Precious Recordings is clearly in it for an Olympic marathon, albeit with a few sprints along the way. Hence, following on rapidly from a still-fresh trio of seven-inch singles from newbies and returnees, comes two ten-inch outings, bringing fresh sounds from veteran players and a near-forgotten aural slice of the past, respectively.
EP review
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Nick Godfrey’s Precious Recordings label continues to be one of the most reliable historical route-finders for visits inside the BBC vaults, in parallel to promising recent forays into releasing new recordings. From such navigation, fresh archival spotlights are put upon the familiar and near-famous, as well as those previously misplaced in the mists of musical time. Enter then, three 10-inch EP platters -- bolstered by bonus digital content -- from the latter camp.
Dipping just a toe into the DIY electronica streams these days still requires some weighty waders to avoid being soaked by the volume of material. Hence, another amalgamated approach is needed to fish for some of the most notable new wares.
So what business do they have deploying experimental music under the radar? Well, it’s all in the name: NMIXX — (Pick) NMIXX, if you will? This approach in their first single, “O,O”, wasn’t immediately embraced by audiences and critics. Multiple shifting styles and frequent unexpected jump-cut changes weren’t easily digested, even by an audience that has come to expect split-second editing in both music and videos.
The documentary evidence of an accepted invitation to Maida Vale from the Yeovil-birthed quartet, this is an unpretentiously charming C86-era memento. Fleeting in duration yet brim-full of melodic energy and youthful camaraderie, these four recordings may possess plenty of period trappings, but they contain an elevating freshness.
This latest confection, all proceeds for which go toward Worldwide Cancer Research, possibly defines the term short but sweet. Actually, maybe sweet isn't quite the right word, because the amount of emotion and atmosphere that is generated in a little over seven minutes on Page Of Pentacles is quite simply extraordinary.
After branching further out of apparent comfort zones across 2024 in terms of content and format manoeuvres, Precious Recordings pivots once again, around the turn of the New Year, with three self-set-boundary-breaking releases.
Barbican Estate are a Japanese trio now based in London and this release for Feral Child compiles four previously available tracks that were either downloads or pressed on limited cassette runs. Because of this, there is pretty good variety in the selection and with a running time of a little under half an hour, there is plenty of opportunity for them to spread their magic.
The latest release from our favourite pastoral bedroom psychedelicist finds Robert Sotelo in the esteemed company of Mary Currie where they weave four treatsome tales from the heart and mind.
Feral Child are celebrating in style with their fiftieth release; in a really stylish glossy disco bag, Italian experimental adventurers Cloud Canyons have been given a makeover by Dom Keen's very own Studio Kosmische. Over two ten-minute tracks, Cloud Canyons share a cut from their recent album and one track just for this release with Dom to see what fresh magic he can uncover.
The latest four-tracker brought to us via the conduit of Godfrey’s basement flat HQ flips back to the aforementioned sprawling C86 scene, which continues to fascinate Discogs hunter-gatherers, for the sole BBC session from Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes, a band that dispensed a handful of singles / EPs across the late-‘80s and one album in 1990.
The EP spins out on Dorothy’s silvery words to a backdrop of softly brushed instrumentation, “Moon”’s cradling circadians bringing to mind the eerie elegance of Anaïs Nin’s poetics on Bells Of Atlantis, its dream-caught atmospherics cloudy with vaporous validation.
The internet is a weird and wonderful place. The music industry is also a weird and wonderful place. So when these two worlds collide, strange and beautiful things happen. For many years, bands would play their way through dingy little clubs and venues until they could get signed, recorded and sent on local, then international tours. This is still an ever-present phenomenon, but the world wide web has […]
Thrill Jockey This is the disco of slurs, of slurry, of slurrrs. Everything seems wasted, in the sense of my favourite Donna Summer track (yep, “Wasted”). Even the hi-hats sound shattered, like you’ve found yourself at Shoom sometime around 1987, the real turn of the century; still dancing but full of MDMA on the down, starting to feel your calves give out but not wanting the music to […]
(self-released) Produced for sale at UnicaZürn’s incredible IKLECTIK performance earlier this year, this thirty-minute CD-R features three live improvisations that are totally in the zone without edits nor overdubs. The slow and deliberate churn of track one, “Ancident”, sets the scene, its scattering fractals spaciously , an Arabian flavour that seems to tattoo the amorphous sands, pencilled in by scarab-chasing harmonics.
Post 3 Electro Knights is a recent collaborative affair from members of Leeds band Bushpilot, who were active back in the nineties; here they have chosen electronic music as their jumping off point, an experiment in synthesis that finds the three members happily exploring the far reaches of their chosen instruments, usefully listed on the back of these two sprawling EPs. Recorded back in 2019/2020, the music travels […]
Zam Zam The solo project of Bristol-based artist Christelle Atenstaedt, Orryx’s ethereal pull is undeniable, the guitar-scapes of her earlier EP now enriched with beats and keyboard kinetics, and of course that beguiling voice which glues the package together.
In Real Life So 2020’s Pompi EP from Meth Math was one of the highlights of the year for me, despite the fact that I flounder to describe it any more accurately than the phrase “ketty reggaeton”. And this new EP is not very reggaeton. Which is fine but they have entirely pushed me down the rabbithole of reggaeton (tl;dr – Bad Bunny is a trans hero; Daddy […]