honest words on honest music
BEST OF 2020
Revealing only one list per day, here’s the long-awaited thirteenth edition of our favorites of the year! Start here.
Interview with Max Richter
I finally catch up with one of my all-time favourite contemporary classical composers to talk about his latest record, VOICES and touch a little on SLEEP.
Lawrence English
A Young Person’s Guide To Hustling
(In Music and The Arts)
An introduction to the revised three-part series and an updated foreword, One tale of hustling.
The guide is divided into three sections – for the work, for others, for you.
In the studio with
Atom™
“… too much gear usually leads to boring ideas, while many good ideas reduce the amount of equipment…”
In the studio with
Yann Tiersen
… I like to be submerged in sounds and the inspiration comes from that…
Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto
In anticipation of the upcoming new album, we celebrate one of our favourite releases from the duo, in this RECITAL of their 2009 album, featuring Ensemble Modern
“… I often start a composition by creating a theme with an acoustic-digital filtered sound. Over this, I often try to integrate pure synthetic sounds from a synthesizer…”
A vinyl-only mix from Mike Jedlicka celebrating his favourites of the year from this still-spinning format…
My first review of a synthesizer module. This one is a very special one, so I just had to share!
“… all the great recordings were made with what people had available to them at the time, and Picasso already knew: when I haven’t got any blue, I use red…”
noition
kôrʹəl pēs
For this final episode of the year, noition compiles a selection of peaceful and choral music
Hotel Neon
Moments
“… a lullaby for all the uneasy…”
Recorded in the span of just eight weeks Moments is one of the more minimal and textural albums Hotel Neon have ever made
“… the stigma of a performance, especially from on-stage or even from the educational theatre side, has this theme that I can’t relate to…”
James Murray & Mike Lazarev
Suññatā
“… where fragile tones appear to hang in an infinite amount of space…”
Following last year’s reworking of ‘Living Treasure’ James Murray and Mike Lazarev present a collection of post-classical compositions woven into delicate ambient textures
“… a tranquil place in a world full of turmoil…”
A flashback to an episode originally broadcasted by the Contemplative Classical community, which is now part of Headphone Commute!
Pleq & Hakobune
Adrift (offthesky Remix feat. Silverness)
“… an album of organic ambiance, warm texture, and minuscule glitch…”
“… I put a lot of focus into the sound design, atmospheric composition, and structure, […] it is the one formula that I use to make my sound audible…”
Tilman Robinson
The Mind Scans and Maps the World Behind
“… coalescing with ever-increasing frisson until its eventual ignition…”
Adam Wiltzie
How To Disappear Inside A Thirty Piece Orchestra
“… a slow-burner of an orchestral immersion…”
“My compositions are bound by the parameters of where they were created. And so to prevent my creativity from stagnating, I need to change those parameters every now and then…”
Danny Mulhern
Flow States
What forgotten wisdom resides in us?
Joachim Spieth
Jiwa
“… like ebb and flow…”
Lovers of electronica, modern classical, and solo piano music alike follow Richter’s releases and gobble them up with their ears.
“… a tranquil and radiant place, slightly subdued in its faint hazy colors…”
“…I find it very useful to invite people to the studio, to listen ‘through their ears’… even without saying a word, you can tell if a piece works or not just by listening together with someone…”
Constantine Skourlis
Eternal Recurrence
“… delving into the abyss that is the human psyche and its inevitable dualistic nature of beauty and of violence…”
I want to call this genre “cinesonic” for its ability to trick the mind into a kinetic journey through imagined space. Recommended for fans of dynamic, physical, and psychological music.
FOUDRE!
Black Swan Theory I
“… evocative titles, mystical symbols, and spiritual signs…”
Rutger Hoedemaekers
The Invention Of The Moon
“… as one age ends, so another begins…”
Sebastian Plano & Maarten Vos
Silk & Sand
“… patterned textures swirling to the frequencies of organic sound…”
James Murray
Slowcraft Radio
Syndication of an episode from Slowcraft label boss featuring his latest favorite tunes
“… the experience of encountering the non-self, of a sound and its reflection meeting in an empty space…”
Thomas Farnon
Protest
“… the journey of an idea, a passion, and the belief that resonates with others coming together in protest…”
“… I don’t feel too bothered about complexity, context, relevance, or reinventing the wheel in music…”
Ben Chatwin
Ghost In The Machine
“… emotive accumulations […] harnessed as melodic anchors among electric storms of pulsating sound…”
Roger Goula
Ontology Of Things
“… a collection of songs that encourage you to wander with the mind…”
Clark
Daniel Isn’t Real
“… a dark and euphoric dreamscape that evokes both rapture and dread…”
Chris Clark’s soundtrack for Adam Egypt Mortimer‘s psychological horror released on the revered classical Deutsche Grammophon label.
Sebastian Plano & Maarten Vos
Dense & Density
“… a beautifully shimmering piece resolving into a liquified bliss…”
Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres
Dance
“… where pure emotion is expressed through sound devoid of words…”
Kit Grill
Headphone Commute Mix
“… [music by] composers taking traditional methods and turning things upside down…”
“… my whole aim is to try and work as quickly as I can before my critical brain can catch up and force me to overanalyze…”
Jasmine Guffond & Erik K Skodvin
The Burrow
“…[T]he most beautiful thing about my burrow is the stillness. Of course, that is deceptive. At any moment it may be shattered and then all will be over. For the time being, however, the silence is with me.”
— Franz Kafka
Simeon Walker
Captive
“… the threads unravel and unwrap to finally release the past that binds us…”
“… I find that ideas need time to mature, or perhaps it’s my perception and experiencing the ideas that need time…”
A companion mix to “Micro Record Label: A love letter for music fans; a how-to for the hopeless; a light-hearted, humorous, self-deprecating detour for the uninterested.”
ASC
Pattern Recognition
“… a type of ‘grey area techno’ that falls somewhere between atmospheric wonderings, intergalactic space travel, and post-apocalyptical crawl…”
In this mysterious and deliciously dark space, your mind meets face to face with angst and anger. Endorphins fire. Dopamine’s released. And you relax among the cradling rhythm that carries you in peace into the void.
Martyn Heyne
Neuwerk
“… touching on loud and soft, brutal and tender, subjective and universal…”
Tukico
Carnim Aiso
“… a callback to 80’s kosmiche musik, early ambient, and modular synth explorations…”
“Some ideas slip away, like beautiful shooting stars. Others, by dint of playing them, begin to structure themselves. But there are no rules…”
Quiet Places
Volume 1
“There’s many things about this place that I find unusual. One of the things I find fascinating is how quiet it gets. It’s the quietest place…”
A brand new project from Dennis White, Charlie May, and Dave Gardner that will take you on a journey to the early days of electronica and chill out…
“… we like to try to make acoustic instruments sound like they are electronic and electronic instruments sound like they are acoustic…”
Flica
White Woods
“… our journey to the north was where we became oneness…”
Leah Kardos
Bigo & Twigetti Mix
“… a sampler of the label’s offerings to showcase the catalog and introduce you to new acts…”
I catch up with Uwe Zahn and chat about his sound design, advanced synthesis, and favorite software.
Goldmund, Richard Luke and Fossil Hunting Collective
A trio of beautiful records, full of lush ambience, a touch of melancholy, and a breath of hope.
Frank Bretschneider, Bunita Marcus, Av3ry, and Hecker
“… one sound can give birth to thousands of tones through self-fertilization…”
Cécile Seraud
Life
“… a contemplative journey that leads with a delicate touch to the deepest part of the heart…”
Amirali & Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
Dystopia
“… expressing the current chaotic state the world is facing…”
Echo Collective
The See Within
“… achingly beautiful and mournfully devastating…”
The Echo Collective breaks out with their debut release of all original material, echoing not just the past encounters and moments, but in its very essence, the present moment which goes on.
Luke Howard + Tilman Robinson
Dark Angels
“… exploring the shadow and darkness that exists in all of us…”
Pat Jaffe
Grandma’s Song
“… step into an ancient Australian forest and take a deep breath…”
“My pianos will always be my favorite piece of hardware. They are the most complex, honest, and imaginative gear in my wheel barrel.”
Christopher Tignor
Ode to Joy
“… of yearning and nostalgia better suited for these troubled times…”
Roel Funcken
A Dyad In The Force
“… an elaborate sound design in the freedom from the digital structures…”
Limpet Space Race & Orchestra of St John’s
Earth Flow
“… exploring themes of erosion, landslides and climate change…”
Olivier Alary & Johannes Malfatti
I Can’t Even See Myself
“… a brilliant exploration of mediated modern communication…”
Aukai
Game Trails
“… the sense of nature is in every piece, and from that comes a sense of calm…”
Markus Sieber takes us on a journey through his inner world, inspired by traversing pathways left by animals in their nomadic quest.
Thoughts on sound design in textural, spectral and functional phases; on metric modulations and polytemporal ideas; and on dance music tribalism.
Henrik Lindstrand
Stora Huset
“… melancholy storytelling that rides the waves of sorrow and joy, mystery and honesty, minor and major chords…”
Gyda Valtysdottir
Mikros (by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir)
A collection of neo-classical compositions featuring music by Iceland’s leading contemporary composers.
Today we visit with Moe Espinosa, who records as Drumcell, Hypoxia, and one half of Belief Defect.
Phil Tomsett
The Sound of Someone Leaving (with Aaron Martin)
“… absence is powerful…”
Disassembler
A Wave From A Shore
“… a tension of charting troubled waters at sea…”
Luke Vibert
Luke Vibert presents Amen Andrews
“… I suppose you could call it futuristic retro…”
Luke Vibert dusts off his collection of samples, chops up the famous Amen break, and turns up the bass for a trip down the memory lane, in an upgraded, massive album.
Built Upon A Fearful Void
Claire Deak & Tony Dupé, Arrowounds, and Vieo Abiungo
An overview of a brand new subscription series by Lost Tribe Sound.
An introduction to the revised three-part series and an updated foreword, One tale of hustling.
Alva Noto
Xerrox Vol.4
… a kind of a journey… perhaps an inner exploration…
After five years, Carsten Nicolai returns with the fourth volume in the Xerrox series, released on his very own Noton imprint.
David Toop is an English musician, author, and professor of audio culture and improvisation.