Tag: electronic music

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: AC Grüns Shares Woozy and Hypnotic “Cosmic WiFi (Radio Free Babble On Mix)”

AC Grüns is a Pacific Northwest-based electronic music artist and producer, who has quickly established a unique sound that’s simultaneously ethereal and immersive and sees him blending house, techno and downtempo paired with crisp beats and deep bass.

His latest single, the sparse and minimalist “Cosmic WiFi (Radio Free Babble On Mix)” is a woozy and hypnotic track anchored around looping and arpeggiated bursts of analog synths and twinkling keys paired with skittering beats. Sonically seeming to channel The Chemical Brothers‘ “Star Guitar” and Kraftwerk, is a mind-bending yet accessible bit of playful experimentation with a cosmic sheen.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Tokyosongbird Shares Broodingly Cinematic “On Falling”

Back in the day, Tokoyosongbird creative mastermind Justin Lewis was signed to the Beastie Boys‘ label Grand Royal Records, released records globally and toured the global festival circuit with his nine member backing orchestra. Grand Royal Records eventually closed up shop, and Lewis withdrew into the studio.

Last year, Lewis had an epiphanous realization that he was neurodiverse. “It was kinda crazy as I’d been searching for years and just never finishing anything – I thought it was my artistic temperament – and then you learn there’s this thing that means your brain works differently – well shiiit,” Lewis says.

“As I got my head around this I wrote this song ‘Let Your Songbird Sing’ (the project’s next single) that was about being completely yourself, and like nothing I’ve ever written before, and a new project was born,” Lewis continues. “I needed a producer to give the sound a scale and an edge, and to properly kick my butt if I became in danger of shelving another album I almost made. Dave Sanderson was the perfect fit.

“I put my first single ‘After the Storm’ out last year on the spur of the moment, it was finished, I got a bit giddy and in about three hours I’d made a video and launched it. I remember getting several messages going ‘What are you doing? This wasn’t the plan — haha, it felt great though! – Tokyosongbird was born and a decade of paralysis at an end”.

Lewis’ latest Tokyosongbird single “On Falling” is a breathtakingly gorgeous yet eerie and brooding bit of Portishead and Tales of Us-era Goldfrapp-like trip hop that seamlessly blends acoustic and electronic sounds: Lewis’ achingly plaintive falsetto ethereally floats over an uneasy seeming arrangement of twinkling, arpeggiated keys, supple bass lines and atmospheric synths.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Ghostcake Shares Fuzzy “Get It Right”

Ghostcake is a mysterious and emerging singer/songwriter, producer and self-described “party ghost, “whose work draws influences from video games and nostalgic soundscapes to create a colorful and imaginative blend of electronica, lo-fi and experimental synth pop.

The mysterious singer/songwriter and producer’s latest single “Get It Right” is a woozy mix of lo-fi beats and synth pop built around a sinuous bass line, twinkling keys, blown-out beats, atmospheric synths, bursts of fuzzy guitar paired with a sultry and yearning vocal sample that occasionally bursts into the fuzzy, hook-driven haze. The result is a song that feels like a pleasant psilocybin trip on a summer afternoon.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: NYC’s Content Blocks Share Lushly Textured and Eerie “IMDS”

Emerging New York-based electronic music outfit Content Blocks — Ian Campbell and Matthew Hord — features members, w ho have collaborated and participated together for years in various musical endeavors and events. Their near-decade of shared experiences crafting, programming and operating the electronic instrumentation in acclaimed industrial act Pop. 1280 has further informed their journey deeper into hardware experimentation — and their latest collaboration together shows the results of their experimentation into ambient abstractions, dance floor deconstructions, and fractured pop tropes into darker realms.

Campbell’s and Hord’s Content Blocks debut “IMDS” pairs off-kilter, repetitive and propulsive percussive patterns with glistening, reverb-soaked synths with reverb-drenched, ethereal yet disaffected vocals coming out like a feverish haze. While sonically seeming to channel Rival Consoles and Noble Rot, “IMDS” simultaneously manages to evoke the late night return home from the club with the music and the entire night reverberating in your head and soul — but the rest of the world may well be asleep.

Conceived as an audiovisual experience, “IMDS” is accompanied with a video created by the duo’s longtime collaborator Scott Kieran (ESP TV) that starts off focusing on an accelerating centrifuge interspersed with frames featuring cell death and electronic feedback and 3D imagery that orbit around a lone figure dancing or using a complicated elliptical-looking device. It’s fittingly eerie and trippy.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montreal Chill Panic Shares Vibey and Brooding “Day 75”

Montreal Chill Panic is the moniker of a mysterious Trois-Rivières, Québec-based instrumental electronic music producer and artist. Since the project started about 18 months ago, the mysterious Canadian artist and producer has managed to release three albums, last year’s Playing With Time, and this year’s Another Midnight and Journée de travail, all of which have amassed over 350,000 streams on Spotify to date.

Through their three albums, the prolific Canadian artist has established a difficult to pigeonhole sound, which comfortable straddles the boundaries of hip-hop, house, ambient and IDM — with a decidedly lo-fi sound. To celebrate the project’s first year, Montreal Chill Panic released a new composition every day for the 100 days leading up to the project’s anniversary on February 12.

Building upon a growing profile, 2023 looked to be very busy: They had shows planned throughout the year and are currently working on a new album.

But in the meantime, the Canadian artist shared “Day 75” with me. Built around a dusty, lo-fi production featuring wobbling and shimmering synths, plinking and skittering beats “Day 75” is a vibey and moody composition that evokes an autumnal chill.