YlangYlang - Am I Being Overdramatic? (2014)

Ailanthus

/Ambient pop, Chillwave, Avant-pop, Glo-fi, Alternative pop, Ambient, Art pop, Dreamwave, Post-pop, Indietronica, New Weird Canada, Glitch folk/

Comment: YlangYlang is the prolific (French) Canadian Catherine Debard whose 11-track issue is pure sonic joy for filling your sunshiny day. Her sound consists of a sort of sound which was popularized by such artists as Julia Holter, Maria Minerva, Laurel Halo, Grimes. More concretely, it consists of vowel effects which used to sway from one channel to another or one vowel sample is simply superimposed by other ones thereby either creating psychedelic or crystalline sense. Furthermore, Debard`s issue is varicoloured with some free folk compositions where concrete music drenched backgrounds create fairly unusual feeling to bold guitar chords in the foreground. The release finishes off with a soothing ambient composition where briny undulation is brought to the front. In a nutshell, the outlet is a fair notch of the blossoming Canadian music scene and was certainly one of the best albums in 2014.          

Shamane – Hypercamp (2013)

Ailanthus

Swan City Sounds

/Ambient techno, Vaporwave, Seapunk, Industrial techno, Experimental techno/

Comment: Shamane`s 10-track issue provides a dense mix of experimental and industrial-tinged techno rhyhms harking back to the legacy of Autechre and Throbbing Gristle and on the other side providing more contemporary oneiric progressions in the style of vaporwave and seapunk, though, at a more buried level. In true, at times these synth layers used to evolve into remarkably gloomy atmospheric outputs or using a less emotional language. Although the album is rhythm-based it is not a sort of dance music by its nature at all – it is insistently experimental and explorative and emphatically bit oriented and on the other side it used to talk to us a little tongue-in-cheek (for instance, involving some “ironic” sounds being slightly disjointed out of the context). All in all, the result is thought-provoking and challenging.