Last year I reviewed Seaworthy's 1897, in which I was fascinated by Cameron Webb's careful balance of field recordings and traditional musicianship, often working together to create a sound where nature itself was the musical instrument. Working with like-minded artist Matt Rösner, the two use a similar approach, and the result is a work of the same spirit, but a different sound.
Hotter than July. This week's episode has plenty of fresh new music by Marie Davidson, Kim Gordon, Mabe Fratti, Guided By Voices, Holy Tongue meets Shackleton, Softcult, Terence Fixmer, Alan Licht, pigbaby, and Eiko Ishibashi, plus some vault goodies from Bombay S Jayashri and Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin. Solstice moon in West Midlands, UK photo by James. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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The last Boduf Songs album featured a reproduction of a Zdzisław Beksiński painting. His fantastic art always conveys a sense of doom which reaches far beyond the borders of the picture itself. On this album, Mathew Sweet fully captures this same sense of unearthly displacement: "There’s no way out and no way home." The music of Boduf Songs has also been pushed further than before; while the dreamy campfire arrangements are still present there is also a massive diversion into previously unexplored (at least by Sweet and company) musical territories. The end result is the best Boduf Songs album yet.
It is easy (and not unreasonable) to critique Mark McGuire's voluminous solo output as excessive and somewhat redundant–no one needs every single album he releases.  However, it is worth noting that he has maintained a remarkably high (and still seemingly increasing) level of quality for an artist with over three dozens releases to his name and his "major" releases (like this one) tend to be especially good.  Get Lost explores a lot of ground that McGuire has already covered many times before, but he is still covering it beautifully and even exhibits some welcome signs of evolution.
What initially began as two 15 minute pieces on their first collaboration is now a sprawling four hour surround sound album. Sonically, the result is consistent with the first two installments, leaning more towards Andrew McKenzie's dark, impenetrable drone than the skittering, fragmented rhythms of Sean Booth and Rob Brown.
Tietchens, one of my favorite sound artists, approaches this new album from a different tact than his others. Rather than composing with new sounds, he instead chose to recycle existing material and recordings through various processing techniques, some receiving up to ten reinventions before completion, resulting in one of his most sparse, yet diverse works.
When Michael Gira closed the door on Swans over ten years ago, the title of this album spelled out clearly that he was done with the concept. Swans have always taken perversity in their stride and the perversity of a (then) final, live album being their masterpiece fits comfortably within my view of their work. It is easy to scoff now and talk about the financial benefits of reunions but it is obvious from every note on this double live album that the sheer energy required to fuel the fires of a group like this could not last forever. Changes of life pushed him away from Swans and now a similar situation has caused him to abandon The Angels of Light in order to pick up the flame that burned at its brightest here.
As labels large and small continue to mine the dormant backcatalogs of forgotten post punk artists, hoping to cash in on the continuing dance punk fad, it hardly fazes me that Ike Yard, a group name-checked in Simon Reynolds' latest book, would get this type of revisionist treatment.
