Sparrow Hawk Cowboy Flying Saucer‘s second album dispenses a series of lead hollerer BK13‘s slightly surreal and repetitive vignettes over an at times contorted and at times spacious scrum of musical hubbub. His appearance at a Travel Lodge wedding that transformed into some kind of hallucinatory extended dream-state is brought to life in a way that I wasn’t expecting.
Mr Olivetti
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Rocmusic I was more than a little excited to discover R.O.C were returning after quite some time away and this album does not disappoint. Somehow, ROC manage to exist outside of the music industry and any trends and vagaries that may afflict it. Although it has been twelve years since their last LP, when the music starts it could have been yesterday that the previous albums were released.
Omnibus Press Damo Suzuki will be seventy years old next year and has spent the best part of half of those traversing the globe with two distinct iterations of his musical caravan; first the Damo Suzuki Band / Network and latterly the ever-evolving global musical cast that are his Sound Carriers. Interspersed in those years were twenty-six spent working full time for a Japanese company that manufactured measuring […]
Blue Tapes The latest release from The Blue Tapes House Band has only one disappointing element; the cassette isn’t blue, but white. I don’t know what is going on here and it is fair to say I have no idea what the House Band are trying to do, except drive the listeners crazy. For nearly an hour, pure white noise rolls out
Rune Grammofon Maja SK Ratkje‘s latest album for Rune Grammofon is a really intriguing piece. Written for the Norwegian National Ballet‘s interpretation of Knut Hamsen‘s breakthrough novel Hunger, it is entirely centred around a modified pump organ. The device was something that she played every night live on stage with the ballet, and that is an incredible feat when you read the spec: “…a modified, wiggly and out […]
Archaeological Notoriously diverse sound artist Andrew Liles first met ex-Mayhem vocalist Sven Kristiansen (AKA Maniac) at the 2008 Roadburn Festival and was later invited to join the latter’s group Sehnsucht. A desire to continue performing together saw the pair reconvene at various points up to this current point, when they decided to lay down this remarkably subtle yet faintly disturbing album. I say subtle, because when you consider […]
Courier Back in 2014, sound artist Stuart Bowditch produced a series of pieces for an exhibition that was taking place in the old Co-operative Bank in Colchester. Created solely using sounds discovered in the thirty rooms of the old edifice, it was installed as a loop playing on an in-car DVD
Discus Martin Archer founded Discus thirty years ago this year and has pushing the envelope of what we might expect from jazz-based music ever since. Describing itself as the adventurous label, two recent releases that dropped through my letterbox are both vivid sonic adventures that use very different foundations as their jumping-off points.
Upset The Rhythm Fresh on the heels of Vital Idles‘ 2018 LP comes a four-track 7″ vinyl EP containing all-new material. The resonant post punk bass intro of “Break A” puts me straight into a good mood and the clear guitar slashes strike through at just the right tempo. Jessica Higgins‘ vocals when scattered across the track are intriguing
Constellation The opening track on Light Conductor‘s Sequence One nods to the experiments that Spiritualized undertook on their second album and blasts them into space. It involves the simplest of ingredients, but the effect is quite astounding; a six-note repetitive pattern, three lazy notes on bass and other analogue squelches give the overriding impression of a space station slowly revolving.
Tapete I find it really heartening that Stephen Lawrie is continuing his Telescopes trajectory in such a self-contained manner. This latest album, The Telescopes’ eleventh and the third for Tapete, finds Stephen solely in charge of the band’s direction and after the centre of the Earth feel of As Light Return, with its monolithic slabs and black hole circling, there is a return to more song-based structures
Preceded by the “Chateau” single earlier this month, unconventional musical subversives R.O.C return with their first album in twelve years, Bile And Celestial Beauty, appearing on rocmusic on 29 March. Oleg Rooz has created seven short films to go with the album, and his video for the track “Divorce”, which is released this Friday (15 March) and receives its exclusive premiere below, accompanies an interview with Mr Olivetti.
Tenement George McFall‘s first release under his own name, after stepping out from behind his Clean George IV pseudonym, has quite an intense edge with an arch and literate drive that stands it out from a lot of the synth-based music of the moment.
Rocket Girl I have fond memories of corresponding with head Rocket Girl Vinita back in the 1990s, those heady days of hand-folded seven-inch singles and US imports being posted out from their East London lair for the equivalent cost of a second class stamp in today’s over-inflated mail costs. That the little notes nearly always came from her and would also include suggestions of bands to whom she […]
Enraptured Enraptured Records must be in their twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year now, and although things seem to have gone a little quiet on their front over the last few years, Coldharbourstores are still flying the flag for them and are back after a mere three years with their follow-up to 2016’s Wilderness. With Graham Sutton back behind the desk again
Version Studio Swedish duo A Swarm Of The Sun have been together for a good ten years or so, but this latest album is their first since 2015. Erik Nilsson, guitarist and pianist of the duo, is also chief of Version Studio Records, the group’s label; and vocalist Jakob Berglund arranged the beautifully monochromatic artwork, all snowy forestscapes and misty moods.
Southern Lord After listening to these first two re-issues in a planned series, I can see why Southern Lord would want to be responsible. Thirty years after their initial releases, their legacy lives on in the sound and sweep of various members of the Southern Lord roster both past and present.
Thrill Jockey Elena Setién doesn’t rush into releasing albums. This is her third in six years and her first for Thrill Jockey, who really seem to be expanding their palette at the moment, and so Basque-born but Danish resident Elena brings a kind of remote, subtle beauty to the fold. The songs contained within Another Kind Of Revolution‘ describe her love for everyday life and what nature has […]