Demob Happy

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

8.5/10
Perennial critics’ favourites Yo La Tengo return with an album that reigns in some of the magpie tendencies of 2006’s sprawling ‘I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass’ with a more focused set. ‘Popular Songs’ - their twelfth [...]

[Read more →]

Album Review: worriedaboutsatan - Arrivals

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
8.5/10
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 [...]

[Read more →]

Without Walls
8/10
Despite his reputation as arch studio boffin, producer Sascha Ring - aka Apparat - makes unapologetically beautiful music. Unlike some of his IDM peers, Ring is not interested so much in abrasion or near-mathematical deconstruction, but with music that swells and soars with classical grandeur. Among current producers, he bears a resemblance in tone [...]

[Read more →]

Scandinavian Dark Star
6/10
Much has been made of the atmospherics and wintery mood on this album but for me this was a dissapointment. The marriage of classical music and electronica is always an uneasy one - countless clinical, po-faced concept records have been made in this mould. What is missing from many of the reviews about [...]

[Read more →]

Animal feelings
7/10
This should have been the Collective’s crowning moment. The return of the full ‘line-up’ so soon after last year’s Avey Tare and Panda Bear-orchestrated masterpiece ‘Sung Tongs’ heralded great things, and many early reviews agreed. I’m not so convinced. There are moments on this record where they genuinely seem to push the boundaries of [...]

[Read more →]

Shock waves
7/10
Minotaur Shock’s second full-length will surely raise his reputation to the level of some of his more overrated peers, namely Four Tet and Manitoba, both of whom seem to have been unjustly hogging the electronica limelight for the last couple of years. ‘Maritime’ take a naval theme as its core imagery but despite a [...]

[Read more →]

Tokyo dreaming
9/10
One of the best soundtracks in recent memory (the best since Morvern Callar - great music, shame about the movie), Lost in Translation is an evocative collection of tracks that recall the unique atmosphere of the film. My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields complements tracks by the likes of Squarepusher (in one of his more [...]

[Read more →]

Light as Air
6/10
Air’s third album proper is a cautious fusion of its predecessors, the much-imitated lounge classic Moon Safari and the plainly silly prog folly 1000 hz Legend. Despite the appallingly smug and unimaginative cover, Talkie Walkie opens with promise. Venus, Cherry Blossom Girl and Run evoke the kind of wigged-out, androgynous space pop that [...]

[Read more →]

Staring at the Sun
7/10
This is avant-garde music aimed at evoking tangible atmospheres rather than oblique abstraction for its own sake. Besides the false start that is ‘Made in Hong Kong’ - with its inauspicious opening drones that sound like your stereo is melting - Endless Summer delivers its promise of bright, shimmering (albeit massively warped) [...]

[Read more →]

Bjork minus the yelping and beats
6/10
Bleak and wintery atmospherics are the name of the game here, courtesy of the eponymous Susanna Wallumrød and keyboardist Morten Qvenild (affiliate of German avant-gardists Jaga Jazzist). However, it’s a weary and winsome effort, forcing you up close and personal with the icy (Icelandic) vocals, with not much else to [...]

[Read more →]