Category: Album reviews

Strategic Tape Reserve: Whetmann Chelmets / Ergo Phizmiz ft. Depresstival

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Two recent releases from the Strategic Tape Reserve label both continue the label’s fascinating voyage into the heart of adventurous electronic sounds.

Whettman Chelmets’ Koppen finds the US sound artist foraging for sounds at The Gathering Place, a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It can be thought of sonic reconnaissance trip before Chelmetts upped sticks and moved to the area. These found sounds and field recordings were then augmented with elements such as snatches of radio broadcasts, the wind chimes outside his house and electronic melodies. Its title – Koppen – refers to a system of dividing the world into different climate zones, and the names of these pieces here refer to a specific zone in the Koppen classification system.

One could easily suggest that Chelmets’ deployment of serenity and turbulence in each track is a reflection of the volatility present across the world. These pieces are all restless, never still, always moving. Even in moments of tranquility, something edgy is just around the metaphorical corner. ‘ET’ and ‘Dfd’, for example, present vibrant soundworlds of many layers – metallic, ringing, bell-like tones, slowed-down rain sounds, whistling half-melodies, and something earthy and naturalistic, maybe the sound of walking through a damp wood in Fall. They are simultaneously enveloping but also threatening and brooding, poised with a sort of calm and resolute danger.

Something similar happens on ‘Cfa’. Here we are presented with a cluster of pretty, almost classical melodies. At some indefinable point these sounds become buried and lost as a harsh, sawing, back-and-forth sound and crushing white noise blanket drapes itself over the track. On ‘Dfc’ and ‘BWh’ the inverse happens, with a cloying, impenetrable web of sound dropping out into randomised bursts of dislocated radio recordings – ghostly voices and snatches of broadcast music. They are respite, perhaps, from what comes before, but somehow more ghostly and unsettling because of the starkness of contrast.

Koppen is presented as a single long piece, its constant shifts creating a dizzying, relentless unpredictability: in the quieter moments you are filled with anticipation of noise overtaking any sense of calm, and in the noisier moments you are waiting for the sudden drop into beatific, pastoral sweetness. None of this is remotely accidental, of course, and Chelmets proves himself to be an absolute master of sculpted, dramatic, enlivening sound art.

Owl And Monkey Haven by Ergo Phizmiz and Depresstival brings to an end their fabled Leisure Pop Trilogy. The third instalment of their series for Strategic Tape Reserve, following Plaza Centraal (2001) and Elmyr (2020), this is an utterly madcap leftfield pop sprawl.

The tone for this is largely set by opening track ‘Foyer’, an effervescent, skittish, lo-fi banger with wiry guitars, a decidedly awkward funkiness, birdsong, recorders, bleeping Casio synths, oompah bass, dull documentary samples and a vocal about paradise that sounds suspiciously like the late Mark E. Smith. All in one song!

Ergo Phizmiz has made a career of operating fluidly around copyright, and that’s no different here. Meanwhile, multimedia artist Depresstival set an ambition – this is deadly serious, so please approach it that way – to “become the ultimate post-structuralist Geri Haliwell tribute act.” This heartfelt reverence to the onetime Ginger Spice would certainly the interjection of a sample of the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ on the standout ‘Heartslashwallet’, a track that sounds like a Numanoid replicant thoroughly pissed off at having to constantly pay for romance. Meanwhile, ‘Stalker’, which includes lyrics about voyeuristically watching someone taking out their bins, has more than a stench of The Residents about it, and ‘Four Things I Would Have Done If It Wasn’t For Fucking Brexit’ is a protest song dressed as an erudite expression of love for motorik German music.

Quite honestly, nothing I write here could do justice to how completely bonkers this collection is. What I will say is that the final track, ‘John Lewis Christmas Advert’ envisions an alternative reality where a female torch singer covers the Sex Pistols over a tear-jerking stop-motion short film to support a department store’s flagging seasonal sales. Seriously ridiculous and ridiculously serious by turns, and a high watermark in the Ergo Phizmiz prankster portfolio.

Koppen by Whetmann Chelmets was released July 7 2023. Owl And Monkey Haven by Ergo Phizmiz ft. Depresstival was released September 8 2023. Both releases are on the Strategic Tape Reserve label.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

Shots: Any Second Now / Bana Haffar / Goldston – Jones – Kelley – Larkin / Awakened Souls / Yui Onodera

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ANY SECOND NOW – Any Second Now

This album of synth pop genius was released in December but only hit my inbox recently. A London duo of vocalist Steve Olander and synth whizz Alex Hall, Any Second Now take their name from one of the most subtle Vince Clarke-penned moments on Depeche Mode’s 1981 debut, and Any Second Now is resolutely faithful to electronic pop’s best vintages. Containing songs written over the last four decades but which were never recorded, these thirteen songs are filled to bursting point with crystalline, haunting one-note synth melodies and skeletal drum machine rhythms. With the opening and closing instrumental tracks (‘Peking Sunrise’ and ‘Peking Sunset’), Any Second Now isolate the early 1980s’ fascination with travel and far-off, exotic places, while the semi-detached, almost spoken emotional vocal of key tracks ‘Plastic World’ and ‘No Face’ serve as useful reminders of how easily early synth pop evolved out of punk. These songs are all poised perfectly between darkness and lightness, with ‘Who Killed Kennedy?’ tackling one of the most-asked questions of all time with a cheerful, if unresolvable, levity, while the title track is easily one of the most infectiously joyous pop tracks you’ll ever hear. Simply brilliant.

Any Second Now by Any Second Now was released December 17 2022.

https://anysecnow.bandcamp.com/album/any-second-nowanysecnow.bandcamp.com/album/any-second-now

BANA HAFFAR – intimaa’ (Touch)

intimaa’, the latest album from Montreal-based sound artist and modular electronics pioneer Bana Haffar, can be thought of as a sensitive and delicate collision of styles. On the one hand, key pieces like ‘Elemental’ and ‘Lifter’ highlight the vibrant and often unpredictable pathways that can be established by patching a bunch of magical sound-making boxes together; on the other, they are infused with structures, shapes, rhythms, atmospheres, field recordings and melodic detail that nod to traditional Middle Eastern music. As a listener, you can listen intently for these moments, or just appreciate intimaa’ as a richly textured ambient masterpiece.

intimaa’ by Bana Haffar was released May 19 2023 by Touch.

https://banahaffarreleases.bandcamp.com/album/intimaabanahaffarreleases.bandcamp.com/album/intimaa

GOLDSTON / JONES / KELLEY / LARKIN – Miasms (Full Spectrum Records)

Miasms brings together Lori Goldston (cello), Greg Kelley (trumpet), Al Jones (electronics) and Austin Larkin (violin) for four improvised pieces, recorded in 2019. The occasion was an exhibition focused on the remains of a piano which had been dropped from a helicopter onto musician Larry Van Over’s farm in Duvall, Washington in 1968, an extreme artistic gesture that carried more than a whiff of Fluxus about it. The four musicians here are, in part, responding to the visual stimulus of the piano’s shattered remnants, but the main jumping-off point came through Jones attaching various electronic devices to the piano itself. Each piece contains an intense and intricate soundworld that fluctuates between the quiet and the dissonant. On ‘Two’, thick drones emerge from a turbulent, volatile squall of strings, while the comparatively calm ‘Three’ concerns itself with smaller gestures before a disruptive trumpet blast from Kelley forces the adaptable players into a more strident formation.

Miasms by Goldston / Jones / Kelley / Larkin was released August 4 2023 by Full Spectrum Records.

https://fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/miasmsfullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/miasms

AWAKENED SOULS – unlikely places (Past Inside The Present)

awakened souls are a duo of Cynthia Bernard (voice, guitar) and James Bernard (bass, synths, guitar). Inspired by the idea that we can all find creative impulses in the least likely of places if only we took the time to stay present, this collection of ten pieces is perhaps one of the most delicate, contemplative albums I’ve heard. Reassuring and comforting, pieces like ‘waiting’ are nevertheless poised and purposeful, not exercises in empty ambient drifting. An oscillating synth tone on ‘fall asleep, dream’ floats determinedly over soft, undulating sounds and Cynthia’s ethereal vocals, collectively guiding your awareness and providing clarity to the disorganised clutter of your mind. Beyond beatific, and a joy to be in the company of.

unlikely places by awakened souls was released August 16 2023 by Past Inside The Present.

pitp.bandcamp.com/album/unlikely-placeshttps://pitp.bandcamp.com/album/unlikely-places

YUI ONODERA – Mizuniwa (Decaying Spheres)

For Mizuniwa, sound artist Yui Onodera recorded sounds while visiting the Tochigi Prefecture, a landlocked area lying 80km to the north of his Tokyo home. A beautiful, tranquil location encompassing mountains, national parks, water falls and, on the basis of this album, ample sources of inspiration for Onodera. The six pieces here have a life-affirming warmth, full of rich, constantly-moving yet subtle synth layers and naturalistic water sounds. For me, key pieces like ‘Mizuniwa 2’ and ‘Mizuniwa 6’ are sonic embodiments of the concept of shakkei, whereby a background landscape is incorporated into the design of a garden. In this way, Onodera’s pieces encompass distant horizons and close-up details, making for a truly transcendent listening experience.

Mizuniwa by Yui Onodera was released August 4 2023 by Decaying Spheres.

yuionodera.bandcamp.com/album/mizuniwa

Words: Mat Smith

Thanks to Graeme.

(c) 2023 Further.

Atom Brigade – Atom Brigade

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Atom Brigade started out as a collaboration between Martin Jensen and Rupert Lally, initially taking the form of an instrumental distance collaboration, its stylistic template being squarely focused on the 1980s. The pieces they created fell neatly a mix of low-slung, guitar-inflected melodic post-punk and chunky, almost Madchester-style funk grooves.

At some point in proceedings, the pair felt that the tracks they were honing would be well-suited to vocalists. They enlisted Star Madman (Amanda Jay) and Oliver Cherer and the Atom Brigade collective was born. Instrumental tracks like ‘Safe Travels’ and ‘Breathe Breakdown’ are the moments where Jensen and Lally get to show off their sound design and production chops, where their expansive knowledge of the rudiments of electronic composition truly comes to the fore.

However, as the pair themselves acknowledged, these pieces really benefit from the addition of vocals. This is an album that effortlessly flicker between dark and light, with Star Madman’s heartfelt, warm singing gracing the searching, thwarted ‘(We Never) Made It To Forever’ and the gently uplifting yet emotionally devastating closing track ‘New Illusion’.

The tracks with Oliver Cherer take the Atom Brigade sound in a manifestly different direction. ‘Little Town’ has a vaguely Thomas Newman dimension to its shimmering elusive sound, one that is caught between the poles of wonder and numb, emotional detachment. His vocal here is earnest, determined but quiet, interfacing with the fragile, fluttering soundworld created by Jensen and Lally to leave you feeling tentative, unresolved and uncertain. In contrast, ‘Oh Bader Meinhof’ is infectious and irrepressible, with Lally’s cool, chiming guitar licks and Jensen’s breakbeat locking together wondrously.

There is an understated dimension to Atom Brigade. None of these songs grab forcefully for your attention yet they deliver a resolute and memorable self-assuredness. That strange and unplaceable synergy is what makes this such an inspired collaboration. More – much more – please.

Atom Brigade by Atom Brigade was released August 11 2023 by Subexotic.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

Ten Years Of Third Kind: Portland Vows / Trium Circulorum / Fisty Kendal

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Brighton’s Third Kind are celebrating their tenth birthday in September 2023. To celebrate the occasion, the label released three new typically diverse gems, with further exciting projects expected to surface later in the year.

Portland Vows – Plastic Alice

Plastic Alice is the first of two new releases from Aberdeen-based modular electronic musician Bob Plant. Its seven delicate, ruminative tracks ponder the existential (post-existential?) philosophical question that bothers us all from time to time: what if I’m already dead and nothing is actually real? Plant describes this as “a soundtrack to that imagined disappearance”, and this collection has a very corporeal presence even if it can’t offer definitive reassurance that this isn’t all a freaky dream. Wafts of gentle, half-heard melodies and gauzy wisps of electronic texture cling to pieces like ‘A Friend Or Relative’, while a powerfully resonant searching quality emerges through the haunted strings of the dense (yet minimalistic) ‘Neurology’. The album concludes with the firm and resolute synth melodies and squalling strings of ‘Tangled Again’, carrying a weightiness, certainty and acceptance. Plant’s other Third Kind release is the similarly bewitching ‘Witches Of Hopsas Woods’, which will be released in September.

Plastic Alice by Portland Vows was released July 14.

Trium Circulorum – Uranium EP

Probably already long sold-out, Uranium is a follow-up to German drum ‘n’ bass producer Martin Hansel’s recent Third Kind release Boodoo Khan. Released as a lathe-cut three track single, Hensel offers up vibrant new mixes of two album tracks – ‘Uranium’ and ‘Enter Boodoo Khan’ – which both isolate the mysterious, ritualistic rhythmic energy of the original pieces but transform them into urgent, powerful and thrilling new shapes. Hansel got so immersed in the idea of reinterpreting his own work that he went on and remixed the whole of Boodoo Khan for a digital version of the physical release. The lathe-cut release is rounded out by a mix of ‘Uranium’ by labelmate Fisty Kendal, who reduces the sub bass and hopscotch beats of the original to a twitchy, nervous cut full of deep, shimmering synth work.

Uranium EP by Trium Circulorum was released July 21.

Fisty Kendal – Price Match!

Price Match! is a follow-up to one of the earliest Third Kind releases, and catches the wonderfully obtuse electronic producer Fisty Kendal (Stephen Cousins) in fine form. Unplaceable and restless, this precision-sharp collection switches seamlessly between the liquified electro shapes of ‘Coolin’ With The Renegades’, the semi-acoustic lo-fi techno of ‘Dead Crow Blues’ (a collaboration with Croydon’s Superman Revenge Squad) and the semi-cynical askance look at the ramifications of AI on the rapidfire pulsework of ‘Softmax ‘98’. The highlight here is the dreamy ‘You Know, For The Kids’, which skews its own sublimeness with humorously juxtaposed samples of interviews presented in such a way as to highlight the lonely love life of an electronic music-making nerd.

Price Match! by Fisty Kendal was released August 4 2023.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

bleed Air / Hualun – GhostEP / Dead Man

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If a tape loops infinitely, where does it start and end?

A new split cassette from anonymous electronic artist and bassist bleed Air and Shenzhen legends Hualun ruminates quietly on that enquiry. The beginnings and conclusions are not clear. There is an A-side and a B-side, one by bleed Air and one by Hualun, but the labels glued to each side of the cassette shell might as well be interchangeable.

But there is a starting point to the story of this collaboration. Because it is a true collaboration. It is not simply two artists each throwing together music to fill a side of a tape, with little that obviously connects either side of the ferric oxide frontier. This began with an idea and a response: Hualun would make some new music, and bleed Air would respond to it. Idea and response. Two distinct creations. One unique source.

And yet it was agreed that bleed Air’s response would occupy the A-side, meaning that you hear the response before the idea. The net effect is one of reversal: even though you know it not to be the case, the relative positioning makes you feel like Hualun are in fact responding to bleed Air. If a tape loops infinitely, where does it start and end?

These two sides are, then, inextricably and umbilically linked. They both occupy a contemporary vantage point overlooking some of 1970s German electronic music’s finest moments, completely in tune with the sonic adventuring that the likes of Conrad Schnitzler and a select pioneering few bravely undertook.

There are three pieces that open Hualun’s side that form a beautiful and engaging triptych. ‘Snow Bath’ carries a fragile outline of a melody that evolves slowly over the course of the track, giving rise to a sense of gentle, fluttering motion and a languid, purposeful but relaxed poise. ‘Strand Man’ floats forth on horn-like textures, being funereal yet joyful simultaneously. Your attention is directed to those thick, resonant notes, but just behind them is a constantly shifting backdrop full of the minutest details. A sense of euphoric resolution arrives at the very end, just before it collapses into white noise. A surprise comes in the form of ‘Folks’, which is constructed from gentle cascades of guitar and electronic melodies. The piece is almost Beverly Glenn-Copeland-esque in its mesmeric, warm and loving presentation.

bleed Air’s side – the response to all of the above, remember – begins with ‘GhostEP’, built from wraith-like electronic transmissions and background static from a broken radio. These (im)pulses are then replaced by placid synth melodies that are sweetly moving, arranged either like classical motifs or fairground organ music, even as they are threatened by grinding machine sounds. One of my favourite pieces follows. ‘Travelogue’ features deep, spacey atmospheres uncoiling at a sedate and graceful pace. Resonant, swelling melodies give this a widescreen, sci-fi soundtrack quality; stirring, despite its minimal presentation. Elsewhere, the plaintive, echoing piano of the evocative ‘Ajar’ creates the image of sitting silently in a cafe, looking sadly through the window at the world going by and feeling completely detached from everything.

Both sides end in similar territory. bleed Air’s ‘Gap Map’ and Hualun’s ‘Before The Storm’ are stylistically inseparable. A white noise gale blows through these tracks, punctuated by a haunting (haunted?) melody. We are left with many questions. Who is who? What is what? Are they the same artist performing the same track? Or two artists standing in front of a mirror, so alike and yet so divided by the original idea and the reflected response?

If a tape loops infinitely, where does it start and end?

GhostEP by bleed Air / Dead Man by Hualun is released September 1 2023 by superpolar Taïps.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

The Dark Jazz Project – 3 / Dead King (A Play In Three Acts)

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“Don’t overdose on this stuff,” The Dark Jazz Project’s Andrew Spackman told me when he sent me his new album, 3. “It’s pretty potent!”

I reckon I can handle it. I’ve been consuming Spackman’s music for years, first when he was know as SAD MAN and more recently as The Dark Jazz Project. Wonky jazz bangers were always Spackman’s medicine of choice, but with his most recent reinvention, it’s like he’s taken his music into a whole new dimension. I don’t mean into some sort of spiralling, ‘groovy, baby’ timewarp. I mean darker. Jazzier. Projectier.

3 is intense, though, even by Spackman’s standards. The risk advisory is to be noted. Twenty tracks. Two hours. An accompanying play called Dead King (A Play In Three Acts). This sort of stuff would take most artists years to come up with, but Spackman is able to deliver this kind of wonderful sprawl with a spontaneity and fluidity – at high speed – that’s resolutely fresh and refreshingly imaginative.

Never one to repeat himself, 3 flips and flops like around like manic three-legged frog, delving deep into dance music’s murkiest corners to drag out skewed rhythms, off-kilter half-melodies, headcleaning glitchy noise and a seemingly limitless collection of cool jazz samples. And that’s just the first track, the decisively-named ‘Jazz’. The effect here is like watching an especially dexterous DJ seeking out the most floor-clearing tracks in his collection and yet managing to get the stoic crowd to wiggle along with manic glee.

Picking out standout tracks from 3’s vast number of cuts is a tough, nay impossible task. They’re all belters. If highlights you must have, check out ‘The Great Ones’, a track which lurches from graceful, contemplative piano to a segment that sounds like Moby’s ‘Thousand’ remixed by a Dutch hardcore artist while juggling cans of ball bearings. Meanwhile, ‘Carloza’ twitches forth on a breakbeat reimagined by Gene Krupa, over which Spackman sprinkles tinkly synths and buzzing, vital hooks.

‘Babonza’ sounds like a shoot-out between Star Wars laser pistols and a drinking straw noisily chasing the final drops in a plastic beaker containing Ken Kesey’s Kool-Aid. ‘The Stranger Again’ is a tight, 4/4 monster that rapidly switches direction into a noisy mess, just as you’ve started showing off your best moves. It rather reminds me of when I was dancing to the Paul Oakenfold remix of U2’s ‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’ at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Wildmoor nightclub and the DJ switched tracks just as I had started playing air guitar along with The Edge.

3 is effectively the informal soundtrack to Dead King, involving a medieval monarch, a timewarp (okay, so I was wrong about the timewarp: groovy, baby) and a magical, energy-providing creature. The play is beautifully presented, with fantastic photography and a totally bonkers narrative. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for the King, though the title may have already yielded that clue.

Mr. Spackman, you have outdone yourself this time.

Footnote: this review was completed while flying over Canada. As ever, I had eschewed the onboard entertainment in favour of the moving map. Two places were beneath us as I concluded the final sentence – Flin Flon and Pukatawagan – while Medicine Hat was off in distance. I fear that my mind had reached such befuddlement by Spackman’s latest collection that place names and track titles had become indistinguishable. Sheesh, he wasn’t wrong about the potency.

Shameless plug: Spackman contributed to my Mortality Tables LIFEFILES series with a track that was literally made with nothing but clothes hangers. Check it out here. All proceeds to the Deaf Children’s Society and Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

3 and Dead King were released / published by Irregular Patterns on July 7 2023.

(c) 2023 Further.

Amongst The Pigeons – Embrace The Point Of No Return

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Embrace The Point Of No Return by Daniel Parson’s Amongst The Pigeons project couldn’t be more different from his 2021 album Silence Will Be Assumed As Acceptance. For a start, this is a solo flight for Parsons, whereas Silence Will Be Assumed… was very much a collaborative release. It’s also instrumental, eschewing the vocal contributions that have characterised his last few releases. And yet, in spite of these differences, Embrace The Point Of No Return feels like a strangely logical follow-up.

Celebratory and upbeat, tracks like ‘Swipe For Latex’, ‘Trespass’, ‘Proximity Alert’ and ‘Who Do You Have To Go Home For’ have a compelling urgency and intensity – solid beats, dominant synth hooks and a propulsive, irresistible forward motion. That sense of intensity was also evident on Silence Will Be Assumed… with its focus on environmental disaster, social inequality and racism, but here it’s as if Parsons has accepted that the world is totally fucked, so we might as well just give up and dance. With that in mind, these pieces all shimmer and twitch with a euphoric, hedonistic carefreeness, devoid of any existential worries or troubles.

‘Nightshade’ is this writer’s personal favourite, a delicate, low-key banger that transports me back to early 1990s dance music. That track seems to encapsulate a sense of levity and optimism. I may be conflating this with my own now-distant youthfulness at the start of that decade, but it really felt like you could lose yourself completely in dance music’s rhythms and melodies and ignore what was going on in the world and the rest of your life.

This is the joyous, positive, life-affirming DJ set that plays while we watch our final sunset. We are dancing on the terminal beach, our eyes fixed on the diminishing horizon, outside the last nightclub on Earth.

Embrace The Point Of No Return by Amongst The Pigeons is released August 4 2023 by Peace & Feathers.

(c) 2023 Further.

drøne – The Long Song

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drøne is a duo of Mark Van Hoen and Touch’s Mike Harding, accompanied by ‘invited guests’. Presented as a single piece divided into discrete sonic movements, The Long Song captures the pair exploring a soundworld characterised by tiny, almost imperceptible changes in currents.

On ‘Escapement’, snatches of overheard conversation and baritone prayer calls join hissing noises that sound like gas escaping from a damaged canister, what could be a faltering shortwave data broadcast and tiny clusters of electronic melody. The interplay between these disparate elements is sudden and fleeting. Nothing stays in place for long. Everything – literally everything you hear – is ephemeral and inconsequential.

The approach taken on ‘Escapement’ runs through the entire duration of The Long Song. On ‘Altamura’, sounds arrange themselves into an inchoate, distant rhythm, but just as you start to lock into its abstract groove, it drops away and is replaced by a grainy – possibly VHS – recording of a weather broadcast from a location that isn’t specific. The effect is like listening at twin speeds: a sense of things unfolding both slowly and also rapidly. This isn’t some intense trading of ideas designed to appeal to the hyperactivity of the modern age, as the pace is rarely ever frantic; yet somehow ideas are allowed to evolve here at a surprising velocity, just one that is delivered with the extremest subtlety.

‘Inanna’ is one of the most gripping and arresting pieces on the album. Here, a collection of haunting, overlapping choral vocals (from Bana Haffar, Jana Winderen, Anna von Hausswolff and others) floats delicately and elegiacally into view. The presentation is at once uplifting, joyous and vital, yet they float above a foundation layer of gravelly, impenetrable sub-bass and clusters of wild static. As soon as your attention locks onto that, any sense of joy immediately evaporates, leaving you suddenly doubtful and uncertain. Something similar happens on ‘He Frightened The Bird Away’ which follows, only here it is a vaguely sinister, alien tapping sound and restless non-rhythm that punctures its way through clouds of becalming, descending harmonies.

There are countless moments like this across ‘The Long Song’, moments that trip you up and force you to reconsider what it is that you thought you might have heard, that decontextualise and recontextualise themselves endlessly. It shows two artists in complete control of their sound palettes, fully aware of the powerfully disorienting impact their assemblages can have on a listener.

The Long Song by drøne was released 5 May 2023.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

Secret Flight – Secret Flight

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Secret Flight first floated ethereally past my music radar at a performance at Milton Keynes Gallery in January 2020. Built from wonderfully delicate synth sounds, heat-haze hooks and brittle rhythms, overlaid with hypnotic, angelic vocals, that Secret Flight performance occupied a unique zone bordering lo-fi electronica, classical melodies and a sort of shoegazer-y feeling of numbness and detachment.

This self-titled album follows an initial release in 2018, My Forever Mirage. Secret Flight contains some truly mesmerising, haunting pieces, each constructed using that fragile, sparse approach to arrangements that left such an indelible impression on me back in 2020. Along with more resolutely ephemeral pieces comprising just voice and elegiac synth chords, there are some truly breathtaking standout moments. One of these is the seven-minute ‘A Prism’, laden with detuned beats, subtle arpeggios, a relentless spiral of synth tones and a chamber choir coda about grief that offers a sense of resolution and closure.

Another outstanding track is ‘On The Day’, which has a beautiful, 1981-vintage synth-pop outlook, the combination of precise, restrained electronics and soaring, beguiling voice recalling Yazoo’s finest moments. ‘Vertigo’ has a crunchy beat with a vaguely glam rock swing, the accompanying vocal having a sort of muted euphoria that reminds me of early Smiths, while the quietly defiant progressions of closing track ‘To Lose’ is going to be the music accompanying the final scene in the movie adaptation of the book I haven’t written yet.

Secret Flight is a remarkable, if consciously understated album. It maintains a firm hold on your attention, enveloping you with its delicate presentation and revealing more of itself and its sentiment the more time you spend with it. Its vocal themes are open and honest, yet also shrouded and deliberately obfuscated, offering a window into emotional turmoil, love, loss and personal anxieties. A powerful (yet subtle) journey from start to finish.

Secret Flight by Secret Flight is released May 26 2023.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

Gvantsa Narim – Apotheosis Animæ

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Gvantsa Narimanidze is a sound artist from Tbilisi, Georgia. Her latest work was inspired by the winter season and was composed between the end of 2022 and start of 2023. It was a winter fraught with anxiety given the ongoing Russia – Ukraine conflict and fears that gas supplies across Europe would be insufficient to cope with extremes of cold weather, ushering in nightmarish predictions that countless people, suffering fuel poverty, would freeze to death.

How much of that backdrop fed into Apotheosis Animæ is hard to discern. What is evident is a frosty stillness that presides over the delicate, sparse pieces that Narimanidze presents here. The piano-led opening track ‘Apotheosis’ is augmented by gentle reverb which only enhances a mournful, slightly dejected tone. It’s almost as if Narimanidze is sighing outwardly at the start of colder weather and the unstoppable slipping by of time.

That air of austerity and acceptance wends its way with intense subtlety through the pieces here. The ten-minute ‘Amnesia’ begins like an outline of itself, wherein all detail has been scrubbed away and replaced by tiny, almost imperceptible changes in momentum, a growling synth tone and high-pitched string sound drifting in like a bitter breeze. Snatches of voice, eulogising humankind’s relationship to the Earth, taps into Narimanidze’s belief system, foreshadowing a dramatic denouement wherein all the disparate elements previously buried deep in the mix coalesce into something tangible, something living.

‘Born In The Mist’ consists of suppressed, howling sounds that carry a sense of danger, heavy processing giving rise to a murky, dramatic, almost claustrophobic soundworld. It reminds me (pleasantly) of the first time I came upon one of Thomas Köner’s quiet works, whereupon I turned the volume up to an ear-splitting level to experience the brutality of amplified near-silence. ‘Train’ is easily one of the most mesmerising pieces in this collection, beginning with icicle-sharp pirouettes and gradually opening out into a crystalline field of synth pads on the axis between the haunting and the joyous. Elsewhere, the expansive ‘Codex’ has a lingering latency, an unswerving drone loop dominating the background while tendril-like synth arpeggios creep slowly into earshot. A stately, muffled glissandi piano motif adds a sense of grandeur as it weaves through the drone and synth spirals.

Narimanidze is a masterful sound designer, capable of infusing her pieces with a naturalistic spirit but also a searching, inquisitive, unresolved quality. Those signature flourishes can be found all over Apotheosis Animæ, representing a fantastically intricate, complex and yet spiritually rewarding body of work.

Apotheosis Animæ by Gvatsa Narim is released on 26 May 2023 by Cruel Nature.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.