a closer listen

Some lives are difficult to imagine unless one has experienced something similar. Alisa Nedashkovska (Travis or Alice) wrote her debut EP during her first two years as a Ukrainian refugee in Berlin, and uses the music to bridge the gap between identity an...

Once in a while, we realize we’ve created a closed loop.  In 2023, when ACL reviewed ALT (Abby Lee Tee)’s Disputed Territory and the single “Beavers,” we lamented that “Beavers” was not on the album.  Ri...

Summertime, and the living is not so easy, not if you are Ukrainian as Russia has upped its ballistic missiles attacks. Quinte apt then that this month we spoke to Air Defence System from Kharkiv. He told us about his latest EP please don’t stay any longer.

Before that we met with the Iranian musician and film director and producer Ram...

Inspired by a bird landing on a city windowsill, Air Signs by anthéne looks to the skies for meaning or assurance. We don’t find a feathery, avian energy here. Instead, this is an airborne album of open expanse and surging textures, matching the bird’s natural element. Ephemeral guitar sounds overlap in loops, rising and falling like breath. Diffuse ...

too_basicc is an digital audio-visual modular synthesis project based in Beirut, Lebanon. Over the months of march-april they released three albums in quick succession with the latest being عهد الأصدقاء [“The Covenant of Friends”] — a title that refers to the classic Arabic-dubbed anime series originally known in Japan as Romeo and the Black Brot...