Look what we sneaked online while you were sleeping…
Transmission 43.0…. w/e 29/10/2017
Revolutions of a 33 and 45 kind….
A great night was had when we made a rare trek outside the shambolic Sunday Experience shed to venture into the dark and cold to witness the event that was the Vukovar album release party. Alas no cake, candles or bunting, but a performance of primal intensity awaited and was delivered with sharpening intent, something that much recalled the Birthday Party, perhaps more so, the Boys Next Door before them and the Virgin Passages. Particularly good to finally meet up with Brian and the Bordellos clan. It’s not often we ask a favour, but please do check out their latest full length, mentioned somewhere here below, maybe even buy it with the added satisfaction that you’ll be supporting one of the finest and most brutally beautiful bands around.
There’ll be another missive this Tuesday on Hallowe’en, it’s currently curdling on the back stove, last minute suggestions welcome, plenty of ghoulish grooves abound, everything from Hitchcock to Fenella Fielding and more …. stay spooky….
Another loss to rock, the passing of Fats Domino, one of the original prime movers of the teen overthrow of the 50’s, had us much saddened and with that we’ve dedicated the intros and outros here with two cornerstones of rock n’ blues. RIP sir.
Opening grooves …..
… the man …. Much respect …..
… featuring ….. thank, the house in the woods, vukovar, gulp, preston field audio, Hannah peel, tom Rogerson and brian eno, Thurston moore, vanishing, swaggerjack, grooms, lean year, john peel, fats domino, veda rays, mattiel, the nordic giants, the lovely eggs, Charles hayward, the telescopes, james green, Gökçen Kaynatan, tom o c Wilson, Europaweite Aussichten and S.T.R.S.G.N, keith seatman, east and west rendezvous, three dimensional tanx, beyond the wizards sleeve, willolux, our glassie azoth, snakes don’t belong in Alaska, the space spectrum, the big drum in the sky religion, full bucket, the beaulieu porch, vukovar, polypores, Thomas ragdale, tulketh, Portland vows, st james infirmary …..
This being Sunday morn, I couldn’t think of anything more sonically apt than this, a track – the opening salvo in fact, taken from a very fine release heading out of the Set Foot Press sound house by Preston Field Audio. This be the tranquil ‘St Walburges’ – aglowed in a church like serene and a delicately quiet regal phrasing, this slow to wake beauty thaws exquisitely to unfurl and blossom into a most enchanting slice of sweetly frosted pastoral electronica, the synthetic voices coalescing to form a most wonderfully divine hushed harmonic ghosting, very elegant and somewhat elegiac. https://setfootpress.bandcamp.com/album/pfa
Don’t think we’ve mentioned this particular track just yet, from a new Hannah Peel full length whose arrival date is surely imminent, in fact it might already be out. Anyhow it’s called ‘’Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia’’ and this is the quite sublimely demurring ‘archid orange dwarf’, a track which I’m certain, but don’t quote me, features the Tubular Brass folk who you might well recall rephrased Mr Oldfield’s legendary ‘tubular bells’ earlier this year giving it a full and lush brass treatment. Anyhow, archid orange dwarf’, perhaps it’s just me, but I hear a beautiful pastoral palette sumptuously rising from delicate slumber all the time nodding to a Reich and Riley tutoring peeling from this colourfully beguiled slice of woodcrafted jubilance which, should you care to draw up a little closer is, with careful ear, revealed of an intricate weaving that hints of Vernon Elliott in collusion with a certain Douglas Gamley. Quite perfect if you ask me.
from one slice of sublime to another, incoming December a collaborative album forged from the pairing of talents that is Tom Rogerson and Brian Eno. This is the rather distractive ‘motion in field’ – a track taken from a new album entitled ‘finding shore’. Heartbreakingly beautifully, the tender emotional touching and lightly toned expressions casting something of a lunar flutter by, a point where the outer spectrums of kosmische collide with a classicist eye, its delicate disarming crafted upon an orbital waltz motif not unlike sound wise, it has to be said, that instinctive ear for melody, composition and expression of both feeling and the tranquil as evidenced on releases bearing the distinctive name of Qluster upon their hide albeit here as though seasoned by the ice carved melodic intuition of an ‘at bracken’ era fortdax.
there’s no info accompanying this, but would I be right in saying that the IMPATV folk have branched out into video work, methinks so. To our own disappointment this somehow slipped beneath the net on original asking, by Vanishing this is the darkly weaved and brooding ‘the forger’, something which, unless our ears do deceive, had us much recalling Barry Adamson, it’s shadowy back drops seductively stirred and stilled in an edgy ghosting of chamber noir.
Staying with the IMPATV folk a little while longer, here’s another newly peeled video, well I say new, new to us since it’s been out since April time. This is Swaggerjack and the remote ‘river of sun’. this is in truth, is quite other worldly, something you might expect expect falling from one of those Radiophonic Workshop offerings from the 70’s, but listen closely and it’s the precise and patient ascent /descent of the silvery spectral shimmering orbs that makes for something of an eerie yet all the same, hypnotic listening, the pulsing motions evoking something stilled in reverence and yet chilled in an alien unknown.
Last one for the IMPATV collective for this missive at least, unless of course they see fit to batter our in box in all manner of strange loveliness. Can’t think or comprehend for the life of us, how we managed to miss this initially, but a little rooting around oft reaps rewards don’t you find. Here’s some footage from Thurston Moore earlier this year, in fact from the Paradox at the Peer Hat in Manchester in March cooking up some nifty mind-blowing jazz skronkness.
john peel corner ….
Pulled from their recently released ‘Exit Index’ set for Western Vinyl, the quite perfect ‘end’ the latest single from Grooms at times glowers like a dark hearted mirror opposite of the Flaming Lips’ ‘peace swords’, etched in a forlorn sighing, there’s a fracturing degrading of sound throughout as though the light is being slowly extinguished amid a swirling of untamed turbulence and a deep sense of losing grip. https://soundcloud.com/western_vinyl/end-from-exit-index-by-grooms
Staying with Western Vinyl, tripped across this, truth be we were blown away. This is from Lean Year from a self-titled album just out, this being the track ‘waterloo suns’. The press blurb mentions Karen Dalton, the reference very apt and far from lost on us because this track does tread upon a lineage that draws heavily to evoke a misty recall of Linda Perhacs and Susan Christie simultaneously linking the invisible dots to Laura J Martin. Weaved in a ghostly intimacy that pulls you near, amid its sparse tip toeing framing and willowy wood craft, a deliciously demurring and sighing folk spectral seductively strays occasionally visited by some niftily fraying and smoulder toned riff punctures. https://soundcloud.com/western_vinyl/lean-year-waterloo-suns
No one does immaculate, majestic or euphoric quite like the Nordic Giants, it’s as though they have a direct open channel to your soul. After what seems like an age, new sounds emerge without fanfare and flag-waving in the shape of ‘amplify human vibration’ from off which, we’ve found ourselves a tad captivated by ‘dystopia’. Not the brooding overcast goliath you might rightly expect of something titled such, but more an expressively radiant sonic Catherine wheel ablaze in glorious haloes of life affirming effervescence. A faultless exercise in the coalescing of melody, message and emotion into a stirring and jubilant prayer amid which a classicist craft rises phoenix like to the soft euphoric burn of riffing sky siren arpeggios. Utterly blissful. https://nordicgiants.bandcamp.com/
Stupidly good moving picture parade accompanying new lovely eggs whipper snappering caustic cuteness, it be called ‘I shouldn’t have said that’, it be out soon, we mentioned it here https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/the-lovely-eggs-6/ and here https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/the-lovely-eggs-7/ – any questions at the back.
Tour dates go like this ….
UK Tour Starts Thursday!
Thur 26 Oct – The Snooty Fox, Wakefield
Fri 27 Oct – Gorilla, Manchester
Sat 28 Oct – The Soundhouse, Leicester
Sun 29 Oct – The Actress and Bishop, Birmingham
Mon 30 Oct – The Portland Arms, Cambridge
Tues 31 Oct – Open Norwich, Norwich
Weds 1 Nov – Oslo, London
Thurs 2 Nov – Talking Heads, Southampton
Fri 3 Nov – The Haunt, Brighton
Sat 4 Nov – The Exchange, Bristol
Ah the Telescopes, much loved around these parts and with good reason, latest to their formidable shape shifting sound spectrum, a second full length this year in the guise of frankly superb ‘the stone tape’. This limited wax release heads out via yard press of Italy, mentions of it being made here https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/the-telescopes-5/ – it’s an album that sublimely distils all the various facets of the Telescopes consciousness paring them down into a returning six track head trip from oblivion. In short, easily their most accessible and immersive listening experience to date. From that set the Velveteen prowler ‘the desert in your heart’ darkly shimmers weaved upon a seductive ghost like mesmeric mantra.
Tour dates as follows ….
Oct. 25 London, UK – The Brewhouse
Oct. 26 Brighton, UK – Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar
Oct. 27 Hartlepool, UK – The Studio
Oct. 31 Bilbao, Spain – Kafe Antzokia
Nov. 1 Saragossa, Spain – Dabadaba
Nov. 2 Madrid, Spain – Moby Dick Club
Nov. 3 Leiria, Portugal – Texas Bar
Nov. 4 Lisbon, Portugal – Sabotage Club
Nov. 5 Badajoz, Spain – Mercantil
Nov. 6 Pamplona, Spain – Nebula Bar
Nov. 7 Barcelona, Spain – Sala Upload
Nov. 8 Tarragona, Spain – Sala el Cau
Nov. 9 Perpignan, France – Allez Viens
Nov. 10 Martigny, Switzerland – La Caves
Nov. 11 Bologna, Italy – Freakout
Nov. 12 Roma, Italy – Fanfulla
Nov. 15 Nuremberg, Germany – Z-Bau
Nov. 16 Halle, Germany – Hühnermanhattan
Nov. 17 Copenhagen, Denmark – Venue TBA
Nov. 18 Aalborg, Denmark – 1000Fryd
Nov. 19 Berlin, Germany – Badehaus Berlin
Nov. 20 Koln, Germany – Sonic Ballroom
Nov. 21 Paris, France – Supersonic
Nov. 22 Cardiff, UK – The Moon
Patiently practiced in the improvisional art form, heading out of the Care in the Community sound house shortly, ‘Improvisations’ finds past masters Thurston Moore and Charles Hayward collaborating together. Moore, most famous for heading up the colossus that was Sonic Youth, has in recent years strayed ever deeper into the terrains of noise, drone, minimalism and weird ear, an obsessive fan both as a collector and champion of the out there, left field and often left behind. Hayward, a career stretching back into the early 70’s, is blessed with a formidably envious CV, among those he has belonged – gong, blurt, Camberwell now, massacre and this heat. Due to hit record counters early December time, the set features seven untitled tracks recorded in one afternoon sitting earlier this year, from that set, a little footage revealing the slick symmetry cooked up by the duo, Moore’s fretwork harnessed from the very elements groans, glowers and gnarls like nothing we’ve heard since the days of Bill Horist releases frequently flying through our mail box.
Many thanks to Doug over at Finders Keepers for sending this out to us, there will be full mentions in days to come. For now, though, here’s the opening cut of a seriously fried lost gem from the deepest vaults of 70’s Turkish pop. This be Gökçen Kaynatan. a pioneering practitioner / visionary in early electronica blending freaked out trippy kaleidoscopic riffola to the track ‘Doğanın Ötesi’ – a cut peeled from a careful and lovingly compiled collection of recordings assembled by the FK folk simply called ‘Gökçen Kaynatan’. This trip pill sounds freakish even by today’s standards, how then it must have appeared way back in the mists of time, its subtle scuzzy and stoner detailing masking a curiously attractive fringe flipping futuro-funk grooving hinting of a wasted Funkadelic doing spacey psych shapes to John Cameron’s ‘psychomania’ soundtrack.
Truth be told, we just can’t get enough of this vintage soundtrack around these here parts. From Europaweite Aussichten and S.T.R.S.G.N, this is the original score for ‘the seeker’. Piloting terrains these days ventured by, say Pye Corner Audio, these three teaser tracks emerge ghosted in demurring dystopian dialects, part svelte and part ethereal, their sculpturing pays homage to a VHS golden age both brooding and beautiful yet cautioned in futuristic visions and what if nightmares, for here the chill formed elements of Vangelis and Tangerine Dream are harnessed with acute artistry and blended with the classicist shadow play of a classic era Goblin as evidence on ‘alternative theme #1’. https://wil-ru.bandcamp.com/album/the-seeker-original-soundtrack-recording
been an absolute age since pickled egg records troubled these pages, yet trouble they do with what sounds like a kooky corker if this here teaser track is anything to judge by. Pulled from an incoming album ‘tell a friend’, this is Tom O C Wilson with a track called ‘the ones’. A real scatter ball of a track that tiptoes, darts and delights with a peculiar sense of impish craftiness to forge something which distantly flutters into terrains occasioned by the likes of William D Drake albeit concocting distant homages to Vernon Elliott. That said, it’s the flightiness and airiness of its almost casual like playfulness that whispers softly in your ear subliminally compelling you to hit the repeat button if only to affirm your initial thoughts that it be clever, compositionally crooked and above all, clearly the work of a precocious talent.
Briefly back with ‘The New & Improved Active Listener Sampler’ which though mentioned in earlier despatches, we promised to revisit again and almost forget in all the chaos that is the Sunday Experience shambles for a sonic shed. Anyhow, we will, I promise, pick up the threads of this hopefully later in the week. For now, a little smattering of selected gems, this being the nearing of All Hallows what better way than for a spot of spooky sonic duck apple courtesy of Keith Seatman’s ‘odd in a nightcap and a cup’. It’s a track that locates you in a place one might suspect that most wouldn’t venture had they the choice, a delightful slice of ethereal disturbia, the misty melodies, a conspiratorial gathering of ghostly fairgrounds, chamber spectrals and unearthly utterances, rise like amorphous apparitions to instil a twin faceted sense of dread and enchantment. Much admired around these here parts, three dimensional tanx go all nuts down and far out, pressing down heavy on the warp factor settings for some seriously stoned and wigged out space boogie courtesy of ‘astral plane flight attendant’ – a mind mushrooming sortie that ought to be on the radar of folk who dig the tripping sounds happening out of the mighty Sulatron imprint. Last up for this brief stop by, east and west rendezvous’ ‘Colombo’ heads matters out to the resting groove though not before spraying your listening space in a beard forming lazy eyed and mellowed bliss kissed sleepy haze, imagine a super chilled and seriously laid back Insektlife Cycle tooting on the biggest of peace pipes and getting fried on a diet of softly stirred countrified psych mosaics spaced out on woozy 70’s MOR trims. https://theactivelistener.bandcamp.com/
Mentioned in passing somewhere here https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/gulp-5/ – the much adored Gulp’s divinely demurred ‘morning velvet sky’ gets the Beyond the Wizards Sleeve retuning, into the bargain the slickly svelte seasoning equips it with a floor throbbing love star pulsing hypno groove that seductively goes all cosmically trippy and mesmeric to emit head shrooming coolly coalescing celestial call signs whose shimmer toning raptures radiantly align into flight paths to interface with Jane Weaver. https://soundcloud.com/e-l-k-1/morning-velvet-sky-richard-norris-remix-radio-edit
Haven’t a clue where on earth you might pick up this if you so desire and we suspect you just might. Been out for a while, depressingly sneaking beneath our radar, till now that is. This is Willolux with the affectionately slow to burn ‘modern day maestro’ – a bit of a deceptive honey that swoons, swerves and steals glances to blossom warmly with a soft lilting seduction all the time alluringly shapeshifting between moments of delicate psychedelic phrasings and the cool smoulder of forlorn lazy eyed strum burns, quite gorgeous if you ask me. https://soundcloud.com/willolux/modern-day-maestro
Huh, not so much as a ‘hi, how are you’ in several years and then dropping two tracks in the space of a week or so. Truth be known, we’ve always had a soft spot for Our Glassie Azoth, our attention piqued by a short feature in the debuting issue of ‘Dukes of Scuba’ announcing his emergence from long hibernation courtesy of the obliquely disquieting ‘Sfy3_cyclereform’. Within its 18-minute sitting a sonic wormhole was found opening through which a portal to an underworld perilously poised between dream and disturbia welcomed. This name your price occurrence now comes accompanied by the shorter yet nonetheless equally stirring and sinister visitation ‘The joynt magnetism of three heavens’, again exemplary in poise, atmosphere and edginess, its chill formed chamber tonalities exacting a deeply isolating and skin prickling senses unravelling tension whose macabre beauty has something of a Hitchcock-ian impending dread attaching to it, very Stockhausen. https://ourglassieazoth.bandcamp.com/album/listen-to-the-voice-of-fire
Further readings here https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/our-glassie-azoth/
There’s been much gnashing of teeth occasioned by tears at the news that all 77 copies of the latest cassette from The House in the Woods has long since flown the coup, hopefully to loving homes. This, I don’t mind saying, is frankly immaculate. Side one of the release, titled ‘Paralysis’, if this doesn’t have you going wow whilst trying to pick up your jaw from the floor with heart a aching and tears a flowing, then we have to wonder, why are you bothering reading this, better still isn’t there another web site you can trundle off to in search of vacuous pop cheapness. Now I’m minded to say Antonymes might be your first reference marker and yes I know it’s 35 minutes in length, indeed a tall order in one serving, but believe you me, well worth the investment of time and undivided consideration, for here amid the crystalline frost flecked fissures an immeasurably beautiful euphoric radiance shifts into ascendancy amid the thawing classicist spectrals, as though some heavenly passing in eclipse formation, in its parting a vapour hissed void descends with the arrival of a despairing hush before the advent of a siren hail distantly moving through the foggy mists ushers in like some celestial occurrence. The effect overall, both majestic and church like, really is something else. https://genot.bandcamp.com/album/paralysis-live-at-silent-night-8
Everything about this scream fracturing, fraying and fragmenting, the way it sickly seesaws cowered in a shadowy edginess, all the time distressed, angular and decidedly unhinged, quite perfect. Us being typically awkward have opted for the sets sore thumb, the parting and punishing ‘petrol head’ from Thank’s ridiculously limited cassette through the wonderful Cruel Nature imprint of Newcastle entitled ‘Sexghost Hellscape’. This blighter instils a chill, both primal and primitive, its weary mantra culturing the kind of freeform feral disquiet that hints both of seriously scowling Boys Next Door and Virgin Prunes, in truth much reminding us of the Vukovar live experience, yet scratch away a little deeper and we’ve an overwhelming urge to go rooting out forgotten platters by the criminally neglected Pure Morning for favourable comparison. https://cruelnaturerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/sexghost-hellscape
staying with cruel nature a little while longer, here’s a little something that found itself snapped up of its limited 40 copy cassette pressing in the blink of an eye and rightly so, for Snakes Don’t Belong In Alaska’s ‘inauguration of a True Believer’ is a smoking 15 minute colossus of brooding cool. At once sultry, swarthy and hitherto epic, this monolithic titan fixed stares its dryly husked snaking mantra with the kind of primordial phrasing that might well have procured nods of approval from the mighty Godspeed not to mention, freewheeling with a withering intent into the shadowlands of the Cult of Dom Keller, the kind of mind fracturing heavy psych cooked up by the likes of the Heads and Mugstar, stunning if you ask me. https://cruelnaturerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/ancient-alien-tempel-ritual
you know, some releases are so good they write their own reviews. So easy for me this, new thing from Veda Rays, this be the irrefutably slinky and seductively sexy ‘false coloured eyes’. An echo from the 80’s sveltely distilling potently wired elements of forgotten B-Movie moments and weaving them into the kind of acutely primed prowling and pulsing pop persona that might hint it be the work of a Duran Duran dark twin. There’s no doubting by our reckoning, that it sits somewhere on a sonic axis somewhere between the criminally neglected Autodrone and the much-missed White Rose Movement.
Okay I’m hearing Nancy, are we agreed, just love the way this is about you like a rash, a stolen moment from the 60’s kissed with a feint sultriness and oozed in the delicate touching of smoking swoons that sound as though they are wanting of a Spaghetti Western stand off. Anyhow this be the stupidly cool ‘Count Your Blessings’ by Mattiel which is heading out of the esteemed Burger imprint. https://soundcloud.com/burgerrecords/mattiel-count-your-blessings-1
Just 10 of these knocking around, a twin track cassette heading out of Bristol’s Liquid Factory imprint, this particular release featuring the wilfully wild and untamed sounds of the big drum in the sky religion courtesy of ‘Super Panentheistic Freakout Infinity’. Now be honest, title alone and you’re thinking ‘I want some of that’ and you haven’t even heard a note, truth is neither have we. We joke of course, our heads being turned on to the fried and freakish manifestations scratching away at the tapes lead cut ‘Alpha’ – wonderfully cacophonic, caustic and dishevelled, for here a curdling stew gouged in feedback squall disfigures, fractures and splinters with wayward panache, freeform stoner freak noise, sometimes jazzy, sometimes psychy yet always noisy, totally damaged and reassuringly wired and weirded out, a bit like an impromptu Acid Mothers shamanic work out mid-way through one of their extended bonged out noodle doodles and something that ought to figure highly in the record / tape collections of those much subscribing to the various guises that form the extended Henry Cow family. https://liquidlibrary.bandcamp.com/album/super-panentheistic-freakout-infinity
Ready for some seriously tripping mind shrooming psych cosmica. In truth the swirling in our eyes hasn’t subsisted yet and we are still trying to climb off the ceiling and it’s all because of the Space Spectrum’s ‘the dark side of the red eyed queen’, quite frankly no need for bong pipes here, this blighter is smoking its own stuff and you can bet your backside it’s of an out of body grade. These dudes hail from Germany and appear, on the evidence of this, fully versed in bending matter, for this sub 17-minute titan sounds like some lost and forgotten private press from the 70’s distantly heading out influenced by say, the Brain / OHR imprints of the day. Fusing kraut, psych and space drone, these recordings, made in 2012, delicately drift out softly forming intricately weaved yarns of spectral webbing that slyly and amorphously wrap you tightly in a dreamy cocoon, all the time the sounds gathering in focus, definition and density subtly shifting through the gears forging wave after wave of shimmering ripples by way of their stratospheric siren signings to rise towards a point of critical mass therein dissipating and dissolving in washes of lunar vapour mists. Quite something all said. https://thespacespectrum.bandcamp.com/album/the-dark-side-of-the-red-eyed-queen
Incoming on the ever wonderful Sonido Polifonico imprint shortly, a teaser tasting of the demurring delights delicately dappling the grooves of James Green’s ‘the donkey jukebox’. A most alluring and affectionate autumnal bouquet turned in the softly enchanting homely calm of slowly yawning picturesque woodlands stirring to wake to the willowy weave of wheezing accordions. Utterly adorable and very much seasoned in the subtle soft sigh of a breezy Bucolic braiding.
Am I missing a trick here, I mean to say, why isn’t the Beaulieu Porch far more household name than some other less deserving souls currently frequenting the psychedelic universe. Blessed with a carnival of sound irrefutably aglow in the richest fineries of that olde peculiar known as English eccentrica and nursed on the vintage whimsy of Syd Barret and the surreal mushroom mosaics etched by the Beatles’ ‘magic mystery tour’, the Beaulieu Porch occupies a nether land sprayed in dreaming wonder, the recently released ‘keep on screaming’ download, free an all, sublimely blended the rarest of craft in pairing together elements of the Zombies, Nick Nicely and the Ooberman. ‘IS’ currently available with a limited accompaniment of signed copies of ‘the view from Gainsborough / of particles’ 7 inch, features this here nugget in waiting which goes by the name ‘golden face’ – think the Luck of Eden Hall, the Chemistry Set and Nick Nicely shoehorned into a finite studio space cooking up strange lysergic spell craft.
anyone fancy some dystopian VHS groove, with all this talk of Blade Runner make over’s and the adoration poured upon the sounds emanating from the Stranger Things universe, not to mention a certain John Carpenter retuning his finest sound track moments., here’s a little something then that ought to clip the ear of those faithful to the analogue cause. This is from Full Bucket, a cut by the name ‘fr33ze’ which I’m sure you’ll agree, appears to over the course of its near seven-minute stay, shoehorn enough tropes and familiar nods as to be the cause of a pub quiz question asking punters to identify all the elements. Now don’t read that to mean there’s no individuality here, there is, and in abundance, yet this cut straddles, so many references its head hurting as it astral glides by way of Vangelis and Tangerine Dream to the Orb and Orbital, stopping of momentarily at Faltermayer, Yellow Magic Orchestra and of course Mr Carpenter. https://soundcloud.com/full-bucket/fr33ze
I’m losing track of these things, so you might want excuse me a second, but if memory serves me rightly. ‘puritan’ be the third full length from the mighty Vukovar. Now we say ‘mighty’ deliberately and with good cause, because for all the hoo hah’ing around about certain bands circumnavigating post punk terrains, these dudes are the real deal. Fusing grace and grandeur with an edginess of character, their craft feeds and sucks upon a shadowy palette that nods obviously to a youthful Bunnymen (best evidenced on the fraying shadowy swing oozing through the grooves of ‘SSS’ nodding very much to a classic Echo b-sides from the early 80’s a la ‘broke my neck’ / ‘fuel’) and the Wild Swans, yet scratch a little deeper amid their psyche and the brooding shadow fraught persona momentarily peeking between the cracks and fractures, weaves a strange spellcasting whose musical tongue reaches and stretches far further than the austere chill of punks fall out party to encompass a gloomed passage into pop’s underworld. It’s something that presses tightly like a post Birthday Party Nick Cave, those of a mind to err towards disagreement might do well to head immediately to the heraldic folk fanfare of ‘once more for the puritan’ for illustration, for immersed in a genre defying vintage, a sweet though nevertheless dark macabre haunts here drawing a distant kinship to the Hare and the Moon. That said ‘puritan’ works on two levels, oozed in a thickening tension and gouged in weariness (the superbly coiling omnipresent chill of the dead heading ‘the leader is my light’ slyly snakes into the darkest depths of the Killing Joke psyche), by and large it hisses with a scratching discontent and savage restlessness, yet viewed in one sitting, pass by its smoke choked darkness and what emerges overall is a mass of sorts, the hymnal tonalities and that unerring sense of fatal hope gouge and etch a brooding magisterial aura across the grooves the likes of which not heard equalled since the days of Joy Division – see ‘this moment severed’. ‘puritan’ opens to perhaps Vukovar’s most oblique pop moment to date, stark and grand ‘ubermensch’ is perfectly poised all the time purring with close intimacy to peel resplendently with quiet euphoric majesty at the 4.33 point. ‘down in the willow garden’ based by all accounts on a traditional arrangement, strangely links distant arms with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s ‘architecture and morality’, an epitaph of sorts, the spectral shimmering and the ethereal chorals sorrowfully weeping stricken at the face of the apocalyptic visions as the stars decay to extinguish and to the deathly howl of a deafening silence everything dies. Already having served notice of intent, trailer single ‘the clockwork dance’ features here, a nose bloodying slap across the chops to their peers, I mean how can you live with this, I suspect the blighters have mastered the art of fusing the angular with the epic. Which leaves the hauntingly ornate oriental motifs decorating the eerily stunning and disquietingly beautiful ‘All the pretty little horses’ to tuck you up and bade farewell. Limited to just 50 numbered copies, on the evidence of this (‘puritan’) and trupa trupa’s second full length (‘Jolly new songs’), the benchmark has been notched up several settings.
Further readings ……
https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/vukovar-9 /
https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/vukovar-10/
https://vukovarbrutalisthouse.bandcamp.com/album/puritan
another release that’s so far managed to sneak to the blind side of our usual watchful radar, a little something sneaked out by Polypores a while back. Much gnashing of teeth to discover that this cassette release is long since sold out, a two-track affair, featuring ‘blooms’ on one side and ‘mire’ to t’other. It’s the latter that’s caught our ear though, a full on immersive hypno grooving mind rewire that astral glides through the AI consciousness cooking up newly birthed technoid sonic interfaces that communicate in pure binary waveforms, prog kosmische anyone. https://polypores.bandcamp.com/album/blooms-mire
while we are on the subject of Polypores here’s a little teaser video for a collaborative appearance by Thomas Ragdale and Polypores last month …. hopefully recordings from the event will at some point appear on the Polypores soundcloud page…..
Staying loosely connected to polypores a little while longer, he can be found heading up the production duties on this nifty outing by Tulketh. Entitled ‘difficult third EP’ we’ve been a tad taken by the cut ‘nitrous 2’ whose strangely subtronic swing and acutely funk struck grooving, not to mention the delightful way in which it morphs mushroom like from a remote starting point to blossom out sucking in every bit of free space to literally fill the canvas in a vibrant array of sonic lifeforms, in truth had us much minded of a mid-way point on the techno axis located between a playful Biosphere and a particularly loosely youthful Wagon Christ. https://tulketh.bandcamp.com/album/difficult-third-ep
could have sworn that we’d featured these folk in previous musings, appears we were wrong. Been out a while, alas sold out of its ridiculously limited cassette variant, this is Portland Vows with the post-apocalyptic ‘sun noise’ from their ‘play nicely’ outing earlier this year. Must admit to loving the stilled remoteness of this, both eerie and frosted, its minimal dusting hushed in an ice-cold edginess that appears to silently stir with odd detachment and ominous intent, its shadow fallen binary cold tech pulsars all the time shifting up on the tenseness quotient to draw something of a sonic kinship with the Truth About Frank. https://portlandvows.bandcamp.com/album/play-nicely
another from the Concrete sound house, this is the Newcastle based St James Infirmary who I suspect I might be right in saying is just one person, a certain G Lang. Again, super limited, ‘a heap of broken images’ released a month or three ago in a cassette edition of just 30 is graced in a bucolic vintage. We here have found ourselves somewhat smitten by the head bowed tearful tug of ‘view from the Litchen Window’ which aside being sumptuously crushed beneath a ghostly introspective beauty that hints of a L’Augmentation shimmied up to Pram revisiting lost 70’s soundtracks by Roy Budd, is similarly sprayed with the kind of shadowy noir seduction one might well associate with a 90’s Bristol scene. Add in oodles of spy themed phrasings and a haunting of spectral majesty and you have yourself something of a quietly unassuming gem. https://saintjamesinfirmary.bandcamp.com/album/a-heap-of-broken-images
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the sunday experience 