Substantia Innominata “Are All Things Equivalent?” may be the question, but the answers that Matt Waldron offers up for his contribution to Drone Records‘ sequence of 10” vinyl releases are as difficult to pin down as one might imagine from someone who has been a significant contributor to the surrealistic behemoth that Nurse With Wound has become over the last forty-odd
EP review
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Courier Sound Suffolk micro-label Courier Sound have released another of their beautifully presented cassettes. Coming in a lime green hand-made box and lime green cassette, with Quality Street wrappers and lovely little card inserts, it looks a treat, but it totally belies the aural contents. The fact that the wrappers are salvaged from “several years of reluctant Christmas obligation” should warn the listener
Foolproof Projects Andy Pyne and Lisa Jayne have reconvened as Map 71 to unleash a download EP of new material from Foolproof Projects. After time spent squirrelled away in their bunker (I imagine), the bouncing repetition and simple insistence of opener “Ex-Socialite Needs A New Invention” is faintly reminiscent of some of Factory Floor‘s rhythmic experiments, but here Andy uses squalls of synthetic sound to try and put […]
Phantom Limb JR Bohannon is a Brooklyn-based solo guitar player who first recorded this mini-album back in 2017 for cassette label Ausca. Phantom Limb liked it enough and saw enough in its diverse energy to warrant a reissue. JR originally hails from Louisville in Kentucky, and some of that city’s heritage has leaked into the sound of the songs, along with the usual likes of Robbie Basho and […]
Courier Back in 2014, sound artist Stuart Bowditch produced a series of pieces for an exhibition that was taking place in the old Co-operative Bank in Colchester. Created solely using sounds discovered in the thirty rooms of the old edifice, it was installed as a loop playing on an in-car DVD
Upset The Rhythm Fresh on the heels of Vital Idles‘ 2018 LP comes a four-track 7″ vinyl EP containing all-new material. The resonant post punk bass intro of “Break A” puts me straight into a good mood and the clear guitar slashes strike through at just the right tempo. Jessica Higgins‘ vocals when scattered across the track are intriguing
Jahtari Originally released in 2009, Hissing Theatricals was Jackson Bailey‘s début release as Tapes and now receives this vinyl re-issue treatment commemorating its tenth anniversary. A decade on, and Tapes’ resolutely 8-bit sounds have both never seemed more contemporary nor somehow as timeless as they do now. This is perhaps in large part due to Jahtari, who have doggedly kept to the true spirit of lo-fi DIY releases, […]
Modularfield The latest release from Cologne’s Modularfield label is an EP from electronic artist Jochen Mader, here trading as Skyence. It is one of the label’s infrequent vinyl releases and the 12″ format perfectly suits the atmospheric artwork of a shadowy fencer mid-lunge. The cold, blue colours and the stillness of the image evoke the dusty and romantic, yet antiquated world of the fencing room.
Editions Mego On the back of last year’s double LP début comes this teasing taste of UUUU‘s expanding soundworld, a two-track twelve inch that steeps your ear in some mighty fine sonics as your eye is creeped out by the grainy black and white of the cover.
Jahtari For their self-titled EP, Shigeru Ishihara (AKA DJ Scotch Egg) and Kiki Hitomi have ramped up the musical mania found on their Shinsekai LP, delivering a five-track 12” which veritably throbs with dubbed-up electro, Afro-funk and 8-bit disco (e)motion. Cyberpunk to the max, the duo blitter and batter their infectious grooves
Cyclic Law You can never rely on the bloody British weather. Given that until last week April had been unseasonably cold and damp – a fifteen-minute walk from Brockley Station felt more like battling against the January elements than revelling in the joyous unfolding of spring – I was hoping that a small silver lining to such a meteorological cloud might be the right atmospheric conditions .
Bank A merry dance of yin and yang that finds Drew McDowall draping the canvas with his trademark shadowplay , slumberous contours for Hiro Kone to throw over her modular light and broken trinkets as both scoop at a secret melodic heart.
Spector Ex-directory, an embodiment of modernity and the way we, the youth of society, feel now. Spector’s new EP clearly shows off this generation of music’s inheritance and influences from its predecessors in pop, with their own modernity ingrained into every lyric.
Nonplace When it comes to drumming, the late Jaki Liebezeit is up there with the likes of Stomu Yamashta and Charles Hayward. So when I heard his cult-like percussive collective Drums Off Chaos was finally releasing two sweet EPs’ worth of tracks upon the world, I was more than stoked.
Little Miss Echo Recordings This is the debut EP from Johanna Bramli, who is possibly better known for being one half of “motorik electronic pop band Fröst“, but I’ve not actually heard them, while I have seen Bramli a couple of times at live shows around Brighton. And verily she is good.
Distant Spore After luxuriating in the carnival like atmosphere of 2014’s full length Make It Look Like Nothing Happened and the head spinning smorgasbord of 2016’s Everything Is Magick, nobody could really second guess Impuritan‘s next move. The colours and textures employed in the previous releases made them a fantastic new discovery and I was intrigued to see what the next step would be.
Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records Metal isn’t a particularly progressive genre, in a lot of ways; for all the fluff that people throw at it, musicologically speaking, it’s rarely divested itself of fairly conventional tonalities, regular 4/4s, flattened out timbres and limited melodies. I appreciate that’s kind of “the thing” that makes metal and as someone who doesn’t really like metal it’s unfair for me to tar it […]
Substantia Innominata Creaky, scraping, spinning tones and the sound of rolling objects on metal; ominous drones and fragrantly uptilted shimmers abound, horns and moans, whirrs and clicks