As we near the end of Glaciers, so the pieces grow sparser, a lugubrious atmosphere of impending doom is upset by the most incredible vibe shimmer and the two instruments as they circle one another collapse into one another’s arms, spent for now and drifting away, becoming more and more distant, leaving the listener with echoes of what came before
Album review
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Precious Recordings pushes things even further with a back-to-back payload of early-summer releases. Featuring newbies and returnees delivering wares with a variety of provenances, here follows a breakdown of what the label now has vying for our shelf space.
The list of instruments on guitarist Geir Sundstol's sixth album for Hubro is as long as both my arms. This inventive selection of widescreen soundscapes utilises all manner of guitar-adjacent instruments and straddles an interesting space between Ry Cooder-esque introspection, Ennio Morricone-like sweeps and Eastern tonal influence.
The title is pretty hilarious and the album artwork of emojis disintegrating into a murky computer soup had me wondering what it would be like if each symbol that people use had a soundtrack. Would it be anything like this or the complete opposite? There is only one way to find out; so allow the tentacles of the Ancient Psychic Triple Hyper Octopus to slowly reel you in.
For those who have been following her lateral art-pop manoeuvrings as far back as 2009’s tentative Mind Raft EP, the freshly-dispensed Ready For Heaven should feel like a logical and satisfying refinement of the pathways that started taking proper shape on 2015’s The Expanding Flower Planet solo debut album and which have evolved over subsequent releases, whilst still being packed with invigoratingly fresh ingenuity.
Kranky The title of this meditative collaboration between guitarist Michael Grigoni and Mark Nelson trading as Pan American feels like a comment on the current state of the world order. Michael’s other role as assistant professor of religion gives an indication of the reflective nature of the pieces on offer here. Merging Mark’s guitar, mandolin and synths with Michael’s pedal steel, lap steel and dobro, they strike out […]
If you like hazy guitar improv, this is solid. Four lengthy crafted excursions dusted in a ghosting of late ’60s psychedelia and geologically pinned to a Neolithic underground burial complex in Malta.
...his trust in and familiarity with the players comes across well in the live aspects of the recording process. It is that voice which you are buying into though; a stentorian baritone that also has warmth and vulnerability. Allied to the often reserved but flexible backing and with the addition of Ruth's sweet vocal counterpoint, this latest album sheds new light and shows a new way forward.
I’m Being Good are back with their somethingth album, and what a number something is. Difficult to describe IBG without reference to a bunch of ’90s bands, but for my money they’ve always had a wit and laconic element that’s missing from your Polvos and Truman’s Waters.
Each of the pieces here comes from a different perspective, using similar ingredients to create a very different feel, as if each track was a mini-soundtrack in its own right with the common thread being AVAWAVES’ collective imagination.
...a return-within-a-return from visual artist and onetime pastoral-psych legend Mark Fry. Having previously brought 2011’s baroque-tinged I Lived In The Trees (with backing assistance from The A. Lords) and 2014’s soothingly lush South Wind, Clear Sky to the 2L catalogue, after a decade or so’s gap arrives the meta-anointed Not On The Radar.
Angle Shades is the new moniker for the Richard Jones Trio whose previous album, itself entitled Angle Shades, was a joyful take on the jazz piano trio format. A couple of years has passed and the trio of Richard on piano, Joshua Cavanagh-Brierly on bass and Johnny Hunter on drums has re-entered the studio to see what further magic can be summoned.
In scope and ambition, Alamut is a remarkable piece of work, performed live at a former Crusader castle in Ljubljana in 2022. Involving the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, the Human-Voice Ensemble vocal group from Tehran, the Gallina Women’s Choir and AccordiOna, the canvas full and sonicly rich, expertly conducted by Iranian-born Navid Goharib and of course all superbly subverted by Laibach.
Although conceptually bonded around memories of the brutalist architecture and municipal communitarianism of the Sunderland Civic Centre, demolished in 2022, Chambers stands up as a low-tech yet otherworldly edifice built from its own sonic materials. Framed primarily through the stretched parameters of a basic analogue synth set-up, with some apparent deployment of his dusted-off drum kit, this ten-track tape / download delivery has some genuinely alluring and arresting moments spread across it.
Manuel Pasquinellli is probably best known as drummer for Sonar, the David Torn-affiliated group, but also plays with Schrödinger's Katze and the AKKU quintet. For his first solo album, Michael has come up with an intriguing idea; to use his heartbeat as a metronome and to perform a live set using the ever-evolving tempo as a starting point for extemporisation.
These songs do feel stronger, with the organ ruder and more insistent while Michael's drums are more upfront, pushing harder than on The Love Pseudomorph.
...this debut album from pianist Yonglee and his group The Doltang is definitely an unusual beast, connecting dots between jazz, prog and the heavier more awkward end of US underground. Yonglee's capricious piano attack combines with synths, bass drums and guitar to form a unique sound that also harbours improv and experimentation, as well as hidden melodies that hark back to elements of history.
Whilst on paper a collaboration between a successful modern poet (Brian Bilston) and an ensemble co-led by indie-pop veterans (Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s The Catenary Wires) might suggest a slightly unwieldy and ephemeral vanity side-project, in aural reality Sounds Made By Humans proves to be a deeply entertaining and durable product from the creative conjoining of like-minded souls.