Gizeh Leeds six-piece Tomorrow We Sail seem to be steering away from that city’s prevailing need for noisy stuff and heading into calmer, more melancholy territory with this, their second album.
Album review
Aagoo Italian guitarist and producer Eraldo Bernocchi has worked on a wide range of projects since forming Sigillum S in the eighties. He has collaborated on projects with Harold Budd, Markus Stockhausen, Robin Guthrie and Russell Mills among many others. From working with avant-garde noise to almost world music, Solitary Universe finds Bernocchi and Chihei Hatakeyama in a more ambient mode.
Consouling Sounds There is very little to give the game away on the sleeve to Monnik‘s second album Bedevaart. Besides the title, artist and three track names, there is no more to go on.
Beats In Space There’s a soft interference about this record, a sense of loss; it’s beautifully produced throughout and sort of drifts under you as an album (not a bad thing at all), but there’s a real sense of dislocation; you never know quite what it is you’re hearing.
Kranky Dedekind Cut has been extremely busy in the last couple of years what with one album on Non and a whole plethora of self-released EPs. He has obviously been noticed as this second album is being released on Kranky, happy home of all things leftfield and with an ambient slant.
Cherry Red For me, Felt were one of the most important bands that this country produced in the 1980s, and in Lawrence they possessed a true English eccentric visionary who deserves to be viewed in a class of his own. The idea of starting a band with a view to releasing ten albums and ten singles over the course of ten years is a masterpiece of self-imposed marketing
Beggars Arkive Dance was a change in direction for Gary Numan after four albums where he explored dark, cold electronic music, and he obviously thought it was time to move away from that area. This being 1981, it was only now that a lot of other popular artists were just beginning to explore Numan’s minimalist synth sound for themselves, and suddenly the UK charts were flooded with bands […]
Nonplace Burnt Friedman is one of those mystery names that seems to often be involved in so many collaborations. His work with Jaki Liebezeit in Cyclopean was a deliciously rhythmic stew and his stuff with David Sylvian, particularly the Nine Horses album was really lovely, so to be confronted with a compilation of his own work was a pleasant surprise and then to discover that it covers a […]
Trilithon On headphones this Transits remix album rules, even better blaring through the speakers. Really needles the betweens, plucks aspects from its tidal original, spectrum-snakes its brooding intent, kicks out a dance of contemplative delectables. Over two and a half hours of music derived from the same twenty-three minute source material
American Dollar Bill : Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous To Look At Face On Thrill Jockey So so so… I’ve got probably more Keiji Haino albums than anyone reasonably needs. My heirarchy tends to look like Haino solo > Fushitsusha > anything else. He’s got a pretty intimidating discography — more like the little-and-often of free improv and jazz than magnum opuses of rockism. The right answer […]
RVNG Intl. Mark Renner was a mystery name to me, and because of that I must admit to an element of surprise at the attention lavished on the packaging by RVNG on this collection of tracks. The tracks date from electronic music’s halcyon days of the 1980s and cover Mark’s initial foray into recorded sound in 1982 up to the point where he seems to have put music […]
City Slang I had a real love for Calexico back when they first started. There was something about Joey Burns and John Convertino disappearing into a shack in Arizona somewhere and reproducing the sound of their environment in such a charming and understated way. That dusty, warm sound, the sensation of lounging underneath the canopy of an orange grove as these subtle, Mexican-influenced, horn-infused delights float around your head like the […]
Aphelion Editions Straight out of Bristol’s thriving underground comes this forty-minute slice of unnerving ambience from EMEI, AKA Louise Brady. Vexing her inner witch, this fine example of tonal paganism more than matches the haunting abstractions that package it all up.
Riot Season Familia de Lobos is a six-piece from Buenos Aires formed in 2016 and their first album, released as a limited LP on Riot Season, is a fantastic mix of warm 1970s-inflected desert guitar music and more traditional Latin American sounds.
Care In The Community The conversation on Improvisations is first rate, smarting with witty crosswires and argumentative animals. Charles Hayward‘s percussive verve is more than a match for Thurston Moore‘s mauling muscle, both parties templeing temptation fluidly, seeding your mind in animated gusto.
Drone Now into its sixth volume of lovingly curated drones, the latest collection in this series brings together Nam-Khar, Markian Volkov, For Kings And Queens and Kevin Durr. The four contributors offer up a varied palette of clanks and heaving synthesis
Zoharum Glitching its way out of the speakers with an eerie sense of space and place, Raskol’nikov and Hjalmar Hach mix environmental sounds and close-mic’d recordings with abstracted electronics, and together they set out on a mission to imaginary parks in the far yonder, into then up above the clouds.
Drag City After four years away, No Age return with a follow up to 2013’s An Object, released on Sub Pop. They seem to have left that spiritual home, headed for the more experimental environs of Drag City and have now released Snares Like A Haircut.