A diverse set of albums drawn from the electroscape. Always the norm. Never the exception.
Explore. Discover.
Albums are in alphabetical order.
Cybertherial II by Jonny Fallout
Cybertherial II is the companion to Jonny Fallout’s debut LP, Cybertherial, which itself followed the stunning EP, Escape from Ultra City. Cyberthrial II is moody, authentic, and complex. The soundscape is built from reverberating synths, beats that balloon, trample, and slap, melodies that endlessly oscillate, with seemingly their own living emotion that can coddle, heel, and leave the heart weeping The atmosphere leaves you with a distinct feeling of wanting, for what, I do not know, and is perhaps the beauty of it all. The vocalist is otherworldly, a flame that warms the cold air.
Fountain of the Heart by VANITAS命死
Fountain of the Heart by VANITAS命死 is a majestic, earthly, and lush soundscape, like climbing through mountains of green, slushy moss. The rhythmicity of the melodies and bass lines continuously round the bend but never arrive. Beats run across consciousness, leaving you only aware of them momentarily. Sounds of an artificial nature in the distance, possessed dolls lying under the bed, days on the swings during childhood, all caught between disorientation and awareness. The promise of a magical place lures you in, and though you may disappear into an empty space that’s memoryless, it’s a glorious visit.
Midsummer by Binaural Space
Binaural Space released Midsummer on summer solstice. The album was inspired by the bittersweet feeling that the days are already getting shorter just as the warmth and light of summer begins, magical forests with women who lure, dance with, and kill men. The mood is both somber and exciting, eliciting feelings of defeat and triumph. The soundscape is ordered, fluid, yet there’s a sense of wobbling on the edge of chaos. The sounds can be dreamy, warped, or like scraping rusting strings in hollow cans, creating great texture, all bottled up in a supernatural atmosphere that is noticeably grown from within and unfolds like sensations coming and going through time.
Platinum Phantom by Darien Shields
It’s 1997. Infectious pop melodies, beats, and bass lines can be heard blaring through rattling boom box speakers, out car windows, and the tube TV of pubertal teens, sentiments brought to life by Darien Shields on Platinum Phantom through exquisite sampling, redefining nostalgic sounds in a thumping, warped, and hazy vapor space. Most striking is the variety of moods Platinum Phantom offers. Sure, the grooves will draw you in, but you will also be gifted time travel to a late 90s dance club, paranoia, heartache, serenity, and contemplation. The album also features a collaboration with Donor Lens, which brilliantly sets warm, organic and natural, hypnotizing percussion and bass lines against the sounds of the city.
Screentime by Enraile
Enraile has crafted a hulk of an album on Screentime. It’s a drug injected into your vein, a vial loaded with a heavy dose of invigoration and emotion, soon to be pumping through your heart. Beats hit hard, balloon, and batter, while heavily weighted melodies are transmitted to and from your psyche from a tuning fork across broken radio waves, leaving just after arriving, within reach but never graspable.
Some Kind of Magic by Amethyst Rain
Some Kind of Magic by Amethyst Rain is at once liberating and enveloping, an ascension into a magical, surreal, and glorious space. Bass lines throughout are warm, deep, and steady, providing a much needed sense of stability in this new place you’ll find yourself, commanding you to slow down, while cool synth melodies with a noticeable pop element, yet brave enough to be sorrowful, invite you to wonder an ethereal atmosphere and contemplate new ways of thinking and feeling. Each note is carefully and gently placed into a web of sound unraveling across time, working together synergistically as they construct the soundscape. Nothing leads. Nothing follows. Amethyst Rain is Marek Hradil and Sheridan Black of Neaon. Explore their solo projects.
Specific State by Manhatten
Manhatten has bestowed his third LP upon the world, Specific State, and it is stunning. Following Blue Sky Girl and Can We Talk, we find Manhatten stepping into a vapor space, a surgeon using his scalpel to carve a fresh soundscape from a slab of rainbow-colored zeros and ones, the songwriting the movement of his steady hand shaping the coming and going of each note. Most striking is the tension in the emotion Specific State elicits, built around patient tempos, the moods can be energetic, somber, and bright. Addictively inquisitive.
Swarm by Be The Hammer & JOHN 3:16
I discovered JOHN 3:16 and his brand of drone on Nikoletta Winters’ webzine, Love Across The Light Years, where she reviewed his December 2020 release, Tempus Edax Rerum, and have since dug into his discography and related musical projects, including the sonic beast Swarm by Be The Hammer & JOHN 3:16. Swarm is built around long, drawn out melodies that are not unlike a swarm of unseen forces in sound, growing in strength as they near, seemingly always behind you, no matter the direction you turn to face to meet them. The guitar wails, feedback fades like white noise over black spaces, a backdrop to haunting spoken word. Cinematic in scale, due in part to the concrete crushing percussion that serves as a perilous reminder of an invisible calvary of death lurking, waiting for your arrival, yet somehow, the soundscape is quite soothing, perhaps, at last, lethargy of a restless mind, or perhaps, the sweet relief of surrender.
Vapor by Persona La Ave & Baraka
Persona La Ave & Baraka pair up on Vapor. A groovy, hazy vapor space lays the foundation for an out of body experience vacillating between two selves, one in a psychedelic spa, the other sitting in a raggedy recliner surround by bargain striped carpeted walls. Scratch beneath the surface here, though, because Vapor is chocked full of hypnotic melodies, rhythmic bass lines, supernatural grooves, vintage textures, moods, and atmospheres, all incredibly rich and nuanced, an album to revisit and indulge often, peeling away the layers one-by-one.
Velvet Garden by Mystryl
Velvet Garden by Mystryl consists of seven beautifully composed songs that creates an enveloping and breathtaking atmosphere. The unfolding of the album is not unlike the planting of a seed that grows into a journey through life and death. The soundscape elicits a sense gasping, seeking passing thoughts as synth melodies reverberate emotion. Against your will, the energy gently nudges you over the edge into the light, dark, supernatural, earthy, imaginative, and quite tangible.
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