Opa Loka Philippe Petit‘s double-CD album Do Humans Dream Of Electronic Ships is all over the place, exhaling a sci-fi softness the type Louis and Bebe Barron sculpted back in the ’50s. A gouging cello bursting in somersaulting capillaries, chased by an errant black’n’decker rub that casts some scary shadows. A patchwork bounce of . The nostalgic blur of copulating shapes owling on the tap of empty skipping […]
Mr Olivetti
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KrysaliSound As well as running KrysaliSound for the last ten years, Francis Gri has been recording soundscape art, producing thought-provoking and atmospheric pieces that, while they tend to head in an ambient direction, have far more depth. Here, due to personal experience, he has tried to capture through a suite of four soundscapes the loss of memory and how one interacts with the world around them when this […]
Nonplace The latest release from Wolff Parkinson White is an intriguing proposition. The alias of German drummer Jochen Ruckert is put in use when radical electronic ideas need a vent and the latest album Favours and particularly the tracks chosen from that album for the Nonplace EP are pretty radical.
Mute (Europe) / Fat Possum (North and South America) / Bloodlines (Australia) Rowland S Howard is one of the heroes of the post-punk musical landscape, and possibly the most innovative and unique guitarists to ever venture forth from Australia. As a member of The Birthday Party, his razor-scarred, angular guitar swathes traced the routes for Nick Cave‘s messianic vocals. After they split, he passed through the dust-ridden gothic […]
three:four French saxophonist Clément Edouard has enlisted some friends to produce this most extraordinary and atmospheric suite of pieces for three:four. With him on electronics, Linda Olah and Isabel Sorling on vocals, and Julian Chamla on cymbals and harp bass, you kind of know that Dix Ailes is going to be something special.
Ipecac What a mouth watering prospect: two parts Cop Shoot Cop, one of whom was in Swans; one part Swans and one part Unsane. You just know that Human Impact is going to be one of those slinky New York vengeance bands that prowl the darkened streets, an eye out for trouble and a savage way of dealing with any they come across.
Jazzland After 2019’s Dark Star Safari, Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang once again find themselves back in the studio and still pushing the boundaries of recognised musical form. Although it doesn’t quite have the subliminal quality of that album, Snow Catches On Her Eyelashes is heading in a different direction, still exploring space and texture, but paring the sounds down to electronics, samples and guitar — although you […]
Tapete In a world that seems to have gone completely crazy, it feels like the perfect time to welcome back Bobby Conn after too long away. Tapete clearly felt that the world wasn’t the same without him and on his debut album for them, and first since 2012’s Macaroni, he has wrapped himself up with his regular collaborators and boy, do those guys really bring the funk when […]
Peeler Collectress have been experimenting with their twenty-first century chamber music for the bet part of twenty years. Since the release of 2014’s Mondegreen, the group no longer find themselves within the Brighton orbit, and that distance plus life’s other opportunities, has found them slightly changing the way they work. Snatching opportunities where they came, they would reconvene to thrash out the bones of the pieces here on […]
City Slang I remember first listening to Tindersticks‘ extraordinary Marbles EP on the strength of a Melody Maker review back in 1993, and falling love with their slightly shambling but immensely textured and moving songs.
Disco-ordination The idea behind The Fantasy Orchestra is one of enthusiasm, inclusion and love that has drawn two groups of people together, one based in Bristol and one in Paris, with the intention of giving an orchestral update to some of the more unusual and unexpected songs in the world canon. Started by Bristolian Jesse Vernon of the much-missed Liftmen, amongst others, the orchestra has embraced amateur players […]
Subcontinental Indian pianist Aman Mahajan has been working on the pieces that make up his album Refuge since 2005. It is a musical diary of sorts, and one that reflects the personality of this idiosyncratic player. There is an inner sense to his playing that, although it nods to jazz, Indian folk and classical, very much breathes with its own life.
Affairs Of The Heart On Cascade Lakes‘ first album, the sound has a kind of ragged heart beat to it, the opening track driven by bells and a steady rhythm, with a quavering guitar line and the sort of vocal delivery that brings to mind early Arcade Fire; the touch of melancholy in the chord structure, an evocative sweep of strings sitting quietly in the background.
Hubro Hot on the heels of last year’s Salika, Molika, Erlend Apneseth has gathered around him another supergroup of Nordic heavyweights. Fellow Hubro artistes Stein Urheim, Anja Lauvdal, Hans Hulbækmo and Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson, along with accordionist Ida Løvli Hidle. They join together on Fragmentarium to flesh out some of Erlend’s compositions that were initially written for the Kongsberg Jazz Festival
KrysaliSound Ishmael Cormack entered the thirteenth century church of St Andrews near his rural Somerset home with a view to laying down a series of improvised sketches using tape loops and found sounds, trying to release natural but subtle polyrhythms from these unlikely sources. The overall effect, spread across the six tracks contained herein, is one of a series of faint, impressionist watercolours, rendered so subtly that at […]
Discus Martin Archer is one very busy man. As well as running the Discus label, he seems intent on putting out album after album with various different collaborators and under numerous styles. It doesn’t feel like so very long since the Anthropology Band‘s album rose like an incredible new sun over my world and I have been living with it since, trying to put its two-and-a-half hours of […]
Pumpedita Avi Pfeffer is an American-based composer working from the classical tradition but using those tropes transposed into the world of electronic music. His current album A Lasting Impression consists of four sweeping and transformative pieces that are tied together by the very nature of their journey.
Blue Tapes The church-like drone that opens Cadu Tenório‘s stint on Blue Tapes lends a feeling of solace with just a hint of accordion japes in the tones. It is a reverential and gentle opening that unfolds slowly, infinite and flat like a coastal landscape, merging with the sombre greys of sea and sky, undulations that change features in miniscule ways.