One Little Independent The latest album from Scottish inventor and sound artist Lomond Campbell tips a hat to fellow tape loop enthusiasts William Basinski and Steve Reich, but goes one step further by actually engineering the machinery himself. It involves some complicated device which includes tape loops, a rotating magnetic disc and a couple of eccentric cams that ensure that every second of the soundscapes presented here is […]
Album review
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Klanggalerie Long-time contributor to and performer with Eyeless In Gaza and wife of Martyn Bates, Elizabeth S has just released her first solo album. Gather Love presents twelve tracks that texturally invite you to ask what it means to be human, sparkles with a withering warmth that stays with you.
Constellation Judging from the artwork of the latest Jerusalem In My Heart album and the fact that Qalaq is explained as feeling of deep worry, the state of play in the Middle East is a constant concern to Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. The renowned soundscaper and producer has managed to use this album as a representation of the tension that prevails in the region, yet also shows the beauty that […]
Mute Phew‘s New Decade strips it all away, orbits the sultry sizzle of fragmented abstracts and of course Hiromi Moritani’s vocal dynamics that magnetically grab-bag. Born in the pandemic, the album’s whispering contours were a result of wishing to not annoy the neighbours too much, an oh-so-quiet verve that’s best suited to and appreciated on headphones.
Upset The Rhythm Upset The Rythm‘s radar is always sharp and can be relied on to serve up a healthy antidote to the burger’n’fries musical factory that clogs up our cultural arteries. Companioning the creative, often at the expense of commercialism they go, scouting fresh talent, scouring the musical roadside for neglected gems, and I’m guessing their recent journey with Normil Hawaiians has bought fresh dividends in the […]
Discus Martin Archer is once again proving himself one of the hardest-working people in music with two very different collaborations in quick succession. It seems that every other release that comes from Discus involves his playing, but there is always an extraordinary diversity in styles and sounds. The latest albums here from avant-rock / prog jazz trio Das Rad and an improv duo with guitarist and old friend […]
Rage Peace Ex-Prince Rama frontwoman Taraka Larson returns with her debut solo album, trading in digital exotica for freakout psych garage jams to excellent effect. Prince Rama, also sometimes known as Prince Rama Of Ayodhya, encapsulate a certain particularly far-out strain of late 2000s / early 2010s psychedelia. Darlings of the blogosphere from the very start, they represented a unique moment when particularly weird music was breaking out […]
Disciples / R.A.T.S. It’s been a long time since Pale Saints‘ Ian Masters and His Name Is Alive’s Warren Defever worked together as ESP Summer on their country-tinged 1995 self-titled release, so it came as a pleasing surprise when the project was mysteriously resurrected last year – even more so the strange disembodied ambience that they gathered into that tantalising instrumental offering. Now the duo return to flirt […]
One Little Independent With their second album, AVAWAVES, the duo of Aisling Brouwer and Anna Phoebe, found themselves stranded far from one another during the enforced partition of lockdown, but still with a burning desire to collaborate on new music. The synchronicity of their ideas and sounds is in no way affected by the isolation and if anything, there is a sense of longing that plays throughout Chrysalis […]
Nomark Warning: this review will be extremely biased as I think Amon Tobin is dope as hell. Coming back from my dad’s during my younger years entailed many long bus trips on the 76 towards Waterloo station. To help pass the time, Dad would lend me his old iPod, and give me albums to fill my ears with as I gazed out of the window at the swarming […]
Crammed Discs Brussels in the early ’80s must have been a really cool place to be, with Marc Hollander starting up Crammed Discs just as Tuxedomoon arrive, spreading their stateside art rock sensibilities across the city. Lurking in a bar in the centre was Benjamin Lew, tinkering with an MS-10 and producing his own from found sounds and an experimental outlook. Meeting Tuxedomoon’s Steven Brown was a match […]
Rednetic The eleven tracks spread across the latest release from 4T Thieves apparently owe something to Boards Of Canada; but having never listened to that act, I can only say that the woozy soundscapes and lethargic trip hop beats captured here have a real effect on the listener, their odd textures and slipperiness bringing to mind the sort of lonely, sweeping, slow motion vistas of Bowery Electric.
Lumberton Trading Company After Siôn Orgon’s brilliant Black Object comes this freshly minted dozen. Dust is a mini LP whose first track takes no prisoners, births this baby in muscled metal, words dark’n’glistening, then slamming a singular technoid, a ballsy brilliance that surrounds itself in a jaded tinsel epitaph.
Fallen Moon John Sellekaers‘ latest Feral Cities album is a series of drone-based soundscapes that fit well with the brooding but slightly abstracted cover image. There is a sense of solitude that runs through Arcs And Layers, but the sort of solitude that is bracing and life-affirming. The jittery opening to “White Heat” echoes around your head as the unstable bass looks for a way of settling down. […]
Here we are then, a big ole' retrospective of Faust's... if not golden era, then certainly their best-known stuff. "Canonical" krautrock. And of course krautrock is a silly term at its silliest in reference to Faust -- the German band featuring least Germans, singing in French and English and German
Upset The Rhythm Here’s another tasty treat from those excellent Upset The Rhythm peeps. Dark World is a twenty-two track exposé of Normil Hawaiians’ early verve, showcasing a formative pool of edgy punk / post-new wave that would finally mutate / mature into the arty haemorrhage that was their debut More Wealth Than Money and beyond. Back then things were quite fluid, sponge-like, a many-tentacled beast collected here […]
Thrill Jockey The bringing together of Montreal’s Big|Brave and Portland’s The Body has produced a gratifying collision culminating in a series of tales taking in slow, ancient folk and creeping, hypnotic post-metal in equal measure, laying them bare and then piling noise and heartache into the mix to provide an album that enthrals ever more with repeated listens. On Leaving None But Small Birds, this temporary seven-piece has […]
Relapse In a world ridden with plague, what could be more timely than black metal? And in a world facing impending climate catastrophe, what could be more timely that deep ecology? And in a world regulated by time, what could be more timely than timelessness? Fortunately, there’s a band who do all three. And a new album by Wolves In The Throne Room is just the kind of […]