Discus Another month and another Martin Archer collaboration. You have the feeling that the man never sleeps, adventures in sound flowing through his veins at all moments. The thing is, the quality never seems to dip even when the variety is so great. Here, he reconvenes with old friend John Jasnoch on bass guitar, percussionist Lee Allatson and Sarah Farmer on violin and electronics. The title of Wasp […]
Bellissima Strip away the commercialism and associations with Christianity, and Christmas is actually rather lovely. In colder climates, coloured lights reflect and refract on snow and ice while friends and family come together over a cosy hearth to exchange gifts and good cheer, insulated against the hoary darkness outside. It’s no coincidence that many if not most cultures in the Northern Hemisphere have some form of celebration near […]
Jahtari Denizen of WaqWaq Kingdom, Kiki Hitomi and German clarinetist Volker Hemken have teamed up with Jahtari supremo and erstwhile disrupter Jan Disrupt as Cosmic Threat for a strangely removed journey into the outer limits. As if beamed in from some distant, forgotten outpost, Cosmic Threads merges dub reggae, electronica and gritty atmospherics with a soupcon of spiritual swing that leaves the listener constantly gaping at the imagery, […]
Erototox This is a feathery snake of an album. The quality of drone hovers in there like a forgotten memory that ensnares. The first track’s clustering notes messing with your wiring in a good way, its perfume potently levitating in your skull, ominously glowing like the matt-black gloom of the stately artwork. The up close and personal of the instruments that adorn the cover giving material context to […]
Efpi The fourth album for the agile pigeonhole-dodging quartet Let Spin finds them mixing things up a little, taking ideas of pieces into the studio and working them into a lather over the course of a couple of last year’s late summer days. This way of working, attempting to bring the vivacity of their live show into the studio, has been a great success; plus their idea to […]
Experimental musician, singer and songwriter Siôn Orgon creates electroacoustic music, sound design and production in Cardiff. He has worked with the likes of Thighpaulsandra and is a member of Rocketgoldstar as well as collaborating over the years with groups and artists including Coil, Splintered, William D Drake, Peter Christopherson, Andrew Liles, Damo Suzuki, Faust and many more. Siôn also does sound design for BBC TV, as well as dance […]
SOFA The latest releases from experimental Norwegian label SOFA are very much on the cutting edge of musical discovery, or how our environment or things we take for granted can be manipulated to provide entertainment or a new aural experience. Having recently listened to the new Sarah Davachi album and read the reviews of the new Greg Davis LP, the search for how minimal drone music can affect […]
Bristol 29 November 2022 Stereocilia plied an exquisite soundscape of guitar-generated ambience. A beaming iridescence of infinite frets blooming in circling sand, layered up and waspy, later sipping some sweet subterranean gloom splattered in shivering petroleums and graining howl. The back of the guitar’s neck sending thundery quakes on through, slowly airbrushed away on curving twilights as one track blends into another, cuts back into a cascading corrosion […]
Discus I often think that the purest format for improv is the duo where one of the players is a drummer. There is something about the interplay between two musicians, both questing for fresh knowledge, plus the space provided between the grounding of the percussion and the wind scattered revelations of the instrument.
Lava Thief Clean is a warm acoustic delight, sees known Thought Forms songs stripped back and reconfigured, born anew with fresh titles reflecting this. The slow creeping weave of “Hiding Beneath” invites us in, its spidering vocal spiral chased in recoiling twang and cello, attentively sweeps you off your feet for the words of “Our Ghosts” to vividly burn, buoyantly pull around that sinewed strum, shuffling percussion and […]
Computer Students™ Yet another discovery that I can’t believe has taken twenty years to cross my path. Cheval de Frise were a French guitar and percussion duo operating at the turn of the millennium, trading in the kind of tight, angular guitar rock that was coming out of Chicago. But they give it a neat twist by being a duo and playing around one another in a way […]
Retractor Persistence Is All After putting up with muffled audience recordings of this memorable experience for over twenty-odd years, this recent instalment from Thighpaulsandra’s Coil archive is a total godsend. Considering the strictness of the staff on the night in question, capturing a personal memento of the gig was nigh-on-impossible, so this crystal-clear souvenir of Coil’s second Royal Festival Hall appearance is way beyond expectation. Persistence Is All […]
A member of Thee Silver Mt Zion and a co-creator of the avant-klezmer group Black Ox Orkestar, Jessica Moss has collaborated and played with the likes of Daniel O’Sullivan, Sarah Davachi and Big|Brave. To accompany her fifth solo album, Galaxy Heart on Constellation, she is on tour throughout Europe. Mr Olivetti put some pertinent questions to the Montréal-based composer and violinist. This album feels like a rather wild and […]
London 5 November 2022 The UK 2022: it’s Saturday and it’s raining; not in a Blade Runner kind of way, with neon lights and futuristic vistas, but in a drab way that only the UK knows how to do with aplomb.
April Danish sax player and composer Fredrik Lundin is quite the collaborator, his list of ensembles longer than my arm. For his latest series of genre straddling pieces, he has enlisted the far reaching capabilities of the Odense Jazz Orchestra, ensuring a blend of freedom and swing that suits his compositions which try to shine a positive light on the current state of things on It Takes All […]
Not Applicable The Covid break two summers ago found renowned experimental trio Leverton Fox taking their gear and a loose idea into a Sussex woodland, setting up two ambient mics, sitting back and allowing their improvisational magic to unfold amidst the fallen leaves, spreading boughs and hidden animal trails. The whole thing feels like an invitation; an invitation to descend into the undergrowth and to listen as the […]
One Little Independent For Ásgeir‘s fourth solo album, these strange times of introspection and separation have found him engrossed in the studio, pushing his ethereal brand of electronic folk-pop in fresh directions. Concentrating on his angelic vocals and layering swathes of perfectly produced sound around him, he draws the listener into his carefully constructed sonic world, images of his frozen homeland abounding.
The internet is a weird and wonderful place. The music industry is also a weird and wonderful place. So when these two worlds collide, strange and beautiful things happen. For many years, bands would play their way through dingy little clubs and venues until they could get signed, recorded and sent on local, then international tours. This is still an ever-present phenomenon, but the world wide web has […]