Look what we sneaked online while you were sleeping…
Transmission 20.0….w/e 20/05/2017
Revolutions of a 33 and 45 kind….
This edition features……
Alison o’donnell, the insektlife cycle, scarfolk, moog, penguin café, chxfx, us golf 95, praise space electric, liquid liquid, Oppenheimer analysis, coronita, gesaffelstein, droplex, Charlie, telex, deux furieuses, tres, the electronic circus, message, les visitors du soir, martin dupont, turquoise days, the time larks, solilians, whak bionic, Ptolemaic terrascope, finders keepers, eiks, oddfellows casino, indian wells, you the night and the music, Wytch Pycknyck, Richard bone, Brinsley Schwarz, us and them, the orange drop, mark and the clouds, Laetitia sadier source ensemble, sextile, the kinks, the corrupting sea, diagnos, the home current, concretism, laker Herzog, .laika, quickspace supersport, th’faith healers, drop nineteens, 18 wheeler, airiel, delia Derbyshire, bonbon experiment, john sinclair
I feel a Mega Dodo special is looming in the distance not least because we’ve been greeted with releases aplenty from this most admired of sound houses. With that in mind a little sneak peek of something incoming from former Mellow Candle-r Alison O’Donnell, taken from a new set by the name ‘climb sheer the fields of peace’ this is the rather tranquilly airy ‘redbreast in a rowan tree’. As the title might give hint, a brief and genteel ode to the redbreast and the blossoming of spring, caressed in bird song chirps all delicately turned and sprayed in morning dew, Ms O’Donnell colours a picturesque tapestry that’s softly daubed to capture eloquently the spirit of nature’s serene and stilled beauty. https://soundcloud.com/mega-dodo/alison-odonnell-redbreast-in-a-rowan-tree
Staying with mega dodo, another release that’s been serenading our turntable of late, a new full length ‘vivid dreams parade’ by the Insektlife Cycle who many of you might recognise given they’ve been championed and into the bargain adored the release schedule of the fruits de mer imprint in recent times. Again a full review is afoot, for now though we suggest you grab an earful of the aptly titled ‘SunGaze’ which unless our ears do deceive comes pressed in sheens of solar scorched euphoric radiance all finitely fashioned and framed in their trademark instrumental idents, it’s a craft arced upon a stirring progressive post rock spectrum that ebbs and flows with emotional intensity, in truth if reference points are your bag, something that freefalls into the bruising atmospheric beauty once occasioned upon vinyl by the much missed Workhouse. https://megadodo.bandcamp.com/track/sungaze
A brief moment of moderate humour…..featuring Count Arthur Strong and Anita Harris, alas only a brief trailer…..
Isn’t this the most exquisite of things, both lush and mesmeric not to mention free spirited, the floral patterns genuflecting in a sighing gracefulness to the seductive spray of the string sections, the romantic inclines, the genteel lollops caressed to colour a neo classical tapestry both lush and vividly vibrant all the time spirited and invested with an emotional wherewithal and a sense of majestic crafting that finds it bridging the gaps between Reich, Nyman and Sakamoto. This is Penguin Café with a track entitled ‘Cantorum’ from a full length for Erased Tapes called ‘the imperfect sea’ – quite simply something else.
Hopefully we should be getting copies of this sometime later in the week, emerging from out of the castles in space imprint this is a teaser trailer for the incoming CHXFX album ‘transcranial targets’ – an uber progged out astral trip and quite possibly the trippiest thing to have hit our desk since the days of the magic mushroom band and system 7 were found scrambling our turntable and musically wallpapering our head space in a melodic pastiche of naked lunch / videodrome / 2000AD dystopian strangeness, that said plenty of old school 50’s electronic crookedness afoot here with the Baron’s Bebe and Louis impishly muddying the palette as well as some neat Radiophonic eeriness, add to the mix elements of Omnia Opera and praise space electric and you have yourselves what might be best described as the equivalent of musical magic mushroom head trip.
Stuff we missed……and some electro….and a spot of can you guess the classic tune…..praise space electric, liquid liquid, Oppenheimer analysis, coronita, gesaffelstein, droplex, Charlie, telex
Minimalist tech from Coronita……
Then there’s these dudes of whom we’ve no info on, sounds like a crossover era Shamen moving from psych to trance / house c. 1988……..anyway its by Gesaffelstein….
Droplex……
…..charlie from many years ago……..
…telex…..
Oppenheimer Analysis
Mentioned in passing a second or two ago, here’s a wee slice of praise space electric….
…..finally Liquid Liquid……yep swiped for ‘white lines’…..
Spied this on the 345rpm face book page which in case you’ve been asleep or ignoring our frequent mentions in these pages, is a lathe vinyl cutting service run by former Southall Riot man Phil who deals in the kind of limited run bespoke vinyl editions that you’ve probably seen gracing the catalogues of Polytechnic Youth, Static Caravan, Fruits de Mer, Castles in Spaces, Sonido Polifonico and more in recent times. Anyhow as said this is one of the latest to head off the cutter, a strictly limited outing from US Golf 95 and a track by the name ‘fade’ which has already sold out of its first clear wax pressing – limited to just – er – 10 copies and now almost out of its second on ‘monochrome’ – er – just 20 of those. The track in question, ‘fade’ be its name, a wonderfully alluring chill toned nocturnal sophisticat sumptuously ghosted in a sparsely kissed framing and sounds by way of these ears not unlike a love note exchanging soiree happened upon by Plone and a ‘digitalis’ era ‘ISAN. https://usgolf95.bandcamp.com/album/–3
Welcome return to these musings of the formidable Deux Furieuses with a brand new single about to break cover entitled ‘silencing of the roar’. Arriving simmering its grooves and scoured in discontent and mistrust, it’s a savaging rally cry for those without voice or who’ve found themselves isolated by a political machine riddled in deceit, double dealing and bully boy tactics, a machine that seems intent on protecting its own whilst condemning those that oppose to the wilderness and happily content to watch those once neighbours, family and friends turn against each other and divide. As to that actual sounds, much like an oncoming apocalyptic storm or a cavalry tracking fast in the distant haze, the tension heavy and darkly brooding with turbulence and desperation, at once stricken and howled in quiet fury it rises from out of the shadows gouged in a scab picking fist clenching anguish all tightly wired to a choking and despairing claustrophobic post punk primed angular battle cry. In short does it for us, a hymn for what is decent, fair, just and right. https://hearthis.at/deuxfurieuses/deux-furieuses-silenced-by-the-roar/Py2/
Interlude…..lost electro nuggets……tres, the electronic circus, message, les visitors du soir, martin dupont, turquoise days
Tres with ‘operator’
The electronic circus…….from ‘81
Message from ’88…..sounding very first album OMD with a young Depeche Mode fetish….
Les visitors du soir……
Martin dupont
Turquoise days….
For a second I could have sworn I’d died and gone off to heaven, blame Solilians whose newly pressed dream drift ‘planet binah’ really does deserve to be described as immaculate, bruised agreed, but immaculate all the same, a deeply divine orbiting vapour trail, much like a spacey Dead Can Dance if that is, you were struggling for comparable references. https://soundcloud.com/solilians/planet-bina
Swiped this, much like the previous track from the latest terrascope listening list, more about that in a second. This is the quite airily breezy roving rustic radiance that is ‘rhapsody in june’ by the time larks, the track finds itself peeled from a set entitled ‘grain of light’ which I suspect we need in our life very soon or else we fear we’ll spontaneous combust. Everything about this just beams loveliness and sunshine, a quaint harvesting of folk riches, birdsong and flutter by head in the clouds coos all sumptuously wrapped up in oodles of melodic merriment, the only thing missing being a rusty warped porch and a maypole, suggest you file next to your prized Snails platters. https://soundcloud.com/the-timelarks/rhapsody-in-june
I’ll be honest when I say, yes we were drawn to the label name, this be from Swedish based imprint Little Ant Struggling who according to the liner notes pride themselves on the unearthing of silken sounds located on the outer electronic margins. Latest posting on their sound cloud page, a track by Whak Bionic entitled ‘freeten’ – utterly mesmeric, this porcelain beauty traverses the serene sonic corridors once visited upon by the likes of Manual, Inch Time and a very youthful Cheju, gorgeously dream drifted whilst finitely carved, by the sounds of things, from pure lunar ice. https://soundcloud.com/little-struggling-ant-records/whak-bionic-freeten
The original outsider guru’s, once upon a time flicking through and indeed, reading copies of the esteemed Ptolemaic Terrascope was akin to discovering a portal whereupon existed strange sound worlds so remote and eclectic that their very existence fell beneath the eyeline of John Peel, a throwback to a lost 60’s counter culture, this self -styled illustrated occasional simply oozed cool, champions of all things DIY, everything about it just wreaked of old worldly classicism to such an extent that you half suspected it was pressed, produced and published in some faraway middle earth land where new fangled things like t’internet and money were a distractive trifling consequence. In recent years, Terrascope has succumbed to the evils of the digital age, an online presence still guides you gently by the hand towards the more esoteric happenings of record world, away from the disappointments of chart bothering hopefuls and whatever passing bandwagon the mainstream ‘musical’ press have dictated be this week’s flavour, not influenced in any way shape or form I should hasten to add, by a healthy financial donation, often called advertising space – ahem – these days head Terrascope-r Phil even hand presses miniature journals on printing devices so old and whiffing of such vintage that one suspects even William Caxton would deem old school, these literary letters known as the Terrascopaedia appear in such infrequent limited number that in a mere blink there be a fear they be gone. To date there have been seven such editions, visions of which can be viewed along with all other variously gathered treasures somewhere here http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Home/New_Credits_Page.htm which while you are there, a little rummage around will turn up old favourites ‘rumbles’ – and while you wander around observing these feasts, the terra-folk have even cobbled together a musical soiree known as the ‘terrascope playlist’ – now up to #12 – how clever, how quaint and how essential. https://soundcloud.com/magiceye1961/sets/terrascope-playlist-12
Newly plucked and sprayed in mischief, merriment and mirth, sometimes the liner notes are as barking as the sounds they play, the spring selection from those freakster folk at Finders Keepers is afoot with Messrs Shipton, Mitchell and Votel emerging from their winterlong hibernation afresh with anarchic impishness and melodic mindfulness. Accompanying them on this Easter weekend self-discovery shindig a bag o’ records and a brace of invited guests, still no track list summary so I guess you’ll just have to park up and plug in for two and a half hours and lose yourself in their folk woozy hippy tripping smoking transcendentalism with occasional side servings of mystical wellbeing thrown in at no extra cost. https://soundcloud.com/finderskeepersrecords/finders-keepers-radio-easter-folkish-special
Mentioned a week or two ago somewhere here https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/eiks/ with a promise that we’d send requests to secure sound links, this is the becoming sweet beguilement that is ‘away they fly’ by Eiks from an incoming full length entitled ‘braids’ – simply exquisite and dare we say the prettiest and most alluring of things to have happened upon our player having us imagining some gathering of Stealing Sheep, Saint Sister and Lisa O Piu types around an Oddfellows Casino prepared campfire, easily deserving of being sat next to noa babayof’s exceptionally perfect ‘blue bound’ set from last year.
talking of Oddfellows Casino, I’m certain we eyed the name David Bramwell collaborating and guesting on a recent release being aired on band camp the name of which along with the links we’ve momentarily mislaid. So while we rummage around looking for said sounds, we did eye news that the Oddfellows Casino are shortly to emerge from their hidey hole with a planned fifth album by the name ‘oh, sealand’, tracks off which along with various vault finds and sounds of yore are currently being previewed at weekly intervals via facebook. Now Mr Bramwell should really need no introduction, described in passing as the British Sufjan Stevens, he is possessed of a creativity that sits outside time, fashion and generic pigeonholing, a magical carnival of sound that draws from many yet nods and neither owes to none, sometime shanties, briefly tailored in softly radiant psych, touched with folk, baroque and chamber tones, all these ingredients serve to enrich his colourfully mysterious palette. Latest arrival to the Oddfellows Casino songbook, a cover of a track that featured on the flipside of a 2010 release by Grasscut. Entitled ‘swallow the day’ it becomes his own the instant his reflecting melancholic tones appear into view, the dulling caress of crystalline opines sweeten the sting but soon they struggle beneath the hollowing weight of its bruising glow, it’s all wonderfully withdrawn and seductively sighing stuff. https://soundcloud.com/oddfellows-casino/05-swallow-the-day
those among you previously unaware of Oddfellows Casino, pull a pew and listen to Mr Bramwell loosely narrating the secret history of Oddfellow. First aired on Radio 3 several years ago, this is ‘the haunted moustache’.
A positive feast of ear pricking platters and a quite simply faultless rummage into the backs of record racks that most sniff at with puzzled envy. The latest listening soiree from those ‘you, the night and the music’ folk opens with a track from an imminent Buried Treasure happening that we’ve mentioned in passing but really do need to take a closer listen of, a vault find that features recordings by Yuri Morozov who throughout the 70’s and 80’s was beneath the oppressive eye of a surveillance Soviet was to be found populating a secret sonic underground with sounds ahead of curves that many never knew existed. We really must gen up on Reet Maff’l – a duo who feature among their ranks members of the much loved / missed That Fucking Tank found here doing strangeness aplenty. Featured elsewhere among the rich pickings, take your choice from Suzanne Ciani, Tristram Cary, Alison O’Donnell, Revbjelde, CHXFX – whose album for Castles in Space I must admit we are hugely looking forward to hearing, add to the mix a brace of recent Sonido Polifonico lovelies courtesy of Seabuckthorn and Bell Lungs, perfection from Julius Vanderbilt and Prana Crafter. All said prime ear candy happenings this show, as if what we’ve already mentioned wasn’t enough to have to you all a wow and flutter, may we suggest you tune your radar to the psych drift smoke that is Mt Mountain’s ‘floating eyes’ – in short an imagining of Godspeed if they’d jumped into the studio and shared a bong with Balmorhea. Of course, all said, we quite fancy Sievehead’s ‘invocation’ a blistering bad boy that at times amid the frenetic dischord had us much recalling Leatherface in a nose bloodying head butt with the Triffids. https://www.mixcloud.com/Youthenightandthemusic/you-the-night-and-the-music-207/
A most welcome message from the Wytch Pycknyck alerting us, or should that be, warning us as to new happenings afoot with a limited cassette readying itself to both break hearts and be the cause of head fracturing swoons aplenty. It be called ‘the skeleton tape’ – a three track hairy mama which alas we can’t share links just this moment, safe to say we’ve had an earful of the angular freakiness that is the lead out track ’ten bag’ and would heartily recommend, nay insist, that admirers of the much-missed Brew imprint and the ultra-cool Riot Season will be much adoring of the skewed and skewiff stoner psych fuzz gnarling that curdles the tape heads, utterly zonked out wig flipping grooviness to go.
The ongoing ‘things we missed’ series rumbles on, here’s a little something that ought to tune favourably with those folk among lucky enough to have secured a copy of that rather spiffing XAM Duo / the Au Fait 7 inch released prior to RSD17 in honour of Norman records. This is from a release out many years back by Indian Wells through Bad Panda, a label whose last contact with these musings was or at the very least appeared, well how can put this, a tad nonplussed. Anyway this is ‘Wimbledon 1980’ – a cut culled from an album that you can freely download entitled ‘night drops’. Prime reason for mentioning this track is the rhythmic syncopating ping pong that’s afoot throughout, much like that echoed by the aforementioned XAM Duo track, yet add in the atmospheric spectral swathes and what you get is a deeply alluring and fleeting moment of ghost lit grandeur frosted in time and re-spun as though some serene and mesmeric celestial occurrence borne of the spinning rings from the film version of HG Wells’ ‘the Time Machine’. https://soundcloud.com/indian-wells/indian-wells-wimbledon-1980
I’m sure there’s a limited cassette pressing of this that’s long since flown the coup and had us miserably administering kicks to one’s own backside aplenty. But enough of our masochistic pastimes, up for lengthier mentions shortly is a limited release just out through Mega Dodo featuring the lost pulled at the last moment studio album by Brinsley Schwarz entitled ‘it’s all over now’. This rare vault find artefact, recorded in ’74 and shelved as the band imploded, finds the Brinsley’s in peak form, featuring a smattering of covers and originals pens, its kissed with a country / schmaltzy bounce that’s lightly pop fried in an easy on the ear sonic vintage that owes much to a candy toned 50’s pop radio, of note here an early version of ‘cruel to be kind’ – several years later to provide a hit for Mr Lowe, here trimmed in a country toning and ostensibly looser in vibe than it’s chart bothering younger sibling. https://megadodo.bandcamp.com/track/cruel-to-be-kind
and there we were only mentioning Alison O’Donnel’s spectral ‘redbreast in a rowan tree’ – see above somewhere here – and along appears a video to accompany scarcely a day or so later, ah well, guess a second mention same missive won’t do harm….
Literally just dropped on the welcome mat, more mega dodo essentialness in the shape of an incoming set from Richard Bone entitled ‘age of falconry’ from off which ‘Queensberry Wilde’ has been sent ahead on scouting detail. An airily dreamy affair peppered in all manner of regal heraldry, really quite hypnotic I must say as it slyly draws the dots between Mike Oldfield, Steve Reich and a ‘Greenaway’ era Michael Nyman, indeed that good. https://soundcloud.com/mega-dodo/richard-bone-queensberry-wilde
And just to round up matters for now, more Mega Dodo happenings of recent times, a few videos of tracks previously mentioned and much loved, heck we better move on otherwise people will think we like the label or something……
Visual delights a go……
Mentioned in passing here https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2016/11/02/us-and-them-4/ – a little of the quite perfect Us and Them…….
….the orange drop…..mentioned here https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2016/12/07/the-orange-drop-2/
…and finally Mark and the Clouds – from a new album which I’m suspecting we here are a little light on…sounds quite spiffing not to mention had us with an overpowering urge to rifle through the record collection for our copy of the Bee Gees first album….anyhow this is ‘take my sky’ if your taking notes, and you should be……
Just to prove there is no favouritism afoot here – see the previous flurry of postings, we can confirm that Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble are in fact part of the Drag City sound house and not the Mega Dodo family, oh and that her latest offering, a track pulled from her very recent ‘finding me finding you’ full length, is as intoxicating as it be flighty and flirty. Orbiting familiar sound worlds once traversed and inhabited upon the grooves of Stereolab’s much adored ‘cobra phrases….’, ‘the woman with the invisible necklace’ is peppered and populated by a slyly woven seduction that intricately intersects the margins of lounge, 60’s cosmopolitan pop and 70’s tropicalia and forges from them, a vintage sounding cool whose loosely morphing flutter by prowess hops, hiccups and skips with a casually playful sophisticated chic.
SPRING AND SUMMER TOUR!
5/17/17 Les Bains douches, Besancon, France
5/18/17 Sonic, Lyon, France
5/19/17 Neubad Club, Luzern, Switzerland
5/22/17 Bodega, Nottingham, United Kingdom
5/23/17 The Musician, Leicester, United Kingdom
5/24/17 The Junction 2, Cambridge, United Kingdom
5/25/17 Shop Front Theatre, Coventry, United Kingdom
5/26/17 The Continental Pub, Preston, United Kingdom
5/27/17 South Street Arts Centre, Reading, United Kingdom
5/31/17 Oval Space, London, United Kingdom
6/8/17 Northside Festival, Brooklyn, NY
8/4/17 Monty Hall, Jersey City, NJ
8/5/17 Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA
8/6/17 DC9, Washington, DC
8/8/17 Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC
8/9/17 The Mothlight, Asheville, NC
8/10/17 Third Man Records, Nashville, TN
8/11/17 Georgia Theatre, Athens, GA
8/12/17 Will’s Pub, Orlando, FL
8/14/17 Walter’s Downtown, Houston, TX
8/15/17 The Mohawk, Austin, TX
8/18/17 Valley Bar, Phoenix, AZ
8/19/17 Pico Union Project, Los Angeles, CA
8/20/17 The Chapel, San Francisco, CA
8/22/17 Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR
8/23/17 Sunset Tavern, Seattle, WA
8/24/17 Neurolux, Boise, ID
8/25/17 Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City, UT
8/26/17 Lost Lake, Denver, CO
8/28/17 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN
8/29/17 Schuba’s, Chicago, IL
8/30/17 El Club, Detroit, MI
9/1/17 Grog Shop, Cleveland, OH
9/2/17 Club Cafe, Pittsburgh, PA
9/3/17 BSP, Kingston, NY
9/5/17 Great Scott, Allston, MA
9/20/17 – 9/23/17 International Festival Of Psychedelia, Liverpool, UK
Radio recommendations – just to prove there were other records in 1967…..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08q6181
Stereo spanking second album sneak peek servings from those uber cooled folk at the felte sound house, this is the quite frankly stark and psychotropic chill waved post punk paranoia of Sextile with ‘one of these days’. Ripped from an imminent ‘albeit living’ full length, ‘one of these days’ bears down with shadow lined precision, a primitive dark star gouged with a dead eyed pulsar vibe whose intensity literally burns subliminal holes in your head space, off the radar in terms of cool and at once tightly wired and unflinchingly austerely angular, an orphaned love child of a Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Suicide knee trembler I wouldn’t wonder. https://soundcloud.com/felte/sextile-one-of-these-1/s-XZr9a
Many thanks to Jason of the Corrupting Sea for sending over downloads of his forthcoming album ‘Samatta’ which you should find heading out shortly via somewhere cold records. While we prep for full review, here’s another teaser track in the shape of ‘I love you over the moon’ with which to have you all a swoon. Caressed and sculptured with stilled elegance, its porcelain framing and delicate turn of sonic phrasing softly shimmer tones to an intimate haloing that grace falls elegiacally with a quietly surrendering radiant glow, a moment of tender opining reflection that’s at one with itself, its slo-core seduction pressed as a love note framed and frosted in time.
Must admit to being a mite fond of this. Early happenings from Bird Law who we believe hail from up north, as in Scotland with a home demo version of ‘where are the turtles?’ – a delightfully scuzzy pop paint bomb of bubble grooved C-86 vibes and grunge gouged strut cuts, irrefutably adoring of all things Dinosaur Jr, Shonen Knife and Veruca Salt. Nuff said. https://soundcloud.com/user-297900511/where-are-the-turtles
interlude…….forgotten lovely stuff…..laika, quickspace supersport, th’faith healers, drop nineteens, 18 wheeler, airiel…..
laika
quickspace supersport
Th’ Faith Healers
Drop nineteens
18 wheeler
…just couldn’t resist this to wrap up things…..from Airiel…..
Currently causing a fuss at the Static Caravan shop of sonic delights, judging the speed of the few that flew out of Norman records last week, you might want to consider getting your backside into gear if you want to secure one of the remaining ultra-limited lathe pressings. This is a track from a four track blink and its gone wax / CD set by the Home Current entitled – er – ‘the Home Current’, this one be ‘when waiting deadly’ a glitch grooved slice of minimalist tech all shuffling trip hop beats and mutant funk nano-bot designer wear artificial intelligence blip core, one for after-hours listening consumption, at once measured and intricately honed, sounding I must admit like a deeply isolationist and spectral Biosphere trading in sound worlds that recall the early catalogue ear wear of the likes of Expanding, Rednetic and Smallfish. https://soundcloud.com/martin_thc/when-waiting-deadly
Alas no sound links just yet, but a brief head’s up as to essential groove coming through via the excellently name Control Freak Kittens imprint, prized from a self-titled full length due to land July time, ‘be good’ is a demurring orbital soft psych carousel by Diagnos, a duo featuring talents who’ve graced the line up’s the Concretes, Monster, Mackaper and Sons of Cyrus in previous lives. Serenely dream dazed in wispy swathes of vintage kosmiche, ‘be good’ sumptuously pilots the kind of lushly toned and spectral lunar worlds populated by the likes of the tomorrow syndicate and the palace of swords albeit as though filtered through the sun charmed dream machine of the Cavern of Anti Matter.
Delia Derbyshire archive…….
https://electronicsound.co.uk/blog/delia-derbyshire-website-is-live/
Seriously essential listening from John Sinclair found here hooked up with Youth for what is a simply irresistible and smoky 4 track head trip. Heading out of the Iron Man imprint late July time on what we assume will be, hulking slabs of heavy duty 12-inch vinyl, ‘beatnik youth ambient’ is a 30-minute narcotic induced astral trip. Somewhere here one of the last recordings by Howard Marks graces the grooves, elsewhere the mood and vibe is loose and trippy, a deeply chill toned intoxicating happening of mind frying and bonged out wooziness, best of the four being ‘brilliant corners’ a homage to Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs whereupon Youth’s frankly freaked out jazz dystopian tones are cast upon a morphing cyclone of fracturing arabesque atmospherics and dream draped mind loss over which Sinclair spits and growls narrating forgotten alternative histories of a restless 60’s American underground. Sound links to come.
Ah…the mysterious Laker Herzog. Ultra-limited 2 track, 111 only hand numbered lathe just out through Polytechnic Youth no doubt which, by the time you read this, have all long since sold. First sighted on the second volume making up that quite excellent ‘Bedroom Cassette Masters’ series, mentioned in these pages at regular fond frequency, a collection of lost bedroom electronica from the 80’s curated, if memory serves me right, by the folk behind Midwich Youth Club. We’ll allow you to draw the dots. Played at a number of different speeds ‘driven to silence’ and ‘told’ feature here, the former ghosted in a gloriously shadow lined dystopian greyness upon which a bleakly propulsive chill wave beat all stricken and stirring is gouged gloomily upon the grooves forging an icy disquiet which in truth sounds like an unlikely alliance pitting together a particularly disconsolate DAF with the hollowing ice cooled Modern Eon – that said played at the preferred alternative 33rpm it all sounds very Andrew Eldritch. As to ‘told’ – would it help if I said it literally perspires eeriness, glazed in own sub-zero environment, seriously frost bite forms just being in earshot of it, clearly a creative mind whose been picking over the grooves of John Foxx’s ‘Metamatic’ by candle light on successive nights. It was then we realised that we’d been playing the blighter at 33rpm, ramped up to 45rpm it all gets a tad frazzled in hysteria, a critical melt down ensues, very Landscape in design and direction and something becoming of nights camped in freebasing on Thomas Leer platters, mind you that said do we hear the brief though audible influence of Bill Nelson populating the sonic equation. In short then four tracks for the price of two, wonder what it sounds like at 16 and 78 rpm……hang on a tad…..
https://soundcloud.com/halfreleases/laker-herzog-driven-to-silence-remix
Many thanks to Colin over the much admired and loved Castles in Space who sent over a hulking parcel of desirable coloured wax artefacts among its number the eagerly awaited CHXFX full length, which impatient hearts we’ll be featuring over the weekend. Tucked amid this ear pricking presentation though, a prized a highly sought after lathe copy of an ultra-limited one sided release by Concretism which was pressed up for the recent Independent Label Market soiree at the Old Spitalfields Market last month. A taster of things to come, ‘the view from pye green corner’ comes pulled from his forthcoming, as yet, as far as I can recall, untitled full length set due we believe sometime July. His most fluent and fluid composition to date, it finds its author stepping up the ante, crafted with familiar trademark Concretism tropes of yore, the sound is expanded and lushly phrased, clipped in a cinematic sheen it dovetails sumptuously expressed of a svelte stream lined future visioning that draws on the quietly euphoric symphonic sprays first encountered on FortDax’s sublime ‘at Bracken’ full length debut albeit here relocated in the twilight wiles of John Carpenter’s ‘utopian façade’.
And so back with the Home Current, again many thanks to Geoff at Static Caravan for shipping this out, an absolute must have lathe cut 7 inch / CD package. Limited to just 100 copies and selling fast, a four-track feast, two tracks of which feature on the lathe with the additional brace bolstering the accompanying CD quartet. A release best described as a coming of age event, it finds Mr Jensen stepping up to the plate to impishly mess with your head in the crafting of a four-headed sonic hydra that slinks, snakes and seduces the underbelly of the more in tuned low lit nocturnal hidey holes passing for cool clubland. The sounds slick and minimalist yet lushly toned are primed with a sense of the yesterday, the now and the tomorrow, both backward glancing and forward thinking a Balearic seasoning peppers their grooving. ‘uncertain twilight’ opens the proceedings, dizzily dazzled in a vintage 80’s shelling, its fluid body checking bops and funk-struck flightiness has all the clinical ear candy wherewithal to imagine a ‘the crackdown’ era Cabaret Voltaire being fed through the eye of an 808 State hyperreal mind morph. While it’s title and initial moments might well encroach into darker terrains that edge ever cautiously around the second side of Tubeway Army’s ‘replicas’, ‘ballad of the night machines’ peels and fractures resplendently radiant to reveal a floor thumping festival high in waiting on seduce setting future wave colossus trimmed in the likeness of a mid-career Plaid. On a personal level, favourite moment here is when waiting deadly’ – mentioned in passing somewhere here a day or so ago, which to paraphrase (not) we noted fondly is ‘a glitch grooved slice of minimalist tech all shuffling trip hop beats and mutant funk nano-bot designer wear artificial intelligence blip core, one for after-hours listening consumption, at once measured and intricately honed, sounding I must admit like a deeply isolationist and spectral Biosphere trading in sound worlds that recall the early catalogue ear wear of the likes of Expanding, Rednetic and Smallfish’. Rounding up the four-track dance floor charge, itself the cause of much swooning here, the glitch groomed ‘Kvalitetstid’ is awash in Balearic after glows, trance toned smoulders and bliss kissed euphoric raptures, cannibalising the sounds of lost club nights into one hulking 90’s after shock.
Sneaking around the Bedroom Cassette Masters facebook pages following the mention of Laker Herzog – see above – we unearthed this little gem on a posting. By the Bonbon Experiment this is ‘the wasp factory’ – a track pulled from 4 track recordings recorded in the mid 80’s according, that is, to the liner notes. The alter ego of Mancunian resident Adrian Slatcher, he’s been busy of late recording a new album whilst similarly populating his band camp pages with a trio of ‘test pressing’ EP’s – which we will try to listen to for later review in the coming days – along with an emptying of the sound vaults – hence this set turning up. A coolly distractive slice of isolationist pastoralism that you’d no doubt rightly expect to turn up on one of those A Year in the Country audiological findings, honed to vintage precision yet strangely with its head looking into Quatermass-ian / Kneale futures, a sense of remoteness swirls amid it cold war sonics much like the haunting hum of overhead pylons on the march. https://bonbonexperiment.bandcamp.com/track/the-wasp-factory-2
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The end groove……
A documentary celebrating the Moog, certain this came out commercially around 2007 or thereabouts….
…..and there’s this, which we’ll leave you with…..
the sunday experience 