As cornerstone enterprises in what Electronic Sound magazine recently redubbed as the ‘grassroots electronica’ scene, Doncaster’s Woodford Halse and Biggleswade’s Castles In Space labels continue to curate physical and digital releases with care and affection, as well as supporting their signings to stretch beyond straightforward musical appliance reverence. As these first two new outings of 2025 from each imprint exemplify.
Adrian
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Although less prolific and less visible over the last decade after a rewarding thirty or so years of jointly directing The Walkabouts and Chris & Carla, Chris Eckman has remained a reassuring background presence as an adaptable Americana ambassador embedded in Europe.
The never-ending flexibility of folk-framed idioms is undoubtedly one of the music world’s undervalued gifts, with there being near-infinite creative power in the union of pastoralism and open-minded songcraft, as the following four full-length releases contest.
With 2025 already feeling somewhat weighed down with algorithmically-enhanced gloom, we’re undoubtedly going to need some sheer aural abandonment to get through the remaining pre-spring period… and indeed beyond. Enter then two new releases following divergent trajectories, aligned towards taking us away from it all.
After branching further out of apparent comfort zones across 2024 in terms of content and format manoeuvres, Precious Recordings pivots once again, around the turn of the New Year, with three self-set-boundary-breaking releases.
For those feeling forswunk and seeking to switch-off over the mid-winter break, then musical products conceived by artists in hermetic bubbles seem suitably worthy of some eleventh-hour examination, at the end of a very hectic 2024. As the three below albums attest…
Such is the sheer abundance of output from the music world in recent times -- which feels particularly acute this year -- it can be quite hard not to miss key things, even from reliable sources. Yet, thankfully, two distinctly dissimilar albums from the trusty homestead of Gard Du Nord Records have been extracted from the review pile just in time for Freq coverage in 2024. Both remind us that the label’s quietly radical diversity remains a compelling force running in the background of the record-releasing business.
On reaching its twentieth birthday, Nathaniel Cramp’s Sonic Cathedral label has arguably benefitted from a degree of nominative determinism. Whilst he has tirelessly championed the sacred tenets of shoegaze, it’s not been in a restrictive small chapel sect-like way, but in a very broad-church fashion.
Skep Wax Carrying on from a richly productive 2023, Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s stealthily effective Skep Wax label set-up has this year continued to alternate between curating latter-day ventures from indie-pop veterans and nurturing newer talents. Whilst this has manifested in a slightly lower output in terms of records released, in favour of more live events, the tail end of 2024 and the start of 2025 seems […]
Whilst many bands at certain operational levels come alive for evenings and weekends, it seems as if the members of Chicago power-trio Stomatopod need them more than most outside of their day jobs, to discharge emotionally and recharge electrically. With this second full-length album from the ensemble – following on from 2022’s sturdy six-song Steve Albini-cut Competing With Hindsight mini-LP – it feels like the post-nine-to-five uncorking is positively explosive.
With their creative stock having risen again off the back of last year’s Music For KIDS archival release on Domino and this year’s surprisingly strong new studio album Walk Thru Me on Joyful Noise, it’s perhaps no surprise that John Davis and Lou Barlow’s reunion as The Folk Implosion has continued so wholeheartedly for a quite lengthy UK tour.
Having first emerged thirty odd years ago in Leicester, as a lesser-known and more bucolic presence in the UK’s post-rock micro-boom, the longevity of Lazarus Clamp recently feels like it has followed the operational influence of chameleonic Chicago legends Eleventh Dream Day. Not in the sense that the band has had a major label dalliance to survive and evolve on from, but in the way that Michael Larkin and co. have latterly only come together to record when the songs, people, day-jobs, family commitments and logistics all allow -- which can take literally years.
While the gravitational pull and distraction of the festive season leads to a slowdown of new releases in most music scenes, in the expanded electronic sound universe, things carry on pretty much regardless 365 days a year. Hence, the need to wrap a few things up again in a like-minded -- but not limiting – bundle once more, just to keep up.
Yet, out of the blue in the middle of this year came word of a new solo album -- via the Drums & Wires Recordings label run by her erstwhile bandmate and still-fellow Seattleite Michael Wells -- in the shape of the very welcoming and much-welcomed Beckonings. A richly diverse collection that reacquaints us with Torgerson’s skills as a singer, a song-interpreter, an arranger and a collaborator, as well as her lesser-explored role as a writer.
Whereas its aforementioned predecessor presented itself as a widescreen and eclectic set, this year’s six-song Last April is a far more intensely concentrated and intimate affair. Assembled out of necessity, to process the grief from the premature passing of a close family member, this is an extremely poignant suite of reflections.
Latterly, although Bardo Pond’s new activities have slowed somewhat, the band’s bounteous back catalogue and previously unreleased tape vault extractions are being given considered curatorial care through regular releases on Fire Records, Three Lobed and Matador. With the latter label having just exhumed 1999’s churningly squally Set And Setting long-player, alongside Melt Away, a double-LP of choice rarities built-up around the ensemble’s four-album Matador affiliation, the time seemed more than ripe to converse over email with Michael Gibbons on the past, present and future of Bardo Pond...
This Precious Recordings-curated collection, from the long-gone Reading-birthed Saloon, comes with some weight of expectations attached, being the first LP-sized vinyl product generated from the label’s rooting around the BBC session vaults, after a remarkably reliable run of EP releases. However, such weight is quickly lifted from the first airings of these side-apiece audio chronicles of two visits to Maida Vale.
Visiting the international DIY electronica scene market these days never leaves pre-disposed listeners with a shortage of produce to choose from. However, with so many common core ingredients in abundance – such as vintage modular kit flavourings and conceptual protein – zooming in on those seemingly most able to refine their recipes, is a means to limit overstocking the synth pantry shelves. Enter then, four relatively divergent but loosely familial platters for a tasting session.