Archive for December, 2009

IN MEMORY OF CHARLES WESLEY COOPER III( TELEFON TEL AVIV )[ 1977 - 2009 ] (entries are listed in alphabetical order by artist. links point to album reviews on headphone commute) Architeq – Gold + Green (Tirk) Bibio – Ambivalence Avenue (Warp) Detritus – Things Gone Wrong (Ad Noiseam) Lusine – A Certain Distance (Ghostly [...]


I don’t believe in silent art. Perhaps the shuffling of the feet, or the occasional rude phone conversation may be considered to be a unique soundtrack for the museum. The space where art must be observed uninterrupted. But I have another idea. I imagine sonic installations played along contemporary art. I once went into an [...]


In the silent and sad mountains, music speaks without the lyrics. Words escape and rise in clouds, forming vapor, pain and passion. Music, on the other hand, is harmless, floating low above the ground, spreading long and foggy fingers, through the grass and morning flowers. In this dark and lonely winter, snow begins to lightly [...]


IN MEMORY OF DANIELLE BAQUET-LONG(CELER / CHUBBY WOLF)[ 1983 - 2009 ] (entries are listed in alphabetical order by artist. links point to album reviews on headphone commute) Bvdub – We Were the Sun (Quietus) Chubby Wolf – Meandering Pupa (self) Danny Norbury – Light In August (Lacies) Elegi – Varde (Miasmah) Fjordne – The [...]


Here comes another excellent installment of Reflections on 2009. Today I host thoughts on the year in music from the elusive Rafael Anton Irisarri, a list of favorite releases from the curator of 12k’s Line division, none other than Richard Chartier, and the owner of Home Normal records, Ian Hawgood. I must admit, it’s always [...]


Have you ever walked in the autumn rain? Just like the sunshine warms the breezy beaches, and the snow blankets the silent cemeteries, the rain drenches my clothes, and no, you can not tell that I’m crying. Covered from head to toe in the wetness and music, my feet plop through puddles, as my mind [...]


I may not share or write about this type of music all too often, but I’ll admit that I’m in love with stress erasing, head cleaning, heart pounding, minimal beats. Whether it’s the sound of Detroit, Chicago, London or Berlin, I’ll be there dancing away to the four-to-the-floor rhythm of my favorites and notables, such [...]


James Vella, aka A Lily, pops in with his reflections on the year. Vella runs his own O Rosa Records, and works for FatCat. He’s also a member of one of my favorite post-rock bands, Yndi Halda, who submitted their list of selected releases of the year below. I’ve also got some reflections from Vella’s [...]


Something warm and crispy is tickling the inside of my ear canal. It travels through my cochlear labyrinth, where the sensory hair cells sway with the vibrations and generate electric signals, which in turn fire the synapse towards my primary auditory cortex. Somewhere within Wernicke’s area of my cerebral cortex it all makes sense, and [...]


Abandoned places and desolate spaces, covered with rain, snow and ash, wrapped in a blanket of white noise and pulsating bass, somewhat metallic, chilly and wet. These are the images for these sounds for these places of my mind. Something is trembling with the beat of my heart. Tick-tock. Time rewinds to the mid nineties, [...]


Today I’ve got another treat for you. John Twells, co-founder of Type Records, and the artist behind the name Xela, shares his thoughts on 2009. Occasionally I chat with John, and his breadth of knowledge across all genres always surprises me. Being the man behind one of my favorite ambient, modern classical and folktronica labels [...]


Hope you’re opening your wallet and catching up to all the goodness from Headphone Commute’s Best of 2009! Meanwhile, as if that’s not enough, I’ve got more reflections for you coming. Today, I’ve got Sylvain Chauveau wondering why he still misses out on all the good dubstep and if it will ever kick in for [...]


After spending an entire night dancing at an outdoor festival, I wake up in my tent, drenched in morning dew and sound. The music never stopped playing, but it has slowed down in pace. As the music guides me towards its source, the path winds in between the trees that seem to sway with the [...]


Sit down. Stop thinking for a while. That thought? Let it go. Let it all go. Call it meditation, call it concentration, call it what you will, but let it go. That thought? Be above it and let it pass. Watch the thought pass through your mind. It passes, as the air through your lungs [...]


I’ve received a warm response from all the artists and labels for their Reflections on 2009. Keith Kenniff, who is known to many of you as Helios, Goldmund and Mint Julep, compiles his top 10 favorite albums of the year. Each entry is accompanied by a unique commentary from Keith himself. This is yet another [...]


The first installment of Headphone Commute’s Best of 2009 begins with Music For The Film Behind Closed Eyelids. This is a playlist of my favorite albums of the year, consisting of music that simply makes you feel. This is music that moves you from reality into daydreams then into nightmares and back into reality. The [...]


I absolutely hate rating music. I hate dating it too, but rating… That’s just wrong. I mean, how can you compare the minimalist beauty of Taylor Deupree to the pounding beats of Chris Clark? What’s the scale here? Last year, in Headphone Commute’s Best of 2008, I attempted to tier my favorites into “Absolute Must“, [...]


There were more than just a few releases this year that jumped to the top of my rotations and will most likely appear in my favorites list at the end of this year. These came from one of my favorite labels, Ad Noiseam. In 2009, this Berlin based label pumped out albums from Cardopusher, Broken [...]


Here are three more reflections for you. These keep coming in, so keep your eyes peeled for many more to be published in the upcoming days. A few of these, as you may have already noticed with Simon Scott, are elaborate enough to be warranted an article on their own. By this point, I realized, [...]


Simon Scott stops by to share his thoughts on music in 2009. It must be a great year for Simon. Late last year he launched his own label, Kesh Recordings, kicking off with a compilation 88 Tapes, featuring some of my favorite ambient and experimental artists. This year, Kesh released albums by Hannu, Saito Koji, [...]