Moon Orchids delivers stately country rock ballads that explode into squalls of guitar noise, shards of trumpets embedded in their Crazy Horse-like roar. This first full-length, following the Kalamazoo, Michigan-based band’s Skin/Skein EP and a single, evokes Neil Young certainly but also the Band and, in quieter moments, Bill Callahan.
That Callahan reference derives in part from bandleader Jacob Simon’s hollowed out tenor, but also from his offhand grace with lyrics. The words are simple and straightforward, but they slant sideways revealing mystery beneath the skin. In “Gospel Tree,” one of this disc’s best cuts (Simon liked it enough to include it twice), the image of castrati monkeys singing falsetto is striking, this tossed off couplet is maybe…
Category: ***
There was a time, around the start of this millennium, when rock music got its act together and offered something new and refreshing, something satisfying and so much more than the usual style over substance that the genre is known for. Bands like The Strokes, The Killers and Arctic Monkeys arrived on the scene and started delivering music woven from both style and substance. Listening to “America’s Favourite Pastime” makes you think this could be the opening sonic salvos being fired for another wave of such greatness. And, of course, the secret to such success was that those bands were more than just rock acts. Sure, the music kicked some arse, but it was also forged of indie coolness and no small amount of pop accessibility too.
A staggering 36 years into their mission to explore strange new sounds, to boldly embed themselves inside rewardingly thorny knots of riff, Brighton-based mavericks I’m Being Good’s fascination for the delectable complexities within subterranean noise thrives unabated.
Their ninth full-length is the sound of insatiable curiosity on the prowl, an exercise in just how many dangerous twists and occasional jump-scares this kind of post-math, post-prog, post-post-rock music can encompass. Spaceshitter’s not simply out to unnerve you – that would be ungentlemanly, and the group have plenty more ideas in their quiver. But this is definitely a record that savours every curveball it sends out there.
Like forebears Polvo and contemporaries…
Caspar Brötzmann, founder and leader of the avant-rock power trio Massaker, has been away from the spotlight for a while without being inactive. The band went on hiatus after releasing five glorious albums between 1986 and 1994, and touring the globe several times.
They continued to play live occasionally, but weren’t interested in recording. The guitarist recorded an album with his father Peter Brötzmann’s tentette (The März Combo Live in Wuppertal), issued three duo albums with F.M. Einheit, Page Hamilton, and Robin Guthrie, and did session work. In 2013, he formed the power trio Nohome and issued an eponymous album. In 2017, Brötzmann teamed with bassist Massimo Pupillo and drummer Alexandre Babel for…
Not since Cities and Memory’s The Chimes has an album delved so deeply into the resonance of church bells; and Campana Sonans (Ringing Bell) has the dual advantage of being a single-artist LP and a physical release. One may even purchase a printed stained glass tote bag to carry one’s record (plus 19 more)!
After relocating from LA to Berlin in 2019, Jake Muir became enamored with the sound of the city’s church bells. This led him on a Europe-wide trek as he began to record and examine the vast differences between sonorities and approaches, most especially the staid practices of Germany versus the melodic sequences of England.
But of course the album is not just bells; Campana Sonans is a reflection of history and…
Even if you are the type of person not to overthink the notion that it should be “Irish goodbye” instead of “Irish exit” — not for nothing, but The Temple Bar can’t sufficiently resolve its origins — in the very specific case of Tantrums in Tandem, it’s still something of a misnomer. Ryan Palmer’s first full-length under this alias follows an accelerated origin of its own that’s resulted in a hello denizens of any nation could recognize and one of the year’s better indie rock debuts.
Palmer is an artist on the ascent, but he hasn’t come from nowhere. The Marine Park resident has spent time playing in Brooklyn bands that include Screwbawl, Wince, Best Girl and Kid Nice, most of them associated with the mischievous Cropsey Records (aka “Brooklyn’s…
Throughout her debut record, Things I’ve Said Before, classically trained folk musician Remi Goode relies solely on a nylon-stringed guitar. While this is not unheard of for country and folk musicians — Willie Nelson has been playing one for 55 years — it’s certainly not the norm nowadays. But the choice gives rich warmth and softer tones to an already ethereal sound.
The nine-track record – the recording of which was split between various bedrooms and a proper studio – has an intimacy to it that feels almost intrusive. With “Don’t Drive Me Home,” the set begins on a mellow note — acoustic guitar and soft violin framing Goode’s warm, confident vocals in a bittersweet song of conflicted love. While not every song that follows is as placid,…
When solo and collaborative releases are counted, the discography Ian Hawgood‘s amassed is nothing short of staggering. What makes it all the more impressive is that, as this latest release shows, he’s still capable of creating vital and imaginative work unlike anything he’s produced before. One of the ways he accomplishes that is by devising ever new strategies for creating material, in the case of Savage Modern Structures the sound-generating gear he used, specifically guitar and that beloved prog standby, mellotron. It’s all Hawgood, though in October 2024 he and Will Bolton brought the album to its final form by using the AKG BX20 spring reverb units at Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm to give the material extra analog warmth and organic reverb.
French musician Sébastien Roux is an inveterate sonic explorer, utilizing an engineering background in computer signal processing to develop compositions, multi-channel sound installations, radio pieces and site-specific performances. Over the course of the last 20 years, he has released recordings like More Songs and Quatuor which use the individual parts of Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 10” as the basis for an electroacoustic exploration of form and timbre.
Inevitable Music #5 is a sonic translation of Sol Lewitt’s instructions for wall drawings composed for the Dedalus Ensemble while Musiques D’ordinateur is computer music developed from formal investigations into algorithmic procedures. Roux’s most recent release, Les disparitions…
Some musicians get their first glimpse of celebrity, flinch in the glare of the spotlight, and quickly burrow their way back underground. But Duncan Sumpner, you suspect, knew from the beginning that fame – even fame on a very small and grassroots indie level – was not for him.
A schoolteacher from Oughtibridge, a residential village on the outskirts of Sheffield, Sumpner has released a string of records under the name Songs of Green Pheasant without ever quite stepping into the light. The project’s origin story speaks volumes about his elusive approach. A demo that Sumpner sent to Fat Cat in 2002 became a fixture on the label’s office stereo. But when they decided to get in contact to offer him a record deal, the email bounced back, and it took them…
Multiple recordings are available featuring Melbourne guitarist Cam Butler with ensembles of varying sizes — in addition to the eleven solo instrumental albums he’s issued, Butler’s also contributed to other artists’ projects — but there’s something undeniably special about one featuring him alone. In that context, his command of the instrument and associated gear is especially apparent, especially when it’s not put to self-indulgent or egoistic ends but instead used to realize the artistic expression for a given piece. It also allows his singular tone to be heard clearly and for the listener to better appreciate the textures he coaxes from his Gibson Les Paul.
Being an album of unaccompanied pieces, Spirits Flying Home is naturally intimate and…
Príncipe have been championing the music coming out of Lisbon’s suburbs for the better half of two decades. The dominating style has been batida, a mashup of two Angolan rhythms — kuduro and kizomba — bound together by whatever sonic glue a producer sees fit. Following the success of batida’s first wave, an increasing number of producers have begun experimenting with this style of music; despite the label’s best efforts, it’s becoming nearly impossible for them to house this ever-expanding pool of talent.
Não Estragou Nada is Príncipe’s third compilation and, at 37 tracks long, its greatest. It features music spanning two generations of producers: 19-year-old wonderkid Helviofox shares the roster with OG batida and kuduro producer…
There’s some search for definitions needed here. Of course, both OdNu and Ümlaut are monikers, in this case referring to New York artists Michel Mazza and Jeff Düngfelder.
Then we come to Mitochondria Johatsu, the title of their second joint project. Using two separate terms, they seem to want to create a new one – mitochondria are small organelles found in nearly all eukaryotic cells, often referred to as the “powerhouses of the cell” because they generate most of the cell’s energy. On the other hand, johatsu is a Japanese term for people who vanish from their lives without a trace, often to escape shame or stress.
In many ways that combination of terms does seem to define the music Mazza (electric guitar,…
Experimental is a tag that can scare off listeners. Albums with this label can sound like something from the research and development wing of music: abstract, difficult or even weird. At first glance, Friendship Traces by Steven Lambke and Jimmie Kilpatrick looks like one of these records: it’s based around synths, drum samples and a melodica. There’s nary a guitar in sight. But right from the get-go, this duo shows themselves as open-minded, warm, and friendly.
Friendship Traces is a shade under half an hour long and the result of sessions of playing, overdubbing and tape manipulation by two Canadians: Lambke, a Canadian singer and guitarist, and indie musician Kilpatrick, formerly known as Shotgun Jimmie. Both have…
There is no warning and no chance to prepare. The instant you press play on Ash Fure’s Animal, a mass of thundering sub-bass hits you like a predator pouncing on its prey. With consciousness too slow to react, some ancient, primal region of the brain lights up. Suddenly, you find yourself in fight or flight mode, pumped with adrenaline, heart racing and palms sweating.
The US experimental musician and composer has dedicated a significant part of her career to exploring the physicality of music and our instinctual feedback to sound, with The Force of Things: An Opera for Air (2014–2022) and Hive Rise (2020) tackling the human body’s relationship with fear and the palpable effect that sonic waves have on the psyche. However, none…
Typically, when an artist stays out of our view, every public gesture he or she does make is loaded with extra significance. Think of the ways each demo, cover, or bit of extramusical trivia is instantly subsumed into the canons of D’Angelo, Fiona Apple, or Frank Ocean.
But given how Corbin, who drifted from SoundCloud stardom to deeper recesses of the internet, has released music — first under a different, instantly infamous stage name, and then in intermittent bursts that suggest a true disregard for self-promotion and self-mythologizing — the temptation is to receive his songs as a series of experiments, tips of an iceberg that will languish in a Google Drive folder until it melts.
The grey cover of his new album, Crisis Kid,…
Vazz formed in Glasgow during the early ’80s, and initially consisted of vocalist/lyricist Anna Howson and multi-instrumentalist Hugh Small. With Howson’s ethereal harmonies floating over Small’s sparse drum machines and mysterious guitar hooks, the duo’s music fell somewhere between coldwave, post-punk, and dream pop. The five-song mini-album Your Lungs and Your Tongues (released in 1986 by Cathexis Recordings, also home to records by Fini Tribe and Pink Industry) was one of a handful of vinyl releases the pair made before splitting up near the end of the decade. As Small resurfaced during the 2010s with solo piano and ambient compositions, Vazz’s scant ’80s discography was rediscovered and revived in several different configurations…
It’s been a year and a half since BASIC first emerged out of a bare bones set up of two guitars (Chris Forsyth and Nick Millevoi) and a drum machine. That early experiment, inspired by the 1984 collaboration between Robert Quine and Fred Maher, put a boxy, machine-drilled framework around open-ended guitar jam. Mikel Patrick Avery tended the rough propulsion of the drum machine, enriching its stutter with additional improvised percussion, while Forsyth and Millevoi slashed away at one another on conventional and baritone guitar. It was, at once, disciplined and free-spirited, and you can see why it appealed to Forsyth. Christian Carey reviewed the full-length debut last year, writing “With a rattling drum pattern, synth lines embellished by bent notes…
San Diego in the ’90s was a great place to be if you were a weird punk kid. A conservative Navy town on the surface, the hardcore underground churned out innovative bands at a furious clip, with the bleeding edge of the scene revolving around Gravity Records and its standard-bearers, Heroin and Antioch Arrow. Balancing nihilistic fervor with a ragged poetic sensibility, these bands transmuted post-adolescent angst into timeless invectives against boredom and apathy. After Heroin broke up in 1993, guitarist Scott Bartoloni joined with vocalist Matt Goldsby, bassist Ryan Noel, and drummer Mario Rubalcaba to form Clikatat Ikatowi. Combining the intensity of hardcore with the epic soundscapes of local noise rock exemplars Drive Like Jehu, Clikatat Ikatowi quickly…
Despite his relatively young age, Kory Reeder has already produced well over a hundred scores, the earliest dating from 2017 and the Covid years being particularly fertile for him. He has composed in a range of genres which include large ensemble, soloist with orchestra, choral, chamber (5+ players), quartets, trios, duos, solo, open ensemble pieces, art songs, stage music, electronic music, field recordings. In addition, Homestead is his second album release on Another Timbre, his first on that label having been entitled Codex Vivere recorded in December 2021 by Apartment House. Prior to those releases, Reeder’s first album Love Songs, Duets had been released on the prestigious Editions Wandelweiser Records. Two other Reeder albums have been released…