Foxy Digitalis
As an album title, Journey Test sends my thoughts skittering in multiple directions, but as an actual album, I find calm and focus within its gentle movements and warm glow. Cincinnati-based composer Tristan Eckerson has released countless albums of modern classical music, but with Purple Decades, he reveals something cocoon-like and introspective. Using a minimal palette but moving […]
The world that unfolds on Aviva Endean’s tremendous Moths & Stars feels expansive and deeply rooted within a vulnerable space. Visceral stretches permeate every layer of the album while its breadth grows with each track’s forward progression. Electronics spin pensive drones into aural memories spreading through our inner thoughts, encased in the glow of vibrating strings and […]
Sinemis is the new moniker from Circassian-Turkish producer Sine Buyuka, and her debut, Dua, is a wonder. Fusing disparate styles in surprising yet seamless ways and imbuing each passage with a wealth of emotion opens an immersive, transportive world. Buyuka channels the fraught unknown of experiencing and recovering from a life-threatening illness into every facet of Dua. […]
Albums and compositions about climate change and humanity’s impact on our planet have become a regular fixture in my listening habits in recent months. I dug into these themes and explored them via sound with Frederik Croene last month, and now Kaspar Bjørke Quartet’s Mother is occupying a central location in my mind. Mother is an […]
I finished writing this piece a few days ago before news of jaimie branch’s passing broke, and amidst the heartbreak, I keep thinking of her irrepressible, generous spirit. She always showed up. Listening to her irrepressible, searching runs on “Dayenu,” and thinking about where the title comes from (a Passover song) and what the word […]
700 BLISS (DJ Haram & Moor Mother) slice mantras into the city’s concrete skin on the visceral, cathartic, and even hilarious Nothing to declare. Backyard breakbeats and fried, snaking synths build madcap webs. Future rhythms take a sawblade to squarewaves, fusing proto-electronics with hip hop reveries and free jazz energies. Moor Mother and DJ Haram […]