Z Tapes is a small-but-mighty label out of Bratislava, Slovakia, who release everything from bedroom pop to properly polished indie music. They have a massive roster of artists they work with, and also, bucking the current trend for vinyl, offer cassette releases. There is a lot of appealing music on this comp, but the track […]
Category: Music
Various Artists: Habibi Funk 015: An Eclectic Selection Of Music From The Arab World, Part 2
Our friends at Habibi Funk are becoming legendary as their roster grows. What impresses me the most about the folks who run the label is their absolute passion for music from the Maghreb which has been criminally underrepresented throughout the world for decades. It’s shameful that the labels in the region didn’t think that the […]
KAUAN – Ice Fleet
KAUAN hail from Estonia and bring something extra to both progressive rock and post-rock. Long, drone-laden, repetitive music that holds one’s interest throughout. Perhaps the best way to describe this is like a very much slowed-down My Bloody Valentine with a symphonic progressive tinge to it. Unique. I quite like this.
IZ Band – 廻声Jangqerek
The legendary Shenzhen-based Old Heaven Books released a powerful album from the Chinese-Kazakh band IZ Band. This is listed as folk music, yet the music is brutal, sounding like early 1980s post-punk or Industrial rock. Think of, maybe, a Kazakh Killing Joke or a Central Asian early-period Current 93.
Controlled Bleeding – Songs From The Drain
Controlled Bleeding were one of the few bands who could glide from genre to genre easily. They were comfortable working with EBM, harsh noise and experimental music, and would even appeal to some elements in the goth-rock crowd, but this particular album stood out as their magnum opus for me. Paul Lemos, the one constant […]
Dominique Figaro & Steve Shehan – Figaro... Si!
I had no idea what to expect with this album except that it was promoted by Carbon 7 record label impresario and former Univers Zéro bassist Guy Segers. His taste tends to be outstanding, so I gave this a shot. Quite pleasant, actually. Dominique Figaro’s voice reminds me of a lot of 80s female avant-pop […]
Celer – In Light Of Blues
Will Long is Celer, an ambient music composer living in Japan and therefore, a relatively close expatriate neighbor of mine. He releases a lot of music, as is the fashion with some highly competent composers these days, but his work feels like a cut above. Though this album has 12 tracks, they are rather short […]
Dzivia – Flower Maiden
Dzivia are a project out of Belarus specializing in a music that crosses ambient, Nordic folk music, symphonic progressive rock and regional music. They manage to do all this in one track. Impressive.
Gil Talmi – Unspooled
Thanks to my friend and Galego brother Andrés, I’ve come across a soundtrack composer and sound designer out of New York called Gil Talmi. He has been nominated for an Emmy Award (presumably in soundtrack music and apparently fond of working on socially conscious projects. I’m far from a bleeding heart, but it’s good to see […]
Saucejas – Dabā
Our dear friends at CPL-Music have done it again! This 60-track album by Saucejas is an ethnographer’s dream if you’re into Latvian music, and there is an organic feeling to this album. Nothing too terribly processed, nothing added that didn’t need to be there. The album is appropriately titled, as Dabā is Latvian for “in […]