Essence Music Recorded as part of a travelling art exposition of the same name, the sessions released as America Here And Now finds Expo Seventy in a rare four-piece configuration, mainstay Justin Wright joined for the sessions recorded in Kansas City by Aaron Osborne of Monta At Odds and Mysterious Clouds on bass alongside drummers Mike Vera (Shroud Of Winter) and David Williams.
Album review
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Clouds Hill James Johnston often seems omnipresent, having lent his dark twang to the likes of Lydia Lunch, The Bad Seeds, Faust, PJ Harvey and of course his own baby, Gallon Drunk, over the past few decades. It comes as a bit of a surprise then that The Starless Room is actually his first ever solo release under his own name.
Bureau B This is the second instalment of Bureau B‘s Con-struct series, with Schneider TM taking up the posthumous reins, grappling with Schnitzler‘s daunting archive. In direct contrast to Pyrolator‘s take on the subject (a few years back), this dwells on the more investigate side of Mr Conrad‘s oeuvre, something Mr Dresselhaus gets down’n’dirty with, eking out a host of abstract vitality, wrestling with sonic life-forms that defy your […]
Touch Lustmord has long had an affinity with space, both the sonic space of his heavily dub-inspired soundscapes and the actual physical space of the cosmos. For people of Lustmord’s and my generation, space was our future — where we all expected to be hanging out by the start of this century.
Hallow Ground I’m not going to use the C word, but he’s not hiding from it. As much as Danny Hyde is his own man, and Electric Sewer Age is his own creation, there are several tantalising trails and in-jokes and red herrings for the fanatic(al). Some of these traces are obvious
Atomhenge Hawkwind will inevitably be remembered for “Silver Machine” — an unlikely (even in 1972) top ten hit — and Space Ritual, possibly the greatest live album of all time. From 1970 to 1973, they were indeed the voice of the underground, the UK’s version of Grateful Dead, had that group been any good…
Tonefloat The final instalment in Dirk Serries‘ long-running series of releases, Resolution Heart sets a fittingly uplifting mood for the end of a process that started with the first Microphonics CD in 2008.
Hornschaft Back in 2014, two guys spent one day recording music for a 10″ record in an old school in Nowa Hut to accompany a hardback book of photographs. The result of photographer Giordano Simoncini and musician Alessandro Incorvaia‘s labours, hand-numbered and limited to 500, I hold in my hands and it is a thing of beauty.
Double Six / Domino This is a very welcome reissue of John Cale‘s 1992 solo live album and on listening to it again, I am struck by various things. We know him so well as producer — The Stooges, Nico, Jonathan Richman, Patti Smith, etc — and as a collaborator (Lou Reed, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Spedding, LaMonte Young, etc), but what this album shows us is just […]
Benedict Taylor: dashing young blade of the London (and beyond) free improv scene. He’s a busy man and a fine player and in possession of a veritable encyclopaedia of techniques. The scratchy ones, the frittery ones, the ones that sound a bit like a helicopter in the distance. But not showy, in case you’re worried that it’s going to sound like a viola lesson.
Sulatron OK, are you ready for take off? A big heavy stoner riff, swirling noise and a cosmic chant vocal from Komet Lulu — it can only be the title track from the reissue of Electric Moon’s classic The Doomsday Machine.
Bureau B Well, Bureau B have unleashed another Camera album like some hyperactive missile of joy for us all to experience. This is the third LP from the Berlin duo and this time there is a lot more to it than the feeling of Neu! songs being played by adolescent teenagers with too much energy. There is energy in abundance, but this is tempered with real thought as […]
The Alphabet Business Concern The first taste of this album (as you’d expect) is a salty one, buffered by a sea breeze, Sarah Smith‘s eerie delivery peeking through spidery fingerings of instrumentation. It’s a short atmospheric swell that ignites an introspective shiver, a curiosity that’s quickly burnished in light and airy intoxications.
Sulatron Tanzlinde is the début album from Italian psych band Sherpa and is very impressive for a first LP. Containing ten songs, it spirals across the full psychedelic spectrum of many-coloured hues, but also touches on elements of progressive rock within some of its sound textures.
So. I did some reviews of the first batch of Every Contact Leaves A Trace releases, which were fine indeed. And here we are, just two short years on, in a world that looks slightly different. And yet, on plod sound-art micro-labels, furrowing obstinate fields. I say that in a fashion that might sound derisory, but if I know one thing about ECLAT label-head Seth Cooke, it’s that he’s […]
Self-released Most new bands were previously other less new bands, and so songwriters behind Bloom (Megan and Emily) used to be part of The Beautiful Word, who were Brighton-based indie-ish breezes sharing borders with whimsy and twee but (mercifully) never fully occupying those territories. The Beautiful Word were great, but they’re not here any more and (ahem) from that seed grew Bloom. (Sorry). There’s a bit of a […]
Kranky I remember seeing Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt‘s band, whilst touring with the aptly-titled Painjerk at the much missed Croft in Bristol. We were incredibly thankful for the aural balm that Emeralds provided after the assault of Painjerk. It was akin to bathing your face in a warm sunrise after being hit by lightning.
Drag City It has been a tough couple of years for David Pajo. A suicide attempt after discovering his wife’s affair was followed by a motorcycle accident that left him temporarily wheelchair-bound. We would not be blamed for thinking that music was the last thing on his mind, but Drag City have done us all the great service of releasing Highway Songs, the latest collection of tracks under […]