Tag: Various Artists

Various Artists – Insects

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A warning: if you’re the kind of person that massively freaks out at the insect-based challenges on shows like I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here or The Challenge, Insects is not the compilation album for you. Containing 12 tracks each inspired by insects, if you’re even remotely scared of humming, buzzing, flapping or the amplified sound of insectoid limbs scurrying across a kitchen surface, this is likely to send you into a complete panic. For everyone else, this is a sharply-executed curatorial exercise by the always-remarkable Dustopian Frequencies imprint.

Key tracks for this reviewer include ‘Anopheles Genus Takeover’ by BMH (WCR’s Kate Bosworth and Matt Jetten) which has the sinister nihilism of an imaginary soundtrack to Iain Banks’ ‘The Wasp Factory’, until Bosworth issues the line “There are no tin openers anymore,” which is a trademark bit of wry humour I’ve come to look for in BMH’s savagely inventive music. Dave Clarkson’s squelchy techno banger ‘Hive Mind’ is another, providing further evidence of an alchemical skill that Clarkson has for turning pretty much any sound – toys, sweets, fairground rides, caves – into electronic music gold, in this case imagining a swarm of killer bees descending on an illegal outdoor rave.

At the other extreme, Linear North’s beetling, sub-bass-heavy ‘Brains Nor Backbone’ has a weird mournfulness and sensitivity toward the insect population, with phrasing that pivots on a quote nodding in the direction of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

A recurring memory kept popping into my head while writing this. It was of being in a room in London’s Natural History Museum when my daughters were very small, a curator pulling out drawer after drawer of glass topped boxes, each containing a selection of different insects. This compilation is a lot like being back in that room, only each successive display case is accompanied by a vivid, visceral and very occasionally panic-inducing soundscape.

Insects was released January 23 2026 by Dustopian Frequencies.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Various Artists – Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1

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Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1 collates 13 tracks from artists either based in, or with links to, the Gulf region, and was compiled by VCUarts Quatar’s Erika Tsuchiya.

The album employs a wide angle lens as it surveys the sound art spectrum. We hear whispy, euphoric vocals on Ghayda Abdujalil’s sparse ‘Fast-paced Life’. We hear modernist, leftfield electronic pop on Khulafi’s ‘Touch Sand!’. We observe processed sound and field recording excursions on Toni’s evocative ‘Caught In A Sandstorm’, where you can almost feel the desert wind blasting your skin, and Sam Nester’s watery ‘Field Notes’. We hear playful, noisy, disruptive sounds from a train journey on TuaregBeats’ ‘Al Wakra Metro Station’. (I played the latter while on my commute home in England, and the interjection of train announcements on TuaregBeats’ track left me feeling utterly confused as to where I actually was.)

We also hear dark ambience on Salfeya Alblooshi’s ‘E-waste Contaminant’, which carries, on one level, a soundtrack-friendly brooding sense of threat and danger; on another level, it has a fragility, a barely-there lightness that recalls the near-silence of Thomas Köner. Its counterpart comes in the form of the dreamy ‘The Shand’ by WYWY, whose central melodic refrain and breathy vocal feel like they could have found a comfortable place tracking a scene of emotional uncertainty in Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader’s The Canyons.

Tsuchiya appears her twice, under her 3R1K4 alias. ‘Compound’ clusters tinkly, bell-like notes and a 1990s Warp electronica sensibility before offering up a savage, stuttering bass shape that creates the notion of the track suddenly lurching into a blistering rage banger. That latency informs a pulse-quickening feeling of tension and drama which ultimately dissipates rapidly into gentle vocal loops and soft ambience. Her collaboration with mourad, ‘Sunrise Rain’, which closes the collection, leans more prominently into that ephemeral, textural sound, offering soft, shimmering notes alongside a field recording of a relentless, noisy rain shower.

A carefully curated and engaging collection of varied sounds and inventive ideas.

Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1 was released February 7 2026 through Ephemera Records

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Various Artists – Fictions

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The latest release from Crammed Discs’ reinvigorated Made To Measure series is described as a compendium of ‘wordless fiction’. Curated by Crammed Discs co-founder Marc Hollander (Aksak Maboul), the album compiles eight tailor-made pieces that navigate a path between ambient, soundscapes, adventurous electronics and modern classical stylings.

While the pieces here are new, there is a sense of reverence through the inclusion of a track by Benjamin Lew and Tuxedomoon’s Steven Brown. The pair originally worked together during Made To Measure’s initial years, releasing Douzième Journée: Le Verbe, La Parure, L’Amour in 1982 and its follow-up A Propos D’Un Paysage in 1985, creating mesmerising and innovative clashes between tapes of African music and electronics. After hooking up again at a Made To Measure event in 2019, they found themselves rekindling a creative partnership, and their track – ‘A.D. Sur La Carte’ – is a haunting stew of inquisitive synths and mournful trumpet that together feel amorphous and ephemeral.

Another Made To Measure alumnus is Pascal Gabriel, here appearing in his Stubbleman alias. Gabriel released his critically-acclaimed Mountains And Plains audio travelogue for the label in 2019 and has collaborated with Crammed Discs and Aksak Maboul in the past. His piece finds him working with Norweigian trumpet player Nils Petter Molvær. ‘Ne Pas Se Pencher Au Dehors’ has definite soundtrack credentials, the melodic synth refrain and more direct trumpet playing that comes in after two minutes sounding (to me) like the perfect accompaniment to Michael J. Fox’s final scene in Bright Lights, Big City as he watches the sun rise over Manhattan’s East River and contemplates starting his life afresh.

Elsewhere, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith delivers a cascade of burbling synths on ‘Waterways’, managing to enrich analogue sounds with an aquatic sense of motion, over which floats a pretty xylophone motif. LA’s Mary Lattimore is an artist that has truly redefined approaches to playing the venerable harp, and her ‘Bird’ offers up a sweet, heart-wrenching duet with electronics that is simultaneously hopeful yet thwarted, as if gazing wistfully on the fleeting nature of existence.

Not that these are all delicate, gentle sonic experiments. French composer and sound artist Félicia Atkinson’s ‘The Sun, Perhaps Three Of Them’ bristles with wild energy, a central white noise drone and what could be a voice is nothing short of chilling, while Christina Vantzou’s tone poem ‘Museum Critic’ use of out-of-place found sound to catch you off guard and knock you out of the meditative state provided by other tracks here.

Taken as a whole, Fictions represents an absorbing, inspiring collection onto which you can write your own personal narrative.

Fictions was released October 14 2022 by Crammed Discs / Made To Measure

Thanks to Jim at Ampersand and PG.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2022 Further.

Various Artists – Isolation And Rejection Vol. 4

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Various Artists - Isolation And Rejection 4

In 2019, to my immense disappointment, the Front & Follow label decided to shut up shop. It looked like either a temporary cessation of activities or a complete end of a 12-year run that had seen the Manchester-based imprint issue an incredible run of adventurous sonic material from a diverse set of artists. 

Fortunately, 2020’s lockdown presented the ideal opportunity to bring the label back, specifically for the Isolation And Rejection series of artist compilations. From the off, the premise was simple – Justin Watson, who runs the label, put out an open call for artists to send in tracks that had been rejected by other compilers. Isolation And Rejection became something of a home for the unwanted, overlooked and unloved. All proceeds from the sales of the digital albums go to The Brick in Wigan, a charity focussed, like Isolation And Rejection, on the homeless. 

In keeping with the previous three editions of the series, the tracks presented on the penultimate instalment are far from mere

offcuts or poor quality knock-offs. Volume 4 collects together twenty-four tracks from established, well-known artists like Kepier Widow, Howlround, Rupert Lally and Pulselovers – none of whom, frankly, should ever find their music on a compiler’s cutting room floor. These artists nestle evenly alongside material from less well-known individuals, creating a sense of even-handedness that is a credit to Watson and his label. That he selected an acoustic guitar strumfest – MJ Hibbett’s ‘Rocking Out But Quietly’ – as the album’s centrepiece is downright audacious amid the anxious, squalling, buzzing, droning and quietly ethereal electronics elsewhere, but then again Front & Follow were always defiantly atypical in their release schedules.

So here you get the woozy, hypnotic structures of Stellarays’ ‘Butterfly Control Tower’, all delicate melodies and an electro-shoegazery disposition; the nod in the direction of Cabaret Voltaire on Function Automat’s resolute ‘Data Data’; Earthborn Vision’s haunting, edgy electro pulses on ‘Effects Of Isolation’; Graham Reznick’s processed cello and choral vocal textures melding with stirring electronics on the beautiful ‘The Visit’; Kepier Widow’s brooding ‘Perfect Latency’. Elsewhere, Rupert Lally immerses himself in the same ambient sonic foreshore that inspired his Marine Life album with the pastoral ’It Learns From Its Mistakes’ and Lammergeiers delivers a psychedelic stew of amorphous, shapeshifting processed blues guitar riffs and grainy textures set to motorik rhythms on ‘Ephemeris’. 

My personal favourite here comes from Joe Evans’ Runningonair. His ‘Cocktail Hour’ is a breezy slice of gentle exotica, all tranquil beats, discrete acid squelches, blurry shapes, vibes and jazzy piano, just perfect for mixing a Mai-Tai or three in the comfort of the Tiki bar you fashioned up because you had nothing else to do in lockdown. Cheers. 

Isolation & Rejection Volume 4 is released September 25 2020 by Front & Follow. 

Words: Mat Smith 

(c) 2020 Further.