(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 drones, worn out from intergalactic travels. You can see them rushing past, but we are static, waving from […]
EP review
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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 that hook you in front and centre, prowl your head like an over-active imagination with armfuls of day-glo […]
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 the unknown to a more established name.
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 classical world — and there’s a cracking rendition of Bach‘s Chaconne for solo violin you should check out […]
(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 The Soil‘s opener “Yet I Am” fills me with same the primal shivers I felt when I first […]
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 his stall. But with titles like “HST Exeter To Newton Abbot 1990” and “Class 37 Highland Sleeper 1992”, […]
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 notice on playing the EP is the extraordinary voice of Clair le Couteur.
Faustus As on Daona‘s startling debut album The Secret Assembly, this duo love to weird you out, inject you with a swaying unease and mess with your expectations. The vaporous vampires and ghostly cinematics that glue up the action on Nightside Of Eden are like midnight’s children creeping the architecture a glint in their eyes that’s nothing to do with the moon.
In Real Life Sometimes music appears in front of you and it seems to have come from nowhere. Like, it definitely slaps but you can’t quite plot how it got to be. Meth Math fit that description.
Courier The latest beautiful little Courier Sound package to drop is another based on an intriguing premise. Using the idea of William Burroughs‘s obsession with the number twenty-three, mysterious electronic artist Alien has concocted twenty-three pieces in twenty-three minutes.
Nonplace Burnt Friedman‘s Nonplace label certainly keeps him busy along with all his other engagements, but to celebrate their fiftieth release, he has paired two tracks of his collaboration with João Pais along with two of the tracks from his Jaki Liebezeit sessions which were recorded in 2015 on his famously pared-down kit.
Nonplace The latest release from Wolff Parkinson White is an intriguing proposition. The alias of German drummer Jochen Ruckert is put in use when radical electronic ideas need a vent and the latest album Favours and particularly the tracks chosen from that album for the Nonplace EP are pretty radical.
Phoenix G As a house and techno producer, Mr G has been jamming the dancefloor for the best part of twenty years with releases on an array of labels as well as those on his own Phoenix G label. He seems to have spent most of 2019 cruising around the world on a strange and love-filled trip, the culmination of which is this set of six tracks that […]
Mottomotto Kyoto’s super-pop prog virtuosi Viva Sherry are back with a delightful 10″ vinyl release on the ever-reliable Mottomotto and considering it six tracks come in at about twenty-five minutes, it is extraordinary how much ground they manage to cover in that short period of time. 2017’s Obento Music was a similar formula, and I can only imagine that they don’t think that the general public is able to […]
Courier The latest beautiful offering from Courier with its own hand-cut sleeve is a collaboration between old pals Nick Dawson and Stuart Bowditch, who were responsible for the genesis of the Silhouette Cameo 3 compilation that was released last year. In keeping with that album’s vibe of familiar sounds taken out of context and sent flailing into orbit, this latest improv collaboration has been stewing (no pun intended) […]
Thrill Jockey Thrill Jockey continue their venture into noise territory with the first release from Eye Flys. The band is named after a Melvins song and with their own track titles like “Crushing The Human Spirit” or “Weaponize” and with rather sinister cover art, you probably have a good idea of what this six-track EP contains.
Courier Sound There is something so delightful about Courier Sounds‘ three-inch CD packages. There is real care in the colour scheme and presentation, while the sounds contained are little gems, ones that have to be carefully selected considering the relatively short duration of the format. Sound recordist/musician Kim Rueger trades here as Belly Full Of Stars, the moniker denoting her more abstract, electronic experiments.
Courier The latest beautifully packaged release from the ever-reliable yet increasingly diverse micro label Courier is the four-track EP Silences‘ from south-east England-based duo of the same name, James Green and Nick Dawson. Intended as the first in an ongoing series, the recording took place on one day in Southend and the end result takes you far away from any obvious points of familiarity.