Courier Sound After my recent question of “where else would you find such a thing?” for Alien‘s recent 23 tracks in 23 minutes release for the wonderful Courier Sound label, head honcho Stuart Bowditch has decided to ask fellow traveller and long-form electronic artiste Eumig to attempt a similar undertaking. As somebody who is more attuned to stretching pieces out to see where they will eventually take him, […]
Yearly archives: 2020
198 posts
Mute Despite impressions of the “are they still going?” sort, Erasure records are always worth a bash. Arguably, unlike a lot of their synthpop contemporaries in the ’80s, they’ve consistently respected the format. A bunch of songs, not too long, no faffing about with excessively long instrumentals. Pop discipline, that’s the order of the day.
Ndeya To consider Jon Hassell’s career to date is like the Pentimento of the title; a layering of ideas that slowly emerges to create something different to the earlier form it started from. Structurally, his work is not too dissimilar to that of painting, so each new listen reveals something fresh about the performance, much in the same way that new essences can be discovered when you study […]
Discus The de tian story is an interesting one; back in late 70’s Sheffield, Paul Shaft left new wavers 2.3, who released a record on Fast, to pursue something less structured and more adventurous. Along the way, he came into contact with Martin Archer and between them they pushed the band in a decidedly free direction, playing gigs and pushing boundaries until finally morphing into Bass Tone Trap.
Relapse It’s been five years since Zombi’s last album (Shape Shift) and sixteen years since their debut album Cosmos, so any new release by the band is always an exciting thing. The two members have hardly been idle in the last five years; Steve Moore has released several soundtrack albums and a smattering of 12” EPs, while AE Paterra has had a smattering of releases using his Majeure […]
A Turntable Friend 2017’s Untied Kingdom was the first full length Wolfhounds release in twenty-seven years and its lucid mix of musical vitality and social commentary was refreshing, on point and far more than we may realistically have expected. Three years later comes another album and once again, the intervening years have only gone on to hone their musical prowess, lyrical divergence and vocal abilities.
Prescription The first volume of Coil‘s unreleased Astral Disaster sessions was a revelation, chocked with new perspectives, and even introduced us to some fascinating freshness straight from the cutting room floor.
Ndeya I first became aware of Jon Hassell’s music in the early 1980s because of his collaboration with Brian Eno on the Fourth World Volume 1: Possible Musics album. Then of course a little later he worked with David Sylvian on his rather wonderful Brilliant Trees album of 1983. He was one of the few EG label artists at the time that truly straddled the divide between jazz […]
Bureau B You know that you are in for a mysterious journey when the artist’s name Baal and Mortimer turns out to be a pseudonym for one Alexandra Grubler. Her ability to fuse sparse electronics with disembodied but somehow compelling vocals is really rather impressive, and for each of the thirteen vignettes compiled here, the mood changes subtly, often hesitant, the sounds hiding in shadows, stretching and pulling […]
House Of Mythology As their debut’s successor, Téléplasmiste‘s third album To Kiss Earth Goodbye tones down the spacey dronescaping, that Time Machines-like purr, of the previous LP in favour of a more transitional tingle where dancing structures free up the space, openly invite an otherness to come and play.
Editions Mego The panoply writ “disruption” was cursed paratactically; or better, pastiche’s ante-noumen should imperatively be considered hypotactically. That is, without hesitation or compunction — res ipsa loquitur — but also mured qua violence (a tendril disavowed ‘twixt Richard of St Victor / Libidinal Economy).
10 To 1 Australian expat Mark Kluzek‘s The Doomed Bird of Providence has been producing thoughtful, melancholy travelogues for the weary of heart for the best part of ten years. These often focus on colonial times in his native Oz, but on Rumbling Clouds of War Hover Over Us, the journey described is even more personal to Mark and much closer to home for us.
Infrared Metalheadz veteran J Majik follows up 2019’s well received Full Circle with a three-disc album, Always Be, which continues his melding of old school drum’n’bass with a certain experimental scattering of sounds across the banging beats, making it a little more than just a raucous dancefloor filler.
Bureau B The opener “Electric Garden” on Bureau B‘s re-release of Conrad Schnitzler‘s 1978 album Con sets up a wonky forest of purr-cussive sirens that mercurially glisten, shapes that gently ricochet the headphones in buttery artificiality, form-filled but formless, bending that Karlheinz Stockhausen concrete into something less stoic and more playful.
Tapete Symbiosis is Nathalie Bruno‘s first solo album-length outing as Drift.. After membership of Leave The Planet and Phosphor, and her Black Devotion and Genderland EPs, Nathalie decided to lock herself away and search within to complete a collection of tracks that would hold together as an album. it is fair to say that on the strength of Symbiosis, she has succeeded in that plan.
Bureau B A splinter from the original Faust family, Gunther Wüsthoff presents a selection of his solo work as Total Digital via Bureau B. The title is one which the first three tracks encompass superbly in a triptych of machined doodles, pre-fixed by “TransNeptun”, a series far removed from planet Faust as it is humanly possible.
Courier Sound The latest release from The Spermaceti Organ, on a lovely cassette from Courier Sound, is a crazy, lurid yellow in an orange outer case; a vibrant and vivid release that is somehow the opposite of the distant light-smeared visions evoked by the sounds.
André Stordeur was a pioneer of modular synth music and the leading exponent of the form in his native Belgium; sadly, he passed away in April 2020 before being able to complete a session or be interviewed for Philippe Petit‘s Modulisme. A session was however constructed from historic recordings, and the interview (which has already appeared on Modulisme) reproduced below dates from 2018, conducted by Chris Ferreira.