Dipping just a toe into the DIY electronica streams these days still requires some weighty waders to avoid being soaked by the volume of material. Hence, another amalgamated approach is needed to fish for some of the most notable new wares.
The first catch on this day of listening and writing, is a long-in-the-works 12” EP outing from Mücha (AKA Amanda Butterworth), following on from a pair of choice cassette albums — 2023’s Hello Caller and 2021’s Fall – also with label partners Frequency Domain.
Projecting a mysterious yet magnetic presence through this still somewhat under-the-radar solo venture, Butterworth manipulates and embeds her largely wordless vocals into sonic submersions that largely shift back and forth along a sliding scale between ambient-techno and glitchtronica.
The two extended cuts assembled here on the A-side – “Skin” and “You Make Me Go Under” – with corresponding remixes from Surgeon and Datasette on the flipside, skilfully sum-up the primary Mücha modus operandi to date across a welcoming wider vinyl sound stage. The former near-seven-minute lead piece is magnificently hypnotic, as it weaves layers of primal percussion and extraterrestrial electronics round ethereal looping ululations, whilst the slightly shorter latter composition persuasively pushes the vocals higher, to sit atop some mesmeric mechanically-broken beats. Although the bonus reworkings do add some extra VFM to the whole thoughtfully presented platter, it’s the two original tracks that warrant the most repeated deep spins into the engrossing aural world of Mücha.
No stranger to the scene, but close to becoming a genre-in-himself, is Stephen Buckley, who returns as Polypores via the rapidly-expanding Quiet Details CD-led catalogue, with I Wish There Was A Place Like That.
Whilst taking some cues from the enterprise’s nominatively determined thematic remit, this is essentially more of Buckley burrowing even further into his own auditory tunnels, by way of modular synths and an open-ended imagination.
Consequently, we’re taken through evocative swirls and pulses (“Open World” and “Zones Unknown”); soft nods back to the irradiated routes inside 2022’s Infinite Interiors (“Mise-En-Abyme”); incorporeal elementalism (“Look At Orchid Swimming With Wasp”); freeform space-jazz (“Void Reveal!”); entrancing minimalistic burbling (“Impressions From The Noosphere”); and glistening pirouettes (“Headfooters”), all seemingly without breaking into a sweat.
Followers will rank I Wish There Was A Place Like That highly amongst the loosest and most charming chapters in Stephen Buckley’s ongoing odyssey.
Whilst it has been a little less busy on the Clay Pipe Music front in 2025 so far, curator-in-chief Frances Castle reignites the enterprise’s slow-burn output with another 3” CD mini-album, in the shape of Micro Moon’s Figure In A Landscape.
The first broader release documenting the entwined Anglo-Spanish talents of guitarist / synthesist Stephen Holbrook and pianist / synthesist Isabel Pérez Castro, after a handful of Bandcamp-only outings, this six-track set packs a lot into its concise twenty-two-minute runtime, as it stretches around genre boundaries.
Thus, opener “Radiofaro” and “Fabrica Da Luz” brush contemplative neo-classical piano figures with eerie electronic strokes; “Desire Lines” goes into gloomier surroundings replete with John Carpenter pulsations and post-rock guitar matrices; “End Transmission” enmeshes haunted house ghostliness with flickers of Radiophonic Workshop effects; “Border” bleeds pastoral string picking into sci-fi cinematics; and “Mirror Mash” ushers out proceedings with ecclesiastical drones. An impressive Clay Pipe-facilitated introduction all told.
And finally, for now at least, courtesy of the previously Freq-profiled bases of Woodford Halse and Castles In Space, come two contrasting conceptions.
Meanwhile, emerging out of Woodford Halse is the grittier – but still inventive – strains of The Sunshine Miners from Conflux Coldwell, the equally solitary endeavour of the Leeds-based Michael C Coldwell.
-Adrian-
