Rock Action As far as I am concerned, Luke Sutherland has been away from producing his own music for too long now. After helping to create the blood-rush post-rock of Long Fin Killie to the dreamy trip-hop of Bows and the pan-European Music AM, he wrote some delightful novels and then disappeared into the welcoming bosom of Mogwai. Until now…
Mr Olivetti
788 posts
Va Fongool In her bid to subvert the sound of the trumpet and meld it into something that is purely her own, Hilde Marie Holsen has teamed up with synthesizer artist Magnus Bugge as Bilayer to generate an album’s worth of esoteric and other worldly soundscapes. If you are lucky, you may recognise the sound of her primary instrument here and there, but often it is disguised
Spècula A serial collaborator, Teho Teardo has been releasing music for the last thirty years, both as a member of various bands and also as a solo soundtrack composer. Max Porter‘s Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, a book that has been adapted for the stage, directed by Enda Walsh, is a tale of sorrow and loss and for this album, Teho has reached deep inside himself to […]
Border Community Leafcutter John‘s latest comes with a stylised map of the east coast of England, and places that we can visit from where he has taken some of the samples used in the construction of the seven tracks here. It is a great idea and somehow, along with the brief descriptions John provides of the circumstances surrounding the pieces, it feels as though we could almost be […]
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 […]
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