German label raster-noton has been quietly building an empire of astute dance floor and headphone wizards; amassing producers with a progressive bent to their love of heavy techno music. Producers who are not content to hit for par or sail the known course of safety and calm waters. Producers who want to challenge the load-bearing capacity of your speakers, and your hips. So, if raster-noton is a burgeoning techno armada, growing in parallel to the early rise of Ninja Tune, then Kyoka is the Neotropic to Kangding Ray’s Amon Tobin in the raster-noton canon. But I would hesitate at making any further direct comparisons to Riz Maslin’s Ninja alter ego.

On Is (IsSuperpowered), Berlin-based and Japan-born Kyoka offers a brilliant bouquet of flavors and influences. There is the kosmische cut-up flow of Jan Jelinek wed to the heavy dance floor deconstructions of Andy Stott, but a bit more…

Editor’s Note: February may be over, but our forum is still on! Today I bring you installment #5 of Sounding Out!‘s blog forum on gender and voice. Last week Art Blake talked about how his experience shifting his voice from feminine to masculine as a transgender man intersects with his work on John Cage. Before that, Regina Bradley put the soundtrack of Scandal in conversation with race and gender. The week before I talked about what it meant to have people call me, a woman of color, “loud.” That post was preceded by Christine Ehrick‘s selections from her forthcoming book, on the gendered soundscape. We have one more left! Robin James will round out our forum with an analysis of how ideas of what women should sound like have roots in Greek philosophy.

This week Canadian artist and writer AO Roberts takes us into the arena of speech synthesis…

Κατά ένα περίεργο λόγο ακούγοντας ξανά και ξανά το “Fade away”, το νέο single της Susanne Sundfor, μου ήρθαν έντονα εικόνες και μνήμες από τα τέλη των 8o’s και την ανέμελη αθωότητα που τα χαρακτήριζε. Αυτή λοιπόν είναι η Νορβηγίδα που πολλοί έμαθαν πέρυσι όταν και συνεργάστηκε με τους Royksopp στο “Running to the sea”. Ωραία φωνή με κλασσικές pop επιρροές αλλά όχι τόσο 80’s όσο ακούγεται στο σημερινό “Track of the week”. Το τραγούδι αυτό είναι το πρώτο δείγμα από τον επερχόμενο δίσκο της με τίτλο “Ten love songs” που θα κυκλοφορήσει τον επόμενο μήνα.

Οι Marsheaux ποτέ δεν δίστασαν στο παρελθόν να διασκευάσουν αγαπημένα τους τραγούδια κυρίως από τα 80΄s. Το έκαναν μάλιστα και με ιδιαίτερη επιτυχία όπως στο “The promise” των When in Rome ή πολύ περισσότερο στο κλασσικό “Pop corn”, το τραγούδι με το οποίο γνώρισαν μεγάλη επιτυχία.

Αυτή τη φορά αποφάσισαν να κάνουν ένα πιο παράτολμο εγχείρημα και να αποδώσουν φόρο τιμής στο μεγαλύτερο συγκρότημα ηλεκτρονικής μουσικής και μια από τις κύριες επιρροές τους: τους Depeche Mode φυσικά.
Διασκεύασαν λοιπόν ολόκληρο το “A broken frame”, το δεύτερο album των DM από το 1982. Θα κυκλοφορήσει στις 23 Φεβρουαρίου, πρώτα σε κόπιες κίτρινου βινυλίου και έπειτα σε cd, πάντα από την Undo Records.

Εδώ μπορείτε να ακούσετε ολόκληρο το “A broken frame”:

Editor’s Note: Today I bring you installment #4 of Sounding Out!‘s blog forum on gender and voice! Last week Regina Bradley put the soundtrack of Scandal in conversation with race and gender. The week before I talked about what it meant to have people call me, a woman of color, “loud.” That post was preceded by Christine Ehrick‘s selections from her forthcoming book, on the gendered soundscape. We have two more left! In the next few weeks we’ll have A.O. Roberts with synthesized voices and gender, and lastly Robin James with an analysis of how ideas of what women should sound like have roots in Greek philosophy.

This week guest writer and professor Art Blake shares with us a personal essay. He talks about how his experience shifting his voice from feminine to masculine as a transgender man intersects with his work on John Cage. So, lean in…

Field recordings and soundscapes do much more than reflect the sounds of nature.  They also delve into local culture and artificial sound environments; they serve as travelogues, historical statements, and calls to political action.  An environment once captured is never the same, and some are disappearing.

An exemplary field recording captures a specific place lodged in a fragment of time.  An exemplary soundscape edits sources to tell a larger story, opening a window to let the light in.  Each sub-genre serves as reflection and metaphor.  When combined, the ten releases on this list offer a fine cross-section of sound that is available in the outer world as well, if only we would listen.

And now, in alphabetical order, A Closer Listen presents the Top Ten Field Recording and Soundscape Releases of 2014.

Chris Silver T ~ Salty Spots (Impulsive Habitat)
A simple idea becomes an elegant meditation on memory as…