After conducting another targeted rummage through the BBC’s archival strongrooms, Precious Recordings takes us back through some of the life and times of Glasgow’s The Primevals -- in John Peel, Andy Kershaw and Janice Long-commissioned session configurations.
Monthly Archives: October 2025
11 posts
Soul Song Jerusalem-based composer and bassist Yosef Gutman continues his inspired run of collaborative albums with Shir Yedidot, a collection of chabad nigunim, which are Hasidic melodies along with a selection of his own compositions, but all inspired by the idea of melodies adorned with prayer and tears. This approach tends towards the lower key, but along with the uplift and positivity and the assembled players: regular travellers […]
That all-important hypnotic unison that each attentively drives towards until the density manifests, literally just appears and things lock into a gristled repeat full of vaporising trajectories. In this case it’s almost industrial -- a buzzing solid wasping your head with its cavorting sibilance. A miraged montage, where you’re not sure who’s doing what, all reverberating in delicious tribal splashes.
Allying Hardanger fiddle and jaws harp with the kind of beats found in electro-halling, disco-gangar and springar d'n'b is still a novel idea and one with which they are trying to show a natural progression from the sixties through to the modern day. Familiar dance staples like the Roland TB-303 and TR-909 flex their elegant muscles against instruments that have been around for hundreds of years and the outcome is a real ear -opener.
Whilst arguably having missed a few opportunities, Touch is nevertheless a roundly decent latter-day Tortoise record that reassures us that the internal alchemical artistry – even if not as effervescent as it once was – retains a distinctive potency. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait for another best part of a decade to find out if there is more left in the shared sonic tank.
The two albums work well but in different ways, and for any fan of intelligent and leftfield electronica are are rather essential. They stand up well over thirty years later and Warp's re-issues are very welcome.
Building on the dictaphone rawness of Matt Loveridge’s Atworth release as MXLX comes a devotional enrichment minus the tape hiss atmospherics, eight tracks that delve deep into the hammered soul of the piano.
The encore gives some of the release the audience have been craving, a delirious bagpipe-led trance concoction, which drifts just the other side of the line between Dionysian and line-dancing. Even the band seem a little surprised, as if this had come from somewhere they hadn’t previously been prepared to go. The King Arthur is a bit like that sometimes.
A slowly evolving space full of tapering shapes and vortexed growth. Mr York adding flute to the modular carpet Steve Davis and Kavus Torabi supplied. A rich and heady concoction, edged in feathery floating viewpoints and ashened in peppery paper cuts.
Harris Dickinson takes full advantage of his mushrooming acting career by making a writing / directing debut with this defiant and supremely tightly wound drama about Mike, a former prisoner struggling to rebuild his shattered life despite a mess of obstacles threatening to trip him up no matter how hard he tugs at those fabled bootstraps.
Why they aren't playing to at least a few hundred people per night is a complete mystery, but they clearly enjoy their peripatetic lifestyle... enjoying the enthusiasm of those people that made an effort on a Tuesday night. It was one of the best things I have seen in a long time; the joy, the intensity, the love for the songs and respect for the audience all added up to an unforgettable evening and long may they continue.