Foxy Digitalis
There’s an intangible magic that sparks to life when artists collaborate in the same physical space. Brooklyn’s Sontag Shogun traveled to Lau Nau’s home in Kimitoön, Finland to write what would eventually become Valo Siroutuu (“The Light Scatters”), but in the process opened a window into someplace greater, onto something important. On the title track, eyes and […]
ML Wah (aka Matt LaJoie) takes a new shape for his latest iteration, Mirrored Night, an album of solo piano improvisations that sing like shapeshifting constellations in the black sky. “Liberation” is a centerpiece of the album, flowing across the celestial divide like a river of sonic light imbued with a guiding spirit pointed toward a […]
Kee Avil’s debut album Crease is a force. On the second single, “saf,” the Montreal-based project led by producer and guitarist Vicky Mettler, fractured dreams morph into real-world anxiety. A hypnotic furor takes hold as Kee Avil slinks along splintering rhythms while phantom layers of Mettler’s voice swirl like black smoke promising the ominous fire to come. […]
On his debut for Hands in the Dark as Läuten der Seele, Christian Schoppik paints surrealistic aural landscapes that disorient as much as they transport listeners. Using German Heimatfilme samples as the basis for a collection of 12 dark and whimsical loop collages, Schoppik uses ageless hues and sonic connections. “Gedanken Der Mückenlarven In Der […]
Led by New York-based composers Vicente Hansen Atria and Mat Muntz, The Vex Collection uses new and surprising combinations of traditional instruments and original music contraptions (designed by the composers via 3-D-printing technology) to simultaneously create an alternate sonic history and a new impossible future. On “Fugue,” highland bagpipes and Korean taepyeongso (a conical double […]
I am always so taken with the ferocity and agility with which Laura Cocks plays the flute. Their new album, field anatomies, explores the degree to which a body can be pushed and what exists in the space beyond our limitations. Cocks’ music exists in simultaneous spheres of deep, investigative realities and an effervescent glow of […]
Tyler Mitchell rejoining forces with Arkestra stalwart Marshall Allen for a set of succinct rippers is exactly what the world needs in 2022. Mitchell and Allen go back decades and, after some years stomping down their own paths and exploring different vistas, when Mitchell came back in the Arkestra in the early ‘10s, the cosmic […]
Troy, New York’s Armbruster creates a warm sonic sanctuary with his new album, Masses. Using acoustic and electric violins, Armbruster communes with the open spaces of an old church where Masses was recorded. On this first single, “In the First Leaves,” lilting repetitions meditate on the gravity of weightless emotions left to percolate through generations unchecked. Each note […]
Unexpected relief floods through the generous spaces of “And It Happens Every Day,” the first single from saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin, guitarist Dave Harrington (who blew my mind with this reimagining), and drummer Kenny Wollesen’s new album, Invite Your Eye. Harrington’s quiet, inquisitive guitar progressions pull back the curtain on a world finding bright spots of color on an […]