#synth artist electronic artist Synthwave trance music music release

[auralpatterns]

well it's been a while on here! let's do a 2021 wrap-up of discoveries (from any year; people who think they can do an effective end-of-year wrapup of all releases that year as casual listeners are fooling themselves)

per RYM I've logged 212 new ratings:

| 2 at 5 stars |||| 21 at 4.5 stars |||||||||||| 59 at 4 stars |||||||||||||| 66 at 3.5 stars |||||||||| 47 at 3 stars ||| 14 at 2.5 stars | 1 at 2 stars | 2 at 1.5 stars (first ratings I've given this low since 2007)

One of the two 5-stars is a 90s single I've known for long and hadn't gotten around to rating before … so my best-rated find of the year is uncontestedly Arjen Schats, Manifolds (2021); classic Berlin School

The 4.5-ers:

Sergey Eybog: Everlasting Summer (Bright Side) (2013) – cool VGM, very sunny atmospheres. I have not played the game (apparently a visual novel actually)

Nigel Mullaney: The Navigator (2021) – versatile synthwork from a long-time Ian Boddy collaborator

U/V Light: Cenotaph (2015) – hella catchy retro synthpop; 5 stars for the opener "Arriviste"

V/A / Lucky Lotus label: Journey to the Stars (2016) – four-hour orbital strike of J-core / J-trance / allies. I got this in 2018 already but eh it was back in its day a major stimulant for me get my thesis finished and all, might as well leave it a shoutout here

Material Object: Indiana Drones (2013) – very ambient techno, dedicated to the late Pete Namlook

CFCF: Liquid Colors (2019) – the new savior of ambient d'n'b? not even in a meme way?

Curium: Aember (2007) – chill IDM from what I think of as the "netlabel side" of the genre: none of the drillcore 3avant5u aggression, just a honest interest in doing clever electronic music

Маяк: Река (2013), Вышеe звёзд (EP, 2014) – best synthwave find of the year. you may need to know something about East European 80s to get full nostalgy bonus from this

Holon: Connect | Isolate (2017), Echoes of the Void (2017) – a new breed of synth music entirely really; psybient techniques without the drugs, electro-industrial soundworld without the angst, space exploration without the analog fetish … to honor the trend of Really Dumb Genre Names I've decided this should be called "Uplifting Industrial"

Kashiwa Daisuke: april.#07 (2007) – modern electro-classical snippets; some fantastic, some eh

Doss: Doss (EP, 2014) – dream trance! it's not just for the 90s, even if kids these days for some reason get the core idea usually wrong completely *coughxd*

Penguin Cafe: Handfuls of Night (2019) – not the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra but an excellent "sequel band"; if you ever needed more Brian Eno in their work maybe

Aural Expansion: Surreal Sheep (1995) – kinda same deal as Aember above, more actively techno; might be better than the much-hyped 76:14. it is very cool when labels put their 90s or 00s back-catalogue, rarities and all, on Bandcamp

Floating Points: Bias (single, 2020) – some promising initial exploration into "future garage". I still have no idea what is the core sense of "garage" or if one even exists

Nanoray: Zapper (2021) – wherein it turns out that hardcore breaks is not just a new spelling for breakbeat hardcore and is actually a cooler new evolution. a lot of it is a bit over-memed but this one is just right for me

Martin Stürtzer: The Omarion Nebula (2020) – best ambient find of the year; artist mostly does somewhat less outstanding Berlin School

Zabutom: Zeta Force (Digitone Version) (single, 2021) – FM synth re-edit from Swedish chiptune legend's 2011 EP. more please

Tangerine Dream: Recurring Dreams (?? compilation, 2019) – new-generation lineup goes back to the basics forreal and puts out excellent advanced covers of their classic-era work. much better than similar attempts in earlier decades

Earth Trax: LP2 (2020) – I'm finally starting to find good clues / entrypoints into house; this one and several others found via @lamuyazimina (thx!)

[hcmj]

HCMJ’s Favorite Albums of 2019!

Listen to a mix featuring these albums here: HCMJ’s 2019 End Of Year Mix

Other Favorites:

David Bruce - The North Wind Was a Woman

galen tipton - fake meat

upusen - Highland Ave.

BLACKPINK - Kill This Love

Starkey - Earth EP

Lamp - ‘A Distant Shore’ Asia Tour 2018

AWITW - Ｓｈｅ Ｗａｌｋ Ａｌｏｎｅ う者姻

Seaketa - Gion ぎおん

SNJO - Diamond

BONNEVILLE - AFFORDABLE LUXURY

20) Gareth Davis & Scanner - Footfalls

I first found the experimental composition/clarinet music of Gareth Davis in the early 2010′s during my initial dive into the Miasmah catalog. Teamed up here with another electronic musician/clarinetist, Footfalls uses long, poetic waves of deep woodwinds and synth improv to describe hauntingly desolate environments. It only seems fitting to start the list with one of many bookends on a decade in the grim, cold grey of Philadelphia.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

19) Barker - Utility

Arp and delay-driven rhythmic expression that recalls late-era Kraftwerk, building a pristine sci-fi future with ear-pleasing, rich, and laser-sharp production. Like disembodied trance or house music searching for a strong beat that never comes, Utility is absolute, skillfully-stated synth pleasure.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

18) Sean McCann/Seth Graham w/Kymatic Ensemble  - Split Series Vol. IV

Seth Graham’s Gasp was a big favorite in 2018, here condensed and re-imagined for chamber ensemble. Sean McCann’s “Vilon” finds a blissful middle-ground between electronic ambient music and traditional western instrumentation, like a poignant hymn sung somewhere far away, while the new “Gasp” arrangements are full of expressiveness and surprises.

BANDCAMP

17) 猫 シ Corp. & t e l e p a t h - Building a Better World

Deep bass pulses and distant rain welcome us to a familiar comfortable place, but as the unmistakable sound and melodic freedom of telepath’s original synth work bends its way over rolling toms in the reverb-soaked hifi opener, it becomes clear that this album is something new and special. Full-on new age drenched in an endless downpour, it’s a huge and beautiful world that’s blissful to be lost in.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

16) Various Artists - Oneironaut

Another rare case of a compilation that is actually worth listening to, Japanese indie powerhouse Local Visions assembles the best talent from the sax-loving, jazz-infused, post-vaporwave electronic underworld of Japan and beyond in the indomitable Oneironaut comp. Notable contributions from Utsuro Spark, upusen, Tsudio Studio, tamao ninomiya, and countless others deliver a hazy daydream.

BANDCAMP

15) wai wai music resort - WWMR 1

Also from Local Visions comes this special collection of tracks caught somewhere between “lost LP found in a record crate” and “bedroom 4-track” - two distinct lofi flavors that mysteriously meld seamlessly on WWMR 1. It sounds new and old, youthful and mature, and full of affection for love and the music it references.

BANDCAMP | SPOTIFY

14) EXID - Me & You

There’s something about this mini-album, a Christmas time snowy nostalgia as the sun sets on another chapter of life (and era of kpop) in tracks like “나의밤” and “WE ARE..,” the Jamiroquai funk of “내일해 (Urban Mix),” or club igniting title track - EXID may never exist in this form or at this level again, and like so many of my favorites this year it reflects the recent history of its genre brilliantly.

APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

13) Fire-Toolz - Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace)

Field Whispers is the stunning next step in the evolution of Fire-Toolz that feels completely at home on the finely-curated Orange Milk. Extended sax-soaked dreams collide with splinters of music jumbled and broken, elegant and disjointed, all bouncing off each other while still leaving room for moments of soaring guitar and dreamy synth pads.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

12) Hakobune - The Last of Our Time Together

With over 50 releases (4 just this year!), Hakobune’s discography can seem like an impenetrable wall of ambience, but like classics Seamless and Here and Love Knows Where, The Last of Our Time Together stands out - monumental and multi-dimensional - a slow dance skidding along the frozen surface of an endlessly deep, rich sea of emotion.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

11) FM Skyline - Advanced Memory Suite

As nostalgic electronic music continues to evolve and find itself elevated in the hands of increasingly-focused musicians, FM Skyline delivers a joyful retrospective on a decade that gave new life to so many old sounds. Exploring the inner recesses of our memory and delusion, Advanced Memory Suite turns the page on a decade of chillwave/synthwave/vaporwave/whateverwave. It’s a hypnotic monument to the modern renaissance.  

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

10) emamouse - Black place on the edge

It was a huge year from the prolific Tokyo-based visual artist and musician emamouse, whose non-stop creative output continues to challenge the very nature of reality. Black place on the edge was a standout favorite this year, layered and mysterious - incidental music for the surreal dreamworld described in mou’s most unnerving illustrations. Like waking up and finding yourself trapped inside Quest 64.

BANDCAMP

09) Koeosaeme - Obanikeshi

My favorite Orange Milk release of the year, Koeosaeme delivers another absolute hurricane of hyper-detailed, sensory-extreme, buckshot-to-the-face arrangements. The sheer amount of data on this album is staggering, with more musical information packed into a few minutes of its blissful chaos than most full length albums combined.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

08) Jaeho Hwang - Non-self 비자아

I was super fortunate to play a show with Jaeho Hwang in Tokyo during this year’s Neo Gaia Phantasy tour - his immense set started so intensely it’s as if the entire room was cast under a shamanistic spell, hypnotized by percussive expressionism, drawn to the light of digitally melting faces and occult rituals playing out on the screen behind him. Non-self 비자아 is without mercy and full of powerful and primal energy.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

07) Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising

Natalie Mering’s subtly expressive, velvety voice on its own is enough to make anything she touches turn to gold, but her songwriting is so masterfully dialed in on Titanic Rising it’s as if Harry Nilsson came back from the dead to write a new volume of pop rock ballads to get us through the next 50 years. It’s an album dripping with love for all the best parts of the 1970′s (Stardust-era Willie Nelson, early ELO, “Lost Weekend” Lennon and friends, etc), but also showcases the compositional chops to match and sometimes surpass its musical lineage (e.g. “Picture Me Better”).

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

06) Monari Wakita - RIGHT HERE

Off the heals of last year’s jaw-dropping Ahead!, ex-Especia Monari Wakita continues to defy modern conventions while asserting herself as one of the most powerful female voices in jpop. “エスパドリーユでつかまえて” sounds like Hitomitoi when she was a rising star, FRIEND IN NEED continues the new jack swing flirting, “やさしい嘘” sounds like it’s begging to be sampled by a future funk artist, and the lead-off single “Just a Crush for Today” is somewhere in a stop-and-go freefall between Billy Joel and Sonic R.

VIDEO 1 | VIDEO 2

05) Yeule - Serotonin II

Beneath the subtle power and diffusion of a voice like an extra-dimensional Julee Cruise, Serotonin II’s beautifully bleak paintings of the world it carefully constructs are reflective of Yeule’s transcendence into the artist’s next form. Crumbling brutalism under a blinding white sky, aliens in a graveyard - the romance of eternal torment in the spiral - all in dark room illuminated by a computer monitor sometime in the 00′s.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

04) The Caretaker - Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 6

The final release for this multi-year project, capturing a mind being lost to dementia, also marks the end of Leyland Kirby’s multi-decade spanning Caretaker project - a project that has had an immense impact on my perception of the limitlessness of music. Now completed, Everywhere at the End of Time towers as a 50 track, 6.5 hour journey from dreamy lucidity to terrifying confusion and darkness.

BANDCAMP

03) Tsudio Studio - Soda Resort Journey

Tsudio Studio brings a contemporary frame to leisure fantasy. Instant classics “Kiss in KIX,” “Asian Coke Light,” and “Like a Ruin” expand on the electro-bossa pop of Port Island, while surprises like “Beijing Cat” expand and explore new worlds of sound. One perfect chord after another, from start to finish, Soda Resort Journey is bubbly and delicious to listen to. Play it looped, close your eyes, be where you’d rather be.

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

02) Minuano - Butterfly Dream

Lamp vocalist Kaori Sakakibara’s side project Minuano is like some mutant variant of Lamp - equally complex while slightly less disorienting arrangements (although there are a few re-worked Lamp classics on here), tighter pop sound, stunningly immaculate vocal production - all while maintaining the unique orchestral jazz pop that makes both bands such a euphoric joy to listen to. “Memory of Soda Pop” was my favorite track released by anyone this year.

BANDCAMP

01) EQUIP - CURSEBREAKER X

This was the year of EQUIP. No better story for this year, no better sound than CURSEBREAKER X - the songs from this album will always bring back a thousand memories of smoke-filled clubs, dark forests, and snow-capped mountains from across Japan - the building promise of absolute freedom and a happier tomorrow as we all lived the Neo Gaia Phantasy.. But even without my personal connection to the music, the hardware-driven “perfect sound” VGM and EQUIP’s signature cassette tape destruction has never been better balanced than it is here - it’s loud, and filled with unforgettable melodies and unknown lands. It’s monumental and iconic and will stand the test of time and it was my favorite album of 2019!

BANDCAMP | APPLE MUSIC | SPOTIFY

[musicdish]

C Z A R I N A Releases Spacewave Ballad "Til The Last Star"

Rising RetroFuturist synth and electronic artist C Z A R I N A has released her latest spacewave and dreamwave ballad entitled "Til the Last Star" to welcome summer. Accompanied by atmospheric synths and orchestral arrangements simulating the journey through outer space, C Z A R I N A reels listeners in a Sci-Fi-inspired, trance-like dreamscape in her most vulnerable performance and personal testament about the epic lifelong journey one would traverse for love. "Til the Last Star" is now available for streaming and download in digital platforms worldwide. Written, composed, performed and produced by C Z A R I N A (aka Vero Faye Kitsune), "Til the Last Star" poignantly talks about love as the true paramount choice through life's journey. "Many of us are driven by ambition and goals while in search of one's self. We often forget that at the end, all that matters is our ability to give and accept fearless, dauntless love," explains the artist, who herself had found tremendous success for many years as a fashion mogul, prior to her return to music and fully embarking upon uncharted territories towards self-discovery. Before C Z A R I N A, Vero Faye Kitsune spent her time as the full time creative director and founder of the famed footwear and accessory brand, IVY KIRZHNER NEW YORK. With a design aesthetic true to her own notoriously unapologetic rock-and-roll persona, her footwear collection became a global success, with a long list of celebrity clientele including Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Kesha, Lily Collins, Cassie, Jamie Chung and Tori Kelly. Her line was also stocked at specialty retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom Salon, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Intermix, Harvey Nichols London and Printemps Paris. With the paramount accomplishment of her company, C Z A R I N A decided to venture back into music and form a sound that is a true reflection of her dynamic skillset as a creative professional. On November 11, 2018, her critically-acclaimed debut LP, Painted Holograms, was released and had earned her a spot in several Best of 2018 lists, including Music Connection Magazine's Hot 100 Independent Artists of 2018. C Z A R I N A blurs the lines between retro and modern, along with vivid and colorful lyricism, sonic guitars, heartfelt melodies and vocal hooks which are all signature to a soundscape that is truly her own. Her trademark persona has garnered attention from publications including Guitar Girl Magazine, Dark Beauty Magazine, She Bops and Iron Skullet Synthwave. The latter praised C Z A R I N A's masterwork debut LP, Painted Holograms, as "a remarkable creation at a critical moment in synthwave's history... She may very well be the first synthwave rockstar." To keep up with C Z A R I N A and her evolving musical projects, visit CzarinaOfficial.com and Instagram @Czarinaofficial. http://www.czarinaofficial.com http://soundcloud.com/czarinaofficial/c-z-a-r-i-n-a-til-the-last-star/s-Fhq7S