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Plain ride is a band including Janne Westerlund, a member of Musique Machine faves Circle, as well as Pharoah Overlord, Chainsmoker and Sweetheart. Like Circle, they take off in different genre trajectories. Yet where Circle go everywhere from prog-rock to Kraut rock, drone and even a bit of metal edge, Plain Ride add more prominent late sixties 60's to mid seventies American rock and folk influences.
With a name like Various you kind of hope they came upon the notion as a way to piss off people with I-pods, in which case I raise a glass in appreciation of their revolution against post-modern musical zapping. Not only that but they in The World is Gone have produced a searingly cutting edge fusion of dubstep and moody folk to while away the nights of urban (perhaps urbane?) isolation.
Underwater Passage is built around sounds recorded from an abandoned telephone cable some 10km under the sea south of Livorno Italy. This may suggest we’d be in either dark ambient or field recording territory, but this is surprisingly is fairly varied both in sonic emotion and sound movement.
This new double disk set from Japanese psychedelic rock/ folk/ out-there group shows them offering up one sprawling, crawling, jammed- out and ominous psychedelic rock cd long track. And 8 smaller tracks that dip into psychedelic ritual music, improvised music, lo-fi dada electronics,avant- jazz and all manner of fun & chaos.
As its title suggest this is made up purely of field recordings taken from various jungle areas in and around Thailand, over a four year period. The field recordings are left as recorded and tamper free, and I have to say this is one of the most replayble, strange, haunting and rewarding field recordings disk I’ve come across.
Though his career as sound artists spans over 30 years with collaborations with the likes of Michael Nyman, Colin Potter and Keith Rowe along the way, amazingly this is Phil Mouldycliff’s first solo album of sound works. The six tracks on offer here fall somewhere between ambient, drone and haunting and sometimes a little quirky sound art.
After the release of their superb second album and one the ambient highlights of last year Deep Frieze, it seems only fitting that Cold Spring should revisit & reissue the projects first album from 2001 here presented with enhanced artwork and extra track.
Here english Ambient/ slowed post-rock guitar and synth duo return with their second releases on Important after the simply stunning rural tinged 'Honey Rose' ep from last year. This double disk set brings together a disk of live recordings of new material and an remix/ re-contextualized versions of the live tracks by the likes of Robert Horton, Keith Berry, Gregg Kowalsky, Astral Social Club.
Furnace is collaboration between two finish sound artists; No Xivic who’s know for his dark electro-acoustic soundscapes and Gelsomina who’s an prolific and inventive noise artist. Furnace offers up one long collaborative track and one each solo track- as a whole the album shows some surprising moments both structurally and sonically.
Para Pacem- Para Bellum is a curious, original and cinematic rich mix of requiem masses, intricate piano beauty & discord, doomy organ unfold, industrial beat flavoured 80’s synth sound tracking, electro acoustic bounding & funeral ambience.
Each of the four tracks presented here are named after letters Kafka wrote to his Father, his sister Ottla and two women in his life, Felice and Milena. I will not pretend to be a kafka scholar, as I've only read some of his letters to his father, along with his other classics, the Metamorphosis (and other stories) and the Castle. I don't intend to expound greatly upon my impressions of his literature, mostly because I don't feel that I'm necessarily qualified, as I'm no critic or expert on the written word. I'm simply a casual, sometimes avid reader. But it would be negligent of me not to at least attempt to tie together the work of Kafka to the music presented on this album.
Joanne Robertson makes lo-fi, mostly acoustic/or stripped down electric gitar mix of folk, punk, grunge that’s often very haphazard and discordant, though it's not with-out it’s own awkward and pained charm. The lighter is her debut album
This is a highly welcome reissue of Circle's first album from 1994, which I’m sure many won’t have heard before. It has all the familiar Circle elements in place i.e. locked rocking grooves, musically genre pick ‘n’ mix and general adventurous, playful vibe. But with a more indie/ post- rock feel to the tracks, also the songs are in a smaller bite size than their later sprawling work- filling here 70 minutes with 15 tracks.
This is a superb, varied and near faultless double disk compilation from the German/ Austrian Percht/ Ahnstern label, which I’m sure long term MM readers will have heard me rave about before. This is an ideal primer for the uninitiated and a welcome back to old friends alike as it a mixes together already released material and with exclusive material for this compilation.
This is a new American folk & stripped-down blues/ rock project from Geoff Farina(Karate, Secret Stars) that brings to mind a more wordy and serious take on some of Jonathan Richman work, who’s know to most for his comic/tragic chorus work on the soundtrack for Farrelly brothers There’s Something About Mary.
Lumrapideco presents 6 tracks of sometimes quirky, sometimes windswept and often sprinkled with noise instrumental music that falls some where between experimental/ space rock, folk, retro electronica and drone craft. Utlizing electric guitar, guitar synth, synths, percussion & voice textures.
Fish forms brings together three pieces of edgy & rewarding improvising, with each piece full of its own depth, surprise and effective atmosphere.
Though the production & feel of The Principle of Cosmic instability is extremely nasty and lo-fi there some very dramatic, grimly tuneful and well put together slabs of black metal craft going on here that have an added atmospheric edge with the recorded in a steel crypt vibe.
Fractured offers up 11 shots of dark /edgy cinematic electronica & drum ‘n’ Bass with the odd hint of metallic & dub tendencies here and there too.
Bonnou Machine is a just over 40 minute billow nuclear storm of an industrial noise, jagged electro discharged and metallic sci-fi dread spat from the fevered mind of cut-up cyber punk writer and noise artist Kenji Siratori.
After the folk meets noise,meets bizarre sample charming yet chaotic debut from 2006 by this young American three piece. Here they return with a slightly more polished yet still chaotic second album which brings together a haphazard, often epic and soaring mix of post-rock, ambience and noisy/ emotional charged vocals.
Named after a rare and threatened animal, the musical project Snöleoparden shares a uniqueness with its counterpart among the animals.
The Tangent are unashamedly Prog Rock as one could imagine with nods towards the likes of Pink Floyd, Yes and Rush. With some very nice jazzy edges, a few more modern electronica touches here and there too.
Vigil is a highly polished and often tuneful collection of sombre, forest bound folk songs, that are striped down yet darkly passionate with most of the tracks consisting just of layered acoustic guitar playing, kettle drums and sombre, deep and dark melodic german vocals.