Built around his new custom synthesizer, the latest from the electronic musician and Nine Inch Nails member showcases the vast potential of both the instrument and the artist behind it.
Fact Mix 807: Yen Tech
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Fact Mix 807: Yen Tech
Part emotional odyssey, part experimental radio play, the SVBKVLT artist holds up a fractured mirror to the absurdity of contemporary times.
Yen Tech guides us through an extraordinary aural retelling of an alternative cultural history of the COVID-19 pandemic in his sprawling Fact mix, which weaves together text-to-script speech, AI language models and a breathtaking suite of experimental music, selected and compiled solely for its emotional heft. These are tracks that have provided strength and solace to the Shanghai-based producer and vocalist over the course of an extremely heavy year, linked more by an exploratory spirit than by any coherent aesthetic or genre focus. “Due to the pandemic I was unable to return to my residence in Shanghai and got stuck in semi-lockdown in the USA,” the artist explains. “The year that followed has felt like being encircled in a steady escalation of violently surreal and psychedeli
KMRU – Argon by Dan
Berlin / Nairobi based electronic musician and sound-artist Joseph Kamaru, aka KMRU releases Argon, the second track to be taken from his beautiful compendium album Logue, comprising works from his past years of self-releasing. The synth line of 2018’s Argon pops and bubbles, mimicking bright African melodic vibrancy while a churning, static distortion threatens to breach the surface, revealing a sophisticated, measured understanding of texture and timbral interplay.
KMRU is uniquely positioned between the rarely-married cultures of ambient and African musics, entwining his compositions with field recordings from his native Kenya and the surrounding countries of East Africa.Though the deep, tectonic slowness of his music can be compared to the work of Lawrence English, William Basinski, Stars of the Lid (i.e. Western musicians), Kamaru’s core culture shines through in a pure and singular way. Found within Logue
By Yunus Momoniat• 14 April 2021
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MAY 26: Artist and music producer Brian Eno poses in front of his latest light illustration titled 77 Million Paintings during a photo call for Luminous , a program of musical events being hosted by the Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid Sydney on May 26, 2009 in Sydney, Australia. The festival runs from today until June 14 and sees 30 musical acts, performances and installations taking place at Bennelong Point, including Eno s audio-visual piece 77 Million Paintings at Sydney Opera House on May 26, 2009 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Sergio Dionisio/Getty Images)
From the early 1950s, rock music became the soundtrack for city life, the thrashing snare drums and jangling of electric guitars reflecting and colouring the soundscapes of a cacophonous industrial civilisation. By the mid-1970s the guitar was being replaced by the synthesiser and the timbre of popular music began to change into varieties of other textures. H
Reviews / / 07 · 04 · 2021
When you listen back through an artistâs back catalogue you normally pick out a running theme. Whilst I listen through the previous 11 releases of Jamie Stewartâs
Xiu Xiu project, less of a band more of a revolving door for the gifted and outcast, the thing that stood out was the beauty of the music. Even if the times were hard. Yes, it was peppered were brutalist motifs but there is always a beauty to it. Sometimes itâs that of a fuzzy memory of childhood crush, or a broken beauty, like Jackie Kennedy during JFKâs funeral, but there it is a beauty to the music.