Archives for posts with tag: downbeat

Pōneke/ Wellington based electronic composer-producer Emma Bernard has been making music for 5 years under the name Ludus and has now quietly delivered one of the best electronic albums of recent times, full of lush, atmospheric music. Here’s the dreamy synth+guitar world of “Moving Places”

What’s immediately impressive from this Ludus album “Two of the Same” is the effortless and mostly low-key way it blends more familiar minimal techno and electronic music styles with its creator’s own exploration of sounds, field recordings, tones, moods and subtle rhythms. It may not be as idiosyncratic as the thrilling Vanessa Worm album “Vanessa 77” last year, but “Two of the Same” is just as individual and assured.

The notes mention the album having “a strong connection between composition and live performance” and that may explain the more spontaneous than programmed feel of human-operated-technology often evident in the compositions and performances captured on the album, particularly in the two gorgeous downbeat electric piano compositions Chord Work and Chord Work II.

MilouxDay 17 of NZ Music Month is something not very underground but definitely a bit pop, in the form of “Pocket” by Miloux.

Miloux (or maybe MILOUX) is Auckland musician, composer, producer Rebecca Melrose. “Pocket” is from her first release – “EP 1” – which is 5 very polished darkly soulful downbeat electronica songs. There’s a hint of jazz and trip-hop and it’s all brought together in a restrained and tasteful contemporary production.

It is a track heard a lot on Dunedin’s student radio station Radio One in recent months, soon becoming a familiar (and welcome) ear-worm.

It rekindles memories of some of the early alternative pop (‘trip hop’) electronica music from the mid-90s like Morcheeba (“Trigger Hippie”) and Sneaker Pimps (“6 Underground”), although the influences cited by Miloux are understandably the more contemporary Purity Ring, Grimes and James Blake.