you, the night and the music #208

I do feel we’ve fallen behind with these ‘you, the night and the music’ transmissions, while our back was turned the blighters have posted three intermissions –  so while we fill our boots filling in our listening gaps here’s episode #208 –  an electronic only extravaganza pilfers and picks its way through the finest releases currently vying for your love and affection on the outer margins of pop’s vast sound universe. A two hour cornucopia of the strange, the surreal and the simply sublime opening with some seriously off the wall wired weirdness from the late Alan Sutcliffe taken from a cassette of archive recordings heading out in strictly limited quantities via the adored buried treasure entitled ‘EMS synthi AKS improv’ – a collection shoehorned to bursting with some of the finest vintage electro freak outs, shaped in a passing image of Louis and Bebe Baron. Next up some immaculate ghost drift detachment from Concretism pulled from a forthcoming happening for castles in space, ‘the view from pye green tower’ captured here in all its cold war heraldic glory. Previously unknown to us, microchip junky as their name might hint, sound like the kind of early 80’s drop outs who may well have hung out with pre Art of Noise folk while cutting shapes on the coolest of floors to the likes of ‘metal dance’ era SPK and Agents Aren’t Aeroplanes. Massive apologies are due at this point to Moon Wiring Club whose last opus was such a surreal blast that we hitherto forgot to give it the critical word love it so richly deserved, anyhow here he is in a head to head with Belbury Poly on ‘the music room’ – a noir lit 60’s lounge lizard sumptuously mooching about in a mercurial lunar fantasia fashioned in celestial choirs, tripping dub motifs and oodles of dream weaved arabesque arrangements, very Astralasia meets Invaders of the Heart. Pattern language, i’m certain we’ve mentioned them here previously, perfect the kind of wistful isolationism so much adored of the ghost box set with ‘deeply recessed windows’ sumptuously recoiling the monochrome future tones of a ‘digitalis’ era ISAN. Up next Canadian boy / girl duo meter bridge stump up the deceptively alluring chill waving dream pop demure of ‘beta test’ into the bargain emerging from the other side sounding not unlike Sophie and Peter Johnston. As to Cloud Waste and the Calf, i’m not altogether certain whether we’ve mentioned this lot in passing, we’ve certainly had their recent ‘centre city’ set on repeat play in our gaff, this is ‘rain grey concrete’ – certainly something that ought to appeal to those Polytechnic Youth loving folk among you given its situated sound wise, somewhere between Polypores and Concretism. As to Fred Und Luna , we really must nail a copy of ‘Im Klanggarten’ full length through bigamo musik, that is if ‘Angeln ohne schnur ist super’ is anything to judge by, coolly caressing kosmische flutter-bys, very serene, very Bucolic, like a dozing Pye Corner Audio (whose recent blink and it was gone head  to head with Faten Kanaan features a little later in the set) and something we suggest subscribers of the more mellowed minimalist murmurs emanating from the deep distance imprint ought to seek out at their earliest convenience. And weren’t we just talking of Polypores a second or so ago, from the latest A Year in the Country report, more about that in a second, the spectral beauty that is‘graveney marsh’ emerges, think tear stained sparsely crafted future telling epitaphs concocted by Zombi and that should put you in a close sonic ball park. Gnoomes, what can i say, they mess with your head decorating it all manner psychotropic mesmerics while Vorderhaus’ recent PY full length provided for a coolly coalescing chill waving cornucopia that tuned its headspace into the way of the much missed Weird imprint. Somewhere else, a few happenings from Children of Alice and the Polymer Cities, the former submerged in all manner of tripping Radiophonics with the latter, mentioned several times in passing this missive alone, getting all very Herbie Hancock ‘rock it’ fused with YMO and put through the Landscape sonic scrambler, then its off for a spot of coolly calibrated cruise controlled cosmic driving from Australian Testings Labs Inc, sadly an album we missed, something we’d hasten to add for those youthful Echoboy admirers among you. Another much loved album around these here parts this year so far, CHFX’s ‘transcranial targets’ – the featured cut on this occasion being the triptastic odyssey ‘tracking shots’ while the Assistant side of a recent limited lathe split with the Home Current gets some much deserved turntable love, something which i seem to recall we noted as being a delightfully primitive techno nugget. Approaching the final curve, you’ll find treats aplenty from Cavern of Anti Matter, the Time Attendant, Laker Herzog as well as a rather a spiffing version of ‘the persuaders theme’ a track we in fact mentioned in these very scribbles by the pulselovers no doubt played to mark respects to the recently deceased Roger Moore, all said though we’ll leave you in the capable hands of both the house of daggers and keith seatman, the former whose ‘agent zero’ is cut with the kind of mooching subterranean glitch minimalism that had us here mourning the passing of days when strange bullet holed sleeves containing weird ear sounds from tomorrow used to drop on our door mat courtesy of the esteemed Fat Cat, all very Smallfish friendly and dare i say touched in a kind of passing through the veil quiet euphoria. As to Mr Seatman, like Moon Wiring Club massive apologies are due, another release literally played to near destruction and much adored around here, this being ‘odd in a nightcap and cup’ – more hallucinogenic head tripping i’m afraid to say, a ghost light mysterio woozed in a spell weaving fantasia of dissipating carousels and fragmenting realities, a deeply immersive and senses disorienting lysergic labyrinth that we here have found ourselves in need of leaving a magical paper trail in order to trace our steps back out safely. https://www.mixcloud.com/Youthenightandthemusic/you-the-night-and-the-music-208/