Thrill Jockey For Dommengang‘s third album for Thrill Jockey, it sounds as though they threw all their stuff into the back of the car and blew their LA home in favour of a wild ride into the desert, forsaking the concrete gleam for some dusty widescreen excesses. The scree of feedback that opens the album is a welcome reminder of their rock roots, but also that they are […]
Mr Olivetti
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Thrill Jockey The bringing together of two serial collaborating drummers can only be a good thing, and when they have the pedigree of Oneida‘s Kid Millions and Uniform‘s Greg Fox, we must be in for a treat. Greg plays drums on Biting Through, but he also concentrates on creating a synthesized backdrop for each of the six drum-crazy tracks appearing on the album.
Farmadelica Silver Relics are a duo from New York who ply a kind of synth- and rhythm-orientated take in classic American rock song-writing. Consisting of songwriter Alex Sepassi on guitar and synths, amongst other things, and Justin Alvis on drums, they formulate a sound that is redolent of the sort of film imagery that anyone could recognise from the last thirty years; those enormous storm drains that run […]
Rosélie Records Child ballerina turned singer-songwriter Bethia Beadman was transplanted from the West Country to the flat lands of Lincoln, and from there plies her trade, releasing albums of emotional and sweeping drama, the latest of which even includes Mike Mills of REM fame on keyboards, guitar and vocals. Having spent time as a member of Hole‘s touring band and part of Circulus, as well as writing and […]
Courier Sound Suffolk micro-label Courier Sound have released another of their beautifully presented cassettes. Coming in a lime green hand-made box and lime green cassette, with Quality Street wrappers and lovely little card inserts, it looks a treat, but it totally belies the aural contents. The fact that the wrappers are salvaged from “several years of reluctant Christmas obligation” should warn the listener
Wave Folder The list of equipment that Radek Rudnicki uses on the latest RPE Duo album is full of things of which I have never heard: a Buchla System 200, Eurorack modular, Octatrack and Bugbrand PT Delay, amongst quite a few others. His partner in musical nirvana, Matt Postle, meanwhile makes do with trumpet, piano, Korg and melodica. Between them, though, they weave quite a tapestry of textural […]
Disco Gecko Lower case soundscape composers Toby Marks and Andrew Heath recently found themselves in a fresh part of the UK, looking after a friend’s house and decided to travel north, south, east and west from that point, making recordings and taking aural snapshots of the areas in which they found themselves. Owing to the way in which they both work, the field recordings that they collected form […]
Arjuna Music Dark Star Safari is a collaboration between four doyens of the Scandinavian music scene bringing together Samuel Rohrer, Eyvind Aarset, Jan Bang and Erik Honoré. Their self-titled LP finds four kindred spirits looking for a way to push music into even newer directions, trying to find a new language amongst the remains of everything that has gone before.
Upset the Rhythm Hash Redactor hail from Memphis, Tennessee, but you wouldn’t really know it from the bass-heavy post-punk groove that they throw out on their first album. Made up of Alec McIntyre from Ex-Cult and Charlotte Watson and Meredith Lones from NOTS with George Williford on second guitar, the album is structured but sleazy at the same time
Foolproof Projects Andy Pyne and Lisa Jayne have reconvened as Map 71 to unleash a download EP of new material from Foolproof Projects. After time spent squirrelled away in their bunker (I imagine), the bouncing repetition and simple insistence of opener “Ex-Socialite Needs A New Invention” is faintly reminiscent of some of Factory Floor‘s rhythmic experiments, but here Andy uses squalls of synthetic sound to try and put […]
Phantom Limb JR Bohannon is a Brooklyn-based solo guitar player who first recorded this mini-album back in 2017 for cassette label Ausca. Phantom Limb liked it enough and saw enough in its diverse energy to warrant a reissue. JR originally hails from Louisville in Kentucky, and some of that city’s heritage has leaked into the sound of the songs, along with the usual likes of Robbie Basho and […]
Out In the next part of Ut‘s re-issue campaign, their first album Conviction is up for the treatment and deservedly so. As mentioned before, for me they were unsung heroes and the purity of their democracy was something that a lot of other bands could have learned from. The fact that Nina Canal, Sally Young and Jacqi Ham all wrote and all sang is an unusual thing in […]
Discus Martin Archer‘s Discus label certainly knows how to throw a curveball. After the motorik groove of Das Rad and the subtle freedom of Beck Hunters, their next release is the chilly post-folk artistry of Frostlake. Jan Todd has taken four years to record the follow up to 2015’s White Moon, Black Moon and once again has bassist Terry Todd adding his warm groove to some of the tracks […]
Houndstooth Renowned synthesist Abul Mogard‘s latest release and first for Houndstooth is a selection of reworkings which take in some interesting artists from today’s outer fringes.
Rocket Gum Takes Tooth have waited five years to follow up their second album Mirrors Fold, but it would appear to have been well worth the wait. The wildness of the live spectacle is not so apparent when listening to this album, but the amount of ideas and angles that the duo has on drum and electronic sound-making is phenomenal.
Hubro Øyvind Torvund‘s latest opus on Hubro is a sweeping gesture laying open his love for the kind of crazy exotica that the likes of Martin Denny and Les Baxter wowed the unsuspecting public of the 1950s. It is not about copying what came before, though, as there are some curious modernist elements that attempt to update that classic lush and string-laden sound.
Thrill Jockey Matmos‘s latest is a really impressive feat, considering every sound that you hear on the album was generated by something plastic. As a comment on the current surfeit of plastic items that we have on the globe, it packs a potent social message; and what’s more, considering the possibilities, it is a really good listen.
Fiasco Recordings Art Trip And The Static Sound‘s 2018 album A Week Of Kindness is being refreshed in the public’s consciousness by the release of the “Iron Lung” single. This particular track shines a light on their more repetitive Spacemen 3 leanings, with a rough and grungey circular guitar motif. The drummer is the key here, not allowing anything to escape from the black hole of sound.