Once again the pleasure we get from this music is due to many elements – strong melodies, watertight arrangements and playing by the team, the superb synth and electric piano work of Chaudhary, tasty jazz chords. And of course the bright upbeat mood of these very accessible pieces. Her music isn’t always especially “experimental”, apart from perhaps the cyborg-inflected episodes like ‘Ghanaplasticity’, but then it’s also not easy to pigeonhole it for a mainstream audience. It’s not just the fun-loving approach to musical genres (including steel pans, sitar-like instrumental breaks, funky rhythms, 1970s soul, psychedelic touches and electronic decorations), but there is something endearingly “quirky” about her song lyrics which may trip up the unwary. I personally think it’s great people still care enough to compose an entire “jazz ballad” song in praise of the “Rambutan” fruit from South-East Asia, or use a song to propose “National Chocolate Oat Milk Day” as a national holiday in the calendar. As a life-long reader of Mad Magazine, I am well aware of Don Martin’s 1963 story about “National Gorilla-Suit Day”, which (absurdly enough) became a real “thing” across the United States with at least one city where we can find devoted zany-types dressing up as gorillas once a year. Which shows us that satire can never go far enough.

I should perhaps add that Amanda Chaudhary is not a satirist as far as I can see, and she and her band are clearly having a great time making this gorgeous music – the joy is infectious as soon as you listen. When Frank Zappa wrote “silly” songs about details like dental floss and tweezers, there was very little joy in his heart, and he took a perverse pleasure in the absurdities of everyday life. No such misanthropy here, just beautiful tunes and great playing and real warmth. But she loves cats, so what else could we expect? (16/07/2024)

Leader Jason Berry has impressed and entertained us with his previous well-polished and expertly-performed records of exciting music, and this one is no exception. The line-up here includes Steve Adams, Myles Boisen, Chris Grady, John Hanes, Amanda Chaudhary, and many other luminaries – the combined CV of these players is pretty staggering, and it’s no surprise they’re in demand as live musicians and session players. Musically, they exhibit the skills needed to negotiate the ingenious changes in Berry’s elaborate compositions, but at no time have I found myself “overwhelmed” with instrumental show-offs or players packing too many notes into each bar. Once again we admire the concision of Berry’s compositional thoughts; no need for a 17-minute instrumental excursion to make his statement, when he can compress his ideas, and the need for musicianly expression, into pieces that arrive as perfectly-realised episodes lasting 4-5 mins.

It so happens Berry is also a gifted illustrator, and his full-colour drawings appear on the cover and in the booklet, expressing in visual form his very unorthodox take on the themes of Julius Caesar, a dazzling combination of science-fiction, optical puzzles, and colourful surrealist japes; the very incongruous juxtapositions will intrigue the questing mind. Berry sees Julius Caesar as a story of “ambition, power, and political violence”, and how the rhetoric of a speaker can incite a mob to violence. The parallels with America’s current political turmoil are self-evident, but let’s hope that the crowned figure in a blue business suit represents some political parvenu, appointed merely because of his position as a tech oligarch, or related to donations from one billionaire gangster to another, is being hounded out of office pursued by whatever agency we have left that still fights for the forces of good. I’m being far too prosaic in my interpretation though, an attitude which does no favours to the many-layered and allusive talents of the creative-thinking Jason Berry, and his talented crew of interpreters. Another essential release…from 29 November 2024.

Coming in a very strong second in the Zeuhlist hierarchy (Art Zoyd claiming a bronze), Belgian chamber-prog veterans Univers Zero have come in from the cold after nine years of inactivity on the recording front (their previous release Phosphorescent Dreams being primarily a Japanese import from 2014). Their re-emergence finds the outfit with a somewhat reduced line-up when compared to past activities. In fact, it’s only UZ founder member, drummer/keyboardist Daniel Denis who plays on all of Lueur‘s eleven cuts; some surprisingly concise, with seven tracks coming under four minutes (prog Heresie!). As for the occasionals; Daniel’s son Nicolas can be found on bass/percussion and vocals while Kurt Budé (clarinets) and Nicolas Dechêne (guitars) complete the picture.

I’ll admit the mothballing of the bygone/exotic instrumentation (almost a UZ trademark) is still sorely missed. But, shorn of the balofons, spinets and bassoons, the intense, brooding atmospherics and crumbling cliff face tension still manages to threaten and insinuate at the most unexpected times. Even now still a little too real for certain monthly prog glossies I guess. Surely rubber stamping that claim for example is “Sfumato”. Split into two distinct and separate pieces, it opens with a distressed, wavering organ motif, followed by an insidious Wyatt-like nursery rhyme that’s then gatecrashed by a heavy martial passage, piano stabs and cymbal splash. Part two pushes the intensity levels considerably with some strident keyboard fanfares, matched with militaristic drum barrages that see Monsieur Denis clearly playing out of his skin. “Axe 117”, though, is probably the heaviest element on this particular periodic table – an insistent one-note emergency tannoy signal finds itself the backbone to full flow iron foundry ambience, that are mixed with faux choral synthetics that come with an ‘x’ rating.

There’s obviously something going on here with the light-related titles; first Phosphorescent Dreams and now Lueur, which translates from the French as ‘glimmer’. That really undersells the project (two years in preparation), as it’s glaringly obvious (sorry…) that UZ burn as brightly as they did during their time at say, Atem, or the ReR Megacorp.

Bars Without Measures (DISCUS MUSIC DISCUS 159CD) features an astonishing array of musicians – over two dozen at least – performing across 11 tracks of generously dense and rich music, which we can safely say has huge “crossover” appeal to listeners who enjoy jazz, progressive rock, and that odd strain of European “chamber rock” which surfaced in the 1980s and appealed to Chris Cutler when he was enthusing about it in the pages of the Recommended Records catalogue. As mentioned in previous write-ups, Eclectic Maybe Band is a triumph of process – it’s possible that a track will start life played by musicians in the studio, but it’s within the rules to add parts and overdubs after the fact, in an open-ended method that allows musicians to send in their contributions over the internet. In fine, we don’t know how much of an “assemblage” we’re hearing at any one time, but it’s not important – the results, always exciting, innovative, and full of unexpected surprises, are what count in the final analysis, as the prospector takes his nuggets to the assay office.

In his liner notes, Guy Segers does emphasise the importance of the internet to this continuing project, partly because in the “old days” it would have been difficult, expensive and time-consuming to get all these international musicians together into the recording studio for a session on a particular date. The possibility of digitising music, and being able to shepherd it around the world through fibre-optic cable, has thus been grasped as an opportunity to think on a grand scale, do something that was not possible before. But Segers stresses the important impulses that start it all off for him, as with all creative endeavours – he speaks, with some animation, of “music without stylistic restriction”, “a vast horizon of emotions”, something that “never reflects the same colour”. In short, it’s not about technology or fetishising computers, but about creating something new and beautiful. And in organising this “collective project”, one where he does not see himself as leader, Segers hopes to bring the names and the work of these musicians to a wider audience of listeners and journalists. This being the case, please peruse ye the credits to learn new names, or reacquaint yourself with familiar ones, from France, Belgium, Austria, the UK, and the USA. Rather ordinary sleeve art, but I suppose that image does convey something of the “rush” of digital data down the pipes of the world wide web. (Sept 2023)

Billing as a cosmic atmospheric black metal duo, Stellar Forest put out its self-titled debut EP a week ago and a real doozy it’s turning out to be, to my ears at least. Stellar Forest may be new but members Erroiak (vocals) and Septev (all instruments) come with a lot of experience in black metal, atmospheric black metal and dark ambient, and various combinations of these genres. It’s no surprise then that this EP merges elements of these aforementioned styles into a hybrid blackened techno / ambient synthesis, and moreover one that manages to be savage and hard-hitting, noisy and cold, and at the same time icy-glossy and polished, and trance-inducing, in a way that electronic pop can be. Searing, burning tremolo BM guitars, furious blast-beat percussion and spidery roaring, rasping vocals meet a barrage of glacial dark ambient, minimalist coldwave melody, glitch electronics and breakbeats: the range of influences and inspirations brought by Erroiak and Septev are mind-boggling but across all six tracks of the EP the black metal elements are clearly defined and help to anchor the varieties of non-metal music that pass through.

Tracks are numbered I to VI and can be treated as being mostly instrumental, as Erroiak’s screaming, wailing vocals tend more to be one of various layers of sonic texture in each and every track. At just under 30 minutes, the EP plays as a soundtrack to a futuristic science fiction film just waiting to be made, once the Stellar Forest men give their thumbs up to such a project. The noisy scourging BM guitars and pounding drums may be upfront across most tracks but the synthesisers and electronics fill the spaces behind them, presenting a soundscape made intriguing, mysterious and complex by all the contrasts of its component musics and their interactions between and among one another.

As the EP continues, the music becomes more and more dreamy and trance-inducing, as breakbeats and ambient drones start competing for equal attention with the BM elements, sometimes superseding them altogether (as on track III), and often it seems as if all the angels in Heaven and the demons in Hell have come together in one Almighty rave that ranges over the length and breadth of the known cosmos. While parts of the music can be ugly and savage, and melancholy can be found (especially on track 5), the overall impression is of a sweeping glacial and abstract beauty that can be ethereal and spiritual, and which is not usually malevolent though neither is it completely benign. In all of this, Erroiak and Septev do not forget that melody, riff and proper song composition matter, and all songs feature these structural constituents, even if in unusual ways.

A most singular sound universe of sweeping cold beauty, terrifying and confronting, yet breathtaking in its scope and ambition, beckons to all who might dare enter the Stellar Forest realm.

Swiss player Eva-Maria Karbacher here with a fine solo record Ochotona Calls (WIDE EAR RECORDS WER070), made with her muted soprano saxophone and nothing else. She’s a member of Saxophone Quartet Uneven Same, distinguished by being an all-female combo, heard to great effect on the set of compositions by Thomas K.J. Mejer, label-mate and fellow Swiss. As an earnest of her skills, Karbacher spends 21:51 mins detailing the life of the ochotona as her opening cut, a bubblement of unpredictable patterns and shapes oddly punctuated by a judicious buzz (from overblowing) acting as counterpoint and percussion section. I never saw an ochotona in the wilds of America and Asia where they live, but though they resemble a mouse these small mammals are more akin to a rabbit. Although it uses its voice to pass on messages and danger warnings to its fellow ochsters, Eva-Maria Karbacher is not setting out to emulate the sound of this animal, rather to suggest its “lively and agile nature”. This may account for the slightly scuttling mode of the music. Even the dreams of the animal are, with great sympathy, described on the second track. As far as I can recall, few saxophonists in the history of free improvisation have exhibited such compassion for the animal kingdom. I only wish this theme had extended to the cover art, which is rather bland array of pinks and blues, like the paintings in a dentist waiting room. Otherwise, score five reeds to Eva-Maria. (17/07/2023)

French player Pascal Lovergne arrives from Lille with their Palace Sessions (NO LABEL) EP, all performed solo by him on a solo acoustic bass guitar, as he perches before a single microphone. Opening moments suggested we might be in for a bout of the minimalisms in Wandelweiser mode, but not exactly; although Lovergne calls himself an improviser and a composer, he’s also intent on exploring – or perhaps suggesting – many diverse musical styles and genres, including Indian ragas and 12-bar blues. At this point it’s probably tempting to cast one eye in the direction of your Takoma collections, but in fact Lovergne has evolved, or cultivated, his own very unique style which owes very little to conventional ripple-picking, open tunings, or chord shapes. Much more muted and reflective than the average Fahey copyist. Just to throw another element into the mix, he’s apparently familiar with the work of Pierre Vasseur, a very obscure musique concrète composer who released his music under his own Free Way Musique private press in the 1980s, later to be rescued by the Creel Pone CDR label. Vasseur had some ideas about “relevant contours” in his music, which has impacted on Pascal Lovergne to the extent that’s he’s undertaken a “long time search” to apply these principles to his own music. This EP is one result of that labour. Although admittedly restricted in its sonic reach, the record does document Lovergne’s very assured performing style, and invokes a very particular mood of introspection and contemplation. (12/07/2023)

If you look carefully at the front cover art for “Contemplation”, the fourth album from Finnish occult black metal act Valtakunta, you’ll discover a horrific suicide scene – and that’s the point of this work: the free-form nature of the noisy music, ranging through noise, trance and psychedelic influences and elements, might suggest an uplifting outlook promising transcendence and hope, but the craggy death-rattle vocals and the arrangement of the track titles actually warn of emptiness, dark horror and the resulting despair that follow after such revelation. After releasing four albums over a nine-year period since the first self-titled debut came out in June 2015, Valtakunta remains a mysterious act and the only thing I can say for sure is that this album and the previous third album “Ylösnousemus” (Finnish for “resurrection) feature contributions from Antti Klemi from fellow Finnish BM act Circle of Ouroborus. On “Ylösnousemus”, Klemi contributed vocals mostly but on some tracks on “Contemplation” he also plays guitars, drums and synthesisers. Nevertheless, Valtakunta maintains a distinct style of desolate BM experimentation even as that band draws closer to Circle of Ouroborus in its worldview and existential despair and dismay.

Opening track “The Temple of Our Reincarnation” is a sterling work of continuous blackened noise fury and thunder, dominated by burning tremolo guitar, crashing percussion work and a roaring demonic vocal hidden in a chamber kilometres deep underground. The drone / trance chaos and erratic drumwork continue in “Through Stones, Roots and Lepers” with a clearer (and thus even more horrific) vocal though some people just might find the howling guitar feedback tiresome and distracting from the drumming. “Necromantic Delusions” admittedly doesn’t sound much different, but it appears more focused as the guitars and percussion work together rather than against each other and a definite mood is established.

The last two tracks “Void Soul” and “Contemplation” are the two glories of the album – or, depending on your viewpoint, the most harrowing tracks – as the vocals rise to screams and suffocating keyboards join the guitars and thundering drums in their cacophony. At least everything is less chaotic than previously, with the guitars now playing definite riffs, and melancholy and sadness now suffusing the cold space-ambient synthesiser drones and the other raucous music. Whatever sounds and noises appear now have a clear purpose, right down to the end lingering drone guitar notes. The final title track appears to start in a hypnotic trance state, and for a few minutes you feel as though held in a taut embrace, ready to drop anywhere and everywhere, yet the music holds tight and steady. The screaming may be the most horrifying part of the track – come to think of it, it may be the ghastliest element in the entire recording – as it rants and vents its spleen in some enclosed tomb in another dimension. In its second half the music – mostly blackened noise / space drone psychedelia – reaches a shrill climax, with the drums banging away and the guitars and synths roaring up a storm of feedback howl and power electronics drill noise.

Bent Windows Records’ Bandcamp page did promise dismay and demented horror with this album, and I will admit the music can be unbearable in its extreme noise terror stance. The first three tracks play as though the musicians are fumbling in the black noise chaos and trying to find a balance between what they’re doing, so they can do what needs doing – but once they’ve achieved their balance, even though that happens quite late in the album, there’s simply no stopping them as they charge through a fraught soundscape and push into another dimension, leaving little more than purrs and rumbles behind. Behind the horror, the bleakness and the despair though, there’s still a quality, hard to pin down, that is exhilarating and enthralling enough for listeners to follow all the way through, though the path be strewn with extreme danger and deception.

Two years after its last album “Celestial Woods”, Raat sets loose another full-length atmospheric BM / post-BM humdinger in “Enchantment”. As on “Celestial Woods” and “Raison d’Être”, this album, the third for Raat, features fairly long tracks (usually five to eight minutes, with one song “Falling Stars Surround Me” extending to 10+ minutes) filled with constant activity which makes them all sonically dense. Punishing blast-beat percussion layered over with blaring heroic synthesiser melodies and background droning ambience, grinding noise guitar riffs, and the occasional clean-toned six-stringed tune delivered in a quiet setting, all presided over by an angry, raspy phantom vocal, dominates a washed-out, perhaps even ravaged soundscape. This soundscape is echoed in the choice of front cover artwork: this is a reproduction of “Souls on the Banks of Acheron” (1898) by Romanian artist Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl (1860 – 1933) which portrays the Greek god Hermes in his psychopomp role – erm, I see he’s nearly been cut out of the right-hand side of the picture – leading the souls of the recently deceased to the shores of the Acheron River in Hades to await the arrival of Charon.

The atmospheric BM side of Raat can be ferocious, cold and hard-hitting, especially on early tracks like “Void’s Embrace” – yet there is room also for softer, more tender and melodious moments where blackgaze / post-BM influences come to the fore. The album begins very strongly and aggressively with “Luminous Wrath”, a harsh, even vicious song that transforms midway into a more graceful and flowing piece of melancholy, and then changing again into a bloc of tough, harsh atmo-BM noise grind. Wisps of ambient melody around this and other songs add subtle shading to them, and some depth to the music overall.

As we progress through the early tracks from “Luminous Wrath” through “Void’s Embrace”, “Dreams Alight” to “Darkened Wings” with their stream-of-consciousness questing through realms of cosmic transcendence, the music becomes more open to pensive post-BM / blackgaze influences, with touches of ambient and progressive rock, though some of the early aggression and savagery is lost. Songs lack distinct riffs and melodies, and the flip-flopping between harsh atmo-BM attack and passages of melodic gloom and radiance tends to make the tracks sound more similar than different. Later songs like “Pure Spirit” and “Falling Stars Surround Me” have a lighter, more cheery and optimistic mood but by the time we reach these tracks, some of our fellow listeners may have fallen away due to the arduous nature of the journey through earlier songs. Even then, “Falling Stars …” can be a very lumbering track, repetitive in parts, with the vocals nearly drowned out by the jackhammer drumming and guitar churn. Bonus track “Reflection” is an all-instrumental piece of weepy acoustic guitar melody wreathed in soft ambient drone and a slight sunny shimmer, with just enough of a dark unexpectedly mechanical undertone to give the album’s conclusion an ambiguous air.

Compared to earlier albums, “Enchantment”, despite its name, has a harsh sound which flattens the songs a little and robs them of some of their depth and subtlety. At this point in Raat’s career, the vocals probably should be more upfront than they have been before, especially as the lyrics are important and contribute to their respective songs’ melancholy and moods. Even in later songs with their more mellow nature, nearly all the lyrics gravitate towards despair and hopelessness in a universe that has no care or sympathy for the living beings it creates. The only thing to wish for is a death that is not too painful, or which offers a hope, however brief, of peace before sensation is lost entirely or another life cycle with all its sorrows and alienation begins.

The album may be a grand achievement technically, but my impression is that Raat has hit a crossroads in its musical and lyrical development and progress. To stay fresh and vital, Raat all-round musician Sushant Rawat will need to rethink, perhaps even change the project’s style and themes.

I was grabbed from opening seconds of odd Moog sounds and thereafter found it all a compelling listen – what I’m enjoying most is what I think of as the “open” structure – free from compositional structure and four-beats to bar, allowing musicians apparently to freely move about a proposed and vast imaginary space. Bourne is throwing a few jazz piano shapes when he reaches the “table mountain” area, but likewise he’s also providing tasty cosmic sounds on his “memory moog”, seemingly a new analogue toy from renowned vendors Linn. Switching freely between the two keyboards (thanks to his new “pivot” chair), Bourne manifests wiry strength on the acoustic piano and delicately subtle tones and empathy on the moog, quite a few lightyears away from the untamed raw style of Sun Ra on that instrument. Meanwhile there’s also Chris Sharkey, known to us as leader of The Geordie Approach, a trio who realised their “northern krautrock” vision on the Shields album for this label not long ago, and who also added his guitar licks to Archer’s Anthropology Band. Sharkey produced today’s record, but more to the point he’s also credited with “live processing”, and clearly there’s a zillion zappulating effects on the magic board which he brought into Airedale on the day, which he uses now sparingly, now generously, depending on how freaky the players may be, mutating into octopoid chimeras and tripping over their long hair. Sharkey’s futuristic guitar blonks also exceed Robert Fripp for audacious overly-disguised ingenuity, allowing many mournful seagull plaints to ensue. Rhythm section is Andy Champion on electric bass and Joost Hendricks on drums.

The music emerged from two full recording sessions of playing (and there’s a plan to release more of it on Volume 2); ‘Functional’ was, impressively, the first take from the first day, and it’s here in its entirety. Going to assume this means no edits, no overdubs. Label notes hint at much pent-up energy (after lockdown and over hurdles) being unleashed in the studio when the team pushed in through the fire doors. Label notes also wisely make no claims for “modern jazz-rock fusion” or “detectable kosmische influences”, which is refreshing and earns bonus points, and in places we might say the group are inventing something quite new of their own, purely by ingenious mix of instinct and craft. It’s sufficient for us in the audience to just enjoy the very confident free playing, the exciting instrumental combinations, and above all to drench one’s bones in the very satisfying sound of the recording – vivid, upfront, maximal…you bet…you’d think Sharkey’s high-quality production services would be in high demand from every band that calls themselves a “free improvising” combo, but perhaps his phone number is ex-directory. Also there’s the all-yellow cover with plain black typography, attempting perhaps to emulate an Incus sleeve. Very good indeed. From 12th January 2023.

“With every thought, the soul loses colour again” … that’s the English-language translation Google Translate gives for the title of Danish BM act Ildganger’s second album “For hver tanke mister sjælen atter farve”, hinting at the misery, bleakness and dark uncertainty threaded through the recording’s five tracks. The album’s cover art is no more reassuring in its dark murky colours and style suggesting inner storms and general chaos.

“En sjael til dom” (“A soul for judgement”) starts the album in epic depressive doomy blackness, from slow jangling-guitar moping to hard riff crunching confrontation and dense noisy storms of raw tremolo guitar grind, urgent beating percussion and above all the gruff declamatory vocals that add extra paint-stripper harshness to the music. You certainly feel as though you’re tumbling into a spinning black whirlwind, the centre of which leads you inexorably into another, more forbidding dimension than any you might have experienced in your worst nightmares or most desolate moments. However, it’s really with the second track “Ved horisontons ende” (“At horizon’s end”) that Ildganger’s full aggression and songwriting flair are unleashed in music that can sound shrill and almost hysterical with rapid-fire trilling riffs backed by pained synths. Drama ebbs and flows as the music transits through a brief atmospheric passage that suddenly ends in blasts of guitar noise, blast beats and sonorous orchestral synth background.

After a brief ambient instrumental punctuated by claps of thunder, rain shower and sighing choirs, the album plunges back into the existential storm with “Dans om tomhedens mund” (“Dance around the mouth of the void”), a solid and intense drama combining raw BM, symphonic BM grandeur and even snippets of post-BM radiance and melody. The track is so dense with layers of guitar texture and keyboard theatrics that it feels overwhelming, even suffocating at times, and a whiff of decadence and decay is not all that far away. The album closes with “Conflagration in the Heart of Stone”, the only track on the album with English-language lyrics, an even more histrionic piece that gathers up all that the previous tracks have unleashed and poured these forces into a mix of hard-hitting machine-gun percussion, showers of burning guitar and chiming jangly guitar melodies, and evil-sounding keyboard sighing. The track chugs off over the horizon in a mighty barrage of ferocious guitar shower, thumping percussion and deranged orchestral synth bombast, leaving behind a sad lament.

On the assumption that Ildganger is a solo project, the album as it is, is a sterling effort in song composition and performance, with all instruments harmonising very well even when the music appears most chaotic. The slightly murky production is both an asset and a liability: audiences will appreciate that the muddy quality adds bleak atmosphere but at the same time it makes the music seem a bit one-dimensional and blunted when perhaps it needs to be sharp. The guitars could certainly do with extra power and zing as there are occasions where they are reduced to a mere grinding presence. “For hver tanke …” is a decent enough recording though I’m not sure it has much staying power: it doesn’t offer much, musically anyway, that has not already been done with the mix of elements and influences from different sub-genres of black metal and dark ambient.