4AD Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun (1987) This was the band’s third masterpiece, and a firm favourite of mine. The otherworldliness of Spleen And Ideal is here leaning towards the symphonic, a neo-classical oomph held on an animated skyline. As with Ideal, Brendan Perry is in fine fettle, dedicating a whole side to pondering life’s woes, drawing inspiration from the historical, mythical, going for the emotional jugular in […]
Album review
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Bureau B There were two main reasons that I was eager to hear the latest Automat LP; firstly you cannot go wrong with Bureau B, from current albums by the likes of Faust and Camera to re-issues of important back catalogue from the likes of Conrad Schnitzler, Asmus Tietchens, Palais Schaumburg, etc, they represent the cream of German underground music; secondly was the involvement of Jochen Arbeit, latter-day member of Einstürzende Neubauten and guitar slinger […]
Nomadic Island Musically, Olga Szymula‘s début LP is like a toothpaste tube of psilocybin rainbows and juttering dislocations. A sizzle of torn circuitries and bright petroleum blisters that spill haunt-o- delically from its instrumental start into the mysteriously entitled ‘Ø’.
Gizeh There’s a moment on The Stone Is Not Hit By The Sun, Nor Carved With A Knife, not long into “The Stone”, where Nadja hit their full metal mark, ramp up the drone-doom riffs hard and it becomes essential to reach for the volume knob in order to bring the levels up yet further.
Drone The fifth volume in Drone Records‘ signature series of Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone compilation LPs continues the label’s commitment to releasing the best in long-form sonority and — of course — drones from around the world.
Zoharum Occasionally known as Navel, whose Ambient series of albums of last decade included Eno-referencing titles such as Music For Spaceports, Günter Schlienz has been making delicately shaded melodic drones and curling electronica since the 1990s. His latest release comes courtesy of Zoharum, and concerns itself with the theme of autumn.
Play Loud! Lasciviously teasing your ear; this is an album full of spontaneity, sparking in the flutter of odd juxtaposition. A scramble footed Partch with a pinch of Bertoia’s love of reverberation, she treads anarchically out on her own, tasting the shapes, sensations.
Northern Spy Some guff you’ll read everywhere: by a large margin the best-known sitar player and largely responsible for the popularising of Indian classical music. Unfortunately, it’s still a world I don’t know a great deal about; I know there’s a difference between Hindustani and Carnatic Indian classical music, but precisely what the difference is, I’m not sure.
Hassle Frnkiero and the cellabration are reborn under a new name. Familiar and new at the same time, this album shares some things with its predecessor, but is completely different too. Rawer vocals, more chaos: Parachutes is an album that will not go unheard, and will resonate in the minds of those who hear it.
Blackcat A suitably rumbunctious beast, Unruly Milk‘s Spilaggges combines the eclectic guitar playing of Joe Thompson (also of Hey Colossus and Henry Blacker) with the rippling interventions of Kek (Hacker Farm and Ice Bird Spiral) to make for a neatly under-produced début album. Add in occasional vocals from Elisa Thompson and some unspecified help from Stefano Giaconne and the results are a woozy wander through a West Country psychedelic mindscape
Rocket Sometimes you want music you can just joyfully wig out to. For exactly these moments there is Goat, for which I am very grateful. Goat have an unselfconscious and unflinching commitment to their music. It’s a celebration. A testament to emotionally transformational power of music, but thankfully without any underlying philosophy other than manifestly really enjoying what they do. Their euphoric delivery, which comes across in recorded […]
Dekorder Starts very Steven Stapleton-like with a manic woman in full-on polka-dot phobia jabbering like some Echo Poeme cut-up, well versed in disturbing vocal spikes. The next track leaping towards some brume-like contact play, electroacoustic grit in the psychic ointment. A disconcerting churn caught on a glass-rim hum diving the industrial before dipped into a dichotomy of digitised distress.
Heavy Rural This sounds like home. It’s slow, like Somerset. It creeps up on you, like the sunlight splitting off the top of Glastonbury Tor. It gets where it’s going in its own time; there’s absolutely nothing about this release which feels forced. Neil Mortimer (Urthona) and Michael J York (Cyclobe, Téléplasmiste, The Stargazer’s Assistant) have a beautiful sense of quietude as their music crawls majestically over the landscape.
Cherry Red I must admit to having come late to Luke Haines. I managed to avoid Britpop almost entirely for reasons largely connected to booze, drugs and industrial rock, but my vague memory of the whole era is one of a terrible national mistake from which only Haines and Jarvis Cocker appear to have emerged with any semblance of dignity. Recent years have seen me falling in love […]
Trashmouth Sweeping in on a waft of churning organ and pounding drums, Taman Shud‘s second album Oracle War has more than a whiff of classic seventies grungy acid-frazzled rock to its fragrantly-flecked switchback riffs and tight-as-you-like chops and changes. As soon as the wall of sound starts propping up their house of the holy noise, it’s impossible not to see images of dank basements, oil-wheels turning and the air heavy […]
Le Petit Mignon / Staalplaat Monno‘s 2013 album Cheval Ouvert has been spruced up for this art edition by Le Petit Mignon, pressed on two glorious discs of purple/white and gold/white vinyl. Encased in a fold-out sleeve that is a work of obvious dedication and considerable aesthetic delight, the four tracks inside offer a perhaps less obvious but no less satisfying a route to gratification as its packaging.
House Of Mythology The gentle slope of ambience that ignites this baby keeps its cards very close to its chest. That twinkling starlight and temple solemnity give very little away. Those odd squelchy bits that sound like Mr Burroughs‘ typewriter turned flesh mingling with the more tuneful. Those vaporised swirls erupting in Bar Maldoror fissures (more Current gasps than Nurse naughtiness; I was half expecting Mr Tibet to dip […]
Zoharum Deep like the desert where the unchecked winds create and carry the drones, Gaap Kvlt‘s Jinn — which follows on from 2014’s Void — draws on field recordings from north Africa to evoke the baking days and cold nights of the Sahara.