One Little Independent Not only did Poppy Ackroyd have to contend with Covid around the writing of her fourth album, but the birth of her first child also coincided with the process. As you can perhaps imagine, on the strength of that, the album runs through a full range of emotions from thrill and ebullience to concern and introspection. Although the album is solely piano based, using the […]
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Sulatron This is a live set by Electric Moon and Portuguese band Talea Jacta, recorded at a club in Lisbon pre-pandemic on 20 September 2019, when these kind of things were a lot easier to arrange. In that respect it is a document of a freer time when music flowed without boundaries or isolation.
Rose Hill As the album title would suggest, this is a Solstice recording made by God’s Teeth And The Interstellar Tropics at The Old Market Theatre in Brighton in the pre-covid bliss of the winter of 2019. A three-track recording that attempts to untangle your subconscious on a lysergic lance of percussive mis-shapes and vocalised abstracts, with a lovely Angus MacLise sensibility that floats on Karl MV Waugh’s […]
All Saints Laraaji was discovered by Brian Eno in 1979 while he was playing in Washington Square Park. At this point Eno had moved to the US and was in the process of working on his Ambient series of albums and label that had started with Music For Airports. Laraaji’s release would be Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance and was be released in 1980; it is the only […]
Upset The Rhythm If the Frank Sidebottom homage of a cover doesn’t grab you, the explosiveness of Bad Advice Good People‘s contents is certain to freeze-frame the widest of smiles to your face. A raucous six pack akin to Kleenex or Gang Of Four with hard-chiselled words and bloated basslines that hook you in front and centre, prowl your head like an over-active imagination with armfuls of day-glo […]
Zonedog For Under Triple Suns, Jan Gleichmar‘s Disrupt finds itself abandoned far from home, heading through the upper atmosphere, stretching and randomly steering through the sparsely lit sky amidst the rumble and flash of multitudes of unseen objects. The sound of freefalling against the background drone that opens the album contains a sense of helplessness. A voice appears telling us that “you have suffered minor head trauma” and […]
London, 15 November 2021 The sense of anticipation was immense, bathed in a blue haze, monitors staring out of it like Ewok eyes, the stage remaining empty as the words “Dream the name and I will answer to it” breeze in, tantalised in sparse flickerings and occasional birdsong roughed by the distinctive rub of a cement mixer.
Discus Jan Todd‘s third outing as Frostlake finds her appearance as part of The Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere lending a warmer and more open feel to this double-length collection when compared to the icier, more dramatic Ice And Bone from 2019. There is a lightness and an airiness to her voice this time around that brings to mind the first shoots of spring bringing to an end the […]
London 13 November 2021 It feels very strange returning (and especially reviewing) live music again after nearly a two-year absence. Some things have changed, but much was the same as before. The big thing was the crowd reaction; and starved of live music for so long, people seemed hungry to see their favourite bands again. Maybe we won’t take live music for granted and support many of the […]
Greyfade Christopher Otto has clearly read the twentieth century composer’s guide to nicking ideas from the East, and leans heavily on knowledge of just intonation. But this debut release isn’t one of those superficial “exotic” borrowings (when do we get to lay into Terry Riley for that, by the way?) and probably has more to do with the kind of tonal particularly of Horatiu Radulescu than any mid-twentieth […]
Honest House I really miss the heyday of the kind of muscular, sinuous post-rock that was plied by the lies of Shipping News and June Of 44. Thankfully for me, the twin bass guitar-led Delwood have stepped into the frame and their first outing is a real winner. The idea of two bass guitars has me thinking firstly of Rothko and then of Girls Against Boys, but Delwood […]
Bellissima It was only a matter of time until Katharine Blake (Miranda Sex Garden and The Mediæval Bæbes) and Michael J York (Téléplasmiste, The Utopia Strong, Current 93 and Coil) would conjoin a bewitching whole, gather a few musical friends into the equation to produce this haunting debut that gathers the periphery around you in a stretchy equilibrium.
Crammed Discs The latest Aquaserge release is yet another unique addition to their intriguing canon of work. Expanding the band to a nine-piece here, they have drawn inspiration from four contemporary classical composers; but rather than retreading those steps, they have chosen to expand on the original ideas, tailoring them to suit their own sound in its inimitable glory and reflect something modern back to the mid-twentieth century.
Important Imagine, if you will — you are driving through a vast flat featureless landscape. It is snowing so hard you can barely see, spirals of snow and frost whorling on your windshield. The ground undulates, ever so slightly, the rise-and-fall the only hint of motion, of any life at all. The swells come together, faster and faster, higher and higher, until the frost-bitten landscape becomes like a […]
One Little Independent The latest album from Scottish inventor and sound artist Lomond Campbell tips a hat to fellow tape loop enthusiasts William Basinski and Steve Reich, but goes one step further by actually engineering the machinery himself. It involves some complicated device which includes tape loops, a rotating magnetic disc and a couple of eccentric cams that ensure that every second of the soundscapes presented here is […]
Klanggalerie Long-time contributor to and performer with Eyeless In Gaza and wife of Martyn Bates, Elizabeth S has just released her first solo album. Gather Love presents twelve tracks that texturally invite you to ask what it means to be human, sparkles with a withering warmth that stays with you.
Constellation Judging from the artwork of the latest Jerusalem In My Heart album and the fact that Qalaq is explained as feeling of deep worry, the state of play in the Middle East is a constant concern to Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. The renowned soundscaper and producer has managed to use this album as a representation of the tension that prevails in the region, yet also shows the beauty that […]
Mute Phew‘s New Decade strips it all away, orbits the sultry sizzle of fragmented abstracts and of course Hiromi Moritani’s vocal dynamics that magnetically grab-bag. Born in the pandemic, the album’s whispering contours were a result of wishing to not annoy the neighbours too much, an oh-so-quiet verve that’s best suited to and appreciated on headphones.