Niafunken Mirco Ballabene has studied double bass to the highest level and has used that grounding on his latest album to probe the links between the academic music of the twentieth century and more improvisational techniques. This melding of the two is what makes Right To Party tick and also what makes it such an intriguing listen.
Yearly archives: 2021
167 posts
(self-released) That guttural bleakness punctuated by a lone-slap of reverbed timpani is impressive — a real sit up and listen asthetic tied to a wine-glass hum and a circle of Galás gulls that drag you into a ritualised scrape of brutalist electronics and scatter-cushioned skin. Lay In The Salt Of The Soil‘s opener “Yet I Am” fills me with same the primal shivers I felt when I first […]
Label Fandango Modern Hinterland trade in the kind of anthemic nineties-influenced indie pop-rock that I thought had gone out of fashion. The sort that bands like Morning Runner and Longwave used to ply, and I am pleased that people out there still feel there is mileage in it. Chris Hornsby possesses a characterful voice that sits well with the gentle energy of the band.
KrysaliSound The latest release on KrysaliSound finds two Italian artists, Pier Giorgio Storti and Nicola Fornasari, joining forces as That Which Is Not to produce The Basic Sharpness Of Emotions, a series of contemplative soundscapes on captured through the lonely environs of a distant forest. It has a rarefied feel that puts us way outside human contact, and the slow sway of cello and clarinet join forces with […]
Music For Nations Despite being fronted by ex-Gorgoroth drummer Einar Selvik and having in the past featured Gaahl on vocals, Wardruna are very much not a metal band. Oh sure, metalheads love them, and they did a bunch of stuff with Enslaved, but they are not a metal band. Because they don’t play metal. But… hold on and hear me out… entirely?
The interest that Brave Words generated, even here on the other side of the world, found them courted by bigger labels and for their second, the recently reissued Submarine Bells, they found themselves on London derivative, Slash.
Phantom Limb / Dekorder / and forty-two others worldwide Senyawa apparently move in circles that include your Stephen O’Malleys and your Damo Suzukis and your Oren Ambarchis. But let’s not hold that against them. They’re an Indonesian duo that use… well, it’s not clear what of these sounds is orthodoxly “instrument” and what’s sound / processed noise / loops. Synths, junk percussion and vocals seem to be the […]
Courier On another of Courier‘s delightful cassette releases, we find Cousin Sharky trading in “sub-dimensional bass street electronics”. Although this goes part way to describing the sound contained therin, there is something at times distant and ancient about some of the wide variety of moods and textures on offer on Re-Evaluation Of The Macro-Cellular Communication System.
Zoharum And so, Phurpa are back. Like Russian Cenobites stepping slowly from the shadows and wreathed in a thick fug of juniper smoke, they are here once more to bathe us in their power and resonate our chakras in sympathy with the universal vibration. For those not already familiar with Phurpa’s low-end majesty, they are a “roving monastic choir” from Moscow, led by the enigmatic Alexey Tegin and […]
Off World, the studio project of Sandro Perri and Lorenz Peter (Corpusse, Processor) has so far released Volumes 1 and 2 of three planned LPs for Constellation, “rich in deconstructed melody, aleatory composition techniques, and interplay between acoustic and synthetic-electronic instrumentation”. Sandro says of their new video, premiered here today, in the label’s Corona Borealis series
Discus Serial collaborators Tony Oxley and Cecil Taylor had this 2002 show recorded, and Discus have released it as a showcase for the kind of joyful power of which the duo was capable of. That it is the overriding sensation that comes from Being Astral And All Registers: joy; at times an utterly maniacal joy but joy nevertheless.
Hummus Swiss fourpiece Convulsif certainly understand the power of tension. On Extinct, their third album, the opener “Buried Between One” had me checking the CD player to make sure it was s till working, such was the space between the resonant bass notes. When you leave it to play and you are being lulled, all of a sudden the bass clarinet kicks in like a swarm in your […]
Disciples The beginnings of a thing are rarely seen, beyond its creator and co-conspirators, an initial spark so easily buried in the bushfire it nourishes; so it’s something of a privilege to soak up the plenitude of ideas that would give His Name Is Alive their distinctive play of light and shade. These recent archival finds have certainly been an eye-opener to the creative force that underpins the […]
Francisco Meirino (also known as Phroq up to 2009 when creating harsh noise). Using instrumentation including modular synths, reel-to-reel tape recorders and various home-made electronics, he has collaborated with artists such as Leif Elggren, Michael Gendreau and Gerritt Wittmer and also writes for contemporary music ensembles and dance with releases on labels such as The Helen Scarsdale Agency, (who have just released his A New Instability LP) Flag Days […]
Buried Treasure Named after a sunken granite reef in the Celtic sea, Haig Fras takes this remote place as a source of inspiration, to sonically spill in a subterfuge of folding texture and swifting aquatics bleached in a Derek Jarman-esque gleam. Part Urthona, part Téléplasmiste, Neil Mortimer and Mark Pilkington seamlessly blend a perfect whole here, giving a salty glimpse of things to come (I do believe).
Trace Eternally keeping his unique flame alive and forever pushing the sound somewhere fresh, Rothko‘s Mark Beazley is an irregular collaborator, but always uses the opportunity to discover something unexpected. This is his first since 2016’s full length A Young Fist Curled Round A Cinder For A Wager, and here the harsh real life tales of Johny Brown are replaced by the more heartbroken vocal sound of Second Hand […]
Dais I’m not going to use the C word, because it’s been a long time since they ceased to be and we all have to stop thinking in those tired patterns, even me, who can’t. Agalma is a minor triumph all of it’s own, finding pathways through music that spins off and around what could broadly be called New Age and finds its own corners. This time around, […]
Courier Sound Courier Sound main-man Stuart Bowditch has chosen to wade into the “how far can we push twenty-three tracks in twenty-three minutes?” debate with his own retort to Alien and Eumig. Trading as USRNM, Stuart’s twenty-three minutes are wildly diverse and also stray furthest from the format of twenty-three one minute pieces.