Recommended by
From Here We Go Sublime
Axel Willner’s 2007 debut is a keeper in this world (electronic music) or any other world. The concept is wild and simple, or maybe wildly simple: make tracks that are essentially just the build sections of other songs. I don’t mean that these other songs exist, but that he has excised the peak sections of his own songs, and extended them. So you get this sublime near-climax for an entire album, very much four on the floor, but built from the soft and airy sounds of acts like GAS and other people on the airborne end of things. Using those two strategies, he puts his pieces through slow, easy-to-read chord changes, a bit like The Cure. Imagine a pop band playing across the earth and the satellites send you the biggest harmonic data they can perceive, but our man Axel gets there first and shreds it into confetti over a stonking kick.