(self-released) I was intrigued to learn of ambient jazz duo Nelson Patton‘s deep involvement with the genre defying artist / singer Lonnie Holley and there is some obvious bleed between his brand of impressionistic, dreamlike song-writing and the slightly woozy, eyes half-closed atmospheres of Universal Process, their latest album. Although only just released, the pieces were written and recorded a couple of years ago, pre-pandemic, so it carries […]
Mr Olivetti
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Yew As a child, I had an image of how the future was going to look and I have to confess that forty-odd years later, I am pretty disappointed. Everything seems to be smaller, more compact, less shiny and interesting and space is almost ignored. The sounds on Losing Circles that Thomas Dimuzio and partner in sound, Double Leopards‘ Marcia Bassett, conjure up are exactly how I imagined […]
Carton / Coax Visual artist and sound sculptor Jean Francois Riffaud has taken his RIFO alter ego on a guitar odyssey hanging primarily on tonal repetition and hypnotic rhythmic interaction. Running through five inter-related pieces that spur one another on like an enthusiastic relay team, the guitar on Betel is treated with anything but reverence and at times is barely recognisable. The utterly basic hypnotic rhythm that prepares us […]
Geist im Kino It is hard to believe just how prolific Rutger Zuydervelt is as Machinefabriek, and how he finds the time to put together something as thoughtful and involved as the soundtracks created here for choreographer Yin Yue‘s dance pieces. There are two separate commissions here, both inhabiting a world of air and space, drifting from movement to stasis, gathering momentum and then watching and waiting as […]
Room 40 For his latest epic, composer Lawrence English has eschewed anything human-made and has chosen to weave a series of pieces from sounds recorded over a period spent in the Amazon. Rather then putting down a recorder and allowing it to capture whatever happens and unleash that, he instead selected from fifty hours of material to create standalone pieces that maybe highlight a certain creature, or a […]
Thrill Jockey William Tyler‘s folky Americana has graced releases by Lambchop and Silver Jews as well as his increasingly assured solo releases. Marisa Anderson treads similar ground on her own records, although the recent collaboration with drummer Jim White did lead down some exciting improv avenues. The eight tracks presented on Lost Futures rely on the interplay of Marisa and William’s differing approaches to the guitar, William often […]
(self-released) Mr Diagonal‘s latest album is a curious thing, coming on like the strange musical of a landlocked dreamer forever yearning for the tropical shores of the Pacific. On the cover, he sits clutching a six-string ukulele, straw hat and cut-offs, but appears to be in a launderette or somewhere equally mundane, with a faraway look in his eye and a bottle of rum by his side.
Thrill Jockey Cécile Schott seems to have taken the opportunity on this latest Thrill Jockey album to go fully retro electronic with the likes of the Yamaha Reface, Roland Space Echo and Moog Grandmother being given the chance to glimmer in the dusty twilight that abounds on The Tunnel And The Clearing. Spread across seven tracks and encompassing the kind of plunky Latin rhythms that are so redolent […]
RVNG intl. Rachika Nayar‘s follow up to the recent Our Hands Against The Dusk is a gorgeous little series of bedroom snippets, a dozen flights of guitar fancy that trade chiming circular motifs against delicate picking, with the odd churn of lower register adding a touch of melancholy here and there. Those circular motifs are so pretty, though, that the tone rings purely and they swoop around your […]
Discobole Surnatural Orchestra saxophonist Nicolas Stephan‘s idea for the Paar Linien project was to interweave contradictory lines in one piece of music to see how they worked together. Enlisting assistance from Basil Naudet on alto sax and guitar, Louis Freres on bass and drummer Augustin Bette, they take off into the hinterland between Chicago-style post rock and the freer stylings of the likes of Ornette Coleman. This just gives […]
Discus Wandering trumpeter and member of the extended London Improvisers Orchestra, Charlotte Keeffe‘s first solo album finds her drawing together various facets of her abilities, ranging from her solo trumpet improvisation via her jazz quartet recordings through to the sprawling conduction of the pieces she has arranged for the LIO. What holds all these disparate pieces together is Charlotte’s shining love of the trumpet and the mysterious roads […]
Krysalisound The latest release from sound sculptor Wil Bolton takes the listener on a journey in seven distinct parts through a diffuse landscape populated by everyday sounds that are framed in such a way that everything around us appears languid and slightly unfamiliar; that intoxication that comes from an unknown country, the first visit holding smells and tastes and sounds that are unfamiliar. The movement is slow and […]
Discus Another sonic adventure from Discus finds Alex Ward‘s abilities on the various instruments used here being stretched to their limits. He plays everything here, and that covers guitar, bass, drums, woodwind, keyboards and various dizzying noisemakers. Not only is it an instrumental tour de force, but the musical styles that the album encompasses are varied in the extreme, bursting through: free jazz, metal, math rock and ambient […]
Kranky The latest Loscil release stems from an intriguing proposition; have a twenty-two-piece orchestra play a three-minute composition, press it onto acetate and sample the end result after a little abuse, and use that as the basis for ten long drifting pieces. In general, Clara is a sedate album, initially evoking the slow ebb and flow of waves on an empty beach, but a sea that over millennia […]
Glacial Movements John Sellekaers‘s latest series of drone sculptures are the sort of journey in which you can just close your eyes and allow them to transport you. The drones are deep and resonant, but with other lighter textures skirting the edges, pushing you off balance just a little. The ebb and flow is at times slow and rhythmic with pulses scattered, the rising and falling bringing to mind […]
Tenor-Vossa I suppose it is fair to say that what set Breathless apart from their contemporaries was the extraordinary voice of Dominic Appleton; it somehow managed to encapsulate a desolate longing, but never really strayed into melancholy. It was a voice that understood loneliness and did its best to rise above it. Having said that, the band managed to surround that voice with some of the most widespread […]
Jazzland The artwork for Maridalen‘s first album, photographs of beautiful but brooding Scandinavian vistas sit well with the pastoral gentleness of the music contained within. The three players — Anders Hefre on sax and clarinet; Jonas Kilmork Vemøy on trumpet and sparse percussion; and Andreas Rødland Haga on double bass — convened in the nineteenth century mission house of Maridalen Kirke and somehow the vibe of this old […]
Broken Folk The duo of Clair le Couteur and Carli Jefferson brings a much-needed sense of drama and intrigue to the world of folk and their love of the history of song and its function as a staple for our way of life is perfectly presented in Lunatraktors‘ second full-length album, The Missing Star. Taking , they weave sad and strident tales of humanity’s undoing and also its […]