Torgeir Vassvik is a unique folk singer and guitarist here representing the Sámi, the indigenous peoples who live in Norway, Finland, Sweden and parts of Russia…unenlightened souls used to refer to them as “Laplanders”, a term which is now considered inappropriate. The Sámi are fishers, farmers, and fur trappers; you’ve probably seen them on the telly when BBC Four broadcast The Great Reindeer Migration show (a rare piece of TV which was very long-form and dispensed with any annoying voice-over narration, much to my relief). Your current listener knows next to nothing of the traditions of the Sámi, but today’s record has a lot of experimental adventure and zest along with the folk elements…Juhani Silvola is supplying intense electric guitar licks and heavy strums, the better to showcase the eerie vocalising wails of singer Vassvik.

The growly expressions of the latter may put you in mind of throat-singing, but the combined effect of the duo somehow arrives at roughly the same area as LPs by Dredd Foole or (sort of) Jandek, or any singer who jettisons the restrictions of verse-chorus structure in their songs. The songs rarely depart from a root note and the joy of listening is to be found in the open-ended free-form extemporising of the singer, as he recounts these stories intended to connect the traditions of the Sámi with contemporary modes…so that “the past reaches out to the future”, selon the liner notes. Indeed the term “Joik Noir” has been coined to encapsulate the achievements of this duo, and the “noir” aspect reminds us that the songs are in fact quite turbulent and troubling, and even if we don’t speak the language it’s evident that life is difficult and all is not well on the snowy flats.

Norwegian-Finnish Silvola has amazed us on previous solo outings, such as the astounding Wolf Hour Roundelay which demonstrated his deep connections to ritual and mythic notions, making him the ideal partner for this very special musical adventure. (02/01/2025)

He’s always exhibited a strong concern for global climate change in his records, only now he’s convinced that things are worse than ever, and he’s not afraid to describe the 21st century as “apocalyptic times”. On Lost Tribe of the Shadow, he’s found that the best way to cope is to create an imaginary parallel world of some sort, a world which hasn’t been ruined or polluted or exploited by us strip-mining oil-burning use-up-everything humans. This other world is, in Brian McWilliams’ mind, now sending us coded messages, effectively telling us to stop what we’re doing right now before we destroy everything. He’s written a whole set of paras about this imaginary invention of his, as if it were all real, as if he’s tapped into a lost civilisation with its own mythology supporting the mysterious signs and signals, which are either written on the walls of caves, or broadcast as radio messages. All of these tropes and messages are clearly expressed in the long-ish second track ‘A Dark Age’, which has the added unsettling effect of a spoken-word recit which – poignantly enough – we can’t make out clearly. Compared with previous items in his catalogue, this one is decidedly dark and pessimistic, but the music is richly-textured and a rewarding listen. Should be required listening for all delegates at the next COP summit conference on climate change.

Excellent black-and-white insert is covered with images of coded scrawls in support of the theme. Mostly played by Aperus with some instrumental support from Jason Goodyear, Paul Casper aka Frore, Ivan Block, and Karla K McWilliams, with mastering by Robin Storey of Rapoon. (03/12/2024)

One long track recorded in April 1982 and a more recent offering from August 2013, featuring the VCS3 and vocal ravings of Jean-Marc. Marc Dufourd showed up very briefly in the 1980s as a member of the French experimental jazz art group Axolotl with Bernard Bollerot, Etienne Brunet, Jacques Oger, and Lambert Boudier; their first 1981 album has recently been rescued by Le Souffle Continu. I never heard it, but it’s supposedly more in the “classic” free improv realms than their second LP Outmaneuvre (1984) which leans towards Rock In Opposition tendencies. Dufourd also lent his guitar skills to the Hotel Hotel album by that towering genius of French avant-everything, Jac Berrocal, and he recorded with the great Pascal Comelade.

It’s been great to hear these “vintage” 15 mins of wayward guitar exploits from 1982, but I have the impression the session wasn’t much more than a try-out and might not have been intended for publication at the time. This is kinda reflected in the unfinished and sketchy nature of the music. No matter, since there are some listeners (and I’m one of them) who are hungry for any evidence of free-thinking experimentation from this 1980s period, which is rapidly developing into another “golden age” of free playing. My only other observation that this incarnation of Thrash The Flash isn’t as outright “noisy” as the 2002 version, but noise isn’t everything.

The cover images are by Diavolo Marco; we’re advised to look closely at these abstract paintings for the hidden text messages which spell out “everlasting sonata” and may have some bearing on the nature of Foussat’s music and his life’s task. (17/12/2024)

I love the music of this group – Michael Serafin-Wells playing most of the instruments, Sylvia Solanas adding spoken word and backing vocals – but I’ve pretty much exhausted my vocabulary and can’t find anything new to say about their beautiful music. I might say that they’ve progressed some way beyond the “dreampop” tag they formerly used to promote their music, and have now carved out a space of their own making – very devotional, respectful, and illuminated by a mysterious light like the inside of a cathedral. This one is a double CD with 22 tracks of music, song, poems, and other such dreamy interludes, and happens to be inspired by the French artist Louis Janmot, who created Le Poeme De L’Ame in the 19th century – a series of paintings and related texts which reveal a very devotional Catholic besotted with the beauty of ecclesiastical imagery, but also poised midway between heavy symbolism and tormented by impossible Romantic dreams to equal those of William Blake. No wonder that Bipolar Explorer are drawn to this creator – you can clearly see their preoccupations with the afterlife, especially the passage of angels between this world and the next, in just about all their albums, starting with their Christmas album Til Morning is Nigh, which we heard in 2018.

The full colour booklet includes song and poem texts, as well as evocative images of the night sky, comets, solar phenomena, and angels. The group continue to honour the memory of the deceased Summer Serafin, who receives printed credits for vocals and spoken words. (18/11/2024)

Today’s item Broken Allures (COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR339CD) follows their trusted pathway – all performances, voices and instruments subjected to twisted studio treatments and processes that induce maximal madness and distort all rebakes and rope ladders into nightmarish dimensions, in as much time as it takes a French chef to whip up a pink macaron inside a smoked trout. Fenech on guitars, bass, drums, sequencers…Epplay filling in on synths, samples, and diabolical tape recordings, sound effects and field recording captures…label is correct to hint at some form of “musique concrète” approach in the final mix, but even this clue doesn’t convey the unhinged genius found in these splicing touchettes, where spontaneity and crazed imaginative skills are privileged above the mode of academic pondering and deliberation of the IRCAM school. As such, Berrocal remains true to what I regard as his post-punk hero influences that have helped mould his jazz improvisations since the 1980s – and just check out that recent Catalogue record if you’re inclined to doubt this – and he still embodies the vocal loopery and zaned-out terrorthons that Stapleton evidently admired (and could never imitate successfully, try as he may).

Speaking of “that period” from English underground music, Cosey Fanni Tutti (of all people) is also here, adding chilling lyrics sung in equally unsettling voice on two tracks, and electric guitar on a third – ‘Viva La Hacienda’, as it happens, one of the stand-outs on the whole set and we’d like to think a nod in direction of Manchester and Joy Division. Speaking of Public Image Limited – which we weren’t exactly – Jah Wobble also surfaces from 20 fathoms to add his bass blorrks to the title track, and indeed it might be that element that so cheerfully drives this strong piece down its death-disco inflected dubby pathway back to the rocky beach. With Berrocal’s echoplexed trumpet writhing on top like three deep-sea fish about to be fried in the pan, we’ve got a harshoid-horror studio mash that Martin Rushent would only have dreamed about, and even the ghost of Teo Macero raises one toenail from his perch in paradise. To lock the case up tight, the opening track was inspired by ‘Warszawa’ by Bowie and Eno, and on ‘Coiffeur Pour Vince (Tu Sais La Mort)’ we have, wouldn’t it be fair to say, a deliberate throwback to Berrocal’s immortal ‘Rock’n’Roll Station’ from 1976, that surreal re-imagining of early American rock and roll – which this time around throws in an additional verbal salute to Johnny Burnette.

As with previous outings by the trio, the music seems (to me) to be taking place in near-darkness, and the poetic surrealist sound-poetry of this great man Berrocal both confuses and illuminates the mind like a green candle. Recommended! (10/10/2024)

I’ve been left high and dry by previous releases from this mysterious figure, but perhaps I haven’t been sufficiently saturated in their ocean of debris. I see that today’s record – which might veer towards being a showcase for their guitar playing – also includes repurposed live recordings and room recordings from as far back as 2011 to 2013, indicating that nm likes to the take the long view and regards their audio life as a continual cycle of layering and recontextualising of sounds; if that’s right, they might not be too far apart from the methods of Frans de Waard. Akystret does in places feel weightier, more considered, less sketchy than previous items heard in these walls; occasionally we veer off into rather bleak and heavily-abstracted zones, where the coldness and lack of a human presence has its own aesthetic frisson.

On ‘Allein Mit’ we’re more successful at discerning treated guitar solos which keen like a lonely wolf against a backdrop of drone, distortion, and unknown layerings; it’s like a nightmarish take on the genre of New Age Music. ‘Ele’ on the B side of the album feels like a sketch for a lost Popol Vuh recording, haunted by the spectre of Daniel Fichelscher. (28/10/2024)

On today’s cassette Hako (MA RECORDS M 34) it’s one side of the duo with woodwinds and guitar, then another side where they’re joined by the Japanese player Kohsetsu Imanishi and her koto. As before the Czech-German duo adhere to their “strict idiom”, which I have previously taken to refer to a set of rules and parameters that must be respected. This discipline does result in very subtle interplay, and quiet all-acoustic music, but it’s also intensive; Papenheim’s “clicking” noises made on the guitar are understated, but very bold and confident. Wróblewski’s clarinet tone is slightly more conventional, but he deliberately limits himself to very few notes, and injects his purely abstract breathy passages as needed. The duo seem intent on carving out their own corner of minimal improvisation that stands far apart from others.

On the B side, they become a trio with the addition of Imanishi and koto, an event which came about during Karm’s March 2024 tour of Japan. On this occasion, the quiet-and-minimal aesthetic is enhanced – or distracted – by the sounds from the nearby railway at the Hako Gallery. Apart from one Ftarri recording made in 2024, we don’t know a great deal about Kohsetsu Imanishi, but her presence here has made for a mystical moment of improvisatory tension, and her aesthetic approach seems to be very sympathetic to the Karm “idiom”. This particular musical meeting might be a little slow to start up, but at its peak we hear something approximating a sketched-in diagram for a conversation that could lead in several different directions. You can hear the players working hard to keep all the options open, all possibilities on the table.

Issued on a small Czech label, arrived 29/10/2024.

Some of the above is reflected, I like to think, in the drawing appended to the letter sent to me from Bill, flat guitar seen from its side resembling a snake, its long tongue caressing the amplifier with a benign energy, micro-explosions emanating from its back. Thompson isn’t just another “droner” type, and there’s a real purpose and strength to his work. (20/09/2024)

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)