Bayonne – Drastic Measures

On February 15, 2019January 18, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews1 Comment

Echo can be a troublesome thing.

You’ll be hard pressed to find a track on Austin-based Roger Sellers’ second Bayonne album that isn’t drenched in shimmering reverb. The ten tracks here are all complex, painstakingly-wrought, many-layered affairs achieved in a manner not dissimilar to the way Brian Wilson developed the distinctive sound of Pet Sounds; but the final layer throughout is an impenetrable fog of echo, and the effect is to give even the most upbeat moments here – the mesmerising piano-led ‘Uncertainty Deranged’ or the densely percussive title track – an uncertain, awkward, unfathomable quality.

Sellers wrote the album in a relatively dissociative frame of mind amid the relentless gigging that accompanied his debut; a feeling of arriving but never staying. That gives Drastic Measures a dynamic of constantly moving, never once still, even its most tranquil moments containing a propulsive restlessness.

From the tender, resigned balladry of the haunting ‘Bothering’ to the insistent drama of ‘I Know’, Drastic Measures is an album that can’t help but leave an indelible mark on you – you just won’t be able to tell if you feel better or more confused about yourself when it’s all over.

You can thank that pesky echo for that.

Drastic Measures is released by City Slang on February 22 2019.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

Hugh Marsh – Violinvocations

On February 13, 2019February 13, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews1 Comment

Hugh Marsh - Violinvocations - Artwork

Violinvocations by violinist Hugh Marsh was recorded at the Los Angeles home of Jon Hassell and owes its entire genesis to enormously frustrating circumstances: schlepping all the way to LA from Toronto to work on a project, only to find that it had been scrapped without anyone bothering to tell him. Frustrating though it was, it afforded the time that Marsh used to craft this innovative, colourful collection using only his violin and a cabinet full of effects.

Marsh is an adaptable player, and that versatility is evident across the eight diverse pieces here. What isn’t immediately evident is his chosen instrument, given how subsumed it is under layers of processing and looping. You hear plucked notes and melodies underpinning the likes of ‘Thirtysix Hundred Grandview’ or the scratchy, plaintive soundscapes of ‘The Rain Gambler’ but on other moments – such as the crazy ‘Miku Murmuration’, wherein Marsh’s violin is converted into babbling Hatsune Miku gibberish or the Hendrix-y riffery of ‘A Beautiful Mistake’ – you’d be hard pressed to believe a violin was ever involved.

The effect is to do for the violin what Robert Fripp did for the guitar, turning your perception of this humble instrument entirely on its head.

Violinvocations by Hugh Marsh will be released by Western Vinyl on February 15 2019.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

Lucy Mason – Flashback Romance

On February 11, 2019February 6, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews1 Comment

Think of Flashback Romance as hotly-tipped singer Lucy Mason concluding some unfinished business: four of the nine tracks on Mason’s debut LP appeared last year, including her fragile re-rendering of Radiohead’s ‘High And Dry’ and the sparse, dreamy, glacial build of ‘Out Of The Blue’ that achingly opens the record.

Produced with Jess Ellen, Mason might have perfect pop poise – a voice that could melt the heart of even the stoniest disposition and songs that nod to both soulful quarters and the casually anthemic – but her conceit is to wrap emotional outpourings like the mournful ‘3am’ in delicate arrangements enriched by vintage analogue synth warmth, hazy reverb and atypical rhythms.

‘Sunday’ is a profound highlight at the album’s centre. Here, Mason’s voice carries a flat, regretful quality draped with echoing piano and a barely-there architecture of beats that opens out unexpectedly into a buzzing electronic pop conclusion blessed by an irrepressible, muted rapture. The album concludes with ‘Kids That Night’, the curious highlight of the tracks that appeared last year. The song is beautifully, cruelly, affecting, offering a wistful view back into carefree days of innocence before life got in the way and heaped unwanted responsibilities on your callow shoulders.

Flashback Romance by Lucy Mason is self-released on February 15 2019.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

Neu Gestalt – Controlled Substances

On February 4, 2019February 1, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews1 Comment

Neu Gestalt is the alias of Edinburgh-based electronic musician Les Scott, whose fourth album Controlled Substances was created using a deliberately pared-back set of tools: a violin, a guitar, a modular system for processing source material, Akai samplers and an Atari computer from the late 80s to bring it all together.

The result is twelve tracks of extreme fragility, each and every sound within them processed and sculpted into their final form, and only occasionally betraying their original sources. On the standout ‘Kintsugi’, echoing temple percussion and glitchy rhythms provide a basis for heavily processed guitar patterns and frozen half-melodies, while on opening track ‘Machines Of Grace’ plaintive violins emerge as crackly, embrittled textures over a bass-heavy electronic dub rhythm slowed down to a glacial pace.

Scott is a fan of the way that timestretched samples have an inherently degraded quality, and you can hear that play out across the material here, providing an evocative fabric through which more clarified sounds are permitted to wend their way. The effect, on tracks like the mesmerising ‘A Glow From The Wreckage’ or ‘Drowned Worlds’, is like trying, and ultimately failing, to precisely alight upon memories from the gauzy mists of your past.

Controlled Substances will be released by Alex Tronic Records on February 8 2019.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

Karolina Rose – Invicta

On February 1, 2019January 29, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn EP reviews1 Comment

invicta-ep-high-res

Brooklynite Karolina Rose’s route to electronic pop isn’t exactly a common one: having graduated from Philly’s prestigious Wharton School, Rose wound up in New York’s financial heartland before giving it all up to focus on the somewhat more perilous business of being a singer-songwriter.

Invicta was trailed by last year’s ‘Going To Berlin’, a buzzing track filled with crisp beats and a rapidfire bassline, its lyrics showcasing an artist unafraid to deal with erudite lyrical concepts many times removed from the usual concerns of the pop scene. On Invicta, Rose develops those sensibilities further, with tracks like ‘Crystal Gem’ taking the club-infused, sharply-rendered synth gestures of ‘Going To Berlin’ and adding a bold, defiant lyric and a bassline that nods to Talk Talk’s similarly resolute ‘It’s My Life’. The urgent closing track ‘Move With Me’ adopts a distinctly 80s production panache, containing all manner of sinewy electronics and icy, melodic hooks.

Elsewhere, the tender ‘Goodnight, Mr. Moon’ has the kind of happy-sad textural fabric that belongs on the end credits of an indie film, while the heartfelt chorus on ‘Downhill’ and towering, anthemic build suggests that Karolina Rose studied the pop playbook just as hard as she did business studies.

Invicta by Karolina Rose is released by Violet Sunset Records on February 1st.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

TOTM – Bliss / Blurred

On February 1, 2019January 31, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews1 Comment

cover

The debut album from Brussels-based fourpiece TOTM cuts a distinctive path through dreamy folk, the rhythmic fluidity of Krautrock, percussive minimalism and hypnotic electronics. In vocalist and guitarist Charles Bernard they have a frontman that pours quiet emotion into each of the tracks on Bliss / Blurred, poised on a tension-filled wire between anguished musings and beguiling wonder, that voice being perfectly placed amid Nicolas Magrez’s intricate synth layers, Adrien Kaempf’s bass figures and Thomas Vaccargiu’s complex drumming.

Bliss / Blurred opens with the rapidly-evolving synth cycles and expanding sound palette of ‘Silver Apples’, becoming by turns serene and angular, finally opening out into a mass of restrained drumming and fuzzy riffs. The track sets the scene for the album’s frequent switches in direction, from ‘Stellar Door’s tight, proggy spacefunk to the dreamy ‘Ghost Dance’ with its attendant rapidly arpeggiating synth patterns.

The album closes with the droning interplay of ‘The Sleeper’, anchored in motion by a steady bass pulse and some of Bernard’s most affecting vocals. Like a lot of the tracks here, ‘The Sleeper’ is far from docile, coalescing via dexterous drumming toward a noisy, clangorous conclusion, marking Bliss / Blurred as a powerful, resonating body of work.

Bliss / Blurred is released by Flickering Lights on February 1st.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

The Silver Field – Rooms

On January 31, 2019January 31, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews2 Comments

The central figure in The Silver Field is Coral Rose, whose debut album for Tim Burgess’s O Genesis imprint concerns itself with the metaphorical act of leaving a home, and the metaphorical rooms of that home that begat the album’s title.

Composed of off-kilter tape loops and an anything-goes approach to sound layering – everything from strings to the queasy drones of a bagpipe chanter – Rooms is a captivating progression through an ethereal landscape lying somewhere between organic, mystical folk and an electronically-enhanced post-modern ambience thanks to heavy processing and the deployment of a breath-controlled analogue synth. The effect on tracks like ‘Gost’ is to draw you into a dense, undulating web of sonic events – clattering sounds and percussive micro-noises, a gently repeating guitar, low vocals and patches of jarring discordance.

The instrumental lamentation of ‘Rosebud’, a pairing of acoustic guitar and unpredictable, noisy interventions sounding not unlike a distorted, reverb-drenched recording of a bow being dragged across a metal bench, is nothing short of an heartbreaking, arresting moment among arresting, heartbreaking moments. It is on ‘Nourish’ when the album’s electronic dimension presents itself most clearly, with a spiralling, eddying array of echoing crystalline sequences rapidly circling a mournful, affecting vocal.

Rooms is out now on O Genesis.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

Kamaal Williams – New Heights / Snitches Brew

On January 25, 2019January 31, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Single reviews1 Comment

Last years’s debut Kamaal Williams album, The Return, showcased the jazz wizardry of keyboardist Henry Wu, recently of dissolved group Yussef Kamaal. That LP operated on the funkiest fringes of the new jazz renaissance, and this new 12-inch takes that approach two steps further.

The A-side cut ‘New Heights (Visions Of Aisha Malik)’, co-produced by Darkhouse Family, is a serene, laidback deep cut dominated by wandering piano clusters and a robust rhythm section, through which unexpected sounds are threaded – little percussion gestures, meditative synth strings – but never in a way that takes a focus away from the core trio sound. It at once sounds faithful to classic jazz but in a manner that nods firmly in the direction of hip-hop.

On the flip, the cheekily-named ‘Snitches Brew’ with guitarist Mansur Brown is a dexterous headlong rush into a psychedelic wilderness, echoing the Miles Davis experiments that yielded the track its title. ‘Snitches Brew’ is dominated by an unfaltering electronic bassline and restless, shuffling drum pattern from Dexter Hercules over which Brown’s liquefied guitar patterns wheel freely. As a counterpoint to the relative calm of ‘New Heights’, it couldn’t be more different – but that’s what makes Wu’s Kamaal Williams so refreshing.

New Heights / Snitches Brew is released today by Black Focus Records

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

Kaada – ZombieLars (Soundtrack)

On January 23, 2019January 22, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews1 Comment

John Erik Kaada’s Closing Statements was one of last year’s standout albums, straddling as it did the worlds of electronic music and modern classical composition with a moving suite of pieces dealing with final farewells. A versatile composer for his own solo releases as well as film and TV, Norway’s Kaada is also a frequent collaborator with Faith No More guitarist and Ipecac label head Mike Patton, making him a highly adaptable and fluid musician with a penchant for unexpected eclecticism.

This new release contains some of Kaada’s work for the TV series ZombieLars, a coming-of-age teen story filtered through the voguish lens of vampires, werewolves and zombies. The collection showcases Kaada’s precise rendering of mood and texture via styles that feel inextricably linked to an 1980s soundtrack recipe. ‘Algebra and ‘Annerledes’s synth sprinkles and dominant beats sound like they may have consciously mainlined the score from Escape From New York, while the stentorian ‘Beeserk’ has a stop-start quality akin to a classically-infused flavour of dubstep. The urgent, moody ‘Detroit’ stands out for its unswervingly hypnotic layers of bass and haunting melodies, while ‘Brain’ captures some of the maudlin quality that dominated Closing Statements with stirring strings and gentle arpeggios.

ZombieLars is released by Mirakel Recordings on January 25 2019.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.

I started a new music blog. It’s called Further.

On January 22, 2019January 22, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I started a new music blog. It’s called Further.

It’s a place for reviews and features of things that just don’t fit into my Mute Records blog (Documentary Evidence), or things that I really like that I’m not covering for someone else. That’s about as much as there is to say about it.

– Mat

Mat Smith is a music writer for Electronic Sound and Documentary Evidence. Occasional contributor to Clash, This Is Not Retro and Cold War Night Life. Press release writer for VeryRecords. Father, husband, vegan.