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.
EP review
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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 […]
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 […]
(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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Shaytoon Following on from last year’s Maramar cassette, Aria Rostami returns with a further exploration of devious beat-driven electronica. This time around, Bolbol is a seven-track EP featuring mixes of the title track from Sote and Sepehr which ally curls of electronica and mysterious keyboard refrains with the kind of […]
(self-released) This Comet Of Any Substance release, Full of Seeds, Bursting With Its Own Corrections — which can perhaps be described as an EP due to its short running time — has the greatest air of mystery about it. There is something disorientating about the woozy instrumentation that flickers and […]
Upset The Rhythm If the Frank Sidebottom homage of a cover doesn’t grab you, the explosiveness of Bad Advice Good People‘s contents is certain to freeze-frame the widest of smiles to your face. A raucous six pack akin to Kleenex or Gang Of Four with hard-chiselled words and bloated basslines […]
FatCat Following numerous delays, the twenty-fourth — and last ever — issue in FatCat’s long-running and much-loved Split 12” series finally arrives. As with previous releases, the notion was to pit different sounds and styles against one another in an attempt to draw out links and similarities, or merely introducing […]
Bedroom Community As often happens with these things, Rakhi Singh was a new name on me and then her Manchester Collective popped up for this year’s proms, putting in a rare performance of establishment-baiting Julius Eastman. Having checked out some of her other work, she’s clearly comfortable sitting with the establishment […]
(self-released) That guttural bleakness punctuated by a lone-slap of reverbed timpani is impressive — a real sit up and listen asthetic tied to a wine-glass hum and a circle of Galás gulls that drag you into a ritualised scrape of brutalist electronics and scatter-cushioned skin. Lay In The Salt Of […]
Courier The latest release from the ever reliable Courier is a real trip down memory lane for people of a certain age. The cover image shows a handle from a slam-door carriage of vintage British Rail rolling stock, which perhaps goes some way to showing how Ciclismo has set out […]
Broken Folk For the follow up to their well regarded debut album, This Is Broken Folk, Lunatraktors have looked far and near for a set of traditional songs to bolster this EP, a little taster for the second album due for release in 2021. The first thing that you really […]