Intimate Inanimate The artwork for the latest collaboration between Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist is lovely, but has a kind of impenetrability that filters through to the sounds within. It is as if these undiscovered runic symbols had a diffuse and languorous soundtrack that had been beamed in from some hitherto uncharted land. Time Apart In The West is broken down into fourteen months, and that sense of […]
Mr Olivetti
901 posts
Joyful Noise Recordings You could suggest that after nearly forty years in the music industry that Lou Barlow has finally found himself in a position where he has various different directions in which to flex his musical muscles; Dinosaur Jr for his bass playing chops and meatier songwriting, Sebadoh for the more esoteric ideas and interplay with Jason Loewenstein, and his solo work for the more personal and […]
Opa-Loka It seems to me that Philippe Petit‘s mission in his artistic existence is to make us re-appraise the way that we listen to music, sound, noise, however you wish to describe it, and to try and rewrite the rules, using sounds and forms that are so outside of the general sound world that they feel like transmissions from another planet. It is as if he has tapped […]
Constellation I was really looking forward to seeing Fly Pan Am come to Bristol last year. On the strength of last year’s C’est Ca, it was bound to be a storming show — and then lockdown hit, so although we didn’t manage to see them, instead we have ended up with another album and what a beauty it is. Conceived as a musical narrative accompanying the acclaimed contemporary […]
(self-released) Drummer Jochen Rueckert uses his Wolff Parkinson White alias when he is in the mood for subverting the romantic notion of the soulful vocalist tugging the heartstrings of the listener. This he does by surrounding the singer in question with a barrage of sonic accompaniment that tests the strength of the singer’s ability to put across an emotion. Following on from last year’s collection Small Favours, which […]
The Leaf Label Fernando Corona has been pushing the boundaries of recorded sound as Murcof for some twenty years or so now and for this latest, he is reunited with The Leaf Label; a fitting home for his restless innovation. The work on this double album was started four years ago as pieces for the Geneva-based dance company Alias. The fact that it was produced for such a […]
Upset The Rhythm Finally, more from Kaputt in the form of this delightful clear blue 7″. Only two tracks, I know, but what a frantic mood they bring to the party; slightly sickly, Fursy sax, high-pitched keening guitar, double-tracked inquisitive conversational vocals. It all just jumps in there, grabs your hand and starts running.
À Tant Rêver du Roi Kong‘s sole album has taken thirteen years to finally be issued on vinyl, and its muscular insistence and discomfiting tension is great to have back in circulation. I can’t remember who suggested that the trio was the ultimate expression of the rock format, but these three certainly brought noise as well as the mania and the telepathic interconnection. It seems extraordinary that Snake […]
Archaeological / Dio Drone The latest collaboration from these two denizens of the underground is quite a change from their previous release due to its live format and it being the only current recording of them performing together. When the Archaeological folk requested their appearance at the eighth Dio Drone Festival, people were perhaps expecting them to tackle pieces from Darkening Ligne Claire, but instead a wildly unexpected […]
Upset The Rhythm For me, Upset The Rhythm are turning into a kind of post-modern 4AD or Too Pure, the sort of labels on which you could take a punt and pretty much guarantee that what you had purchased would be good. So far, UTR have had an excellent hit rate, always managing to find the kind of interesting, whimsical and unique acts that make the listener sit […]
Crammed Discs That most dashing of European labels, Crammed Discs, is celebrating forty years in the industry, and in keeping with this are engineering a series of reissues, of which the first volume of their Made To Measure albums is at the front. Made To Measure served as an adjunct to the main label, releasing albums that were slightly out of the ordinary, often affiliated with other forms […]
KrysaliSound Benjamin Finger is a rather prolific electronic artist based in Oslo and one who has spilt his largesse across numerous labels in the last ten or so years. KrysaliSound is the latest recipient and Auditory Colors is a miasma of drifting tones, mystery vocals and snatched, hallucinatory moments. There are many instruments at play here as well as field recordings, and “alien objects” that move the pieces from […]
Foolproof Projects It is always great to have Map 71 back in the fold and once again they are pushing the envelope of what can be achieved with voice, synth and drums. This four-track EP seems to have its feet in the dub camp, with Lisa Jayne‘s vocals covered with swathes of echo, whereas Andy Pyne‘s drums patters tend in a more tribal direction, making for an intriguing […]
A Tant Rêver Du Roi (EU) / Buzzhowl (UK) / Learning Curve (USA) Blacklisters (styled as Blklstrs on the sleeve)’ latest is only their third in about ten years, but their formidable live reputation certainly translates well to the recorded performance. With the likes of Idles and Shame making it big, there is clearly still an appetite for the sort of brutal, minimalist action that we find here […]
KrysaliSound The harpsichord is one of the most evocative instruments; its sound immediately transporting you back four or five hundred years to the time of royal courts and bewigged composers. On Voluta, Francesco Maria Narcisi takes fragments of the instrument being played and introduces them to a modern setting that puts it right onto the back foot.
Audio Obscura Neil Stringfellow‘s Audio Obscura has followed up 2020’s Love In The Time Of The Anthropocene with another expansive and hugely diverse litany of the destruction that has been caused since the time that our species has been on the earth. It is an affecting and far-reaching suite of pieces that make great use of the spoken word, set against the backdrop of expansive electronica that is […]
Injazero There is something kind of fitting about the title to Mike Lazarev‘s latest mini opus. It is a work of real compositional thought and love, but although it comprises ten tracks, it clocks in at a little over twenty minutes. You may think that it would only constitute sketches or fragments, but each of these short piano-led pieces is perfect in its integrity and the moods captured […]
Gizeh The brief spoken-word section, remote and benign, of the drifting opening track to Christine Ott‘s latest release, Time To Die, lends an air of tired truth to the doomy and distorted soundscape. Electronic sounds waver in the dust of a far-flung outpost, distant and interminable.