Polypores – Cosmically A Shambles / Various Artists – Undulating Waters 9 / Pulselovers – Glass / Farmacia – Ellas / Hawksmoor – An Aesthetic: Experiments In Tape / Gordon Chapman-Fox – Very Quiet Music To Be Played Very Loudly / Cate Francesca Brooks – Lofoten / Jolanda Moletta and Karen Vogt – Sea-swallowed Wands

Once more on to the fertile fields of the DIY electronica scene we go, cutting a path to search for the most interesting of musical crops that grow and regenerate at exponential rates…

First up, with somewhat benevolent predictability, is the latest long-player from Stephen Buckley’s Polypores. Whilst his regular presence in these synth scene rounding-up exercises is somewhat inescapable, the freshly-squeezed Cosmically A Shambles — available via the less customary outlet of Preston’s Cracked Ankles — is perhaps one of the biggest lateral steps from its restless creator in some time.

Having left behind a lot of his beats-driven approaches after early outings on Polytechnic Youth — in subsequent favour of more elemental, sculpted and freeform routes through modular synthesis — Buckley rediscovers and reboots his rhythmical tendencies with this new nine-track treatise. This doesn’t, though, mean retreating to techno-adjacent conformity.

In fact, the results that are rather hard to pin down for points of obvious references, such is the bracing distinctiveness that Buckley displays with almost everything he sets his mind towards recently. However, if forced by the threat of an AI algorithm breaking things down for us instead, the album’s strands of sonic DNA can be untangled to a degree by this writer’s brain.

Hence, the uplifting “Lungs And Limbs” positions the fictionalised resonance of martial foot stomps in lockstep with trilling pulsations; the whirling “Whorl” marries metronomic drum ticks to free-range synth flourishes; the tremendous “Timeless Spirals Of The Motherfungus” and “Untethered (Ascend Now)” both envisage sublime lost Steve Reich and Yellow Magic Orchestra collaborations; the classical-prog pirouettes of “Interdimensional Hopscotch” add a new twist on Wendy Carlos worship; and “Hazy Dazy” provides an airy rotation on previous ghosts-in-machine essaying.

With further Polypores platters already set to bubble up quickly behind it, Cosmically A Shambles should be picked up with an urgency that matches its own compelling internal insistence.

Also never shy of appearing in the humans-meets-machine music coverage around these pages is the Woodford Halse label family. On the mothership enterprise comes, therefore, the multi-artist Undulating Waters 9.

Bringing together familiar and not-so-familiar characters, this generous fifteen-track CD selection box feeds us – amongst other things – Audio Obscura’s oceanic soundwaves, Salvatore Mercatante’s polar-chilled pulsations, mesmeric Nico-like ethereality from Rachel Watkins, Misty Bywater and Art Abscon’s filmic folktronica, bouncily infectious synth-pop from Personal Bandana and Yumah’s wonderfully hypnotic vocal-layering adventuring.

On the younger progeny Preston Capes imprint come two contrasting releases. With Glass, from label boss Mat Handley’s Pulselovers project, we find the 2020’s very limited Zener_05 cassette (previously released by Sensory Leakage) reissued with new artwork and a fresh name. Although being one of the most esoteric entries in Handley’s personal canon, with two slabs of musique concrète (“Trope” and “Noisedemo”) and a half-hour live recording, the title track’s gorgeously pulsing and percussive homage to Philip Glass is worth the admission price alone and is almost too short at seventeen minutes in length.

Additionally, out on Preston Capes is Ellas from Argentinian brother-duo Farmacia. New to these ears, Ariel and Diego Sima make for an intriguing proposition with this late acquaintanceship after twenty-five years of operations.

Conceptually celebrating all the women in their lives, the collection uncoils through glitched-up vocal samplings (“De Turno”), mid-fi takes on Computer World-era Kraftwerk (“Vera”), percolating utopian sci-fi radiance (“Flor”), squelchy neon-lit cinematics (“Pupe”) and balmily evocative moodscapes (“Julee”), with some endearingly arresting freshness.

Still talking of multi-limbed enterprises, Biggleswade’s Castles In Space now sprouts out its Lunar Module arm for dedicated CD / digital-only explorations from the mass orbiting ranks of electronically-minded auteurs. The first two outings arrive from Gordon Chapman-Fox (AKA Mr Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan) and Hawksmoor (AKA James McKeown). Both clearly make the most of not have to be concerned by the confines of vinyl presentations.

The former’s four elongated pieces decisively deliver what its prescriptive Very Quiet Music To Be Played Very Loudly title determines, through its imposing dark drones, expansive submersions, glistening neo-classicism and gothic reverberations.

The latter’s more technically-framed An Aesthetic – Experiments In Tape also follows its self-set remit closely and deeply, as it moves across numerically-tagged tracks that warp and weave forebodingly through treated tape loops and other kit from in McKeown’s toolshed.

Whilst both niche affairs are not entirely geared towards the casual Castles In Space visitor, they certainly present curiously promising possibilities for a side-hustle that bridges the gaps between the record company modus operandi of Kranky, DiN and Quiet Details.

Whilst not exclusively made of up electronic artists, Clay Pipe Music certainly has a healthy cache of diode and semiconductor conjurers on the books to deploy upon receptive ears, whilst still retaining the endeavour’s collectivised focus on themes related to times and places, the latest being Lofoten from Cate Francesca Brooks.

Inspired by Norway’s remote Lofoten Islands above the Arctic Circle and utilising an array of analogue synths and vintage drum machine tech, the dozen gathered cuts beatifically extend the shared visions of Brooks and the Clay Pipe community.

Summoning scenes of frosty night air, icy waters and mountainous landscaping, through the filters of Brian Eno’s Ambient series, Steve Roach and Brooks’s own considerable catalogue, Lofoten may not be a summertime soundtrack affair, but it helpfully makes the eventual return of longer colder nights — to spin it in a more apt context — far less dread-inducing.

Last – but definitely not least – is Jolanda Moletta and Karen Vogt’s Sea-swallowed Wands for the Quiet Details ambient series. Whilst minimally synthetic at the core, it’s clearly apparent that the pair’s wordless vocals would not be quite so sublimely looped and enmeshed together without some shrewd electronic manipulations.

As an eight-part suite this sprawls out as a stunningly realised statement, which pours in richly distilled elements from Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, early Julia Holter, Melinda Bronstein and Julianna Barwick as well as the twosome’s separate bodies of work, to create cohesive combinations of swirling symphonics and choral atmospherics that stretch and wrap around the senses in stunningly immersive fashion.

-Adrian-