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 the strange disembodied ambience that they gathered into that tantalising instrumental offering. Now the duo return to flirt […]
Michael Rodham-Heaps
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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 More Wealth Than Money and beyond. Back then things were quite fluid, sponge-like, a many-tentacled beast collected here […]
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 up a Giallo sensibility, akin to Goblin, but with more lurk in the suspense department. That repetitive and […]
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 crumbled stiltskin of a track that sonically scrambles
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 passion. Now the follow-ups to these early albums, The Wind Is Strong… (1990) and Wappinschaw (1995) finally see […]
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, leaking naturally into the latch key languid incessants of “Inner Z”, full of sweeping Moog and dazzling silver, […]
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 action. The ping(ed) recoil of air-gun darts mingling with festive barrel organs, weaving between the goods, the fruit […]
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 architect David J Smith has gathered together a host of like-minded travellers, including The Utopia Strong’s Kavus Torabi, […]
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 this provides a plentiful platter to all that is broken or bent out of shape.
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 aesthetic that has me hopelessly hooked as doubled-up gusts of echo breathe from within.
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 live will testify to the witchy atmospheres she conjures, the abstracted emotions laid bare in looped violin, cello […]
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 into his sack, a scary prospect that the duo then decide to crayon over in a bright Midsommar […]
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 beast bowed by Stéphane Barascud taking a coarse grain sandpaper
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 flickers of percussive recoil until the drama is daggering divergent colours and serpentine mirage.
Zam Zam The synth duo of Kevin Valentin and Benjamin Moutte have a proper appreciation of their wares, something that the ominous plunge of the opener on their new Surprise Barbue album Kabukichō solidly demonstrates. It mindscapes a lovely tensive herald, spiralised in jewelled splashes and a subtle creep of melody that glitters its periphery. A drama that twists in “Cerf-Souris”’s unfurling keystrokes as a sweetened glaze of […]
Three Lobed Leaping off Headless’s comfy sofa, those Sunburned peeps are more frazzled and distinctively vocal with this year’s follow up release Pick A Day To Die on Three Lobed Records. The sleek-lined kiss of the previous LP seems to be left to unravel more, to tail-spin adventurously as Jeremy Pisani’s flinting frets carve its introverted entry point, while a Basho barbecue of crystal chord called “Dropped A […]