Since his 2016 album for BEB, People Skills has mainly attracted attention with compilation tracks around the extended Low Company Bubble. His album »Hum Of The Non-Engine« for Digital Regress is now a welcome compilation of diverse loosies that nevertheless perfectly encapsulate why collage experimentalism and mumblefolk were sent to speed date on every other tape three years ago. Perhaps the best record in this category since the last No Rodere album. 

I didn't know anything about Bruce Falkian, but the media-satirical superstructure on their debut for Antinote is in some parts a bit too flat for me. But metaperspectively freed, this is a really amazingly good post punk album, which in places sounds as if Malaria had seen electroclash coming back then.

It's always nice when people get over their Ed Banger past without suffering a wrinkle and are now free to work with Valentina Magaletti. Zongamin was secretly overqualified for the blog house era anyway, and today, in the 22nd year of his career, he releases his best record. On Suono Assente, Magaletti pushes the dub of her Holy Tongues project even deeper into post-punk grooves, while Zongamin follows with slapping basslines and shoegaze. And by the time Coby Sey staggers into a Claire Denis soundtrack on »Bites« at the latest, V/Z will have landed on the shortlist of albums of the year so far. 

»No Soul, No God, No Devil, No Existence« – Hajj calls his album Jürgen without irony, and this sincerity is hard for my millennial brain to take at first, but also rather admirable in its corniness. Burial and weightless grime are the right false references here, because the sonic inspiration clearly does not follow the British continuum, but Chicago, Memphis and Paris instead, although the transported melancholy does then legitimise this crooked comparison on an emotional level. Florian Aigner 

Rrose's journey reaches its climax on »Please Touch«, and there are only a few techno producers who work so meticulously and freely in album format. In its stepping moments, »Please Touch« most closely resembles Regis and Katatonic Silentio, in its technoid moments it resembles the best Plastikman Maxis and, almost incidentally, in the drum-free sequences it is a fantastic ARRRT EP. 

I love it when reviews write themselves. The top comment for Zaumne's »Perfume« on Bandcamp at the moment is: »Superb sound design, only tarnished by the excessive French whispering«. Well, replace tarnished with enhanced and we're finished with this review. 

Soundtracks are admittedly rare here, mainly because it's difficult for me to judge whether they can stand on their own at the time of release. The main exception at the moment is Micah Levi, but Oliver Coates also qualifies in this category with his score for »Aftersun«. Rarely have I heard a soundtrack that is so ambivalent about the feelings of its two protagonists without making them too explicit (the great Bowie/Queen finale notwithstanding). The fact that Coates was working on a film here – the punchline of which knocked me out cold – certainly helps, but my goodness, that bloody cello hits a different note. 

Koshiro Hino's Kakuhan project was one of my favourite albums of last year, so my efforts to review »Geist II« were correspondingly feverish. There may be contexts in which these emphatically discordant field recordings work, especially when accompanied by visuals, but on its own this album is – narrow-minded as it may sound – just music per se in the broadest sense. 

Jon Collins' approach to field recordings, on the other hand, is more accessible, even if his work with Demdike Stare sounds particularly droney and ephemeral compared to his relatively linear solo work. »Fragments Of Nothing« was 2020's companion tape to »Sketches Of Everything«, an album that accompanied me through the strange pandemic autumn in 2020. »Fragments Of Nothing« is even more minimalist and a little less dubby, but again, every minute spent in anticipation pays off. I'm curious to see how part 3 will turn out, »Minerals« was released at the end of June, but seems to have been held up at customs. 

In his collaboration with Mount Sims, Olof Dreijer's obsession with steel drums reaches a climax – that is to say, a cliché-free conclusion. »Souvenir« doesn't use silly »The Office« memes to introduce the instrument, but aims to bring together Eurocentric avant-garde conventions with gamelan arrangements and genuine West Indian appreciation. This works best in the middle of the album, but the attempt to embed this instrument in the disturbing gothic folk context right at the beginning is also very interesting. 

Each of Bendik Giske's last three albums contains at least one transcendental track, which, in its ecstatic interplay of repetition and modulation, makes you think that music might be the mediator between here and there after all. On »Cracks« it was »Cruising«, on his collaboration with Pavel Milyakov and now it is »Not Yet«. As always, Giske's madcap approach to album length remains a challenge in the best sense. But here, with Beatrice Dillon as co-producer, another fascinating layer is added, as her dogmatic rejection of any morphing of the music allows for an almost painfully brilliant album that completely liberates Giske's improvisations from conventional jazz etiquette. 

I don't know how many times I listened to the first part of Florian TM Zeisig's »You Look So Serious« during the coronavirus years, but this Basinskified version of Enya loops will forever remain my official FFP2 soundtrack. The second part, which is being released together with Part 1, does exactly what the first seven tracks did before: 2011 clams casino beats without the beats. Sounds disparaging, but it is a Fields Medal-worthy formula.