Time keeps its own time

[WiDGe->]

Weirdly, I get these moments where I think "I might go on Moop and post a big music thread". Usually I'm driving a car at the time so actually being able to react to this is a little fraught with danger. But the thought is there. And then years pass. But Moop doesn't pass, I'll be drifting over various feeds and I'll see the familiar names pop up doing their own thing in their own world. Anyway, I've been mulling over the impact of social media and how it basically put a spanner in little communities but actually community is where life is a lot more, I don't know, fulfilling in terms of engagement. Long and short of it, I've finally got around to starting to make my big ol thread and it may as well be able noises I've been mulling over the year. TBH, since being a regular back in the day when the internet was created using twigs, leaves and mud, I've kept on discovering noises and sounds, so what I was is not always what I am now. Weirdly, what I was on Dotlite has made a huge ol' comeback, but more of that later.

Some sounds.

This is going to be a little salvo. I really got into the entire deep, dreamy house/techno thing this year. Very good for pure disassociation. Cuddle my ears with reverence. There are a few names that crop up a lot - first off is Tren. I have no details on Tren whatsoever other than they put out albums and I say thank you very much.



Then there is Lb Honne. Again, I lack details, but that really doesn't matter a great deal to me whatsoever. I've noted they've started to move into the circles that Lawrence and Efdemin operate in, so their time is coming. This track has a bit more of a pulse, I love the meticulous nature of the arrangement. All the claps and hats have been organised "just so" which my mind just latches onto. All very techy to start with, the reverence swells halfway through.



Now I do know about this one. It is (was) a side project of Martinou. There was a big vision behind it all but - to be frank - I came to it right at the end of it all, where I picked up the album. It's a bit more gritty than regular Martinou, you can really viscerally feel all the hiss and crackle in it.



And I suppose I'll tie it off with a nod. I'd argue that this entire vibe was pretty much started by Traumprinz (or one of the various aliases: Prime Minister Of Doom, DJ Metatron, DJ Healer, Prince Of Denmark). Here another alias, it actually lies more towards the nostalgic trance edge of DJ Metatron than the above ones. It was notable because it is the first release they've put out digitally and on Bandcamp. Usually an album would appear on allpossibleworlds.de and you'd just have to buy it on faith. Anyway, I'm still waiting for this to land on my doorstep but essentially it is a massive 6x12" version of the massive 3 hour Irini session on Soundcloud.



plus the darling Mandarin has posted the entire thing to Soundcloud as split tracks, for those who find the EUR30 asking price of the digital a bit much:

 

[Agneeta]

Just popped that Irini track on. Lovely stuff. Hammering away like a good un and then in pops a piano.

 

[octophone]

WiGgle->! Hello!

 

[WiDGe->]

It me

 

[WiDGe->]

I suppose having put some irini in there, I'll continue with one of the obsessions I've been on over the years. I started to notice a bunch of proggy stuff coming through from outside of the prog scene. I basically noped out of prog halfway through the 00's as it was starting to become super stale, before landing in its current state where it has decided to dial down the BPMs into some lethargic amble, with every artist seemingly using each other as reference thereby creating one of the most sonically narrow genres outside of what was famed for being wildly diverse.

Anyway, new names and scenes have come to the fore, so some for 2025 that I've been buying.

First off, Follow from Alvar. Alval/Ekkel is of note for having popped up on S.O.N.S in demand Junction Forest Seoul imprint, and the first EP is annoying hard to get a hold of. Thankfully, he just put out a cracking album of vibrant stuff here and I'm just loving the end of night slanted vibes.



Neptune Discs turned to Manchester artist Aiden Francis for a high energy workout. Neptune is pretty much straight up and direct, no messing around there. I stumbled across them when I found their big triple pack 6 year compilation earlier in the year. This had also just come out so I threw it into the basket too.



Ok this one is actually a nice bit of chug, but it is right on the balearic vibe. Haws is consistently good as a label of recent and this Vol 4 V/A effort was strong on all fronts - great collection of artists all on form. While 3/4 of these are pushing the BPMs, Solar Suite are throwing right back to classic Ibiza.



I love Bliss Inc. and he's been on great form since the off really. Nobody is getting that full on 90s electronic vibe quite as nailed as him. Tends to be quite varied in spectrum from the early woozy 90s vibe up to the more taut turn of the millenium stuff. I really liked this double header with DJ Teeth as it really hit on that bonk along fast prog trance thing. Nice stuff.



Stunning compilation from the ascendent Love On The Rocks. Paramida's label is resident at Panorama Bar and sprinkled with fizzing energy. In terms of her own productions, she has this knack for creating incredible "mix CD starter" tracks across the various EPs she has put out. This one is great and is a gateway to the superb 10 Years Love On The Rocks compilation. Love the little Age Of Love sample in there. No irony, pure authenticity.



One more from Love On The Rocks, Pancratio has been doing well this year and his recent double EP on Faith Beat has been propping up lots of end of year lists. This shouldn't be looked over and was featuring across loads of nights and festivals. Reminds of of when Yoshitoshi and Deep Dish were at their turn of millenium peak. Great EP this, I'd drag out any of the tracks.



Last up is aussie pair Sleep D. I'm pretty much hunting down massive crops of their stuff and littering it through my mixes. Great at doing undulating evolving tracks while always keeping everything fresh from release to release. They put out a lot this year, so I'll pick this effort from an EP I picked up some months ago.

 

[octophone]

Lovely to see all those Bankcamp logos.

 

[WiDGe->]

Lovely to see all those Bankcamp logos.

I’m trying to buy as much as possible from there.

Naff did a lovely thing where it is obviously quite expensive to ship out from Toronto (?) and so they put the digital price really low, so you can source it locally and then mop up the digital after.

 

[WiDGe->]

Maligned genres making a comeback continued to make pace. This compilation of classics from the Telepathic Fish orbital parties (think the who's who of 90s eletronica played these) was an insta-buy for me considering it had a holy grail track on it for me - Satellite Serenade, best known for kicking off Sasha & Digweed's Northern Exposure. Plenty of delicious matter to get into here, such as this unusual version of Golden Girls.



While that was the past, new material was coming through. Oprofessional's Repulsive Force series got a third entry. While it stepped away from the mega-long-trax format of volume 2, it was no less firmly rooted in the 90s ambient house vibe.



Then Roza Terenzi's trip hop act Trickpony got into full swing with a great EP. They're doing live appearances atm so fingers crossed for a long player in the near future. It was only listening to this that I realised that trip hop had really been absent entirely for so many years.



Apparently getting a window into Purelink's live shows is really hard and closely guarded (I will take this as truth) so this double header of live ambient noodlings is a rare slice. Very much disassociation material.



Biosphere are one of those legacy acts that I just never happened to cross paths with in the past. He had a release on AD93 in recent years that was so utterly morose that I couldn't make it through it. And this comes from Captain Melancholic himself. This effort buried itself into my mind near instantly. There was a patch early in the year where I was just cycling between this and the Tren LP.



I was a big supporter of MPU101 and wrote about the first three issuings of the X01 series for IA. I had quickly twigged that it was a new project of Roland Analogue Orchestra - a reimagining, a rebirth. Historically, RAO felt a bit like a soundsalike act - one track he did from the past was effectively a retelling of Daft Punk's Da Funk, while more recent works tended to operate in the Boards Of Canada realm. Since becoming MPU101, I felt like he established his own identity - mainly of someone who loves his synths and creating little perfect moments frozen in time. Sure you can hear a bit of BOCish-ness in some of them, but that comes with the machines - BoC did love their Roland SH101, and thereby it isn't too hard to walk into that realm with that machine.