Articles
2010 Ten Favourite Labels
Liam Singer

Albums
Akabu
Amorph
Keith Canisius
Carinthia
Cursor Miner
Dark Party
dOP
Evon
Ex-Wise Heads
Forever Delayed
The Fun Years
Dirk Geiger
The Green Kingdom
Chihei Hatakeyama
Hessien
Robin Holcomb
The Inventors of Aircraft
Peter Jørgensen
Loveliescrushing
My Dry Wet Mess
Silje Nes
Ontayso
Piiptsjilling
Pleq
Radioseed
relapxych.0
Sharp & Whetham
Liam Singer
Erik K Skodvin
Sarah Kirkland Snider
Squares On Both Sides
Strië
Sutekh
David Sylvian
Taiga II
Francesco Tristano
RJ Valeo
Victoire
Wreaths
Zelienople

Compilations / Mixes
Buzz.RO! 2010
Crónica L
Timo Maas
Movement Torino Festival
Sebastian Mullaert

EPs
Dday One / Glen Porter
Depth Affect
Enabl.ed
The Gentleman Losers
Gulls
Mimosa
Piece of Shh…
Shufflepunk
Teebs & Jackhigh
Telekaster
thisquietarmy + yellow6
Tom White

Cursor Miner: Requires Attention
Uncharted Audio

Three albums on from his 2002 Cursor Miner debut album Explosive Piece of Mind, Rob Tubb continues to refine his blissfully twisted sound on the fourth opus Requires Attention. His tracks are severely tripped-out exercises in rave-addled quirk laced with tongue-in-cheek humour—consider the rollicking chant “Minibar,” for example, which sets sail with a voiceover recounting a looney story about a 1965 ocean liner called USS Pencil Sharpener that sank, with its only survivor a minibar that floated for 300 miles until it washed up on an island to be worshipped by natives.

“Reject” (“the ground beneath my feet rejecting me…”) opens the album with Tubb doing his best Jim Morrison imitation and doling out morose lyrics in a brooding murmur while electronics slowly mass into a sweeping wave. Though the album's material is solidly crafted, Tubb stays resolutely true to his warped vision, as viral concoctions such as “The Man With the Transparent Face” attest. Yep, “Mad Cow (Intensively Farmed version)” does, in fact, twist a cowbell into fulminating funky shape and couples it with a convulsive breakbeat throb whose corrosive slam would do any number of electronica artists proud; a similarly lunatic sensibility underscores the aptly titled “Chinese Water Torture.” “The Golem of Bognor Regis” presents a wacky slab of disorienting electropop tomfoolery in the grand Aphex Twin tradition with Tubb's voice electronically treated into a degraded croak and backed by a sleazy electro-blues jaunt. Not that there was any room for doubt but the feverish jungle electro-chant “King is a Killer,” nightmarish incantation “Failed State,” and furious raver “Silicon Savage” prove that Requires Attention is anything but ambient music. Coming as it does after so much intensity, the acoustic folk-blues ballad “For Each Other” makes for an appealing exit. The album's dozen songs largely play without interruption so one is rarely able to get one's bearings before the next storm hits but that's obviously part of Tubb's grand plan for his latest full-frontal collection.

October 2010