Latest news with #electronica
The Guardian
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
For Those I Love: Carving the Stone review – bracing anger at Irish social stasis
On his 2021 debut as For Those I Love, David Balfe closed the gap between performance poetry, moody 1980s synthpop and sample-stuffed electronica to craft an evocative eulogy for his friend Paul Curran, who died by suicide in 2018. The result was Kae Tempest meets New Order via the densely referential lyrics of Real Lies; a set of songs steeped in lump-in-the-throat nostalgia for more innocent times, and in the muted echoes of dancefloor euphoria. On this follow-up, the Dublin musician – now in his early 30s – adjusts his subject while clinging tightly to his fury and devastation. Aside from The Ox/The Afters, a tribute to a former hardman who dies from drink, there's not much literal grief on Carving the Stone – but Balfe is still in mourning. His psychic wound is more abstract now, a slow-blooming bruise caused by the brutal Irish economy and the tech-addled meaninglessness of modernity. Over a boisterously ravey backdrop, No Scheme chronicles the lifestyles of Balfe's erstwhile contemporaries ('life above their means / And driven mad by phone scams and everyday still spent on Facebook'), while Mirror rages against 'cunting blackshirts' who promote nationalistic beliefs to the workers they exploit. Carving the Stone's portraits of new kinds of poverty are too depressing – and depressingly accurate – to be beautiful, although the music offers occasional bursts of strange joy (Civic's frantic breakbeat; the fiddle break in Of the Sorrows), while Balfe's heartfelt, hyper-focused social commentary means it's rare to find an album this rich in meaning.
The Guardian
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
For Those I Love: Carving the Stone review – bracing anger at Irish social stasis
On his 2021 debut as For Those I Love, David Balfe closed the gap between performance poetry, moody 1980s synthpop and sample-stuffed electronica to craft an evocative eulogy for his friend Paul Curran, who died by suicide in 2018. The result was Kae Tempest meets New Order via the densely referential lyrics of Real Lies; a set of songs steeped in lump-in-the-throat nostalgia for more innocent times, and in the muted echoes of dancefloor euphoria. On this follow-up, the Dublin musician – now in his early 30s – adjusts his subject while clinging tightly to his fury and devastation. Aside from The Ox/The Afters, a tribute to a former hardman who dies from drink, there's not much literal grief on Carving the Stone – but Balfe is still in mourning. His psychic wound is more abstract now, a slow-blooming bruise caused by the brutal Irish economy and the tech-addled meaninglessness of modernity. Over a boisterously ravey backdrop, No Scheme chronicles the lifestyles of Balfe's erstwhile contemporaries ('life above their means / And driven mad by phone scams and everyday still spent on Facebook'), while Mirror rages against 'cunting blackshirts' who promote nationalistic beliefs to the workers they exploit. Carving the Stone's portraits of new kinds of poverty are too depressing – and depressingly accurate – to be beautiful, although the music offers occasional bursts of strange joy (Civic's frantic breakbeat; the fiddle break in Of the Sorrows), while Balfe's heartfelt, hyper-focused social commentary means it's rare to find an album this rich in meaning.
The Guardian
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ninajirachi: I Love My Computer review – a surprisingly moving tribute to 2010s EDM
In case the title of Ninajirachi's debut album didn't make it clear, the Australian producer spells out her love for all things electronica on its turbo third track: 'I wanna fuck my computer / Cuz no one in the world knows me better.' A glitched-out cacophony of bleeps, mechanical spirals and sirens, the track – titled, descriptively, Fuck My Computer – is a firework display of raw energy and excitement. That freneticism rarely lets up across I Love My Computer, an immensely fun and inventive dance album that doubles as a surprisingly touching coming-of-age story from one of Australia's minted electronic exports. After first gaining prominence as a triple j Unearthed High finalist in 2016 and 2017, Ninajirachi – real name Nina Wilson – established herself at the forefront of Australia's then burgeoning hyperpop community. But as the genre's saccharine synths, irreverent samples and pitched-up vocals went increasingly mainstream post-2020, Wilson expanded her sound further. She released a cerebral 2022 mixtape, Second Nature, and played a series of slots at major US festivals including Lollapalooza and Las Vegas's Electric Daisy Carnival. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The now 25-year-old producer has started identifying her genre as 'girl EDM' – a tongue-in-cheek nod to the 2010s electronica she first fell in love with as a teenager online. Across the album's dozen tracks, Ninajirachi pays tribute to that nascent period. Repeatedly, music reaches out in a language only she can hear: On Fuck My Computer, 'it calls my name'. And CSIRAC, a throbbing track named after the first computer to play music (an Australian invention, incidentally), feels like a deranged, borderline inscrutable trip into Wilson's laptop. Across three minutes, the track jumps from chipmunk vocals to squelching acid-house breaks, metallic drones and pixelated breakbeats, as well as an eerie spoken-word bridge about following a sound. Which is exactly what the track is doing, racing through Wilson's computer at breakneck speed and transcribing its bleeps and bloops. But you don't need to overthink I Love My Computer to grasp the sincere depth of feeling Wilson has for her tech. In iPod Touch, another album highlight, Wilson links her music player to a flood of teenage memories. 'It sounds like high school, front gate, smoke in my face / It sounds like iPod Touch / yellow Pikachu case,' she sings, her sugar-rush delivery thrashed against a frantic beat. Not to will another reboot into existence, but it'd make a great theme for a gen Z take on Puberty Blues. Here, images of archetypal Australian teenage rebellion (including wearing tiny Supré shorts) are just as nostalgic as memories of 'me and my computer hanging out till late', blasting a bass-boosted Porter Robinson song and trying out free music production software. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Even with its 2015-specific imagery, iPod Touch encapsulates something universal. It sounds like the giddiness of adolescent discovery, where a song or artwork can cut through the confusion and awaken something so personal that you have no choice but to make it your entire personality. You might scoff at Wilson's awakening through EDM – arguably the defining sound of the previous decade thanks to the likes of Calvin Harris, David Guetta and Diplo. But I Love My Computer proves how much juice the genre has, especially stripped of its noxious frat bro connotations. Wilson readily embraces steady builds, squelchy drops and a relentless BPM rarely below 120. I Love My Computer isn't all euphoria, either. Delete is a twinkling ode to embarrassing Instagram stories, while Battery Death is a burnout lament built over dystopic error-synths. And on eurotrance track Infohazard, Wilson recalls stumbling upon a photo of a decapitated man on her computer as a teen. Led by a piano, it's one of the few times a non-digital instrument is easily identifiable on the album – offering a strange sense of warmth to the confused, confronting memory. Indebted to electronic pioneer Sophie, Wilson has never been focused on real-life restrictions, more interested in what she can create than replicate. With her debut album, Ninajirachi charts a long-term (and fruitful) relationship with her computer. It's very fun and surprisingly moving. I Love My Computer by Ninajirachi is out now via NLV Records
BBC News
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'Her vulnerability still resonates deeply': Why Madonna's Ray of Light is 2025's hottest album
From FKA Twigs to Addison Rae, many of today's hottest pop stars are taking inspiration from Madonna's swirling 1998 masterpiece. What is it that has made the album such a touchstone? Madonna's varied discography is a mother lode of musical inspiration. With her early albums such as 1984's Like a Virgin, 1986's True Blue and 1989's Like a Prayer, she helped to invent the concept of the instantly recognisable, clearly delineated pop "era". But, during the past year or so, a slightly more recent Madonna album has become a touchstone for a new generation of musicians – 1998's Ray of Light, a cutting-edge collection of swirling electronica, which she largely crafted with British producer William Orbit. "It's the perfect blend of pop sensibility and electronic innovation: it manages to deliver both, which is rare," Welsh electronic musician and producer Kelly Lee Owens tells the BBC. Owens, who cites Ray of Light as a major influence on her 2024 album Dreamstate, believes Madonna's masterpiece feels like "something that was fated to be made" in that "it was created at exactly the right time and place and has now become timeless". British singer-songwriter Mae Muller also drew from Ray of Light while working on her new EP My Island, which was released earlier this month. Muller says the album's euphoric title track helped to put her in "a magic place of nostalgic melancholy" that made her "want to dance", which is her "favourite place" musically. This year alone, music critics have detected Ray of Light's sonic legacy in acclaimed albums by British avant-pop alchemist FKA Twigs (Eusexua), Portuguese-born Danish R&B musician Erika de Casier (Lifetime) and US TikTok creator-turned-pop singer Addison Rae (Addison). The album's aqueous-sounding spin on 1990s electronica – beautifully fluid and flecked with techno and trip-hop – is disarmingly contemporary once more. In March, former Little Mix singer Jade Thirlwall (now known as JADE) released a suitably dramatic cover of Frozen, Ray of Light's chart-topping lead single. She said she was drawn to Madonna's haunting ballad because "it feels like a mix of genres" and "isn't your typical pop song". In a way, this cuts to the crux of Ray of Light's enduring appeal: because the album was such a cultural disruptor when it came out, it retains a rare cachet more than 27 years later. Now, Madonna herself is revisiting the Ray of Light era with an accompanying (if somewhat belated) remix album called Veronica Electronica. Just released, it collects seven club-centric reworkings of songs from the original LP alongside one previously unreleased demo: the resilient break-up song Gone Gone Gone. When Madonna announced Veronica Electronica's release in June, a post on her website explained that it was "originally envisioned by Madonna as a remix album in 1998", but the project was "ultimately sidelined by the original album's runaway success and parade of hit singles that dominated the spotlight for more than a year". No self-respecting pop star undersells their achievements, but this isn't hyperbole. When Ray of Light was released in February 1998, it debuted at number one in 17 countries and at number two in the US. In the UK, it spawned no fewer than five top 10 singles: Frozen, the pulsating title track, the reflective ballad Drowned World/Substitute for Love, a touching double A-side of The Power of Good-Bye and Little Star, and the existential club anthem Nothing Really Matters. Ray of Light would go on to sell 16 million copies globally: an especially impressive total given that Madonna released the album when she was 39, a challenging age for female performers who refuse to narrow their ambitions. By this point, she was no stranger to railing against a toxic blend of sexism and ageism. In a 1992 interview on the BBC chat show Jonathan Ross Presents, she lamented the fact that "once you reach a certain age, you're not allowed to be adventurous" and called out critics who she claimed were already saying: "That's so pathetic, I hope she's not still doing that in 10 years." A year after its release, Ray of Light collected three Grammy awards, including one for best pop album. Perhaps surprisingly, Madonna's only previous Grammy win had been in the best music video, long form category back in 1992, for Blond Ambition World Tour Live. At the time, the overwhelmingly positive critical response to Ray of Light helped to dispel lingering suggestions that Madonna's career was a triumph of style over substance. Music critic Robert Christgau wryly alluded to this line of thinking in his review of the singer's 1990 compilation album The Immaculate Collection when he imagined naysayers complaining that she was "all image" and "couldn't have done it without MTV". Cutting-edge electronica But, perhaps most remarkably of all, Ray of Light helped to usher underground dance sounds into the musical mainstream. Mostly co-produced by Madonna and Orbit, with contributions from the singer's longtime collaborator Patrick Leonard and another forward-thinking British record producer, Marius de Vries, it minted a distinctive, sonically stunning mix of electronica, trip-hop, techno, ambient and new-age music. Writer and editor Alex Frank, who reviewed Ray of Light for online magazine Pitchfork in 2017, says this blend would have sounded especially fresh to US listeners who bought the album when it first came out. "The cutting-edge electronica of the UK and Europe had trickled over to America in fits and starts in the 1990s, but at least chart-wise, it was nowhere near at the same level [as in Europe]," Frank tells the BBC. Crucially, this exhilarating new musical direction helped to differentiate Madonna from her contemporaries. Frank says the US mainstream at the time was dominated by "big ballads from Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, R&B and hip-hop songs, plus some pop-country from artists like Shania Twain". Though Ray of Light is more than 27 years old, writer Shaad D'Souza believes it's "probably the Madonna album that sounds the best in 2025". He concedes that the production does "sound a little bit dated" in places – an inevitability in the ever-changing world of pop music – but also notes that "its primary components are all things that have been coming back into vogue". The album's sporadic Britpop-style guitar riffs feel sweetly nostalgic in the year that Oasis are mounting a massively anticipated reunion tour. More like this:• Intimate images of 'the real Hotel California'• Why Lady Gaga's comeback hits the spot• The album that sent shockwaves through the '00s D'Souza believes the Ray of Light renaissance has been several years in the making, spearheaded by some "slightly more underground albums" – among them, Australian trip-hop duo ASO's eponymous 2023 debut, and the same year's National Wonder Beauty Concept, a collaboration between Ecuadorian producer DJ Python and US experimental musician Ana Roxanne. But he tells the BBC that Ray of Light has become a red-hot reference point in 2025 because "we're at a fulcrum point where pop music is being taken seriously by everyone". This presents ambitious artists with a potential dilemma – or at least a fresh challenge: "What differentiates the really serious and craft-driven stuff from the less important stuff?" Drawing from a period in Madonna's career when she was "trying to change the musical landscape for the better" by adopting an "auteur-like approach to pop music" is one way of showing you're serious about your craft. Revelatory songwriting Still, Ray of Light's intoxicating sonic cocktail wouldn't pack such a punch if the album didn't contain some of Madonna's most ruminative and revelatory songwriting. She celebrates the birth of her daughter Lourdes on the lovely Little Star, but also confronts the death of her mother on the astonishingly stark album closer Mer Girl. "And I smelled her burning flesh, her rotting bones, her decay," Madonna sings in hushed tones. "I ran and I ran, I'm still running away." Owens says the overall effect is "so emotionally raw and sonically intimate" that what Madonna is singing about, a devastating visit to her mother's grave, "feels almost tangible somehow". Elsewhere, Madonna explores the essential emptiness of fame on Drowned World/Substitute for Love, social unrest on Swim, and her yearning for human connection on standout album tracks Skin and Sky Fits Heaven. Frank believes Ray of Light's spiritual streak is another reason why it chimes with so many contemporary artists. "A sense of the spiritual and introspective is all over pop music now," he says. "When you listen to Charli XCX's [2024 album] Brat or Ariana Grande's most recent album [last year's Eternal Sunshine], they're soundtracking their journey of spirituality and self-care – their search for meaning – on top of a foundation of electronica." On one occasion, Madonna takes her quest for spiritual enlightenment a little too far. The album track Shanti/Ashtangi, which she sings in the ancient Indo-European language Sanskrit, sets lines from an Indian hymn, the Yoga Travali, to a rattling techno beat. It's doubtless well-intentioned, but also feels like crass cultural appropriation coming from a world-famous white woman. In a way, though, Ray of Light's occasional flaw only adds to its appeal. "The album feels 100% authentic to Madonna, which is what people have always wanted from music, but maybe even more so today," Muller says. Owens agrees, saying that while "the electronic landscape Orbit created is timeless", Madonna's "vulnerability still resonates deeply" too. For this reason, Ray of Light's influence seems unlikely to wane. It's an album that redefined, and continues to shape, the kind of music that pop stars can make and achieve success with. Veronica Electronica by Madonna is out now on Warner Records -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mansionair Announce New Album ‘Some Kind Of Alchemy', Share ‘Atlas'
Mansionair have revealed their third studio album, Some Kind Of Alchemy. The follow-up to 2022's Happiness, Guaranteed. is set for release on Friday, October 10th via Sony Music Australia. To coincide with the album's announcement, the Sydney-based electronica trio have lifted a second single from it entitled 'Atlas'. The new seven-minute track, which follows on from last month's 'Lose Yourself Again', also serves as Some Kind Of Alchemy's closing number. In a joint press statement, the band noted that their latest single lyrically focused on 'reconnecting to oneself'. ''Atlas' is a song about… find[ing] a sense of place and belonging,' they wrote. 'It's about acknowledging our closest relationships are the ones that help us see ourselves in times of being lost. It's a journey of searching for yourself in new places, only to return home to find that what you were looking for was right beside you all along. It's a seven-minute journey song. [It's] everything we love about our band dialed [up] to 11, and we think it's arguably our best song to date.' Some Kind Of Alchemy was entirely written and produced by Mansionair themselves – the first of their albums to be created in such a way. 'The whole album is based on how we are in relationship to other people [and] other places,' they continued in the press statement. 'We very rarely exist in isolation. It was our search for the balance between holding on and letting go. We made this record with a desire to distill and perfect the very essence of what Mansionair meant to us. [It] was a beautiful challenge that somehow managed to flow between us, and we couldn't be prouder of it.' Next month will see the band head to North America on the Lose Yourself Again tour, which will see them play across the US and Canada from mid-July to early August. Some Kind Of Alchemy, meanwhile, can be pre-ordered and pre-saved on streaming platforms by clicking here. Love Letter To A Record: Mansionair On Daft Punk's 'Discovery' Michael Clifford Enlists Porter Robinson For New Single 'Kill Me For Always' Cut Copy Announce New Album 'Moments', Share 'When This Is Over' The post Mansionair Announce New Album 'Some Kind Of Alchemy', Share 'Atlas' appeared first on Music Feeds.
