Vince Clarke "Songs of Silence"
As the album title suggests, Songs of Silence is a lyricless, instrumental album, and is hugely evocative for that. Unlike anything you’ve previously heard from Vince Clarke as an artisan of dynamic electropop, Songs of Silence has about it a more sober ambient electronic beauty, its unique characteristics put it in a category of its own.
For the creation of the record Vince set himself two rules – first that the sounds he himself generated for the album would come solely from Eurorack (a modular synthesizer format introduced in the mid-90s) and secondly that each track would be based around one note, maintaining a single key throughout. The resultant pieces, with the Eurorack sound clay then manipulated on Logic Pro, amount to wordless narratives, in which a sense of synthgenerated, cosmic remoteness is often jolted by stark interventions, reminders of the human hand at work amid this machinery.
Charlie and the Tropicales "Presents for Everyone!"
Charlie & The Tropicales return with “Presents for Everyone!” – a collection of tropical holiday music by way of sunny New Orleans, the northern most port of the Caribbean! Go ahead and mix up a punch and throw a log on the fire, or open up the windows and dance around the tree – be it a douglass fir, coconut palm or Evergleam!
Loose Wing "Miracle Baby"
From Drum & Wires Recordings:
Loose Wing hasn’t cleaned up completely since its critically praised debut album — “Loose Wing are serving as an example that the area’s still got it,” says UPROXX. Instead the band, led by songwriter Claire Tucker, has further focused its pounding and present sound via their sophomore release Miracle Baby.
Miracle Baby delivers an even more potent version of Loose Wing’s ability to capture themes of “isolation, intimacy, and teen angst that has yet to be outgrown” (The Big Takeover), recalling Neko Case or Low — Tucker recently organized a benefit concert to benefit Low’s surviving member Alan Sparhawk following the untimely passing of Mimi Parker — set loose through the lens of Throwing Muses.
Drop Nineteens "Hard Light"
Hard Light is every bit the ride that Delaware was, diverse in its sounds, with surprises at every turn. Drop Nineteens have brought clarity and cool in 2023 to the genre they helped create. A portrait of a band 30 years later, as talented and dedicated to their craft as ever. To put it more bluntly, they’re at the top of their game.