This week's series of episodes features images from Asheville, NC, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene this past week.
Please consider donating to the various organizations in and around the area.
Episode 714 features music by Pan•American, Maria Somerville, Patrick Cowley, The Gaslamp Killer and Jason Wool, Der Stil, Astrid Sonne, Reymour, Carlos Haayen Y Su Piano Candeloso, Harry Beckett, Tarwater, Mermaid Chunky, and Three Quarter Skies.
Episode 715 has Liquid Liquid, Kim Deal, Severed Heads, Los Agentes Secretos, mHz, Troller, Mark Templeton, Onkonomiyaki Labs, Deadly Headley, Windy and Carl, Sunroof, and claire rousay.
Episode 716 includes Actors, MJ Guider, The Advisory Circle, The Bug, Alessandro Cortini, The Legendary Pink Dots, Chihei Hatakeyama and Shun Ishiwaka, Arborra, Ceremony, Ueno Takashi, Organi, and Saagara.
In 2013 my wife Gaia was pregnant. We were then waiting for our first born to come, expected for November of that year. A few little obstacles and troubles occurred during the nine months, so my anxious nature at the time generated in me the need to somehow express the feelings in a record, where I conveyed the worries that a father, especially a musician that needs his own moments for playing, may have in terms of an expected potential future lack of time and energies.
I also decided to involve fellow musicians I got to know at the time, like Maurizio Abate (guitar), Enrico Coniglio (guitar and organ), with whom afterwards I would have made full albums - but you can find here the first traces of our collaboration. There were Andrea Serrapiglio (cello) and Cristiano Lupo (bass), that I knew for quite some time, and featuring female voices. I asked Dominique Van Cappellen-Waldock (that I discovered through her marvellous presence on a Doug Sharin solo album) if she wanted to sing on a track, and she did, providing her own lyrics. The American singer Jenny Oakley, aka Empty Vessel Music, did the same on track one, as well as a glitching sample from Nicola Ratti is also featured.
The central piece of the whole album can be considered “Family Man”, a sort of cover from a song by Black Flag, totally reversed by my wife Gaia Margutti. She re-interpreted the lyrics her own way, and she performed it in an unforgettable session of home recordings, with my daughter Olivia, now finally born, hanging from her neck.
Indeed, the album took quite a long time to be made, and then the ‘wait’ was over, transformed in the new life we were all three now living together.
The second half pieces, actually a long track sliced in three parts, are dedicated to this transition period, where also tensions in the family are occuring. The tracks are built on a piano melody provided by the Japanese artist, Mujika Eisel, that collaborated with me on a previous album.
Now it is 2019, and not only is Olivia 5 years old, but also Nora was born, in March 2017. This album, is now dedicated to both of them, and can in a away, be perhaps considered a bit too ‘direct’, (as a Henry Rollins song!) but it’s for me a sincere expression of feelings and sensations. The concept of waiting can be interpreted in different ways, and anyone can ask himself what the two dogs in the front cover (kindly provided by the Italian photographer Adriano Zanni) are expecting to come.
Anyway, the album is finally released, thanks to the generous and neverlasting effort of US label Infraction, available in the three formats of LP/CD/DL, with an additional 7” containing two outtakes entitled “After the Wait” (exclusive to physical formats only), when the new life was becoming a new set of routines.
I even made a video in 2018, featuring - guess who? - my family. It can be seen on Infraction Bandcamp and on my website as well.
I hope that this long pathway of experiences, feelings, music and visual art will be shared with careful listeners all over the world. - Matteo Uggeri
Album editions :
100 copies of clear blue water LP + 7 inch (after the wait)
150 copies of black vinyl 180 gram edition
Each LP is housed in a Stoughton tip-on style heavy sleeve. The 7" is a clear vinyl.
250 copies of full-length CD. The first 100 copies will contain a bonus CDR with 2 exclusive tracks (entitled 'After the Wait'). The CD will be housed in a Stoughton style mini-lp gatefold sleeve.
"Spiritual Noise" is how My Cat Is An Alien baptized their own music and intermedia work at the beginning of their third decade of activity.
Volume 2 in the ongoing "Spiritual Noise" series is a further step ahead in the unheard new music territories of MCIAA.
Released on the new Antigravitational imprint, the record label & multimedia platform created and curated by MCIAA and set up with gallerist and publisher Marco Contini, the album was designed following principles of seriality and of installation art: the vinyl LP takes the shape of a multimedia object which displays a proper artbook mounted on the cover jacket, giving access to cinematic poetry films and extra contents for a fully immersive experience.
A year in the making in complete secrecy, the intention was to spring The Moon Cracked Over Albion without any warning or preview upon an unsuspecting World. In fact, personal anticipation scuppered that plan and here is the finished article a little ahead of time. Conceived and recorded in a nation (a World?) so tragically divided, it could fall apart, it's hoped that just a few seeds of hope and optimism can be sown over the course of the time you'll spend in this peculiar World.
The CD is in production right now. An expanded vinyl edition is planned for early 2020. Please note that Track 10 is the exclusive 4th side for the coming vinyl edition.
Selected Tracks 2 is a double-album with a new selection of tracks recorded by Esplendor Geométrico between 1995 and 1998. Ten of the thirteen tracks appear for the first time on vinyl. Some rarities, only published in very limited CD-R during the nineties and without distribution, are also included.
E.G. are pioneers and masters of rhythmic industrial music since their formation in Madrid in 1980, enjoying an international cult status for decades. During the nineties, they developed their unique and unmistakable style, influenced by the new synthesizers of those years and digital technology.
In this double-album, we find machine and hypnotic rhythms, metallic sounds, tribal sonorities, distortion, collages with voices ..., which also show their influence on the current trends of industrial techno. The songs have been chosen from albums like Polyglophone (released only on CD in 1997), EN-CO-D-eSPLENDOR (published in Japan-only on CD in 1998), and exclusive live tracks that do not have studio versions: "Al Asalto," "Nuevo Frente," "Elektrozavod," or "Ciudad Électrica." Also included are three tracks from the Syncrotron EP (Hymen 1988).
"When I think of the word Industrial... I think machines, gears, factories with tall smoke stacks. Esplendor Geométrico means exactly that to me. Hard minimal rhythmic machine music that grinds like a huge device that is cutting metal girders for large buildings. Though most would quote bands like Throbbing Gristle, Neubauten & Coil as being the truest form of industrial, the music of Esplendor by far best describes the word 'industrial' when applied to music." (Adam-X, 2004)
Stephen Mallinder, co-founder and frontman of the iconic Cabaret Voltaire, has returned with his first solo album in over 35 years: Um Dada. Laced with leftfield house and cut-up sound collages, Um Dada is a melding of energies that are an exercise in simplicity and motion. Sincere, playful realism that beckons your body to move, always reminding you to never take yourself too seriously without forfeiting your agency.
While steering Cabaret Voltaire through the 1980’s, Mallinder was already busy piecing together his first solo album entitled “Pow Wow”, which would help define Mallinder’s interest in the more leftfield electro sounds shaping England at the time. It was this diverse and abstract hybrid that helped inspire generations of artists and musicians through steeping raw machine funk within the whimsical and absurdist ideology.
Since the release of “Pow Wow” in 1982, Mallinder continued his pioneering work with Cabaret Voltaire, as well as recording and touring with his electro projects Wrangler, Creep Show, Hey Rube, Kula, and Cobby & Mallinder. In addition to his non-stop schedule in electronic music, his professional life as a journalist, broadcaster, producer and now a professor of Digital Music & Sound Art at the University of Brighton, has lead Mallinder to a unique point in his career. Most in his position would be caught up in rosy retrospection, but Mallinder himself says, “There’s too much digital finger-licking right now; every thought and desire at the turn of a dial… well a click of the mouse. And there’s a giddy, false nostalgia about the analogue past. Sorry to burst your bubble but the truth of history is more mundane: practical, pragmatic...Um Dada is about ‘play’ – cut and paste, lost words, twisted presets, voice collage, simple sounds – things that have been lost to technology’s current determinism. Let the machines talk to each other, let them dance .. they lead, we follow.”
Um Dada opens up with the exact machine-led surrealism that Mallinder recommends in “Working (You Are)”. A thick, stripped back dance floor groove provides the ideal foundation for Mallinder’s eccentric vocal cuts. The frisky chops present an almost twisted irony, subtly bringing to mind the role we’re all forced to play as just another cog in the ever grinding capitalist machine of life. Yet, somehow, the listener is left feeling optimistic. A prime example of simplicity at work.
Tracks such as “Satellite” give a skillful illustration of Mallinder’s adeptness with his musical expertise while preserving his core historical context as only simple reference. The underlying bassline and percussion, coupled with the floating melodies and airy vocal refrain disclose the vulnerabilities of love and loss without a hint of irony or nostalgia.
Um Dada is mischievously idealist, however never loses touch with reality. Offering structure while simultaneously dismantling any and all preconceptions. The spirit of sincerity that sustained Cabaret Voltaire’s lengthy career is abundantly present within founder Stephen Mallinder’s journey through his own whimsical utopian consciousness and staking claim to an identity that is solely his own.
1. Working (You Are) 2. Prefix Repeat Rewind 3. It's Not Me 4. Um Dada 5. Satellite 6. Colour 7. Flashback 8. Robber (bonus track) 9. Hollow (bonus track)
Heaven is a work of contemporary church music. Centrally occupied with the subject of death, its conceptualization was catalyzed by Spiluttini's discovering his mother's preparations both for her own death and for his. He arrived at her home in 2015 to be led into the local church and shown the two adjacent places she had reserved for their urns. The tracks on Heaven together consist of an analogously personal and anticipatory negotiation with death.
Partly derived from organ recordings made in the same church, the album frequently enlists Arvo Pärt’s compositional method of tintinnabuli. Aside from the thematic logic of its sacred associations, the method suits Spiluttini's tendency, in spite of heavy and dynamic passages, to minimize tonal complexity. His characteristic uses of gnashing bass, restlessly irregular pacing and serrated distortion return. This time, they combine with pads, harps, fluttering organs and swooping choirs.
Track titles throughout Heaven conjure intense emotional conflicts, especially those arising from experiences of embodiment. Touch isolation is a term for the toxic masculine stigma against platonic touch between men. If such a reference on an album preoccupied with death and afterlife raises the question of whether Spiluttini considers any touch – let alone platonic – to be possible in Heaven, the title "Flesh Angel" perhaps answers it. As with "Body at War" and "Weakened Centurion," such a title positions the agitation of its music among ongoing struggles with body acceptance. Meanwhile, "Rainbow Bridge" recalls the 1980s prose poem promising an eternal reunion in death with one’s beloved lost pets. In context, these various indices seem to capture the yearning speculation that, as the nexuses of experience, bodies are not discarded in death; on the contrary, they achieve a state of perfection.
Heaven revolves within dramatic and ever-changing vignettes. As church music, it lacks real communal participation or fidelity to hymnal text. Instead, it must come to terms with negation and eternity as dependable threats to generational and spatial distance, to personal struggles with earthly embodiment and to the anxious, hyperactive navigation of identity in late modernity.
The fourth album from HTRK, the duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang, arrives five years on from 2014's Psychic 9-5 Club. While some much-loved HTRK hallmarks remain—the combination of space and intimacy, the unmistakable interplay between Yang's guitars and Standish's vocals—Venus in Leo differs markedly in its energy, returning to HTRK’s underground rock past with the stylistic playfulness and variety of a modern mixtape.
Over the soft strums of acoustic guitar, the album’s introduction, "Into the Drama," posits a theory that "what was once considered self-sabotage could be revisited as being under the influence of Venus in Leo," Standish explains. Fingerpicked guitar loops rise slowly and fall over a cold, brittle beat. Previously released lovesong "Mentions" finds Standish exploring the lack of physical intimacy in the social media age. Elsewhere, there are emotional highs, like on the kaleidoscopic single "You Know How to Make Me Happy," which details a suspended state of ecstasy, Standish commending her partner's conscious efforts to prop her up with compliments. "New Year's Day" traces a flimsy resolution to get healthier, instantly busted by an evening of debauchery, recalling "the worst possible start to the year with bad friends and bad behavior." The silver lining is the sunrise: "pink, red, orange, white, peach" Standish repeats as the track laps with a velvety, hypnotic refrain.
Archetypal themes emerge as the band explore the makings of personality. Standish revisits her childhood home in a recurring dream ("Dream Symbol"), a doomed first kiss ("New Year’s Eve") and high drama ("Venus in Leo"). Recorded more or less live in HTRK’s home studio in the Dandenong Ranges outside of Melbourne, the album's simple production reveals gorgeous, toned-back arrangements and an evolving, idiosyncratic songcraft.
It's been ten years since HTRK released their breakthrough first album, Marry Me Tonight. The band has undergone profound changes, with the first two albums released amid the deaths of close friend and collaborator Rowland S. Howard and HTRK co-founder Sean Stewart. Psychic 9-5 Club set them on a path of self-discovery, and Venus in Leo marks a spirited new chapter by one of the most distinctive bands of the past decade.
This latest release from Lea Bertucci ambitiously follows in the footsteps of Pauline Oliveros' landmark Deep Listening album (1989), though site-specific performances are certainly nothing new for the NY-based saxophonist/composer. In this instance, the site was the Marine A Grain Elevator at Silo City in Buffalo, which NNA Tapes describes as a "silent, hulking concrete corpse" that stands 130 feet tall. Unlike Oliveros, Bertucci chose to make her celebration of extreme natural reverb largely a solo affair, using the 12-second decay of the cavernous enclosure to create a rich haze of sustained drones and ghostly harmonies. After the initial performance, however, she reworked the material with the aid of some collaborators, so the final album is a bit more complex and layered than a solo sax performance might have been. Not much more though, as Resonant Field's primary appeal lies in those original performances, making it a very different animal than its more composed predecessor Metal Aether.
It is convenient that Deep Listening is the most obvious reference point for Resonant Field, as deep listening is exactly what is required to fully appreciate the nuance and intent of Bertucci's work.In fact, it is an intriguing challenge to try to figure out which unexpected sounds originated from site-specific acoustic phenomena and which were later studio additions.Given that Bertucci set out to "to excite and activate the space by playing certain pitches and extended techniques," the resonance of the silo undoubtedly supplies some distinctly non-saxophone sounds.The opening "Wind Piece" is the simplest piece to deconstruct, as the only post-silo interventions seem to be Robbie Lee's flute, some occasional scraping metal textures, and some well-placed ripples and distortions.The timing of unusual sonic phenomena likely provides the clearest clues, as the deep, slowly undulating drone in "Wind Piece" vanishes as soon as Bertucci stops amassing a ghostly cloud of trilling, fluttering tones around the same frequency range.Similarly, when she switches to a more forceful and repeating melodic fragment, the reverberations vibrantly ring out as a somewhat transformed shadow image.
As cool as the natural reverb and resonance of the silo can be, however, Resonant Field is definitely an album with an extremely constrained palette.As such, three of its four pieces unavoidably feel like variations on the same theme (a solo sax improvisation that alternates between sustained tones and rapid flurries of notes).The title piece is an imaginative and compelling departure from the rest of the album though, as the languorous initial sax melody is subsumed by rolling, panning, and reverberating drum samples and a rich tapestry of chirping, hissing, and flapping field recordings.At its peak, it resembles a nightmare set deep in a hallucinatory jungle, but Bertucci eventually tamps down all that roiling, primal chaos to clear the way for more saxophone licks.Thankfully, those layers of strange and evocative sounds never completely go away, so the piece becomes a compelling push-and-pull between "nocturnal mindfuck jungle" and "silo jazz."I think the jungle ultimately triumphs, which is great, as I prefer Bertucci's sound art side to her more instrumental one.Given all that, "Resonant Field" is very much the album’s centerpiece and probable raison d'etre, but the other longform piece "Warp and Weft" has some flashes of inspiration as well, as does the all-too-brief closer "Deliquescence."Of the two, I prefer the latter, as guest double-bassist James Ilgenfritz unleashes a wonderfully squirming and supernatural-sounding storm of harmonics and bow squeals.Ilgenfritz also provides the set piece at the heart of "Warp and Weft," as Bertucci's steadily accumulating haze of slowly dissolving sustain is unexpectedly joined by some wonderfully subterranean-sounding groans and shudders.      
While Resonant Field is quite enjoyable for what it is, there are some inherent caveats with any album documenting a site-specific performance.The first is quite obvious: the acoustics of the original site are very different from those of any home-listening experience and the recording process itself cannot capture the full, surround-sound richness of the performance.As such, an album is a necessarily "flattened" version of the experience, which places much more emphasis on the melodies and harmonies than was originally intended.Less obvious is the fact that the space itself dictated the shape of these compositions: certain motifs are sustained and repeated solely because of how they interacted with the resonant frequencies of the building, not because they were an integral part of a deliberate compositional arc.I suppose it is a nice surprise that there is a deliberate compositional arc at all though, as it is impossible to "compose" in advance when the whole point is to inventively and intuitively interact with the acoustic environment.Still, I cannot help but wish Bertucci had gone a bit further in her post-performance enhancements, as the reverb of the space is expected to do a lot of heavy-lifting here and it is not nearly as satisfying as what she could have achieved with a greater emphasis on her field recording and textural sorcery.Consequently, Resonant Field is more of a solid one-off departure rather than a worthy successor to Metal Aether, though the title piece unquestionably ranks among Bertucci's finest work to date.
This second installment of Blank Forms' ongoing Christer Hennix archival series is quite a radical departure from the wonderful Selected Early Keyboard Works, which is a hell of a surprise as both albums originate from roughly the same period (Stockholm, 1976). The key difference is that Keyboard Works was composed of (mostly) solo rehearsal tapes made during the Dream Music Festival, while Hegikan Roku captures the ensemble's actual public performance. In fact, it was to be The Deontic Miracle's only public performance, as Hennix wryly notes that the trio were "the most rejected band ever formed in Sweden." While that is somewhat heartbreaking, it is easy to see why this project was not warmly embraced: challenging art is often described as being "ahead of its time," but The Deontic Miracle must have seemed like they existed outside of time altogether. Even by today's standards, an amplified Renaissance oboe and sarangi trio playing dissonant, Just Intonation drone music would likely clear a room instantly (as would a lot of other albums that I like). As such, this is definitely one of Christer Hennix's most difficult releases, but it features some very bold and uncompromising work indeed. It is wonderful to see it finally surface.
Catherine Christer Hennix was first inspired to form The Deontic Miracle by La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, which she encountered during her time in NYC.Young would prove to be quite an influential figure in Christer Hennix's life, as would Pandit Pran Nath.She first met both at a festival in 1970 and would later study extensively with each.Roughly a year after that meeting, the first incarnation of The Deontic Miracle was born in Sweden.Unfortunately, the ambitious endeavor was cursed right from the start, as the dozen jazz musicians Christer Hennix enlisted did not adapt to Just Intonation well at all.Exasperated, she completely gutted the ensemble until it was just herself, her brother Peter, and Hans Isgren.I am not at all surprised that the hapless jazzmen had so much trouble wrapping the heads around Christer Hennix's radical vision though, as she is an accomplished mathematician and complex mathematical ideas have always played a central role in her work.Moreover, her musical inspirations at the time were probably so far out as to be nearly incomprehensible to most musicians: the NYC avant garde scene and Hindustani raga influences were probably as close to the mainstream as she ever came, as she was similarly fascinated with Japanese Gagaku music and the thirteenth-century vocal music of Perotinus and Leoninus.In hindsight, it is legitimately remarkable that she was able to find two people who were even aware of all of those disparate threads, much less interested in helping her combine them into radical new forms.
To my ears, the two lengthy pieces that comprise Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku most closely resemble the uncomfortably harmonizing drones of Japanese imperial court music–the Gagaku influence is definitely the most powerful guiding force here.After its initial flurry of fluttering and trilling oboe virtuosity, the opening "Music of Auspicious Clouds" coheres into a heavy, slow-moving fog of endlessly shifting, buzzing, and nerve-jangling drones.I suspect the underlying thrum originates from the sine wave generator and the "electronics" credited to the trio, but I am not sure what kinds of sounds Isgren could conjure from an amplified sarangi.The heart of the piece, however, lies in the clouds of ugly harmonies that converge and dissolve in an eternal ebb and flow of simmering tension.The following "Waves of the Blue Sea" is initially a bit less harrowing, as the trio allow a bit more space into their oboe eruptions.It favorably reminds me of Terry Riley’s great "Poppy Nogood" at times, though Riley's trilling and overlapping flurries of saxophone sounds considerably more meditative and indebted to Eastern drone than Christer Hennix’s similarly trilling flurries of oboe.Before long, however, that reverie curdles into a grinding and uncomfortable miasma of otherworldly harmonies quite similar to that of "Auspicious Clouds."The two pieces on Hegikan Roku may start somewhat differently, but the ultimate destination is very much the same every time.
It is amusing that two pieces inspired by such normally pleasant and calming tropes (clouds and the blueness of the ocean) can feel like a sensory assault or plunge into deep existential horror in Christer Hennix's hands, particularly when contrasted with the similarly Zen-inspired but distinctly not-terrifying work that Peter Hennix recorded over the course of his own career.Notably, this album even explicitly borrows its name from a 12th century book of Chinese Buddhist koans ("Blue Cliff Record," in English).Unrelenting tension and intense discomfort are not traditionally sensations that I normally associate with Zen Buddhism, which makes Christer Hennix's interpretation an especially fascinating one.My working theory is that she heard these pieces very differently than I do, finding a reassuring mathematical order at the heart of the cacophonous entropy.I would be curious to learn how much the actual form and structure of these pieces was deliberately engineered though, as it seems like the focus is almost entirely on harmony.That central focus has not changed much in the ensuing four decades, but I do feel like Christer Hennix eventually got a bit more interested in framing her harmonic experiments in a tighter and more satisfying compositional arc.While it is entirely possible that I am imagining/projecting that, her early work definitely feels like it relied very heavily on sheer audacity (I include The Electric Harpsichord in that statement, which was also recorded in 1976). 
Notably, the album's description mentions John Coltrane as one of the major reference points for this performance, which was a comparison that I initially found perplexing.After listening to it fairly deeply on headphones, however, I began to see that it made perfect sense: Christer Hennix and her brother regularly unleash fiery, Coltane-esque squalls of notes on their oboes, but the Just Intonation tuning of the instruments makes them sound more like an extradimensional insect swarm than jazz.In fact, just about everything about this performance still sounds jarring and alien to ears conditioned to Western modality, which is quite an impressive feat: though they were not appreciated for it, The Deontic Miracle were absolutely visionary in their complete rejection of conventional form, melody, and harmony.This performance would have blown minds in the right time and place, but Sweden in 1976 was neither of those things, so this one show was like a bright and beautiful star spectacularly burning out forever.Or at least close to it, as it would be another roughly 35 years before any of Christer Hennix's singular compositions saw any public release.Happily, the first work that eventually surfaced was the stunning The Electric Harpsichord, which made a hell of an impression and instantly created an audience for other lost works from one of the 20th century's most radical and innovative composers.Among those, Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku admittedly stands as the most challenging endurance test, making a truly rough entry point for the curious.For the already converted, however, it is yet another landmark Christer Hennix release that is quite unlike anything else on earth.
Carla dal Forno announces her second full-length album, Look Up Sharp, on her own Kallista Records.
The London-based artist enters a new era in her peerless output pushing her dub-damaged DIY dispatches to the limits of flawless dream-pop. In a transformative move towards crystal clear vocals and sharpened production, Look Up Sharp is an evolutionary leap from the thick fog and pastoral stillness of her Blackest Ever Black missives, You Know What It’s Like (2016) and The Garden EP (2017).
Three years since her plain-speaking debut album, the Melbourne-via-Berlin artist finds herself absorbed in London’s sprawling mess. The small-town dreams and inertia that preoccupied dal Forno's first album have dissolved into the chaotic city, its shifting identities, far-flung surroundings and blank faces. Look Up Sharp is the story of this life in flux, longing for intimacy, falling short and embracing the unfamiliar. Dal Forno connects with kindred spirits and finds refuge in darkened alleys, secret gardens and wherever else she dares to look.
In her own territory between plaintive pop, folk and post-punk, dal Forno conjures the ghosts of AC Marias, Virginia Astley and Broadcast through her brushwork of art-damaged fx and spectral atmospheres. The first half of the record is filled with dubbed-out humid bass lines, which tether stoned hazes of psychedelic synth work as on "Took A Long Time" and "No Trace." These are contrasted with songs like "I'm Conscious" and "So Much Better" that channel the lilting power of Young Marble Giants and are clear sequels-in-waiting to dead-eyed classics like "Fast Moving Cars."
The B-side begins with the feverish bass and meandering melody of "Don't Follow Me," which takes The Cure's "A Forest" as its conceptual springboard. It's the clearest lyrical example since "The Garden" of dal Forno's unmatched ability to unpick the masculine void of post-punk and new wave nostalgia to reflect contemporary nuance. Look Up Sharp reaches its satisfying conclusion with "Push On" - dal Forno’s most explicit foray into an undiscovered trip hop universe between Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn. The album's last gasp finds personal validation in fragility: "I push on / I'm the Place I'm Going," a self discovery lifted by reverberant broken beats and glass-blown vocals.
Adding further depth to Look Up Sharp are the instrumentals, which flow seamlessly between the vocal-led pieces. "Hype Sleep" and "Heart of Hearts" drink from the same stream as The Flying Lizard's dubbed-out madness and the vivid purple sunsets of Eno's Another Green World. While "Creep Out of Bed" and "Leaving for Japan" funnel the fourth-world psychedelia of Cyclobe's industrial-folk into the vortex of Nico's The Marble Index.
Conceived as a whole, Look Up Sharp is a singular prism in which light, sound and concept bend at all angles. A deeply personal but infinitely relatable album its many surfaces are complex but authentic, enduring but imperfect, hard-edged but delicate. A diamond. Look up sharp or you’ll miss it.