Tag: Other

Various Artists – Celebrating The Bat Chapters 1 & 2

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The Dustopian Frequencies imprint has developed an enviable knack for curating themed compilations. I most recently wrote about Insects, which was focused, as its name deftly implies, on artists contributing sound works inspired by the imagined stories of specific insects. Split over two volumes, Celebrating The Bat does something similar, only this time the label’s curatorial gaze is trained on bats.

It is a vast and, if I’m honest, initially daunting project. There are 44 artists here, making this a mammoth set of volumes to work through, filled with familiar names and many that have totally passed me by. It is certainly worth the effort to listen to this all, however. The first volume (Darkness Falls) was intended to evoke the idea of the sun slowly setting, ushering bats out from their daytime hiding places into the darkening skies, while the second compilation (Into The Night) seeks to document bats as they dominate the night sky, hard at work hunting, right through to daybreak.

On the first volume, highlights include tracks by HDRF, MikeKSmith, Giants Of Discovery, Justice, Exit Chamber, Rawtrachs, Lukas Fraktal, PG Warren, Moston Priory and Ali O’May. There is a sense of accumulating darkness in these pieces. Across the first volume you hear lots of drones, grim tones and skittish, randomised sounds that evoke both the sonar communication methods of the bats, and also the dizzying way in which they skim, flip and perform head scratching acrobatic manoeuvres rapidly through the skies. Two tracks which occupy a determinedly different space come from Foster Neville, whose ‘Phoebus Denied’ offers a brief and mournful theremin elegy fringed by buzzing, metallic sounds, and Pocket Dimension, whose ‘Lady Jacaume Of Bayonne’ presents a sparse post-punk electronic cut that would have found a welcome place in the early Mute or Rough Trade catalogues.

Where the first volume feels somewhat brooding and sinister, the second feels, in some ways, more obviously celebratory. Where some tracks approach the bat’s mystique and mystery, there is a sense of joy in a track like 30 Door Key’s ‘Bat(Amax)’ which springs and hops along on wonky rhythms and melodies, while the spoken word contributions on Autumna’s ‘Interceptor’ makes the point that most experienced aerobatic pilots would love to pull off the moves that bats are able to perform so effortlessly. These tracks join other superb pieces by Warmfield, Hexham Wolf, svefn, The Music Liberation Front Sweden, M. Francisco, Trevlad, Scholars Of The Peak and Bernard Grancher.

Postscript

I have two bats which used to visit our garden but who I didn’t see at all in 2025. They reappeared a few weeks ago when we enjoyed a brief run of evenings that were blessed by entirely clear skies.

On one weekend day during that period, the temperatures had been so unseasonably warm that we’d been able to hang some washing on the line. In the evening, I went outside to get the clothes in just as the pair of bats started their elliptical dances right above my head. It was thrilling to watch and to feel a brief but perceptible rush of air from frantically-beating wings, sometimes right by my ear.

I went into the lounge and gushed about what had happened to my youngest daughter, who looked uncomfortable and slightly circumspect – fearful, almost. In some ways, the two sets of very different reactions – my amazement and my daughter’s discomfort – sum up the two sides of this collection; the dark and the light. It makes me think that bats have been given a pretty bad reputation, mostly thanks to Dracula, The Lost Boys and countless other films derived from Bram Stoker’s root idea.

What Dustopian Frequencies have achieved here, in a highly maximalist way, is to rescue the industrious bat from mischaracterisation. Celebrating The Bat offers, across 44 absorbing, evocative and smartly-executed tracks, a reverential celebration of these wonderful and frequently misunderstood creatures.

Celebrating The Bat Chapter 1: Darkness Falls was released April 2 2026. Celebrating The Bat Chapter 2: Into The Night was released April 17 2026. Both releases were issued by Dustopian Frequencies.

Shameless Plug: The Music Liberation Front Sweden released ‘Even Though It Was The Blink Of An Eye, I’m Sorry For What We Have Become’ as part of The Impermanence Project, part of my Mortality Tables collaborative endeavour. It can be found here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Shots: Xuma / Asher Levitas & Margaret Fielder McGinnis / Brass Clouds, Fog Net & Volcanic Pinnacles / Hiro Ama / Pas Musique

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XUMA – FREE BETTY

‘Free Betty’ is a protest song by Xuma, the Brighton duo duo of Harriett and Chris Robbins Kennish, whose debut album Jasmine I wrote about two years ago. The focus of their ire here is on the jailing of one Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, imprisoned in squalid conditions in Morocco for wearing a slogan t-shirt – in London, where the last time I checked we still enjoyed freedom of speech and expression – that supported two women sentenced to death in Iran for being lesbians. ‘Free Betty’ contains four mixes of the track, fronted by Harriett Robbins Kennish’s angular, punky vocals, the mixes all pack their own political punch, ranging from crisp electro to fast-paced minimal techno. You can read more about the Free Betty campaign here. Released January 18 2026.

https://xuma.bandcamp.com/album/free-betty

Shameless Plug #1: Chris Robbins Kennish released ‘Wedding Piano’ under the name Ultrachill as part of Season 3 of my Mortality Tables LIFEFILES project. It can be found here.

ASHER LEVITAS & MARGARET FIELDER MCGINNIS – THROUGH THESE RED WINDOWS

This collaboration between sound artists Asher Levitas and Margaret Fielder McGinnis uses two discrete inputs as the jumping-off points for the four tracks presented here. The first is a series of sculptures by McGinnis which are named after Wallace Sabine (1868 – 1919), a physicist whose pioneering work on acoustics was integrated into the architectural design of the Boston Symphony Hall. The second input is a recurring childhood dream that Levitas experienced, which, when approached as sound sculptures, become textures that range from dreamy and resolved to tangled and impenetrable. These were then played through McGinnis’s sculptures, fringing them with a metallic crackle like a rattling air conditioning unit which gives even the most elegiac tone a sense of deep and complex uncertainty. A remarkable release from these two seasoned artists. Released February 13 2026.

https://asherlevitas.bandcamp.com/album/through-these-red-windows-2

Shameless Plug #2: Asher Levitas released ‘It’s Like Last Time But This Time You’ve Got A Gun’ as part of another Mortality Tables initiative, The Impermanence Project. It can be found here.

BRASS CLOUDS, FOG NET & VOLCANIC PINNACLES – DIVE 2: SONOLUMINESCENCE

It’s hard not to describe the second release from the Bathysphere imprint’s Dive series as immersive. Recorded in a single day by the mysterious Brass Clouds, Fog Net and Volcanic Pinnacles, Dive 2 is part-jazz, part-ambient, part-soundscape and all, well, immersive. We hear unobtrusive, atmospheric field recordings, singing bowl tones, evocative saxophone melodies, and big blocks of floating texture, often all at once. It is a highly emotional suite, sidestepping specific classification. The inquisitive piano melodies, fluid synth-brass notes and fluttering electronics of ‘Spectral Visions’ combine together to make one of the album’s emotive highlights, its discernible instrumentation briefly collapsing into a dense web of enveloping drones. ‘Phosphor Signals’ trawls through rich, bass-heavy low-end thanks to a combination of sonorous sax and heavy synths, though which poke a joyful melodic pairing of chiming percussion and piano. Immersive, like I already said (twice). Released February 26 2026 by Bathysphere.

https://bathysphererecords.bandcamp.com/album/dive-2-sonoluminescence

HIRO AMA – BOOSTER PACK

In 2024, I reviewed Japan-born, London-based Hiro Ama’s Music For Peace And Harmony for Electronic Sound. This seems to happen to me increasingly rarely these days, but it is an album that I returned to countless times after the review was written. Its gentle, mellifluous atmospherics left a real impression on me, and I found myself playing it during moments where things were getting on top of me or I felt anxious. Honesty, it’s a beautiful collection. Please do check it out. The Hiro Ama of Booster Pack is very different. This is music designed to move your feet, not soothe your troubled soul. In fact, the only trace of the Ama from Music For Peace And Harmony I can find is on ‘Cloud 9’, where a wonky melody briefly offers a glimpse of the lightness of spirit that coloured his 2024 album. The EP proves Ama to be a highly dexterous and unpredictable producer. The intense ‘Lava’ belongs in a Moby rave DJ set from 1992, with a savage, almost EBM bass line. Opener ‘Booster’ is the highlight, occupying a euphoric (but often skewed) deep house zone that, like the spiritual side he showed on Music For Peace And Harmony, Ama makes entirely his own. Released April 10 2026 by PRAH.

https://hiroama.bandcamp.com/album/booster-pack-ep

PAS MUSIQUE – 8 PHRASES

Hot on the heels of the solo Pas Musique performance by founding member Robert Pepper at the Pictor Gallery in New York last week, there’s a new album out this week. 8 Phrases is the soundtrack to a film comprising eight short segments, and finds the trio of Pepper, Michael Durek and Jon Worthley returning to the instant composition / filming approach they used between 2008 and 2011. The full film can be found here. ‘Whisper’ occupies the dead centre of this collection, finding them intoning a nursery rhyme I’d forgotten all about over a sound bed of swirling, slightly discordant electronics doused in phasing, fluctuating reverb. The words are delivered in a low, conspiratorial whisper which imbues them with a grim sense of discomfort and unease, not dissimilar to how The Residents often usher the familiar toward the nightmarish. Elsewhere, ‘Inside A Clock’ fuses a pulsating, restless low-end with murky, shrouded voices from which emerges a dense sequence of unpredictable sounds. ‘Garden Echo’ might have the most beatific title of all of these pieces but it is also one of the collection’s darkest moments, as a polite cloud of pretty textures gets hitched to a dirty, faltering rhythm, accompanied by urgent sirens, and grubby blocks of distorted noise. Released April 24 2026.

https://pasmusique.bandcamp.com/album/8-phrases

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

The Doomed Bird Of Providence – Metoric Heralds Of Danger

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I have an awkward relationship with graphic scores. On the one hand, I can’t read music, so the idea of an alternative way of providing instruction to musicians that doesn’t use traditional notation really appeals to me. On the other hand, I find them utterly baffling. I can’t ever figure out what they’re trying to convey, whereas sheet music has at least a sense of order (unless you’ve ever tried to decipher one of Charles Ives’s scores). All of this is irrelevant because I can neither read music nor play an instrument anyway, though I find it pretty easy to follow the score for John Cage’s 4’33”…

I mention all of this because the fifth album from the London-based The Doomed Bird Of Providence makes use of an especially bewildering graphic score. “The scores are circular in shape,” writes Mark Kluzek (accordion, bass, glockenspiel, percussion). “They are split into rings which are the stages of the composition. The performer moves from the centre, outwards, through each ring and responds to the symbols assigned to them. The symbols are prompts suggesting a certain way of playing…”

I’ve followed this collective for a number of years. I’ve always found their semi-improvised music leans into a sort of sea-shanty style mournfulness, and in fact the first album of theirs I ever wrote about was inspired by stories from the sea. The jumping off point for Meteoric Heralds Of Danger was an 1874 prison novel by Australian novelist Marcus Clarke, For The Term Of His Natural Life. All the titles contain a nautical reference reflecting the fact that Clarke’s book details the horrendous treatment of a man transported by boat to Australia, his punishment for having been accused of committing a crime.

There is a curious sense of finality and hopelessness to these pieces, reflecting the fate of a prisoner doomed to spend the rest of his days in a penal colony. There are, however, moments of somewhat muted joy. The recurring violin and viola refrains by Joolie Wood and Rachel Laurence on ‘Darkly Rolling Waves Flashed Fire’ and the otherwise apocalyptic title track are two such relatively hopeful moments. Kluzek’s stirring Parisian bridge musician accordion on ‘A Long Low Line On The Distant Horizon’ is another.

There are four long-ish improvisations using the visual scores here, augmented by four shorter composed pieces. Without watching the musicians interpret the score in the studio, you’d be hard-pressed to know which was which apart from the lengths. Taken as a whole, Meteoric Heralds Of Danger is a remarkable collection, and exactly what I’d expect from them.

Meteoric Heralds Of Danger by The Doomed Bird Of Providence was released March 20 2026. With thanks to Mark.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Mariusz Szypura – Chopin Residue

On By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews, Installations, Live reviewsLeave a comment

Chopin Residue is a series of multi-media works by Polish artist and former indie rock musician Mariusz Szypura.

One part is a collection of ‘deconstructions’ of Chopin’s music, featuring the likes of Adrian Utley, Lee Ranaldo, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, John McEntire and many others. These pieces range from the ethereal, fleeting tones of ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 20’ (with Charlie Draper on ondes Martenot and Theremin) to the ferocious guitar-heavy ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 22’ with Ranaldo and saxophonist Zoh Amba, wherein strings emerge only to be battered down into submission. ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 4’, with Utley, drummer Joey Waronker and thereminist Carolyn Eyck sounds like it belongs on Utley’s first Portishead album, with its chunky jazz rhythms and shimmering, maudlin guitar and electronic textures.

On the deconstruction of ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 2’, Szypura presents Chopin’s mellifluous arpeggios as a snarling web of grubby synth sequences, offset by rigid drumming by John Stanier, feisty guitars from Sugar Yoshinaga and Draper’s electronics. ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 15’ features jangly guitar from Ranaldo, measured kitwork from Stanier, and an array of tuned percussion from Milosz Pękala, the sum of whose parts is a long, hazy, psychedelic piece framed by the tracest outlines of classical melodicism.

Another part of this collection is a series of ‘reworks’ by Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke, Matthew Herbert, Christine Ott and others, which you are encouraged to play simultaneously with the deconstructions, if you happen to own two turntables.

Herbert’s version of ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 22’ hitches sprinkles of Chopin’s piano to a dubby rhythm track, while Adrian Utley reimagines ‘Étude Op. 25 No. 12’ as a bouncy electronic wonderland complete with delicate, flute-like melodic gestures. Fennesz introduces skipping electronics and oscillating guitar to his version of ‘Berceuse Op. 57’, in the process turning the piece into a vibrant, unpredictable, becalming soundscape. Sean O’Hagan takes ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 4’ and renders it as skipping, fragmented leftfield electro, while Jim O’Rourke subjects ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 2’ to heavy reverb and phasing, the result of which sounds like an orchestra tuning up.

Christine Ott floods ‘Nocturne Op. 72 No. 1’ with layers of beatific ondes Martenot, an extension of her own prowess and practice as a solo artist and in the Snowdrops ensemble. Benoît Pioulard’s version of ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 9’ is constructed entirely from layers of sensitively-arranged drones and swirling cycles of guitar feedback, while Abul Mogard approaches ‘Prelude Op. 28 No. 15’ as an opportunity to offer up a web of edgy, modular synth drones and white noise textures, through which occasionally poke amorphous elements from the piece on the deconstructions disc.

The process of lathe-cutting the vinyl albums of deconstructions and reworks yielded a third part of the collection, in the form of large circular artworks constructed using the plastic residues from the lathe process. Pure white and of varying textures – from fluffy and whispy to brittle, razor sharp and angular – these pieces were installed in the Fridman Gallery on New York’s Bowery between November 2 and November 9 2025. On one level, these pieces may be a comment on wastefulness; in another sense, they are no different from either the deconstructed Chopin pieces or their reworks, for they are entirely new structures arising from something else.

The final element of the collection was a live event in the Fridman Gallery surrounded by the artworks. For this thirty-minute performance to effectively kick off the brief exhibition, Szypura was joined by Ranaldo, Amba and Stanier. The small stage was so cramped that Ranaldo had to climb over an amp to get into position, while Amba played on the floor in the front row of the audience. Animated videos of the artworks – another discrete element of the overall Chopin Residue project – bathed the shadowy forms of the players in soft light, as if to draw your attention away from their playing.

That was often hard to do with Ranaldo, who was here at his most intense and restless. He strikes his guitar with a drum-stick, bows the strings to produce squeals of feedback and taps the neck of the guitar against the gallery wall. Rarely did he ever settle into playing his guitar straight – that was Szypura’s job. At one point, his pressing of the guitar neck against the wall prompted one of Szypura’s circular artworks to vibrate in sympathy. It’s as if he is both unplaying the guitar and playing the artworks – and the building – simultaneously.

His guitar is loud, wild and freighted with heavy distortion. These are the moments where Stanier’s drumming becomes less rigid, more loose, and Amba’s saxophone takes on the wild intensity of an avenue full of angry New York cab drivers during rush-hour. To Ranaldo’s right, Szypura alternated between steady, rhythmic guitar playing and inchoate electronics.

A second movement begins with a quiet pulse and drones formed from the residues of the distortion from the first movement. As the piece progresses, it gathers intensity. Stanier’s drumming becomes increasingly firm, rejecting the tentative drum machine beat that opened the piece and guiding it toward a noisy, apocalyptic crescendo filled with layers of intense overlapping guitar work and terrifying sax dissonance.

“After one has played a vast quantity of notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art,” Chopin is quoted as saying. Szypura’s multi-faceted project is far from simple. It stands as an ambitious, engaging and complex enterprise, and one that illustrates how one source idea can result in many creative tributaries.

Chopin Residue is released November 28 by Black Element.

With thanks to Nico.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

Shots: Cromwell Ate A Twix Here & Yol / Schmitz & Niebuhr / Audio Obscura / Autoreverse

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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.

Shots: Stichflamme Barnick / Nick Storring / Love Stereo / Alex Zethson & Johan Jutterström / Sean Armstrong / Xqui

On By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews, EP reviews, Single reviews1 Comment

STICHFLAMME BARNICK – STICHFLAMME BARNICK (Superpolar Taïps)

Bring on the distortion: the pairing of Stichflamme Dormagen and Robin Barnick was recorded between 2022 and 2024 and finds the pair producing intensive blocks of sound that are subjected to punishing processing. ‘Dolce al Cucchiao’ is among the heaviest tracks here, sounding not unlike an outtake from Pat Metheny’s Zero Tolerance For Silence. Elsewhere, the comparative levity of the pan pipe melody that dominates ‘Montabaur 8’ is subsumed by a ceaseless bass oscillator sweep that, halfway through, threatens to swallow up the poor piper and his innocent, gleeful playing. Released November 15 2024.

https://superpolar.bandcamp.com/album/stichflamme-barnick

NICK STORRING – MIRANTE (We Are Busy Bodies)

For his ninth album, multi-instrumentalist Nick Storring looked to Brazil for inspiration. That impulse gives the seven tracks here a greater rhythmic quotient than his previous works, with layers of vibrant percussion offsetting the orchestral-leaning textures that have become the hallmark of his musical work. At times, these pieces are quiet and contemplative; at others they are noisy, impactful and direct. ‘Roxa’, a three-part suite-within-a-suite, is a case in point. ‘Roxa I’ starts with ephemeral textures and interjections of percussion before opening out to include a stalking blues guitar riff and clusters of tones arranged into a delicate, tentative melody. “Roxa II’ unfolds as a sonic journey, building slowly toward a crescendo of angular, discordant clashes between layers of tuned percussion. The symphonic ‘Roxa III’, which closes the album, begins with rich swells of languid strings before evolving into a series of fast-paced, joyous rhythms for percussion and assembled clapping hands. Released March 21 2025.

https://nickstorring.bandcamp.com/album/mirante

LOVE STEREO – TU MUNDO

I saw Love Stereo perform at the Whisky A Go-Go in LA last year. Their set followed the release of their first single, ‘Fool’, which I wrote about here. A trio of Jonathan Burkes (vocals, bass, synths), Diane Hernandez (drums) and Steve Abagon (guitars / synths), Love Stereo make music that fuses sensitive electronics with a sharp and incisive rock sound. ‘Tu Mundo’, their second single, opens with a heavy, techno-inflected bass line and kick drum pattern before evolving into a softer, more introspective number as Burkes’ fragile vocal drifts into view. As the track progresses, crashing waves of guitar collide with increasingly emphatic vocals, haunting synth tones and pounded drums, a far cry from the minimalist pulse that opened the song. Released 1 April 2025.

https://lovestereo.bandcamp.com/track/tu-mundo

 

ALEX ZETHSON / JOHAN JUTTERSTRÖM – IT COULD / IF I (Astral Spirits / Thanatosis Produktion)

It Could / If I pairs Alex Zethson (piano) and Johan Jutterström (saxophone). Comprising new arrangements of standards, their own pieces and interpretations of pieces by Pet Shop Boys and Leonard Cohen, the album provides a beatific insight into two players who have a symbiotic relationship going back to their teenage years. On their version of ‘If I Had You’ – recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Art Blakey – Jutterström offers a delicate, light accompaniment to Zethson’s minimal keyboard playing, while the version of Cohen’s ‘If I Didn’t Have You’, from You Want It Darker – his final album released during his lifetime – finds both of the players fluidly alternating their way through the song’s core melody, providing a poignant, heart-wrenchingly emotional close to an absorbing jazz suite. Released April 11 2025.

https://alexzethson.bandcamp.com/album/it-could-if-i

 

SEAN ARMSTRONG – VELVET EVER AFTER (Rehberge Records)

Dear Sean,

Many thanks for sending me your album, Velvet Ever After, on March 27 2025. It’s always nice to receive new music, and I’m always very grateful for this.

I also know how inordinately stressful it can be sending out something you’ve created into the aether and hoping for someone to give it a listen. I’ve been there. It takes a lot of self-confidence and resilience. I also know how it feels when someone you’ve sent it to doesn’t respond. I’ve also been there.

And so, with that in mind, I wanted to apologise. I saw your email come in, and I didn’t reply. That sucks. It’s common courtesy to at least acknowledge receipt of an email, from a DIY label like yours. Had I replied at the time, I would have said how much I liked the fact that Rehberge is named after your favourite park in Berlin (who does that?), and how much I loved the fact that it’s something you run with your partner, Rocky Lorelei. But I didn’t reply, and so I didn’t say any of that to you. I could come up with a plethora of excuses and reasons – too many emails, too many problems, too little time etc – but it still sucks that I never replied.

I didn’t just want to apologise for that. I also wanted to say how much I loved the album. I listened to Velvet Ever After after it had already been released, on what had been a really, really stressful day with my day job. It soothed me in a way that I really needed after the day I’d had. Your guitar playing has such a delicate, graceful quality, and I also love the songs like ‘The Whirlpool’ where Rocky adds pretty synth melodies alongside you. Your voice is also superb, and I found myself actually breathing – like actually breathing, with proper, deep breaths – while listening to songs like ‘My God’ and ‘The Library’, for the first time since I got to the office just after 0700.

I’m getting dreamy, sun-drenched West Coast tasting notes and a nice reminder of Real Estate, a band I realised I haven’t played for years, but now really want to listen to again. The instrumental pieces are also absolutely beautiful. ‘Valley Of Racing Shadows’ is stunning, as is ‘Concertina Sundae’.

So, like I said at the top: I’m so sorry for ignoring your email. However, I’m overjoyed that you sent it my way. Please add me to your mailing list with the email I’ve sent you separately, and I look forward to staying in touch.

All the best,

Mat

Released April 25 2025.

https://rehbergerecords.bandcamp.com/album/velvet-ever-after

 

XQUI – ALBION

I have discovered that I gravitate to anonymous characters. Perhaps it’s because I have such a ubiquitous, boring, pedestrian name that it feels like I am in good company with people who keep their identities hidden (while I hide in plain sight). This explains why I get on pretty well with Homer Flynn, the spokesperson for the ultimate anonymous act, The Residents. I’ve spoken with Xqui. We had a Zoom call. Like The Residents, he wore a mask, and it was fucking terrifying.

‘Terrifying’ isn’t a word you could levy at Xqui’s latest missive, the three-track Albion EP. The release continues a series of muses that began back in 2018 with the Britannia EP, and which continued the following year with the Revisited EP. Xqui began, er, revisiting his series of pieces all entitled ‘Britannia’ on 2023’s Nights That Went On Too Long, a release that I contributed spoken word to. His ‘Britannia’ variations lean into a fuzzy, hazy, ephemeral manipulation of what might well be a classic display of pomp and circumstance, snatched from a rowdy Proms performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Your ear latches on to familiar sounds – a swooning orchestral passage, a choir, a distinctive melody – before reverb and heavy processing obliterates that which you believe you recognise.

Is this a social comment on Britishness and our declining global relevance, or just another glorious example of Xqui’s idiosyncratic approach to sound art? Well, it’s actually derived from recordings made at a Lancashire ‘Coconutters’ event, a tradition that dates back some 150 years, and one which originated from the diaspora created through Cornish miners taking their skills – and their traditions – to far-flung places. You can read about that here.

The bit about Xqui’s unique sound art approach remains completely true, however.

Released April 26 2025.

https://xqui.bandcamp.com/album/albion-ep

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

 

Billy Malm – SPÄTZLE

On By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

On occasion, I write press releases for artists. I think of it as a side hustle to a side hustle, given that writing for this blog and Electronic Sound isn’t my main job. I find it a wonderful, liberating experience. A review needs to be relatively objective whereas a press release, given its stated purpose of trying to attract attention to a particular product, is much more free.

As a upstanding, responsible, and, I hope, relatively good music journalist, one of the key disciplines you learn is that you don’t simply rewrite the press release when you’re composing a review. It’s not the first rule of review writing, but it’s fairly close to the top. However, I do notice that quite often the press releases I’ve written get copied completely and passed off as a review, or get subtly edited to show some modicum of originality. And I’m not fully sure how I feel about this, if I’m honest. I don’t know if I’m offended by the laziness, or flattered by the wholesale appropriation of my words.

So, with all of that said, I’m now going to appear completely hypocritical by lifting the entire press release text for Billy Malm’s SPÄTLZLE and pasting it in below.

Self-taught Euro-dance instrumentalist Billy Malm is back with a new collection of studio cuts showcasing the artist’s flair for combining sounds in the same way you might, for example, mix together different kinds of Fanta, maybe Fanta Limón and Fanta Orange, or if you have access to some of the more niche Fantas, like Strawberry or Haunted Apple, you can use those as well, and share that with a friend, giving them some of the mixed together Fantas to drink out of their own glass, so they can experience something that you made for them, even though it’s all just really Fanta and the components of the mixture were produced by the company that makes Fanta, probably in a factory or possibly a workshop if they do it in smaller batches for new flavour prototyping, but the mixture kind of becomes more than Fanta and you can tell by looking at it because it’s not a normal Fanta color, like there’s normally no brown Fanta or dark yellow Fanta, so the friend who you share it with gets this multisensory moment of realizing something unique for the first time and they can swirl it around in the glass and smell it as if they’re at a fancy wine tasting event, and they could be doing this as a funny joke or even in earnest because they are genuinely immersed in this personal act of creation you have prepared for them and to be honest, everyone knows that smell plays a significant role in how things taste, so there’s actually nothing ridiculous about them smelling their drink in this situation, and they might even take things a bit further, holding their ear close to the glass to observe how this combination of Fantas sparkles, perhaps noticing some surprising properties relating to the carbonation, for example that while the bubbles occur more frequently than in normal Fanta, they might sound less explosive when they burst, more like the tiny air pockets in the Fanta are just opening gently like cactus flowers when they reach the surface because this mixture somehow contains less internal violence than other Fantas or mixtures of Fanta that they’ve tried and this evidence of a seemingly miraculous harmony within the beverage might place in them a kernel of optimism that, given the right conditions, could develop into something that at this point in time, they don’t even have the ability to comprehend, and they might go so far as to pour a small amount of the drink you made for them onto the palm of their hand, to feel this thing, to really explore what it is by using the middle finger, ring finger and little finger to rub the liquid into the soft center of their hand, working it like a wholemeal dough, so that the sugars and the previously invisible dirt or dead skin on the skin starts to form tiny sticky tubular strands, kneading the mass, the actually quite disgusting dark micro baguettes of filth, which your friend frowns at, pulling back, suddenly realizing that maybe they’ve taken things too far and that the norms within society aren’t all just completely arbitrary, though some of them absolutely are, but in this case the disapproval earned from pouring sweet beverages on oneself does seem reasonable given this viscid, unheimlich outcome, and the friend looks to you for reassurance that there is a way back for them, a line they can grab before being swept out by the now relentless tides of chaos, swirling all around, threatening to pull apart any notion of stability they once held and you reach out and take the glass of mixed Fantas away from them and they meekly let you have it, this seemingly cursed chalice, this gift infused with so much hope that they irresponsibly abused potentially precipitating any number of currently unknowable consequences and you look them in the eye as they sheepishly return your gaze and raising the glass high between you and your friend, you release a what could be a moment of smile from one corner of your lips, above which a faint twitch ripples across the eyebrow (a waggle? your perceptive friend cautiously wonders) and you slowly draw the glass of mixed together Fantas back in a gentle arc and pour the contents of the vessel, approximately 250ml of Fanta-based liquid, over your head, the soda instantly absorbed into your hair and running down the facial features and neck as you roll the empty glass onto the middle of the laminate-topped table and start vigorously massaging the Fantas into your scalp like some high-fructose 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner, laughing, cackling, on the precipice of what people refer to as hysteria, but without any trace of malice, and your friend, after a few abbreviated false starts, now fully joins in your extreme merriment, howling, shrieking, whooping, convulsing, yelping, hiccupping, coughing, resonant swells ringing off nearby surfaces when the frequencies of the two vocalizations of pure joy align, these roaring tsunamis of euphoric sound sweeping over and blocking out the rest of the world, the humming and hissing of hidden HVAC systems, babies crying, the traffic noises, concerned exclamations from passersby, some kind of alarm, religious bellringing, all squashed into insignificance by the laughter, all but perhaps the rising telltale buzz of the inevitable gathering wasps.

 

Maybe you can see why I did that. I’m not sure that one sentence even is a press release. It certainly intended to be one by the way it started, but that’s most definitely not how it ends up. I would posit that this is less a bit of sales-y text designed to sell a product and a work of surrealist art.

A traditional press release it may not be, but it is more than adequate preparation for what SPÄTLZE sounds like. This is a collection of fizzy, effervescent tracks that flip ceaselessly between wonky electro and leftfield techno. These pieces are dominated by heavy bass, sprays of seemingly random pulses, unpredictable synths and beats that seem hellbent on freeing themselves from a DAW grid-prison.

That’s not to suggest that tracks like the title track or ‘Fragola’ are wayward, messy sprawls. Far from it. There’s discipline here, in abundance, but Malm actively skews any sense of linearity. With ‘Spätzle’, when a steady, glass-like staccato sequence emerges, that’s his cue to mess everything else up, rather than allowing the track to coalesce around that pretty focal point. I appreciate that this analogy might get lost on non-British readers, but what Malm does here reminds me a lot of the late and lamented comedian Les Dawson. Dawson was a talented, almost virtuoso-standard pianist, but he would do these skits where he completely ballsed-up the music he was playing. It was a talent that he could only do convincingly, and with hilarious results, because he was so talented a player in the first place. So there you have it: Billy Malm is experimental electronic music’s Les Dawson. Go figure.

SPÄTZLE concludes with ‘How Are You Doing?’ (I’m fine, thanks). It begins with a web of siren-like sounds that nod in the direction of Fad Gadget’s ‘Back To Nature’, before ushering in a solid 4/4 rhythm that’s probably one of the tightest and unaltered set of beats on the whole album. Stuttering, chugging synths that sound like electronic wah-wah funk guitar, a sprightly bass pattern, friendly drones and harshly-filtered tones are then thrown in over the beats, creating an alternately playful and resolute finale to this brilliantly inventive, wonderfully madcap and boldly other banger of an album.

SPÄTZLE by Billy Malm was released January 30 2025 by Strategic Tape Reserve

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

Allmanna Town – 1911

On By 429harrowroadIn EP reviewsLeave a comment

Allmanna Town are a duo of Phil Dodds (Waxing Crescent) and Jonas Geiger Ohlin (The New Emphatic). There is, however, a third member of this duo – the Library of Congress C-1 cassette deck, used to manipulate sounds which are then edited and reconstructed using a variety of electronic tools.

Dodds and Ohlin’s first release together was ‘LF24 / C.FXNOISE’, part of the LIFEFILES series through my own Mortality Tables project. The proposition with ‘LF24 / C.FXNOISE’ was to use old cassettes I’d accumulated in the 1990s, which were then completely skewed through their intensive approach to re-augmentation.

‘1911’ consists of six short cuts (or ‘samples’ as they call them). There’s a digital edition, or you can shell out on a lathe-cut 7-inch which will have probably sold out by the time you’ve read this. On these pieces, you can really hear, first and foremost, the joint love this pair have for 1990s electro and techno. ‘Sample 28’ is a slow-motion electro-ambient piece that uses a crisp, sparse beat, while ‘Sample 04’ rides a neat 4/4 rhythm.

The trick is to listen to what’s going on behind these beats. The manipulation of tape sources leads to fluttering, unplaceable textures of unknown provenance. On ‘Sample 04’ the effect is to subsidise the regimentation of the the beats with a dreamy, floating motion. On ‘Sample 32’ – the longest track here, at 2’15” – beneath what could be a late-80s digital house piano loop and some sort of classical motif, we hear a web of chatter that sounds like a vocal warm-up from Hatsune Miku.

The whole thing lasts less than ten minutes, but it carries with it an intensity of imagination lacking in far longer releases. Expect great things from this inventive duo.

https://allmannatown.bandcamp.com/

‘1911’ by Allmanna Town is released March 14 2025.

‘LF24 / C.FXNOISE’ was released through Mortality Tables on October 4 2024. Available here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

Shots – Kemper Norton / Veryan / Wil Bolton / Runar Blesvik / the klingt.collective

On By 429harrowroadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Kemper Norton - Tall Trees

KEMPER NORTON – TALL TREES (AND OTHER TALES) (Zona Watusa)

I absolutely love Kemper Norton. His music, very often inspired by Cornish folklore, mythological figures or its forgotten Industrial Age contribution, has a highly distinctive and wonderfully idiosyncratic originality. For Tall Trees (and other tales), he focuses his attention on his own personal history and mythology, celebrating a bunch of nightclubs that have closed their dance floors for good. “None of these places still exist, and some of the people have gone too,” he writes. “But not all of them.” This is club music as filtered the disjointed fog of memory, of too many nights out that you thought you’d remember forever but now can’t. That poignancy and nostalgia is all over Tall Trees, but it’s elusive, hidden beneath grids of dirty beats and lysergic energy. The eponymous opener is punishing and insistent, but it’s also ever-so-slightly wonky, as if the neatness of Kemper Norton’s grid itself is protesting against the uniformity of recollection. The two parts of ‘Victor Dragos’ carry a vital latency, with suggestions of rapid-fire hardcore beats subsumed under washes of amorphous, psychedelic texture and restless acid house pulses. A truly original work from one of electronic music’s most enigmatic of mavericks. Released 28 November 2024.

 https://kempernorton.bandcamp.com/album/tall-trees-and-other-tales

Veryan - Paper Hearts

VERYAN – PAPER HEARTS

Scotland-based electronic musician Veryan released her latest EP just before Christmas. Containing three tracks featuring prominent piano and breathy vocal textures, Paper Hearts has a sort of frozen quality to it, as if the pieces were created while looking across a frosty winterscape. The title track features an icicle-sharp countermelody and a sinewy arpeggio filled reminiscent of Higher Intelligence Agency’s Colourform album from thirty years ago (ah, the memories…). Veryan’s music has always carried a searching, inquisitive dimension, embodied here by the unfurling textures and refracted journey of ‘Gossamer’. The EP concludes with ‘Soft Lights Dance On Walls’, whose circular central piano motif leans into classical minimalism, while its shimmering electronic accompaniment is freighted with a powerfully contemplative energy. Released 23 December 2024.

https://veryan.bandcamp.com/album/paper-hearts-ep

Wil Bolton - South Of The Lake

WIL BOLTON – SOUTH OF THE LAKE (Quiet Details)

I’ve regularly written about Quiet Details releases here, and, on the strength of their first release of 2025, it seems like it will be another year of high quality, gently reflective albums. Wil Bolton’s contribution to the series was inspired by journeys around South Korea, featuring accumulated field recordings, instruments found and played on his journey, and electronic arrangements of extreme subtlety. In many ways, what Bolton has delivered with South Of The Lake is the very essence of what Quiet Details founder Alex Gold was seeking to achieve with this series. Pieces like the standout ‘Sun Tree Trail’ are deeply contemplative, evoking the Buddhist notion of being the still point in the turning world, wherein the listener is surrounded by bird calls, running water and a textural accompaniment of singing bowls and synths that rest lightly and comfortingly upon you. Last year, I spent some time at Lake Shrine in Los Angeles, not far from Pacific Palisades. It was a transcendent experience, and one of the most significant places I’ve ever had the privilege to visit. My only disappointment was the sound of cars whizzing down the mountain toward the Pacific Coast Highway, something that took some intense meditation to ignore completely. If I ever get to go back, South Of The Lake is what I would choose to listen to while there. Bolton’s album is a truly beautiful listening experience. Released 8 January 2025.

 https://quietdetails.bandcamp.com/album/south-of-the-lake

Runar Blesvik - All The Difference

RUNAR BLESVIK – ALL THE DIFFERENCE (Fluttery Records)

Runar Blesvik is a Norwegian pianist and composer whose work seeks to transcend the frontiers of modern classical music, a genre with some of the least defined of frontiers to begin with. Accompanied by strings from the Arcobaleno String Quartet, clarinettist Jussan Cluxnei and Blesvik’s own piano and electronic textures, All The Difference is a gently ruminative listening experience that subtly demonstrates the emotional power of his compositional sleight of hand. The album opens with the achingly minimalist ‘Finding’, wherein Blesvik’s piano is accompanied by sepia-tinted static, a powerfully restrained statement that might have been overburdened by layers of additional sounds or melodies in the hands of another composer. That’s not to say these pieces are all uniformly sparse – ‘One And The Other’ adds strings, rhythms and a beatific synth motif to create a soaring piece that rises quickly before falling back into comparative quietude. Across the remaining tracks, Blesvik pivots his classical vision toward jazzy levity, blissful Terry Riley circularity, gamelan chimes and ambient atmospherics, rendering All The Difference an impactful, exquisite listen, executed with extreme precision. Released 10 January 2025.

 https://runar-blesvik.bandcamp.com/album/all-the-difference

the klingt.collective - Variable Densities

THE KLINGT.COLLECTIVE – VARIABLE DENSITIES (Interstellar)

Viennese experimental unit the klingt.collective consists of Martin Brandlmayr (drums), Angélica Castelló (recorders and tapes), dieb13 (turntables), Klaus Filip (ppooll), Susanna Gartmayer (bass clarinet), Noid (cello), Billy Roisz (electronics and bass), Martin Siewert (guitars and electronics) and Oliver Stotz (guitars and electronics). Variable Densities was recorded at the densités festival in north-eastern France back in October 2023 and highlights just how seasoned these improvising musicians are. No mistaking, this is a large group, and the capacity for everyone to be playing over everyone else to assert dominance is high. Fortunately, that isn’t the case. There are moments of multitimbral, densely-layered intensity where necessary, but for the most part Variable Densities finds small sub-units working an idea to its conclusion before another sub-unit starts a new idea. This creates unexpected, unpredictable juxtapositions as different ideas coalesce, with electronics, tapes and turntables nestling up against strings, percussion, guitar and other traditional instruments. There’s a constant fluidity within these exchanges which means nothing hangs around for long or outstays its welcome. A diverse and compelling listening experience full of vitality, energy and impressive meshing together of disparate influences. Released 11 January 2025.

https://theklingtcollective.bandcamp.com/album/variable-densities

Words: Mat Smith

Shots: wræżlivøść / Snowdrops / Rupert Lally / Dogs Versus Shadows & Nicholas Langley / Stephen Reese / Everyday Dust

On By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

WRÆŻLIVØŚĆ – WRÆŻLIVØŚĆ

wræżlivøść is a Polish pianist and sound artist. His debut three-track release was recorded in Poland, Denmark and the US, and fuses classical piano with extreme sound processing. The result is an EP that is in constant flux, with moments of noise intersected by meditative piano – some of it recorded from his graduation concert at Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium in Aarhus in April of this year – and long, ambient drones pulled out of the myriad sound sources. It is at once chaotic and beautiful, its different textures and sequences being sliced together with rough and sudden cuts that make each track wonderfully unpredictable. The ten-minute ‘wræżlivøść II’ is a marvel, ranging from ear-splintering bursts of noise to dexterous notes, finally collapsing into quiet and soothing textures generated from rippling piano reverberations. Released 27 September 2024. Thanks to Phil Dodds for the recommendation.

https://wraezlivosc.bandcamp.com/album/wr-liv

SNOWDROPS – SINGING STONES (VOLUME. 1) (Gizeh)

Snowdrops are a duo of Christine Ott (ondes Martenot, xylophone, piano) and Mathieu Gabri (piano, keyboards, electric hurdy-gurdy, vibraphone) who make music that leans into the expansive realm of modern classical music. Their sound is, however, hard to pin down, offering a compelling symbiosis of electronics and classical reference points with an evenness that few operating in this genre are prepared to offer, instead favouring a light spraying of synths over relatively traditional playing. The centrepieces of this collection are ‘Crossing’ and ‘Arctic Passage’. Both are long and evolving pieces that the duo have performed for a few years. ‘Crossing’ begins and ends with delicate circular motifs, but at its height is a rousing, stentorian piece where electronic threads and resonant piano collide. ‘Arctic Passage’ is darker, containing drone-y electronic textures that sound like grim frozen winds across the tundra, and sprinkles of brittle melodies and ondes Martenot fluctuations. Elsewhere, the beguiling ‘Ligne de Mica’ is a deep listening exercise for ondes Martenot, analogue synth and Bartosz Szwarc’s accordion, its gentle interwoven undulations taking on a mysterious, unknowable quality where individual elements are barely distinguishable from the next. Another beautiful and engaging release from this remarkable duo. Released 25 October 2024.

https://snowdrops.bandcamp.com/album/singing-stones-volume-1

RUPERT LALLY – THE OWL SERVICE

The Owl Service is Rupert Lally’s seventh soundtrack to accompany a book. His first was for J.G. Ballard’s High Rise, and the intermittent series has taken in William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies and Frank Herbert’s Dune. This time he attaches his compositional nous to Alan Garner’s 1967 award-winning children’s book. At the risk of repeating myself, only with different words and different context (last time it was about film), Lally is an avid reader – and accomplished author – and he has a honed skill for creating music that plots narrative and its key events. Key to the 18 cues that comprise his score for The Owl Service are strings, arranged in such a way as to create a sort of maudlin, mysterious tension throughout the unfolding events. Key pieces like ‘A Night In The Woods’ eschew the strings for wispy synth textures and slowly-unfurling electronic melodies, but its moments such as ‘Ghost Images’ and ‘The Argument’, where strings and synths effortlessly intertwine themselves that stand out the most. A remarkable and carefully-considered score, and several worlds away from his subsequent album, Interzones, released through my Mortality Tables venture. Released 31 October 2024. Interzones by Rupert Lally & Friends was released 29 November through Mortality Tables.

https://rupertlally.bandcamp.com/album/the-owl-service-music-inspired-by-the-novel-from-alan-garner

DOGS VERSUS SHADOWS & NICHOLAS LANGLEY – SALT COAST (Strategic Tape Reserve)

I’ve had the pleasure of working with both Lee Thompson (Dogs Versus Shadows) and Nicholas Langley in different capacities this year. Even after getting to appreciate their methods and processes well because of that, Salt Coast is a surprise. Both know a thing about how to transform sounds almost to the point of being unrecognisable, but Salt Coast finds the pair creating a sort of impenetrable fogginess around noises, melodies and borrowed segments. ‘Marching Through The Radiation’ and ‘Crabtree’ are cases in point – what could be fairground melodies are subjected to such a blanket of echoes that any twee gentility they once possessed are returned as a murky, queasy cues for distressing scenes in a horror film. Probably involving clowns. I’m reluctant to suggest that the technique is analogous to degradation, which has become shorthand for the gauziness of memory; what Thompson and Langley do here is smother their inputs, not decay them. It’s both terrifying and beautiful in its own special way. Released 1 November 2024. Nicholas Langley collaborated with Mortality Tables on LF25 / Matthew’s Hand, part of the LIFEFILES series.

https://strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/album/salt-coast

STEPHEN REESE – HYPERCATHETIC

Stephen Reese is a singer-songwriter from Toronto. A purveyor of smart rhythmic electronic pop, Reese is also a deft lyricist, able to dive deep into emotional themes but also unafraid of levity, metaphor and humour. He first invited me to listen to an early mix of his debut album back in 2022 as we bonded over our love of Erasure and the synth mastery of Vince Clarke, and its strange and beautiful cocktail of sounds and styles really grabbed me. ‘Bog Mound’ is one of many highlights, sounding as fragile, sparse and mysterious as tracks from Depeche Mode’s A Broken Frame, Reese offering a plaintive lyric that seems to be concerned with falling face-first into a muddy puddle. ‘Shatter Pattern’ is dark and edgy, Reese’s vocal containing a sort of dream-like ethereality while a sparse melody encircles a shuffling rhythm. ‘Bathysphere’, which opens the collection, features a submerged beat and clusters of sonar-like pulses, framing a lyric where he gives a small submarine a lonely, isolated personality. Intensely maudlin, stirring yet infused with wryness, it reminds me of Sparks and Reed & Caroline, sung with a quality that suggests Reese has a penchant for folk tunes. A brilliant debut. Released 23 November 2024.

https://stephenreese.bandcamp.com/album/hypercathectic

 

EVERYDAY DUST – OVERTONES (Dustopian Frequencies)

Overtones is a remarkable study of the resonant frequencies contained within a single 200-year-old handbell. The bell was struck, shaken and played with a bow to generate a series of tones and textures, all of which were then processed with techniques that owe a debt to the pioneers of musique concrète. Everyday Dust is something of a modern-day tapeloop aficionado, and his experience with these processes shows through here in the form of an evolving series of considered sequences or movements; the effect is one of slow evolution, rather than the restless jumping around that colours a lot of tape pieces. Heard as a single 30-minute piece, Overtones is simultaneously euphoric and elegiac, yet dark and ominous, qualities that make this immediately recognisable as the work of Everyday Dust. Released 29 November 2024.

https://everydaydust.bandcamp.com/album/overtones

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2024 Further.