ABOUT
Record Curator + Marketing at at LUNA Music. 10+ yrs experience as Design Strategist + Project Manager for web, brand, strategic planning. Play music, eat toast, ride bikes, walk fast.
Late-night bleary jazz vibes to Swiss electro-funk and most points in-between.
Efficient Space, Australian label home to one of my favorite reissues (Steve Hiett’s humid, languorous take on electric blooze) and favorite contemporary electronic LPs (Wilson Tanner’s half-scrambled, half-plaintive II), presents another reissue, 1986’s airy, jazz-adjacent self-titled from Singing Dust.
Got tipped to instrumental and space-y funk/studio psych Swiss outfit L’Eclair via label Bongo Joe (who released an excellent ‘80s Spanish ambient comp last yr).
Tokyo electronic trio UNKNOWN ME are Yakenohara, P-RUFF, H. Takahashi, and Osawa Yudai (Takahashi’s plant music LP Sonne und Wasser is v v good; hat-tip Commend). Jim O’Rourke and foodman guest.
Saw NOMO in Bloomington with a handful of people in the mid-aughts – just an excellent show (2 drummers!) in a too-big venue during the student-less summer. “New Song” is from their 2006 LP New Tones on Ubiquity. Ripe for reevaluation – this grooves.
Berlin electronic purveyors experiences ltd. released my favorite LP of 2020 courtesy Ulla – via London, the new LP from mu tate edges more toward the float tank dub of L0G than Ulla’s ASMR-adjacent glitch. There are glimpses of dancefloor before resubmerging.
Also out on California all-genre LEAVING is LA-based Lionmilk’s solo+soothing electric piano tape from this Winter, originally dropped in friend’s mailboxes. A full-band live double LP is imminent...
UK-based Métron (ft. favorites 7F0 and Meitei) released the new LP from Li Yilei 之 / OF. “WEI / 未“ is pointillist & melodic electronic built on a bed of birdsong field recording.
Allen aka Hiway Ricky played the new Sam Prekop (Sea & Cake) LP for me (despite me forgetting to listen to it) on the nicest stereo I’ve ever encountered. He described the warm+healing properties of Prekop’s meandering synth+drum machine tone poems and, well...he was spot on.
Suemori (aka Hoshina Anniversary) fries traditional instrumentation and vocals into fused electronic forms. This is dance? Out this year on Amsterdam’s / Elena Colombi’s Osàre! Editions.
Ex-Yellow Swan noise impresario Pete Swanson’s label Freedom To Spend has released a handful of mind-openers in the recent past (Pep Llopis, Ursula K. LeGuin, Tiziano Popoli). UMAN - a French sibling duo - is no exception. With painfully-1992 album art, this is some 3rd-eye level New Age that avoids token cheesy moments.
Another low-country jam that floated by – Belgian trio Ignatz & De Stervende Honde play rambling, minor-key choogle. Think a sunrise Velvets set or the insular yang to Endless Boogie’s blaring yin. A gentle ripper to close this playlist courtesy Antwerp’s Ultra Eczema.