Francisco Meirino (also known as Phroq up to 2009 when creating harsh noise). Using instrumentation including modular synths, reel-to-reel tape recorders and various home-made electronics, he has collaborated with artists such as Leif Elggren, Michael Gendreau and Gerritt Wittmer and also writes for contemporary music ensembles and dance with releases on labels such as The Helen Scarsdale Agency, (who have just released his A New Instability LP) Flag Days […]
Buried Treasure Named after a sunken granite reef in the Celtic sea, Haig Fras takes this remote place as a source of inspiration, to sonically spill in a subterfuge of folding texture and swifting aquatics bleached in a Derek Jarman-esque gleam. Part Urthona, part Téléplasmiste, Neil Mortimer and Mark Pilkington seamlessly blend a perfect whole here, giving a salty glimpse of things to come (I do believe).
Trace Eternally keeping his unique flame alive and forever pushing the sound somewhere fresh, Rothko‘s Mark Beazley is an irregular collaborator, but always uses the opportunity to discover something unexpected. This is his first since 2016’s full length A Young Fist Curled Round A Cinder For A Wager, and here the harsh real life tales of Johny Brown are replaced by the more heartbroken vocal sound of Second Hand […]
Dais I’m not going to use the C word, because it’s been a long time since they ceased to be and we all have to stop thinking in those tired patterns, even me, who can’t. Agalma is a minor triumph all of it’s own, finding pathways through music that spins off and around what could broadly be called New Age and finds its own corners. This time around, […]
Courier Sound Courier Sound main-man Stuart Bowditch has chosen to wade into the “how far can we push twenty-three tracks in twenty-three minutes?” debate with his own retort to Alien and Eumig. Trading as USRNM, Stuart’s twenty-three minutes are wildly diverse and also stray furthest from the format of twenty-three one minute pieces.
Kranky This is a welcome repress for loscil‘s 2011 album coast/range/arc//. Inspired by the geography of the Cascadian Mountains, it was originally released on the aptly named Glacial Pace and was very much at home there, but the sort of slow motion grandeur in which the album revels definitely fits in with the Kranky aesthetic. The dramatic artwork showing ice capped mountain ranges and vast lakes is very […]
Eastgate Music and Art In the past couple of years, us Tangerine Dream fans have been rather spoilt by the amount of high-quality historical pieces and releases that have come our way. First of all we had the beautiful edition of Edgar Froese’s biography, Force Majeure, a mammoth book that was obviously lovingly put together and was a must-have item. This was followed by Margarete Kreuzer’s wonderful documentary […]
Niafunken For the latest Noise of Trouble release, main man Marco Colonna has gone for the clarinet as instrument of choice and has drawn in friends Luca Corrada on baritone guitar and Cristian Lombardi on drums, as well as a few others who make appearances along the way. I have to say that for me, the clarinet is one of those instruments whose sound is suffused with joy […]
Eastgate / Cupdisc In the past couple of years or so, Tangerine Dream, featuring Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane, have released five improvised albums dedicated to TD founder Edgar Froese. These have been primarily live recordings made in 2018 during the band’s tour and have had more in common soundwise with the classic 1970s era of Froese, Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann. These sessions have had […]
Discus The Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere‘s fifth outing finds it expanded to an eight-piece and the bulk of the new album’s material being improvised over two days at the end of 2019. Those initial sessions and the subsequent solitary fettling and studio production over 2020 have resulted in an extraordinary odyssey of sound that encompasses structureless, textural drift and gliding, plus all points in between.
Ross Healy is not only the founding member of VICMOD, the co-owner of VICMOD Records and part of the VICMOD ENSemble, but also performs and records prolifically as This Digital Ocean, Amnesia, Roland Oberheim, Oskar T Oram, as well as Cray and many more. Cray’s longform Modulisme session explores the diversity of Healy’s modular electronic music while taking the listener on a journey into inner and outer space.
Courier Sound The insert that comes with the latest beautifully presented cassette from Courier Sound (both the cassette and outer cover are plum coloured) describes the sounds contained therein as “trying to capture and reimagine the healing process through repetition and sonic imperfection”. The manner in which this is attempted is to unfold a series of slowly revolving drone-based soundscapes that seem to hover out of the speakers, undulating […]
Planet Mµ I got sort of lost at dubstep, or maybe 2step, or ponycore, or chiptune, or skelefunk, or, um, footwork… I never properly learned to differentiate jungle from drum’n’bass, or to understand the point in which that became drill or drizzle or whatever the Hell it became. The continuum became the ‘nuum and everyone blamed each other for continuing, for not innovating, for not finding the right […]
Hubro Back in 2006, improv trio Huntsville were plying their trade at a Quebec music festival where they came across Wilco and over a period of time developed a mutual appreciation society. After appearing with them on stage a couple of times over they years, 2010 found the three travellers in the Wilco’s Chicago loft with Glenn Kotche and Nels Cline to see what might come of a […]
Interchill The latest release from esoteric multi instrumentalists Evan Fraser and Vir McCoy takes the listener on a series of journeys through distant lands, the likes of which we are unlikely to experience ion the usual melee of music making. Playing such extraordinary instruments as the jimbush, the sintir, the djeli-ngoni and the guimbri, amongst others, the images that they evoke are of dusty, unspoiled vistas and spiritual […]
Rocket I liked Pharaoh Overlord’s last release, but this newbie is on a whole different level. They’ve turned down that motorik dial a touch, to let in a banquet of euphoric synth work wrapped in a barrage of skewed disco flavours. A groovesome cocktail easily demonstrated by “Path Eternal’”s Giorgio Moroder romp
(self-released) The vibes as an instrument is unique in my opinion in its ability to lift a mood and for its pure, haunting ring to linger in the mind. We were lucky enough to catch Harriet Riley when she was playing with the wonderful Bristol band Tezeta. The vibes added a fresh and shimmering aura to the band’s heady stew of latin groove and jazz skronk. Here, she […]
Burning World Much like Tigger, the funny old thing about genres is genres are funny old things. They don’t really mean that much in and of themselves. Like nicknames at school, you can have them thrust upon you without consent (just ask Andrew Eldritch if the Sisters Of Mercy are a goth band — sorry, mate, you don’t get to choose), and it doesn’t really matter anyway