Discus For Treppenwitz‘s third musical adventure, the trio set up in a living room and pressed record to see what could be captured over the course of two days’ improvisation. That sense of intimacy and immediacy is perfectly captured on this document that finds them further blurring the boundaries that might constrict a trio that leans towards jazz, but is completely immersed in a wealth of styles and […]
Zam Zam The synth duo of Kevin Valentin and Benjamin Moutte have a proper appreciation of their wares, something that the ominous plunge of the opener on their new Surprise Barbue album Kabukichō solidly demonstrates. It mindscapes a lovely tensive herald, spiralised in jewelled splashes and a subtle creep of melody that glitters its periphery. A drama that twists in “Cerf-Souris”’s unfurling keystrokes as a sweetened glaze of […]
Jazzland John Bishop‘s latest Tortusa release, Bre, finds him teaming up with a group of like-minded sonic explorers to prepare a series of fantastical, elemental soundscapes that act as ciphers for the extraordinary images on the cover. The sounds sweep from the speakers, appearing at once modern yet ageless, as if they were generated with no understanding or knowledge of the current state of music. With a guest […]
Three Lobed Leaping off Headless’s comfy sofa, those Sunburned peeps are more frazzled and distinctively vocal with this year’s follow up release Pick A Day To Die on Three Lobed Records. The sleek-lined kiss of the previous LP seems to be left to unravel more, to tail-spin adventurously as Jeremy Pisani’s flinting frets carve its introverted entry point, while a Basho barbecue of crystal chord called “Dropped A […]
Monzen Nakacho For the uninitiated, Monzen Nakacho is something like the two-step-gone-goth solo project of one Gary Short from sunny Worthing in the UK. And it’s the sort of music that you can only imagine coming from somewhere like that — parts end of the pier glee and lurid flourescence, but lacking the asceptic cleanliness of one of your fancy towns. There’s a raft of touchstones for this […]
Bureau B I know very little about Die Welttraumforscher. They’ve (or should I say he’s, as all this is a predominantly solo affair of Christian Pfluger) been going since 1981 as one of Switzerland’s most enigmatic musical projects, sung almost exclusively in German. Luckily for a newbie like me, Bureau B have produced not one but two retrospectives devoted to the band — one covering the early days […]
Crónica There’s a quality that some music has of being like an old friend. I’ve not listened to any new Francisco López in a decade or more but the ’00s CDs of his I have get a fairly frequent spin. Those CDs tended towards a kind of quietism — usually called Untitled [n] and largely a kind of textural building from exceptionally quiet to pretty blaring. All with […]
Niafunken Mirco Ballabene has studied double bass to the highest level and has used that grounding on his latest album to probe the links between the academic music of the twentieth century and more improvisational techniques. This melding of the two is what makes Right To Party tick and also what makes it such an intriguing listen.
(self-released) That guttural bleakness punctuated by a lone-slap of reverbed timpani is impressive — a real sit up and listen asthetic tied to a wine-glass hum and a circle of Galás gulls that drag you into a ritualised scrape of brutalist electronics and scatter-cushioned skin. Lay In The Salt Of The Soil‘s opener “Yet I Am” fills me with same the primal shivers I felt when I first […]
Label Fandango Modern Hinterland trade in the kind of anthemic nineties-influenced indie pop-rock that I thought had gone out of fashion. The sort that bands like Morning Runner and Longwave used to ply, and I am pleased that people out there still feel there is mileage in it. Chris Hornsby possesses a characterful voice that sits well with the gentle energy of the band.
KrysaliSound The latest release on KrysaliSound finds two Italian artists, Pier Giorgio Storti and Nicola Fornasari, joining forces as That Which Is Not to produce The Basic Sharpness Of Emotions, a series of contemplative soundscapes on captured through the lonely environs of a distant forest. It has a rarefied feel that puts us way outside human contact, and the slow sway of cello and clarinet join forces with […]
Music For Nations Despite being fronted by ex-Gorgoroth drummer Einar Selvik and having in the past featured Gaahl on vocals, Wardruna are very much not a metal band. Oh sure, metalheads love them, and they did a bunch of stuff with Enslaved, but they are not a metal band. Because they don’t play metal. But… hold on and hear me out… entirely?
The interest that Brave Words generated, even here on the other side of the world, found them courted by bigger labels and for their second, the recently reissued Submarine Bells, they found themselves on London derivative, Slash.
Phantom Limb / Dekorder / and forty-two others worldwide Senyawa apparently move in circles that include your Stephen O’Malleys and your Damo Suzukis and your Oren Ambarchis. But let’s not hold that against them. They’re an Indonesian duo that use… well, it’s not clear what of these sounds is orthodoxly “instrument” and what’s sound / processed noise / loops. Synths, junk percussion and vocals seem to be the […]
Courier On another of Courier‘s delightful cassette releases, we find Cousin Sharky trading in “sub-dimensional bass street electronics”. Although this goes part way to describing the sound contained therin, there is something at times distant and ancient about some of the wide variety of moods and textures on offer on Re-Evaluation Of The Macro-Cellular Communication System.
Zoharum And so, Phurpa are back. Like Russian Cenobites stepping slowly from the shadows and wreathed in a thick fug of juniper smoke, they are here once more to bathe us in their power and resonate our chakras in sympathy with the universal vibration. For those not already familiar with Phurpa’s low-end majesty, they are a “roving monastic choir” from Moscow, led by the enigmatic Alexey Tegin and […]
Off World, the studio project of Sandro Perri and Lorenz Peter (Corpusse, Processor) has so far released Volumes 1 and 2 of three planned LPs for Constellation, “rich in deconstructed melody, aleatory composition techniques, and interplay between acoustic and synthetic-electronic instrumentation”. Sandro says of their new video, premiered here today, in the label’s Corona Borealis series
Discus Serial collaborators Tony Oxley and Cecil Taylor had this 2002 show recorded, and Discus have released it as a showcase for the kind of joyful power of which the duo was capable of. That it is the overriding sensation that comes from Being Astral And All Registers: joy; at times an utterly maniacal joy but joy nevertheless.