Here’s five recommendations from the …66? releases I’ve picked up since last December.
I can’t believe I haven’t done one of these posts the whole year! (I’m still listening to all of those releases from last December btw.) But I’m trying to be the opposite of just linking to the latest thing I’ve heard.
Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin – Ghosted II (Drag City)
The first of two picks that are trios playing maybe kind of live. That’s a bit outrageous, given the amount of my listening time spent on electronic stuff. Anyway!
Do you know Aussie band The Necks? You wouldn’t mistake this for them, but it has some of the same appeal for me: a minimalism I associate with that electronic stuff I mostly listen to, but when you pay attention it’s never really sitting still, and the players are being awesome in the least flashy way. Just a great sound, floor to ceiling.
The guitar harmonics-led second track is particularly pretty.
James Devane – Searching (Umeboshi)
Something really appealing about the soft, chill techno building blocks of this record, being made a little strange in the way they rub up against each other. Off-kilter loops and patterns you can’t keep track of, but it still feels pretty accessible.
If you’re interested in process, Phillip Sherburne interviewed Devane and I found it fascinating: Devane wasn’t satisfied with the mellow techno album he wrote, so essentially wrote his own randomising software to throw the basic blocks of what he’d made into a blender and spit them out in weird combinations. I can only imagine it must’ve taken a lot of picking and choosing the good bits…
Other Joe – Jealousy Tulip (Best Effort)
There seems to be heaps of great music going on in Australia. This was actually released March 2021, but I picked it up this year and have listened to it heeeeeaps. Another that’s very vaguely in the territory of mellow techno, but this is perhaps more ambient and more textured? Mind you, it’s also more directly melodic on some tracks.
It’s funny, James Devane came from a beatless ambient duo (En), this guy Other Joe has gone beatless ambient since Jealousy Tulip.
Atte Elias Kantonen – A Path With A Name (Soda Gong)
A beautiful and sometimes spiky ambient glitch record from September 2023. Definitely one I’ve had on highest rotate all year. There’s something about the combination of music that, on one hand, I find really relaxing, but, on the other, is built on these rich sound worlds that I find pretty stimulating and buzzy.
People often talk about this kind of thing as perfect headphone music, but I’d also recommend cranking it on a decent system. It sounds mint.
Also, in this post I could have easily included another Soda Gong release, K Freund’s latest, or the label boss’s latest under the name Etelin. They’re both great.
Sam Wilkes, Craig Weinrib, and Dylan Day – self-titled (LEAVING RECORDS)
Immediately worth it for the version of Jobim’s “How Insensitive”, imo. This is is an electric jazz trio – guitar, bass, drums – just playing together on someone’s porch, from memory. While I’m sure there’s overdubs, the whole thing feels really unadorned in the nicest of ways.
A real palette cleanser for an electronic-obsessive. Something I’ll often pop on first thing in the morning.