Lone - Everything Is Changing Colour

Label: VU-US
Released: 2007
Style: IDM, Downtempo, Ambient

"Mix the charm of early Boards of Canada and the intensity of Chris Clark, and you get Lone. Moreso a collection of tracks than an album, there's a rawness to this debut I haven't heard in IDM for quite some time, and it's something that I think is desperately needed. Lone's material captures the essence of what originally attracted everyone to Hi Scores. It wasn't children's voices or number counting; it was the idea that electronic music could escape its mechanical boundaries and display the same amount of raw emotion instruments could without becoming caricatures. Many of the artists Boards of Canada influenced have tried so hard to re-create the components of their music that they never ever re-created the magic that was the eary Boards' true appeal. On the second half of the record, a more pervasive hip-hop influence takes over, and it's to no detriment of the quality of the collection. It's no surprise to see that Lone's hooked up with Bibio's Artists' Valley collective, which cites the Boards as a major appeal, but also dabbles in the hip-hop realm as well (see Letherette). A really captivating debut, and something the IDM/hip-hop heads absolutely need to take notice of." - The Music Lobby

Tracklisting:

1 Duelling Auroras (3:27)
2 Proper Vivid (3:55)
3 My Eye (6:58)
4 Summer Of Summer (4:08)
5 Pure White Lights (4:10)
6 Drifting Off Too Far (1:11)
7 Your Lucky Numbers (2:05)
8 Cat's Eye (1:05)
9 Light From The Heart Nebula (6:02)
10 Piano Happy (2:05)
11 Midnight Feast (5:32)
12 Time Was A Spiral (1:07)
13 A Quadruple Sky (4:36)
14 Number Station (0:55)
15 Missing Persons (2:54)

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Strategy - Drumsolo's Delight

Label: Kranky
Released: 2004
Style: Glitch, Dub, Ambient

"Drumsolo's Delight weds the subtle rhythmic promise of the early work anthologized on Strut with a discreet ambience. The album flirts with the tensions of hyper-modern digital vastness on one hand, and the gritty immediacy of live dub mixing on the other. Drumsolo's Delight moves towards the points of overlap between rhythm and cloudiness- reaching towards the grey area where sounds share active and passive characteristics. Drumsolo's Delight is Strategy's most thematic work to date, and aside from the technical syntheses achieved in the studio, the album is an accurate snapshot of several years' of work creating music concerned with geography/place, people, memory, and weather."

Tracklisting:

1 Cascadian Nights (4:03)
2 Super Shewolf Inna City (5:37)
3 Drumsolo's Delight (5:31)
4 Jazzy's Dilemma (5:40)
5 Super Final Zen (5:54)
6 Walkingtime (5:29)
7 The Jazzy Drumsolo (11:44)

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Collections Of Colonies Of Bees - Birds

Label: Table Of The Elements
Released: 2008
Style: Experimental

"In an era of pervasive lo-fi meandering and leaden, self-indulgentnavel-gazing, Collections of Colonies of Bees sweep in grandly, astheir name implies, in great, billowing swarms of sound, bourn alofton a thousand wings of miniscule, elegant detail. In these extendedinstrumental tracks, guitars chime and soar, recalling the bestcampaigns of the guitar armies of both Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham;deft yet intensely focused percussion propels towards an inevitabledawn; covering it all is a gossamer veil of subtly nuancedelectronica.

Birds is a joyous, expansive experience; crisp, clean, and clear;dappled in sunshine; mottled with dew; epic minimalism in exquisiteregistration. That’s saying something. In our present musicalclimate of smoggy lassitude, Collections of Colonies of Bees arediligently producing a sound that is dazzling – and as sweet as honeytaken straight from the comb. Dig in." - Label

Tracklisting:

1 Flocks I (7:06)
2 Flocks II (10:23)
3 Flocks III (11:00)
4 Flocks IV (8:45)

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Emeralds - Solar Bridge

Label: Hanson Records
Released: 2008
Style: Drone, Experimental, Ambient

"HANSON RECORDS is proud to announce EMERALDS - SOLAR BRIDGE, the trio's first full-length album after numerous cassette and cd-r releases on such labels as American Tapes, Chondritic Sound, and the bands own imprints Wagon and Gneiss Things. The album opens with the side long 'MAGIC' where the band builds a quiet drone into an extreme thick sawblade of swirling noise as beautiful as it is menacing. The flip is yet another sidelong journey titled 'THE QUAKING MESS', a track that stabs your brain with fluttering sparks of synthesized needles before relaxing you into a Göttschingesque dream state while slowly bringing you back to earth with an electronic wave of molten rumble. Fans of the smooth tones of 'New Age Of Earth' era Ash Ra Tempel and the buzzing thick drones of Throbbing Gristle's 'Heathen Earth' should take note, as EMERALDS may be their new source for electronic drugs." - Label

Tracklisting:

1 Magic (12:34)
2 The Quaking Mess (14:14)

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Aidan Baker - I Will Always And Forever Hold You In My Heart And Mind

Label: Small Doses
Released: 2007
Style: Ambient, Drone

"This is a stunning new full-length solo work from the man behind Nadja and Arc. A 51 minute work of shimmering, pulsating drone broken into twelve parts (one for each word of the title) that come together to form a seemless, wordless narrative." - Label

Tracklisting:

1 I (5:37)
2 Will (5:30)
3 Always (2:49)
4 And (3:20)
5 Forever (3:33)
6 Hold (7:09)
7 You (7:04)
8 In (2:04)
9 My (5:03)
10 Heart (6:10)
11 And (2:19)
12 Mind (1:15)

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