Not Applicable Sam Britton, the polymath behind Isambard Khroustaliov, originally trained as an architect, but was swayed into electronic composition early on and has been recording for the last twenty years or so, often in collaborations. The likes of percussionist Maurizio Ravalico and trumpeter Tom Arthurs have crossed his path recently, but here on This Is My Private Beach, This Is My Jetsam, we have the sounds of […]
Mr Olivetti
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Frequency Domain For the second volume of Partials, only a couple of the artists from the previous release make a return visit, leaving the way open for plenty of fresh artists doing their bit for this fantastic cause. Once again, it is a real chill-fest, the majority of tracks happily nestled into the drifting ambient side of things, with only a few adopting beats and allowing the vibe […]
Constellation The latest release from Efrim Menuck finds quite a dramatic change to the sound we have come to expect from him. Teaming up with Growing‘s Kevin Doria has seen a move away from the kind of grandiose string arrangements of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt Zion, and more of an embrace of the kind of slow moving, subtly evolving guitar soundscapes for which Growing […]
Svart By the looks of the duo on the back of the cover and the long list of electronic machines that Timo Kaukolampi plays listed on the inside, with Tomi Leppänen having just drums and a Juno, I figured maybe K-X-P were some sort of twenty-first century take on Silver Apples. I was not too far off the mark, but the vocals that appear on IV are buried […]
Blue Tapes Henry Plotnick‘s excursion on Blue Tapes from 2014 (when he was thirteen) is a meditative collection of pieces that are about slow build, decay and regeneration. Over the course of an hour and six tracks, Henry shows his abilities with a wide variety of instruments and atmospheres that makes for an intensely satisfying, if at times bewildering, collection.
Truant For Kinbrae‘s second album, the brothers Truscott have chosen to weave an aural tapestry of the River Tay. It serves as a kind of love letter and story as to the impact the river has had on their lives, and their interactions with the surrounding landscape. Newly started label Truant has issued this on lovely 12″ vinyl with dramatic photographs on the inner sleeve
Upset The Rhythm Hot on the heels of the Drecksound LP, the third NOTS LP finds Hash Redactor‘s rhythm section Charlotte Watson and Meredith Lones reconvening with singer / guitarist /keyboardist Natalie Hoffmann for another high-intensity post-punk charge, smashing what came before out of the way.
Discus For Discus‘s eightieth release, Martin Archer has decided to go solo again, while also attempting to reproduce some of the sounds of his hornweb sax quartet that was active between 1983 and 1993. Not only that, it appears also as a kind of love letter to those saxophonists that have influenced him over the years of his playing, from the likes of Paul Desmond and Lester Young […]
KrysaliSound The latest release from Tropic Of Coldness is their first for KrysaliSound and builds on the slow motion soundscapes of 2018’s Framed Waves. Spread over four gently undulating pieces, Maps Of Reason unfolds at a pace that is beyond leisurely, and serves to lull the listener with its subtle washes and natural movement.
Thrill Jockey For Dommengang‘s third album for Thrill Jockey, it sounds as though they threw all their stuff into the back of the car and blew their LA home in favour of a wild ride into the desert, forsaking the concrete gleam for some dusty widescreen excesses. The scree of feedback that opens the album is a welcome reminder of their rock roots, but also that they are […]
Thrill Jockey The bringing together of two serial collaborating drummers can only be a good thing, and when they have the pedigree of Oneida‘s Kid Millions and Uniform‘s Greg Fox, we must be in for a treat. Greg plays drums on Biting Through, but he also concentrates on creating a synthesized backdrop for each of the six drum-crazy tracks appearing on the album.
Farmadelica Silver Relics are a duo from New York who ply a kind of synth- and rhythm-orientated take in classic American rock song-writing. Consisting of songwriter Alex Sepassi on guitar and synths, amongst other things, and Justin Alvis on drums, they formulate a sound that is redolent of the sort of film imagery that anyone could recognise from the last thirty years; those enormous storm drains that run […]
Rosélie Records Child ballerina turned singer-songwriter Bethia Beadman was transplanted from the West Country to the flat lands of Lincoln, and from there plies her trade, releasing albums of emotional and sweeping drama, the latest of which even includes Mike Mills of REM fame on keyboards, guitar and vocals. Having spent time as a member of Hole‘s touring band and part of Circulus, as well as writing and […]
Courier Sound Suffolk micro-label Courier Sound have released another of their beautifully presented cassettes. Coming in a lime green hand-made box and lime green cassette, with Quality Street wrappers and lovely little card inserts, it looks a treat, but it totally belies the aural contents. The fact that the wrappers are salvaged from “several years of reluctant Christmas obligation” should warn the listener
Wave Folder The list of equipment that Radek Rudnicki uses on the latest RPE Duo album is full of things of which I have never heard: a Buchla System 200, Eurorack modular, Octatrack and Bugbrand PT Delay, amongst quite a few others. His partner in musical nirvana, Matt Postle, meanwhile makes do with trumpet, piano, Korg and melodica. Between them, though, they weave quite a tapestry of textural […]
Disco Gecko Lower case soundscape composers Toby Marks and Andrew Heath recently found themselves in a fresh part of the UK, looking after a friend’s house and decided to travel north, south, east and west from that point, making recordings and taking aural snapshots of the areas in which they found themselves. Owing to the way in which they both work, the field recordings that they collected form […]
Arjuna Music Dark Star Safari is a collaboration between four doyens of the Scandinavian music scene bringing together Samuel Rohrer, Eyvind Aarset, Jan Bang and Erik Honoré. Their self-titled LP finds four kindred spirits looking for a way to push music into even newer directions, trying to find a new language amongst the remains of everything that has gone before.
Upset the Rhythm Hash Redactor hail from Memphis, Tennessee, but you wouldn’t really know it from the bass-heavy post-punk groove that they throw out on their first album. Made up of Alec McIntyre from Ex-Cult and Charlotte Watson and Meredith Lones from NOTS with George Williford on second guitar, the album is structured but sleazy at the same time