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.