crazy, beautiful rock band play an ultra-gig” explains Jenkinson on a quote from his official website. Noticeably he has gone more in an experimental rock direction, but rock as you’ve never heard it. Take Delta V, a lesson in how to riff out on bass, it is a very immediate and in your face. It seems as if Tom is having a jam session, on another planet. The album opens with ‘Star Time 2′; a song that sounds like I’ve landed on Planet Zelda and Sonics spinning the rings. Its as if ‘Red Hot Car’ has morphed into something altogether more funky.

Often Jenkinsons music has suffered from being cold and, at times, too mechanical, chopped and patched together with precision but sometimes lacking soul or trying too hard to be experimental or progressive. Just a Souvenir breaks that tradition with a far more colourful soundscape, leaning to something Daft Punk esque. There are more elements of electro and acid funk, along with his affection for Jazz breaks and a far more heavy rock sound. But as ever there really isn’t a way of describing what Squarepusher does. He defies explanation, logic, and expectation. He has definitely gone for a more melodic sound, even if melodic, in Squarepusher universe, is still some mutant hybrid of a thousand different styles. He’s doing for bass guitar what Hendrix did for guitar. Obviously there’s a massive time difference, but if we juxtapose the innovation of each artist there is a definite path between the two. The groove is definitely there.

Nothing sums up Squarepushers eccentricity more than ‘A Real Woman‘, a track that sounds almost comical; the strange vocal effects are something that Jenkinson has always loved to noodle with, and it makes for an odd listen. It has a child like playfulness to it. This is candy for extreme candy poppers. With every record the square man puts out he dives into new territory and comes out on top, owning and completely realizing new rhythms and vibrations.  Taking on from his last effort Hello Everything but more psychedelic than anything he’s done before I’m wondering how this would work with a head full of hallucinogens – I know I’d be listening to ‘Planet Gear’ over and over. As for ‘The Glass Road’: dark mystical genius. Not only is he a bass terrorist, but he’s a sweet jazz soliloquist. Just have a listen to his classical guitar on album closer ‘Yes – Sequitur’! Yeah we knew he could play guitar, but it’s always nice to mention his skills off the bass.

When I listen to this record first thing I think is where do his ideas come from? How did that rhythm come into being, where is this man from. Middle England or the centre of the universe! There isn’t anybody coming close to doing what Tom Jenkinson does, not only on the bass, but his whole pallet of musical textures, his direction and commitment to experimentation. Just a Souvenir proves that he is top of whatever game he chooses to be in, and he’s so far out of sight that you’ll be blinded.
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Squarepusher on Myspace