Tag: Electronic

Shots: Pagan Red / Jay Wires / Andy Warhol / Xqui / Khodumodumo

On By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews1 Comment

PAGAN RED – MATERIA (Titrate)

I first came across Pagan Red at a Titrate label night at IKLECTIK in 2022, and the material played that night was signalled as being extracted from this album. My overriding impression of that set was one of physical bass intensity, overlaid with dense drones and other interventions of unknowable provenance that whirr and fizz unpredictably. On record, the 25-minute ‘A Waning Mind’s Eye’, and the shorter tracks ‘Purus Terrae’ and ‘Sands’ are much more subtle, coiling themselves around you with a combination of airy levity and brooding complexity. Materia exists in darkness, light, and everywhere in between. Released March 31 2023. With thanks to Henrique.

JAY WIRES – GHOST (Yes Trigger Music)

The latest single from New York electronic music producer Jay Wires continues the emotional themes of his earlier releases in 2022 and 2023. A haunting and epic synth pop journey, ‘Ghost’ details a sense of abandonment and disappointment. Beginning with sparse, fragile framing, by the end the track has soared to progressively new heights, even as Jay’s vocals become more intensely and savagely introspective. Jay calls this music “electro-pop therapy”, and his ongoing open, frank discourse with his listeners about his relationship struggles is universally relatable to us and, I hope, cathartic for him. Released October 20 2023.

VARIOUS ARTISTS – BEFORE BRILLO BOX OR BANANA: MUSIC WITHIN THE ALBUM COVER ART OF ANDY WARHOL (Él Records / Cherry Red Records)

Writes David Bourdon in his book Warhol, quoted in the copious liner notes of this four disc set: “Art directors showered Warhol with assignments because he worked fast, met deadlines, and displayed a properly submissive attitude when they demanded revisions.”

This compilation surveys the music that lies within sleeves designed by Andy Warhol after he moved to New York City in 1949. This was the era of Warhol’s commercial art, exemplified by drawings of shoes for Glamour magazine and advertisements for the I. Miller shoe store that appeared in the New York Times. His sleeve art for LPs of music by Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, Thelonius Monk, Count Basie and others, released by labels like Columbia and Blue Note, is less well known, but they highlight early ideas of reproduction and collective creation – via assistants and his mother’s calligraphy – that would go on to become staples of his later work. The four discs here compile a significant number of pieces of classical and jazz music featured on those LPs, while a fourth disc collates pieces by Cage, Feldman, Cecil Taylor, Albert and others in an effort to contextualise the musical currents that surrounded Warhol in 1950s Manhattan. Extensive sleeve notes, quotes and photos of Warhol’s sleeve designs round out an essential and original boxset from Él Records. Released November 24 2023. With thanks to Matt.

XQUI – MELTING ICE WITH ICE (Wormhole World)

The latest album from anonymous, Vince Clarke-tipped sound artist Xqui is easily one of his most atmospheric to date. The album’s centrepiece is the ten minute ‘Cherry Red Neon Blues’, where Xqui briefly emerges from behind his mask to deliver oblique verse over a set of long-form soundscapes. Here you find intriguing, impenetrable sentiments that feels, to me, like a vague outline of a strange night out, reminding me of Scorsese’s seminal After Hours. Elsewhere, ‘Zero Divided By Zero’ carries a sense of fragile tenderness, with deep, sedentary ambience offset by soaring, euphoric tones. The (almost) title track, ‘Melting Ice’ features squidgy synth tones that seem to echo and reverberate across a barren arctic landscape. Plaintive, and vaguely melancholic, Xqui‘s new collection feels like unanswered radio transmissions from an abandoned polar lab complex. Released December 1 2023.

KHODUMODUMO – WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THIS SIDE?

An accompanying email with this album from South Africa’s Khodumodumo said, “We hope it unsettles you,” which is a great marketing tactic as far as I’m concerned. And unsettling this certainly is, if you’re generally freaked out by its cloying, discordant, wonky textures and brooding clouds of menacing ambience. ‘Trapped In Deluded And Helpless Loops’ stands out for its cycles of queasily unpredictable repeated samples, while the brief and atmospheric ‘Their Whistles Have Noticed You’ seems to carry a calm latency, presaging some extreme violence. This album is most unsettling with the title track, which uses samples of Appartheid-era news report to highlight South Africa’s racial tensions. Released December 8 2023.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

boycalledcrow – //M E L O D Y_M A N

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The premise for Carl Knott’s latest boycalledcrow release is an imagined world where decommissioned transmitters and dusty radios awake from the slumbers of redundancy and begin functioning again. Imagine fractured sounds, faltering rhythms and glitchy sonic non sequiturs, transmitted abruptly into a era more used to the vapid sterility of streaming and internet radio.

I can’t think of a better place for Knott’s music to exist, even if it is fantastical. As boycalledcrow, his work has always occupied a sort of fragmentary landscape of its own: sounds form, burst into sharp sonic fractals and re-emerge in infinitely rearranged forms; melodies falter and collapse in on themselves; guitars, betraying his origins as a folk musician, offer recognisable shapes but are clipped, alien and discordantly unsettling.

Each of the fourteen pieces here is accompanied by a brief and evocative poem, and at times it feels like these collections of words have been subjected to the same skewed logic with which Knott’s music is developed. The verse to accompany the title track is a more adroit description of his work than any reviewer could muster:

And now
He’s pulling all of the strings
A cat’s cradle
Of tangled tunes
Weaving paths
And making up names

I’ll get my coat. I would encourage you to ignore everything I’ve ever written about Knott’s music.

None of this is intended to suggest that //M E L O D Y_M A N is some sort of messy, randomised sprawl of an album, even if the complicated algorithm-like names of the tracks might indicate otherwise. To suggest this would be to undermine Knott’s skills as a sound artist. In fact, quite the contrary – the album contains some of Knott’s most beatific, resonant works to date. ‘God * Woman = C I R C L E ()’ and ‘dr dr dr || WOODS 777’ consist of tiny cycles of pretty melodies that evoke comparison with Steve Reich, offset by plaintive, organic gamelan textures and shimmering reverb that, when combined, produces an arresting, enveloping minimalist warmth.

Nevertheless, there is something endlessly intriguing about Knott’s more restless moments. The velocity at which ideas form and are replaced creates a sort of turbulence within pieces like ‘(S) illy Song #2’ that leaves you more than a little dizzy as it skips and hops along a path seemingly all of its own. Such pieces are an offset to more delicate tracks like ‘’, ‘~ f o r e s t … MOON ~’ and ‘SUN sun +’, leaving the listener stood perpetually on a precipice of expectation.

And that’s what’s ultimately so interesting here: as one track finishes and another starts, you find yourself trying to anticipate where Knott might pivot you to next. To predict this, however, is a fruitless endeavour, and it’s that sense of bold adventurism that makes //M E L O D Y_M A N such an extraordinary and enriching listening experience from start to finish.

//M E L O D Y_M A N by boycalledcrow is released October 27 2023 by Waxing Crescent.

boycalledcrow recently recorded a piece for my Mortality Tables collaborative series LIFEFILES. Listen to ‘LF13 / Westbury’ here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

drøne & Julia Mariko / Philip Marshall – Vox Interruptus

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Vox Interruptus took place at London’s Iklectic on 19 September. Its central focus was the not wholly unprecedented confluence of opera music with electronic sound, prompted by a collaboration between English Touring Opera and drøne (Mark Van Hoen and Mike Harding). A set by drøne, accompanied by the ethereal, haunting voice of soprano Julia Mariko, formed the centrepiece of the evening, and used sounds scraped from two English Touring Opera productions currently wending their way around the UK – Cinderella and The Coronation Of Poppea.

Mariko appears in the second half of this twenty-minute recording from that night. In the ten or so minutes that preceded her casually walking from a seat among the audience, Van Hoen and Harding delivered a suite of intricate, impenetrable and generally unplaceable sounds and loops, each one tinged with a metallic, purring static. These textures evoke the idea of opera, though it’s hard to define precisely why that is the case. Voices appeared occasionally, creating the impression of the two sound artists standing in the wings of a theatre, voyeuristically recording the sounds of the singers, but for me the sounds that Van Hoen and Harding developed felt like the mimetic approximation of breathing exercises before a performance.

I was there, and it was an utterly mesmerising, experience. Missing from this recording was an abrupt squall of heavy sound that arrived as Mariko finished singing. It was so sudden, loud and unexpected that I jumped out of my seat. It also seemed to surprise Mariko, who smiled briefly, breaking the otherwise earnest demeanour that had characterised her performance.

Noise, however, shouldn’t have been unexpected. As we entered the venue, we were confronted with extreme sonic turbulence, courtesy of The Tapeworm’s Philip Marshall manipulating a batch of found opera cassettes. His set-up was battery-operated and minimalist – a Walkman, a Korg handheld synth, a Bastl Bestie mixer – but the sound he produced was anything but. His set, twenty minutes of which are presented here as ‘Operattack’ was almost the inverse of the drøne set. Where theirs was relatively quiet and ruminative, their source voices suppressed into unrecognisable shapes, voices were omnipresent in Marshall’s performance: loud, bold, and brash; soaring moments of vocal power distorted into nauseating, terrifying shapes. Wilfully unpredictable, Marshall’s set showed vivid imagination and endless possibility.

Elsewhere on the bill at Vox Interruptus were sets from Dale Cornish, The Howling (extracts from whose latest album Incredible Night Creatures Of The Midway were used at a Paris Fashion Week show last month, no less) and JTM (Jonathan Thomas Miller).

Of these, I only caught the JTM performance. The foundation of his set was constructed from one recording of a single vocal sound made by Miller. This was manhandled ahead of time into myriad shapes and structures, over which he then built up live accompaniments with a SOMA Pipe synth. This was all about breath, but the sounds that he forced out of the Pipe reminded me of everything from whale song to the shimmering, ephemeral clouds of sound that Robert Fripp used to create in his solo performances.

This release, then, is only a partial document of that night at Iklectik. What is here, in the recordings of drøne and Marshall, acts as a vivid depiction of a clash of musical worlds, the elemental deconstruction of an established form, and a powerful sonic challenge to centuries of traditionalism.

Bravo.

Vox Interruptus was released September 28 and is available here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

Shots: Script Kid / Witch On Horseback / Andrew Weathers / Xingu Hill

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SCRIPT KID – SKSI

SKSI is a five-track EP from anonymous Philadelphia producer Script Kid, which follows his dizzyingly accomplished debut album, Music For A Deprecated Dataset (2021). Intended as a metaphorical sonic bridge between his debut and a future new album, SKSI is a hot mess of crunchy beats, wispy synths and fragmented samples. ‘Nunya’ flinches and twitches with a nervous euphoria, a swirl of soft ambient textures fluttering around a suppressed rhythm. ‘The Groove’ hitches similarly ephemeral synth samples to a resolute breakbeat, giving me warm and fuzzy Mo’ Wax memories, while the curt ‘$Beatz’ highlights Script Kid’s minimalist flair with 90 seconds of scratched-up chat about ‘money-beats’ that had me tapping my toes on the train home in the rush hour.

SKSI by Script Kid was released July 28 2023 by Music Is The Devil.

WITCH ON HORSEBACK – Jumand

This is purportedly an unearthed suite of four recordings from The Witch On Horseback Institute For Cognitive Salubrity, founded by the narrator of these pieces, Dr. Noving Jumand, in New York State in the 1970s. The story goes that the new age performance space and education centre was founded by some ex-Moog employees, which would explain the deep drones, pulses and half-melodies that frame Jumand’s delivery. It’s all completely made up, of course. There was no Institute, there was no Jumand, and these pieces of strange and abstracted fiction – each delivered by the Jumand character in a flat voice reminiscent of guided meditations – are each one part-Welcome To Night Vale and one part David Lynch. The thirty-minute ‘Unusual Restaurant’ is wry and harrowing, putting you in a dreamlike story that concludes with you tucking into a dish of wafer-thin objects made from the body of a creepy childhood neighbour. You may think twice before listening to that next supposedly relaxing podcast on the Calm app after hearing this.

Jumand by Witch On Horseback was released August 25 2023 by Difficult Art And Music.

ANDREW WEATHERS – A Cardinal With A Sign Of Blood

A Cardinal With A Sign Of Blood is Texan sound artist and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Weathers’ eulogy to his late father and aunt. Their passing prompted this collection of discovered quarter-inch tapes that his father had made, field recordings, guitars, horns and electronics. Ghostly and haunting, the opening piece ‘28 Feb 1975’ features Weathers delivering a sparse, hesitant guitar melody loaded with plaintive contemplation over a murky bed of impenetrable voices and delicate keyboard tones. The 10-minute centrepiece, ‘The Cardinal, The Bike, The Stars’ features taped reportage about and from childhood and thoughts of aliens, Weathers manipulating an unintended cough in one of the recordings into a vague and unpredictable rhythm that ushers in an increasingly complex series of minimalistic layers. Reverential and absorbing, Weathers’ grief has produced a sonic adventure of great and mesmerising power.

A Cardinal With A Sign Of Blood by Andrew Weathers was released September 1 2023 by Full Spectrum Records.

XINGU HILL – Grigri Pavilion

The latest album from John Sellekaers’ Xingu Hill project contains eight tracks of enquiring electronics, and key moments like ‘Hi-Fi Simulant’ and ‘Moving Mirrors’ fizz with a palpable energy. Fragile, hooky synth melodies rest on top of complex beats that nod to minimal techno, electro and splintered drum ‘n’ bass. And yet, despite the components all feeling like they might have a place in a 1990s warehouse rave somewhere outside Amsterdam, something about Sellekaers’ presentation of these pieces feels vaguely… detached. The euphoria that should exist here is suppressed, in its place a sort of ephemeral, almost New Age-y introspection. That sleight of hand – used liberally on each of these pieces – creates beautiful shades of texture and nuance. An enriching auditory experience from start to finish.

Grigri Pavilion by Xingu Hill was released September 15 2023 by Subexotic Records.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.

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.

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.