Consouling Sounds There is very little to give the game away on the sleeve to Monnik‘s second album Bedevaart. Besides the title, artist and three track names, there is no more to go on.
Beats In Space There’s a soft interference about this record, a sense of loss; it’s beautifully produced throughout and sort of drifts under you as an album (not a bad thing at all), but there’s a real sense of dislocation; you never know quite what it is you’re hearing.
Kranky Dedekind Cut has been extremely busy in the last couple of years what with one album on Non and a whole plethora of self-released EPs. He has obviously been noticed as this second album is being released on Kranky, happy home of all things leftfield and with an ambient slant.
Avignon 9 February 2018 As is only to be expected, a screening of selected scenes and scores from Studio Ghibli‘s extensive catalogue of films turns out to have attracted a suitably cosmopolitan audience of all ages and subcultural inclinations to this latest ciné-concert at the hiply bohemian Pandora Cinema.
Swindon 22 February 2018 The good people at the latest of Swindon’s venues, The Tuppenny, have been brave enough to unleash the might of two of the town’s finest sons on an unsuspecting public. First up is the extremely affable Tom, who when donning his magic wolf’s hat becomes sonic terrorist Grasslands, defender of the faith of the open veldt and ex-employee of the month at Safeway in Aberystwyth.
Cherry Red For me, Felt were one of the most important bands that this country produced in the 1980s, and in Lawrence they possessed a true English eccentric visionary who deserves to be viewed in a class of his own. The idea of starting a band with a view to releasing ten albums and ten singles over the course of ten years is a masterpiece of self-imposed marketing
Kosmic Noise Kosmic Noise Records‘ first release comes from Into The Sky, a German duo who seem happy to declare themselves to be the inheritors of post-rock while nodding generously in the direction of immediate forbears such as Michael Rother of NEU! (whose logo KNR are wont to pastiche cheerfully when the opportunity arises),
Beggars Arkive Dance was a change in direction for Gary Numan after four albums where he explored dark, cold electronic music, and he obviously thought it was time to move away from that area. This being 1981, it was only now that a lot of other popular artists were just beginning to explore Numan’s minimalist synth sound for themselves, and suddenly the UK charts were flooded with bands […]
Nonplace Burnt Friedman is one of those mystery names that seems to often be involved in so many collaborations. His work with Jaki Liebezeit in Cyclopean was a deliciously rhythmic stew and his stuff with David Sylvian, particularly the Nine Horses album was really lovely, so to be confronted with a compilation of his own work was a pleasant surprise and then to discover that it covers a […]
Trilithon On headphones this Transits remix album rules, even better blaring through the speakers. Really needles the betweens, plucks aspects from its tidal original, spectrum-snakes its brooding intent, kicks out a dance of contemplative delectables. Over two and a half hours of music derived from the same twenty-three minute source material
American Dollar Bill : Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous To Look At Face On Thrill Jockey So so so… I’ve got probably more Keiji Haino albums than anyone reasonably needs. My heirarchy tends to look like Haino solo > Fushitsusha > anything else. He’s got a pretty intimidating discography — more like the little-and-often of free improv and jazz than magnum opuses of rockism. The right answer […]
Bristol 12 February 2018 Divorcing us from context, Carter was like a travelling salesman peddling dismembered arithmetics, a volatile dance of irregularity from the inside of a wooden suitcase. That awkward caress of pipping bubble wrap and shuffling sandpaper was an intriguing proposition, a parade of mutated modulars bathed in palpitating reverses, guillotined gallop.
RVNG Intl. Mark Renner was a mystery name to me, and because of that I must admit to an element of surprise at the attention lavished on the packaging by RVNG on this collection of tracks. The tracks date from electronic music’s halcyon days of the 1980s and cover Mark’s initial foray into recorded sound in 1982 up to the point where he seems to have put music […]
Little Miss Echo Recordings This is the debut EP from Johanna Bramli, who is possibly better known for being one half of “motorik electronic pop band Fröst“, but I’ve not actually heard them, while I have seen Bramli a couple of times at live shows around Brighton. And verily she is good.
City Slang I had a real love for Calexico back when they first started. There was something about Joey Burns and John Convertino disappearing into a shack in Arizona somewhere and reproducing the sound of their environment in such a charming and understated way. That dusty, warm sound, the sensation of lounging underneath the canopy of an orange grove as these subtle, Mexican-influenced, horn-infused delights float around your head like the […]
Aphelion Editions Straight out of Bristol’s thriving underground comes this forty-minute slice of unnerving ambience from EMEI, AKA Louise Brady. Vexing her inner witch, this fine example of tonal paganism more than matches the haunting abstractions that package it all up.
Mark E Smith may be gone, but not forgotten by Kev Nickells. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to the last order’s half past ten, brevity’s the soul, a fucking time ago innit. By class, vivisection. Applied Shem literally. Where’s the fucking drummer Mark? fucking drummer.
Riot Season Familia de Lobos is a six-piece from Buenos Aires formed in 2016 and their first album, released as a limited LP on Riot Season, is a fantastic mix of warm 1970s-inflected desert guitar music and more traditional Latin American sounds.