Articles
2010 Ten Favourite Labels
Liam Singer

Albums
Akabu
Amorph
Keith Canisius
Carinthia
Cursor Miner
Dark Party
dOP
Evon
Ex-Wise Heads
Forever Delayed
The Fun Years
Dirk Geiger
The Green Kingdom
Chihei Hatakeyama
Hessien
Robin Holcomb
The Inventors of Aircraft
Peter Jørgensen
Loveliescrushing
My Dry Wet Mess
Silje Nes
Ontayso
Piiptsjilling
Pleq
Radioseed
relapxych.0
Sharp & Whetham
Liam Singer
Erik K Skodvin
Sarah Kirkland Snider
Squares On Both Sides
Strië
Sutekh
David Sylvian
Taiga II
Francesco Tristano
RJ Valeo
Victoire
Wreaths
Zelienople

Compilations / Mixes
Buzz.RO! 2010
Crónica L
Timo Maas
Movement Torino Festival
Sebastian Mullaert

EPs
Dday One / Glen Porter
Depth Affect
Enabl.ed
The Gentleman Losers
Gulls
Mimosa
Piece of Shh…
Shufflepunk
Teebs & Jackhigh
Telekaster
thisquietarmy + yellow6
Tom White

VA: Crónica L
Crónica

Crónica celebrates its fiftieth release with a compilation featuring nine collaborations by Stephan Mathieu, Janek Schaefer, Lawrence English, Marc Behrens, Stephen Vitiello, Tu M', and others. Crónica L's material is emblematic of the type of bold experimentalism the label has remained faithful to since its inception more than seven years ago. It's an hour of challenging yet engrossing listening packed with microtextural soundscapes and granular drones that should appeal to devotees of Francisco López and electronic producers of kindred sensibility. Throughout the recording, ever-mutating sounds flutter hyperactively in convulsive settings of resolutely abstract character.

In “Unfurling Fugue,” Janek Schaefer weaves Enrico Coniglio's Venice-based field recordings into a combustible melange of clattering noises and organ tones. Gilles Aubry and Paulo Raposo give us nearly ten minutes of restlessly churning industrial dronescaping in “Forms of Suspension.” @c (Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais) and Gintas K conjure a dizzying storm in “K./85” of rabid insectoid chirp and rumble, with all of it laced with swirling shards of acoustic guitar flutter. Stephan Mathieu and Piotr Kurek generate a deeply crackling drone of voice fragments and electronic slivers (“The Heavens Have Many Colors”), while the plaintive ululations of a Middle Eastern singer shadow a turbulent churn of industrial noise in Ran Slavin and Vitor Joaquim's “Voices Over Water.” “Circles of Twine” finds Lawrence English and Stephen Vitiello weaving outdoors field recordings and piano playing into a dense field of reverberant haze, after which “Rêve General,” perhaps the album's peak moment, takes the recording out on a celestial cloud of blinding tones and washes, courtesy of The Beautiful Schizophonic (Jorge Mantas) and Tu M' (Rossano Polidoro, Emiliano Romanelli). Despite the involvement of eighteen different artists, the collection turns out to be surprisingly cohesive with each of the nine pieces complementing one another by spinning fully developed variations on the dronescaping style. On this collection, Crónica re-affirms its reputation as a label of integrity that regularly offers free-to-download recordings to its listeners and is more than a little deserving of whatever support the electronic music listening community can provide.

November 2010