Rupert Lally

On August 19, 2024August 18, 2024 By 429harrowroadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

AUDIO MAZE – INTERSECTION (Downstream Records)

Damon Vallero describes his new Audio Maze album as “a meeting place and a platform for departure”. Its dub-inflected soundscapes carry a sense of fluid motion, of coming and going. Even at its most languid – as on the widescreen ‘Grand Land’ – there is a feeling of restlessness, even though its constituent parts (a slow-motion rhythm, a metronomic bass pulse, a softly ebbing and flowing melody) suggest a resolute stillness. It transpires that it’s an unplaceable, half-heard sound off in the distance that conjures this feeling of nothing being settled, of everything moving. One of the album’s many highlights is ‘Circle Of Sand’, containing myriad distinct intersections – a submerged bassline that is felt more than heard; a voice whose words cannot be deciphered; a rhythm that feels like the juddering sound of a train passing through a station; a jazzy piano riff that seems to splinter and fall apart gracefully as the rest of the track follows a very different path. This is an album filled with complex detail just beneath its surface textures. Absorbing and richly nuanced. Released 30 May 2024.

https://downstreamrecords.bandcamp.com/album/intersection

XUMA – JASMINE

Xuma is a duo of Harriett and Chris Robins Kennish. Based near Brighton, they make music built from the foundational structures of dance music, with slowly-evolving minimal sequences and crisp, danceable beats offset by Harriett’s often blissed-out vocals. ‘I Know Her’ drifts gently into a dreamy garage-y framework of driving beats and jazzy sounds, over which Harriett deploys layers of euphoric, arms-in-the-air vocals. ‘Joyful’ is one of the album’s many highlights, with vocals converted into loops of shimmering, beatific texture over sounds and rhythms that sound like they are soundtracking a Goan (or maybe Hove?) sunrise. ‘Invisible’ strikes a minimalist techno pose, its feathery electronics fluttering ceaselessly over a stalking pitch-bent bassline, while closing track ‘Relent’ adopts a laidback, half-speed Café Del Mar vibe. Jasmine is a hidden gem of an album, and one that resolutely follows its own stylistic path. I had the pleasure of hanging out with Harriett and Chris on Brighton beach recently, and two nicer people making brilliantly diverse electronic music you will not meet. Released 20 June 2024.

https://xuma.bandcamp.com/album/jasmine

BUNKR – ANTENNE

Antenne is Brighton-based James Dean’s homage to a mysterious pirate radio station, which broadcast continuously from a point in the 1990s before coming to a sudden halt in 1996. This is his evocation of the energy of the station, deploying his trademark sinewy synth melodies, club-oriented beats and a sense of latency. On ‘I Feel Eye See’, he uses a muted hardcore break but instead of hitching it to 1992-vintage head-cleaning hoover noises, he layers the beats with pretty, overlapping spirals and a fuzzy blanket of warm, emotive textures. ‘Oriam Speedway’ ventures into a suggestion of kosmische electronic rock, fused again to suppressed rave beats. My personal favourite track is ‘Controller 29’, whose structures steadily coalesce out of a delicate web of interwoven synth lines that ripple with intense motion. Those patterns quickly fade out of view, only to firm up around a motorik beat and a fluttering melody that nods to Kraftwerk’s ‘Neonlicht’. Another fine release in the Bunkr catalogue. Released 28 June 2024.

https://bunkr-music.bandcamp.com/album/antenne

PLANT43 – THE UNFADING SPARK (Quiet Details)

Another exceptional release from the Quiet Details label, easily one of the most interesting imprints issuing music today. To catch people up on the concept, the idea is that each handpicked artist is asked to produce a body of music that responds to the name of the label. Every release in the series has been a joy to listen to, and the latest – from Tresor stalwart Emile Facey – is no exception. Like some of the other releases surveyed in this post, Facey’s ‘The Unfading Spark’ relies principally on the suggestion of movement and energy. In standout pieces like opener ‘Broken Through’ or ‘Signal Beckons’ or ‘Wisps Of Vapour’, there is this feeling of high-octane techno structures itching to punch their way through the gauzy, enveloping textures that dominate the tracks. These potentially competing forces create a compelling tension – soothing on the one hand, fidgety and restless on the other – that somehow knits together seamlessly, making for an enriching and engaging listen. Released 10 July 2024.

https://quietdetails.bandcamp.com/album/the-unfading-spark

RUPERT LALLY – PROFILER (Spun Out Of Control)

There is not a lot that Rupert Lally can’t turn his hand successfully to. While he might be best known as a prolific (and stylistically dexterous) composer of electronic music, Lally is also an accomplished author and, via his blog, an avid documenter of underrated films and their soundtracks. Profiler, like 2022’s Hacker, brings together these interests into a neat and tidy package. Not just a hypothetical soundtrack, Profiler comes with a detailed plotline and is presented as a lost 1980s crime flick, with Lally’s music leaning authoritatively into the synth sounds of that decade. That means rich, infectious melodies, big beats and a sense of bold, shiny vibrancy.

In spite of Lally’s intuition for period authenticity, there’s plenty of room here for his distinctive noir-ish sensibilities. ‘The Unsub’ is a brooding, unsettling and mysterious short cue, its key focal point being a series of uncoiling tendrils of synth sequences that lead to a cloying, claustrophobic atmosphere full of tension and danger. ‘Possible Suspect’ is the track that feels most like it was unearthed from a bankrupt studio’s archives, with a dense drum machine beat filled with a kitchen sink’s worth of percussion presets and fills and a sharp, sinewy synth melody resting atop a sequence that feels like it was created from a short vocal sound imported into a sampling keyboard. Avid readers of Further. will know how much of a fan of Lally’s music I am, and this imaginative collection is undoubtedly up there with his best. Released 19 August 2024.

https://spunoutofcontrol.bandcamp.com/album/profiler

Words: Mat Smith

BUNKR – The Initiation Well Remixed

On December 5, 2019December 5, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

The counterpart to BUNKR’s debut album The Initiation Well from earlier this year, this collection sees a diverse collection of electronic artists tackling Brighton-based James Dean’s exquisitely-executed pieces. The Initiation Well was a brilliant, if relatively understated gem of an album; an album that didn’t come with glossy promotion or a massive PR budget and yet which exuded a confidence, panache and depth very often absent from a lot of solo electronic efforts that cross this writer’s (virtual) desk. The happy news is that each of the mixes here simply shine a light on how good the original material was in the first place, even if they take Dean’s vision off down interesting, and sometimes unexpected pathways.

Fujiya & Miyagi return the favour offered through BUNKR’s mix of their ‘Personal Space’ with a fresh take on ‘Solitary Drift’, here recast as a mournful vocal pop track thanks to the addition of uncharacteristically muted vocals from F&M’s David Best. The result is a towering synth pop epic moving along on a waltz rhythm and dystopian path. ‘The Initiation Well’ is given a reverential acid techno retread by Jonathan Krisp that immediately transports you back to a mid-90s Richie Hawtin night, beautifully augmented by ambient washes and blurry vocal snippets.

Elsewhere, Echaskech’s mix of ‘Left For Dust’ flips the original into deep minimal techno shapes, its fluttering, filtered melody and unswerving rhythm given a firmness and urgency as the mix progresses, while Luxtron’s remix of ‘East Of Eden’ sounds like an updated version of Aphex Twin’s ‘Xtal’ from Selected Ambient Works 85-92, all woozy texture and shimmering, obfuscated melodies over a restrained progressive house beat.

Perhaps the most surprising moment in this set comes with Infinite Scale’s mix of ‘Docking Procedure’, which pushes the track squarely into deep dub territory, replete with springy percussion, haunting echo and stuttering rhythms offset by squelchy and vibrant 303 flourishes.

The Initiation Well Remixed by BUNKR was released November 29 2019 by VLSI Records.

Words: Mat Smith

BUNKR – The Initiation Well

On September 10, 2019September 10, 2019 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

It’s no coincidence that the first track on the debut album by Brighton’s BUNKR is titled ‘East Of Eden’, for its creator is named James Dean. Drifting forward on a serene topography of heat-haze, gauzy pads and gently-accelerating synth sprinkles, ‘East Of Eden’ is a delicate, purposeful move that ushers in a brilliantly diverse collection of nine finely-crafted electronic opuses.

From the processed vocal melodies of the spacey ‘Docking Procedure’ onwards, this is a record that neatly fuses together Dean’s interest in vintage kit with the gridded framework of techno. 4/4 beats are omnipresent throughout the album, but the resourceful Dean finds ample space within those rhythmic strictures to play with convention. The standout ‘Solar Wings’ is case in point, offering a beatific melodic poignancy over shuddering percussion that nods to the epochal ‘Spastik’ before emotive bass patterns carry the piece off into evocative, widescreen territory. Dean does something similar with the haunting closing track, ‘Rheasilvian Lakes’, delivering an atmospheric, many-layered piece that concludes with the eerie sound of distant rainfall.

Perhaps the biggest surprise here is the beatless ‘Solar Drift’, whose shimmering, tentative astral melodic counterpoints evoke sepia-tinged recollections of early electronic classical LPs, while the gently-evolving, evocative title track is nothing short of a mesmeric, understated wonder to behold.

The Initiation Well by BUNKR was released September 6 2019 by VLSI Records.

Words: Mat Smith