For Canadian-based quartet House of Gold's self-titled debut, the synth-wielding four have taken composer and drummer Isiah Ceccarelli's luminous sketches and cast them in golden, minimalist hues, mellifluous organ tones hopping and skipping around the dreamy ethereal vocals of Eugenie Jobin.
Mr Olivetti
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The basic premise behind this album is the use of Jo David Meyer Lysne's self-designed e-bows on guitar strings to produce naturally occurring random harmonics. As the e-bows have adjustable speeds, so the results are infinite due to other overtones created by the different resonances. There is an element of patience demanded of the player, but the end result is an absolute ever-evolving delight and when allied to Peder Simonsen's microtonal tuba, modular synth and pyrex bowls, the range of tones is pretty impressive.
...Covid restrictions kicked in and this album became a game of two halves, with ideas and basic tracks batted both ways across the ocean. To make it more interactive, both parties recorded over the same period of time and it was taken in turns who would lay down the initial ideas and who would then react to those. The album was intended as a commentary on the increasing role AI plays in entertainment and ironically, the enforced separation has played into humanity's hands.
Of that initial flush of '80s/'90s noise guitar bands, the Telescopes have done the most to leave their history far behind, ploughing an awkward distorted furrow that somehow turns up gems with every release, their bittersweet melodies hidden beneath ever deeper beneath layers of shimmering murk. I like Stephen Lawrie's attitude towards them; seeing himself more as a guardian of the name rather than it being about him. He channels ideas and uses whomever may turn up to realise those sounds.
Having decided to record again, they chose to invite saxophonist Josephine Davies to add further texture and different impulses to their duo set up and that wise decision has thrown further light onto an already gleaming path. A surreptitious dream of sound, improvised and recorded live, the album highlights shared visions yet as seen from three perspectives, tied together in a natural whole.
Eric Chenaux has been ploughing his unique solo path for twenty years or more, but apart from the odd collaboration has generally gone it alone; guitar, pedals and that voice hovering above us, gazing serenely. Here on the latest album we are introduced for the first time to his trio, long-time friend Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer and vocalist and percussionist Philippe Melanson.
A soft, insidious voice over a vaguely threatening throb shines a murky light on the farmyard as a dark, dangerous place. Cattle are given a voice, compared to humans and then given no choice as the electronic quagmire oozes around them. Animals are taken advantage of, figures of fun for our amusement and at their cost while in the distance away from this fœtid scene, the wilderness at the edges of the land are recounted in loving detail. Where nature tries to reclaim, so beauty is finally found.
With PJ Harvey as executive producer and Mike Patton namechecked on the cover, he clearly has some heavy hitting friends, but this is a solo tour de force; a labour of love that finds him playing ukelin, organ, piano, pedal steel, various guitars and basses, with just his friend Mike Kenney helping out on fiddle for two of the nine tracks.
I must admit, I was expecting more of the soundtrack stuff, so to see him front and centre, really living the songs and acting the parts was quite a revelation with his lovely black and white Airline guitar part of the scene. In front of him was a small electronic device which contained backing elements, but really it was about the interaction of the trio that made the show pop.
Costa Rican pianist and composer Sofi Paez has a touch as light as a feather and her first collection of pieces, Silent Stories, conjures numinous images of pastoral landscapes. The album skips from rolling piano momentum to more considered vocal-based pieces that slow the heart rate and this sense of fleeting abandon, along with Sofi's deft touch, is part of the charm of the LP.
Vocalist Randi Pontoppidan and vibraphonist Martin Fabricius met while studying under Jamaladeen Tacuma at a jazz workshop in 2016. Jamaladeen insisted on recording an off the cuff session with the two and after that release, the pair continued working together, collating the pieces to be recorded for this album whilst working on other projects. Clouds' long gestation introduces a sense of comfort between the two players and an otherworldly ethereality that places the eleven compositions collected here well outside any prevailing styles.
This is the second outing for Paul Osborne's Project Gemini and for the opening snippet I wrote "woodland samba Dr Who theme with flute". This gives you some indication of the number of touchstones that are present on Colours & Light and it is a good title as well, because the album is all about the vibrancy of the outdoor world in all its glories, taking in funk elements, baggy twists and soundtrack drama in its inimitable stride.
...a selection of songs that give an indication to the flavour of the album that would have succeeded 2009's Mother Is The Milky Way'. At over an hour long but squeezing in thirty-six tracks, it is very much the musical equivalent of a fistful of snapshots, some coming in at thirty seconds and feels a little like surreptitiously leafing through an artist's sketchbook.
Blueblut ... veer around the edges of forms, picking the little slippery snippets they like and stitching them loosely into and avant-prog stew that simmers nicely. The jauntiness and good humour of the playing is there for all to hear and across six incredibly diverse workouts, they take the listener by the hand across the playgrounds and beerhalls of their minds.
Adventurous Canadian sound sculptor and songwriter Kee Avil sounds as though she is disconcertingly whispering in your ear on her latest Constellation release, such is the intimate production. The heartfelt and slightly disturbing revelations make for a claustrophobic experience as the words are draped and slathered across atonal guitar and creeping, sinister electronics. At times it is a strange, harsh, almost industrial setting for her low-key delivery; and at others, it becomes more expansive, leaning in a twisted folk direction.
Having spent time in well-respected indie bands Veronica Falls, Ultimate Painting and Proper Ornaments, songwriter James Hoare is finally stepping out on his own. Sheltering under the moniker Penny Arcade, this collection of dreamy, intimate reflections that hint at seaside memories and rural idylls are a step in a fresh direction, albeit a sleepy and melancholic one.
Keeping his amorphous Angles group at a steady eight and enlisting a string quartet as well as Other Woman performer Elle-Kari Sander as vocalist, they have constructed a far-reaching and emotionally resonant suite that reflects a self-indulgent modern humanity.
Managing to do so much more with a guitar, bass, drums set-up, they push and pull in new directions, partly thanks to three very different songwriters and also due to the myriad of mysterious sounds wrestled from the guitar by Jason Sanford and his boxes of electronic trickery. It is a wild and at points uncomfortable ride, with three diverse vocalists stretching song structure into taut, complicated patterns, pummelling instruments and insinuating messages into eager ears.
This line-up of Elephant9 has been together for the best part of fifteen years now and although keyboard maestro Ståle Storløkken is the main songwriter and ideas person, the strength of the trio lies in its interplay and the flexibility of rhythm section Nikolai Hængsle and Torstein Lofthus. Although a little influenced by '70s prog, Ståle's variety of keyboards, including Hammond L100, Minimoog and Arp Pro and the forward-looking, constantly searching bass and drums puts this very much in a modern context.
Having set up a new studio in Margate, the freedom and sounds of life by the sea have subtly insinuated themselves in to the pieces here which, along with the album celebrating the sixty-third anniversary of Yuri Gagarin being the first human in space, lends it a strange dichotomy between the weightlessness and movement of being in orbit and the freshness and positivity of time spent idling on the seafront.