Editorial
(29th April 2012)
Hello. Were at the end of April and I've cleared the decks enough to actually spend some time with the music. There are some very nice albums in this one. I couldn't fit them all in the mix which was a shame. Hope you find something of interest.
Peace
Ian
Music
Adrian Dziewanski - Orbital Decay
(vac003)
CDR
It's been a while since Adrian's music graced thee pages and I must say I've missed it. Canadian musician Adrian makes drone music with a decidedly British flavour. His music is very much of the Chalk, Ora, Monos variety; filled with long crystalline drones and gently morphing atmospheres.
It's a beautiful album full of delicately sliding tones filled with light that pulsates and infuses the air with the character of a hazy summer daybreak.
Half Asleep - Subtitles for the Silent Versions
(Humpty Dumpty Records / We Are Unique! Records HMPTY014)
CD
It's always nice when I get sent something that sounds out of the ordinary from the normal strangeness that I treat and abuse my hearing with through the week. This album from Half Asleep, who seems to be Belgium musician Valerie Leclercq alongside various friends and family, is a rather lovely set of songs showcasing her playing augmented by a parade of vocalists (and occasional instrumentalists) all of whom do great justice to her compositions. The music, played mostly on piano or acoustic guitar, is a mix of wistful, but not twee, folk and cabaret flamboyance. Leclercq's playing is understated and stately often with a gently plaintive air to it whilst the vocals provide an ethereal mist that blankets the instruments.
As I said at the beginning, not something that I get the opportunity to listen to very often for these pages but I'm certainly glad that I got to in this case and I would heartily recommend it to those with a hankering for some songs.
Herzog - Waking Up Is Hard To Do
(Rural Colour rc044)
3" CDR
Nicely made little 4 track EP of lightly psychedelic ambient works from an artist I know absolutely nothing about and as my internet is currently dead I can't look him / her / them up either.
The music exists on the tuneful end of ambient; full of airy atmospheres, billowing tones and half melodies. There's elements of Labradford, smatterings of Andrew Chalk and Mirror and a pinch of Eno all added to the mix to create something quite beautiful if a bit brief.
Tetsuya Hori - Dried Fish is Just Good As Bait
(Aphonia Recordings AR041CD)
CD
If I start off this review of an album of music made using voice, cigar box, piano, rubber bands and face (?) by telling you that I utterly, and I really do mean utterly, detest experimental vocal work then you'll understand how difficult I found much of this album to listen to. I find the sort of pointless yelping, burbling and trilling that characterises this form to be hackneyed beyond all hope of redemption. As such my initial instinct was to write this album off altogether but I persevered and behind, around and happily, occasionally, in front of the squeaks and squawks are some very nice rolling, soundscapes, particularly on the second track, Intermezzo. I'm not sure if it redeems the album for me but I've certainly found myself often digging out the disc and playing this one particular track.
Kostoglotov - Kostoglowhat
CDR
This is a new name to me and a welcome one at that. London based musician Kostoglotov provides a very nice set of low-key, lo-fi excursions into a dreamy psyche-pop soundworld of clicks, cuts, pops, drones, swoops, sways and, most welcome of all, melodies. That Kostoglotov knows his way around a tune becomes quickly apparent as the gentle and often introspective compositions float by one after the other. That (s)he's not afraid to augment that tune with excursions through your third eye is a very welcome surprise.
In parts both the vibe and the music reminded me of early Appliance and that cannot ever be a bad thing, for the most part though this album travels a similar road to bands such as Windy and Carl and Amp. It's been a long while since something of this sort has dropped through my letter box and I'm very pleased it did. If you're a fan of any of the abovementioned then I recommend tracking this one down.
Tom Lawrence - Water Beetles of Pollardstown Fen
(Gruenrekorder Gruen 087)
CD
Gruenrekorder continue their run of outstanding releases with this set of recordings made by Lawrence of the underwater denizens of Pollardstown Fen outside of Kildare in Ireland.
The recordings are unadorned and, to a great extent, unprocessed with only sounds below the levels of human hearing brought up into our range. The array of sounds on display is simply astounding. At times it's hard to credit that such a beautiful cacophony is natural. One forgets what is playing as dada-esque sound collages reminiscent of NWW or AMM tumble past. The complexity and the richness of the totality of the sounds lends it a compositional flavour that is then made all the stronger when one snaps back to reality and fully remembers what is playing.
I've had this on repeat for the best part of two days now and am still finding depths and nuances I'd previously missed. Fantastic album on a fantastic label.
Francisco Lopez & Carlos Villena - split
(Mantricum Records mantricum 023)
Cassette
There'll be a few of these split Mantricum split cassettes appearing in these pages over the next couple of issues. This one pairs label honcho Villena with the inimitable Francisco Lopez.
Lopez opens the proceedings with a luscious set derived from field recordings sourced in Queensland, Australia in 2009. There's an arc to the track that moves from silence interspersed with occasional birdcalls through a consonance of natural sounds, the origin of which I could not even begin to derive, before once more descending into silence.
Villena's half of the album continues in a similar vein with a set of field recordings sourced in France and Spain in late 2010. There's a slightly more 'assembled' feel to this one but that's something I prefer; I like to feel the hand of the composer on a recording. For me a composition is often more satisfying than a pure unadulterated field recording. The joy of the sounds of nature for me lies in situ. Sat here in my scruffy little study at quarter past ten at night it is the sound of the composers art that most interests me.
A nice collection that is well worth tracking down.
Christopher McFall - An Eris 23
(SiRiDisc siri09)
CDR
The last time we heard from Christopher McFall he was reproducing what seemed to be the sound of entropic decay on the Mystery Sea label. This time out we are treated to a variety of warped and uneasy melodic introspections. Piano features very strongly here sketching out beautifully woozy melodies over a morphing backdrop of tactile textures.
As the disc progresses harder ambiences grow and spread bringing with them a darker and more claustrophobic feel to the proceedings that feels like an organic and logical evolution. McFall isn't content to leave us stranded in the darkness however and at the album's close we return to the melancholia and the album comes to a simple and stately ease.
Beautiful and heartily recommended.
Sujo / Koperschwache - split cdr
(Inam Records 087)
Ah Sujo how I love the noises you make. This split album opens with 22 minutes of his characteristic coruscating, metallic, post-rock drone. Layers of pulsating and soaring guitars over tripping metronomic drums. Music constructed from glorious, euphoric highs and punishing, ecstatic lows. It's music to play at frankly appalling volume so as to let it pour over you and scour the mundane world away.
After the soul cleansing fire of Sujo, Koperschwache is, at least initially, a much gentler prospect with a first track of hazy guitar abstraction flowing into fuzzy melodies. The second track however is made of thumping drumlines, sharp guitar and some pretty sorry lyrics and vocals. Not to my taste at all this one. Things are back on track for the albums finale though with a brutal 8 minutes of slow as molasses grind that could have done with a bigger mix to truly come to life but still did it's job.
This one was always going to be about Sujo for me and his half alone is, of course, well worth your time but the second half certainly has it's moments.
(inamrecs [at] yahoo.com)
David Velez - Bay Ridge
(Mystery Sea MS 68)
2xCDR
An unusual 2 disc outing for the Mystery Sea label by Brooklyn based Velez which, at an hour and thirty five minutes (58 minutes on disc one & 37 on disc two), is enough to test the attention span of even the most ardent fan of the genre.
As is always the case with MS releases water is the central theme which is, as Velez states in the liner notes, the dominant subject of his own work and as such this pairing should be a marriage made in heaven and for the most part it is. The sounds on offer feel rubbed and ground and scrunched to provide a deliciously textural experience that seemingly hangs together due to the coarseness of the constituent sounds. The problem for me though is it's just too long. My attention span with albums is somewhere around the 40 minute mark after which I start craving something new. As such disc two is easily my preferred of the two and besides, it feels more fully exploratory. Disc one whilst certainly enjoyable kept losing me so I found it difficult to make the journey to it's conclusion and I certainly couldn't do the full two disc trip in one go, which was a shame. Hopefully though you'll have a longer concentration span than me and will be able to stick it out and experience the full effect.
Simon Whetham - Mall Muzak
(Unfathomless U07)
CD
Simon has sourced all the sounds for this release on Mystery Sea offshoot, Unfathomless, at The Mall, Broadmead, Bristol, a three story temple to soulless corporate consumerism in the middle of Bristol city centre. The music, like it's inspiration, is stark and unsettling to such degree that you are soon left expecting the lady in the radiator to start telling you how everything is fine in heaven.
The hulking monolithic music that Whetham has assembled speaks of the grinding, rumbling, laborious underbelly of the place; a far cry from the plastic happiness that is paraded in the public areas. This is the sound of the internal workings of The Mall; it is the sound of the intestines, the arteries, the lungs and the groaning, rasping joints. This is music that has moved away from it's (post-)industrial roots to embrace a new metaphor; one of the biology of the machine; a bio-mechanical exploration of the body-economic.
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Out now on Quiet World
Fazio - All at once the remote go forth my soul and my seeking, the unknowable becomes known
Banks Bailey - Entrances
Heart of Palm - Psychopomp
Ian Holloway, Rhodri Thomas & Stephen Jones - Simple Ghosts & Lazy Old Bones
Ian Holloway - These Clockwork Tides
Sujo - Eilat
Ian Holloway - Handle This Wino Like He Was An Angel: Baubles & Gewgaws 2002-2008
Ian Holloway - TimeNecrotic
Ian Holloway - The Prescient Machine
Ulysses Girelle - Gold, Frankincense & Murder
Ian Holloway - A Thorn May Pick You But A Falls Tounge Even More
Ian Holloway - Phantasms
Ian Holloway - Phantasms II
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Editorial
(March 2012)
Yes, we're still here.
It's taken me 3 months to find the time to put these few reviews together. I'm neck deep in the final year of a course (along with holding down two jobs) at the moment and finding it hard to find much in the way of spare time. Hopefully I'll have finished all the coursework by the end of May at which point (after a short break for a small stress-related breakdown) we'll be back bigger and better than ever (or at least as good as we ever managed to be).
Sorry for the delays to everyone who's submitted. I will get to everyone but it may take a little while. Hopefully I'll be able to post some mini issues over the coming weeks.
Peace
Ian
Music
B. Lone Engines - B. Lone Engines
(Dark Meadows DMR018)
CDR
No here's an album that covers some distance. Reading (UK) duo B. Lone Engines have produced an album of extremes; extremes of mood, of sound, of texture, of instrumentation, of intent.
Nestled deep within it's darkly psychedelic heart there is a fabulously rustic feel to their music. The duo of Spider and Ant are happy to throw thumb piano into the mix together with electric guitar and pair hand claps with soaring digital noise. It shouldn't work but it does, it works beautifully in fact. The music is in equal parts darkly contemplative, coolly exuberant, gently bucolic and brutally psychoactive - often all at the same time.
It's chaos is a massive part of it's charm but equally the verve and aplomb with which it's been assembled shine through and make this a massively compulsive and addictive listen that you'll return to repeatedly.
Jan Kees Helms - StringStrang two
(Ephre Imprint EPH11)
CDR
This is a very nice indeed set of low key drone pieces on the always reliable Ephre label out of the Netherlands. Here they give us a glimpse of the work of one of their countrymen Jan Kees Helms. I have very little information in front of me but apparently these tracks are single take guitar and field recordings and no overdubs.
It's pretty impressive stuff. The music is, for the most part, gentle and introspective with occasional moments of angst rising up but there're also brief snatches of more tumultuous auras, especially on the opener. It's not the most intense of experiences being more of a journey through some nice scenery rather than a full immersion psychotropic mindfuck but the scenery is very nice indeed.
The production is a little hard edged for my tastes and robs the music of some of it's warmth but it's clean, clear and crisp. My preference is for a little more haze in the production of drone pieces but I certainly can't fault him for the mix he's made.
Good, solid tangible drone work. Well worth a listen.
Francisco Lopez - Hypogeion
(Mantricum Records mantricum022)
Cassette
You always know you're in for a strange trip when a Francisco Lopez recording starts it's journey and this is no exception. I'm listening to a CDR promo of a cassette release that'll feature about 19 minutes of music per side.
The first side has a distinctly metaphysical flavour. Right from the off it feels purposefully, other. It's sinuous and seductive in a unwholesomely bleak sort of way. Vaguely dirty and queasy.
Side two is a more subtle animal. It maintains the subterranean aesthetic of it's predecessors but it's scope is wider and there are glimpses of light erratically splayed across the horizon. Album closer 'A Leptotyphlinae seeks for food' is filled with clattering rhythms and insidious invocations that drive one to repeatedly return, wide-eyed and mesmerised into it's embrace.
This final track alone is worth the entry price - it's utterly fabulous - but in conjunction with the rest of the music on display here this release is un-missable.
Pleq + Lauki - The Gravity Lens
(Ephre Imprint EPH12)
CDR
Two new names to me collaborating here for, I think, the first time and producing something quite lovely.
Bartosz Dziadosz (Pleq) and Mikel Lauki are musicians working out of Warsaw and Barcelona respectively. The music they have conjured is a single 21 minute longform drone consisting of a series of overlapping sections that morph and regenerate repeatedly, utilising a pervasive sense of melancholy that occasionally warps into something darker and almost vindictive before retracting itself back into it's reverie.
This is beautifully human music and is very recommended.
Quetev Meriri - Qsamim LeSevel
(GushPunkA)
CD
We've been visited here at Wonderful Wooden Reasons twice before by these Israeli troubadours and it's with open arms and a joyful smile we welcome them back again.
Quetev Meriri produce a psychedelic free-folk explorative music that is just so deliciously addictive it ought to come with a warning.
The line-up as detailed on the press sheet is deceptively normal - singer, bassist, guitarist, drummer - but there are a plethora of other instruments layered throughout the mix, piano being the most readily obvious. Musically it is by turns beautiful, poignant, ugly, angry, perplexed, joyful, belligerent and more. At it's core are a selection of fairly gentle folk(ish) songs that have been realised in the most sensational of ways. Sounds trip over each other in order to make themselves known and have their say, textures establish and collapse in the passing of a thought whilst colours swirl and flash creating patterns that are almost painfully beautiful to behold.
This is a stunning piece of work. I'm writing this at the very end of January and I think I may have already heard the best album I'm going to hear this year.
Syrinx & Jessica Bailiff - Fear of the Red Admirals
(Dark Meadows Recordings DMR021)
CDR
Very low key set from Northampton's finest droners Syrinx as the team up with slowcore legend Bailiff.
I'll admit my exposure to Bailiff's work is extremely limited (I've only heard her 'Even in Silence' album) and there's little here that sounds anything like that album. To my mind her presence is most felt on the albums second and, for these ears, standout track the distinctly airy and psychedelic wafts of 'I Remember You Most'. The rest of this 4 track album is more typically, although perhaps less intense, Syrinx, exhaling monolithic clouds of post-industrial dystrophic miasma.
Darren Tate - Rotate
(Fungal 044)
CDR
This album was destined to be released on my Quiet World label but due to time constraints dictated by a full release schedule Darren decided to put this own put himself and record a new one for Quiet World. To say that I'm a little disappointed is an understatement. This is, I think, the finest music he's produced in a while.
Using guitar and Korg monotron with just a smidge of synth thrown in for good measure Darren has once more taken to the stars with this stunning set of cosmic jams. The music is sparse and for the most part distinctly understated. It's massive in scope and intimate in nature placing the listener in a position where they are held weightless by the sounds. There is a definite melancholy threaded through much of what you hear but its a melancholia derived from exposure to something majestic rather than simple ennui.
Music to make your third eye cry.
Violence & the Sacred - Teddy Bear Stinks Real Bad Now
(VIOSAC VATS6)
CDR
And so, via the magic of the Viosac reissue series, we arrive at 1987 and V&tS are showing a maturity of sound that their early primitivism belied. It is still undeniably the same band that we can hear on those early performances but it's a hell of a lot slicker and, maybe, more coherent.
Sonically it's a continuation of what has gone before. Abstract guitar, cello, synth, voice and sample soundscapes that relate a surreal and incomprehensible narrative. It's filled with caffeine jitters and nic-fit edginess and it stands in front of you trying relentlessly to poke you in the eye with a stick.
Now, doesn't that sound like something you want to hear.
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Out now on Quiet World
Fazio - All at once the remote go forth my soul and my seeking, the unknowable becomes known
Banks Bailey - Entrances
Heart of Palm - Psychopomp
Ian Holloway, Rhodri Thomas & Stephen Jones - Simple Ghosts & Lazy Old Bones
Ian Holloway - These Clockwork Tides
Sujo - Eilat
Ian Holloway - Handle This Wino Like He Was An Angel: Baubles & Gewgaws 2002-2008
Ian Holloway - TimeNecrotic
Ian Holloway - The Prescient Machine
Ulysses Girelle - Gold, Frankincense & Murder
Ian Holloway - A Thorn May Pick You But A Falls Tounge Even More
Ian Holloway - Phantasms
Ian Holloway - Phantasms II
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