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.
Yearly archives: 2023
151 posts
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.
Midori's session for Philippe Petit's Modulisme series allowed her to showcase the impact that modular synthesis has had on her electronic sound, and she outlines the ways in which her music has evolved as a result.
A cracking bit of headphone ambience this from Cindytalk – a very austere rhythm-less space, Subterminal's minimally milled contours full of tiny expressive shifts, subtle changes of bleak brilliance that daisy chain this album's brooding foursome.
Conform To Deform is a must-have history for those of us who bought the records and saw those bands live at the time; but hopefully it will also inspire others to check out the label’s incredible back catalogue, even if sadly many items are now out of print. There will never be another label like Some Bizzare and thankfully Wesley Doyle has finally told its story.
The butterflying flute work here is beautiful, sonics a new serene, resplendent in soft clanking glass and bell-like dings, its simmering satellites dimensionally expanding...
O SingAtMe Seaming To likes to collaborate and lend her unique and otherworldly voice to various projects, including Graham Massey‘s Toolshed and Paddy Steer‘s Homelife from back in the 2000s. Coming up to recent times, Dust Gatherers is her second solo album and follows on ten years from the first. Clearly, this has been a question of waiting for stars to align and the gathering of sympathetic friends […]
Mute Like Phew‘s first album, this collaborative jewel was recorded in Conny Plank‘s legendary studio in Cologne. For the occasion, Chrislo Haas of Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft fame gathered a few like minds to soundscape the surrounds. Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten) on guitar, Thomas Stern (Crime And The City Solution) on bass and Can‘s drummer Jaki Liebezeit, who was no stranger to collaborating with Phew, having worked on her solo […]
Upset The Rhythm This is frantic, fibrous, a Kat Bjelland-like vocal blender. All hot potato vowel action, roller-coasting a gnarly pickle of a backing. A Meredith Monk cave painting of multi-erupting misrule, spitting feathers and glutinous jelly tangling up and clawing on old school Arto Lindsay-like fret lunacy and buck-a-roo grunts. The bush fire insanity of those guitars fills me with so much joy — that thrown- stapling […]
Discus Family Band‘s latest (and self-titled) release, their third since forming in 2015, finds them further exploring their interactions as a quartet and how personal ideas form, and then coalesce when presented to a democracy fully at ease with one another and anxious to express the diversity that jazz welcomes currently. Over the seven pieces presented here, the players take the basic idea delivered by one member and […]