the electroscape has been busy absorbing new sounds and writing in-depth stories, such as our piece about Ireland-based independent musician Alpha Chrome Yayo. This issue of survey of the electroscape features albums with dark, ambient, and meditative qualities, those with old school dance beats and melodies, and even a Christmas album. The artists span the globe, some well-known and many just breaking into the scene with their debut release. Explore. Discover.
Albums are listed in alphabetical order.
(a) period. by AES DANA
(a) period. by AES DANA is a trek through spaces that cannot be clearly defined and straddles fear and comfort, grounded and suspended, historic and futuristic. The soundscape is built around an ever-present reverberating hum that is cold, dark, and wet with waves of chaos that periodically wash over the psychological space, sometimes sounds of rain drops of short electrical circuits, water washing over rocks on the shore, or heavy footsteps rattling the foundation. These waves are like figures momentarily revealing themselves before disappearing into the fog, as you climb the muddy hilltops and sink into the deep crevasses of your journey, curiously wondering what will appear next and when it will do so.
A Year to Remember by Neaon
A Year to Remember is the debut LP from Australian-based artist Neaon. The album showcases mysterious, ethereal vocals embedded in a grim, yet hopeful, soundscape that paints a mystical and surreal landscape as gorgeous as the cover art where the percussion taps along the peaks of mountain tops and synths sometimes wind through deep, narrow valleys and other times hover like fog. The songwriting creates great tension between cool and warm tones. The album stands as strong as a pillar, grounded in Earth, yet it invites you on an otherworldly voyage into the unknown. Neaon also recently collaborated with VVMPYRE on a single entitled “Your Flesh Is Calling” which features her dark and majestic vocals and guitar work.
Appalachian Wilderness by Lisa Bella Donna
The soundscape on Appalachian Wilderness is so powerful, it weakens the knees of your consciousness, commanding you, without awareness, to experience a voyage through the wilderness that is at one time or another frightening, magical, transcendental, and grounded. This December 2021 release from synth mastermind Lisa Bella Donna consist of two songs clocking in over 20 minutes each, both navigating uncharted territory with intensity that is like rafting down a raging river and peacefulness that is like strolling along a stream in a fairy garden. The mood is dark and mysterious, and the sound is engrossing, built from synths that, at times, enter the soundscape so slowly they have consumed you long before you realize, and at times, force their way in.
Big Cosy Christmas by Alpha Chrome Yayo
Alpha Chrome Yayo’s Big Cosy Christmas is as authentic as Christmas albums come. If you’re having a shit time, or if you’re having a great time, ol’ ACY invites you into his home, stokes the fire in your heart, and pours you a drink. Alpha Chrome Yayo ventures into feelings of loneliness and heartache on “Lonely This Christmas,” revisits classics such as “Christmas Time is Here,” and delivers the playful, such as the chiptune-based holiday song on “Broken Game Boy for Christmas.” Alpha Chrome Yayo gifted his listeners an important reminder – an invitation, really – at Christmas time, too, which is to make the absolute most of your life on “Have Yourself an Alpha Chrome Christmas.” So, go on and do as ol’ ACY says.
Bleeding Edge of Night by Night Razor
Bleeding Edge of Night is the debut LP from retro-synth artist Night Razor who hails from Des Moines, Iowa. The authentic character of the album cannot be overstated. The soundscape is built from old school synth sounds, nightmarish melodies, bruising bass lines, relentless beats, and brain battering percussion elements, all surrounded by textures that are sticky and elastic. The songwriting is never overdone. Night Razor uses every sound, rhythm, texture, and beat to do the most it possibly can do. The mood is a dark, late night in a crowded club that only comes to light with each pulse of the strobe.
Chaos Mesa by Woves
Chaos Mesa by Woves displays a symbiotic relationship between a richly textured dark electro soundscape and vocals. Chaos Mesa becomes increasingly addictive with each listen as the intimate lyricism, vast array of moods, and exquisite detail in the daring and innovative songwriting become more salient. The co-existence of a noticeable pop character, psychologically engaging vocals, and varied sounds from which the melodies and textures are built from bring you back to Chaos Mesa time and time again.
Cybertherial by Jonny Fallout
Jonny Fallout released his debut full-length LP, Cybertherial, in November 2021, a beautiful soundscape with vocals that grip you emotionally from beginning to end. Jonny Fallout is a magician in creating layers of melodies that drift through digital landscapes, reverberating through endless loops of zeros and ones that exist neither here nor there. Ethereal vocals are drawn from future places that can feel uncertain and synthetic, such as on “Hypnotized” and “We’ll See It Through (Anthem),” yet somehow entirely natural, grounded, raw, and vulnerable, such as on “Forever (Tonight)” and “The Number.” The album closes with an invigorating, impassioned duet, “Magic Love (Flux),” featuring an infectious retrofuture pop character that moves you to press play from the start of the album one more time.
Dream Utopia by XENNON
On Dream Utopia XENNON took a detour from his signature vocal synthwave sound to write an inquisitive and thought-provoking instrumental concept album about an alien invasion that meets ancient powers. The soundscape simultaneously conveys past and future, capturing the clash of these forces. XENNON created a vast landscape from magnificent lead synth melodies and atmosphere that, at times, can be dreamy and, at times, filled with feelings of angst, intent, revelation, defeat, victory, and new beginnings. The storytelling quality on Dream Utopia is salient in dialogue but even more so through the progressive songwriting which can play like winding up to a green mountaintop to survey the land or assembling an army and marching into battle.
Future Ruins by Architrave
Future Ruins is liberating electropop that showcases a dark psychedelic soundscape with ethereal vocals strung across the space. The songwriting is entrancing. Architrave created a sound that gently brings together a pitter-pattering of beats, looming guitar folding into itself through time, and mesmerizing synth melodies and vocals in one space that is somehow at once big, open, and powerfully broadcasts far and wide yet tight, intimate, and secretive.
Lost Time by Young Empress
Lost Time is the debut LP by Young Empress, and it’s nothing short of spectacular. The album has an otherworldly mood, with warm tones from the bass and vocals so majestic the only appear by moonlight. The soundscape, songwriting, and harmonies have a classic, vintage character that adds a special intangible quality that draws you in. Young Empress so elegantly let each instrument shine – lead guitar wails on center stage, percussion balloons, sax cuts through the thick, and lead keyboard melodies dance across the top. Lost Time is drenched in a wide array of moods, including love, sorcery, anguish, hope, unimpeded passion, and, what’s more, they’re all coated in magic dust.
Kyoto Dreams by Laura Dre
London-based artist Laura Dre tells a tale of a young woman who woke up inspired to find meaning for her future self on Kyoto Dreams. The album is a complete listening experience, a story told in Japanese on chapters interweaved with instrumentals that sculpt the atmosphere and set the mood, which can be serious at times and youthful, magical, and fantastical at others. The atmosphere brings together cool hues of hopeless wandering through rain on city streets together with warm rays of sunshine and waterfalls of new beginnings. The soundscape is built around a light, breakbeat base with a lo-fi dreamy quality, sticky bass lines and hypnotic melodies painted over the top that sometimes prompt you to dance and other times to pause and wonder.
Massive by Mike Templar
Mike Templar is known for creating storied and thought-provoking concept albums, such as Trom – The Resolution of Mind and Digital Death. On his December, 2021 release, Massive, you’ll encounter hypnotic melodies locking onto your brain waves, against solid, richly textured percussion providing a stable yet remarkably light foundation. Loaded with organic, warm bass and patient, calculated songwriting with a salient storytelling quality that elicits feelings of apprehension.
Might Be Evil by Wolfmen of Mars
Are you looking for adventure? Might Be Evil by Wolfmen of Mars is for you. The sound draws on the massive scale of 70s progressive rock and is built around chugging, distorted guitar riffs, electronic grooves, and ritualistic synth melodies. The soundscape is massive and unearthly, and the songwriting tells wild stories with ancient and futuristic origins that can be thrilling, daunting, curious, and playful. Perhaps no cover art has better represented the sound of an album.
Mother's Blood Edition by Penelope Trappes
Penelope Trappes invites you to indulge in the depths of a torturous soundscape on Mother’s Blood Edition, a radical transformation of songs from Penelope Three, stripped of vocals and re-envisioned to communicate emotion and intimate experience through sound. “Nervous,”, for instance, was transformed formed from a 4-minute song with vocals draped over a humming backdrop, fear-inducing beats, and piano notes that drip like cold water down your neck to a 9-minute beast that plays like traversing dense, hissing fog, covering you in the cold and wet. The soundscape on Mother’s Blood Edition is built around the humming sound from within the womb and a splattering of reverberating drone-based tones that are cool, dark, and mysteriously appear from unknown directions. Yet, sometimes, those tones are noticeably warm and provide an indescribable sense of comfort and security. Read Penelope’s captivating description of the album and inspiration for embarking on the journey to create it here.
Multiverse Nightmare by Filmmaker
I’m drawn to the raw electronic synthpunk sound Filmmaker has cultivated, and the synthpunk shines on Multiverse Nightmare which has noticeable horror, industrial, and noise characteristics. Songs are built around sounds that are rough and raw and hypnotic melodies, all within a minimalist soundscape. Layers of distorted chaos reverberate throughout, and beats hammer at your brain, battering you until you wake. What you anticipate in the songwriting doesn’t come, and what you don’t anticipate does, which yields a listening experience that’s engaging and surprising.
Scuro Chiaro by Alessandro Cortini
Scuro Chiaro is an expedition into places that are cold and dark, at times artificial and at times organic. The places you’ll travel can be otherworldly, and they can be quite Earthly. The songwriting is such that with every note, you anxiously await the next, which elicits feelings of uncertainty and provokes a sense of curiosity as you navigate landscapes in unknown territories. The soundscape is an unseen force, placing pressure on you and creating discomfort and tension, with no relief. Before long, the forces subsume you, and while great peace can be found as if floating atop thread strung across spaces with no beginning and no end, there is also a lurking sense of wariness and ensuing danger, a fear the thread will wrap itself around you, dragging you into a bottomless black pit. Press play. Close your eyes. You might be surprised where you end up.
Soaking by Alpha Chrome Yayo
Alpha Chrome Yayo delighted his listeners with the surprise release Soaking, a concept album about one of life’s simple pleasures and necessities – bathing. The lyricism touches on self-pampering in a tub filled with warm water and dead sea salts on “Funky Bath” to stinking up the steam room on “Das Badhaus.” ACY delivers the playful lyrics through rap, busting catchy rhymes alongside head-bobbing funk, gangster melodies, and big, thumping beats. The instrumentals carry the spa theme through, creating an atmosphere fit for relaxation on “Ferns and Steam” and quiet reflection on “La Porte D’Argent,” the latter named after a fabulous day spa in an episode of one of Peter’s favorite sitcoms, Fraiser. So, pour a glass of champaign, draw a bath, get sudsy.
There's Too Much Beauty In This Beast by Strange Eyes
There’s Too Much Beauty In This Beast by Strange Eyes is intimate, authentic, and genuine, magically bringing the brilliant complexity of simple moments to life. The soundscape is dark and open, serving as a grand and dramatic stage upon which impassioned vocals stand atop, vocals that burn like a fire in the cold, icy winter air, pulling you closer. The lyricism feels especially personal, drawing you in further, and elicits a sense of self-reflection through stories of beasts and monsters. The Bandcamp version of the album comes with an exclusive bonus track.
Trauma Club by Male Tears
Trauma Club by Male Tears is sexy, primal, and authentic. The gothic darkwave character shines through in the keyboard melodies, gritty bass lines, and elastic beats. The album is populated with trance inducing melodies, lashing percussion, and ghostly vocals that hover in black spaces, slipping into your soul. Male Tears strung the entire concept through from the opening notes, the cover art, and logo.
Velvet Freedom by Binaural Space
When I first pressed play on Velvet Freedom by Binaural Space, everything around me stopped. I felt shivers up my spine, the hair on my arms raised, and my eyes welled up. I knew nothing of the story. I simply felt a history of life in one moment, envisioned standing knee high in green, grassy fields populated with yellow flowers under the warm sun and blue skies ahead. That’s powerful. Velvet Freedom is much more than the sound, though. It’s a celebration of the Velvet Revolution and the courage to pursue freedom. The album tells pieces of the story through audio clips, along with songwriting that plays like chapters in a book. The soundscape is vintage, melodies hypnotizing, and each note played has great inertia that subsumes the psychological, emotional, and physical space.
We Had Good Times Together, Don't Forget That by Sewerslvt
We Had Good Times Together, Don’t Forget That is an emotional and psychological experience. To say it is complex is an understatement. The soundscape is built around a breakbeat core with atmospheric melodies layered upon the top that are anxiety provoking, fear-inducing, lonesome, liberating, and transformative, sometimes co-existing in time, but resisting fusion in spirit. The cover conveys sad, evil, and terrified images simultaneously forcing their way through the mesh, which embodies the mood as much as it does the songwriting and sound.
You Live Forever by Son Moon
In writing You Live Forever, Son Moon contemplated our shared experience of crossing over from the living to the dead. The album plays like an expedition into what cannot be recounted. The soundscape stretches a moment of crossing over into an extended stay, looking back at times, ahead at others, sometimes feeling scared, and sometimes safe, secure, and peaceful, a recentering as the sun rises and falls on life. The stunning cover art seems to depict a great divide of coming and going, beginning and end, day and night, lush, green, life and dry, desert, death.
Zephilus by Mise
Mise crafted a diverse soundscape on Zephilus that is dreamy, invigorating, adventurous, and everything in between. The ambient atmosphere hums, gently pushing on you with cool vibrations, an atmosphere that is so stable a single beat can startle you, waking you from the spell hypnotic melodies cast over you. Mise stretches the space on Zephilus, sticking sounds in the corners, maximizing their output. This quality of the songwriting becomes increasingly salient as the album evolves. On “Cypris,” “Hypnosis,” and “Forgotten Nature,” for example, the bass drum shakes your core with each boom, atmospheric synths oblige you to take notice of their persistent pushing and prodding, rhythmic percussion pummels your consciousness, and subtle lead melodies lift you up only to let you fall.