Field Journal: 2023.02.11

In this field journal edition, I am happy to share some wonderful new sounds that have caught my ear by way foraging through a wave of new & upcoming releases featuring music by AVAWAVES, Foam and Sand, GoGo Penguin, Hanakiv, Julia Gjertsen & Juha Mäki-Patola, Mammal Hands, Onur Tarçın, and Steve Gunn & David Moore.

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2022 in Review: Highlights of a Headphone Commute

As I am sure many readers are already keenly aware, Headphone Commute is a fabulous online resource of candid words on electronic, experimental and instrumental music that has long been setting the bar to which many independent blogs aspire to including this one. In fact, it was my own early encounters with and lessons from…

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Sound Impression: Light Leaks (for Sarah) by Yadayn

It is a strange thing to enjoy a new release from an artist whose work you admire and simultaneously wish it never had to be made. Such is the case with this new EP by Yadayn, the alias of Belgian musician Gowaart Van Den Bossche. His first new music since Elders (Lost Tribe Sound, 2020),…

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Travelogue: New sounds for a new year

While it may have been a year to forget in many ways, 2022 left us with plenty of fine music to savor thanks to the irrepressible creative drive of the artistic community. Having spent the better part of the past two weeks immersed in a great deal of that music, it is time to take…

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2022 in Review: The Art of the EP

The EP is often overlooked when it comes annual round-ups, but this format continually proves it can provide us with outsized moments of wonder and delight and the year in music would not be the same without them as these 16 releases demonstrate.

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2022 in Review: Electroacoustic, Folk, and Jazz

This is a category I especially enjoy each year for its variety, eclecticism, and nomadic spirit. Here is a selection of memorable releases from the musical edge lands where electroacoustic music and field recordings meet folk, jazz, and other analog experiments in sound.

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2022 in Review: A Sense of Place and Time

The act of creating a sense of a place or capturing a moment in time is a fairly common motif in a great deal of instrumental music, especially ambient, but it is intrinsically at the very core of these works released in 2022. Some are personal narratives or depictions of landscape either real or imagined while…

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Duologue: A conversation with Svaneborg Kardyb

Svaneborg Kardyb are the multi award-winning Danish duo of Nikolaj Svaneborg (Wurlitzer, Juno, piano) and Jonas Kardyb (drums, percussion) based in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. The by-product of fruitful early morning sessions caffeinated with “the blackest of coffee”, Over Tage (‘over roofs’) marks their Gondwana debut where it is right at home among such intrepid explorers of jazz-leaning experimental music as…

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Travelogue: Journey to the Antipodes

After nearly three years of staying close to home, there is something particularly appealing about taking a virtual journey to the other side of the world, especially when it involves the electroacoustic artistry found in this collection of recent releases originating in Australia. Of course, the antipodal perspective is in the location of the beholder,…

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