[Music] Azu Tiwaline – Draw Me A Silence Part. I

A very pleasant surprise came into my inbox today.  From Azu Tiwaline’s Bandcamp site:

Azu Tiwaline : It’s a new name for a new spirit. The one of a producer willing to find a new sound in her origins which take root in the Sahara and El Djerid region in the south of Tunisia. A sound from the desert, drawing on berberian and saharan transe music that connects human beings with Nature.

Peculiar translations and spellings aside, this album managed to hold my attention the whole way through. Thanks to being better connected to the world, we are beginning to hear more and more musicians come out of Tunisia and the Maghreb who are of an astounding quality. This is 21st Century Berber Music mixes techno, dub, and native Saharan rhythms. Fourth World music, updated.

[Music] Yeong Choi – Pizzapi

The cover art grabbed my attention, I have to admit.  This is one of those times where I probably would have passed this up without the shockingly surreal cover art and cheesy tune titles, but I’m glad I stopped by.  Yeong Choi is a pianist, programmer and composer from Seoul, South Korea who puts up an album that has a feel like a soundtrack for a new, more acid-laden version of Alice In Wonderland.  Quite good, this.

[Music] Dead Janitor – Medusa | [ / ] no. 45

Slovakia is producing all sorts of fine music.  Dead Janitor is a fine case in point.  From their Bandcamp page:

Dead Janitor is the alter-ego for Slovak electronic technician Braňo Findrik. Over the past decade, he has steadily produced a series of digital releases leading to his debut Medusa LP for Urbsounds. With an arsenal of pixelated breakbeats and stuttering samples, Dead Janitor presents an adventurous form of polymetric electronica, echoing the complex IDM explorations of the pioneering work of Aphex Twin and Autechre.

Medusa is an apt title for the album that hybridizes digital and analogue technologies into a labyrinthine architecture of sound that prioritizes rhythm over melody. The title was inspired by the beloved camp of Clash Of The Titans but also alludes to the hostility that have become normalized in contemporary politics and culture. Here, Dead Janitor turns samples upside down, subjects the internal clocks to breakneck multiplication and division, atomsmashes electronic sound into it granular parts, and otherwise sets up rhythm to be in conflict with itself.

Tracks such as “Mandatory” that cycle through its 8-bit density of Gameboy bleeps and the title track with its aggressive industrial clamor provide a number of complicated listening experiences that reveal hidden patterns and rhythmic undercurrents over repeated listens.

With its emphasis on displacement and dislocation, Medusa makes for a thrilling if idiosyncratic album in the lineage of Evol, Mark Fell, Russell Haswell, and late-period Autechre.

[Music] Muslimgauze – Eleven Minarets

It’s a bit perplexing to think that Bryn Jones (a.k.a. Muslimgauze) has been dead for 20 years, and yet continues to ‘release’ music.  He must have been far more prolific than anyone could ever have imagined.  Thankfully, the quality of a good deal of this archival music has been excellent.  Not everything holds up, but this release gives the fans of the man what they want – experimental beats with a techno sensibility, made for dancing with heavy boots, I suppose.