Nominally to promote last year's England's Screaming album, it felt more like an opportunity to engage with an audience who had clearly travelled many miles with him over the years, such was the familiarity and ease of atmosphere. The Face Bar is an interesting venue, looking like a social club suite with a series of interconnected rooms and the stage for tonight is set up in front of some very comfy looking chairs and makes for a convivial setting. An engaging character and raconteur, Eric is armed only with two guitars and a series of effects pedals to lay waste to songs old and new.
Celebrating Buried Treasure’s latest Extracellular comp (which is going to get its own well deserved write up soon, I promise), label boss Alan Gubby invited a few of its featured artists to perform at a tiny arts centre just off the London Road in Reading, Berkshire. Knowing the calibre of the label’s eclectic radar and having sampled many previous happenings this was definitely an opportunity not to be missed
...a neatly-distilled pop-noir affair – which includes recuts of prior EP extracts and newer material – that shifts between layered moodscapes and shadowy minimalistic grooves... Glen Johnson is clearly unafraid to wander wherever his perennial penchants take him
...a half-hour album filled with minute-long sketches, each inhabiting its own little world. The BELLASTRA is a random prompt generator that used found sounds to guide the players, with each of the trio adding electronics, accordion and flute respectively.
...as stylish and well executed as the crimes it depicts, while revealing the weaknesses in the chains binding its litany of incident together. But believable characters and a sly sense of humour lubricate its procedural plot, easing us around its numerous chicanes without diluting their thrill factor.
Expansive pianist and composer Olly Chalk has been in the contemporary improvised music scene in London for a number of years, often collaborating but always searching. Here, for In Those Remote Stars, he has drawn a quintet around him of like-minded individuals who bring a sense of bubbling adventure to his eleven compositions.
If 2025 wasn’t quite busy enough for Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s Skep Wax label -- in widening its scope via a slew of new signings and extra global connections -- then 2026 looks set to just keep on building upwards and outwards, with some pretty epic touring schedules and a flux of new releases already in the calendar well into the spring.
Paper Masks is a lovely focused affair where the hypnotic pull of the words shimmer in a peppery abstraction that invites you to taste the kernelling kinetics behind what’s being spoken.
...a product of near-seamless mind-melding that traverses multiple timelines of choice historic influences, without any fashion-focused anxiety.
...this second full-length set from Melbourne’s capital letter-averse kisses has a lot to live up to, both in comparison to the label’s stunning sole LP 2025 outing from Sienna Thornton and the quintet’s own utterly sublime self-released eponymous album from 2024.
Dignity opens with a five-part suite that delves into Isabelle’s feelings of dignity and how we can better live in that manner, with the other players lending a hushed setting which allows the flute to travel, snaking carefully and wavering gently as the Hammond holds out its hand and lends support.
Dialling down prior murkier and less direct tendencies to markedly push guitarist and lyricist Etienne Quartey-Papafio’s now-more-assured vocals much further to the fore, the sophomore Sunlight Echoes is a substantial and soulful step forward for the foursome, rounded out by drummer Jagun Meseorisa, guitarist Michael Adelaja and bassist Vanessa Govinden.
If you imagine a post-hardcore band had ditched guitar and voice and replaced them with two saxes, this is the sound you would have. The interplay of the reeds is really natural and they fill in for each another covering a wide range of tones and are not afraid to change things mid-flight as a air of repetitive notes tugs at one another like two dogs with a rope.
...turns back the clock with a re-curation exercise, to add a key chapter from her earlier work into the same label catalogue fold. Hence, 2010’s The Fallen By Watch Bird reappears in a double-duration coupling with 2011’s close companion collection, The Watchbird Alluminate, which were both previously released on the Bird imprint
...over ten carefully chosen pieces they run through all manner of vocal styles and manners, with a brief introduction allowing the listener an opportunity to hear their differing approaches, from spoken to shrieked and from a bubbling murmur to an intense hammering. You start to feel the energy and the "creeping fog of war" as the subjects elicit the necessary responses from the vocalists.
...right at the very start of another busy year of activity – with several bouts of live Heavenly bookings to fulfil upfront -- Ian openhandedly gave over time to tell all on his early career routes; the life and times of Papernut Cambridge being celebrated across the freshly dispensed and indispensable Everybody Is In Papernut Cambridge compilation; the philosophies and operations of Gare Du Nord ; his broad range of other cultural commitments; and plenty more in between.
I was disappointed to discover that Theta Seven will be the last outing for the Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere, but it might be due to the group’s remit of “proposing an alternative reality in which all notions of common sense have been eradicated” is no longer relevant.
...the artwork’s suggestive shapes feel texturally tethered to the audio’s pitted surface – artwork and sound a collaborative whole, each feeding the other. As much as I love the lyrical bite of those early years, Cindytalk’s introspective canvas has grown infinitely richer in the succeeding years, emboldened by a desire to delve deeper, ridding itself of conventional restraints.