We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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As darkness falls, once familiar territory is rendered alien and foreboding; full of weird and terrifying possibilities. These are Night Lands.
Cardinal Fuzz are proud to present Night Lands, the new album from Dead Sea Apes.
Recorded live in the rehearsal room last December, the newly expanded 4 piece Dead Sea Apes lock into spooky nocturnal grooves, augmented by Nik Rayne (The Myrrors) who was over in the UK for the month.
Night Lands is comprised of 3 off-the-cuff improvised jams, where Dead Sea Apes effortlessly mind meld with Rayne to head off into parts unknown.
Night Lands by Dead Sea Apes is released on vinyl and ltd CD by Cardinal Fuzz.
Out February 7, 2020. More information can be found here.
"Sunburned Hand of the Man might be the last of the great American free rock collectives. There was a time, not too long ago, when every region of this great republic could boast of its own visionary troupe of seekers and improvisers, thrumming at the frequency of the illuminated world. There was Pelt in the south and Jackie-O Motherfucker in the Pacific northwest, No-Neck Blues Band in New York and the iridescent Jewelled Antler out in the Bay Area. And up in the New England wilds, there was The Sunburned Hand of the Man. David Keenan of The Wire memorably called it the New Weird America. It felt to me like the mystical democracy of Walt Whitman. It was never arch or jittery or wiry; it sprawled like the continent and massed like the seas. It produced some of the most singularly thrilling performances that I ever had the privilege of witnessing. Most of those groups have since gone dormant—disbanded entirely or decomposed into smaller units and solo projects. But the Sunburned Hand of the Man remains.
Or rather, we might say that the Sunburned Hand has returned. The sudden appearance of the phenomenal Headless in late 2019 felt like something of a resurfacing. There had, of course, been a steady trickle of obscuro cassettes and CD-Rs over the years, filling out an already bewilderingly immense and impossible to master discography. But Headless felt like their first proper album since the release of the Kieran Hebden-produced A on Ecstatic Peace! all the way back in 2010. It appears that it was no one-off.
The thing that one has to remember about Sunburned Hand of the Man is that while they were no less committed to vast, ritualistic summonings than their siblings in the American free rock underground, they were perhaps uniquely capable of channeling that cosmic funk. There’s a throb and a groove to Sunburned's music that made it as much body music as head music. This is a different kind of American weirdness than that which conjures ghosts and threatens to tear down the veil between worlds. This is “free your ass” weirdness that chugs and bounces. It makes us want to get out of our heads where we’ve all been trapped these past months and drive on the freeway or bop down the street or loaf like Walt Whitman in the stoned sun. Like the man said, it makes us want to taste the campfire. Pick A Day to Die. Sure, but definitely not today."
The debut full-length from ambient-electronic composer Rachika Nayar, Our Hands Against the Dusk, is both kaleidoscopic and inventive, but far from cerebral. In mid-2019, the Brooklyn-based artist chose the cover image (a video still of her hands entwined with a friends') from an old collaborative project. Along with its title lifted from a Richard Jackson poem, the image of "touch" references deeply (inter)personal experiences that animated the album over the four years it was written: not just caress, but encounters and collisions.
Her compositional process similarly begins with a moment of touch: her fingers on the fretboard. Songs are built from guitar loops that are then digitally processed into endless new shapes as they are combined and threaded through multiple genres and emotions.
Nayar grew up exploring musical worlds ranging between modern composers, Midwestern emo, uplifting trance and beyond. The diverse influences are visible on longer tracks such as "Losing Too Is Still Ours," which extends from rippling guitar figures and keening vocals to methodic, marching strings. The song title stems from a Rainer Maria Rilke poem of great personal import. Other songs wind through their own images and cultural iconography, forming a poetic web. The ghostly hazed "Aurobindo," for one, references an Indian yogi at whose Pondicherry ashram a family member had a moment of Hindu "darshan."
For Nayar, the album's fluid but always deeply felt form is thus a way of translating that which could never be summed up with static names, words, or feelings. It is her way of navigating the many communities, musical and human, through which she’s passed as a trans feminine Indian-American. Rejecting the easy reduction of her project to an "identity politics narrative," though, she takes that understanding as one of many in a stream of perspectives that shapes her life, and her music suggests the same.
To that end, Our Hands Against the Dusk mines the flux and discontinuity of experience as fertile ground. Nayar's debut invites us to join alongside it in thinking beyond metanarratives, as musical and emotional histories touch in its twilight space and refract into a multifaceted whole. In that endeavor, Our Hands Against the Dusk is an embrace and a hope.
With three albums in as break_fold, Tim Hann’s approach to complex, yet catchy electronic music has become even more diversified. Sure, the dense production and processing alongside heavy programmed rhythms can be found throughout these eight compositions, but there seems to be an expansion to the ambient elements of his work, balancing the more aggressive and commanding moments adeptly with space and mood.
Rich, ambient synthesizer passages drift over the mix on opener "22_12_18_Pt1" but the buzzing, distorted electronics are not far away in the mix.The beats are slow and spacious, but there is just enough grime to the sound to keep it from being mundane.The understated melodies take the forefront on the following "22_12_18_Pt2," where they share the focus with prominent rhythms, sounding like a cleaner reiteration of the previous part of the song.
There is a similar sense to "Gaps_in_The_Mesh_(Remix)" (a remix of ambient artist Ten’s work) with its focus on slower tempos and rich synths as opposed to the intense production and distortion found in much of Hann’s other work.There is a more noticeable balance in the sound of "13_11_19," in which a restrained rhythm is coupled with shimmering synthesizers and otherwise less discernible rhythmic pulsations.He shifts the noisier elements into more melodic passages, with the result being a comfortable sounding work, but not a forgettable one.
I have always favored the noisier side of break_fold’s work, and that is certainly here as well.There may be some light synth pads throughout "15_11_19," but the punchy drums and dirty basslines balance out the equation exceptionally.While "29_04_18" may be a bit muted in comparison, the low volume distorted hum and idiosyncratic drum sounds give extra depth that is magnified even more with the constant changing and shifting structure.
The two concluding pieces are the one that especially stood out for me, however.The up front synth and drums of "01_07_19" are instantly engaging, and the use of synth arpeggios and other bleeping rhythmic arrangements make for a distinct and active dynamic throughout.Album closer "JP" is another complex work propelled by snappy drum machines, multiple layers, and heavily varied production.As the song goes on, Hann adds more melodic elements to flesh things out, but the final product is as singular sounding as anything break_fold has done thus far.
For his third album as break_fold, Tim Hann seemingly leans into lusher, ambient sounds more than the previous two.That is not to say that there are no heavy electronic rhythms or dense, complicated production, but there is a generally calmer sound throughout this self-titled disc.As is a general rule for me with electronic music, I favor the more dissonant, challenging works on here, but Hann demonstrates his ability to cover wide swaths of the genre’s spectrum while still leaving his unique mark on whatever he does.
Compared to the funk tinged sound of the seminal Liquid Liquid, founding member Dennis Young’s solo trajectory has been notably different in sound, and extremely difficult to compartmentalize. While some of his previous works have continued the use of rhythm and percussion, Bella is a substantially different beast from start to finish. There are no beats or loops or even electronic instrumentation here, it is entirely a work of solo guitar excursions that feature enough pedal usage to give it variety, but never losing focus on the instrument at hand.
Bella was borne out by pure happenstance:Young had just purchased a new guitar pedal and at the point of just testing it out, he became inspired by the sound and immediately began recording the results.Each of the songs here are just electric guitar and a tasteful amount of effects, but consistently grounded in his compositions, improvised or otherwise.
For some of the songs, his performance is rather pleasant and conventional.The opening "Daybreak" leads with twanging guitar layers and echoing passages.Both his playing and the tone itself are more musical than pedal manipulation, but it is just off kilter enough to give a distinct sound and demonstrate Young’s creative approach to the instrument, which continues into the dense note clusters that appear towards the end of the piece.This leads into the chorus tinged sound (a nod to his post-punk days I am sure) of "City & the Stars."Within these distinct notes he constructs additional waves of sound that surge in and slowly dissipate, giving an amazing sense of depth.
This oceanic dynamic is also prominent on "Park & Ride," which features an overall more rhythmic structure but with the emphasis on echoing tones swelling over the rich and nuanced background layers to then subtly withdraw.Chords give a sense of rhythmic structure to "Die Glocke" as well, but as an anchoring layer to the swarms of guitar and noisier outbursts that Young adds more up front in the mix.With his use of muted strings,"Tightrope Tandem" features an almost percussive quality to it, but that overtaken quickly by squealing notes and bent pitches that lean more into chaos.
Some of the most memorable moments of Bella occur when Young combines these more difficult elements with the more conventional ones."Submerged" is a beautiful combination of gentle, expansive tones with the occasionally jarring harsh outbursts.The entirely of the piece takes on this ghostly, abnormal hue that is made all the more fascinating with the complexity of the song ‘s structure."Weightless" is also a high point, where Young blends spectral high frequency sounds with lower, heavier moments.Enshrouded in a sizeable amount of reverb, the disparate layers blend together beautifully.
Bella is, on the surface, a simple sounding work:just guitar and effects.However, Dennis Young’s performance and compositional skills result in an album that is so much more than the sum of its parts.The mood varies significantly from piece to piece, yet there is a clear sense of cohesion.From the delicate introspective moments to the commanding, forceful outbursts, it is enchanting from beginning to end.
COVID-19 has torn people apart and brutally impacted lives. Having lost his father to the disease in April, Apart is Scott’s musical release of his grief entwined with the natural tumult of a much-loved nature preserve spent traversing in youth with his father. These protected wetlands house species that are slowly disappearing, comprising a distinct sonic environment that changes with its inhabitants’ demise. By capturing his current environment as part of his grieving process, Scott harnessed his awareness of temporality in all things as a musical expression to allow him to heal. Scott captures ten representations of this ephemeral world through field recordings centered around a piano, with electronic treatment to achieve an expressive and emotional musical ride.
Comprised of ten tracks named "Apart A" through "Apart J," much of the album feels like an experiment, but one with a powerful purpose: to map out genuine grief against a bewildering new reality, the loss of a loved one balanced with a real need to come to terms with the everyday. As might be expected, this takes the listener through a series of peaks and valleys. The sound of skylarks, loons, flies, overhead aircraft, and passing vehicles permeates much of the music. Scott uses it to bring the listener in touch with a very active and vibrant daytime soundscape, both natural and human-made, before dipping into darker and contemplative moments. "Apart D" guides the listener into a more reflective mood with an evening theme, filled with the sound of crickets, flowing water, and owls, populated with minor chords and elongated drones.
"Apart E" opens into the daylight again, natural sounds subdued by atmospheric electronics, but "Apart G" with sounds of crying loons and a distant thunderstorm offer more complicated emotions, depending on one’s interpretation. "Apart H" seems to distort church bells, dissolving into a screech and abruptly yanking the listener to a darker place with "Apart I." Incorporating harsher mechanical sounds alongside a drifting piano piece, "Apart I" feels the most despairing track of the album, perhaps due to what sounds like an electronic wailing banshee.
I wanted very much to come out of this dark place and out of that valley with closing track "Apart J," but this isn’t where I landed. This album has enough emotive delivery for another listener to come to a different conclusion. Art is undoubtedly subjective, and the key for Scott was to craft a personal guide through his emotional wasteland. An artist choosing to share that vehicle with others reveals bravery, knowing that no listener will come to the same destination as Scott’s own journey.
With obviously no dearth of source material or motivation, Locrian and The Holy Circle’s Terence Hannum has released a third album this year as his solo anti-fascist power electronics guise Axebreaker. Dense with rage, frustration, and noise, They Wear the Mask and Their Face Grows to Fit It does not stray drastically far from his previous albums, but continues his growing legacy of anger and nuanced aggressive electronic arrangements. A combination of catharsis and complexity, Hannum's work is as conceptually narrative as it is purely visceral.
Hannum's description of Axebreaker as a power electronics project makes sense, but I do think that sells it somewhat short.I completely respect the motive behind it:as a genre I can appreciate a lot of artists who fall under that umbrella, but there are many more that either flirt with fascist imagery without clearly endorsing or decrying it, or at worst wearing it like some sort of badge of honor.However, regardless of the political affiliation it tends to be a one-note genre:distorted analog synths, shouted/screamed vocals buried under layers of flanger and delay, and murky lo-fi production.
Like his previous works, They Wear The Mask differs from that framework in a multitude of ways.Sure, there is a lot of distortion, noise, and screaming, but the sounds are rich and the arrangements nuanced, and the album is structurally varied and carefully considered.The five pieces included blend not just these elements, but also field recordings (likely from in person recordings as well as televised protests) and hints of lush melody that add an additional layer to the proceedings.
The opening "A Strategy of Tension" is titled perfectly, emerging from what sounds like sustained car horns and field recordings that slowly grow denser and denser.Under this, Hannum constructs a foundation of expansive synthesizers that, when combined, results in a growing sense of unease and aggression simmering just below the surface.Besides the fact that this makes sense given the underlying concepts behind the project, it also works exceptionally well as an album device building tension, although it never fully releases.
This tension erupts on the following "Receptive to Extremist Ideologies" via echoed, yelled vocals atop a hollow warehouse like ambience.The vocals eventually succumb to a heavier burst of subsonic bass and noise that capture anger and frustration perfectly.However, the combination of a constantly evolving dynamic, and some melodic synthesizers distant in the mix make for a standout work in depth and nuance.
With the brief rattling noise and creaking metal of "Patriot Prayer (Retribution)" bridging the two, the title piece makes for the other major work here.Building from slow, menacing electronics, Hannum keeps a synth soundtrack passage beneath the mix as he throws in outbursts of noise and distant screams.Though there are significant amounts of distortion and overdriven noise, again he keeps the entire thing active and dynamic, never falling into a simplistic or repetitive rut.With the closer "Defeat Forever" increasing in harshness from a motor-like drone into an ending of rioting and breaking glass there is no real sense of relief, however.
They Wear the Mask and Their Face Grows to Fit It is not a radical departure from Hannum’s previous Axebreaker works over the past three years, but it does not need to be.It is again an excellent encapsulation of present day rage and frustration that thankfully is anything but focusing on peace and tolerance.While Hannum’s project was likely motivated by Trump taking the US presidency beginning in 2017, I do not see the change coming in 2021 leading to any decrease of inspiration given how things are post-election and pre-inauguration.Next year could be a four album Axebreaker year, and I have no doubt all of them will be of the utmost quality.
Homelessness is driven by many things, but it has one thing in common: everyone who is afflicted is human. With this recognition comes both a feeling of cold reality and an expectation of change. The latest from Portland’s Soft Kill—a city that has one of the highest homeless populations in the United States—was forged through their personal encounters with the youngest "lost" denizens of the city. Dead Kids, R.I.P. City lays out stark, confronting tales of addiction, bravery in abandonment, and hope amongst loneliness through luminous soundscapes and lingering melodies. What followed is their most complex yet accessible release yet, a richly human and mournful album from a band already associated with melancholy.
My experience stepping into this release was a bit like cueing up The Cure’s Disintegration for the first time, anticipating what would come after the initial introduction before being dragged fully under by the lush, orchestral waves of synths and guitars. Yes, that’s a pretty big statement, and while Dead Kids, R.I.P. City doesn’t have the immediate impact of an opening track like "Plainsong," the album is similarly filled with a soaring sound of warm synths, layers of guitar reverberation, incurably catchy melodies, and familiar comfort of post-punk bass tones. Far from being a substitute for obvious comparisons, underneath the dark lustre lay vocalist and lyricist Tobias Grave’s frank dialogue about the realities of trauma, addiction, and death on the streets.
The spectre of such dark things haunt the very fabric of the album, exuding a hopelessness that manages to come out the other side, sparking powerful recognition of the matters at hand. Songwriter and singer Tamaryn shares vocal duties on "Floodgate," emitting a anguished cry in remembrance of loved ones, lost and forgotten like pieces of refuse in Portland’s streets: "This flood has taken things / This god has grown tired / Tired of loving me / This voice / This voice just leave it be / Of all the things I deemed were down to bury me / I lay here underground." In an impassioned message shared by Tamaryn, she issues a rallying cry for those forgotten:
"The gates are open. The underworld rises and now we all know the rich want us dead. Not just the fringe outsiders and junkies, all of us."
A rich musical assortment is available here. Choir Boy’s Adam Klopp's vocals on the darkly catchy "Matty Rue" add a dreamy feel to the already shimmering guitar sounds. Majestic synths and a danceable hook belie a rue of a lost young soul: "He’s in trouble now, the city’s growing colder. / He’s in trouble now, whispers in our ears / cannot strangle fear, cannot hold back these tears / It all just means the shame, it makes you shiver." Magnus Opus "Oil Burner" offers waves of distortion wrapped in droning rhythms, offset by interludes of quiet balladry. The album achieves a one-two gut punch in closer "I Needed the Pain" using only piano, violin and acoustic guitar, offering a first-person look at surviving alone.
Synthesizers still feature prominently in Soft Kill, but guitar and rhythm section are given more presence this time, hopefully expanding their reach beyond fans of darker genres. The drums are clearer, the fidelity is richer, composition more varied, with a wider assortment of guitar tones at play. Producer David Trumfio (Wilco, Built To Spill) surely helped provide the band’s most solid production to date, further perfected by fabled mastering engineer Howie Weinberg (The Cure, Nirvana, and scores of others). Dead Kids, R.I.P. City is a huge leap forward in an already impressive sound catalog from Soft Kill, and fans across multiple genres should find something to enjoy.
Even though I should absolutely know better, I have spent plenty of time and money over the years trying to find new artists that scratch roughly the same itch that several of my favorites did in their prime. In my heart, I know that no one will ever be able to replicate the magic of classic Dead Can Dance or Zoviet France or whoever, but that certainly does not stop me from endlessly disappointing myself with my doomed and stupid quest. Sometimes, however, I am drawn towards an album due to its surface resemblance to something familiar only to discover that the artist shot right past the target nostalgia zone to achieve something that is unique and wonderful in its own right. That is the case with this latest release from Brian McWilliams' long-running Aperus project, which calls to both the "sci-fi tribal" aesthetic of classic Zoviet France/Rapoon and the desert/ethno-ambient side of Projekt's late ‘90s heyday (Steve Roach, et al.). As far as I am concerned, that is an absolutely wonderful stylistic niche to stake out, but McWilliams' execution is what elevates Archaic Signal into something truly special. Rather than simply recalling the iconic figures who birthed a milieu that I love, this album reveals that those original visions have evolved into a compelling new phase with some visionary architects of its own.
One of my many pet theories is that our immediate surroundings play an enormous role in both how we feel about ourselves and the world as a whole.Consequently, I had a bit of a "eureka!" moment when I listened to an Alan Moore interview in which he observed that if you feel you are living in a rat hole, you start to feel like a rat.Conversely, if you see magic and history all around you, you start to feel like you can do great things yourself.I bring this up because I do not think that this album could exist if Brian McWilliams was not a landscape photographer living in "the high deserts of northern New Mexico," as space, solitude, and a healthy immersion in the non-human natural world are near-essential pre-requisites for escaping the numbing noise of the current age long enough to contemplate more existential and timeless matters.
Based on the conceptual inspirations behind Archaic Signal, it is clear that McWilliams was impressively successful in that escape from noise, as the album took shape around his revelation that bird songs, cosmic noise, radio transmissions, and ancient petroglyphs are all potentially part of the same infinite communication continuum extending throughout all of time and space.Appropriately, each of those threads finds its way into the album somehow, as these nine songs are peppered with bird sounds and an unpredictable array of radio transmissions picked up by a high-powered radio antenna in the Netherlands (numbers stations, space noise, garbled news broadcasts, a distorted call to prayer).The petroglyphs, on the other hand, are included as an accompanying series of postcard-sized art.Given McWilliams pedigree as a photographer, it is not surprising that the images provided with the physical album are an integral part of the whole, but the petroglyphs add an enticing layer of mystery as well.If I were inclined, it would be very easy to tie my mind in knots trying to figure out if any image holds the Rosetta Stone that reveals a shared deeper meaning that unites cave art, happily twittering birds, and the cryptic radio transmissions of distant star systems.
The album opens in admirably strong fashion with the throbbing and gnarled menace of "New Antenna," but it is the following title piece that best illustrates the album's overarching aesthetic.The heart of "Archaic Signal" is a warm haze of intermingled drones that slowly curls like smoke.At the same time, a swelling undercurrent transforms into a lazily heaving pulse that feels like a series of vast cosmic exhalations while a surreal host of phantasmal sounds in the periphery billow and smear, emerging from the drones like organically growing tendrils.Gradually, the original theme evolves into an unexpectedly heavenly coda of choral voices floating through a hissing sea of static and chatter.It all amounts to absolutely gorgeous piece for a number of reasons, but the primarily one is that McWilliams creates a compelling and dynamically rich central theme that propels the piece forward, then enhances it with a series of subtle psychedelic flourishes that feel like a fraying of reality's edges that hints at greater depths yet to be revealed.Needless to say, doing that and making it seem organic and effortless is a neat trick and McWilliams repeats it again and again in varying form as the album unfolds.
Each of Archaic Signal's nine songs is strong in its own way, but my favorite stretch is a three-song streak near the middle of the album that begins with the seething, undulating, and immersive swirl of "Newspaper Rock."It never quite evolves into anything more, but it does not need to, as it feels like a warm and beautiful dream state that lazily swells and recedes like the rhythm of the tides.The epic "Canopy of Stars," on the other hand, is the album's deepest foray into the "sci-fi tribal" aesthetic, as massive drones heave over a stomping and clicking percussion motif en route to a wonderfully churning and blackened finale.The following "Birdsong as Mantra" almost feels like a supernatural deepening of the scene painted by its predecessor, evoking the disorienting sense that time is bending and stretching as I sink further into another layer of reality.In more plain terms, it is an enveloping feast of deep, heavy oscillations and cheerily burbling bird songs that smear and linger in pleasingly hallucinatory ways.    
The usual peril with deep drone music in this vein is that so many artists lack the harmonic sensibility and lightness of touch necessary to pull it off, resulting in a mountain of forgettable and interchangeable releases celebrating monochromatic bass thrum, seismic rumble, and echoing cracks.Admittedly, such fare can still be impressive if an artist's sound design talents are exceptional, but McWilliams takes a much more nuanced, complexly evocative, and personal path.Rather than attempting to replicate the sheer power and scale of massive geological or cosmological events, McWilliams has instead managed to evoke the sense of wonder that they inspire on a human scale.The difference is significant, as it is extremely satisfying to feel like I am lying on my back beneath a vast, twinkling panorama of stars, drinking in all the rich sensory details of my surroundings.It is dramatically less satisfying to merely think "I guess this captures the cold infinity of space pretty well."The former is truly rare achievement and McWilliams has managed to do it as well as just about anyone with Archaic Signal.Needless to say, I will soon be digging further into McWilliams' discography to see what other exquisite pleasures I may have slept on, but is hard to imagine any way that he could improve upon this particulate release.With the arguable exception of the dub-techno elements in "Archaeodreaming," Archaic Signal is an unwaveringly sustained and absorbing spell that successfully untethered me from the present reality and dropped me into a vividly realized alternate world of beauty and mystery.While I suppose only time will tell if this album is destined to become a classic of the genre, it definitely feels like one to me right now.True objectivity about art is basically impossible, obviously, but if I try to disregard the romance of nostalgia, I am hard-pressed to think of many canonical albums in this vein that are as thoughtfully constructed and immersive as this one.
Ray is Ashley Paul's bright, sensual return to Slip: a lifting, delighting suite of yearning winds, loose beats, and cocooning, humid bass coming together and falling apart as songs.
The LP airs Paul's new trio, alongside bass clarinettist Yoni Silver and bassist Otto Willberg, who fatten out and shine light on her singularly intimate, multi-instrumental with mystery and grace. 2018's Lost In Shadows wrote into the bewildering ecstasy of recent motherhood with a tingling resolve. On Ray - recorded remotely during lockdown - Paul's deliciously hesitant songcraft is an outpouring and an anchor in freshly tumultuous times.
Says Ashley:
"Over the past six months I've found myself needing music in a new way, a way of coping. I found again albums I had loved in the past, full of melody and humor, to cancel out the barrage of terrible news happening outside. I think this album is a reflection of that need. There is the playfulness of spending my days with our four year old, and the hours spent tending to plants in the garden and examining bugs, and also the pain of missing family and friends. It's hard for me to fully comprehend the breadth of emotion I've felt recently but maybe this is a small window.
The trio idea had been formulating in my head for months, and then lockdown happened. At first I was very disappointed and thought I'd be waiting forever to finally make it a reality, but time passed. I started working on a new album and could only hear it with these guys. We recorded remotely. I sent material in a variety of ways; written, aurally and verbal ideas/queues, sometimes with just a shell of a track and other times nearly completed. I wanted all our voices to be present, and to allow freedom in the parts for interpretation and improvisation. Maybe because we've all worked together in various situations and are friends, I’m not sure, but it came together naturally, magically and quickly."
Sparkly disjointed pop by Finnish luminary Jonna Karanka!
As part of legendary groups such as Avarus, Hertta Lussu Ässä and Olimpia Splendid, Jonna Karanka has been a key player in the Finnish underground for most of this century. Through her Kuupuu alias, she dwells among an illustrious generation of Finn sound wizards which includes Tomuttontu/Jan Anderzen, Tsemba/Marja Ahti, Lau Nau, et al. Through the collaging of warbled acoustic instruments and looped-up electronics, Kuupuu has long been carving out her own lines into this post-free folk/neo-psychedelia lore.
Plz Tell Me, her first LP since 2013's Sisar, was originally a self-released cassette through which new forms emerged in the Kuupuu repertoire. Jungly orchestral arrangements meet slick dub-tinged productions in a series of pop tunes for disjointed times: whether you dance or swoon or stare confusedly into space is up to chance. The original nine tracks get the full LP treatment for this Belgo-Finn treaty renewal, with 12 songs that weave down endless summer full of disembodied voices that moan and quaver as they murmur lullabies to punctured beats. Plz Tell Me opens a dazzling zone for fantasies to inhabit and intertwine, where incongruent sounds and a noisy kit of dreamed storylines knit a full tapestry of whimsical bliss.