The Limits of Control

"Are you interested in films, by any chance?

I like really old films. You can really see what the world looked like... thirty, fifty, a hundred years ago. You know the clothes, the telephones, the trains, the way people smoked cigarettes... the little details of life.

The best films are like dreams you're never sure you've really had. I have this image in my head of a room full of sand. And a bird flies towards me, and dips its wing into the sand. And I honestly have no idea... whether this image came from a dream, or a film.

Sometimes I like it in films when people just sit there, not saying anything." Blonde

• IMDb
  

Album of the Day

Bibio - The Apple & The Tooth

(2009 / Warp Records)
folktronica / experimental / electronic

Bibio will follow the acclaimed success of his Warp debut LP 'Ambivalence Avenue' with an album of new work and remixes entitled 'The Apple & The Tooth'. With ‘The Apple and the Tooth’ Bibio once again plays to his strengths by showcasing a whole variety of songs, from lush introspective music collages to beats that could be like some long forgotten disco treasure dusted off. It would be hard to believe this was the work of one producer if it were not for the inimitable vintage imprint on his music. (warp.net)

My Rating: 4,5/5

Someday a real rain will come...

Album of the Day

Blockhead - The Music Scene

(2009 / Ninja Tune)
downtempo / electronic / instrumental hip-hop

New York hip hop producer Tony Simon aka Blockhead returns with his third and best instrumental album for Ninja Tune. Blockhead has long made beautiful, emotive music based around the hip hop template, but on “The Music Scene” he elevates his craft to another level. Tony puts it down to the use of Ableton, which means that rather than working from “one basic beat and building off it” (the standard hip hop model), he has begun stringing together multiple beats and weaving them together into increasingly complex, surprising and satisfying pieces of music. As he himself puts it, “I made each song a little more of a musical journey than anything I have ever done before.” (ninjatune.net)

My Rating: 4,5/5

Album of the Day

Simon Scott - Navigare

(2009 / Miasmah)
ambient / drone / modern classical

Simon Scott is something of a hero in underground music circles, having made his name as part of Slowdive - one of shoegaze's genre-defining acts - only to remain an intensely active presence on the scene through his collaborations with Rafael Anton Irisarri (as part of The Sight Below's live band) and Isan's Antony Ryan (recording together as Seavault). In addition to these projects, Scott curates the label Kesh, releasing works from the likes of Sebastian Roux, Hannu, Mark Templeton and Aus. Throughout all these various elements of Scott's work you can trace a common thread running throughout; there's a fixation on the more sculpted, textural aspects of sound. 'Navigare' fully embraces the idea of sound-sculpting whilst retaining the more suggestively song-driven impetus of Scott's past, and the resultant album marks a new evolutionary step for Erik Skodvin's Miasmah imprint. (boomkat.com)

My Rating: 4/5

Gordon Ball

Album of the Day

Danny Saul - Harsh, Final

(2009 / White Box)
electronic / experimental / ambient

The debut solo album from Manchester ‘singer-songwriter’ Danny Saul is an intriguing affair, as is immediately apparent from the beautifully haunting artwork. This is an aesthetic which carries across in to the music. It begins with a slow acoustic guitar which is soon accompanied by a bed of swirling celestial tones gradually building layer upon layer of beautiful textures, the crowning one being that of Saul’s resonant vocals. What begun as a fairly straightforward track fans out in to a sprawling sonic collage full of crackling tape hiss, and establishes Saul has more of an experimental ambient artist than your standard acoustic warbler. (God Is In The TV)

My Rating: 4/5

CandlestickMaker

Definitely a must see... IDM made in Craiova (RO)!

• Myspace
• Download
  

LastNightsParty

Album of the Day

BEAK> - BEAK>

(2009 / Invada)
psychedelic / experimental / ambient

Geoff Barrow cuts an uncompromising figure. His tenure in Portishead since the early ’90s has singled him out as a man unwilling to play the media game, instead letting the music speak for itself. It seems fitting that he’d do the same with BEAK>, an exercise in pecking at the boundaries of experimentation and testing the limits of restraint and the aural senses by recording live in one room. Combining the efforts of Matt Williams, aka Team Brick, on keyboards and Fuzz Against Junk’s Billy Fuller on bass, it’s hardly surprising there’s a doom-like quality to BEAK>’s debut, as heard on the cacophonous ‘Ham Green’, the brooding ‘Blagdon Lake’ and the caustic in-joke of ‘Barrow Gurney’. Submissive this is not. (nme.com)

My Rating: 4,5/5

Album of the Day

A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind Volume 2: Pagan Love Vibrations (Compiled and Mixed by The Amorphous Androgynous)

(2009 / Platipus Records)
compilation / psychedelic / folk


"A fine collection of obscure and semi obscure stuff, covering new and old..."
Dot Dot (The Outer Burbs-UK)

My Rating: 4/5

God Has Curly Hair

Where They Create

"My name is Paul Barbera. I am an interior based photographer - I travel and meet artist & creatives. This is a visual document of their creative environments."

Lost in Translation

link (via Mihai)

Paul Barbera