Bellissima It was only a matter of time until Katharine Blake (Miranda Sex Garden and The Mediæval Bæbes) and Michael J York (Téléplasmiste, The Utopia Strong, Current 93 and Coil) would conjoin a bewitching whole, gather a few musical friends into the equation to produce this haunting debut that gathers […]
Michael Rodham-Heaps
444 posts
Klanggalerie Long-time contributor to and performer with Eyeless In Gaza and wife of Martyn Bates, Elizabeth S has just released her first solo album. Gather Love presents twelve tracks that texturally invite you to ask what it means to be human, sparkles with a withering warmth that stays with you.
Mute Phew‘s New Decade strips it all away, orbits the sultry sizzle of fragmented abstracts and of course Hiromi Moritani’s vocal dynamics that magnetically grab-bag. Born in the pandemic, the album’s whispering contours were a result of wishing to not annoy the neighbours too much, an oh-so-quiet verve that’s best […]
Upset The Rhythm Upset The Rythm‘s radar is always sharp and can be relied on to serve up a healthy antidote to the burger’n’fries musical factory that clogs up our cultural arteries. Companioning the creative, often at the expense of commercialism they go, scouting fresh talent, scouring the musical roadside […]
Disciples / R.A.T.S. It’s been a long time since Pale Saints‘ Ian Masters and His Name Is Alive’s Warren Defever worked together as ESP Summer on their country-tinged 1995 self-titled release, so it came as a pleasing surprise when the project was mysteriously resurrected last year – even more so […]
Lumberton Trading Company After Siôn Orgon’s brilliant Black Object comes this freshly minted dozen. Dust is a mini LP whose first track takes no prisoners, births this baby in muscled metal, words dark’n’glistening, then slamming a singular technoid, a ballsy brilliance that surrounds itself in a jaded tinsel epitaph.
Upset The Rhythm Here’s another tasty treat from those excellent Upset The Rhythm peeps. Dark World is a twenty-two track exposé of Normil Hawaiians’ early verve, showcasing a formative pool of edgy punk / post-new wave that would finally mutate / mature into the arty haemorrhage that was their debut […]
Zam Zam / La République des Granges / Permafrost / Murailles Music From the Tesla crackle of the intro to that extending shadow of organ creeping on throughout, the weird melodics here on Rien Virgule‘s La Consolation Des Violettes feed a widening crescent of expectation. A rich invitation that stirs […]
Finders Keepers The second of Steven Stapleton’s personal picks from his Nurse With Wound list collects together a host of lesser-known German contenders and proceeds to chuck you off the eclectic deep end from the offset. The album opens with a healthy dose of Wolfgang Dauner, whose “Output” is a […]
Dais I’ve been enjoying the broken mirror of Cindytalk’s music for well over thirty-odd years now. The blazing rawness of Camouflage Heart was a great starting point, and the weird dichotomy of it’s follow up In This World reinforced the love with its contrasting chromatics of classical ambiance and psychotic […]
Rocket The nouveau mediaevalism of the first track on Easy To Build, Hard To Destroy, “Elka” is a choice gem plucked for those early hippy daze where I first mentally hitched a ride on the Gnod train from the back of a dusty Trowbridge barn. A trickle of curling consciousness, […]
Play Loud! What a pleasure this LP is, a refreshing skew of anarchic jazz / freestyle surgery and falling downstairs momentums. There’s a manic urgency that makes AIDS Delikat one of my favourites of the Tapetopia series so far. Recorded at the end of 1984, Christmas market sounds intersperse the […]
Rocket This has a weird energy, a smokey commune bonfiring prog, hippy trippiness and the more esoteric end of the musical spectrum. A flamboyant mirage angeling the experimental itch of the Ya Ho Wha 13, King Crimson and Comus (and a hell of a lot more). The Holy Family‘s head […]
Blindblindblind I’m not overly familiar with Le Days’ output, but I’m really liking the stark majestics Daniel Hedin is conjuring up on We Are Nowhere, a double album of emotional outpourings buried in roomy reflection and shoaling silver. As you all know, I love a bit of musical introspection, and […]
Zam Zam A splinter from the family Gnod, AHRKH AKA Alex Macarte, spiders a delicate thunder here on a Bliss Waves (From The Heart Realm) in trio of tracks that meditatively pull, sparkle with a caressive light.
Atlantic Curve I’m loving this album’s cinematic sizzle, the slow sanguine accompaniment that grows round Lisa Gerrard’s voice, full of subdued simmer and deep-diving delight, then the drums kick in and spread the panoramics wide open. Rocky adrenalines that sparkle the headphones surrounded in quantising amber and torn turquoise, an […]
Lava Thief Born from a Richard Brautigan poem of the same name, The Silver Stairs Of Ketchikan is a solo outlet of Thought Forms ringleader Charlie Romijn Barr. It’s always been an intimate, profoundly personal quest, often wrought in the improvised moment. Anybody that’s been lucky enough to see her […]
Akkajee The candle-lit whispering of Lastenkerääjä‘s title track invites you into Akkajee’s folk senabilites, fills the space like a spidery Egon Schiele sketch waiting to be coloured in. Its plucked spine and conversational flow maybe tip-toeing round the baby collector it sings about, an old codger that throws naughty children […]
blindblindblind Wooo, this two-track live album from French instrumental duo Cantenac Dagar is straight off the bone, with no overdubs or studio trickery marring its sizzling sincerity. The crank-handled smack of those beats rupture a refreshing rawness on “Saique”, all dirty’n’distorted stepping into this abrasive banjo shadow. A gnarly screechy […]
Miasmah James Welburn certainly conjures up a sense of epic with this new LP, Sleeper In The Void. The reactive pleasure that is “Raze” ritually burning through your mind like a restless phantom, then plunge-pooled into a corrosive bath of grainy noise, twisting Soliloquy For Lilith-like on bassy parabolics and […]