Thrill Jockey Hot on the heels of last year’s Don’t Look Away, 2019 sees Alexander Tucker once again hunkering down on his own in the studio. Guild Of The Asbestos Weaver constructs tracks that employ his love of sci-fi and cosmic horror in a recognised song format, with all of the pieces here allying his gorgeous vocals to rhythmic and melodious structures that tip a hat to the […]
Mute At last, Chance Vs Causality, the long-lost Cabaret Voltaire soundtrack to a 16mm film by Babette Mondini, sees the light of day. Up until now, only a fragment had surfaced on a b-side to their “Silent Command” 7-inch back in 1979. Would loved to have seen the film, and if the sleeve art is anything to go by it was an artsy collage to be behold.
Courier Sound There is something so delightful about Courier Sounds‘ three-inch CD packages. There is real care in the colour scheme and presentation, while the sounds contained are little gems, ones that have to be carefully selected considering the relatively short duration of the format. Sound recordist/musician Kim Rueger trades here as Belly Full Of Stars, the moniker denoting her more abstract, electronic experiments.
House Of Mythology Back in October of 2018, Ulver‘s presence was requested at a Red Bull Music event taking part in their home town of Oslo. The request was for new work of a drone type, something that might unfold over a length of time, but at a natural pace. The group started to reconvene to work through ideas with one or two members missing, but with itinerant […]
Metropolis Two years in the making and a pre-fortieth anniversary celebration taster of live things to come, Angel In The Detail finds the sonic trio of The Silverman, Erik Drost and Edward Ka-Spel on good form.
Modularfield Continuing Modularfield‘s desire to produce beautifully designed cassettes and to highlight new and innovative electronic artists, the first side of the latest release from Emme Moises feels more about discovery and less about actual contact — but the are possibly discoveries that shouldn’t be made and are far better left alone.
Front & Follow Manchester-based purveyors of forward-thinking sound adventures Front & Follow have called upon the services of bassist Michael Donnelly for the second part of their ongoing series Ex Post Facto. Here, artists are given an opportunity to prepare a new piece of work which is then presented alongside an overview of previous recordings.
Salisbury Plain 17 August 2019 The British Army first started to clear the settlements from Salisbury Plain after the First World War, but it was during the preparation for the D-Day landings in 1943 that they chose to evacuate all the residents from the little village of Imber, in the north-west section of the plain, and it was never re-inhabited. This area is opened up for a few […]
Ear Music If you’ve ever read David Zindell‘s Neverness books, you will know there is nothing more badass than a warrior-poet. For nearly four decades now, New Model Army have been some of the hardest-working warrior-poets in the business, touring the world to their legions of fans (the NMA Family) and still somehow managing to find time to bang out album after album of finely-crafted rock music.
Southern Lord Next up in Southern Lord‘s Caspar Brötzmann Massaker re-issue series are albums three and four, and once again on album three, the line-up has changed a little. Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore was originally released in 1992, three years after Black Axis, and Frank Neumeier had made way for Danny Lommen on drums. The intervening years and the final track on Black Axis must have caused […]
Adaadat / TUTL Rutger Hauser‘s growth from their birth as an improv bass and drums duo in 2013 to the hydra-headed multimedia six-piece of 2019 has taken them from Lewisham in south London, where they were the unofficial house band of the Lumen Lake, to a point approximately 1,000 miles north, namely a community hall on the Faroe Islands. Here, over the course of a weekend, they attempted […]
Swedish dreampopster Gus Ring releases the title track from his forthcoming For Us Lonely Souls album on 23 August, featuring Jolanda Moletta of She Owl on keyboards and Fredrik Ottosson on drums. An exclusive premier of the single can be heard
Glacial Movements Line Spectrum‘s Bruma goes beyond music to the Earth’s inner workings; an inspired soundscape of tidal movement, the fabrication of fossils and the erosion of landscapes. The idyllic lapping of waves gradually subsumed by the roar of the surf as dolphins call is eventually dissolved in a wash of static and morse code structures.
Universal Music Enterprises It’s probably a fair assumption that the more rabid Velvet Underground fans clocked this on its first CD release in 2015. But if you’re not that, and also can’t be bothered with reading the remainder of this review – tl;dr – this is a very good live document of VU.
Church Ceilings Deaf Joe‘s long-player Love Stories is an attempt to convert some of his most cherished travel memories into a kind of series of ambient soundscapes, retaining those souvenirs in a more fulfilling and long-lasting way than a pile of unseen photographs and scattered postcards.
London 14 July 2019 It’s Rick Wakeman’s seventieth birthday, and what better way to celebrate than two nights of his early concept album Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, played in full with lots of extra tracks to help the extravaganza become fully realised. Originally the piece was performed and recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday 18 January 1974. At this point, Wakeman was […]
Upset The Rhythm The ceaseless band-hopping of the two Rachels has seen a five-year gap since the last Trash Kit album, and also the departure of Ros Murray and arrival of Gill Partington on bass. Bas Jan, Bamboo, Shopping and Sacred Paws have kept them plenty busy, but thankfully they have reunited for their third album for Upset The Rhythm, and what a treat it is.
Important Pauline Oliveros, if you’re not in the know, is somewhat of a hero in twentieth century composition and music theory. She’s also criminally under-recorded. She’s also, perhaps most frustrating of all, very difficult to pin down on a recording. Discogs currently lists sixty-five releases, but few of those are anything like broadly available, and of what I’ve heard of the available / semi-available ones, there’s a number […]