IAN WILLIAMS – ALL BECOMES DESERT (Slaughterback)

All Becomes Desert consists of five exhumed ambient improvisations that Beautiful Pea Green Boat founder Ian Williams recorded in the 1990s. Designed to evoke the wide expanses of desert landscapes, pieces like ‘Atacama’ and ‘Kalahari’ have an Eno-ish soothing dimension in their slowly-evolving progression, but there’s also a sense of mystery and wonder which, for this reviewer, speaks to the idea of landscapes being formed imperceptibly over millennia. The departure comes with ‘Outback’, constructed as a beat-free series of acidic sequences, which makes me feel like I’m on a helicopter ride over vast, undulating natural topographies. Important knowledge for synth nerds: Williams made these recordings on an old Roland Juno 106. Released March 2 2021. (MS)

https://ianwilliams.bandcamp.com/album/all-becomes-desert

POLYPORES – SHPONGOS (Behind The Sky)

You may not realise it, but the plants in your local park and garden are all talking to each other. Just beneath the surface lies a kind of underground internet, linking all their roots. This allows them to communicate and thrive in various ways. What’s responsible for these floral subterranean networks? Mushrooms. Or fungi, to be more precise and their long strands of unseen underground mycelia. The wondrous effectiveness of these connections and the beauty to which they contribute above the surface, forms the theme of Polypores’ latest release, Shpongos.

This is at least the 17th album in five years from prolific modular synth enthusiast Stephen James Buckley and Shpongos is a typically ambient, explorative composition. Given the mycological theme, there is clearly a nod to mushroom enthusiast Terrence McKenna. From initial simplistic drones, sounds gradually bubble up into complex, tightly-wound melodies. Tracks like ‘Sweet Rot’ and album closer ‘Exopheromones’ evoke spores drifting in the wind, ready to land and bring new life, where nature had given way to decay. Beautiful, in its own intricate way. Released April 26 2021. (CH)

https://polypores.bandcamp.com/album/shpongos

SIMON DOBSON – MDCNL (Lo Recordings)

Things I hear and feel when listening to ‘Pick Me Up-Down’, the opening piece on Cornish composer Simon Dobson’s second album: minimalist cycles that remind me of ‘In C’; widescreen vistas from the opening scenes of a nature documentary; emotional turbulence that oscillates between poignant sadness and joyous optimism; a sort of euphoric dissonance; a delicate synthesiser melody that reminds me of a specific cluster of notes on the soundtrack to the original Teen-Wolf. Such is the way that Dobson’s evocative compositions can spark vivid images and memories, lightly positioned as they are at the meeting place of soundtrack, modern classical music and ambient electronics. ‘Thread’ is among the most overtly electronic of the five long pieces presented here, its twelve-minute layering of slowly-evolving melodies and flute-like timbres being rooted in a sort of spiritual enlightenment and sci-fi wonder; the soaring, string-led chord change that appears out of nowhere at the three-minute mark is impossibly, relentlessly moving. Released May 7 2021. (MS)

https://lorecordings.bandcamp.com/album/mdcnl

BIEL BLANCAFORT – KENOMA (Modern Obscure Music)

Biel Blancafort is a Catalonian electronic music and his new EP for Barcelona’s Modern Obscure Music was inspired by a recurring dream of arriving at a remote, deserted island called Kenoma, named after the Greek word for ‘void’. The six pieces included here are rarely still and always restlessly moving forward, shrouded in atmospherics inching along the tightrope between uncertainty and beauty. On the title track I imagine Blancafort, alone, lying on a patch of barren beach watching storm clouds gathering and dissipating overhead in motion time lapse, the track speeding gently from fragile melodic passages to a delicate house rhythm. At the other end of the island, the gentle piano note clusters of ‘Llar’ fall somewhere between Music For Airports and Satie’s Gymnopédies. An arresting body of work, yet delivered with soothing subtlety. Released May 21 2021. (MS)

https://modernobscuremusic.bandcamp.com/album/kenoma

YOSHI WADA – THE APPOINTED CLOUD (Saltern)

A remastered, first-time vinyl pressing of recently-departed New York Fluxus composer and artist Yoshi Wada’s The Appointed Cloud from 1987. The Appointed Cloud was Wada’s first large-scale, interactive installation, featuring a custom-built pipe organ and other instruments controlled by computer, installed in the windowless, cathedral-like Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science in Queens. For the performance recorded on November 8 1987, Wada and other musicians played instruments – bagpipes, timpani, tam-tam – alongside the installation, which was controlled by software developed by La Monte Young acolyte David Rayna. The result was an hour-long set characterised by oscillating drones, skeletal tones and intense, frequently jarring sonic interplay, played at incredibly loud volume. The drones evoke the eternal hum of existence, while percussive crescendos for gong and timpani align Wada’s overtone-rich music with classical tradition. Deep listening rarely sounded so dramatic. Released May 21 2021. (MS)

https://yoshiwada.bandcamp.com/album/the-appointed-cloud

Words: Chris Hill & Mat Smith

(c) 2021 Further.