Stone Tapes The Dark Is Rising When it comes to art that is inspired by the horror genre, it can fall into two camps: 1. Art that references horror tropes and classic works of that genre, or. 2. Art that seeks to recreate the sensation of watching, reading, or listening to those works. With Carmilla (Marcilla)/Spectral Visions, from purveyors of classic British doom, Moss, the band goes more […]
12″ EP
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West Norwood Cassette Library Following his recent albums Four Track Mind and Unfidelity, Ekoplekz has now released a six-track EP on the wonderfully-monikered West Norwood Cassette Library label. Rock La Bibliotek is in a different format and has a totally different vibe. On it he offers up a more minimalist sound, and while the richer radiophonic aspects of the albums has been put to one side, with some […]
Machine Elf It’s 1967, The Beatles are No 2 in the charts with “Strawberry Fields,” Pink Floyd are playing The UFO Club, The Incredible String Band are discovering layers of the onion and Hapsash are designing posters to blow your mind. Fast forward 20 years and you have the Alice in Wonderland Club, The Dukes of Stratosphere, The Magic Mushroom Band and Freakbeat magazine. Now in 2014, yet […]
Front & Follow Martin Jenkins is a force of nature, releasing mountains of cassettes, EPs, 12″s, and free downloads since the inception of the Pye Corner Audio Transcription Services moniker in 2010. He’s the closest thing we have to a poster boy for the current state of the hauntological current, giving us an insight into its present, and a possible trajectory for the future. This slight EP from […]
More Than Human This latest transmission from Moebius finds him pushing further at the boundaries of an idiosyncratic take on electronic rhythm-based music which have often characterised his solo recordings and rummaging deeper into the swirling vortices of synthesized experimentalism that he helped pioneer in the ’70s as part of Cluster. “Inmedin” is the piece most resembling the former output, all twinkling electronic bells and chimes over a […]
Avalanche So I defrosted my fridge yesterday. Inches thick in ice, it was. Had to take a hairdryer to it in the end. Scalding hot air. Huge expanses of frozen water. A lot of wrenching, smashing and cries of frustration. All in all, it was a lot like the new Godflesh EP. Decline And Fall is the first new material from the reactivated Godflesh project in thirteen years, […]
Editions Mego In the past couple of years or so there has been a resurgence in synthesizer music, with more and more titles being released every month by various labels. Most of the work I have heard has been of a high quality and is generally packaged well. Many of these albums make use of, and note on their sleeves, old analogue synthesizers to create these sounds. John […]
Pan A slab of 12” electronic whoomph and wibble which brings forth the gloopy analogue joys of sequenced machinery bowing and scraping before the altar of the DJ booth. “Self-Perpetuating Fun Loop” does exactly as it says, whirling around a central set of repeated motifs with the terpsichorean energy of a pilled-up dervish in search of the perfect gyre. Synthesised sounds chirrup and slop until the breakdown comes, […]
Dekorder A hyper-collectible one-sided ‘hybrid vinyl’ you say? *strokes non-beard* What curious engine is this? *bug-eyed lunatic face / “Soylent Green is people!”* Well, it’s got meaty black vinyl on the audio side and the usual slack-jawed picture-disc vinyl on the other – AKA this is what Leibniz was referring to when he uttered under his wig “Die beste aller möglichen Welten” (“the best of all possible worlds”). […]
More Than Human Straight society often views conceptual or avant-garde art with a suspicion bordering on hatred. “Art for art’s sake,” a dirty phrase, meant to imply these artists contribute nothing to society, only existing to inflate their own egos and justifying their existence with pretentious-sounding theories that the everyman can not understand. Look at the way various totalitarian regimes have treated music, which seems to suggest that […]
Woe To The Septic Heart Just in time for a mordant shot at the Easter Number 1, here comes Shackleton again; his last album was a work of necessarily flawed genius, drifting across lines, missing beats and breaks, losing itself in the mystery of moments. It ought to have been everyone’s favourite album of the year but often got a little missed, as if it was just too […]
More Than Human With a name which immediately evokes time travel (or the expectation thereof) and hence perhaps stepping metaphorically and metaphysically out of the linear and quotidian, Paul Snowdon sends the listener on a trip across distances and the aeons. Lifting off with the fluttery electronica of “Iridium Watcher,” side one soon gives way to more radiophonic sounds of “Voiders Delight.” If the Time Attendant persona were […]
We Can Elude Control Film-maker and and sound artist Rose Kallal and Mark Pilkington (The Asterism, Raagnagrok, Stëllä Märïs Drönë Örchësträ, etc.) collaborated on the soundtrack to Kallal’s Implicate Explicate installation for three 16mm projectors in Glasgow in 2012, and this EP results from the music they produced together. In its original mix, Kallal and Pilkington manipulate the heavy drones and reverbs to shudder the speakers and mush […]
Dekorder The trio of Luke Fowler, Richard Youngs and Steven Warwick of Heatsick have made some very strange electronic music here. Red & Blue is one of those on the spot collaborations which sounds like a huge amount of fun was had by all while plugging away in the studio. A liberated sense of playfulness is especially apparent, and it’s pretty much an electronic jam session which, if it […]
Dekorder Conical Space, the first offering of Dekorder‘s brilliant Hybrid Vinyl series, finds Pye Corner Audio‘s Head Technician channelling all his loves: ’80s horror synth, Detroit Techno, kosmische and corrupted technology. These synthscapes conjure images of polished chrome skylines, with miles high neon adverts, before yr cruiser exits the stratosphere, eventually being swallowed in the event horizon of Dr. Reinhardt’s black hole. It’s always a pleasure to hear […]
Drag City UK digi-dub veterans Alpha & Omega have taken on the task of remaking Om‘s track “Addis” from their recent Advaitic Songs album, transforming the original’s hypnagogic swell of doomy bass and mournful cello into a dub workout in two parts. Side A weighs in as “Ababa Dub,” Kate Ramsey‘s haunting vocal lifted into the echo chamber while the strings vibrate below, riding on a coasting undercarriage of […]
The Sound of White Columns Unlike Star Trek fans, Can enthusiasts never have to choose between the two key vocalists of the Can oeuvre. Partly this is because Damo Suzuki and Malcolm Mooney both found idiosyncratic ways in which to interact with the rest of the band. It is also because Can enthusiasts are not necessarily Star Trek fans. Mooney’s sojourn with The Can initially manifests as one […]
Spoon/Mute Bringing together musicians who have worked together separately before – Burnt Friedman and Jaki Liebezeit have released several outstanding records of electronic dub together, among numerous other guest spots and collaborations; Irmin Schmidt and Jono Podmore made two albums as Schmidt & Kumo; and of course Schmidt and Liebezeit were Can members together, as well as collaborators since the band’s demise. Add in Podmore’s sterling work on editing The […]