Techno
Charlie Bertsch / 19 Apr 2023
Defying Stereotypes
Paul St. Hilaire’s Tikiman Vol. 1
Tikiman Vol.1 is a remarkable achievement. It demands to be played over and over and sounds better each time.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 25 Jan 2023
The Dub Perspective
Rob Smith’s Jungle Archive Collection 1 and 2
How can we think about music historically without turning it into a museum piece, a beautiful butterfly impaled on a pin? Bristol legend Rob Smith’s new Jungle Archive Collection 1 and Jungle Archive Collection 2 pose this question forcefully.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 23 Mar 2022
Club Music at War
Sounds of Survival: From Ukrainian Underground
Sounds of Survival: From Ukrainian Underground is so consistently good that its social function almost seems extraneous. We should have been listening to this music before we felt it was our democratic duty.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 13 May 2020
The Power of Failing
Lorenzo Senni’s Scacco Matto
Scacco Matto sounds like a mosaic of Europop hits from the early 1980s. The album is made from pieces so tiny, their arrangement so abstract, that it transcends the referentiality of so much postmodern music.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 18 Sep 2019
Lost in the Wilderness
Wolfgang Voigt’s Germany
When I was little, my German grandfather used to complain that American woodlands were not properly managed. At the time, I figured that this was just another one of his button-pushing remarks, designed to lure people into the sort of debate he loved. (...)