Desire announces new album Games People Play, an eclectic labyrinth of love, power, & deception where every move counts, out March 21st via Italians Do It Better and today is sharing new single “The Judge” alongside a video directed by Kirill Nong.
Games People Play unfolds like a game of chess—Desire as the queen, fate as the dealer, & love as the ultimate wager. Set against Johnny Jewel’s signature cinematic curtain, the record guides players through a shadowy dance floor where strategy & surrender blur. In this world of passion, the line between predator & prey is razor-thin, & every lover is a contender on heartbreak’s edge. Checkmate is inevitable—but who will make the final move?
“In the age of omnipresent surveillance…Machines track our every move while friends stalk our every groove. Take matters into your own hands…be the judge & jury of your own timeline. Life is too short, so forget the lurkers & love the jerkers. Time is running out & court is now adjourned.” – Desire on “The Judge”
Kinlaw is an artist. She’s an opera singer, she’s a choreograhper. She’s a performance artist, she’s a student of psychoacoustics and neuropsychology. She’s not a dancerwho happens to make music. She’s not a composer who happens to have a movement practice. All of her work is connected, completely symbiotic, ruthlessly in conversation with itself, focused on community. She’s been living and working in New York City for over ten years, popping up as a member of several notable musical projects, while earning commissions from institutions like the MoMa Ps1, Pioneer Works, and the New Museum, and working on performance pieces scored by SOPHIE, Caroline Polachek and Dev Hynes among others.
In 2021 she released her first album under the Kinlaw name, an album called The Tipping Scale, which earned comparisons to Jenny Hval, FKA twigs, and Cate le Bon from Pitchfork, and 4 years later she is returning to announce her sophomore LP gut ccheck, which will be released on 3/21 on Bayonet Records. To announce the record she is sharing its first single “Hard Cut” along with its accompanying video.
Kinlaw says of the track:
“The song is about conditions and extremes. It’s about being fed up. Ultimately, it’s a song that’s about aggressively choosing yourself and offering that permission to the listener.”
Matteo Liberatore, an artist and composer who has become a fixture in New York City’s experimental and intermedia art scenes over the last decade, today announces the debut album from his audio-visual electronic music alias Molto Ohm. After introducing the project with live performances at DIY spaces, art venues, and music clubs—often collaborating in duos with artists like Taja Cheek (L’Rain), More Eaze, and Ka Baird—Liberatore is set to release FEED on March 21 via New Focus Recordings.
On the work, Molto Ohm presents his thesis: “FEED aims to capture the fragmentation and alienation of modern life, an exploration of ambition, consumerism, purpose, intimacy, and self-awareness, juxtaposed with a longing for calm, joy, and human connection.”
Alongside the album announcement, Liberatore is sharing the project’s first-ever released track, “Sponsored #1,”which serves as a captivating entry point into Molto Ohm’s idiosyncratic and concept-driven world. The lead single delves into the commodification of self-care, where the quest for mental well-being is shaped by algorithms and consumer-driven promises of a better you. Beginning as a blissful electronic track overlaid with a voice that sounds dialed in from a meditation or self-help app, the track shifts into uncanny territory, magnified by Liberatore’s video, which splices together footage of faux advertisements for a dentist along with shots of smiling individuals and an unsettling last 20 seconds.
In FEED, Molto Ohm urges us to confront how capitalism’s relentless drive to commodify everything has left many subjugated by the promises of an unattainable life. Advertising, consumer technology, and the culture of self-optimization dangle visions of happiness, peace, and prosperity. Deep down, we know that these promises are often hollow, designed to sustain an economy where alienation and dissatisfaction drive consumption. Yet, the pull remains powerful, leaving many feeling estranged from themselves and their world.
FEED examines the battles between material comfort and bodily alienation; ecstasy and ennui; engagement and weariness by recontextualizing familiar signifiers: heavy dance beats, glitchy effects, connection static, motivational speeches, sales pitches, podcast-like confessions, and (faux) ads. The sonics span EDM and abstraction; snippets of yearning songs flash by, and dissonance interrupts lulls. Commanding synths shimmer and stab, while wavy melodies offset the tension. Wistfulness is ever-present, Liberatore conveying that something is being lost. The music looking to a new paradigm.
As an immigrant that moved to New York from a small village in central Italy, Liberatore experienced the cultural shift of transitioning from a stereotypically quiet and idyllic place to the world capital of art and capitalism. After more than a decade in New York and the absorption in the experimental music world (with albums and countless collaborations with Mark Kelley, Elliott Sharp, Taja Cheek, Gold Dime, Amirtha Kidambi, Ava Mendoza, Brian Chase and many more), Liberatore felt the urge to come to terms with his hybrid existence, reconnect to his lost teenage years overseas, the love of Italian pop music, 90s Eurodance nostalgia, small manual cars, the waveless Adriatic sea, and to make sense of this constant feeling of unrest and race towards an elusive, imagined destination.
Liberatore anchors FEED’s production in a loud, contemporary style that marries hyperpop energy and festival friendliness, complicating it with atonal timbres, environmental sounds, and human voices. The music morphs and shifts. The quiet moments are brief and artificial; soulful warmth flickers; noise bursts through, disrupting the transmission. Maybe we can still push back against the corporate machine and retain a hint of autonomy, imperfection, and organic beauty. The inclusion of a Mark Fisher quote in track nine, “After All (Mark)” is fitting. “After all, what could be more shattering, unassimilable, and incomprehensible, in our hyper stressed, constantly disappointing and overstimulated lives, than the sensation of calm joy.” Like the critic-turned-theorist, Liberatore confronts shattering and incomprehensible dread in our overstimulated lives, where even “calm joy” has been heavily commodified and sold to the willing bidder, leaving no escape for the soul.
Keep your mind open.
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Four Seconds Ago, the electronic duo featuring Periphery’s Jake Bowen and Misha Mansoor, return with 1000 Needles (February 21, 3DOT Recordings), a continued exploration of analog synths, spacey dynamics and otherworldly ambient melodies.
“Four Seconds Ago, aside from being a fulfilling outlet creatively, is also just a lot of fun,” Mansoor shares. “Jake and I have always had a blast writing together, and our explorations in electronic music are no exception. The sessions often feel like a good hang where songs magically materialize before our very eyes. To some degree we started Four Seconds Ago as an excuse to learn how to make this kind of music. Now I think we are able to use it as a genuine form of expression. We are very proud of this album, and we really hope you enjoy it.”
A preview of the album is available now with today’s release of a two-song digital single featuring “Bump The Lamp” and “Muse” (listen here).
“When we started ‘Bump The Lamp,’ we got momentum,” Bowen explains. “Every album needs a song to set the pace, determine the vibe, and kickstart the writing, ‘Bump The Lamp’ was this song for us.”
Album pre-orders, which include limited-edition vinyl and a 1000 Needles t-shirt, are available now: https://go.mhe.fm/FSA_1000needles.
Ben Lukas Boysen decided to change things up a bit on his new album, Alta Ripa. He wanted to reconnect with the countryside of his youth, but also embrace Berlin-inspired dance music. So, he combined ambient electro with EDM as well as jazz and classical sounds his father often played for him as a kid. He took those elements and grew an album more than he designed it.
“Ours” starts with soft synths that evoke images of birds gliding over meadows and then landing atop the Tyrell Corporation’s replicant factory as the electro-beats drop. The choppy synths of “Mass” remind me of a string quartet playing fast, low-end notes, and then the bass drop adds an interesting sense of danger to the whole thing.
“Quasar” builds to what you think is going to be a good-sized bass drop, but instead takes the mellow approach and keeps the song soothing. The title track is even more hypnotic and will be a great addition to your mediation playlist.
The bumping bass of “Nox” makes you want to put on dark sunglasses and matching trenchcoat and then find the nearest goth dance club. “Vineta” is synthwave bliss suitable for floating in a zero-gravity pool of saltwater. “Fama” pulses and snaps like a grumpy robot doing a spin bike workout. The album ends with “Mere” – which floats you along a slow river while android birds sing to you and warm winds drift through ancient ruins.
This album will take you to another place, possibly one you’ve been craving for a while.
Minimalist techno plus orchestral sounds to create atmospheric dance tracks? Yeah. That sounds good to me, and is what you get on Kiasmos‘ II.
“Grown” immediately levitates you from the floor and puts you in a better mood with its electro-percussion and happy krautrock beats. “Burst” bumps and thumps with little string quartet touches that are outstanding. “Sailed” percolates with energy but doesn’t boil over thanks to the subtle synths in it.
“Laced” sounds like something fellow Icelander Björk wished she had on her last album (happy synths and strings, little jazzy electric piano touches), and now I want a collaboration between her and Kiasmos. “Laced” nicely drifts into “Bound,” which has thicker bass and even more beats.
The mellow jazz piano on “Sworn” matches well with the swaying string quartet sounds that almost take it into New Age stylings. “Spun” keeps up the strings and bumps up the BPM. “Flown” drifts into “Told,” which keeps you moving and will be great for the second leg of your morning run. The lapping water sounds and soft synths on “Dazed” might leave you as such.
The album winds down with “Squared.” It lets the string quartet shine for almost the first minute before the synths build behind them to a slick beat that lasts the rest of the track and reminds you to keep dancing and / or meditating after it’s finished.
It’s a cool instrumental synthwave record that you’ll end up recommending to many.
Leathers, otherwise known as Canadian synth / dark wave artist Shannon Hemmett, has delivered Ultraviolet— another lush, excellent record that you’ll want on repeat for every late night drive or goth party you’re throwing.
The title track is full of beautiful synths and Leathers’ sexy / spooky vocals. “Highrise” would fit right in on the soundtrack to every late night sexy Cinemax thriller starring Shannon Tweed as Leathers sings “Isn’t it nice in your high rise? Like the page from a magazine that’s come to life…”
“Punish me for wanting more. I’m the one you can’t ignore,” Leathers sings on “Crash.” She’s right. You can’t ignore her, the thumping synth-bass, or the New Romantic-style guitar solo. “Fascination” isn’t a cover of the Human League tune (although that would be amazing), but it is a sultry song about being immediately intrigued with someone you see perhaps at a dark club or in a futuristic airport lounge. “Day for Night” is a lovely ballad and a nice mid-point to the album.
The breathy, sexy “Divine” follows it. It’s a bumping track that doesn’t go too heavy, but does get you in the mood (“I’ll give you a taste of the divine.”). “Phantom Heart” will get you both in the mood and to the dance floor. “Daydream Trash” could be a rediscovered New Wave track from 1986. Leathers nails the sound and feel of that era on it and on “Runaway,” which opens with her saying, “Let’s run away.” and you looking for airfare to Vancouver and tickets for two beyond that.
The album ends with the haunting “Mary,” which seems to be a song about a friend (?) of Leathers (“Mary was a girl I knew.”) who finds love despite not wanting it, and then running from it for fear it will hurt her again (“I got what I wanted. Now I’m running out.”).
This is the kind of record that will make you wonder why more people haven’t heard it, but it’s also nice to think of it as a sexy secret you have with some special people.
Here we are at my top 20 albums of 2024. That was fast! Let’s get to it!
#20: Curses – Next Wave Acid Punx Deux – Secret Cuts
This collection by Curses is a great one of rare goth, darkwave, and synthwave cuts that makes you wonder where these bands have been all your life.
#19: Punchlove – Channels
The wall of sound on this shoegaze record from Punchlove is at times deafening and other times soothing. They’re one of my top picks to be one of the Next Big Things.
#18: Paperkraft – Not C but K
Here’s some groovy house music for you from Japan. This EP was a great debut.
#17: Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol – Big Duff Riffs
“What if we made an album that was all big, dumb riffs?” Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol asked. Well, they did it, and it’s a lot of big, dumb, riffing fun.
#16: Dion Lunadon – Memory Burn
It’s another scorcher from Dion Lunadon as he packs more energy into this EP than many double albums you’ve heard.
This album by Rick Burke, the guitarist of Comacozer, is a psychedelic trip loaded with cool riffs and meditative synths that will take you out of the moment and drop you into some kind of spiritual temple that has Orange amps in it.
This album of French post-rock and psych is a stunning record that came to me almost out of nowhere and immediately caught my attention. The waves of it are both powerful and subtle.
#21: Doug Richards – Project 85 EP
This was a great return for a rave DJ from the 1990s who became a lawyer and then decided to get back into music after the COVID-19 pandemic and ended up dropping a stunning techno EP as a result.
Who makes the top twenty? Come back tomorrow to find out!
For A.M. Architect, everything is interactive. A concert by the electronic duo isn’t just a concert. It’s a multimedia installation, a visual show, an interactive technology demonstration, and more.
At a typical show, the duo, consisting of longtime friends and collaborators Diego Chavez and Daniel Stanush, perform while generative visuals react to the audio they’re creating. “We use a program called TouchDesigner, so it’s all in real time,” says Chavez, whose myriad roles include digital media artist, technologist, and producer. “We love not being the performer; not being the cool guys on stage who have this distant presence. Usually, shows are so serious. It’s just fun to see people at play.”
That technological curiosity, that bold desire to merge disciplines, animates A.M. Architect’s third and finest full-length album, Avenir, announced today for a February 7th, 2025 release date.
The album showcases the duo’s multifaceted approach to electronic production, with Stanush’s musical training and melodic sensibility guiding Chavez’s knack for soundscapes and sonic manipulation. The result is a rich tapestry of pulsating beats, grainy loops, cinematic sensibilities, and charged vocal samples that cull from sources as varied as old crime movies and obscure country singers.
Today, the duo share their title-track “Avenir,” accompanied by a music video. The track paints a lush electronic beat backdrop of exploration, with notable vocals from guest Delenda. Pre-order the upcoming album here, and check it out the video for the title track on YouTube.
On the track, Daniel Stanush shares:
“In creating the music video for Avenir, we were inspired by the lyrics written by our collaborator Delenda. We were interested in the relationships between different versions of ourselves: the person you used to be, as seen through your current self, or vice versa. Like when you remember the promises you made yourself when you were a kid, or the things you regret and wish you could erase, and then as you grow you have to reconcile your old and new self, and the past/present relationship that creates.
Graphically, we wanted to present a dissonance between our self-perspectives, and allow them to evolve and blend together, constantly growing and fracturing, feeding back and diffusing based on a responsive video network, so we shot some video with Delenda, the song’s vocalist, and then created an interactive network in Touch Designer that would respond to video inputs as well as allow us to control how the network would respond. We’re really looking forward to bringing this same setup to live events and allowing audiences to interact with the Avenir in fun ways.”
The two worked on the album remotely for about four years, trading files back and forth between Sacramento (where Stanush lives) and San Antonio (Chavez’s home base). Stanush developed melodic ideas on guitar, bass, and Rhodes piano, while Chavez manipulated the tracks in Ableton and incorporated a range of innovative techniques, including machine learning and live-coding with the help of a portable, open-source sound computer called Monome Norns.
Above all, Chavez and Stanush sought to create music that would feel untethered to any particular time period; music that, like their influences, feels timeless and unmoored.
Chavez and Stanush tend to refer to A.M. Architect as a “multimedia collaboration” rather than a traditional band. The two have been close collaborators since around 2004, when they met while playing in rock bands in San Antonio together. Realizing they shared a love of electronic music (everything from German cult artist Arovane to the early work of Caribou, then billed as Manitoba) and a deep interest in the intersection of art and technology, the two began a side project, which morphed into A.M. Architect.
In 2009, they released their first album, The Road to the Sun, a nimble, beat-driven collection pairing Stanush’s melodic instincts with Chavez’s drum programming. Stanush had studied music theory and knew his way around a guitar or bass, while Chavez came from a hip-hop background and knew how to treat his bandmate’s instruments as samples, with a DJ Shadow-like apt for manipulating rhythms
That division of labor remained largely constant through the project’s subsequent albums—2017’s Color Field, 2019’s Chroma Variants—as their stylistic ambitions grew and the group moved away from live instrumentation in favor of ambient production. With an increased emphasis on vocal samples, Avenir (a French word meaning “the future, or a time to come”) brings A.M. Architect into a new phase of their career, veering towards ambient electronica instead of instrumental hip-hop and instilling their chilly soundscapes with an unmistakable warmth.
Stanush developed melodic ideas on guitar, bass, and Rhodes piano, while Chavez manipulated the tracks in Ableton and incorporated a range of innovative techniques, including machine learning and live-coding with the help of a portable, open-source sound computer called Monome Norns.
Because it was written in the throes of the pandemic, the material felt heavier than usual, with both musicians reflecting on death, mortality, and memories. Such themes were front of mind during the early years of the pandemic, when the duo began experimenting with audiovisual installations. At a warehouse in Sacramento, they led a major installation, using cameras to track people’s motions through the space, which then triggered different lines of melody and visual art on the walls. “We want to be able to bring that kind of experience to more of our projects,” Stanush notes.
Such experiments proved formative to the inventive, free-form spirit of Avenir. As Chavez reflects, “It changed our idea of how songs don’t have to be linear. As long as you’re in it, you can make the song move around. We like to play with time differently.” And true to its forward-thinking title, Avenir brings the future to your headphones even as it summons poignant reflections on the past.
