Piano And Patterns, London Institute for Mathematical Sciences (February 13 2026)

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What happens if the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing? What if there are two left hands and two right hands? What if both left hands don’t know what both right hands are doing?

I could go on subdividing this conundrum up a few more times, but I won’t. I won’t, because it’s irrelevant. Irrelevant because, having watched performances of Brahms’ Variations On A Theme By Robert Schumann, Schubert’s Variations On An Original Theme In A-flat Major and Leontovych’s Shchedryk by Ukrainian pianist brothers Alexei and Sasha Grynyuk – two pianists playing the same piano, together – what I witnessed was an example of complete harmonious synchronisation. Then again, the Grynyuk brothers are two esteemed, award-winning musicians, so nothing short of perfection should have been expected.

Watching their four hands frantically moving across the keys of the antique Steinway piano was a mesmerising display of dizzying dexterity. I watched Vanessa Wagner performing Philip Glass pieces at the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago and I was reminded of her lightning fast performance while watching the Grynyuk brothers as their hands raced at impossibly high speeds across the keys. It was like a display of kinetic energy; appropriate, given that the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences is located at the Royal Institute, where Michael Faraday conducted his pioneering experiments in energy.

It was also, occasionally, a little stressful to watch from a front-row seat that afforded a perfect view of those hands clustered at the centre of the keyboard. I watched, simultaneously in awe of what I could see, and strangely fearful that their hands might collide. It felt like there wasn’t enough space for their hands to co-exist at the instrument together. I anticipated moments of unintentional disharmony through some sort of mid-melodic crash, but, of course, there were none. See my previous comment about their award-winning status.

The two pieces were punctuated by a lecture by Professor Yang-Hui He, a Fellow at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences (and self-proclaimed failed musician), who posited that the true architect of harmony was Pythagoras. Exploring the mathematical theory that explains the note intervals of scales and different harmonic patterns used in Chinese / Japanese, Western and Indian scales, I’ll be completely honest that I wished I’d paid more attention in both my music and maths lessons. It was just as baffling, to a maths novice like me, as trying to untangle the four Grynyuk hands as they played, but it involved fractions, and nothing is more likely to induce educational PTSD in me than trying to fathom fractions all over again.

Self-evidently, this piece is a departure from the usual words placed here on Further. It illustrates that I know very little about musical (or indeed mathematical) theory. Bearing in mind that my two careers – in finance and music writing – rely on a degree of knowledge of both of these, that’s a fairly brave admission.

It also illustrates that I’m more than happy to be put in situations where I am materially outside of the comfort zone in which I tend to operate. It also refutes, to my mind, the notion that your appetite for musical exploration atrophies as you get older. I’ll continue to seek out enlightening, enlivening and mind-expanding musical experiences like these until my ears fully fail me.

With sincere thanks to Katya Gorbatiouk and Sarah Myers Cornaby for the invite.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

 

Rupert Lally – Tiny Universes

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Earlier this year, my Mortality Tables collaborative project released Lunar Forms by Switzerland-based sound artist Rupert Lally*. That album found Lally at what I would argue was his most inventive, using a specific and quirky Eurorack module to trigger randomised rhythms on a daily basis, which he then used as the foundation for the pieces on the album.

The album also found Lally in deeply ambient territory. It’s an area of his work that I’ve always enjoyed, and for Tiny Universes, his latest album, we (pleasingly) find him going even further in that direction.

His choice of title is instructive, if somewhat consciously oxymoronic. These 11 pieces are like studying pinhead-sized universes through a microscope, revealing an incomprehensible vastness that would not be implied by their ostensibly small stature. Musically, there’s a whiff of jazzy Kosmische, a smattering of Vangelis-esque Bladerunner-y widescreen vastness and a determined melodic momentum that’s often missing from a lot of ambient music. Lally is not afraid of introducing unsettling, discordant textures, instilling a feeling of discomfort and uncertainty as much as they seem to evoke the idea of wide-eyed, slack-jawed wonder, surprise and incomprehension.

Lally has always been a masterful electronic composer and sound designer, capable of using an adaptable array of tools and techniques within his work. The sleight-of-hand he deploys here is the art of the slow build. His melodies begin as quiet, ruminative gestures, which coalesce and harden as they progress, often without you noticing. These magnificent, delicate, unexpected, low-key crescendos are critical ingredients of pieces like ‘Cosmic Countdown’, where that aforementioned sense of motion is most acutely felt. Elsewhere, Lally’s approach is to allow pieces to form stately, stirring gaseous structures out of oscillating, restless layers of white noise, lending a creator’s guiding hand while also allowing the tracks to evolve and develop by themselves.

Unlike Lunar Forms, there are no rhythms on Tiny Universes. None. Not even the slightest trace, inference or suggestion. Perhaps they haven’t formed yet in these universes that have caught Lally’s attention. It leaves his melodic and atmospheric prowess utterly naked and untethered; a brave move, for sure, but one that he is effortlessly capable of owning. The result is an album representing yet another high watermark in his expansive back catalogue. And yes, I know I’m biased.

https://rupertlally.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-universes

Tiny Universes by Rupert Lally was released December 5 2025. It is available for a limited period as a pay-what-you-like release.

* There are a small number of CD copies of Lunar Forms available here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

Critical Objects – Fractured In Grey

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‘Fractured In Grey’ is the third single from Critical Objects, a pairing of anonymous sound artist Veryan and the not-anonymous Pinklogik (Jules Straw). The new track continues the duo’s exploration of electronic pop’s hinterlands established with the preceding singles, ‘Rewind’ and ‘Blossoming Ache’, thus time setting Straws’ introspective vocal to a crisp electro beat and a fat, melodic bassline that has overtones of wonky, pitch-bent acid house.

As ever with the Veryan-Pinklogikisches Freundschaft, it’s the details that matter. Beneath that fat bassline is a slowly-unfurling pointillistic melody which gently asserts itself as the track progresses. There are further textural details lurking in the dense reverb which occupies the background, giving Straws’ voice an uncertain, wavering depth. And once again, like ‘Rewind’ and ‘Blossoming Ache’, the dense news of the mix is an illusion. The layers are deceptively simple, leading to the wing lodging itself in your consciousness for hours after.

Like with their previous two singles, both Pinklogik and Veryan offer up their own individual mixes of the track. Pinklogik’s mix isolates the haunting, melodic fragility but hugely ratchets up the rhythm, giving ‘Fractured In Grey’ a sense of slick momentum. Elsewhere, Veryan deconstructs the track into a frozen, atmospheric wonderland of suppressed beats and fluttering, overlapping ambient melodies. That one track can yield two such different perspectives is the quiet power of this wonderful – and hopefully enduring – duo.

https://criticalobjects.bandcamp.com/album/fractured-in-grey

Fractured In Grey was released December 3 2025.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

Shots: A.M. Boys / Cloud Canyons / Marco Avitabile / Critical Objects

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A.M. BOYS – PRESENT PHASE

The second album from the NYC duo of John Blonde and Chris Moore is an enigma. As an example of leftfield electronic pop it’s up there with the best. Not only that, but Blonde and Moore’s conscious decision to evenly split the album between vocal tracks and instrumental pieces is unlike anything else on the market today. That largely from the way these pieces were written through intuition – if Blonde didn’t feel lyrics flowing when they were working on a track, he wouldn’t force them, and it would stay a pure instrumental piece. That gives each of these pieces an intentionality and purpose, not a sense of incompleteness. ‘Yesterday Yes’ is a good example of a track that exudes a bold, epically-building firmness – exceptionally lyrical in its melodic motif, only without lyrics. Elsewhere, the sublime ‘Ocean Ocean’ documents Blonde’s feelings as he sat watching the waves and surfers on Surfrider Beach, bringing some California warmth to their East Coast starkness. ‘Wounded Wrestler’ might be a note of romantic longing to an injured college sportsman, but its noisy, rough-edged delivery gives off an edge of a lost Throbbing Gristle track recorded live in a dark and murky Manhattan club. I interviewed Blonde and Moore for Electronic Sound. You can find that interview here. Released May 16 2005.

https://amboys.bandcamp.com/album/present-phase

 

CLOUD CANYONS – ECSTASY / DISCIPLINE

Cloud Canyons are an Italian quartet of Stella Baraldi, Michelle Cristofori, Laura Storchi and Nicola Caleffi. This single follows their 2023 debut album Dreaming Of Horses Running In Circles, and contains two long tracks that showcase a singular approach to electronic music. ‘Ecstasy’ is a dreamy affair, all pulsing arpeggios drenched in soft reverb to create hazy, gauzy, etiolated textures. There is a hint of white noise at the music’s fringes, like the lonely sound of rain on an apartment window. Over these sounds we hear mantra-like vocals that alternate between euphoric and uncertain, like the clipped voices of a half-heard conversation. ‘Discipline’ isn’t, alas, a Throbbing Gristle cover, but it does bear some similarity to Billie Ray Martin’s version of ‘Persuasion’. Over a grid of ceaseless beats, Cloud Canyons deploy a menacing bass pattern, minimalist, pointillistic high-pitched sounds and a fragile melody, while repeated vocals are processed into echoing beds of sound. It is at once energetic and insistent, carrying a sense of urgency and vital dark energy. The two tracks couldn’t be more different, but, really. who needs conformity anyway? Released July 25 2025.

https://cloudcanyonsband.bandcamp.com/album/ecstasy-discipline

 

MORAY NEWLANDS – THE RED RED EARTH (Wormhole World)

I’ve been meaning to write about this album for a while, ever since I read the opening line of Moray Newlands’ email that accompanied this album: “I’ve been ruminating on the inevitability of death and how it will come to us all at some point.” I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking the same thoughts, and my Mortality Tables project (which Newlands has contributed to) is almost entirely occupied with our essential impermanence. With a title inspired by the soil to be found near his home on the east coast of Scotland, the 16 pieces presented here represent his unfolding thoughts d reflections. Taking in soft and introspective piano, field recordings, wobbly vocal sounds, church bells, discordant strings, delicate electronics, inquisitive textures and quotes from Sylvia Plath, these pieces are far from maudlin, miserable reflections of Newlands’ thoughts. Instead, they carry a sort of openness and acceptance. The exception is ‘An Incident Has Occurred’ and its counterpart, ‘Another Incident Has Occurred’, which underline a brief sense of panicked uncertainty. The plaintive ‘(Put Me In) The Red Red Earth’, which closes the first half, and a version of Philip Glass’ ‘Closing’, which concludes the album, will just about finish you off and usher you to your own burial spot under the title’s red, red earth. Released August 15 2025.

https://wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/album/the-red-red-earth

 

MARCO AVITABILE – A FEW MEANINGFUL THINGS (Colectivo Casa Amarela)

Marco Avitabile is an Italian guitarist. There’s also a house DJ with the same name, but I’m guessing these aren’t the same person. Avitabile’s technique came out of heavier rock, but he has now established himself as a improviser, usually adding effects and processing to lift his music into a more structured style. His latest album for the Lisbon Colectivo Casa Amarela label is one freighted with tension, specifically the different directions we are all pulled in during our lives between family, work and our myriad passions. That essence manifests itself here in playing that is never angry or fractious, but which gently oscillates, as if Avitabile is using his instrument to ask questions in an attempt to make sense of his world. Key track ‘Copenhagen’ is an eight-minute guitar symphony, framed by an initial cluster of heavy guitar crashes and reverb that evolve into a poignant, heart-wrenching melody accompanied by subtle, unobtrusive electronics. The piece has a journeying, evolving quality, moving from the troubled, anguished darkness of its opening moments toward something much more euphoric. Released August 31 2025.

https://casaamarela.bandcamp.com/album/a-few-meaningful-things

 

CRITICAL OBJECTS – BLOSSOMING ACHE

In the last of these round-ups, I covered ‘Rewind’, the debut single from Critical Objects – the duo of Pinklogik and Veryan – and politely asked for more electronic pop from these two wonderful artists. Well, I’m pleased to say that’s happened. ‘Blossoming Ache’ is the duo’s second track, built from a powerful bass hook and determined beats, set in place beneath a series of spiralling melodies that have a fleeting, ephemeral delicateness. Pinklogik’s vocals are haunting and plaintive, alternating between innocence and world-weary disappointment, like a mournful choir heard through the haze of memory. As with ‘Rewind’, both Veryan and Pinklogik provide their own individual remixes to round out the release, offering up polar opposite explorations of the track’s layers – with Pinklogik ratcheting up the rhythmic element and Veryan turning the piece into a sparkling blend of vocals and textures that will have the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention. I won’t repeat the earlier plea for more music from this duo; Veryan has already tipped me off that more is on the way. Released October 31 2025.

https://criticalobjects.bandcamp.com/album/blossoming-ache

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further. 

Mariusz Szypura – Chopin Residue

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Chopin Residue is a series of multi-media works by Polish artist and former indie rock musician Mariusz Szypura.

One part is a collection of ‘deconstructions’ of Chopin’s music, featuring the likes of Adrian Utley, Lee Ranaldo, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, John McEntire and many others. These pieces range from the ethereal, fleeting tones of ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 20’ (with Charlie Draper on ondes Martenot and Theremin) to the ferocious guitar-heavy ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 22’ with Ranaldo and saxophonist Zoh Amba, wherein strings emerge only to be battered down into submission. ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 4’, with Utley, drummer Joey Waronker and thereminist Carolyn Eyck sounds like it belongs on Utley’s first Portishead album, with its chunky jazz rhythms and shimmering, maudlin guitar and electronic textures.

On the deconstruction of ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 2’, Szypura presents Chopin’s mellifluous arpeggios as a snarling web of grubby synth sequences, offset by rigid drumming by John Stanier, feisty guitars from Sugar Yoshinaga and Draper’s electronics. ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 15’ features jangly guitar from Ranaldo, measured kitwork from Stanier, and an array of tuned percussion from Milosz Pękala, the sum of whose parts is a long, hazy, psychedelic piece framed by the tracest outlines of classical melodicism.

Another part of this collection is a series of ‘reworks’ by Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke, Matthew Herbert, Christine Ott and others, which you are encouraged to play simultaneously with the deconstructions, if you happen to own two turntables.

Herbert’s version of ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 22’ hitches sprinkles of Chopin’s piano to a dubby rhythm track, while Adrian Utley reimagines ‘Étude Op. 25 No. 12’ as a bouncy electronic wonderland complete with delicate, flute-like melodic gestures. Fennesz introduces skipping electronics and oscillating guitar to his version of ‘Berceuse Op. 57’, in the process turning the piece into a vibrant, unpredictable, becalming soundscape. Sean O’Hagan takes ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 4’ and renders it as skipping, fragmented leftfield electro, while Jim O’Rourke subjects ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 2’ to heavy reverb and phasing, the result of which sounds like an orchestra tuning up.

Christine Ott floods ‘Nocturne Op. 72 No. 1’ with layers of beatific ondes Martenot, an extension of her own prowess and practice as a solo artist and in the Snowdrops ensemble. Benoît Pioulard’s version of ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 9’ is constructed entirely from layers of sensitively-arranged drones and swirling cycles of guitar feedback, while Abul Mogard approaches ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 15’ as an opportunity to offer up a web of edgy, modular synth drones and white noise textures, through which occasionally poke amorphous elements from the piece on the deconstructions disc.

The process of lathe-cutting the vinyl albums of deconstructions and reworks yielded a third part of the collection, in the form of large circular artworks constructed using the plastic residues from the lathe process. Pure white and of varying textures – from fluffy and whispy to brittle, razor sharp and angular – these pieces were installed in the Fridman Gallery on New York’s Bowery between November 2 and November 9 2025. On one level, these pieces may be a comment on wastefulness; in another sense, they are no different from either the deconstructed Chopin pieces or their reworks, for they are entirely new structures arising from something else.

The final element of the collection was a live event in the Fridman Gallery surrounded by the artworks. For this thirty-minute performance to effectively kick off the brief exhibition, Szypura was joined by Ranaldo, Amba and Stanier. The small stage was so cramped that Ranaldo had to climb over an amp to get into position, while Amba played on the floor in the front row of the audience. Animated videos of the artworks – another discrete element of the overall Chopin Residue project – bathed the shadowy forms of the players in soft light, as if to draw your attention away from their playing.

That was often hard to do with Ranaldo, who was here at his most intense and restless. He strikes his guitar with a drum-stick, bows the strings to produce squeals of feedback and taps the neck of the guitar against the gallery wall. Rarely did he ever settle into playing his guitar straight – that was Szypura’s job. At one point, his pressing of the guitar neck against the wall prompted one of Szypura’s circular artworks to vibrate in sympathy. It’s as if he is both unplaying the guitar and playing the artworks – and the building – simultaneously.

His guitar is loud, wild and freighted with heavy distortion. These are the moments where Stanier’s drumming becomes less rigid, more loose, and Amba’s saxophone takes on the wild intensity of an avenue full of angry New York cab drivers during rush-hour. To Ranaldo’s right, Szypura alternated between steady, rhythmic guitar playing and inchoate electronics.

A second movement begins with a quiet pulse and drones formed from the residues of the distortion from the first movement. As the piece progresses, it gathers intensity. Stanier’s drumming becomes increasingly firm, rejecting the tentative drum machine beat that opened the piece and guiding it toward a noisy, apocalyptic crescendo filled with layers of intense overlapping guitar work and terrifying sax dissonance.

“After one has played a vast quantity of notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art,” Chopin is quoted as saying. Szypura’s multi-faceted project is far from simple. It stands as an ambitious, engaging and complex enterprise, and one that illustrates how one source idea can result in many creative tributaries.

Chopin Residue is released November 28 by Black Element.

With thanks to Nico.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

Shots: Divergion / Critical Objects / Soho Electronic / Nik Kershaw / Oasis

On By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews, Features, Live reviews, Single reviewsLeave a comment

DIVERGION – TRIGOMORPH

Chance processes are the foundational layer of this collaborative release between Shane Hope (The Last Ambient Hero) and Rob Reeves (Kaleida / Bob’s Bakery). Two old school friends who had drifted apart, they were reconnected after Hope sold a synth on eBay, only for it to be acquired by Reeves. That randomness fed into Trigomorph, where they would use stimuli similar to the Oblique Strategies cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers in the mid-1970s.

Personally, I’m very grateful that Hope and Reeves reconnected. This is a powerfully atmospheric collection of five individual tracks, each one presented as two distinct versions – one by each member – that take in field recorded conversations, landscape sounds, drones and haunting, elusive melodies. The first version of ‘Viroclast’ has a poignant nostalgia, with a snippet of conversation across a naturalistic sonic landscape capturing an exchange between two walkers about memories of lockdown. Its second incarnation has a rough, angst-filled edge, full of discordant pathways, wavering Orb-esque synth spirals and resonant bass, all of which drop away toward the end as an inquisitive piano melody arrives. Released July 21 2025.

https://divergion.bandcamp.com/album/trigomorph

 

CRITICAL OBJECTS – REWIND

This one is special. A collaboration between Jules Straw (Pinklogik) and the anonymous Veryan, I can only hope this is a taste of a much bigger project between two friends and talented electronic artists. Outwardly, ‘Rewind’ is a slice of oven-hot, crisp synth pop, using the metaphor of the venerable cassette as a vehicle for Straw singing about catharsis and moving on from some unspoken event.

While it may have all the requisite characteristics of classic electronic pop – insistent drum machines, one note melodies, a fragile and emotive vocal – there’s something else here, some powerful atmospheric layer that has a critical impact on the track’s mood. That effect is reminiscent of Veryan’s shimmering ambient music, and once you identify it you begin to understand how balanced this collaboration is. The single is rounded-out with a remix apiece by Pinklogik and Veryan, each one tilting ‘Rewind’ to their individual styles. More, please. Released September 5 2025.

 

Agnes Haus (Photo: Andy Sturmey)

SOHO ELECTRONIC, VARIOUS VENUES (SEPTEMBER 27 2025]

Soho Electronic is a new electronic music festival featuring 20 artists performing in four venues in and around London’s Soho area, spearheaded by a live performance by Mute founder Daniel Miller. The performances were all focused on the endlessly adaptable possibilities of modular synthesis, spanning everything from delicate ambience to otherworldly transmissions to jazz to punishing noise. The festival also saw a brilliant, noir performance from Agnes Haus, whose Inexorable Ascent album for Penelope Trappes’ Nite Hive imprint is astounding. I covered the festival for Electronic Sound with my friend Andy Sturmey, who I’ve been covering concerts with since 2012. Full report and photographs below.

https://www.electronicsound.co.uk/reviews/soho-electronic-festival-review/

 

NIK KERSHAW, THE STABLES, MILTON KEYNES (SEPTEMBER 28 2025)

‘Don’t meet your idols,’ is advice I’ve chosen never to follow. And so it is that I met Nik Kershaw at my local concert venue, the fantastic Stables in Milton Keynes, at the end of September. He was touring his Musings & Lyrics show in support of a new book, where he’d perform songs, tell wry stories and offer insights into his creative process. Human Racing, his debut album from 1984, was the first album I owned, and I probably wouldn’t be writing at all if it wasn’t for that pivotal moment, listening to that cassette on my shitty Sanyo player as a callow seven year-old. I made a point of telling him that. I’d spoken to Kershaw in 2021 for an Electronic Sound interview in 2021, but had never met this idol in person. A treasured memory.

 

DEFINITELY, MAYBE… OR NOT AT ALL? : INSURING CONCERTS

This article is, I admit, a bit niche. Precipitated by the occasion of Oasis announcing their reformation and tour a year ago, and prompted by the question of whether the Gallagher brothers would be insured for losses if they broke up on tour, I set about exploring the world of concert insurance. The article was written for the Insurance Museum, a charity “working to discover and share with all audiences, the incredible story of insurance, past, present and future”. I’m a member. I have a badge and everything. I’m happy to talk about why insurance matters all day long. Find out if an on-tour bust-up would be covered at the link below.

https://insurance.museum/definitely-maybe-or-not-at-all-insuring-concerts

 

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

alka – the magnitude weighs heavy : a reflection

On By 429harrowroadIn Mortality Tables, NewsLeave a comment

A moment of reflection following today’s release of the magnitude weighs heavy by alka. You can pick up a CD copy at mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

I first got to know Bryan Michael (alka) in 2017 while working for Erasure‘s Vince Clarke as the writer of press releases for his VeryRecords label. He asked me to work on the PR text for Bryan’s first album for the label, The Colour Of Terrible Crystal.

We had a call, and hit it off straight away. Not long after, we had lunch while I was in Philadelphia. He gave me a glow-in-the-dark alka t-shirt and CD copies of previous alka albums. I worked on the PR for the second VeryRecords album, Regarding The Auguries in 2020. By then, the world had gone to the dogs and it was helpful, mentally, to have a project to focus in on. I am indebted to Bryan and Vince for having that album to distract myself from what was going on that year.

When Mortality Tables became visible in 2022, alka remixed the very first Product, ‘Two Meditations (For Freya)’, by Please Close Your Eyes.

We pressed up 7-inch copies of an amazing version of Pink Floyd‘s ‘On The Run’ (backed with a remix by Vince), which we de-released after Pink Floyd blocked us from making it available (no, I can’t give you a copy).

He remixed ‘Cyclic Demonstrating’ in 2023. He provided invaluable support and sounds for The Engineer. We released pod, his collaboration with visual poet Andrew Brenza and ‘drama[mine]’, his collaboration with poet Nero’s Tongue, for which he also made a short film, Different Different Trains, which can be found at the Mortality Tables YouTube channel. All of these releases (apart from ‘On The Run’) can be found at our Bandcamp page.

I am in constant awe of Bryan’s creative sensibilities and his endless ideas. Even though we have built up a solid friendship and productive series of collaborations, when he asked if I would be interested in releasing the magnitude weighs heavy, I was blown away. To be trusted with the release of this project is something I’m so grateful for. Vince also gave his blessing for Mortality Tables to conclude the trilogy of albums that his label started.

Thank you Bryan for placing your trust in us.

A Mortality Tables Product
MTP56

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further. / Mortality Tables

Reed Hays – Buchla 100 Album (For David Baron)

On By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

“Reed, you should really release an album of that Buchla 100 stuff you’ve been recording.”

“I did! Here it is.”

 – From the sleeve illustration by Caroline Schutz

Buchla 100 Album is a conversation.

It is a conversation, as illustrated by the cartoon sleeve image, between two electronic musicians who can trace their friendship back to their studies at Oberlin College in Ohio – David Baron, a formidable synth master, and Reed Hays, a similarly formidable synth genius.

Baron is classically-trained, adding his in-demand orchestral arrangements to pop tracks by Shaun Mendes and Meghan Trainor (to name but a few), while also holding down a parallel career in commercial sound work for clients like Verizon.

The classically-trained Hays’s career has followed a broadly similar path. Baron veered toward pop, but only after spell working with New York avant gardist Charlie Morrow. Hays similarly found himself immersed among New York’s sonic avant garde, also working with Morrow and then Phill Niblock, while also providing commercial music for major US broadcasters. In more recent years, he found a fast friendship in Erasure’s Vince Clarke, releasing two albums as Reed & Caroline with fellow Oberlin alumnus Caroline Schutz on Clarke’s VeryRecords, DJing with Clarke on Staten Island’s Maker Park Radioo, and adding his evocative cello to Clarke’s emotionally-fraught solo album Songs Of Silence. When Clarke ventured out on his own for shows in London and New York, it was the reassuring presence of Hays that appeared on-stage with him.

In 2023, Baron released The Arp 2500, a paean to the seminal 1970 synth created by Alan Robert Pearlman. The album found Baron making exclusive use of Pearlman’s synth. In that way, Hays’s Buchla 100 Album is a conversational response to his friend’s album, given it finds Hays at the synth which has provided him with creative sustenance and inspiration for years.

The Buchla is a curious synth, and, by most accounts, an absolute bugger to use. I spoke to Clarke about this almost ten years ago, when I was helping prepare the first Reed & Caroline album for release. He said he’d owned one, back in the days where his studio was in a circular space at the back of his house in Chertsey, but he’d gotten rid of it because he found it too difficult to use. It was a frank, and somewhat surprising, admission for someone who seems able to master any piece of electronic kit put in front of him. It wasn’t just him, though. I spoke to another Buchla enthusiast who said he’d been enlisted by a major, Bristol-based trip-hop collective, to set up a Buchla system in their studio, which they ultimately found unfathomable.

Originally designed by Don Buchla in the 1960s following a commission from San Francisco Tape Music Center founders Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick, the Buchla synth deployed unique pressure-sensitive inputs, making it a awkward proposition compared to synths with a keyboard controller like the nascent Moog (or the Arp 2500). Somehow, Hays is a member of a small subset of Buchla aficionados who don’t see it as remotely troublesome or hard to use. I’ve always thought that Hays’s mastery of the cello is what means he finds the Buchla so accessible, but I can’t even read music, let alone play it, so what do I know?

The Buchla achieved a weird prominence at the hands of one Owsley Stanley, a peripheral member of Ken Kesey’s acid-tripping Merry Pranksters, who used the synth to create weird and trippy sounds for their happenings. I mention this for two reasons – first because (shhhh – don’t tell anyone!) Hays and I have a project referencing this lined up as a future Mortality Tables Product, and secondly because Hays’s coveted Buchla 100 modules were originally intended for Owsley.

So you could see this as a conversation between two friends, and their two favoured instruments. You could also see this as a fluid conversation between Hays and his Buchla. Prior to recording this album, Hays had gone through an extended spell of finding electronic composition unsatisfying, preferring instead to focus on his daily cello practice. This gives Buchla 100 Album an air of catharsis, almost as if you can hear the coldness toward electronic music slowly thawing as he explores resonant pathways on pieces like ‘Cardinal’.

‘Cardinal’ is emblematic of the way these pieces evolve. Beginning with thin, ahem, reedy sounds, ‘Cardinal’ feels inquisitive, as if finding its own path, taking in a wandering bassline and tuned percussion that nods to a Martin Denny-like exotica. I can well imagine this as a piece of through-composition, watching Hays as he gently guides the track where it wants to go while also allowing the Buchla to determine its own course. It feels curiously symbiotic, with the Buchla as an extension of Hays, and Hays as an extension of the Buchla.

Elsewhere, ‘Quantus’ has a spiky angularity, nudging forward on a resolute drum pattern while sounds ping-pong effervescently around it. It embodies a sort of controlled chaos, where sounds are anchored into place by the rhythm but allowed freedom to skip around all over the place. An extended breakdown finds Hays permitting the rhythm track to swing, injecting a jazz-like fluidity to proceedings, before it concludes with swooning, evocative, synth strings.

Not that this is a purely instrumental affair. ‘Silkworms’ and ‘Liquid Time’ represent a welcome return for Reed & Caroline and their deft brand of leftfield, science-infused, electronic pop. ‘Silkworms’ is a discussion of tiny creatures living on the moon, framed by a determined beat, cute, wriggling sounds and melodies, Schutz’s quietly affecting vocal, and wild, howling sounds that nod to Fad Gadget’s ‘Back To Nature’. ‘Liquid Time’ begins with a funereal, organ-like melody before opening out into an wall of pointillist pulses that flip-flop between slow ‘n’ steady and fast ‘n’ intense. Schutz’s vocal here is both mournful and wholly realistic, singing about the passage of time and a climate-ravaged, polar ice cap-melted, fully submerged world with a calm and unswerving frankness. It may be aspirational to hope for a third Reed & Caroline LP at this point, but if these two tracks provide a glimmer of hope, I’m happy to keep everything crossed that it may materialise.

‘Aria’ is, unquestionably, the album’s most poignant moment. To me, it feels like a moment of transition, between the classical practice that Hays honed while electronic music felt too daunting, and his tentative return to the electronic music form. It is a piece held in place by a stirring, mellifluous melody that will haunt you long after it fades into silence. In its own way, ‘Aria’ embodies the sentiment of albums like Wendy Carlos’s Switched On Bach, Don Dorsey’s Bachbusters or any of the early electronic albums that paired electronics with classical composition as a means of illustrating the potential of emerging synthesiser technology.

I said this felt like a conversation. Hays is a natural, enigmatic, engaging, humorous, self-deprecating conversationalist. For me, privileged as I am to have enjoyed many of these conversations, Buchla 100 Album (For David Baron) is your opportunity to appreciate Hays talking with you, through the electronic curiosity of the Buchla 100, in his inimitable, masterful way. It may have been intended to be a private chat between two friends, but it is one that we are all able to enjoy.

A welcome, and, as a friend, might I say overdue, return.

Buchla 100 Album (For David Baron) was released May 30 2025.

https://buchlareed.bandcamp.com/album/buchla-100-for-david-baron

(c) 2025 Further.

Shots: Cromwell Ate A Twix Here & Yol / Schmitz & Niebuhr / Audio Obscura / Autoreverse

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CROMWELL ATE A TWIX HERE – FRAGILE / YOL – GLASSED ASCENSION (Strategic Tape Reverse)

Cromwell Ate A Twix Here is a typically wry and obtuse new alias from More Realistic Goals polymath Justin Watson. ‘Fragile’ features purloined spoken word commentary from David Yates set to a sound bed of pleasant strings, high-pitched voices, birdsong, noises of unknown provenance, occasional disharmony and myriad other sonic accompaniments. Yates’ chat recounts the first flushes of a new relationship in frank detail, his delivery carrying a frank flatness that belies a sense of dry humour – especially when he describes how the nascent couple arrange their breakfast plates. And then, a moment of revelation when Yates reveals that he is a widower. The sentences are delivered in the same dispassionate voice, and yet the implication is of extreme and devastating sadness, even if none of this is necessarily evident. Finally, the story lurches into a sort of Welcome To Night Vale weirdness. I won’t spoil the surprise, but the title makes a lot more sense after what happens.

In contrast, the Yol side is noisy, expressive and agitated, the voice as a sound source rather than a method of reportage. Insectoid vocal sounds and flat blocks of distortion occupy the background here, punctured by machine-like, menacing sonic objects that sound like they were entirely crafted from recordings of vintage late-1990s modem tones, as well as a sound that could be a spun glass bottle attached to a faulty contact mic. Yol’s voice flutters between shouted statements and exasperated, desperate repetitions about cushions and body parts. It is insistent, forceful and pretty terrifying, if I’m honest, but its challenging aesthetic is also weirdly liberating for reasons that I can’t quite explain. Uneasy listening for the hard of hearing, to quote Fad Gadget and Non. Released March 21 2025.

https://strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/album/fragile-glassed-ascension

 

SCHMITZ & NIEBUHR – PORZ 1975 (Tillerfisch / Superpolar Taïps)

Well, this is an interesting one. An email popped into my inbox from Superpolar Taïps head honcho Marco Trovatello, entitled ‘Prog…?’, which certainly caught my attention. It wasn’t what I’d expect to receive from him. Then again, with Marco and his cassette imprint, I’ve come to expect the unexpected. Schmitz & Niebuhr sounds like a duo, but is in fact a trio of Trovatello, Dierk Düchting and Bernd Wilberg – none of whom, you will observe, is called Schmitz or Niebuhr.

To execute PORZ 1975, the trio were joined by at least a dozen guest musicians and also a marching band. The concept (there’s always a concept in prog music!) was to make an album celebrating the 16 districts of the German town of Porz, which was, in 1975, absorbed into Cologne. Each track is named after one of the districts, and Trovatello / Düchting / Wilberg constrained themselves to only using instruments that were available in 1975. That gives standout tracks like ‘Urbach’, ‘Westhoven’ and ‘Wahnheide’ all sorts of Moog-y richness, with impossibly groovy hooks laid over writhing nests of jangly guitars and driving rhythms. Crucially, there’s no showy-offy, onanistic, fifteen-minute soloing to be found here – just a double-album window into the 1970s electronically-augmented rock music that time politely forgot. Released May 2 2025.

https://superpolar.bandcamp.com/album/porz-1975

 

AUDIO OBSCURA – AS LONG AS GRAVITY PERSISTS ON HOLDING ME TO THIS EARTH

It may not seem like it, for an artist as prolific as Audio Obscura (Neil Stringfellow), but As Long As Gravity Persists In Holding Me To This Earth arose from an extended period of doubt, resulting in a form of creative paralysis. In 2024, Stringfellow hadn’t made any new music for some time because of that overriding lack of belief in something that anyone who has spent any time with his music will know is a rare talent that he possesses, but such is the way with our personal fears and inhibitions: we rarely see in ourselves what others see in us. His focus shifted away from composition toward live performance, and the process for preparing for a show in Whitby in November 2024 yielded the improvised piece that opens this collection, ‘Pyramid Song’

‘Pyramid Song’ has a hauntingly beautiful quality, something that is shared by all ten pieces on the album. There is a lightness of touch here that has perhaps been missing from Stringfellow’s previous music – unadorned field recordings; delicate and emotive piano; fragile and muted, dubby electronics; effusive but not intrusive strings; disparate and dislocated samples. There is, however, an undeniable sadness to pieces like ‘The Weight Of The World’, which speaks to this overriding mental state that he found himself prior to its creation. Being honest and transparent about these things, as we know, can liberate you from these feelings, and this austere, emotional collection is evidently a cathartic listen. A number of Stringfellow’s works, particularly his series of albums focused on impending climate disaster, have been about the macro – those things that will impact all of us; As Long As Gravity Persists In Holding Me To This Earth instead trains its lens on no one other than Stringfellow himself, but in so doing, he has made a universally-relatable album. Sequentially, there is another project that came before this album which explains more about how he unlocked his creativity, which will be released in September. Released May 23 2025.

https://audioobscura.bandcamp.com/album/as-long-as-gravity-persists-on-holding-me-to-this-earth

AUTOREVERSE – AUTOTUNES (Éditions Gravats)

Autoreverse is a duo of Arnaud Rivière and Nina Garcia, and Autotunes is their first studio album. Collaborations like this don’t just happen, however. Garcia and Rivière are seasoned partners in sound, their symbiotic technique and sonic presentation forged through countless gigs, some of which have been documented as live cassettes. It goes like this: Garcia is a renowned, Thurston Moore-tipped noise guitarist (check out her recent solo album Bye Bye Bird, which I enthusiastically covered for Electronic Sound), and Rivière utilises a busted turntable.

‘HI-SPEED DUB switch’ is a joyously abstracted collision between these elements. You hear Garcia’s growling, purring, distorted guitar, and then it is overwhelmed by an initially impenetrable block of squalling feedback from Rivière’s stylus. Listen closer, and textures and details reveal themselves, only they are frazzled and fractured beyond recognition. I thought I could hear voices at the epicentre of the din at one point, but quite honestly it could have been my imagination. The ensuing section seems to be where Garcia and Rivière begin to co-exist, an enmeshed discourse between hissing feedback, textures with all the smoothness of course-grade sandpaper, nuanced pulses, buzzing drones and finally a sense of latent, angry energy expressed as an anti-ambient, amp-bothering soundscape. Thrillingly and wilfully unpredictable. Released June 6 2025.

https://editions-gravats.bandcamp.com/album/autotunes

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

Bendu – Lautner

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Bendu is the alias of Ben Vance, originally from the Midwest but now based in Los Angeles. Lautner is an ode to architect John Lautner, responsible for innumerable distinctive buildings in LA, including the space age Chemosphere above Laurel Canyon.

Vance’s love of his fellow Midwestern emigré was forged after a tour of Lautner’s Sheats-Goldstein house in LA’s Beverly Crest area ten years ago. His ensuing research into Lautner’s practice, and the architect’s love-hate relationship with the adopted LA home where he forged his success, seems to have deepened his hero worship of a figure who sought to bring beauty to what he felt was the city’s inherent ugliness.

Quite how that all manifests itself in the twelve tracks included here is somewhat beyond me. Then again I’m (coincidentally) on a flight to LA as I write this, it’s 0230 back home, I’m trying to keep myself busy to stay awake, and not a lot makes much sense to me at this hour. Each track is named after a specific Lautner property, and its contents are sharp, many-layered electro tracks blessed by Vance’s astute approach to melody and rhythm.

Beachwood Market, designed by Lautner. Photo: Mat Smith, May 2025

The whistling, wandering top line of ‘Rainbow House’ is a highlight, laid over a fat bassline and chunky old school preset beats. A tension between linearity and unpredictable (and harmony and discordancy) characterises ‘Bergren’, acting as a metaphor for Vance’s (and Lautner’s) relationship to the city. Elsewhere, ‘Carling’ has a poignant plaintiveness, a squelchy, jazzy motif interfacing with pointillist tuned percussion, steady beats and an effusive, expansive central hook.

‘Lautner’ by Bendu was released April 25 2025 on Shady Ridge Records

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.