Category Archives: Music

Devin Townsend – Empath

by Jeff Nixon

Devin Townsend is an artist that has always been hard to classify. Releasing such a wide range of music, from death metal, to ambient, to new age, to progressive rock, to country. But to be confined to just one genre wouldn’t be Devin Townsend. Which is why he lets it all out on Empath, jumping from style to style at whim, and creating something truly unique as a result.

I reviewed the last Devin Townsend Project (DTP) album Transcendence back in 2016 saying it took Devin’s sound to a new level. Now that I reflect on it, that … Read more

Mord’a’stigmata – Dreams of Quiet Places

by Matt Matheson

Mord’a’stigmata—not a name that is easily forgotten—has been a name on the periphery of my radar for years. The Polish group’s brand of bleak metal never captivated me enough to warrant much attention, but on fifth full-length Dreams of Quiet Places they have refined their sound into something impossible to ignore. Both composition and production have taken a substantial step up from 2017’s Hope, with nods to purveyors of blackened sludge like Rorcal and older Altar of Plagues, alongside psychedelic elements reminiscent of Entropia and older A Forest of Stars (or their lesser-known reincarnation, The Water Witch… Read more

Patchwork Jazz Orchestra, Splinter Reeds, Colunia, Asymmetric Universe, Ultra Zook, and Kouma

by Dæv Tremblay

Patchwork Jazz Orchestra – The Adventures of Mr. Pottercakes (Spark Label)

The London-based seventeen-piece big band Patchwork recently released their debut album, The Adventures of Mr. Pottercakes, via the lovely Spark Label. The compositions here are lush and broad in styles, thanks to the seven composers behind them and the musicianship of the performers in this great jazz orchestra. The songs are at times romantic, at times evocative, impressionist, or abstract. Listening to this is pure pleasure, for its varied and well-groomed influences and stylistic choices. Plus, at over an hour of material, you’ve got quite enough to get … Read more

Weekly Release Dump

by Dæv Tremblay

Saturday, 9 March

Agustí Fernández, Joe Morris, and Charmaine Lee – Magma (experimental jazz, free jazz)

Barcelona, Spain
On Sirulita Records

Kombo C – Petelin iz Noznega (jazz fusion)

Nova Gorica, Slovenia

Mopcut – Accelerated Frames of Reference (experimental, noise)

Vienna, Austria
On Trost Records

Read our review.

White Pulse – The Fast and the Furious 9 (noise jazz)

Zürich, Switzerland

Read our review.

Sunday, 10

Janko – Chansons parallèles [EP] (experimental rock)

Montpellier, France
On Bermuda Cruise

… Read more

Marathon Devlog 3: Various Improvements

by Dæv Tremblay

Github link

Marathon has been on the back of my mind ever since I started messing around with it. I still remember it not being 100 lines long and still be able to make microrhythms in MIDI. It was a bit crude, and simplistic, but it worked! I was so excited to solve an issue that bothered me, a musical cul-de-sac, with my flimsy programming skills. Since then, the little code grew bigger as I added presets (like a pre-made “swing” option, and similar choices for gnawa and samba rhythms) and functionalities (like the text command option, which I … Read more