Pye Corner Audio is the solo project of British electronic artist Martin Jenkins, who has been amassing a wealth of adventurous, darkly weird material over the past half decade. I discovered him via the Sleep Games LP a couple years ago while searching for perfect music to listen to at work.
I want to make this clear from the get-go: Anohni has crafted one of the most powerful vocal performances I’ve heard in years, wrapping it in incredibly sumptuous production that sounds like virtually nothing else out there in 2016.
With her incredible voice backed by innovative sounds by Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never (a longtime favorite of mine), this album instantly became my favorite work by the artist formerly known as Antony. Her gender transition seemed to herald a new boldness and sense of purpose, as these 11 songs definitively show.
The Colour In Anything sounds like that exact moment when you witness a loved one realizing their full potential. So don’t call it a comeback; this is the sound of eventual self-discovery.
Genesis Clarity is so profoundly deserving of attention that I had to dedicate a second post to it. I’ve recommended this to everyone who will listen and mentioned it on my week in music a few days ago, but I can hardly find any chatter online. I’ve got one friend who’s listened, so I’ve only got one person to talk about it with. Let’s change that!
This kind of discovery needs to be shouted from the rooftops. It’s a revelation. Suryummy has created a true blue adventure.
Drexciya is an enigma of an act that left behind some of the greatest and strangest techno and electro music ever recorded. From the debut album Neptune’s Lair, here’s the first song I heard, the tune that hooked me and opened up an entire new world of sound.
I’d never known the outer reaches of techno until I listened to Andraean Sand Dunes.
It’s a pure exploration of genre constructs littering the ocean floor, an aquatic adventure full of energetic machine-funk pulses and glistening columns of light reaching down from the surface. This is techno for adventuring, the kind of track that makes me want to kick open my front door and run through the night, rather than dance at all. In other words, it’s more My Kind Of Thing.
While the production itself springs from the sounds and structures of classic electro, the music leans hard into futuristic Detroit techno, with a cascading synth repetition begging hypnosis rather than hip shaking. The bass line is as funky as this kind of music gets, but it’s sunk into an atmospheric wash of melody, dropping out for moments of pure untethered synthesizer flight. Head nodding never felt so aerodynamic.
Despite my years-long love of Drexicya, I have never previously written about them on this blog. The mysterious duo of James Stinson and Gerald Donald may have dissolved after Stinson’s untimely death in 2002, but their legacy has only grown over the years. After a host of single and b-side collections were issued, their original album label Tresor began repressing the classic trio of full-lengths on vinyl. This is important, because it means that I was finally able to pick up a copy of Neptune’s Lair and own a piece of techno’s weirdest mythology. It’s not just an important and brilliant album; it’s incredibly easy to get into and enjoy. You can find a copy via Discogs or even on Amazon, though the latter’s price is outrageous.
DJ Spider’s new album is a hot revelation, a refractory slab of noisy techno and deep house. Upon The Gates Of The Great Depth grabbed my attention out of nowhere this morning, leaping from a list of new releases with a sense of inevitability: “I’m going to be really into this,” I thought, seeing nothing more than the abstract cover art. As it wormed its way into my skull, lifting my cheeks in a smile, I realized that I was right.
It’s all thanks to Giant Claw.
Beginning with last year’s stunning Dark Web (see Best of 2014), I fell in love with Orange Milk. The record label hosts a roster of consistently mind-bending artists who have put out some of the most innovative, transgressive, and ultimately fun music of the past couple years. So when another artist I highly respect mentioned Gora Sou’s new Orange Milk release, Ramifications, I had to listen right then and there.
Optimistic Underground 