The science on friendships is out; they are critical to our mental health and general well-being. Friendships allow us to share our ideas without fear of being judged and can make the burdens of life seem less insurmountable. Unfortunately, the importance of physical comradery has waned in our digital world.Continue Reading
LA-based four-piece Bondo make delicately robust music on their debut album Print Selections. If “delicately robust” sounds like an oxymoron to you, that’s because it is. The group’s music is contradictory in that it is both gentle and edgy, innocent and sinister, and lulls the listener into a strange worldContinue Reading
Photo by Sinitta Leunen Igor Ballereau – ijkl French composer Igor Ballereau leads the listener down complex corridors of dark piano, expressive guitar, gutsy percussion and strange sonic experiments on his recent album ijkl. Field recordings of crumbling earth and falling stones are set against sporadic and discordant strikes onContinue Reading
There’s a haunting quality to the music of New York-based artist Sam and the Sea. On their debut EP, “Evil Ghosts,” they deliver seemingly gentle songs, but there is more happening under the initial surface of experimental folk and shoegazing indie, a type of heavy metal in disguise, like aContinue Reading
Being able to find value in the regular is a precious gift. Poets need this skill, not just to help them give meaning to nature but to life. Someone who knows this is Italian producer Joao Ceser. It’s easy to envision the Brianza-based producer sitting in his studio atContinue Reading
The recently released trailer for the Tetris movie led me down a wikihole where I landed upon “The Tetris Effect”. The Tetris effect is when you engage in a game for an extended period, and the logic of the game world follows you into the real one. So, for example,Continue Reading
Photo by Alex Cooper Kayam – Omens alternative Berlin siblings Kayam have recently released their sophomore album “Omens”, and the titular first single from that album is an alluring introduction to an album of intimate and environmental alternative folk music. However, the group prefer to classify their music with theContinue Reading
Girondolini is a musical project by Vienna-based jazz-trained drummer July Skone. Formerly of the high-concept, in-your-face project Gudrun Von Laxenburg, Skone’s recent outing sees his impressive drumming style take a backseat to sample-based plunderphonics pulled off with quicksilver precision. Featuring a cast of collaborators, the self-titled debut album is aContinue Reading
For many people, the 1984 movie Amadeus is the first point of reference for the world of classical music, bringing a dramatic and character-fueled aspect to the otherwise intimidating wall of pretence and demanding music. The success of that movie is down to memorable scenes, one of which involves an emperor summarizingContinue Reading
Maybe songs don’t need to be about anything to be about something. This seems to be the case for the pieces of Sam Himself, a musical project led by Swiss-born NY implant Sam Koechlin. His painfully cool vocal delivery is low in the mix and used to perfume odourless lyrics,Continue Reading