Demob Happy

First published at The Line of Best Fit. If the words “German electronica” conjure images of austere-looking men standing motionless behind synths in mono-coloured suits, or the “nihilist” baddies in The Big Lebowski, To Rococo Rot might help you abandon the stereotype. Stefan Schneider and brothers Robert and Ronald Lippok are a Berlin-based electronica and post-rock trio who have [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

Apparat - Headup [ 5:07 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Hail Radiohead! 8/10 It can take a few years to properly appraise an album by a band as great as Radiohead. It is important to shake off the initial impressions – distorted as they are by the weight of expectation – and allow the album time to grow on you. A band that has so [...]

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Kid B? 8/10 Apparently largely recorded during the same sessions as Kid A, and released only a year later, it has always been hard to divorce Amesiac from its predecessor and look at it on its own terms. It was suggested at the time – and repeated in the Amazon review – that this was [...]

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“Everything in its right place” 10/10 It’s hard to totally understand the furore surrounding the release of Radiohead’s much-anticipated (and arguably best) fourth album. Considering the bold and uncompromising nature of some tracks on OK Computer it seems stranger in context that that album should have had such broad appeal. One can only assume that [...]

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The Autumnal Crush 7/10 Is electronica dead? Its certainly quite easy to trace the influences of Chris Clark’s Body Riddle. There are the tape-damaged keyboards patented by Boards of Canada; the rough jazzy breaks and dusty sampling of early DJ Shadow, whose influence over electronica has been understated; and the sped-up glockenspiels popularised by Kieren [...]

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“The more you try to erase me, the more that I appear” 9/10 Thom Yorke’s Eraser is best viewed as a tangential companion piece to Kid A, in my mind Radiohead’s best album. It was that record’s Morning Bell that best married Thom Yorke’s bare, unprocessed vocals with electronic soundscaping and instrumentation. Those dissatisified with [...]

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Overland But Underwater 7/10 Kelpe sculpt the kind of dense, no-nonsence electronic soundscapes popularised by Warp stalwarts Boards of Canada. Whereas BOC have come to sound like a parody of themselves, heirs-apparent Kelpe revisit the BOC template without the restraint and obsessiveness displayed by their forefathers. ‘Sea Inside Body’ is a massive, cavernous album awash [...]

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Well read? 6/10 On paper this seemed a match made in heaven. Scott Herren’s masterful rythmic programming pared up with The Books’ airy collage folk seeming destined to bring out the best in both: giving the former added space and organic texture and the latter much-need structure and a bit of funk. To begin with, [...]

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