Articles
2009 Top 10s and 20s
King Midas Sound
Starke

Albums
36
Aardvarck
Matias Aguayo
Anaphoria
Anduin
Arbol + Fibla
Aufgang
Beneva vs. Clark Nova
Black to Comm
Bvdub
Cornstar
Dinky
Enola
Fieldhead
FOURM / Shinkei / Turra
Billy Gomberg
The Green Kingdom
Chihei Hatakeyama
Ian Hawgood
Marek Hemmann
Khate
King Midas Sound
Marcel Knopf
Robot Koch
Lambent
Shinobu Nemoto
Olekranon
Laurent Perrier
Piano Magic
Porzellan
Pylône
Ryonkt
Shadyzane
Slow
Small Color
Solomun
The Sound of Lucrecia
Stray Ghost
The Use of Ashes
Sylvie Walder

Compilations / Mixes
Sebo K
Will Saul
Tama Sumo
VOLTT Amsterdam Vol. 1

EPs
Blindhæð
Roberto Bosco
Franco Cangelli
Dieb
dub KULT
Abe Duque/Blake Baxter
Gemmy
Christopher Hobbs
Duncan Ó Ceallaigh
Christopher Roberts
The Sight Below
Two Fourteen
Van Der Papen
Andy Vaz
Vetrix
Eddie Zarook

DVD
Optofonica

Lambent: Smoothness Extract (Deep Night at Ishigaki)
Project Mooncircle

A new collection of smooth head-nodders from Lambent on Project Mooncircle, of late a fail-safe label also home to Glen Porter's Falling Down and CYNE's Starship Utopia. It's actually the third Lambent full-length from Akira Inagawa, who now calls Berlin home but hails originally from Japan. The story goes that Project Mooncircle, presented with Lambent's tracks, fell in love with those of the softer and smoother persuasion, which in turn prompted him to compile seventeen samplings of that kind for the release. The album title reference to the small Japanese island Ishigaki reflects Inagawa's idea that the album can be experienced as a soundtrack to a summer-time night trip around the verdant island (of all the tracks, the lush colour field of “Dazzle” most strongly evokes the restful ambiance intimated by the album title).

Tracks are laid-back and lounge-styled (“Wish”), and there's no shortage of bleep-hop (“May Well Be the One After”) and lurching hip-hop (“Wow Wow Thing”). Harp swirls lend “Night Woose” an arresting allure, and with crackly bossa nova smatterings added to its bleepy hip-hop, “Norm” could pass for a Daedelus jam. “Just,” with its sliced-up soul vocals, is particularly Dilla-like, while “Resemblance” splices voices, bass spatter, and beat stutter into the kind of faded click-hop we can never get enough of. Smoothness Extract (Deep Night at Ishigaki) stitches fifty-one minutes of dusty vinyl samples, soul vocal fragments, and bleepy boom-bap into three-minute instrumental hip-hop patchworks—what's not to love?

December 2009