Bureau B The three man guerilla riot that is Camera have taken new directions, but following in their wake is Licht by Franz Bargmann and Timm Brockmann, both ex-members of the band, but both with a work ethic that means less than a year after the release of Camera’s Phantom Of Liberty (on which LP neither played) we have something a little different into which to sink our aural teeth.
Mr Olivetti
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Turquoise Coal Alan Holmes, one half of Spectralate and doyen of the Welsh alternative scene — which includes being part of the wonderful Ectogram — has been beavering away on those fringes for the best part of thirty years under a wide variety of different names and in different styles.
(self-released) Meriheini Luoto is an improvisational violinist and a recent graduate of the Sibelius Academy. Her love of the forest and how sound can interact with that most glorious and mysterious of environments led her to produce this binaurally recorded, five-part piece which nods to Nordic folk music as well as a looser, more immediate style that dovetail well.
Constellation I remember the first time I heard Godspeed You! Black Emperor; having my mind blown by the sheer enormity of the scale of that first album, the bleak drama and the frazzled audacity of it. With the second album, this ragged bunch of Canadians reached the apogee of what could be done using the basic constructs of rock music
Tapete Nick Nicely is a bit of a mystery. It would appear that he has been recording and releasing music for the best part of the last forty years, but this album released on Tapete is only his third non-compilation full-length record in that time. A series of psychedelic singles were released in the early ’80s and then a series of dancefloor-filling twelve inches in the nineties
Alien Agency For Dig Deeper‘s third long-player, leader Einar Kaupang has chosen to cast a light on the plight of refugees as seen from the perspective of a Norwegian citizen; one who is discontented with the inhumane attitudes and “close the border” mentalities of that government
Mute After thirty years spent as Sonic Youth guitar wrangler, plus his intermittent and incredibly varied solo career of experimentation, collaboration and wild ideas, I thought I knew a little of what to expect from this latest release from Lee Ranaldo. The stark, contextless cover image of tyre marks on a rural road further confirmed my assumptions, only to have them dashed completely
Stickman Papir are a young power trio from Copenhagen plying an expansive take on instrumental guitar music. Together since 2010, V is, as the Roman numeral suggests, their fifth album and squeezes just seven tracks onto two discs, lasting as a little over an hour and a half. Brevity is not their strong suit.
Gizeh The French neo-classical collective Astrïd has been playing together for the best part of twenty years. Back in 2012/2013 after various e-mailed correspondence, they invited the pianist Rachel Grimes, most well known for her US-based collective Rachel’s, to attend a gathering in the French countryside and see what might come forth from such a collaboration.
Bureau B Sound architect Nikolai von Sallwitz and experimental artist Alsen Rau have been collaborating on various projects for the last fifteen years or so and for this mysterious duo of albums, the ever-reliable Bureau B have been chosen to release them. This time around, the duo have chosen the name Esmark under which to trade
Hubro Of the three recent Hubro releases that have come across my path, this Brutter album is the one that perhaps pushes experimentation with rhythm to its optimum limits.
Upset The Rhythm After being seriously impressed with a fantastically rhythmic and propulsive live set by the dynamic duo courtesy of the very lovely people at Upset The Rhythm
Distant Spore After luxuriating in the carnival like atmosphere of 2014’s full length Make It Look Like Nothing Happened and the head spinning smorgasbord of 2016’s Everything Is Magick, nobody could really second guess Impuritan‘s next move. The colours and textures employed in the previous releases made them a fantastic new discovery and I was intrigued to see what the next step would be.
Hubro In comparison to the light wash of our reality that accompanied the Håkon Stene and Kristine Tjøgersen‘s recent album for Hubro, The Third Script combines the talents of Norwegian bassist Jo Berger Myhre and Icelandic drummer Olafur Bjorn Olafsson and spends time constructing an alternate reality, something which takes reference from its place of recording but then pushes it into new realms.
Hubro Since 2009, the good people at Hubro have been diligently documenting the expanding Norwegian music scene that encapsulates jazz, improv, minimalism and whatever else lurks in the mysterious frozen spaces of that fascinating country.
Cut Surface For Melt Downer‘s first release, they have chosen to issue a gorgeous double album in a subtle Technicolor sleeve. From the outside, it promises much and I am pleased to say that it delivers like an overloaded cargo plane, crashing through your neighbourhood, scaring the hell out of families quietly watching television and setting dogs barking and sirens screaming.
7K! !K7 have been issuing releases which trade on an intelligent dance tip for the best part of twenty years now with the likes of Kruder & Dorfmeister and all those DJ-Kicks selections. Head honcho Horst Weidenmüller has chosen to set up a sub-label , 7K!, which is more in a neo-classical vein, but he feels will appeal to fans of the original label. Luca D’Alberto‘s Endless is the […]
Bureau B Another important Bureau B collaboration finds two early doyens of German music joining forces for six tracks of far-reaching, future-spanning electronic visions.