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Review: Mux Mool Planet High School
Label: Ghostly

Planet High School, the sophomore album by Brooklyn beatmaker Brian Lindgren (a.k.a. Mux Mool), arrives roughly two years after the producer's first LP for the Ghostly label, and the time between releases has served Lindgren well. Skulltaste was splintered between instrumental hip-hop tunes and straight-up dancefloor fodder (not to mention hits and misses), but the new full-length finds Lindgren narrowing his sound almost entirely on bouncing boom-bap grooves and the retro-futuristic samples he's keen on crafting them with. That focus has yielded better results, too, as Planet High School is evidence of Mux Mool gradually coming into his own. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 02/10/2012

Review: John Talabot ƒIN

Pick
Label: Permanent Vacation

Back in November, we grabbed John Talabot for a few minutes of conversation, and the Barcelona-based producer expressed some trepidation about his new album potentially being labeled both "tropical" and "shiny." As it turns out, Talabot is likely to be 50% satisfied, as there is almost nothing "tropical" about his debut full-length, but the prevalence of glistening synth tones throughout the record makes it quite possible that someone might deem it a "shiny" effort after all. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 02/09/2012

Review: Lapalux When You're Gone EP
Label: Brainfeeder

Lapalux has a way of fitting an astounding number of elements into his productions. It's something he proved on 2011's Many Faces Out of Focus EP, and in the subsequent remixes that have populated his Soundcloud page and, incidentally, our own downloads section. When You're Gone, the Essex-based producer's debut EP for Brainfeeder, sees Lapalux only continuing to refine his techniques, molding and shaping his seemingly neverending array of ticks, chops, and blurps into even more concise packages as his compositions become more song-like in structure. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 02/08/2012

Review: Octave One Revisited (Here, There, and Beyond)
Label: 430 West

There's something of a close kinship between techno retrospectives and the act of framing graffiti in a museum. Both are dynamic forms of art, yet the act of canonization always seems to remove the momentum that lies at the heart of both. Of course, you'll find no shortage of either, as there are plenty of techno retrospectives and folks like Futura 2000 and Rammellzee (R.I.P.) went highbrow a long time ago. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 02/07/2012

Review: Various Artists Pop Ambient 2012
Label: Kompakt

Kompakt's annual collection of pop-tinged soundscapes enters its twelfth year with label mainstays Wolfgang Voigt, Superpitcher, and The Field's Axel Willner (operating here as Loops of Your Heart) joined by a cast of names old and new. The resulting ten tracks are aligned in their gradual approaches to ambient composition with a handful of highlights and a few low points found along the way. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 02/06/2012

Review: Magnum All Over Me EP
Label: 92 Points

Brixton's 92 Points label quietly crept on to the scene last year, dropping the one-sided "Mr. 67" single from Visionist, one of several producers behind the young imprint. Now, 92 Points has offered up a sophomore effort, tapping Puerto Rican producer Magnum to put together a five-song EP, All Over Me. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 02/03/2012

Review: Ifan Dafydd "Treehouse" b/w "To Me"
Label: Push & Run

It's absolutely no surprise that when Ifan Dafydd first appeared on the scene with a couple of bootleg remixes streaming on YouTube, people thought it was James Blake operating under a pseudonym. The bubbly rhythms, the rich synth chords, the fractured vocal blips, the soulful musicality, the big sub frequencies; it was all a bit too coincidentally familiar. (Hell, the Welsh producer even looks a bit like Blake.) "Miranda" and "No Good" sounded like an ideal mix of the sullen ballads heard on the divisive James Blake and the percolating post-you-know-what offered by cuts like "CMYK," but, as it turns out, Dafydd is certainly his own man with his own tunes. His debut 12" for Push & Run, however, doesn't exactly prove it. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 02/02/2012

Review: The 2 Bears Be Strong
Label: DFA

After more than a decade of well-received writing and performing, four critically and commercially successful albums, and even a top-ten hit, Hot Chip has cemented itself as one of the UK's premier electronic acts. But with success comes elevated expectations, and given the run that Hot Chip is on, any new material from the group will surely be met with scientific scrutiny. Perhaps that's part of the reason why the group's songwriters, Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor, have been stepping outside of the Hot Chip brand to release more personal and less polished music under their given names. More recently, Goddard has gone further, teaming up with Greco-Roman Soundsystem DJ Raf Rundell to form The 2 Bears, which, after releasing a series of EPs, has now put out its self-titled debut full-length. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 02/01/2012

Review: Art Department Touch You Gently
Label: Crosstown Rebels

It's been a whirlwind two years for Toronto-based new-school house duo Art Department. In that stretch of time, the pair has put out four singles and The Drawing Board, its critically acclaimed debut LP. Through that span, Art Department has created a dark musical world that reflects the seedy underbelly of nightlife, portraying it as a pleasure zone lost in the excess and abandon of a month spent below the surface on ketamine. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 01/31/2012
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