Editions Mego An exquisite corpse figuring the familiar Edvard Graham Lewis and Thighpaulsandra, UUUU make for a interesting fusion. Matthew Simms, guitarist and singer for the lo-fi curiosity It Hugs Back and drummer Valentina Magaletti, who once played with Bat For Lashes, but is best known for her dapplings with prepared percussion in Tomaga are the unknowns here
Michael Rodham-Heaps
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Tak:til Years ahead of its 1981 timestamp, Jon Hassell‘s Dream Theory in Malaya was inspired by Kilton Stewart essay about the Dream Tribe of Malaya (now Malaysia) called the Senoi – a people whose equilibrium was based on dreamtime.
Dais Intended as a psychedelic thoroughfare that cures you of time, if only for its duration, this was one of Coil‘s many crowning glories for me. Along with the Spring Equinox EP “Moon’s Milk”, it opened the floodgates towards a richness that is still sorely missed, even all these years later.
Play Loud! After last year’s Gestrüpp, this intriguing artist is back with a compilation of teasing flavours. Trampelpfadnomainroad is a collection especially compiled to synchronise with her seventy-fifth birthday and an exhibition of her life’s work at Städtische Galerie Traunstein in September 2017.
LCR After the excellent atmospherics of Medusa’s Bed, Ms Lunch returns, this time on the other side of the mixing desk for her second excursion with violinist and noise-maker Mia Zabelka. The mistress of the strands, Lydia’s pulling this baby round as producer and joint composer
More Than Human Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe conjures some extraordinary shapes here, a tangle of strange and mystical hieroglyphics that tingle, zone you elsewhere. Nothing lingers too long, everything remains elusive, dissipated on fractured suggestion, the timbre itch of random voltages painting strange immersive mirages inside your skull.
London 12 August 2017 Téléplasmiste appeared through the crowd, all leper bells and bagpipes, before standing behind their modular bookcases like spiritual telephonists bending a self-help guru’s words into slurring stutters
Klangbad Refreshing to have so many fluid points at play, this could have easily drifted in a altogether singular direction – gone all-out sinister rolling those doomic dice – but instead HJ Irmler and Carl Friedrich Oesterhelt tease us with a classical anarchism that isn’t affixed or preconceived.
Bureau B They may have slipped out of the Neue Deutsche Welle limelight sometime ago, but this surprise newbie from Der Plan hits back with that familiar quirkiness that gave us “Du Bist Es Nicht”, “Gummitwist” and the sublime “Space Bob”.
Dais / Sacred Bones Allegory And Self Ahhh, “Godstar” was a surprise back in the day, a light and airy departure from the Crowley curves and noisy exorcisms that had nailed the first two Psychic TV albums. Further Throbbing Gristle fan head-scratching ensued, more so when it hauled the operation completely overground
Trinity Community Arts, Bristol 8 July 2017 On a roasting Saturday, a beautiful day in July, the wonderful Trinity Arts community centre hosted the juggernaut that was the fourth Bristol Psych Fest. Squeezing two dozen bands into one day on two stages was quite a feat to attempt, but seemed to go incredibly smoothly.
Aphelion Editions Straight from the cultural antenna of Aphelion Editions comes this intimate sonic experience, tonally chased in whirlpooling vibrato.
Northern Spy Seeing Larkin Grimm at the (now demolished) Seymour’s Family Club in Bristol back in 2006(?) was a real pleasure, that incredible voice of hers just held its own, her musicianship spurring and stirring her wordy glow-forms.
The Gatherer Consouling Sounds A-Sun Amissa‘s The Gatherer weaves a rich cadaver of intrigue. A sombre dream horned by a raspy clarinet yarn and a trickle of hypothermic piano. A poetically pinned bleed with a lysergic slur of percussion and convulsive coils of sax, burning bright in sulphurous melodics to be cut back to a gorgeous microcosm.
Bureau B Magnetband: Experimenteller Elektronik-Underground DDR 1984-1989 Like Play Loud!‘s excellent Ende Vom Lied, this collection from those bastions of Germanic goodness Bureau B gives you another whistle-stop tour of the DDR’s vibrant underground tape culture. Magnetband is a fourteen-track compilation from the mid- to late Eighties salvaged from a load of brave documenters
Play Loud! Floating di Morel‘s Goal Less Play LP is a sparse, spittle-mouthed wonder nuzzling into some glinting sparks of acoustika. Bursts of sonic weirdness lurk between the main feasts – brief sketches that clear the palette for the more song-oriented goods
Bristol 26 May 2017 The stage may have dwarfed her stature, but Little Annie‘s cabaret queen antics were larger than life, completely over-spilling the place. Cloaked in Eastern silk, her waist a blaze of African bracelets, Annie’s hoarse vocal was something to be treasured – both warm and vibrant, bursting with wit
Thoofa If this was a knitting pattern it would be full of lopsided colour, tangled dimensions and probably more armholes than really necessary. This second helping from Prescott has been well worth the wait. The musicianship is blinding, each track built up on little stabbing motifs playing footsie with Commodore computer tape loadings