One day this world seemed like a safe, quiet place, but it really wasn’t.
Now, someone has tripped an alarm or something.
This is a fire escape.
Fire Escape is a music selection of the latest April releases by Acre.
We tripped the alarm, now you can get out of here.
Caterina Barbieri – Fantas Variations (Editions Mego)
Eight variations of the beautiful track Fantas, the first track from the album Ecstatic Computation by the talented Caterina Barbieri, which many deserved awards have received in the year of the release (2019). On that album, Fantas was a supporting track, in which in ten minutes the human sensitivity came out within a technically complex musical production. These variations do not betray expectations: from the mystical entirely vocal interpretation of Lyra Pramuk, Annie Garlid, and Stine Janvin, through the electric guitar version of Walter Zanetti, up to the soft version of Kara-Lis Coverdale, the path is reconstructed through different compositional approaches that cross the border between the electronic and the acoustic. Despite being all produced by various artists, these excellent eight interpretations of the principal theme maintain the original character of the track.
Listen: Apple Music / Spotify / Bandcamp
Facta – Blush (Wisdom Teeth)
The return of Facta on his label Wisdom Teeth is a little listening gem. After he delighted us in 2020 with “an ode to the dancefloor” at a time when we needed it (as now), he comes back here on equally soft rhythms as usual, but with an added value of research and experimentation formidable. Blush is an album that skillfully blends the electronic tradition made in the UK with a lush spectrum of Balearic, Ambient, and Dream Pop influences. A journey for the heart and mind within harps and water pads, confirming the path of the label between listening music and more danceable rhythms. Many shades compose this album, which manages to don’t get old and sound different even after repeated plays, bringing out details that may escape superficial listening. Really good record for the hot days that are about to knock on our doors. Very recommended.
Listen: Apple Music / Spotify / Bandcamp
Andy Stott – Never The Right Time (Modern Love)
An album whose announcement made us so happy last month, Andy Stott returns in 2021 with Never The Right Time, his eighth album. Entirely accompanied by the passionate voice of Alison Skidmore (his piano teacher and lyric singer) her contribution represents the “human” counterpart in the cold music of the producer. It is precisely the contrast between these two sides that makes Stott’s sound so intriguing: the result, in this as in previous albums, is seductive, which invites the listener to immerse himself and at the same time keeps him at a distance. We return to the sounds of Luxury Problems and Faith in Strangers, but the formula this time does not work as brilliantly as before: the feeling here is that Andy Stott is stepping on paths already crossed, however, the pleasure of getting lost in these sounds remains, sounds that can only be visually strictly black and white.
Listen: Apple Music / Spotify
Croatian Amor & Varg2TM – Body of Content (Posh Isolation)
While this release marks the number 253 in the catalog of the super-prolific label Posh Isolation, the long-time collaboration between co-founder Croatian Amor and Varg2tm arrives here at the fourth chapter. An album that once again confirms the artistic maturity of both the label and the artists involved, continuing (or concluding?) the path started in 2018 by the two with the EP Body of Water, continued with Body of Carbon (2019) and Body of Lila (2020). An album that counts different collaborations with artists already known to the most passionate fans of the label (CTM, Vallmo, and Nikki H2OP just to name a few), whose birth took place entirely by e-mail during a year of confinement and restrictions. Musically speaking, the different souls that characterize the label are reunited, managing to create a landscape of sounds coherent, deliberately de-constructed between various genres.
Listen: Apple Music / Spotify / Bandcamp
SSIEGE – Meteora (Knekelhuis)
SSIEGE, Italian producer who with his 2019 album Fading Summer had made us float inside an ambient-pop cloud, returns here with slightly different soundscapes. A mix of electro, techno, leftfield, and IDM that is incredibly welcoming. The epic and dreamy listening remain, brought by slow but dynamic rhythms, everything accompanied by a warmth that is emanated at the same time by the music, by the title, and the fascinating cover.
Listen: Apple Music / Spotify / Bandcamp
Patrick Belaga – Blutt (PAN)
Patrick Belaga, cellist and composer Los Angeles-based, makes his debut on the Berlin-based label PAN with his oniric album that confirms the growing interest from the label for folk and acoustic sounds (we remember the last Eartheater’s album). These sounds are placed, in fact, between the electronic and the acoustic, complex and not easy-listening. Inspired by a trip to Gallipoli in which the composer felt in the distance a mix of classical music and jazz from an unknown source, the path traced by the album is distinguished by a hallucinatory narrative, that seeks to recreate the imagery of the ancient Byzantine civilizations that populated the Pugliese city. The title refers to an old German word that means “naked”, but that creates a word pun with “blood” when pronounced. Recommended listening in altered states of consciousness.
Listen: Apple Music / Spotify / Bandcamp
Burial + Blackdown – Shock Power of Love EP (Hyperdub)
April’s last surprise comes from Hyperdub, with a double-name EP by Burial and Blackdown, Shock Power of Love. Four tracks from two icons of the British bass/dubstep continuum from the ’00s, one of which is a remix of the mysterious producer Heatmap (the most housey track of the entire EP). The first track of Blackdown, however, is a bass-bomb in UK tradition, which leaves room for the much softer second track composed by Burial. Here he confirms his fondness for long tracks composed by two parts, as in his last release Chemz from January.
Nostalgic echoes, pitched voices, and continuous breakbeats that are now his real trademark are presented once again. The EP closes with Space Cadet, the icing on the cake always by Burial, which is probably the most successful piece of the four.
Listen: Apple Music / Spotify / Bandcamp
Tirzah – Send Me
“Send Me” is the new single by South London singer and songwriter Tirzah, who returns three years after his last album Devotion. The single, written and recorded together with longtime collaborators Mica Levi and Coby Sey, has a more minimal production than the last album, but retains the emotional tone to which we had become accustomed in the previous releases.
Listen: SoundCloud / Spotify / Bandcamp