Articles
Roger O'Donnell
Morgan Packard

Albums
The Ace of Clubs
akido
Cenotype
Cyrus
Mathias Delplanque
Entia Non
Michael Fakesch
False
Forrest
Kraig Grady
Kiln
Kingfisherg
Low in the Sky
Payton MacDonald
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Martin & Machinefabriek
Mt. Fuji Doom. Corporation
Need More Sources
Nobile
Odd Nosdam
Ontayso
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RF & Lili De La Mora
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Seabear
Valgeir Sigurðsson
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Six Twilights
Aaron Spectre
Stamen & Pistils
Swayzak
Tijuana M. A. Broad. Inc.
Utom Alla
Pete Warren
Yaporigami

Compilations / Mixes
Box of Dub
Expanse at Low Levels
Ibiza – Renaissance Vol. 4
Jahtarian Dubbers Vol. 1
The Silence Was Warm

3"/ 7"/ 10"/ 12"/ EPs
Abiku / Kid Camaro
Audio Injection
B12
Bering & Simko
Bury the Sound
The Caribbean
DJ C feat. Zulu
Entia Non
Flavius E
Andre Gardeja
Lerosa
Magnum 38
Microthol
Ontayso
Troy Pierce
Ghislain Poirier
Rusuden
Skoozbot
Slap [unmodified]
Sonmi451
Joel Tammik
TG

Manitou: All Points North
Slo.Bor Media

All Points North is the debut album by Detroit-native Manitou, and that's about all the personal detail that's currently available. No matter: it's the seventy-minute collection that counts and count it does. As song titles like “Just North of Eight Mile Road” and “Hart Plaza Rainstorm” intimate, Detroit is the life-blood that courses through the album and lends Manitou's music a clear sense of place. Whatever the inspiration, the album is full of pastoral and richly evocative ambient settings sure to appeal to fans of Windy and Carl and Stars of the Lid. Only one of the nineteen pieces exceeds eight minutes, with the rest in the three-minute vicinity, but the album works its magic cumulatively with each part a delectable part of a grand whole. Some songs, like “Windsor” and “Ice Cream at Soldiers and Sailors Monument” float past so gently, they're like spirits drifting through deserted houses; others, like “Snowy Night Riding the Peoplemover,” “We Enjoyed the Garden Square,” and “Things Are Different Now but the Street Signs Haven't Changed” are more austere and might best be described as meditative orchestral hymns. A mood of reflective melancholy colours “Remembering that Afternoon Downtown” while guitar playing dominates “I Wrote Your Name on the Davison Overpass,” pushing the album in the direction of ambient folk music. One might expect that a song entitled “Watching the Hudson's Building Fall” would signal a marked increase in volume and intensity but, much like the others, the gloomy piece restrainedly rolls past like a foggy mass (ironically, the loudest piece is probably “Listening to Classical Music. Sipping Tea on your Veranda–Time Stood Still” where swooning tones escalate to a comparatively piercing blur). Sublime snapshots like “Campus Martius” and “Looking up Grand River , From Here All Points North” are both haunting and haunted but the description pretty much applies to this beautiful collection as a whole.

August 2007