Vocalist Randi Pontoppidan and vibraphonist Martin Fabricius met while studying under Jamaladeen Tacuma at a jazz workshop in 2016. Jamaladeen insisted on recording an off the cuff session with the two and after that release, the pair continued working together, collating the pieces to be recorded for this album whilst working on other projects. Clouds' long gestation introduces a sense of comfort between the two players and an otherworldly ethereality that places the eleven compositions collected here well outside any prevailing styles.
Album review
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...the artwork's text resembles (at a squint) something like a boustrophedon, but there's a strong sense that the label Keraunograph have spent a lot of time thinking about font-weights, spacing and those typographical niceties. What I'm saying is that where the sleeve actively resists identification by typical modes, there's emphasis placed elsewhere that makes it identifiable, if not 'legible'.
This is the second outing for Paul Osborne's Project Gemini and for the opening snippet I wrote "woodland samba Dr Who theme with flute". This gives you some indication of the number of touchstones that are present on Colours & Light and it is a good title as well, because the album is all about the vibrancy of the outdoor world in all its glories, taking in funk elements, baggy twists and soundtrack drama in its inimitable stride.
...the sixth tone harmonium is a harmonium with three registers that's tuned very differently to your average twelve-tone equal temperament piano. The sound here is "very microtoney". The daddy of this is Alois Hába (1893-1973), a Czech composer who saw greater harmonic possibilities from expanding the reach of Western tonality, rather than the increased compositional complexity of twelve tone (as created by Arnold Schönberg).
...a selection of songs that give an indication to the flavour of the album that would have succeeded 2009's Mother Is The Milky Way'. At over an hour long but squeezing in thirty-six tracks, it is very much the musical equivalent of a fistful of snapshots, some coming in at thirty seconds and feels a little like surreptitiously leafing through an artist's sketchbook.
Blueblut ... veer around the edges of forms, picking the little slippery snippets they like and stitching them loosely into and avant-prog stew that simmers nicely. The jauntiness and good humour of the playing is there for all to hear and across six incredibly diverse workouts, they take the listener by the hand across the playgrounds and beerhalls of their minds.
Folio is a new thing that Greyfade are doing; on top of their gorgeously designed and delivered records,they're putting together books that complement and wrap the recordings in a load more context. We get a record, Three Cellos By Kenneth Kirschner and a book alongside it. The introduction to the book sets out their store in this regard -- a record is more than just the given digital artefact, it's an accumulation of a load of work. I don't think the idea is to take away the recording in its place as the primary 'form' of a work, but there's certainly a commitment to furnishing the recording with a bunch of context.
Adventurous Canadian sound sculptor and songwriter Kee Avil sounds as though she is disconcertingly whispering in your ear on her latest Constellation release, such is the intimate production. The heartfelt and slightly disturbing revelations make for a claustrophobic experience as the words are draped and slathered across atonal guitar and creeping, sinister electronics. At times it is a strange, harsh, almost industrial setting for her low-key delivery; and at others, it becomes more expansive, leaning in a twisted folk direction.
Having spent time in well-respected indie bands Veronica Falls, Ultimate Painting and Proper Ornaments, songwriter James Hoare is finally stepping out on his own. Sheltering under the moniker Penny Arcade, this collection of dreamy, intimate reflections that hint at seaside memories and rural idylls are a step in a fresh direction, albeit a sleepy and melancholic one.
The Dar Es Salaam duo build on their live breakout with one of the best records of the year Sisso is a bulletproof legend of the Singeli scene at this point; his production stands as a core pillar of his label, which formed the backbone of 2018’s Sounds Of Sisso compilation. It was this album that first broke the Dar Es Salaam sound in Europe, and brought its compiler, Nyege Nyege Tapes, into focus as one of the most exciting labels on Earth.
Keeping his amorphous Angles group at a steady eight and enlisting a string quartet as well as Other Woman performer Elle-Kari Sander as vocalist, they have constructed a far-reaching and emotionally resonant suite that reflects a self-indulgent modern humanity.
What a IDM scuzzy-jazz-noise joy this is. A total fresh skewer on dance music where the ‘I’ is for injured and the dance bit is an interpretative crisp-bag of Ian Curtis-like scutterings. The fragmented energy spurring between Anthony Brown on upright bass and Aron Ward on assorted electronics and effects is a wonderful thing, slipping into the ill-fitting shoes of a host of worn-out genres to monkey-spanner some seriously unhinged magic.
Managing to do so much more with a guitar, bass, drums set-up, they push and pull in new directions, partly thanks to three very different songwriters and also due to the myriad of mysterious sounds wrestled from the guitar by Jason Sanford and his boxes of electronic trickery. It is a wild and at points uncomfortable ride, with three diverse vocalists stretching song structure into taut, complicated patterns, pummelling instruments and insinuating messages into eager ears.
This line-up of Elephant9 has been together for the best part of fifteen years now and although keyboard maestro Ståle Storløkken is the main songwriter and ideas person, the strength of the trio lies in its interplay and the flexibility of rhythm section Nikolai Hængsle and Torstein Lofthus. Although a little influenced by '70s prog, Ståle's variety of keyboards, including Hammond L100, Minimoog and Arp Pro and the forward-looking, constantly searching bass and drums puts this very much in a modern context.
For decades, and across an extensive discography, Six Organs Of Admittance / Ben Chasny have split the difference between delicate folk and brooding drone, usually by placing them next to each other in successive tracks. Along the way, Chasny has dipped into many musical currents, deploying middle eastern sounds, psychedelic builds, more and less extreme drones, gossamer vocals, and a long list of collaborators.
Not that Tarantula Heart is about forcing Philip Larkin to eat wasps either; but come on, if anyone was going to write an album about forcing Philip Larkin to eat wasps it'd probably be Buzz Osborne, who has lost none of his energy -- or his famous hair -- in the forty years since Melvins first decided to crank up the bass.
Having set up a new studio in Margate, the freedom and sounds of life by the sea have subtly insinuated themselves in to the pieces here which, along with the album celebrating the sixty-third anniversary of Yuri Gagarin being the first human in space, lends it a strange dichotomy between the weightlessness and movement of being in orbit and the freshness and positivity of time spent idling on the seafront.
A product of the ever-shifting sands of the group and hot on the heels of VHF’s Hypnotape comes this prime spoken word smothering from those sunburnt folks over at Three Lobed.