Although you could locate R.Dyer’s musical world in the eerie folktronica of their contemporaries, I'm most reminded of Pram, post-rock’s contrary Brummie blatter-fiends. The kitchen-sink orchestrations, the macro-micro focus, the sense of a universe both galactic and mundane, not to mention the theremins, clarinets, microtonal slippage, and musical saws.
Monthly archives: March 2023
16 posts
The synth and organ sounds vary greatly across the tracks and at some points sound like children's cartoon effects, while in other there is an almost sepulchral grandeur. The drums tend to shimmer in the background, gently propelling but never overstepping and the first side is over in no time; four tracks in ten minutes or so.
Attenuation Circuit has been releasing their limited-run experimental releases for over twenty years with no sign of running out of enthusiasm or willing contributors to broaden our aural palates. Two recent releases go a long way to showing how diverse the releases can be.
A dreamy concoction penned in acoustic and electric guitar with some dazzling piano touchpoints, Mars Is A Ten's tracks seem to beam with an off-the-cuff straight to tape immediacy / intimacy that nestles in there; remains with you.
Joined by various guests to add colour and character to the mysterious surrealism of the story, Aksak Maboul weave a genre-defying web around the listener, guided onward only by Veronique's recounting, the thread that draws the unwitting ever deeper.
The album features two mammoth slabs of psychedelic rock, with the tracks by each band clocking in at over twenty minutes each.
For the inaugural release on Clonmell Jazz Social, they have called upon guitarist Harry Christelis to convene a quartet of upcoming players that will do justice to a series of elegant drifting creations that hover somewhere around the border between jazz and minimalism, ever-moving but also always gently steering the listener towards soft, unexpected landscapes.
All their separate concerns coming together to create something new, each throwing fragments in the pot, searching for cohesion. Finding that all-important communal bite, Stratagems picks up from their last collaboration Facilitators, sees this enthusiasm bearing fresh fruit.
However, we knew that the music was inside his soul; he wouldn’t remain idle for long and would soon be strapping on the guitars and firing up the synthesisers to create new music and take us on further trips out there beyond infinity.
Steve's voice gives an unusual perspective, a fine enunciation always surpassed by the words. You feel him tasting them, rolling them around like brandy and then carefully allowing them out, each word ideally formed. The players, himself included, swirl a magical, churning mixture, hypnotic dereliction, groaning grey and often uncomfortable, but only because that is what the message demands.
The world definitely needs more warding-off-evil’ songs, I’d say, the balance always seems to be frustrated stacked in the negatives’ favour after all; so I’m cranking the volume up on this one, and letting it do its worst.
The awkwardness is intriguing but is in no way alienating, you just need to listen again to fully understand how it pieces together and the stripped down post-jazz stylings of the album closer are just the icing on the cake, all judicious placing, a distant wail and momentum you can sink into.
Words that ignite on a slow see-sawing sorrow and symphonic scorch, atmospherically crash-landing into the pulsating syncopation of "À Notre Nuit", its keytoned circles and percussive stutter filling up the canvas in saffron-soaked strokes and feathering accents.
They weren't quite part of that adult indie (ish) stuff that proliferated in Glasgow at the time - Delgadoes, Arab Strap, Mogwai. Probably by dint of being very fanzine, not too srs. They got compared to Pavement or Sonic Youth a lot and never really sounded like either. Probably closer to Swell Maps.
Dwelling upon what humanity has done to this planet, Echoesfromtheholocene’s narrative is a reflective one, disillusioned with the incessant greed that continues to mess up all our futures.
There is structureless flickering with the voice as old and arid as forgotten wheat, shimmering in a heat haze, the vibrato hinting at something while the guitars howl like guiding beasts desperation ever present.