London 30 January 2015 The day didn’t start well. A blocked drain, forgetting the keys to work and having to go back and fetch them and then a slip on rainy plastic, a mid-air semi-cartwheel (“semi-cartwheeled headfirst in the rain,” as Edward Ka-Spel would say) into the side of a […]
Monthly archives: January 2015
21 posts
Suezan Studio The last thing I was expecting when listening to these recently-unearthed rarities was Gospel. But that’s what hits your ears first, hallelujahs, hand claps and all, roasted on some mad Blackpool-type organ and acoustic hints of blue grassy glinting holy — a bedazzle for the senses indeed. Thomas […]
Ici d’ailleurs/Mind Travels Important Aidan Baker has made an art of being really, really boring. Having released several thousand albums to date – with almost all of them revolving around a guitar and a couple of pedals – you’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘boring’ was in some way a […]
Staubgold Collected from two years’ worth of home two-track tape recordings made between 1982-1983 by Liquid Liquid‘s percussionist, Reel To Real gathers together Dennis Young‘s sketches of sometimes engagingly naïve acoustic songs alongside frenetic percussion workouts and occasional synth frenzies which prefigure the arrival of drum and bass in their […]
Beta-lactam Ring This has got to be Edward Ka-Spel‘s most introspective album to date; some would say business as usual, another party political broadcast from the inside of Edward’s head. Words held in tea-stained sepia and dust-choked webs, hints of jaded melody creeping out of the inky gloom, like threadbare playthings […]
The Helen Scarsdale Agency Ever needed to block out the world beyond the ears with the application of sound, to soak and bleach away the intrusive noises of other human beings, their transport, the built environment, the elements themselves? Try Scarlet then, up loud and/or on headphones, and let Jim […]
The Helen Scarsdale Agency So Long is an often subtle work of suggestively imaginative electronics which offers to transport the listener to places where they are equally welcome to apply their own meaning as to take those proposed by both the music and its naming. Drifting along without a seeming […]
London-based duo Kontakte‘s 2014 release These Machines brought a blissfully blistering end to their silence of two years between albums. Here, Ian Griffiths and Stuart Low give a detailed breakdown of how and why each of the album’s tracks came into being. * “Shut Your Eyes And You’ll Burst Into […]
King of Spades It seems like it’s been an æon since the last Chrome album. But with Feel It Like A Scientist, Helios Creed and band returns with some of his wildest proto-punk, space rock craziness in years. “Nephilims (Help Me)” jumps straight in there with a and is a […]
Staubgold Not so much glitching as rippling on a bed of deftly, deliberately placed samples organised by Timo Reuber and Staubgold label head Markus Detmer, Transit is also blessed with the production skills of Joseph Suchy, ensuring that everything unfolds with a suitably spacious, widescreen feel. A constant sense of […]
Sulatron A beautiful-looking release from Sulatron Records, this cosmic slab has three massive planet-sized tracks on it. The album is a collaboration between Electric Moon members Sula Bassana and Komet Lulu and Zone Six members Modulfix and Rainer Neef. These improvisations from Krautzone are pure kosmische soundtracks to outer space travelling. […]
Consouling Sounds Two tracks; fifteen minutes of fearsome post-hardcore grunt, groan, riff and thrash from Eleanora splashes out of the speakers as if the very devil was grinding out the best tunes behind them, goading the band into producing yet more screamed crescendos. Tight as the screws which surely must […]
Dekorder Two companion LPs from Janek Schaefer find this most mercurial of composers expanding upon some of his more exploratory audio ideas across four sides of vinyl (or nine tracks in digital form). “White Lights of Divine Darkness” is a suitably spiritual opener to Unfolding Luxury Beyond the City of […]
Important Recorded live with no rehearsal, as is Damo Suzuki‘s way — he makes a habit of not meeting or playing with the group who will act as his ‘sound carriers’ before the night of the gig — Start From Zero does just that. Mugstar demonstrate their proficiency as space […]
three:four Helena Espvall (of Espers) and David Maranha of Osso Exótico‘s first joint album finds the duo pushing and prodding at the boundaries of what their amplification of cello, violin and electric organ can achieve in the field of drone music. It hardly needs to be emphasised that as much […]
Dais Towards the end of his long and picaresque life, Billy Burroughs had become such an in-demand photographic accessory for the rock star du jour that the astounding body of work that had made him so notable in the first place was starting to slip dangerously into the shadow of […]
Substantia Innominata Lovingly presented as two clear 10” vinyl records wrapped up in Mars Wellink‘s artwork which graces the gatefold sleeve in suitably transcendantly minimal style, Amid Zero Echo swells up and into four sides of the most immensely practised drones imaginable. On this occasion, Thomas Dimuzio uses ultimately unrecognisable […]
Zoharum Originally appearing in 2006 as a limited CDR, Vintermusik finds Machinefabriek‘s alter ego Rutger Zuydervelt collaborating at a distance with Dag Rosenqvist (sometimes AKA Jasper TX) over seven tracks (plus bonus “Feberdröm / Koortsdroom”, which appeared on a 3” CDR in the same era). As the title indicates, this […]
Splendour When I first saw the track titles for this album I was instantly reminded of Galactic Supermarket by The Cosmic Jokers. Spinning the CD I then found that that wasn’t too far off the mark, for this Finnish quartet has more than a touch of the Krautrock about them. […]
El Paraiso Jakob Skøtt‘s vision is a lively one, high on momentum, low on predictability, careering off on scatter-cake rolls, real percussive wakes that glint aplenty between bevy(ed) electronics and whir-rooting diverts. Melodies that knot up, scramble with harmonies that bounce around in a gigantic pinball machine full of shifting […]