Although conceptually bonded around memories of the brutalist architecture and municipal communitarianism of the Sunderland Civic Centre, demolished in 2022, Chambers stands up as a low-tech yet otherworldly edifice built from its own sonic materials. Framed primarily through the stretched parameters of a basic analogue synth set-up, with some apparent deployment of his dusted-off drum kit, this ten-track tape / download delivery has some genuinely alluring and arresting moments spread across it.
Daily archives: 12/05/2025
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Manuel Pasquinellli is probably best known as drummer for Sonar, the David Torn-affiliated group, but also plays with Schrödinger's Katze and the AKKU quintet. For his first solo album, Michael has come up with an intriguing idea; to use his heartbeat as a metronome and to perform a live set using the ever-evolving tempo as a starting point for extemporisation.
Gloriously mental psychological thriller in which Nicolas Cage’s frayed masculinity is subjected to a series of Herculean tests by a gang of malevolent larrikins on an Australian beach, when all he wants to do is hang ten in the swell (or whatever surfers do) while reconnecting with his teenage son.
These songs do feel stronger, with the organ ruder and more insistent while Michael's drums are more upfront, pushing harder than on The Love Pseudomorph.
A clinical psychiatrist gets a taste of his own medicine when his treatment of a semi-schizophrenic patient backfires, so that his own grasp on reality grows ever more tenuous, taking us on an arresting, genre-splicing adventure through a version of Hong Kong choking on the fallout of the 2008 financial crash.
...this debut album from pianist Yonglee and his group The Doltang is definitely an unusual beast, connecting dots between jazz, prog and the heavier more awkward end of US underground. Yonglee's capricious piano attack combines with synths, bass drums and guitar to form a unique sound that also harbours improv and experimentation, as well as hidden melodies that hark back to elements of history.
Whilst on paper a collaboration between a successful modern poet (Brian Bilston) and an ensemble co-led by indie-pop veterans (Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s The Catenary Wires) might suggest a slightly unwieldy and ephemeral vanity side-project, in aural reality Sounds Made By Humans proves to be a deeply entertaining and durable product from the creative conjoining of like-minded souls.
Although the vocals erupt with an in-the-bag fury, the scuzzy guitars rife with distortion and dismay still exert a punky groove that sees the feet tapping. The thundering drums and heavy bass riffs try to protect the guitars as they are set alight, the riffs simple yet satisfying. They aren't afraid to allow a little air into the proceedings either and in places the vocals sound as if they were recorded in the rafters, which adds to a slight sense of discombobulation.