Plutonic Rainbows

This is a great album of quite varied electronics that spans a variety of styles, calling to mind quite a few artists. Lenticular arrives from the Central Processing Unit and is totally recommended.

Bleep:

Central Processing Unit have a claim to being the label with the strongest identity in British electronic music at the moment. Each of their fifty-odd releases provide variations on classic acid and techno stylings. They never fail to deliver in sound and style, and each comes wrapped up in that pleasing white and black package. On Lenticular, Nadia Struiwigh softens the edges of the CPU sound while remoulding the core components into an LP of great deftness and beauty. Recalling Aphex’s best ambient works as well as top-of-the-range Boards of Canada, the tracks here mould well-worn analog stylings into the sort of late-night ditties that will bring wistful smiles to ravers of every generation.

Vinyl, Cassette and Digital Editions are available here.

There have been so many new albums lately that I don't have time to listen to them all. However, in the next few days I will be taking a listen to Lenticular by Nadia Struiwigh and Life of Love by Moon Diagrams. There is also a new Richard H Kirk album that I have yet to look at.

I recently finished reading Dragon Teeth and enjoyed it. Micheal Crichton has been a favourite author of mine for many years. His blend of technology and thriller has proved remarkably successful over the years, in particular Jurassic Park. This tale of genetically-engineered dinosaurs roaming a theme park has been remarkably successful, spawning a sequel, The Lost World as well as a number of movies.

Dinosaurs are still very exciting but long-dead ones - not so much. What I also found slightly disappointing was that the sections devoted to fossil-hunting were few. For much of the novel, it felt like nothing more than a slightly unbelievable western.

Of course this was an unfinished novel so it's more than likely Michael Crichton would have spent a lot more time on it before publication.

If you like Michael Crichton's books, you'll enjoy this but be warned, it's not the work it probably could have been.

Haven't we been here before? That was my first thought as I settled down with this latest from the pioneering German electronic outfit. Perusing the lavish box that this arrived in (with Blu-ray discs and a coffee-table size book), I was struck with the realisation that not only have we been here, we have been here many times. It was only back in 2009 that the band re-released their entire set of eight remastered albums.

Anyway, on this occasion Kraftwerk have chosen to release their live shows on 3D Blu-ray and it does look and sound wonderful. The audio CD edition is spread across eight discs and while most of these tracks sound practically identical to their counterparts from the Minimum-Maximum album released twelve years ago from their world tour in 2004, the main value of this set is the visuals and 3D sound which is stunning.

If you're new to Kraftwerk, I would advise checking out some of their albums before you make this heavy purchase. Their work pretty much defines electronic music over the past thirty years.

I do wish they could write something new.

Vinyl

Audio CD

Blu-ray DVD Audio