Foxy Digitalis
Inside a jet black room, sharp tendrils of light seep in on “We Don’t Eat Dead Things,” the first single from Ensemble Dal Niente’s stunning object/animal. Composed by LJ White, the piece is equal parts whimsical and wild. Sopranos Amanda DeBoer Bartlett and Carrie Henneman Shaw weave their voices into enchanting sunset hues, cascading across the […]
Sam Wenc’s new album as Post Moves, Heart Music, rides in a space that finds long-forgotten aquifers in parched, abandoned expanses. The first single, “Always For Pleasure,” utilizes his focused approach on pedal steel, but builds outward with a diverse palette and keen ear for sonic details. Empty spaces become lush aural environments as he colors […]
Subtle shifts are like mountainous choruses throughout Vlad Dobrovolski’s newest smooth-cut diamond, Playbacks for Dreaming. On “See And Keep Silence.” The mines open into expansive underground caverns where gems shimmer across every surface and unimaginable neon flora blossoms into life. Dobrovolski is a master at creating imaginative tonal textures and mixing them with hypnotic arpeggios that […]
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 […]