honest words on honest music
HC 3.0 BETA
PLEASE READ
The new Headphone Commute Site is here! But it’s not public yet. Here’s everything you need to know about this BETA release in the first quarter of 2019.
Boards of Canada
Geogaddi is a record for some sort of trial-by-fire, a claustrophobic, twisting journey that takes you into some pretty dark experiences before you reach the open air again.
Patrick Jonsson
Suddenly We Looked Like Giants
It takes just one listen to recognize how good this record really is, and then it takes another two or three plays to dig into its depths, to hear the familiar motifs, and to truly fall in love.
Interview with Brock Van Wey
An in-depth two-part conversation with the man behind the bvdub moniker on his Earth House Hold project and the latest release for A Strangely Isolated Place
Murcof
The Versailles Sessions
Ten years of writing means ten years of content, right? I’ve got a few more surprises on the way for the readers of Headphone Commute, but for now, let’s have some fun with a Flashback Friday entry, revisiting an album that indeed needs another play through.
Interview with Warmth
“Once I started producing, it was like an addiction. I remember that I could spend whole nights working on projects that probably I would never end, but spending time like that it’s like something very intimate: you alone with your music.”
The Gentleman Losers
Always Crashing on the Same Wave
…a sense of introversion to it, a feeling of winter approaching…
Richard Devine
Sort\Lave (TimeSig)
“I wanted the record to sound very different to my previous works which had been more cold, digital, clinical even and had all been made using computers.”
No matter how deformed these atonal sounds are the cadence of the piece holds up its monumental structure… this allows for a formation to stand strong while free abstraction sways through open trails…
Ólafur Arnalds
re:member (Mercury KX)
“For me, [re:member] means the opposite of dismemberment – to become yourself again, to become a member of yourself…”
[…] incorporating transcending rhythms into a cinematic piece of music, which lifts it from the slowly crowding stage of comfort zones, onto a plinth, where Arnalds is uniquely on his own.
Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones, Varg, and Chevel
Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones Vicious Circles It’s pretty easy to get stuck on a single …
Hammock
We Watched You Disappear
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness…
It’s time to revisit another favorite album by Fennesz and Sakamoto-san
Chilly Gonzales
Solo Piano III (Gentle Threat)
“The musical purity of Solo Piano III is not an antidote for our times, it is a reflection of all the beauty and ugliness around us.”
Chilly returns with his third, and hopefully not a final album, of whimsical and clever tunes.
Ian Hawgood, Michael Vallera and Liars
At this point, there’s honestly no rhyme or thought or reason behind the path of my arrival at these sounds.
Orangewarrior
HALFTIME FOOTWORK JUNGLE MAYHEM
It’s that time of the year, kids, when we invite our favourite Halloween ghost and ghoul to wreck some mayhem on our ears.
Murcof
Lost In Time (Glacial Movements)
Lost in Time plunges us into perpetual renewal, each ending leading to a new beginning.
A soundtrack to Patrick Bernatchez‘s same-titled film; “a sound project that is part of the explorations around Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” initiated in Berlin in 2010.“
Frédéric D. Oberland
E Quindi Uscimmo A Riveder Le Stelle
[…] a cocoon whose ascending and cyclical pulsations intoxicate us, as if under a hypnosis…
From the Mouth of the Sun
Sleep Stations (Lost Tribe Sound)
The album’s modesty and restraint becomes part of its charm as it lulls the listener into a sweet melancholy…
Helios
Veriditas (Ghostly)
Viriditas is a word meaning vitality, fecundity, lushness, verdure, or growth. It is particularly associated with abbess Hildegard von Bingen, who used it to refer to or symbolize spiritual and physical health…
After a decade of albums on his very own Unseen label, this Boston-based modern classical and film composer gets a backing from a well-respected Ghostly International imprint.
Peaking inside Alan Myson’s studio and his making of Bodied for Planet Mu
Ital Tek
Bodied (Planet Mu)
“the music focuses on the interplay between the minuscule and the vast, beauty and brutalism…”
A powerful entry in the Planet Mu‘s catalogue, and an outstanding follow-up to Alan Myson’s 2016 release, Hallowed.
Some honest thoughts on integration of music into your daily practice
Jóhann Jóhannsson
Fordlandia (4AD)
Fordlandia brings together the soaring grandeur of its predecessor […] moving between heady, melting cadences and crystalline motifs with gorgeous, dreamlike logic.
This coverage of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson‘s sixth studio album is a continuation of my personal revisit through the albums that have changed my life, as yet another entry in my occasional RECITAL series.
Resina, Julia Kent and Jean D.L., and Aaron Martin
Some cello themed Sound Bytes from 130701, Gizeh, and Preserved Sound
Yagya
Rigning (Delsin)
The subdued dubbed-out bass patterns and swelling pad-sweeps …
Warmth
Parallel (Archives)
Slow-burning ambient textures that capture the frequency spectrum across its peaks and valleys
Deepchord
Auratones (Soma)
A foray into deep, organic, cinematic dance music
There is something in his culmination that is always hypnotic, with the subliminal kick pulsating in the backdrop as if it was underwater as if it was under my skin as if it was myself.