Category: electronic music

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Finnish Duo RORO and snapir Share Cinematic Yet Intimate “Fractures”

Kauri Ruohonen is an in-demand Helsinki-based singer/songwriter, electronic music producer and founder, best known in electronic music circles as RORO. Ruohonoen is also the creative director of record label/production house Booa Music. As RORO, the Helsinki-based producer and artist has developed a sound frequently characterized by deep, moody atmospheres and sophisticated elements while working extensively with a growing list of Finnish acts including joalin, Louie Blue and jambo.

Jonathan Snapir is an in demand Helsinki-based electronic producer, best known as snapir who joined Booa Music in 2020 as a studio musician and producer, contributing to tracks alongside RORO. The following year, he dove deeper into experimental electronic music, driven by a relentless curiosity for unorthodox sounds and production techniques. snapir‘s debut EP, 2022’s LUNG showcases the Finnish producer’s ability to craft diverse yet cohesive audio landscapes that are captivating.

The pair bonded over a shared passion for experimental electronic soundscapes. Last year, they released their debut single as a collaborative duo with “Mass” which will appear on their debut effort as a duo, Colors Left, slated for a January 17, 2025 release.

The material sees the pair moving fluidly between dark electro, ambient and glitch-infused soundscapes while creating a deeply personal listening experience, informed by the duo’s shared desire to process pass emotions through innovative sound design. “Our goal was to create a soundscape that represents emotional rebirth,” they explain. “Each track is a deliberate exploration of bringing color back into a monochromatic experience.” 

Colors Left‘s latest single “Fractures” is a deliberately sculptured song that’s built around delicate yet painterly layers of skittering beats, ambient synths, whirring glitch and glistening synth arpeggios paired with a motorik pulse. Through a fearless exploration of unfamiliar sounds and unconventional production techniques, “Fractures” manages to be simultaneously intimate and introspective and yet cinematic.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 74th Birthday, Tina Weymouth!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Talking Heads’ and Tom Tom Club’s Tina Weymouth’s 74th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Lomotor Shares Hypnotic “Bee In A Bag”

Josh Rathburn is a Northern Massachusetts-based electronic music producer best known as Lomotor. Drawing comparisons to Boards of Canada and JOVM mainstay Rival Consoles, and inspired by hills and valleys of his rural surroundings, Rathburn’s work sees him blending modular and analog synthesizers with found sounds and early childhood cassette recordings to create songs that often feel like a scratched and faded memory of a melody heard long ago.

The Northern Massachusetts-based producer’s latest single “Bee In A Bag” is a hypnotic song featuring dense layers of oscillating synths, skittering beats, bursts of spacey feedback paired with a motorik-like groove. While seemingly recalling LCD Soundsystem‘s 45:33 and The Chemical Brothers‘ “Star Guitar” the new single manages to be trippy yet club friendly.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bad Robot Shares Max Blücher Remix of “Aero III”

Micheal Ricker is a Delaware-based electronic music producer and artist best known as Bad Robot. And if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of months, you might remember that I’ve written about two of Ricker’s latest Bad Robot singles”

  • The aptly named “Supermassive,” which features skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling thump, scorching bass synths and a woozy and wobbling synth melody. Fittingly, it’s the sort of club and festival banger that sounds as though it should knock a building over. 

  • “Close To You,” which according to Ricker, is “a bit of a departure into a brighter, more ‘pop’ sounding progressive house style.” Built around an almost mantra-like glistening synth phrase, shimmering synth arpeggios and skittering beats, the motorik-like “Close To You” is both summery and remarkably catchy, while seemingly nodding at Discovery-era Daft Punk-like French touch.

Last year, Ricker released his full-length debut, Year One, which featured “Aero III,” a gritty banger anchored around a woozy polymetric melody and skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling thump. Recently, Max Blücher remixed “Aero III” that retains the original’s woozy polymetric melody but pairs it with more aggressive, skittering tweeter and woofer rattling thump with some brief bursts of industrial clang and clatter, and some eerie ethereal synths. The result is take that gives the song a spacey, house music quality.

“Inspired by the gritty sound design and frantic polymetric melodies of my original track ‘Aero III,’ Max has taken the musical DNA and infused it with his own. While the original is great, Max definitely improved the quality of the track with his production skills and imagination,” Ricker explains. “This house remix is an ethereal journey through space and time with elements of Deadmau5 that are felt even in the cover artwork.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: LENny (IT) Shares Lush “Night Lights”

Lenny Lorenzi is a Romagna, Italy-born, New York-based electronic music producer and DJ, best known as LENny (IT). Lorenzi’s career started in earnest when he was a teenager with his first DJ sets and first original productions.

By the time, he was 17, Lorenzi was on the decks at Titilla, a room at the Riccione-based club Cocoricò. And in a short period of time, the Italian-born, New York-based producer and DJ played some of the most important, internationally renowned clubs including Ibiza‘s Sankeys, Barcelona‘s Macarena, Brooklyn’s Output and Miami‘s Clevelander, as well as the most important clubs of the Romagna Riviera.

Adding to a growing profile in the electronic music scene, back in 2011, Lorenzi started the Wave Music Boat, a traveling party that cuts across the Adriatic with stops in Catalonia and the Balearics that featured guests like Sam Divine, Michael Cleis, Argy, Supernova and a lengthy list of others. Wave Music Boat is a major backer of the Molo Street Parade, an event that pairs seafaring traditions with contemporary electronic music. Lorenzi also serves as the artistic director of the event.

Currently based in New York, the Italian-born DJ continues to push the sonic and stylistic boundaries of electronic music. His latest single “Night Lights

s” is a lush track featuring glistening and arpeggiated synths, skittering beats, bursts of African percussion, and twinkling keys that manages to be club and lounge friendly while possessing a cinematic quality.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Solid Spark Shares Summery “Higher”

Solid Spark is a rising electronic music producer and DJ, who has caught the attention of the global electronic scene with a sound that seamlessly blends contemporary pop sound with golden age EDM nostalgia. For the rising electronic music producer and DJ, the result is material that’s dance floor friendly but packs a deep emotional and energetic resonance. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Dream,” a slick, club friendly banger featuring glistening synths, a sultry and yearning vocal sample, skittering beats and euphoria-inducing hook and drops. The production revealed a producer with an uncannily sophisticated sense of soulful craftsmanship.

Building upon a growing profile, the rising producer’s latest single “Higher” is a club friendly bop featuring glistening synths, a chopped and screwed vocal sample-driven, incredibly catchy hook, a yearning female vocal sample for the verses, skittering tweeter and woofer rattling thump. While continuing to cement his reputation for crafted and soulful electronic music, “Higher” may arguably be the most summery and catchiest song of the producer’s growing catalog to date.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: WØØLS Shares Painterly “Flooded”

Brock Woolsey is a Californian-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, electronic music artist and creative mastermind of the solo recording project WØØLS. With WØØLS, Woolsey uses a mix of acoustic and digital instruments to create a collage sound characterized by textured synths, fuzzy tones, soft pianos, heavy low end and driving drum patterns that draws from Jon Hopkins, James Blake, Tycho, Shlohmo and Weval among others.

The Canadian artist’s latest EP Santa Rosa is slated for a June 14, 2024 release through Hit the North Records. The EP’s third and final single “Flooded” is a painterly almost shoegazer-like track that opens with a symphonic-like synth melody before quickly featuring glisten synth arpeggios, skittering beats, tape saturated fuzz and twinkling keys in a song that twists, turns and morphs into different textured passages before bringing listeners back to the beginning.

“Flooded” was inspired by Woolsey’s first analog synth, a Sequential Prophet Rev 2. “I was listening to Machinedrum heavily while writing this song. The bridge is a nice break in the song. Delicate piano chords run with tape cassette saturation” says Woolsey. The track opens with a symphonic melody, eventually carrying listeners through a roller coaster of textures and passages. The bridge provides a break in the reoccurring melodies, nearly sounding like a completely different track before making a full circle, bringing listeners back to the track’s essential melodies.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Prefuse 73 Shares Cinematic “Vast Wildlife Poison”

Miami-born, New York-based Guillermo Scott Herren is a pioneering electronic musician, producer and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed recording project Prefuse 73. Slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Lex Records, Herren’s latest Prefuse 73 album New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 2 serves as a companion album to New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 1, which was released back in March.

New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 2 reportedly continues Herren’s groundbreaking take on experimental composition through the lens of media sensationalism of crime, blended with influences from lost soundtracks, musique concréte and beat-tape music to create something wholly unique yet extremely accessible.

“I always have a movie or some random visuals playing on mute behind me in the studio,” Herren says of his creative process. “It could be horror from any era or just an old Fellini film; they tend to be playing on a loop. I will turn around from the mixing board and just stare at the images to get inspired.”

He adds, “It means that when you do finally hear my music, it’s hopefully created in a way that prompts you to see a whole scene play out in your head.”

New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 2‘s second and latest single “Vast Wildlife Poison” continues a remarkable run of cinematic material that would perfectly complement a true crime series — or French Connection-meets-Mission Impossible-like thriller with the song anchored around a strutting and slithering jazz-inspired bass line, reverb-drenched, plucked guitar bursts, jazz syncopated beats and intermittent synth blasts.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Seattle, WA-based multi-instrumentalist, electronic music artist and producer Grant Eadie is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed JOVM mainstay outfit Manatee Commune. Over the the better part of the past handful of years, Eadie has specialized in a carefully molded sound that pairs natural overtones extracted from field recordings and other sources, live instrumentation and arrangements and slick yet nuanced production.

Eadie’s fourth Manatee Commune album Simultaneity is slated for a July 19, 2024 release Bastard Jazz. The album, which marks a return to his longtime label home, is anchored around the lush and vibrant production that’s his trademark while being a bold and mature step forward in his sound and songwriting approach. Eadie has stepped away from standard songwriting and lyrics altogether, with the album’s material leaning closer to ambient electronica while keeping one foot solid in the realm of house music.

Simultaneity‘s latest single “Faulted” is a lush and woozy track anchored around gentle layers of glistening and reverb-soaked synth arpeggios, skittering percussion and tweeter and woofer rattling thump that twist and turns into dreamily prismatic patterns. Sonically recalling Octo Octa‘s Between Two Selves, “Faulted” is a track that’s meditative enough to be lounge friendly but with enough muscular oomph to be club friendly.

women who kick ass by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Initial Orchestra Shares Hypnotic “Dynamic Tube”

Currently splitting her time between Paris and Brussels, Sarah Chièze is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer, filmmaker and visual artist, who can trace her curiosity and passion for sound to growing up in a family of musicians.

Chièze started studying at the conservatory before she could actually write. But as a musical prodigy, she learned piano, flute, guitar and singing. And although piano is her preferred instrument, singing has informed her compositional approach and the thematic concern of her work — the construction of language.

When Chiéze went to college, she studied cinema and visual art, which have become important parts of both her professional and personal lives: She composes scores for film and has developed a digital graphics price that allows her to create the artwork for her releases.

Her multimedia project Initial Orchestra sees her crafting compositions that draw from a range of influences, including flamenco, prog rock and classical music among others — and pairing that with sci-fi-inspired images that invite the listener and viewer’s mind and body to freely wander.

Chièze recently released her debut EP, the six-song Resolution. The EP sees the emerging multimedia artist taking the listener on an epic journey while crafting melodies that are simultaneously euphoric and deep. Throughout the run of the EP, its six songs echo and contrast each other.

Anchored around a painterly layers of a looping and repetitive, twinkling melodic phrase that twists and turns around skittering and pulsing trap-like thump, the EP’s latest single “Dynamic Tube” is a mind-bending, cinematic bit of electronic music that channels Trans Europe Express-era Kraftwerk.

Throwback by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 84th Birthday, Giorgio Moroder!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Giorgio Moroder’s 84th birthday.