Laurel Halo
DJ-Kicks
Release Date: Mar 22, 2019
Genre(s): Electronic, Techno, Pop/Rock, Club/Dance, Experimental Techno, Electro-Techno, Detroit Techno, Experimental Club
Record label: !K7
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Album Review: DJ-Kicks by Laurel Halo
Excellent, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 9/10
For the 68th iteration !K7 have called upon Berlin-based producer Laurel Halo , AKA Ina Cube, to provide a mix which makes use of her penchant for the acoustic and electronic and in which she can explore the differences therein. What results is one of the more enthralling collections in the series, packed with exclusives and explosive floor fillers in equal measure. This is clear even from the outset with the first of Halo's new compositions, "Public Art".
Based on rating 8/10
DJ-Kicks is Laurel Halo's first commercially available mix, but it follows a decade's worth of podcast mixes for various music websites, as well as a background in college radio. Like her music, Halo's mixes incorporate styles from throughout the history of dance music, often leaning toward Detroit techno/electro and U.K. bass culture, but she's also likely to venture into musique concrete and contemporary composition.
Based on rating 8/10
Laurel Halo, the American-born producer, musician, and DJ, has released four dissimilar studio albums since 2012, which move briskly from experimental pop, through minimal techno, to evergreen-ambient textures. Her avant-garde technique remains steadfast. To alter the properties of sound by tinkering with the roles that voice, machines and wide open spaces can play in modern music.
Based on rating 3.9/5
When Laurel Halo was studying at the University Of Michigan, she DJ'd regularly on WCBN-FM, the campus radio station whose freeform programming policy let her play whatever she liked. In practice, that likely meant a lot of jazz--the station had a large archive, and she'd been introduced to it through her parents' record collection. But one night she also dropped "The Most Unwanted Song," a collage of opera rapping, souvenir-shop bagpipes and a Christmas children's choir.
Opinion: Excellent
In a time of relentless live streams, and archived podcasts, radio sets and live recordings, the mix CD has had to look elsewhere for inspiration. It's no surprise, then, that some extraordinarily challenging and interesting ones have been released over the past few years, particularly Objekt's relentlessly innovative Kern Vol. 3 and Nina Kraviz's fabric 91 which gleams with near-peerless peculiarity.
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