While Tuareg guitar music continues to gather acclaim through groups like Tinarawen, the wider context of poverty and rebellion in Niger and Mali remains obscured from the outside world. In response, Sublime Frequencies continues its vinyl series documenting Tuareg music in the Nigerian city of Agadez.
Give us an hour, we'll give you music to remember. This week we bring you an episode with brand new music from Softcult, Jim Rafferty, karen vogt, Ex-Easter Island Head, Jon Collin, James Devane, Garth Erasmus, Gary Wilson, and K. Freund, plus some music from the archives from Goldblum, Rachel Goswell, Roy Montgomery. Rubber ducks and a live duck photo from Matthew in the UK. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Loren Chasse is a busy man. A founding member of the famed Jewelled Antler Collective, he also takes part in projects as varied as the delicate dronescapes of Thuja and the woodsy pop of The Blithe Sons, both of which also feature label co-founder Glenn Donaldson. When he sets out on his own though, Chasse opts for the Of moniker, and it is in this habitat that he seems most at ease. Combining ambient subtlety with a dense and immersive drone aesthetic, Chasse creates initimate sonic structures that seem to resonate from the earth itself.
Apparently the first time around just wasn't good enough. Rune Grammofon, in celebration of another five years of great music, has decided to rerelease another gorgeous hardcover art book with a two CD compilation for perusal accompaniment. Initially planned as a revision of the original and now legendarily hard to track down first edition, the second edition instead scrapes the palette clean and builds from the ground up with a new design layout and art by Kim Hiorthøy and 25 mostly exclusive tracks from many of the label's favorites.
Released in the spring of last year, this album was well received but didn’t get enough lasting credit to make it into the annual retrospectives that followed. Listeners hungry for a new take on loop based ambiance should take notice, since Ecstatic Sunshine bucks the plodding and formless conventions of lesser artists working in the genre.
Mirroring the economy, Larsen appear to be undergoing a bit of a recession following many years of seemingly unstoppable growth. On their difficult 8th album (just ask Black Sabbath about that), there is less consistency than there has been in their previous releases. There are still some fantastic moments on this album (not least some wonderful parts with guest vocalist Little Annie Bandez) but they are tempered by some lacklustre pieces which unfortunately drag the album down a notch.
Many (if not most) artists get maybe two albums out before falling into a rut and losing whatever magic they had. In the case of Stars of the Lid, the opposite occurred with their creativity only truly taking momentum a couple of albums into their recording career. This reissue of their debut shows the initial staggering steps that would eventually grow into the sure and elegant music that the duo now creates. This album may be patchy but it is here that the foundations for the unique Stars of the Lid sound are laid down.
It is little surprise that French electroacoustic composer Berangere Maximin's musical path has consisted of both conservatory studies under Denis Dufour and stints in rock and world bands. Her solo debut consists of six works that expound upon the tape manipulations of Pierre Schaefer, but whose sense of drama maintains her contact with the popular musical forms that she has partaken in.
Australian laptopper Mark Mitchell has made an insanely ambitious and hyper-literate psych-pop concept album. Unfortunately, it is also a veritable volcano of twee.
This is space opera at its finest. (As in the subgenre of science fiction literature where tales of romance and dare doing heroes fight power hungry villains and alien monsters, all set against the backdrop of the stars.) There are no ear splitting sopranos singing in German on this record, but sultry vocals cooed into a microphone over gorgeous synth lines and hypnotic guitar riffs. This was the perfect band to sit down and listen to as I waited for my flight to arrive inside a dimly lit spaceport bar.
Colossal Yes is the quixotic side project of Comets on Fire drummer Utrillo Kushner. According to Kushner, this album was inspired by New Zealand indie rock bands like The Clean, The Verlaines, and The Tall Dwarves. Oddly, this influence appears to have had only a marginal effect on the band's sound, as they still most closely resemble the mellow '70s rock of The Band.
