Mira Calix, adventurous electronic musician and sound artist, dies

Producer released numerous albums of material and experimented with installations, sculptures and scores for Shakespeare plays

Mira Calix, the electronic producer celebrated for her complex, highly imaginative music and sound art, has died.

Her label, Warp Records, announced the news, and did not give a cause of death, nor her age. A statement posted to social media said in part: “Mira was not only a hugely talented artist and composer, she was also a beautiful, caring human who touched the lives of everyone who had the honour of working with her … she pushed the boundaries between electronic music, classical music and art in a truly unique way.”

Continue reading...
by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Destroyer: Labyrinthitis review – wayward, dance-infused weirdness

(Bella Union)
The Canadian rockers weave dreamy electronica through an album that buries frequent moments of brilliance beneath a bewildering collage of ideas

Labyrinthitis – an inner ear infection that causes dizziness and disorientation – is a good title for an album that’s dizzyingly, and sometimes pleasingly, weird. The Canadian indie rock veterans set out to make a techno record, with New Order, Cher and Trevor Horn also on their lockdown moodboard. It hasn’t quite worked out as planned, because Destroyer don’t instinctively grasp the simplicity at the heart of all great dance music. So instead we get fussy, endless layering and fragments of good ideas crushed into one another, topped with vocals that wobble from bizarre, mannered cabaret to slam poetry rap.

What saves Labyrinthitis from being insufferable is singer Dan Bejar’s great facility for melody, and the gentle new wave pulse on songs such as All My Pretty Dresses. Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread could fit into a Caribou set, and the frankly bonkers, sprawling June is one of the best things Bejar has ever written. Unfortunately, there’s often this vast emotional chasm in his music, a feeling that nothing ever means anything, until the final two tracks, The States and The Last Song, which prove that he can write a lovely, affecting lyric after all.

Continue reading...
by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian

Fred Again review – pop’s top producer steps out of the shadows

Albert Hall, Manchester
The low-key musician behind hits for Ed Sheeran and Charli XCX goes on tour with his own albums that tackle loss and lockdown

If there’s a universal language of pop right now, then Fred Again speaks it fluently, translating ideas into worldwide smash hits for artists such as Ed Sheeran, George Ezra and Charli XCX. Stepping out from the backroom, the south London 28-year-old, born Fred Gibson, is opening a tour built around last year’s one-two punch of Actual Life parts 1 and 2, two personal, sample-heavy solo albums recorded at the encouragement of mentor Brian Eno.

“I so appreciate you being here, so please don’t think that I don’t if I don’t say anything,” warns Gibson, hands clasped, early on in the set. He’s a low-key and smiling presence in a brown tracksuit surrounded by synths, keyboards and drum pads. Instead, the communication comes from a screen behind Gibson – videos captured seemingly from his phone, short bursts of text message. The set is described as “a sort of diary from April to December 2020”. Digital intimacy coupled with broad-brush sentimentality is in keeping with Gibson’s production style.

Continue reading...
by Fergal Kinney via Electronic music | The Guardian

Griff review – Brit-winning rising star is confident and characterful

Chalk, Brighton
After the baffling flop of her single Black Hole, the pop singer-songwriter is still ready to reach for the stars in this breezy, funny show

A year to the day before this performance, Griff won the 2021 Brit awards Rising Star poll, and her star has duly risen. The pace hasn’t been as meteoric as for previous winners such as Adele and Florence + the Machine, but tonight’s showing proves that the singer/guitarist/keyboardist born Sarah Griffiths has done the groundwork.

By the simple devices of a memorable “bubble” ponytail and challenging clothes – tonight it’s bodice-to-knee ruffles – she’s made herself recognisable, as confirmed by a flock of style magazine front covers. Meanwhile, her mainly self-written and self-produced electropop, which tends to focus on the dark corners of past relationships, is arrestingly moreish, and her on stage presence is confident and funny. Receiving a framed tapestry from someone in the front row, she’s genuinely delighted: “A cross-stitch! I want people to see it!” When another admirer hands her flowers, she carries them as she wafts across the stage.

Continue reading...
by Caroline Sullivan via Electronic music | The Guardian

Charli XCX: ‘People who take it too far are better than people who don’t’

The hyperpop star’s new album is an experiment into how far she can push the ‘pop star character’ she’s created. Can she stave off a rebellion from her fans in the process?

If you are ever in need of a stark reminder that social media is not real life, I can recommend Zooming with Charli XCX. Moments before I am due to speak to the pop star, she posts a series of images on Instagram to trail the release of her new single, Baby. On all fours in a tasselled leather bikini, with dramatic eye makeup and talon-like nails, she is the epitome of the provocative, vampish pop star.

So when she appears live on my computer screen, it is slightly jarring to see the 29-year-old looking utterly ordinary: dark hair scraped back, no makeup, grey baggy jumper and cradling a mug of coffee. Instead of dramatically writhing, she is thoughtfully musing – in the kind of unclipped, middle-class English drawl that makes everything sound deadpan and dry – about her 13-year career, the majority of which has been spent at the coalface of experimental pop.

Continue reading...
by Rachel Aroesti via Electronic music | The Guardian