Hello music lovers! My oh my, has it been a while. Time passes like water under a bridge, as they say. But who are they, anyway?
Anyway! Welcome to the Fresh Batch – an exhaustive list of underground sounds from the past fort-month. There’s something for everyone in the Fresh Batch – so don’t hesitate to have a click around! We’ve tried to make discovering interesting and satisfying new music as easy as possible for you with this quick list.
Music for Magnolia Trees is a compilation of downtempo and ambient electronic music, curated and presented by TRIP FM and Triplicate Records.
This 15-track project is a pleasant journey, peppered with peaks and valleys of mood and energy. Pinging back and forth between ethereal ambience and chill-out beats, the diversity of the artists work is spread out like a fine mixed-berry jam over crispy toast.
While you could not say this is a purely ambient release, the whole track list exudes an ambiance of warmth and comfort, even when the grooves are hitting. The resulting listen is wholesome and enjoyable, whether passively as background music, or actively, perhaps as soundtrack to an afternoon bike ride.
Several of the tracks stand-out in their splendor and composition – such as ‘I’ll See You When The Rains Come‘ by Johnny Fallout, which travels between heartwarming classic ambient and late 90’s IDM sounds, making for quite the electronica odyssey. ‘Different Vibrations‘ by Cathode Ray Tube is another highlight, packed with deeply satisfying percussion delays and textural synth-work.
‘Gone Without A Trace‘ is a personal favorite, swirling together all sorts of instruments and inspirations to create a head-boppingtrip-hop track that would not be out of place in a Thievery Corporation DJ set.
There’s a definite old-school electronica energy to the project, and it would likely sit well with fans of Boards of Canada, Squarepusher and Casino versus Japan.
Between the bliss and the beats – there’s a lot to enjoy in Music for Magnolia Trees. Nearly an hour of lovely electronic music, created and curated by talented folks. Hopefully you can make some time to give it a listen – which can be done via the labels Bandcamp page, or streaming on all the popular platforms.
Miracle Build is a new project of short tracks by waavypanda, released both independently and via Engram Recordings in May 2023.
The album is full of fresh and intriguing sounds arranged into unique phrases. The tracks dance delicately between blissful IDM grooves and dissonant chaos with ease. The overall vibe is reminiscent of early 2000’s braindance with plenty of percussion zipping around amidst the playful synth-work.
Though the tracks are, for the most part, quite short – waavypanda does a great job packing and stacking sounds into 2-minute vignettes. And if you just can’t get enough, I’d highly recommend pairing this one with waavypanda’s other recent album ‘angelmech tears‘, as it carries a very similar style heavily informed by ambient and acid sounds.
Colorless Blood is an abstract and contemplative experimental electronic album from Ukrainian producer Lost Phosphor, self released on May 17th 2023.
The 7 track project has a unique tone to it – unbridled creativity nested in avant-garde structure with a healthy sprinkle of dissonance.
Much of the project feels refreshingly free-form, with a distinct absence of grooves in favor of surprisingly pleasant rigidity. Percussion, strings and pianos plink and plonk steadily along the timeline, evoking luminescent patches of wilderness and soggy villages in the dead of night.
Though mostly instrumental, the final track Resurrection takes the steam built up from the previous tracks and channels it into a dubby-techno jam complete with vocals and hard hitting drums.
Cradle is a 2-track ambient/downtempo EP from San Francisco’s Solarein, self-released on May 13th, 2023.
The project is tight and lush, with atmospherics and textures taking center stage, surrounded by chilled beats and slowly-evolving synths. Speaking of textures, the sonic feeling of this record is pretty phenomenal, with lots of room in the mix for clicks and pops to fly around in between the more melodic and utilitarian sounds.
Both tracks borrow themes from one-another, from the progression to the vibe, like two sides of the same coin. Heavy yet hopeful. The songs return to motifs seamlessly, looping back around on themselves and their melodies. Some of my favorite moments were when guitar blissfully swept its way into the mix, soaring above the established structure and injecting heavy emotional energy with its distorted riffs.
For fans of downtempo electronics like Boards of Canada, Casino Vs Japan and Kiln – Cradle is likely to put a smile on the listeners face, if only for 15 minutes.
Prolific Netherlandian ambient producer exm returns with a frosty longform project bulbone.
Self-released via the artists bandcamp page – bulbone takes the form of a 25-minute ambient expedition through crisp arctic wastelands and desolate tundra laden plains. The listener is forced to seek shelter behind the weaved fabric of buzzing tones and pulsing, gritty synthesizers. The ominous and omnipresent drone of the windswept landscape sits comfortably behind an aethereal ensemble of horns, woodwinds and strings whom speak in staggered cadence and wonton trajectory.
Fans of intelligent, outsider ambient will be satisfied with this listen – properly balancing listenability with intriguing sonic exploration.
You can support the artist today by purchasing the project at Name-Your-Price via Bandcamp!
The beautiful chaos of Eternity Hotline returns with this sweet little 6-track project titled “Practicing Juggalo“
Perfectly fusing together playful IDM with lo-fi beats and dancefloor electronics – Eternity Hotline crafts a thoroughly head bopping experience throughout the 6 dense tracks. Weaved into the seemingly chaotic surface are countless deeply-satisfying riffs and melodies bubbling up!
The hybrid juxtaposition of so many sounds and influences can be a bit hard to pin down – but it’s certainly not hard to enjoy! While it might leave a DJ scratching their head at just which crate to organize these tracks in – most likely it will simply leave you nodding to the beat and begging for more.
Welcome back to the Fresh Batch, music lovers! We return with our monthly new-music column absolutely packed with phenomenal sounds.
With summer coming fast and furious (stay cool out there, folks!), we’ve rounded up a selection of lovely summertime releases. Dig in, swim around and enjoy…
Cartoon Forest II is the second full-length project from experimental trio Cartoon Forest – released on Crash Symbols in May, 2022.
Recorded live in 2018 – the tape basks in a raw beauty that is both refreshing and intriguing. Cartoon Forest II is a wonderful blend of experimental ambience and psychedelic drone with a touch of post-rock. It’s quite easy to become lost in the hazy, distorted soundscapes – laying back on the gritty foundation before letting luscious, morbid riffs wash over you.
I adore the sounds used in this project – often morphing between semi-acoustic to ethereally ambiguous. By track 4-5 you will start to peel back and realize the true experimental and progressive nature of the album. There’s no holding back from the trio as the dive deeply into incredibly unstable and emotional territories – embracing soft distortion and semi-dissonant waves amidst the already established landscape.
Cartoon Forest truly exemplifies the experimental group format – demonstrating the benefit of weaving together the threads of several avant-garde minds. This tape is a blissful journey dense with ideas and riffs that you don’t want to miss. I’ve only heard the digital version myself but I can already tell these tracks will benefit from being heard with the warm process of cassette ribbon passing through a tapedeck.
New experimental sounds from the Vivarium Recordings camp!
Limnociclo by Druida is a marvelous experience of sonic exploration – successfully weaving together threads of lofi chiptunes, long lost casio loops and an atmosphere of thick smoke.
I am always a big fan of electroacoustic experimentation, so Limnociclo ended up being a deeply satisfying experience for me. Druida masterfully layers very intimate pluckings and tappings with urgent bass and frothing pads of dissonance. The result is a surreal and soundtrack-esque experience.
Tracks like Forma really caught my attention, fusing together reggaeton and post-vaporwave into a downtempo groove. Or Nowhere FM – where the true experimentality of the project is given space to breathe and flourish.
I could go on about how the rhythmic shredding massages my brain, how the project is mixed so masterfully that you can almost taste the local climate, or how flawlessly the album glides between genres and tones. To put it simply, you need to hear it to understand, and I highly recommend this one.
Eternity Tree 