Music

Six tracks in twenty-five minutes: fractured breakbeats, distorted texture and a lot of low-end pressure. Orens has worked with Max Cooper, and it shows in how much room the sound design gets.

TJ Hertz’s second album for PAN, built from field recordings and sound design fine enough that he has talked about spending a whole day on a single kick drum. It has no interest in the dancefloor and goes about building a world instead. A properly great record.

Felix Manuel’s second album, where he finally let his jazz piano into the record and built the rest around Zosia Jagodzinska’s cello — jungle, techno, ambient and modern classical inside nine tracks. Very cool and properly experimental. I liked it a lot.

The debut, eleven tracks Christopher Taylor wrote and recorded in Vienna after leaving London — neo-soul melodies laid over cracked electronics. Not the greatest album out there, but I listened to it in Yekaterinburg the year it came out, and it gives me the same warm memories of that time.

The fourth and last Daft Punk record, recorded over four years with session players instead of samplers — Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder and a live rhythm section in place of the machines.

Christopher Young’s score for the 2011 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel — eighteen short cues for a story set in Puerto Rico in 1960. For me it is pure warm memory of a trip to Sri Lanka.

The third record, and the one where the band dropped nu metal for something closer to straight rock. Named after the Doomsday Clock reading of that year.

Tobin’s sixth record, built from field recordings of everyday objects and animals instead of crate digging — the sources are processed until you cannot hear what they were. The name comes from the foley studio, where film sound is made the same way.

The second Boards of Canada album, darker than the first and stuffed with backmasked voices, numbers and cult references buried in the mix.

Thirty tracks across two discs, split between drill and bass pushed past what a drum machine should manage and quiet pieces for prepared piano. It was the last Aphex Twin album for thirteen years.

Jesper Kyd’s first Hitman score — nine tracks of pure electronics, written inside the memory limits of DirectMusic. Another game out of my childhood: every time I hear this, warm memories come back of playing it the year it came out. The score never got a proper release of its own — it only reached streaming officially for the 25th anniversary of Hitman.

Recorded over three years while the game was being built, and shipped with the Collector’s Edition. The Tristram guitar is the part everyone remembers.

The debut on Warp: detuned tape loops, half-heard children’s voices and the sound of a documentary you cannot quite place. Everything the duo did after starts here.

The second Prodigy record, written as rave was being legislated out of existence in Britain — the Criminal Justice Bill runs right through it, down to the track named after a sound system. Breakbeat hardcore before the band turned into a rock act.

The debut, assembled from cassette recordings James started making at thirteen. Ambient techno before the genre had a name to give it.