This is some of the brightest, most colorful music I’ve been into in a long time. It’s a psychedelic magic trick, striking the pulse of zeitgeist labels like 1080p and Orange Milk from far out of left field, a completely unexpected place and time.
I was tricked in the best way when I first heard Soichi Terada Presents Sounds From The Far East.
This is the soundtrack to my cyberpunk dreams.
More than almost any other release I heard last year, HK sends me spiraling down the rabbit hole of my subconscious, detached from routine, from worry, from time itself.
This week has been as busy as ever so I didn’t have a ton of time for new music, but I made up for that with deep enthusiasm for what I did discover.
Thanks to Dam-Funk’s excellent new entry in the DJ-Kicks series, I’ve been looping a certain new-to-me album half a dozen times over the past day alone. I’ve also spent time in one of the most sublime virtual worlds ever created, in The Witcher 3.
Deadbeat, aka Scott Monteith, is a dub techno artist from Montreal, perpetually approaching the genre with an outsider ear. Although he currently resides in frosty genre mecca Berlin, his music is still refreshingly focused, strange, warped fingerprints everywhere.
Where All Is Fled crawled under my skin after a while. I listened, I liked it, and I listened again. Then I kept listening at work. I looped the album every time I drove. This sound world was burrowing its way inside me for weeks before I realized what was happening. The way this album became one of my favorites of the past year was almost… passive aggressive.
Every once in a while, a great album by a favorite artist slips right by me. Nightvision is a perfect example. Mark Van Hoen released the album in November of 2015, and I stumbled upon it only this week. Van Hoen’s work has appeared on my best of lists and his former band, Seefeel, created some of my favorite music of all time. This was a huge oversight, as it turns out.
After just a few listens, I really wish I’d heard the album a few months ago. I have no doubt that it would have appeared somewhere on my best of 2015 list. Nightvision is frankly incredible.
Optimistic Underground 