ARTICLES
2006 Top 10s and 20s
2006 Artist Picks

ALBUMS
17 Pictures
Angina P
Ateleia
Benni Hemm Hemm
The Boats
Cappablack
Celer
Dead Letters Dead Words
Deceptikon
Deerhunter
Denzel + Huhn
Displayaz
Dollboy
Drone
Eluvium
Emanuele Errante
The Eternals
Fear Falls Burning
Marcus Fjellström
Fonoda
Funkstörung
Goldfrapp
Gyroscope
Robert Henke
James Holden
The Idealist
Anders Ilar
Landing
LCD Soundsystem
Library Tapes
L Pierre
Lullatone
Tor Lundvall
Mad EP
Mahogany
Melodium
Mem1
Daisuke Miyatani
Mole Harness
Momus
Monoceros
Mormo
Mothboy
Original Hamster
Pierson & Horton
Prince Valium
Radical Face
Retail Sectors / Yaporigami
Rylander & Elggren
Scott Solter Plays PIM
Sideshow
Silicone Soul
Skream
Splinters
Mark Templeton
Thread Pulls
T. Raumschmiere
Tycho
Ultre
Virculum
Xela

COMPILATIONS/MIXES
AudioArt 03
Cumulous
Dubstep Allstars Vol. 4
Eriksen / Toft / Utarm
Katapult VA Vol. 3
Let's Lazertag Sometime
Mr Geoffrey & JD Franzke
Skagen / Halvorsen / Toft
Tectonic Plates

3"/7"/10"/12"/EPs
Gabriel Ananda
Robert Bardini
DAT Politics
Dead Letters / R. Sundin
Dogmixer
Benjamin Fehr
Fenin
HL
I Make This Sound
Zoë Irvine
Kyriakides and Moor
Lamont & 2tall
Ljud. & Piloten / Kama Aina
Jacob London
Sam Mcqueen
Miskate
Ryo Miyashita & Hiiragi_
[nara]
New Faces
Of / Greg Davis
Charlemagne Palestine
Phon.o vs Litwinenko
Portable
PostPrior
Samarah
Nicholas Sauser & Ditch
Someone Else
Hannes Teichmann
Tractile
Andy Vaz

IMAGES
F.S. Blumm

The Idealist: I Am The Fire
AA/Nosordo

Gothenburg, Sweden resident Joachim Nordwall may be known to some through his membership in Alvars Orkester and The Skull Defekts but his solo debut under The Idealist guise, I Am The Fire, captures an entirely different yet equally compelling style. Its six electronic tracks straddle meditative ambient and industrial drone, the combination of which makes for a subtly unnerving listening experience, akin to being strapped into a chair and therefore helpless to do anything but watch while a centipede scuttles across one's arm. The framing pieces, “The Knives Are My Eyes” and “My Head Is On Fire,” exemplify that quality by being simultaneously placid and unsettling.

Elsewhere, the disc offers extremes. The eighteen-minute “To Make Exact Copies Of Every Mistake Ever Made” is, in some respects, a microsound excursion as minute sounds grow in volume subtly, though it's hard to characterize it as such when its reverberantly droning nucleus swells so imposingly throughout; Nordwall shapes the material with such restraint, the appearance of a soft tone twelve minutes in assumes a significance it would hardly have in a less obsessively controlled setting. “The Cranium,” a seething and blistered swirl of atmospheric noise, is considerably more aggressive though it never reaches the ear-shredding pitch one associates with Merzbow and Pita, and it may be that the heavily-distorted speaking voice in “The Declaraaation of Indeeependence” is, in fact, reciting the titular text but it's hard to tell when the voice is so mangled; regardless, it resembles the sound of Nordwall dragging a razor blade across the speaker's vocal cords and transmitting the operation via intercom. I Am The Fire is disquieting material (best appreciated as a headphones listen) but captivating nonetheless.

January 2007