Music Reviews

Nine Inch Nails is riding high on the publicity of its heavily hyped Ghosts I-IV release and is capitalizing on that buzz with a new free album release, The Slip. It’s available exclusively as a free download, but physical releases are in the works.
There’s a 2008 Nine Inch Nails Tour coming up this fall, and […]

 

 1,000,000: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Spotted Peccary label has been consistently putting out great ambient, space and synth music albums. Their latest release, Below The Mountain, by Craig Padilla, is no exception.
We’ve reviewed a couple of other albums by Padilla, The Light In The Shadow & Genesis. While his last two releases had more of an ambient or space […]

Made Records sent over iiO’s Rapture Reconstructed and it wasn’t one of those disks that we had to immediately dig into and check out.
The release is a double-CD set of remixes of iiO’s 2002 club hit Rapture. Does anybody really need 18 remixes of any track?
After giving the release a few listens, though, I’ve changed […]

If you want to hear some music that’s really original, you could do a lot worse than checking out Ojos De Brujo’s wonderfully syncopated, flamenco-influenced Techarí.
Ojos De Brujo (Eyes of the Wizard) is a Barcelona-based world fusion group, with eight members that play everything from flamenco guitar to tablas to turntables. Guest on the release […]

Gods & Monsters, the seventh release from Juno Reactor, sees Ben Watkins stretching a bit, but not straying too far from the Reactor formula of mixing techno and world music influences.
While it’s great to see techno getting bent and adapted, not all off Juno Reactor’s attempts to push its range are successful.
The first track on […]

The Zizzle Zoundz is a psychedelic electronic music toy that looks to me like it might be as much fun for parents as it is for kids.
Apparently it uses RFID embedded in the pieces that act as triggers.
Here’s the official description:
Zoundz creates a fusion of self- composed music with an accompanying light show. With it, […]

René van der Wouden’s Universal Quiet is a collection of retro synth music that is a treat for fans of 70’s Berlin School music.van der Wouden is a Dutch composer and synthesist who describes his style as retro, Berliner Schule and progressive. van der Wouden builds on Klaus Schulze’s pioneering mid-seventies sound, modernizing it and […]

 

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Momentum, the latest release from UK artist David Wright, is a generous helping of lush symphonic electronica.
It’s another great release on the AD Label, which is home to Robert Fox, Code Indigo, Ashok Prema, Richard Bone and many others.
Momentum is a studio reworking of music Wright performed at a recent Gatherings concert in the US. […]

Nine Inch Nails latest release, Ghosts I-IV, has generated a tremendous amount of hype, more for NIN’s distribution approach than the music itself.
The group is offering the release in a variety of versions, and is giving away a selection of free tracks, Ghosts I, as a teaser. You can also download the collection officially via […]

I picked up a copy of Jean Michele Jarre’s Oxygene: Live In Your Living Room DVD recently and it’s a must-have for fans of classic synth music.
The package captures a 30th-anniversary live multimedia performance of Oxygene, and features a 5.1 DVD of the performance, a 3D video version of the performance, the new version of […]

DJ Dolores is back with a new CD of Brazilian house music - 1 Real.
1 Real combines traditional Brazilian pop arrangements with DJ-style mixing. The tracks are full of afro-Brazilian percussion, brass and chants.
More Sergio than Suba.
While Dolores’ sound is fairly traditional, it’s clear from the start of the CD that Dolores will deliver an […]

 

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German electronic music artist Robert Schroeder has been producing music since 1979. He was discovered by Klaus Schulze, and to this day, his music bears a Schulze/Berlin School influence.
Schroeder’s music on SphereWare is in the classic synth music vein of 70’s synth artists, but with enough modern touches to make it appeal not only to […]

Hypnosphere’s Magnetism CD is a fantastic collection of Berlin-School synth music that fans of classic Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream will love.
The music, composed and performed by Lambert Ringlage & Wolfgang Barkowski, features wonderful warm analog sounds, evolving digital synth textures, interlocking sequences, phased pads, ambient interludes - all the stuff that made those 70’s […]

 

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 Magnetism Part 3 [2:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Angels Voices is a polished new chill-out collection from Sequoia Records that is themed around the female voice.
You may know the Sequoia label for its Buddha Lounge or Hotel Tara chill-out albums. This set isn’t far off from those series, but the vibe is closer to new age than downtempo electronica.
The tracks on Angels Voices […]

The Shukar Collective offers something a little bit different than the average electronica on their latest CD, Urban Gypsy.
Urban Gypsy features ursari music - Romanian bear tamer music - combined with breakbeats and dub effects. The tracks prominently feature folk instruments like spoons, wooden barrels and darabuka. Just as prominent, though, are drum machines, synthesizers, […]