Leaf Laurence Pike is quite the musical polymath and one of Australia’s leading exponents of experimental drum-based music. After a number of collaborations with the likes of Australian jazz legend Mike Nock and Jack Wyllie from Portico Quartet, as well as releases by his bands PVT and Triosk, this is the first to find him heading out under his own name.
Mr Olivetti
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Grönland Where to start with Holger Czukay? His is a name with which any self-respecting music fan will be only too familiar. Holger had a career that started in 1960 with the introduction of the Holger Schuring Quintet, then time spent as a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen
Duophonic Tim Gane has barely rested in the last thirty years. After McCarthy was taken over by Stereolab, it was fascinating watching that band evolve into the well-loved and much imitated melder of genres that it became. From the lo-fi hypnotic racket of “Goldenballs” to the sublime pop chemistry of “Captain Easychord”, the band were in constant motion. Since their dissolution
Arlen After twenty years of playing in various groups together and apart, Ghost Music finds songwriters Matt Randall and Lee Hall reunited and plying a fine example of what I would consider to be melancholic English coastal music.
Wharf Cat A spectral, dream-inducing five-piece from Estonia is not what I was expecting to be listening to, but that is what Holy Motors are and this, their first album, is a thing of rare beauty.
Hubro The last couple of years have been busy for Kim Myhr. You|Me is his third album of 2017, including two collaborations: one with Lasse Marhaug and one with Ingar Zach; while in 2016, he released two albums, including one with Jenny Hval and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra.
Hubro Hubro are doing such a great job of cataloguing and drawing to our attention the vibrant neo-jazz/experimental scene in Scandinavia. This latest album from Erik Honoré, following on from 2014’s well-received Heliographs, explores further his experiments in the melding of live improv and sampling technology.
Gizeh Leeds six-piece Tomorrow We Sail seem to be steering away from that city’s prevailing need for noisy stuff and heading into calmer, more melancholy territory with this, their second album.
Consouling Sounds There is very little to give the game away on the sleeve to Monnik‘s second album Bedevaart. Besides the title, artist and three track names, there is no more to go on.
Kranky Dedekind Cut has been extremely busy in the last couple of years what with one album on Non and a whole plethora of self-released EPs. He has obviously been noticed as this second album is being released on Kranky, happy home of all things leftfield and with an ambient slant.
Swindon 22 February 2018 The good people at the latest of Swindon’s venues, The Tuppenny, have been brave enough to unleash the might of two of the town’s finest sons on an unsuspecting public. First up is the extremely affable Tom, who when donning his magic wolf’s hat becomes sonic terrorist Grasslands, defender of the faith of the open veldt and ex-employee of the month at Safeway in Aberystwyth.
Cherry Red For me, Felt were one of the most important bands that this country produced in the 1980s, and in Lawrence they possessed a true English eccentric visionary who deserves to be viewed in a class of his own. The idea of starting a band with a view to releasing ten albums and ten singles over the course of ten years is a masterpiece of self-imposed marketing
Nonplace Burnt Friedman is one of those mystery names that seems to often be involved in so many collaborations. His work with Jaki Liebezeit in Cyclopean was a deliciously rhythmic stew and his stuff with David Sylvian, particularly the Nine Horses album was really lovely, so to be confronted with a compilation of his own work was a pleasant surprise and then to discover that it covers a […]
RVNG Intl. Mark Renner was a mystery name to me, and because of that I must admit to an element of surprise at the attention lavished on the packaging by RVNG on this collection of tracks. The tracks date from electronic music’s halcyon days of the 1980s and cover Mark’s initial foray into recorded sound in 1982 up to the point where he seems to have put music […]
City Slang I had a real love for Calexico back when they first started. There was something about Joey Burns and John Convertino disappearing into a shack in Arizona somewhere and reproducing the sound of their environment in such a charming and understated way. That dusty, warm sound, the sensation of lounging underneath the canopy of an orange grove as these subtle, Mexican-influenced, horn-infused delights float around your head like the […]
Riot Season Familia de Lobos is a six-piece from Buenos Aires formed in 2016 and their first album, released as a limited LP on Riot Season, is a fantastic mix of warm 1970s-inflected desert guitar music and more traditional Latin American sounds.
Drag City After four years away, No Age return with a follow up to 2013’s An Object, released on Sub Pop. They seem to have left that spiritual home, headed for the more experimental environs of Drag City and have now released Snares Like A Haircut.
Bureau B Releasing records on and off since 1993, Jo Zimmerman has found another new home on the eternal home for musical explorers Bureau B. His first Schlammpeitziger album since 2014’s What’s Fruit? finds him in less of a disco place, with the beats a little slower — but the vibe still as deliciously idiosyncratic and strangely surreal as ever.