...here we have a compilation of artists that maybe seen on the periphery in some cases, but were equally as important to shaping the sounds of the era, and some even having a greater influence on the German underground music that followed than the bigger bands.
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The arresting hugeness of a projected bird's eye breaks the darkness of the stage as Wardruna’s harmonising voices rise to a regularised patter, punctured by a defiant shell-like crunch. A sound that grows on a waltzing mirage becoming equally huge as the silhouetted band is suddenly thrown into illuminated focus.
So what business do they have deploying experimental music under the radar? Well, it’s all in the name: NMIXX — (Pick) NMIXX, if you will? This approach in their first single, “O,O”, wasn’t immediately embraced by audiences and critics. Multiple shifting styles and frequent unexpected jump-cut changes weren’t easily digested, even by an audience that has come to expect split-second editing in both music and videos.
...singer Owen Williams is doing quite well with the latest Tubs album, but where that tends to take as its starting point the classic British indie sound of yore, to my mind, Ex-Vöid looks more across the pond, aligning itself with the kind of flurrying '90s indie purveyed by the likes of Velocity Girl and Tsunami, but containing the essential melancholy that comes with a British perspective.
Whilst such output has fleetingly tipped the hat to his formative enterprise along the way and Galaxie 500 songs have regularly reappeared in recent solo ensemble live shows, it’s taken until now for a fuller recorded reconnection with the most atmospheric elements of the hallowed group’s aural palette.
The production is dub-heavy and indolent and reverberates around us while a big, lazy heartbeat tries to smother the textured backdrop which is alive with echoing, half-hidden sounds. It can move at pace, lively yet elegant, with chiming guitars that are a little reminiscent of Michael Brook, but their jazz influences do peep through and they come on like a cavernous cousin of the Portico Quartet.
the fact that Hersh’s recent recordings have confirmed a renewed creativity means fresh rewards for those of us who have kept the faith over the years. Arguably providing the biggest late-reblooming flourish – following on from 2022’s rowdy yet textured Black Pearl with 50 Foot Wave and 2023’s sonically diverse Clear Pond Road solo outing – is this new nine-track set from Hersh’s mothership enterprise, Throwing Muses.
They like their guitars heavy and their riffs to circle as cymbals crash, but there is a dreaminess to their distance and there is a feeling, particularly on opening track "One Thousand Years", that they are making their way slowly up a mountain, the guitar gradually winding tighter, preparing us for an incredible view.
Having totally missed their recent Bristol outing, I’m glad Upset The Rhythm are now offering a tantalising taste of Earth Ball in action. A duo of live cuts, each gig filling a whole side each.
...there are ten players including Martin to bring this eclectic selection to life and sees the assembled throng veering through jazz, prog, psych and funk with what can only be described as aplomb. In fact, there is little opportunity for respite over this fifty-five-minute blast and each song seems to consist of numerous parts; some segues sympathetic while others are unexpected.
DO 555 PS is his first solo outing, utilising ideas formulated with his Pelican System album, but pushing them further and attempting to create a suite of songs for an imagined world from saxes, samples and electronics, and what an impressive feat it is. Over ten tracks, real and imagined sounds roil and reverberate, generating an atmosphere that picks at the edges of reality, uncovering a universe hidden in the shadows; one for which we need to take a deep breath before entering.
Upset The Rhythm It has been seven years since the last Rattle album and it feels as though in the down time Theresa Wrigley and Katharine Eira Brown have chosen to strip their drum and vocal sound down to the absolute bare bones, as if Sequence was too busy. They have stuck with the formula of two tracks per LP side but, with one being substantially longer then […]
Although Swiss melodic post-indie rock trio Ventura has been a unit for the best part of twenty years, this is only their fifth album but what a great discovery for these ears. Using the power of the guitar/bass/drums line-up, they cue up ten strong yet diverse tracks on Superheld that run from the slow strength of "Bubbles" to the rhythmically awkward "Advertiser", passing through all manner of other stylings to keep the listener constantly engaged.
His playing on Sidewalks In Motion bears a fair amount of resemblance -- a drummer that's worth listening to. Lots of big dynamics in paradiddles, ever-present and holding things down, but rarely bandstanding. A lot of skittering goes on, but never into the realm of free improv.
The end result is Convergence & Variations, a lovely melding of the recognised and the unexpected; a meeting of two like minds who gently push one another in directions that they may not have chosen to head separately, using pieces by the likes of Bach, Schubert and Satie as jumping-off points for their collective imagination.
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.
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.