Mdou Moctar has, in the last decade or so, ripped through the consciousness of whatever we're calling underground music these days. First with the Music From Saharan Cellphones (very autotune, very drum machines) and later with his full band business occupying the rarely seen 'actually good' slot of contemporary psychedelic music. Difficult to say whether Moctar is psych -- I'd say not -- because I gather he's closer to Tuareg traditions than not, but perhaps psych is a broader church than I think of it as.
Monthly archives: March 2025
23 posts
Some tracks sound like conversations between beings struggling to communicate but drawn together by some greater force. Different textures manifest themselves; his breathing direct through the reed is interrupted by electronic interjections, while the swiftness of a romantic moment is is pummelled by percussive points and the distant movement of comets.
With his 2023 debut, Evensongs, having rightly been hailed for its modern but ageless psych-folk magnetism -- by Mark Radcliffe, Shindig! and the Guardian alike -- expectations are set quite high for this sequel set. Whilst the nine-song Collodion possibly doesn’t quite possess the same out-of-the-blue awe of its old-as-new prequel, this is still a sublime twenty-minute offering in its own right.
Although the Kjetil Mulelid Trio has been recording since 2017, this is their first album with replacement bassist Rune Nergard and continues their jazz-adjacent explorations with a light and adventurous sound that ushers the listener through landscapes familiar yet refreshed.
Boy did Laibach bring the drama … the first third of the show cherry-picking their back catalogue, starting with a mangled noise-fest with lots of slanted perspectives and controlled chaos. A scampering scrapyard of debris and screeching guitar, the drummer coming out from behind his kit to supply an eerie air-raid drone from a spinning air-pipe as the keyboardist’s chords conjured a host of bent up, shattered shapes.