Illusion of Safety with Pastoral (KORM PLASTICS) from 2023 – though cover images may suggest a field recording escapade, this one is performed sounds and collaborations taking place through tape swapping. Even the creators are uncertain when this took place, but it may have started out when Frans de Waard sent a demo to Dan Burke in 2011. He then admits he “forgot about it” and was pleasantly surprised to get this back. Some tracks may include Kurt Griesch as well as Burke, some time after a 1995 tour. One track ‘Ground’ uses an emulator which resembles a VCS3 synth, and might be the most “eventful” piece on offer with its unusual emissions rising to the fore. Some portions, like ‘Thermogenesis’ do the baffling long-form drone thing which is both quite serene and also oddly hollowed-out, so abstract that the sounds slips through your fingers. Probably good for erasing the memory.

Keiji Haino in a team-up with the Norwegian octabass player Guro Skumsnes Moe on Drums & Octabass (CONRAD SOUND CnRd334CD)…we don’t seem to have heard too many performances from the Japanese man of mystery for a while, although the one with Konstrukt was pretty powerful, and I liked it when he played with Marteau Rouge in 2009. This one is all-acoustic and made with harmonium, accordion, shenai and voices, besides the drums and bass, plus every track describes some supernatural powers of flowers which you never realised existed. Moe (one half of The Touchables) has been more outspoken with his low-register ferocity, but he shines here with his singing voice, daring to equal Haino when it comes to concocting an impromptu hymn to plant life in a high register. The set is mostly creaky groans which lurch around in grumbly fashion, although there are some snare-drum shots on the ‘Yellow Sparrow’ track that hit home like icepicks. Not especially crazy, if anyone was expecting an energy-jazz thing, although the long track which occupies all of disc two has some moments of heavy screech, bass growls and the drumkit throwing a tantrum. Was released in 2023.

Bizarre tape found at bottom of box…Kinder (IP-702) by Egone released on the Florida label Illuminated Paths. This might be Paul Harrison of Yorkshire, associated with Xemporium in the UK, and probably part of a parcel of goodies he sent us in 2023. I guess I might have been expecting harsh or weird noise, but this is bright and entertaining electronica with beats, heavy on the loops, patterns, repeats, and glistening with a tasty DIY surface – none of the rough edges removed, as too often happens in digital realms. ‘Anti Precision’ might be his watchwords for making this kind of music, and ‘Sudorific’ is the effect this boiled-sweet glorp will have on the listener. A good one.

Three CDs of music by the excellent Biliana Voutchkova on Blurred Music (ELSEWHERE MUSIC elsewhere 001-3), documenting three live performances from Dec 2016, where this violinist was joined by Michael Thieke and his clarinet for these dates in America. The word “blur” is being used to set the scene for “indeterminacy”, and refer to the method used by both musicians, for instance alternating between improvisation and composition in the structure of each piece. Ultimately, they’d like to “blur” time itself. There’s nothing unfocussed about their playing, if that’s what you were thinking; Voutchkova in particular lands each note with the grace of a bird somehow alighting on a cloud. Not minimal music; it’s packed with empathy, emotion, meaning, and genius. Released in 2018.

Austrian genius Katharina Klement here with Textur (KALD CD 03) – 14 experiments composed for the piano and loudspeaker, using a six channel tape recorder. Some technicians and mixers are credited, e.g. Flo Prix, Oliver Gross, David Petermann, but I think this is all played by Klement. I love the precision of this – it feels like she’s typing it all out by longhand, setting each note in metal in preparation for a letterpress edition. She packs so much complexity and density into short, economical spaces that it’s like hearing Xenakis compressed in a matchbox with a Stockhausen packed lunch at the interval. One of several back catalogue items she sent to us years ago; see this page. This one was released in 1998.

Doc Wör Mirran sent us Confusion Rocks! (MISS MANAGEMENT HAVE TEN) – recorded in 2015 in a German studio. Joseph B. Raimond plays all the guitars and synths, and did the cover paintings, supported by Stefan Schweiger on drums. Raimond has been ruder, and more abrasive, but this is enjoyable and well-made rock music, not especially avant or challenging. Think of it as a form of latterday Krautrock with added Euro-synth melodies and textures. I’d like to have heard a shade more “confusion” in the grooves, but the mood throughout is pretty mellow, despite growling mad head painting on the cover and titles like ‘Every Fibre of my Body Hurts’. Not enough Jean Dubuffet, more like Marc Chagall. The ‘Self Portrait, Broken’ does at least deliver a mildly uncertain episode of self-contemplation. Released in 2016, their 142nd release (take that, Zappa).

Also from Doc Wör Mirran the much more interesting Tape Hissed (Historical Obscurity Volume 2) (MISS MANAGEMENT HAVE NINE) which apparently was drawn from the archive of DWM recordings as far back as 1983 up to 1994. A long list of collaborators and camp followers on these rare cuts, even including Jello Biafra. Packaged as a “three-sided” release, of which the first two sides on tape might be included as a snippet inside the jewel case! At least two tracks here – unsure of the titles which don’t quite add up – are brilliantly concocted layers of balmy noise, accumulating in a very open-ended fashion and allowing any errant synth squiggle or passing gnat to flap their wings in the general melee. Some tracks may appear more conventional art-rock mode, but even these uglified workouts are informed by a lunatic sense of mayhem and controlled chaos. They also had the good taste to dedicate the release to David Bowie. Maybe the time has come for a proper reevaluation of Doc Wör Mirran, arguably a much “better” band than Sunburned Hand Of The Man. From 2016, I think.

At first spin it seems heavy on the electronic elements, all programmed and synthed by our man in the chair, but it turns out a number of acoustic musicians have lent their trumpets, flutes, trombones, guitars, strings and woodwinds (and their singing voices) to the collective effort. Simon Öggl is gifted enough a musician to blend in all these contributions to produce a convincing set of instrumentals, and more than once there’s a “cinematic” feeling wafting in through the skylight of the studio. Track titles seem to allude to travels to an alien world, and the demented cover art proposes an impossible landscape where perspectives are going crazy, yet there’s still time for some form of agriculture and exploration in among the weird trees and clouds.

Press notes suggest this landscape is balanced precariously “between affiliation and alienation”, but the user-friendly music indicates that, for the most part, Simon Öggl has little interest in exploring the darker side of human nature. Polished studio tracks, sometimes veering towards a stilted cerebral take on drum-n-bass, are his stock in trade. If you have the taste for more, Öggl also plays in the Viennese quartet Drahthaus, who play a form of ambient lounge electro-pop according to some sources. (19/12/2024)

The A-side was composed for a radio soundtrack and it’s made from rejigged synth tones, underpinned with quite a nice dubby bass effect wandering around like a disaffected inflated balloon. If you were expecting a medically-correct impression of the workings of the human heart, then Ben Casey wouldn’t approve of the irregular patterns exhibited here, but he might send the x-rays over to an intern for signoff. The B-side is a remix – is that still a thing in 2025? – by Hanno Leichtman alias Chromacolor. As he did previously, he can’t resist the temptation to add extra instruments – keyboards, guitars, plus cello strokes from Anthea Caddy and vocals from Annie Garlid, all of which builds a confection to take us down a completely different route. Chromacolor finds opportunities for micro-riffs and suggested musical themes which are barely discernable in the original skeletal framework, but perhaps that’s the value of collaborating. Pleasant and accessible. (23/09/2024)

Challenging and rather arid minimalist needle-point work from Hans Castrup on Covalent Radii Revisited (ATTENUATION CIRCUIT ACU 1074). It’s a collaboration with EMERGE, i.e. Sascha Stadlmeier, the highly prolific and engaged German experimenter who runs this label. Astonishing and deeply non-human electronic sounds surround the listener like a cold, kaleidoscopic mobile hanging in an art gallery, which is pretty much the desired intention – Castrup has a career as a visual artist, the record accompanied a specific exhibition of theirs, and even EMERGE was pulled into the vortex and discovered a skill for photography he didn’t even know he had. The title Covalent Radii Revisited and its underlying theme both have something to do with measuring sub-atomic particles, reflecting Castrup’s interest in physical science, and we’re invited to take it all as a metaphor for how the music was constructed. I’m certainly feeling the conceptual rigour, but the compositional core not so much; elements feel like they’re pieced together at random rather than executing a pre-planned arc or following a design. It’s hard to feel at home in this forlorn, abstract world. (25/09/2024)

Voice-and-saxophone improvisation from Annick Nozati and Daunik Lazro on Sept Fables sur L’Invisible (MAZETO SQUARE 570566-4). These May 1994 recordings have apparently only just surfaced; they were captured at the Musique Action festival at Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy. What these two players are attempting is nothing short of a spirit-made-flesh artistic gesture, tapping into unknown forces and revisiting the modes of ancient history to make these powerful, intimate statements. As the press release puts it, “the method is simple, but the experience is profound”. This is very restrained and unshowy music; rather than an extroverted wrestling match staged in the name of ultimate freedom, here is free improvisation being used to express emotions and ideas so private that even the act of listening by an audience can feel like an intrusion. (25/09/2024)

Double CD of instrumental guitar music from Christopher Colm Morrin, a Dublin artiste who is new to us. Sketches 1-17 (STRAY SIGNALS STRAY016) is an apt title for these rather unfinished and inoffensive pieces; our initial reaction was to wonder why they even needed to be published, and in such quantity. On today’s spin however I’m seeing a shade more purpose in these languid ambient downers with their heavy use of effects pedals; each tune reflects something of the isolation of Morrin and the circumstances under which he made them. Don’t fret, it’s not another lockdown record; just something to do with a change of holiday plans. It might do more people a lot of good if they were shut up alone in a house for a long time. The music, in its distant and abstract manner, could be read as an index of the circular thoughts and rather occluded ideas that creep into the brain during such moments; it borders on a form of unhealthy brooding, which I like, and introspection is good for the soul, which I believe. Morrin also does poetry, all sorts of visual art, and has composed film soundtracks. (23/09/2024)

Swiss-Italian trio Niton here with their 11 album (PULVER & ASCHE / SHAMELESS RECORDS), so called because on this occasion the group have opted to work with 11 collaborators, respected international musicians drawn from many quarters – including free improvisation and avant-rock music, and that’s just the ones I’ve heard of. The trio themselves play electric cello, analogue synths, and amplified objects – and, as we recall from their previously-heard outing Cemento, they also like to edit, remix, and refashion the recorded sounds. A curiously unengaging collection; there’s not a single moment when the record sparks into life, and despite the input from all these other talents, Niton have not capitalised on their unique abilities nor done them any favours with their unwelcome reprocessing. Instead, all musical identities and personalities have been effaced into a boring morass. A useless record. (12/08/2024)

Paula Rae Gibson has made The Roles We Play To Disappear (33 XTREME 024) with the help of instrumentalists Alex Bonney, Kit Downes, Rob Luft, and UK jazzer Matthew Bourne; they provide sensitive backdrops for her wispy and emotive vocalising, on these 13 post-modern love songs. I’m looking for the promised “terror and turbulence” in these ambient-ballad-reverso-torch-songs, but Gibson prefers to remain elliptical and rather distant, gently teasing out her responses rather than declaiming with the force of a Ma Rainey. Look elsewhere if you want tunes or melodies; rather, Gibson is aiming to creative an intimate and very ambiguous mood, and the ripples of her troubled soul tend to manifest as whispers and murmurs. The title suggests she sees all human relationships as a game-playing masquerade, nobody what they appear to be, where we’re all in danger of losing sight of each other, and ourselves. (30/09/2024)

Latest from UK ambient-oarsman and relaxo-instrumentalist Keith Berry is Tropical Modernism (VSM THEORY VSM 012CD), where the 17 tracks all refer to travelogue themes in holiday-brochure locations, each title an update and a commentary on the 1950s Exotica LPs of Les Baxter and Arthur Lyman. Indeed some of them – ‘Tiki God’ or ‘Taboo and Exile’ – could almost be lost titles from either of those two maestros. The vector-art cover also joins in on this kitschy game. Despite all these outward-looking signs and signifiers, Berry’s music is as hermetically sealed as a bug in amber; not a single one of these languid tunes has a life outside of the studio hothouse where, like some mutant orchid, it was cultivated. Les Baxter at least managed to generate a deal of excitement about the prospect of visiting unknown eastern locales, albeit in a Hollywood Technicolor Doris-Day manner; Keith Berry conveys no such excitement, or even a simple sense of wonder about a trip to foreign climes, and it seems he’d rather be at home in bed. Inside the digipak you’ll find troubling images of syringes and tablets, perhaps suggesting that the darker side of this project is that the music be used as a form of mind-numbing tranquiliser. (30/09/2024)

Hayashipooo (from Akashi in Japan) with their Awasemiso (kgr047) record. Highly idiosyncratic take on electronic music made with synths and drum machines, and additional “muttering”. They are proud of using meaningless words with this chatter aspect. A charming salad of unheard sounds, beguiling simple tunes, alien rambles, and modern intrigue. Even when rhythms emerge from the unpredictable stew, they are all off-kiltre, cock-eyed, and slippery underfoot. Put a Casio in the hands of an untutored genius, and a corner of the world can be changed.

Trond Jervell from Norway and Eiko Weishaupt from Germany perform as Trond & Eiko on Wunderkerze und Räucherkerze (kgr045). Playful, but slightly uncertain concoctions made from glitch, samples, synths, and whatnot. Oddball anecdotes and guessing games, rendered in quietly unassuming drones and fizzes. Eleven tiny miniatures in the gallery, with titles like ‘Autumn in June’ and ‘Frogs at Dawn’; they may not take us anywhere, but create pleasant moods and daydreams for three to four minutes at a time.

Heavy Cloud is the English performer Ryan Hooper from Cornwall. On An Unmapped Absence (kgr046), he draws inspiration from looking at landscapes, and his own memories; also intending to express a personal sense of loss or grief. Entwining these forces is a difficult task, but he makes a good stab at it. The cover collage (also by him) is a visual analogue to the process, using superimposed photos to some extent. Evocative, lonely, washed-out drones contain a lot of wistful emotions.

There’s not much more I can add to what has already been written about this talented creator, but he certainly gets better and better at realising every nook and cranny of the imaginary post-war Britain fiction-scapes he delineates with his fully-charged digital paintbrush. As to that, he is one of the few contemporary electronics experts whose work always seems to be in “full colour” – an entirely subjective appraisal, a bit like asking a fellow if they dream in colour – but yellows, reds and oranges are sure to fly from your speakers when a Seatman disk is spinning on the deck. What I’m feeling on today’s outing is how each tune contains at least two or more central ideas, one layered on top of the other and creating an exciting push-pull dynamic as the sound slithers along like a gigantic multi-rainbow python. Other familiar elements: each tune’s title resembles a chapter heading from an imaginary Puffin paperback of 1962; the upbeat mood and over-crowded audio panorama ever-ready to tip over into a menacing mood as the occasion demands it.

Is it my imagination, or are there more human voices in the mix this time? They chatter and squeal, setting riddles…starting out as friendly pixies then turning into nasty goblins. Ever-hinting at supernatural forces in the mode of Alan Garner, but I’d love it if one day Seatman took a deep-dive into the unknown, precariously balanced betwixt the benign and the malevolent. I suppose a project featuring imaginary theme music for The Silver Chair, or Out of the Silent Planet, is too much to ask for? (11/07/2024)

Contemplations (empreintes DIGITALes IMED 24189) is a survey of electro-acoustic compositions by Emma Margetson from Derby (UK), dating from 2015 to 2022. Mostly she used very simple means – close-miked objects, concentrating on one subject per composition, no especially radical changes and no foregone conclusions about what the work “means”. By the time of 2019’s ‘Sketching Froanna’ she attempts an ambitious eight-channel composition, responding to the lines and shapes of an artwork by Wyndham Lewis. If there’s an underlying theme to Margetson’s observations, it’s about introspection and reflection, linked to the passing of time. Some pieces might be prosaic and descriptive, but I like her understated outlook on the world.

Canadian France Jobin is more than just a musician – she wants to occupy large spaces, and does gallery installations and film work, perhaps even overlapping with architecture in some way. Her Infinite Probabilities (Particle 2) (ROOM40 RM4234) continues to explore her ideas about quantum mechanics and string theory, including deep ideas about physics and dimensions. These scientific areas are unfamiliar to me, but it seems she too admits she was out of her depth, yet compelled to keep exploring from her sense of restless curiosity. She had an epiphany – “feeling adrift and perplexed isn’t a hindrance but rather an advantage” – and perhaps endeavours to share it on this record. Impressive; there’s a real sense of tremendous weight and depth to these minimal tones, and we can truly feel the excitement of the journey as the piece advances.

Let’s enter the “overload zone” for new releases by Stefan Goldmann, one of which is a five-CD box set. First we have Alluvium (MACRO M77), a single CD of 12 tracks from this German-Bulgarian DJ and electronica artiste, based on “research” in various parts of the world including his home Berlin, Istanbul, Sofia and Thessaloniki. No field recordings from those locations (in case you were expecting same); it’s all electronic, and he’s exploring the potential combinations of machine-created rhythms, set down in irregular patterns that mess up any sense of a “grid”. It’s the third such release in his series of “metric assymetry”. While this might be mistaken for some form of experimental Techno, it’s highly conceptual in nature and expressly designed to confound the listener’s expectations. Goldmann states his thesis with the ruthless precision of an academic presenting a scientific paper, but it’s still highly listenable.

All the above from 2 April 2024.

{scope} is a trio of Italians – Laura Agnusdei, Matteo Pennsei and Luca Sguera – who had a jolly time at an artists residency in Scopoli in Umbria some years ago, resulting in the album A Week From Monday. Now joined by producer Francesco Piro, they’ve made Nightcap (KOHLHAAS KHS030) to showcase their unique blend – odd sounding synth and clunky prepared piano combined with insouciant saxophone lines. What emerges is neither jazz nor electronica, but it sounds like they had fun, if the unpredictable and illogical stop-start effusions are any indicator. The generally upbeat mood can grow wearisome, but it’s preferable to those moments where they turn maudlin and introspective. The maddeningly synthetic sound is almost unreal; maybe all music will be like this in the future when the robots take over. (15/05/24)

Belgian composer and violinist Catherine Graindorge draws inspiration from Greek mythology, among other sources, to create Songs For The Dead (GLITTERBEAT / TAK:TIL GBCD153) – an album of lugubrious downer instrumentals, recits, and songs. Various players and vocalists turn up to this picnic in the bone orchard, including Simon Huw Jones narrating with his sonorous tones. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is a powerful one, but Graindorge seems to completely miss the point of the story, and proves unable to extract any emotional truth from it. She has a theatrical / acting background, and it shows in the melodramatic flavour to these under-nourished pieces, which are heavy on the atmospheric lighting effects, but short on compositional ideas. The record resembles an ersatz late-period Scott Walker album. (15/05/24)

American Derek Piotr is a new name to me – he may have started out some nine years ago operating in a vaguely glitch / electronica area, but since 2019 has researched and studied the folk music of his homeland, in particular Appalachian folk, and is now regarded as a composer and archivist. His Divine Supplication (DPSR 005) is all over the arena, and in a good way; surprising sounds and combinations, unexpected phrases (both lyrical and musical) packed into short, compressed packages, tricky rhythms wrong-footing the ear with both hands. Collaborators have swarmed to him, including A-list players such as Fennesz and Maja S.K. Ratkje, and the whole album is a dizzying array of beats, pulsations, squiggles, and layered, treated vocals, many of them refusing to stay on point or in the right key, which is great. No genre or time period is off the table – a motet and a hymn from the 13th century lurk among the very modern raps and programming. Tho’ lyrics are hard to make out, you can still tell it’s a very personal set for this fellow, but if I hadn’t read the press notes I’d never have guessed it came from a background of recent personal tragedies. I was expecting more introspection and self-examination, but as it turns out, there’s just the right amount. Wayward beauty is buried within these grooves, but it also lies on the surface too. A gilded trellis conceals a platinum heart. (15/05/24)