Electro – Page 51 – 7th Level Music

Review: Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts VI: Locusts

The second of two free instrumental albums offered by Nine Inch Nails in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghosts VI: Locusts is darker than its predecessor – Ghosts V: Together. The track titles alone don’t bring to mind hopeful images like the last album. Many of the tunes on Ghosts VI: Locusts could easily fit on a horror film score.

“The Cursed Clock” is just such an example – bleak piano and creepy timing. “Around Every Corner” brings in a lonely trumpet and sounds not unlike passing buses to remind you of a film noir. “The Worriment Waltz” is a good title for what a lot of people are doing these days. “Run Like Hell” is surprisingly subtle (and that great trumpet comes back to haunt us in it).

“When It Happens (Don’t Mind Me)” starts off with Dario Argento-film score manic percussion and synths. The sounds of “Another Crashed Car” bring to mind images of an open cell phone (probably being used pre-collision) call going unanswered and windshield wipers scraping across cracked glass. “Temp Fix” is short and…odd.

“Trust Fades” fades right into “A Really Bad Night.” The two themes go well together. “Your New Normal” is like a strange breath across your neck, and “Just Breathe” might be the creepiest song on the album. “Right Behind You” calms things down a bit.

“Turn This Off Please” is the longest track on the album (over thirteen minutes) and slinks around the room like some sort of smoky adder. The piano on “So Tired” is like something you’d hear on the score to Exorcist III. The closing track is “Almost Dawn,” which is a bit uplifting after all the doom and gloom of the previous tracks. Yes, it still has some creepy elements in it (like that warped music box) but it still conveys a sense that the sun will come out soon and we’ll all embrace the light.

Nine Inch Nails seem to be acknowledging that things look bleak, but they also encourage us to not become overwhelmed. Things will turn around in time. All things are impermanent, even suffering.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe while you’re here.]

Soulwax’s next album was made with just one synthesizer.

‘EMS Synthi 100: Deewee Sessions Vol. 01‘ is an exciting new project from David & Stephen Dewaele (Soulwax) that celebrates the pioneering modular synthesizer, the EMS Synthi 100.

The highly collectible package, will be released on May 29th by DEEWEE and The Vinyl Factory, compiling a new album, created entirely using a lovingly restored EMS Synthi, alongside a 48-page book exploring the synthesizer’s history and the story beind the album. The Dewaele brothers hope to have the opportunity to create further volumes in the series in the near future.

“It was our belief that there were tons of melodies and rhythms hidden within the machine,” commented David & Stephen Dewaele. “We just had to make it sing. Every sound you hear on this record, however hard to believe, originates from the mighty EMS Synthi 100. Some were easy to make, some took days to get right. A few of the compositions were written beforehand, with the Synthi 100 in mind, then translated onto it. A couple were created by just messing around for hours, and some of it is the machine randomly playing by itself, inspiring us to build onto its unique chaos.”

‘DEEWEE Sessions Vol.01’ features the album on heavyweight 180g vinyl along with a fully-illustrated 48-page book exploring the background behind the album and history of the Synthi 100. The book compiles a foreword from David & Stephen Dewaele; an introduction from 3030, the specific Synthi 100 unit that was used for the album; a history of its creation and an exploration of its sounds; and finally an interview with Ivan Schepers, the IPEM technician who has been 3030’s long-term custodian.

Fittingly, this tribute to such an elegant machine is presented in a beautiful style, art directed by Ill-Studio. The vinyl is held in a perforated ‘patch bay’ cover with a fully artworked inner sleeve, while both the disc and book are housed in a clear PVC bag.

‘EMS Synthi 100 – DEEWEE Sessions Vol.01’ will be released on May 29th with catalogue numbers DEEWEE034 / VF301. A digital version will also be available via download and streaming services and all formats are available to pre-order from HERE.

This album was made with the kind assistance of and in collaboration with IPEM, Ghent.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe before you split.]

[Thanks to Deewee Ltd.!]

Rhye releases a “Beautiful” new single.

Rhye – the project of LA-based musician Michael Milosh – returns with “Beautiful” via Loma Vista Recordings. Known for his “reserved, understated and brilliant soul” (NPR Music), “Beautiful” is Rhye’s first proper single since the release of 2018’s JUNO-Award winning Blood. It’s sophisticated in its subtlety, opening with a flurry of strings and a taut percussive beat. Throughout, the song gently surges with humming organ and piano. Milosh’s voice shimmers over a mellow bass line and is instantly recognizable as he advocates for finding beauty in everyday life. This idea is being presented via A Beautiful Weekend on the Rhye website, where the song is paired with accompanying visuals of beauty.

“As we all share in this collective crazy moment that is quarantine, there are many ways to deal with the isolation, many ways we can truly fall into ourselves,” says Milosh. “For me, celebrating the beauty that is my partner has been a huge inspiration for me and a saving grace. Beauty is something we truly need to be open to in this moment. Find it in music, art, your loved ones, or yourself.”
Listen to Rhye’s “Beautiful” –
https://found.ee/Rhye_Beautiful

Milosh has been filling his isolation time recording new music and performing livestreams as part of Secular Sabbath, including a morning ambient performance with Joseph August and the Corona Sabbath with Diplo. Secular Sabbath, the LA based creative community founded by his partner Genevieve Medow Jenkins, initially focused on live ambient music events. During quarantine, it has blossomed with a range of offerings.

In conjunction with the “Beautiful” single release, Rhye is offering a limited edition Box of Beautiful care package which includes a tote bag, a custom scented candle by Joia, a vegan leather embossed notebook and pen, a postcard, engraved selenite, and a bandana. This custom box is available via the Rhye webstore. There will be more Rhye news in the coming weeks.

Keep your mind open.

[It would be beautiful if you subscribed.]

[Thanks to Sam and Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Jon Hopkins helps us meditate with “Singing Bowl (Ascension).”

Jon Hopkins presents “Singing Bowl (Ascension),” the first in a new series of “Meditations” that is available to stream now and appears on “Quiet,” his 24-hour long collaborative playlist for Spotify. Designed with deep meditation experiences in mind, “Singing Bowl (Ascension)” perfectly fits into Jon’s transcendent selections. To create this piece, Hopkins recorded a range of vibrations created by a 100 year-old singing bowl found in an antique shop in Delhi. He then fed these into a laptop running a simple, generative system that triggered the hits and drones at random. This would allow synchronicity to play a central part in the composition process, and remove as much “thinking” as possible from the writing. An earlier version of this generative piece was used as a sound installation at last year’s Helsinki Arts Festival.

Hopkins further explains the inspiration behind the track: “Like so many people I felt pretty paralysed by this situation when it first unfolded. All my plans for the year were cancelled, and everything felt so weird and dreamlike. But gradually I found I wanted to create something – to find peace and perspective through making music, as I have always done. It felt beautifully pure to just use one acoustic sound source, and no synths. It was liberating to write something without playing anything on a keyboard – to avoid the familiar diatonic scale for the first time, and thus avoid any of my own conditioned playing habits. There was a magic in setting this generative system in motion then just letting the vibrations of this bowl create their own world. I listened to harmonics layering on top of harmonics for hours and was transported.”

Watch Jon Hopkins’ “Singing Bowl (Ascension) – excerpt”
https://smarturl.it/JHSBAyt

Listen to “Singing Bowl (Ascension)” here
https://smarturl.it/SingingBowlAscension

Listen to the “Quiet” Spotify Playlist
https://smarturl.it/JHSBAsp

Jon Hopkins Tour:
Wed. Aug. 12 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre w/ RÜFÜS DU SOL
Thu. Aug. 13 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre w/ RÜFÜS DU SOL
Sun. Nov. 11 – Stockholm, SE @ Gota Lejon
Mon. Nov. 12 – Oslo, NO @ Sentrum Scene
Thu. Nov. 5 – Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royal
Mon. Nov. 8 – Copenhagen, DK @ DR Koncerthuset – Koncertsalen
Mon. Nov. 9 – Paris, DR @ Salle Pleyel
Wed. Nov. 11 – The Hague, NL @ Zuiderstrandtheater
Mon. Nov. 16 – Berlin, DE @ Philharmonie
Fri. Dec. 4 – London, UK @ Royal Albert Hall

Keep your mind open.

[Why not subscribe while you’re here?]

[Thanks to Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Kllo release “Insomnia” to help you get through long nights of self-isolation.

“[‘Still Here’ is] light and densely nuanced at the same time.” – Nylon

“[‘Still Here’] is delicate and rollicking and propulsive and lovely.” – Jezebel

“‘Still Here’ is built around a brisk, frenetic backbeat that seems like the foundation of a dancefloor banger, but the meat of the song is melancholy balladry on the indie-pop wavelength. The resulting contrast is deeply appealing…” – Stereogum
Kllo – electronic pop duo of Melbourne cousins Chloe Kaul and Simon Lam – will release their new album, Maybe We Could, on July 17th via Ghostly International. Today, they share the new single, “Insomnia,” which simmers in a similar melancholy of lead single “Still Here.” “Insomnia” skitters with steely beats and tender keys. It’s one of the few songs written from separate locations when both artists were in North America independently, and its feeling reflects a sense of jet-lagged joy and displacement, the “high highs, low lows” as one line goes.

“It’s one of our favourites off the album and is heavily influenced by our time in North America,” says Kllo. “The song is about laying in bed fantasizing that you’ll give your all to something and that someone else will too, but knowing deep down it will never happen. The moment of the night where you can’t switch off and differentiate your truth from your imagination.“

Stream “Insomnia”:
https://youtu.be/QJdm3I0gcnI

Following the release of their adored full-length debut Backwater, two years of global touring, a handful of singles, and a near-breakup, Kaul and Lam both took time away from Kllo to make solo work. The experiences served as a reset, giving them space to learn separately, and, ultimately, to appreciate what they have together. Largely written and recorded upon their return, Maybe We Could signals a new start for Kllo. Ten tracks pairing the rhythms of dance music to emotive chords and melodies; revealing two artists at their strongest yet most vulnerable, operating as their truest selves, honest with each other and their craft. Songs on Maybe We Could grapple with familiar dynamics: unrequited love, doubts, desires, and decisions. Musically, the album finds Kllo following their impulses, embracing a more subdued and nuanced tone.

Maybe We Could mirrors the progression and growth of the two artists behind a singular project. The title references a phrase they repeat often when recording. A collective strategy towards facing uncertainty, taking chances, and making choices. Ones that become more deliberate as time rolls on. Lam sums it up, “It’s like the album started off with ‘maybe’ and ended with ‘definitely.’”
Stream “Insomnia”:
https://youtu.be/QJdm3I0gcnI

Watch “Still Here” Video:
https://youtu.be/5qguVdZs27I

Pre-order/Pre-save Maybe We Could:
https://ffm.to/kllo-maybe-we-could

Keep your mind open.

[I’ll sleep better if you subscribe.]

[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR!]

Sofia Bolt’s “All She Wants” was designed to make you move.

“Amélie Rousseaux moved halfway across the world to heal, and it is a pleasure to hear her processing.” – Pitchfork

“Bolt trades in understated indie rock ” – The Guardian
Sofia Bolt (a.k.a. Amélie Rousseaux) shares a new single, “All She Wants;” the second standalone single since the release of her debut album, Waves, in 2019, which drew praise from Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Pitchfork, and more. “All She Wants” was recorded live at Electro-Vox Studios in Los Angeles, a song written for listeners to move to. The video was created by animator Jenna Caravello.

“I always wanted to write music for people to dance to at my shows,” says Rousseaux. Her songwriting was influenced by harmonies and guitar riffs found in 1970s jazz-funk records. “My goal was to play around with tension and release while keeping a forward momentum. I listened to a lot of The Meters, Cymande, Roy Ayers while working on ‘All She Wants.’”

Sofia Bolt is the project of French-born musician and songwriter Amelie Rousseaux. In early 2017, pent-up in Paris and searching for transformation, Rousseaux moved to Los Angeles. Her first few months in LA were a revelation – she found herself surfing every day, reflecting on her relationship, and immersing herself in American culture and music. This shock to the system brought a creative blossom that gave rise to the sweeping, beautiful, honest, and acclaimed debut album Waves, released in July 2019.

Recorded live in a whirlwind five days by a cast of LA all-stars, Waves is at once casual and tightly constructed, with Rousseaux’s pop melodies leaping and diving over a bed of guitars and roomy drums. Since the release, Rousseaux has created the soundtrack to Hedi Slimane’s winter 2020 Celine collection and has toured both the States and Europe, opening for Sharon Van Etten, Interpol, and Stella Donnelly.
Watch Video for “All She Wants”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXQCI7RUck0&feature=youtu.be

Watch/Listen/Share:
Waves album stream
“Heart Is A Rock” video
“Les Journees D’Automne” stream

Sofia Bolt Tour Dates:
Mon. June 8 – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
Tue. June 9 – San Francisco, CA @ Swedish American Music Hall

Keep your mind open

[All I want is for you to subscribe.]

[Thanks to Jim at Pitch Perfect PR!]

Kelly Lee Owens’ “Night” is a great gift from her for self-isolation dancing.

“The pounding four-on-the-floor rhythm section on ‘Melt!’ makes for both a club banger and a political comment, a dazzling dance macabre for impending environmental collapse.”
— Pitchfork, “Best New Track”

“[Kelly Lee Owens] makes skittish techno that makes the hairs on your neck stand up and demands to be heard in a dripping warehouse.” — The Guardian

“a fathomless, flickering techno banger” — Gorilla vs. Bear
Convention-blurring techno producer/musician Kelly Lee Owens releases a new song, “Night.” The track appears on her new album, Inner Song, which has been moved to August 28th on Smalltown Supersound. Following techno banger “Melt!,” “Night” opens with a monopoly synth and Owen’s soft, intimate vocals, before transforming with a danceable, staccato rhythm and jockeying beat.

“This track speaks as to how feelings and insights are more accessible to us at nighttime – how the veils are thinner somehow and therefore how we are more able to connect to our hearts true desires,” says Owens. “I wanted to release this track as a gift to you during this crazy time, to give a part of my heart to you all.”
Listen to “Night” by Kelly Lee Owens
https://KellyLeeOwens.lnk.to/night

Watch Kelly Lee Owens’ Visuals for “Melt!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kW0vbVEIXE

[Keep your mind open.]

[Subscribe tonight.]

[Thanks to Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Review: Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts V: Together

Ghosts V: Together is one of two instrumental albums released for free by Nine Inch Nails as gifts to everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic. The albums are meant for meditation, reflection, or ambient sounds for study or work or pleasure.

As the title suggests, this album is meant to inspire a sense of belonging despite separation. The titles of the tracks evoke hope and courage. “Letting Go While Holding On,” the album’s opener, is over nine minutes of meditative drones and minimalist percussion and lets us know that releasing our grip on the past is the only way to move forward. “Together” is over ten minutes of ambient sounds that resemble radio static, as if NIN is reminding us of our connection over distant miles as we try to tune in to stations we can barely hear. “Out in the Open” follows, reflecting what we all hope we’ll be soon. Its shiny synths bring to mind images of sunlight breaking through dark clouds.

We can get there “With Faith” – a song that blends simple, soft percussion with chant-like synths. “Apart” is the longest track at thirteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. It’s fitting, as sometimes it seems we’ve been apart during this pandemic for ages and will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. “Your Touch” brightens things up a bit as it helps us remember the warmth of human contact.

“Hope We Can Again” sums up the mood of a lot of people well. It combines simple music box tunes with simmering synths that reflect a simple warmth that everyone hopes to have again. The closer is “Still Right Here,” which, thankfully, most of us are. We are here, biding our time, seeing changes that are happening and ones that need to be made, and looking forward to coming out to embrace each other, and the upbeat drums of this final track are there to encourage us.

Don’t expect industrial beats, trance floor-fillers, and angry yelling on this album (or the next). This record isn’t made for that. It’s made to calm all of us down. Let it happen.

Keep your mind open.

[We can be together by you subscribing.]

Rewind Review: The KVB – Only Now Forever (2018)

Recorded and self-produced in their Berlin apartment, The KVB‘S 2018 album, Only Now Forever, is a neat mixture of contrasts. It is melancholic, yet ebullient. Somber, yet hopeful. Moody, yet joyful. It’s an honest look at modern living and a warning against its trappings. The title of the album itself is a suggestion of presence. We only have now, this moment, forever. The past never existed. The future never will. We can embrace this divine truth or we can stay buried in a past long gone or worry about a future that doesn’t yet exist – and will be completely different from what we expect when it does arrive…in the now.

Opening single, “Above Us,” is a shadowed electro-pop tune with definite Berlin krautrock influences to its beats and bass as Kat Day and Nicholas Wood sing about rising above the drudgery of modern life. “On My Skin” is a beautiful track with haunting synths by Day and playful ghost-like guitar work by Wood as he sings a tale of a relationship that’s come to an end for reasons unknown to him.

The title track opens like a lost early 1980’s film score that backs a race on some sort of futuristic motorcycle. Day’s synth bass and beats are like android heartbeats. “And the past has all been done. The circle comes ’round again. All I fear will go away. It’s only now just begun,” Wood sings. Fear, like all things, is impermanent (if we allow it to be), and The KVB encourage us to step off the treadmill of fear and move forward under our own power. I’m sure “Afterglow” has been remixed and spun in multiple Berlin industrial / dance clubs by now because it evokes images of Replicants seducing humans and vice-versa.

“With everything, there comes a price,” Wood sings at the beginning of “Violet Noon,” which the band describes on their Bandcamp page as “a romantic ode to the apocalypse.” I can’t describe it any better than that. Day’s breathy vocals on “Into Life” will make your pulse quicken and your spine shiver. “Live in Fiction” is another warning from them. “Everything in the world has changed. I cannot find the truth,” Wood sings. People have embraced fiction over truths that upset their comfortable realities, even when those truths would improve their lives and the lives of those around them.

“Tides” is appropriately named because Day’s synth swell and ebb like the tide, almost catching you off-guard now and then with their sudden burst of energy. “No Shelter” slinks into the room like a femme fatale walking into a detective’s office in a 1950’s dime novel. The album ends with the upbeat “Cerulean,” which has Day laying down a wicked synth-bass groove and her backing vocals feeling like a cool mist as Wood’s feel like a warm canyon wall echo.

Only Now Forever encourages us to accept truth and embrace the present. It’s themes resonate even more in 2020 than they did two years ago.

Keep your mind open.

[You can embrace the now by finally subscribing.]

Review: Sofia Kourtesis – Sarita Colonia

Hailing from Peru but based in Berlin, producer / DJ Sofia Kourtesis released a four-track EP, Sarita Colonia, earlier this year that slipped under my radar until I read about it in an article about the best electronic music we might’ve missed so far in 2020. I’m glad I found that article (which I can now no longer locate), because Sarita Colonia is a gem I would’ve otherwise overlooked.

The opening title track gets off to a great bouncy house start. The synths grow in volume and brightness as a steady dance beat keeps us grounded. “Moninga,” with its reversed samples and loops, is even happier than its predecessor. It even includes a sample from the cult film The Warriors (“Everybody says Cyrus is the one and only.”), which delighted me.

“Hollywood” is a groovy house track with thumping bass, Marilyn Monroe samples, synthesized hand percussion, and beats that shake more than a rabbit’s nose. It turns into a floor-filler around the two-minute mark when the synths back off and the bass takes the forefront. The closer, “Akariku,” has snappy synth-beats that almost sound like they’re cut off before they become full chops as heartbeat-bass thuds alongside them. The synths bubble until they’re at a rolling boil and you’re incapable of standing still by this point in the song (not even a full two minutes). The song is about love and lust, sampling The Temptations‘ “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” and Jakatta‘s “Ride the Storm.”

This is a slick EP. A full-length from Ms. Kourtesis would be a great addition to 2020’s electronic music catalog, but this well-crafted record is a great appetizer for more things to come.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe before you split.]