...this hybrid set-up of past Piano Magic players from different eras of the group gels succinctly through three freshly-cut pieces across fifteen minutes. The comparative brevity suits them well, particularly when focusing proceedings even more tightly on the ensemble’s pop-noir smarts on the two bookend tracks fronted by Johnson.
EP review
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After a relentlessly prolific and steadily diversifying 2025, it’s perhaps not surprising that Precious Recordings is one of the first independent labels out of the release gates at the dawning of 2026. With respectively refreshing twists, the below pair of near-back-to-back vinyl and digital outings confirm that the core business of digging up the BBC’s buried treasure chests – with consent - remains undiminished: LP-length anthology of The Twinsets’ triptych of vintage John Peel sessions & Jetstream Pony’s recorded live-on-air appearance for 6Music, Riley & Coe Session 09.04.25 EP.
There is undoubtedly no productivity crisis in the broad spheres of nouveau shoegaze and DIY electronica, with complementary manoeuvres and convergence playing out between them to boot. This is certainly apparent in sifting through another review pile on the verge of toppling over, replete with a lot of familiar suspects from some reliable sources.
Precious Recordings is clearly in it for an Olympic marathon, albeit with a few sprints along the way. Hence, following on rapidly from a still-fresh trio of seven-inch singles from newbies and returnees, comes two ten-inch outings, bringing fresh sounds from veteran players and a near-forgotten aural slice of the past, respectively.
Nick Godfrey’s Precious Recordings label continues to be one of the most reliable historical route-finders for visits inside the BBC vaults, in parallel to promising recent forays into releasing new recordings. From such navigation, fresh archival spotlights are put upon the familiar and near-famous, as well as those previously misplaced in the mists of musical time. Enter then, three 10-inch EP platters -- bolstered by bonus digital content -- from the latter camp.
Dipping just a toe into the DIY electronica streams these days still requires some weighty waders to avoid being soaked by the volume of material. Hence, another amalgamated approach is needed to fish for some of the most notable new wares.
So what business do they have deploying experimental music under the radar? Well, it’s all in the name: NMIXX — (Pick) NMIXX, if you will? This approach in their first single, “O,O”, wasn’t immediately embraced by audiences and critics. Multiple shifting styles and frequent unexpected jump-cut changes weren’t easily digested, even by an audience that has come to expect split-second editing in both music and videos.
The documentary evidence of an accepted invitation to Maida Vale from the Yeovil-birthed quartet, this is an unpretentiously charming C86-era memento. Fleeting in duration yet brim-full of melodic energy and youthful camaraderie, these four recordings may possess plenty of period trappings, but they contain an elevating freshness.
This latest confection, all proceeds for which go toward Worldwide Cancer Research, possibly defines the term short but sweet. Actually, maybe sweet isn't quite the right word, because the amount of emotion and atmosphere that is generated in a little over seven minutes on Page Of Pentacles is quite simply extraordinary.
After branching further out of apparent comfort zones across 2024 in terms of content and format manoeuvres, Precious Recordings pivots once again, around the turn of the New Year, with three self-set-boundary-breaking releases.
Barbican Estate are a Japanese trio now based in London and this release for Feral Child compiles four previously available tracks that were either downloads or pressed on limited cassette runs. Because of this, there is pretty good variety in the selection and with a running time of a little under half an hour, there is plenty of opportunity for them to spread their magic.
The latest release from our favourite pastoral bedroom psychedelicist finds Robert Sotelo in the esteemed company of Mary Currie where they weave four treatsome tales from the heart and mind.
Feral Child are celebrating in style with their fiftieth release; in a really stylish glossy disco bag, Italian experimental adventurers Cloud Canyons have been given a makeover by Dom Keen's very own Studio Kosmische. Over two ten-minute tracks, Cloud Canyons share a cut from their recent album and one track just for this release with Dom to see what fresh magic he can uncover.
The latest four-tracker brought to us via the conduit of Godfrey’s basement flat HQ flips back to the aforementioned sprawling C86 scene, which continues to fascinate Discogs hunter-gatherers, for the sole BBC session from Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes, a band that dispensed a handful of singles / EPs across the late-‘80s and one album in 1990.
The EP spins out on Dorothy’s silvery words to a backdrop of softly brushed instrumentation, “Moon”’s cradling circadians bringing to mind the eerie elegance of Anaïs Nin’s poetics on Bells Of Atlantis, its dream-caught atmospherics cloudy with vaporous validation.
The internet is a weird and wonderful place. The music industry is also a weird and wonderful place. So when these two worlds collide, strange and beautiful things happen. For many years, bands would play their way through dingy little clubs and venues until they could get signed, recorded and sent on local, then international tours. This is still an ever-present phenomenon, but the world wide web has […]
Thrill Jockey This is the disco of slurs, of slurry, of slurrrs. Everything seems wasted, in the sense of my favourite Donna Summer track (yep, “Wasted”). Even the hi-hats sound shattered, like you’ve found yourself at Shoom sometime around 1987, the real turn of the century; still dancing but full of MDMA on the down, starting to feel your calves give out but not wanting the music to […]
(self-released) Produced for sale at UnicaZürn’s incredible IKLECTIK performance earlier this year, this thirty-minute CD-R features three live improvisations that are totally in the zone without edits nor overdubs. The slow and deliberate churn of track one, “Ancident”, sets the scene, its scattering fractals spaciously , an Arabian flavour that seems to tattoo the amorphous sands, pencilled in by scarab-chasing harmonics.