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”, […]
Mr Olivetti
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Aagoo Nicholas Merz plies the same kind of widescreen, literate music for adventurers that shares some similarities with the likes of The Triffids and The Go-Betweens; a deep, resonant voice, seemingly full of wisdom, backed by a thoughtful band that frames the lyrics and leaves space for the listener’s imagination.
Thrill Jockey There is always an air of mystery surrounding the releases of Marc Richter‘s Black To Comm, and his latest album opens with the most disorientating stumble through memoirs and memories, faded and distressed. His ability to lead the listener gently around the ravages of a stricken mind is never greater than on Ooctye Oil and Stolen Androgens.
One Little Independent Henrik Lindstand‘s latest album centres entirely around the sweet tonality of his piano playing. There is a remoteness and a kind of solitude on Nordhem that is reflected in the kind of videos he chooses to release for each piece.
On-U Sound / Evergreen Recordings Denise Sherwood, daughter on On-U hero Adrian, has been simmering the tracks that appear on her debut album for the last seventeen years. Unsurprisingly, considering her pedigree and the family history, there are appearances here from the likes of Mark Stewart, members of Tackhead, as well as Filip Tavares; but thankfully, it never takes on the kind of overwhelming power of Tackhead. Instead, […]
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.
We Are Busy Bodies Library Voices member and sound artist Michael Scott Dawson has turned an unexpected bout of vertigo into the impetus for this series of stunningly minimalist vignettes that use generative synth tones to form slow moving cascades of ambient sound.
KrysaliSound Paweł Pruski is a Polish ambient artist interested in the search for what lies between words, between moments and how to capture those elusive spaces in some sort of sound form. Over thirty-five minutes and six pieces on Between, various atmospheres are evoked, but each one feels as though the basis is a long, flat landscape, with hazy blue skies and the roll of purplish clouds far […]
Discus Martin Pyne spends a lot of his time preparing music for use in a dance studio environment, so during this recent period where everybody is shut up in their own little universes, he has found his mind wandering. Images of a lonely musician adrift in an empty theatre bereft of performers abound in this latest collection of lovely stripped back pieces that utilise percussion and vibes, with […]
Fire For some extraordinary reason, it has taken thirty years for Dons Savage to follow up the seminal early work of Dead Famous People with a full length album. Fire Records tracked her down and put her in the studio where it seems the years just dropped away. Her knack for perfect melody and succinct pop bite is now aligned with the sort of precise production and baroque […]
Lightning Archive Michael J Sheehy‘s first solo album in ten years is one of spectral, slow beauty; the creeping, acoustic melancholy hiding a new found zest for life that seems to put much distance between it and the more desperate and depraved output of Dream City Film Club and to a lesser extent Miraculous Mule. Here, buoyed by the recent birth of a child and the opportunity for […]
Jazzland Rymden, the post-jazz trio of Bugge Wesseltoft, Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström has released its second foray into the outer limits, hot on the heels of 2019’s Reflections And Odysseys, and it continues in a similar vein but pushes the explorations and interesting syntheses a little further abroad. As essentially a piano, bass and percussion trio, you could be forgiven for thinking that there is a limited […]
Phantom Limb These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound is the first album that Richard Skelton has released that is not through his own label, and is a continuation of his journey towards the perfection of a certain sort of elemental soundscape. Although the titles of the pieces contained here refer to Anglo-Saxon “leechdoms” or remedies, for me they are not just bound to the earth, but […]
Big Potato (Europe) / Graveface (North America) There is a sense of joy to the cheesy fairground keyboards that open up Moon Attendant‘s debut album One Last Summer. The gentle drums and sleepy vocal delivery full of secrets give this first track a sense of a bedsit Squeeze, with a window overlooking the Brighton seafront and a view of the spring tides through lace-curtained windows. That warm charm […]
Kranky There is something about MJ Guider‘s sound that puts her perfectly at home on Kranky. There is a sense of drifting, of distant sounds clouded in fogs of reverb that make everything feel limitless. But there is also an intensity to the metallic rhythms that put you on guard. Sour Cherry Bell is the follow up to 2016’s Precious Systems and continues Melissa Guion‘s exploration into the […]
Fire Tobin Sprout is probably best known as part of Guided By Voices, the oh-so prolific Dayton, Ohio band. The fact that he ever found time for a solo career is testament to his desire to release something that stood apart from GBV. Although no longer a part of that band, it has been four years since the last album The Universe And Me graced the shelves. Empty […]
Temporary Residence On first hearing Sparkle Division‘s debut album To Feel Embraced, which is a dusty fusion of lounge jazz and sleepy beats, one wouldn’t immediately figure it for a William Basinski project, but he is the man at the helm — although it is as much studio assistant Preston Wendel‘s outing, as his own work was the inspiration for Basinski. He digs his sax out for a […]
Kranky This is the second album for Julie Carpenter‘s Less Bells pseudonym and furthers her explorations pairing drifting electronics with choral vocals and the application of tension. There is a whimsical feel to the electronic wash that opens the album and cymbals glow with a kind of spectral sheen, but there is a sort of tension to the sounds due to an inertia that prevents the track from […]