The way the oud steps sprightly around the treacherous tracks and narrow passes like a mountain goat is a delight to follow; and as it moves, there are times where the electronics scatter like birds causing a whirling dance in the dust swirls.
album review
2660 posts
Although only coming in at a little under half an hour, their third album conjoins numerous guest vocalists from all around the world with generally rhythmic but extraordinarily varied musical soundscapes to produce a journey that never lets up.
...Some sounds just find themselves fitting a mood in combination with a moment and an environmental space. Which is perfectly okay, despite what less nuanced opinion holders might decree. Enter then, two albums that best fit the listening niche for Sunday mornings bathed in a blaze of autumn sunshine… which is handy given their close seasonally-aligned arrival.
..things haven’t changed much with the way the album is structured in relation to the band’s previous studio offerings. We have four shorter tracks on (the virtual in my case) side one, followed by a much longer track filling out side two. The album is supposedly themed on ghosts and things that seem to exist but don’t..
...weaving textural space-laden soundscapes from varied electronic means to concoct a series of pieces that describe journeys of vast distances, but experienced from some sense of womb-like calm.
Stitched together with lots of intricate instrumental details and vocal layers, The Counting Game generously reveals its shrewdly crafted strengths over successive spins, to make it one of Antietam’s most adventurous and most accessible go-to long-players.
...thanks to the enthusiasm of Rothko's Mark Beazley, a collection of the poems has been given suitable soundscape backings and with that the opportunity to escape back into the vibrant, grimy streets from whence the initial inspiration sprung.
Asylum Variations shows no retread of the previous album, but a full-on evolution of what was laid down before, that familiar disaffected voice strung between the splashy synthesis and pedal-pawed bite.
...patience reveals the record’s genuinely rewarding virtues via the divergent matrices of its aforementioned arrangements, even if its significance in the wider canon will take a little while longer to determine, principally through ever-enthralling live presentations.
It is quite a brave thing to put together an eleven-piece ensemble for your first solo outing, but composer and accordionist Kirsten Symczycz has surrounded herself with a group of fine and sympathetic players that do great justice to her seven long and winding instrumental tales.
...the artists behind the three new long-form releases and one archival set below draw their strength from such sonic æther funnelling, both consciously and subliminally.
A groundbreaking entity which later fractured into its own versions of the original dream, never to be whole again, and now some fifty-plus years later, the scattered survivors have penned four independent albums that celebrate what each brings to the unfathomable sum of its parts.
Hopefully having garnered some interest from the Japanese psych-ly inclined hordes, Black Editions are here probably more about the business of shedding light on the weirder and less legendary pieces.
..is perhaps the most personal yet, using the extraordinary mix of soundtrack vibes, funky jazz groove and introspective piano to explore what it means to love in this current world climate.
Although more organically earthbound and less sonically expansive overall, this triumvirate of nascent offerings doesn’t simply dispense thin sketchy outlines for Weaver’s latter-day technicoloured presentations.
..reassuringly sustaining a reputation for molten brilliance in the live arena, it’s arguable that Prolapse’s creative stock has never been higher. Which makes another dive into the group’s historically healthy working relationship with BBC radio producers and DJs suitably enticing.
...these records, finally, are perhaps two sides of the Monk coin -- one a stretching and contortion of what was already there, one pinning Monk to the mast of improvised music and sailing off into the whorling void. Big up yourselves, everyone concerned.
An impressive set of tunes with real sonic depth, concluding with the soft plumage of “‘Concrete Conversation”‘s undulatory rhythmic with croaking robotics slowly frequency combed to silence.