Month: November 2013
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Rael Jones – Mandrake (post-classical)
The running times of the nine pieces collected on Mandrake fall within the broad compass of the usual song lengths of pop and rock music, and they are gathered into a whole which may fall a little short of the usual length of a contemporary album, but whose duration would…
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Various Artists – Singles and EPs
Twelve minutes is a respectable length for an EP, but with eight tunes on this disc they’re still pretty much crammed in, none of them clocking in closer to two minutes than one-and-a-half. If you think that makes this sound like a sampler, you’d be very wrong: although these bands…
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Mechanimal – Mechanimal (electronic rock)
Produced amidst the collapse of Greek civil society and the evaporation of its economic certainties, Mechanimal looks outwards, fixing its gaze in particular on America and Germany as the source of its musical materials, and by implication (not to mention common consent) significant contributors to the social ills afflicting Mechanimal’s…
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Skåglörds – Korea (doom/ electronica)
I don’t know what this has to do with Korea; no more do I know why doom metal (or sabbathcore as it was amusingly described by the label when Korea was submitted for review) represents the north, and electronica the south. I like some enigma in my music, so it’s…
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Various Artists – Album Roundup
This entire album is performed straight to tape (or whatever recording medium was used) on a Roland MC-505 groovebox; Cory Peak chose to use a particular set of simple, rounded timbres that gives it a distinct 8-bit vibe, although the machine is considerably more sophisticated, and a much more powerful…
Oliver Arditi 