Review: Louis Johnstone is known for his mischievous and anti-art approach and here he teams up with Trilogy Tapes for Dracula Completo, an unhinged, chaotic release that defies conventional music. Operating under multiple aliases including Wanda Group and A Large Sheet of Muscle, Johnstone's work blends concrete electronics, warped samples and dark, often distorted spoken-word pieces. Dracula Completo embodies his subversive style and is a mix of absurdity, mutant poetry and rebellious energy. Though Johnstone's work challenges norms and provokes, it remains surprisingly accessible and engaging.
Review: Rabih Abou-Khalil's Arabian Waltz is a masterful fusion of jazz, Middle Eastern traditional music, and Western classical. Featuring Abou-Khalil on oud, Michel Godard on tuba and serpent, Nabil Khaiat on frame drums, and the Balanescu String Quartet, the album achieves a unique blend of sounds. Abou-Khalil creatively uses the string quartet, which is traditionally harmony-focused, to play in unison or octaves, integrating them seamlessly into the Middle Eastern musical framework. The album's highlight, 'Dreams of a Dying City,' evokes a cinematic atmosphere with its brooding tuba and cello motifs. 'The Pain After' starts with an impressive tuba solo that transitions into a poignant interlude with the string quartet, reminiscent of Beethoven's late quartets, before Abou-Khalil's oud adds a touch of wistfulness. The title track, 'Arabian Waltz,' and 'Ornette Never Sleeps' provide dynamic and quirky contrasts. Arabian Waltz showcases Abou-Khalil's ability to innovate with guest musicians, creating a new and compelling musical style. It's a splendid album for fans of world music, jazz, classical, or anyone who appreciates exceptional music.
Review: An about-face is a complete and utter change in direction; it's this sonic capriciousness that the producer, whose namesake is drawn from the word, finds solace in, and wishes to welcome. Following a period of exploring theta wave and hemi-sync techniques - don't ask us, we're still not sure - the artist also known as Le Sculpteur d'Esprit (the Mind Sculptor) is said to have touched down in this dimension with the ambition to transport listeners through at least four portals of altered consciousness; each of these are intended as thought-worlds in which interactive sculptures, evoked through sound alone, are revealed in the listeners' collective mind. From opener 'Le Tournesol (The Sunflower)' to closer 'L'il De L'elephant ('The Elephant Eye'), these are thoroughly well-sound-designed sonic lemni-scapes, bringing complex sets of progressive builds and electro-spirituals to an awestruck form; immaculately experimental, the record would sound well at home on an Invisible Inc. or Cascine tape.
Review: Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Doing justice to decades of friendship and creative exploration between the trio, the album's two sides draw on each artist's dedication to long-form composition, incorporating arhythmic piano spirituals and prepared percussion shimmerings. All this is used to achieve a singular, formalistic sonic abstraction that is seemingly, intentionally critical of the need for context or 'place'.
Review: Chantal Acda is known for penning and performing immersive dark folk music, while Eric Theilemans reputation as a master of percussion that focuses on anything but drums (well, OK, some drums) precedes him. Put them both together, then, and chances are you're not going to come up with the latest throwaway chart hit. Instead, we're offered one of those records that needs time to digest, not least if you already know the movie Koyaansqatsi and its original soundtrack.
A New Score was written for a live performance accompanying a screening of that film, but also works incredibly well as a standalone record. Adventurous and deeply human, it invokes images of landscapes that never give up, accentuating our spiritual connection to the planet ('Track 3'), while also managing to experiment with structure and samples, in turn nodding to the machines and electronics involved in its creation ('Track 2', for example).
Review: Way back in 2012, legendary pedal steel player Susan Alcorn held a residency at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. During that time, she performed a number of pieces that had been arranged for her by cellist Janel Leppin. It's a recording of one of those performances that makes up The Heart Sutra, a fusion of neo-classical, avant-garde experimentalism and jazz that brilliantly re-imagines Alcorn's music. Surprisingly, it's not Alcorn's pedal steel that dominates - though it is audible - but rather a combination of cello, violin, clarinet and guitar. The resultant music is genuinely spellbinding, though, and packed full of atmosphere. We can only imagine what it would have been like to attend the recording, but we wish we'd been there.
Review: For the first time, the soundtrack to Giuliano Carnimeo's 1974 erotic comedy film, La Signora Gioca Bene a Scopa? (released under the international title Poker In Bed), gets a vinyl release through BTF Italiy. Set in Parma, Italy, the film follows Michele, a penniless poker player, whose rock-bottom recourse, born of gambling debts, is to become a prostitute. Scored by Italian erotic film greats Gianfranco Plenizio and Alessandro Alessandroni - two virtuosi of great late 60s and early 70s eminence - we hear a teasing, undying vibe of irreverence here, with tempt-estuous vocals and pizzicato string tickles making light of the lurid relational meeting of minds and bodies that drives the film's action.
Review: Alfa Mist and Amika Quartet share a new ennead of never-heard-before tracks, alongside a few expansions on earlier releases: Recurring. An eternal return of saintly jazz and storytelling hip-hop, the record comes hot on the heels of Mist's recent Variables LP (2023) and the Manchester quartet's Amika's earlier 'Exist' release from earlier in 2024. The latter group have toured extensively with Alfa Mist in recent years, and the new live record notably foreruns its full release with a new exclusive, 'Checkpoint (Violence)', on which Mist not only drums, but at the same time MCs, with verve and flair. Here Mist concept-checks everything from modern-day apartheid to astrology (and exasperations thereof - "don't ask me your starsign"). Amika, meanwhile, embellish each mix with searing string arcos and long fibrous tugs, which seem, ironically, to assure us about the future, though they do lend the songs a demure mood: "don't fret".
Review: Double Consciousness is not just the name of the new collaborative album release between Oren Ambarchi and Eric Thielemans; it's also a term developed by revolutionary theorists such as Frantz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois to describe the cognitive dissonance/dual self-perception of oppressed groups in unjust, often colonial societies. With that in mind, we're not just going in blind here. A forty-minute, single-take epic album recorded live at the Werkplaats Walter theatre in Brussels, this is Ambarchi and Thielemans as we know them best, the former handling the guitar as usual, and the latter on drums and percussion. Many disparate movements ensue, the music seeming to represent the arc of psychic revelation; the roller-coaster ride of fulfilment; tyrants overthrown; and former double-consciousnesses unified.
Review: Anagrams is an Atlanta-based collaboration between Jeff Crompton and JD Walsh which finds the Balmat label moving beyond the typically electronic ambient music they've carried to date, instead embracing a mellow strain of instrumental music drawing on jazz, folk and country and landing somewhere in the liminal space between. Crompton plays alto and tenor sax, electric piano, organ and clarinet, while Walsh stretches out on experimental guitar approaches, adventurous synthesis and drum programming. It's a delicate affair, as it typical for Balmat releases, and imbued with a warmth that can only come from sincere human interaction.
Review: Laurie Anderson's latest album, Amelia, marks her first release since the well-received Landfall (2018) and is inspired by the tragic final flight of aviator Amelia Earhart, featuring 22 tracks that delve into her much storied legacy. Collaborating with the Czech orchestra Filharmonie Brno, under Dennis Russell Davies, and a roster of notable musicians including Anohni and Marc Ribot, Anderson crafts a deeply evocative narrative, while the album reflects Anderson's distinct style, blending lyrical introspection with innovative soundscapes. Drawing from Earhart's personal diaries and communications, Amelia explores themes of adventure and disappearance, providing a poignant auditory journey. A renowned avant-garde artist, Anderson's career spans music, visual art, and performance, recognised for her boundary-pushing work and poetic storytelling, and this album continues her tradition of merging the beautiful with the bizarre, as well as offering a fresh perspective on an historic figure.
Review: Andrew CS, a multimedia artist and creative programmer from the American Midwest, delves into recursive time loops through digital memories on this new album which blends recorded spaces with synthesised loops improvised on custom software. After discovering a field recorder as a teen, Andrew began archiving moments of tranquillity, creating a dialogue between present textures and a future self. Caught in Pointers, weaves a non-linear coming-of-age narrative from six years of altered field recordings and collages data from Andrew's rural youth and Chicago's urban oscillations and envisions their past as a navigable, four-dimensional digital space.
Review: 'Hearing The Water Before Seeing The Falls' is Andrew Wasylyk's second LP for the esteemed Clay Pipe Music label. The album is a refreshing, palette-cleansing exercise in instrumental beats, cinematic soundscapes, and seafaring adventure music; the Scottish artist is renowned for his sensitive ambient cinematic pieces, often complementing the works of visual artists. For example, this project saw Wasylyk travel across five continents before its making, visiting many of the locations that will suffer from climate change in much less than half a century from now. Cameo appearances on various instruments from Alabaster DePlume (Angus Fairbairn) appear across the album, while many more climactic string sequences occur like hesitant apparitions from ghosts of the sea.
Review: Talk about the perfect meeting of minds. Ellen Arkbro is one of Europe's most sought after contemporary composers and musicians right now, having worked with revered institutions such as London's Barbican, GRM Paris, and Kolner Philharmonie in recent times, to name but a few. Johan Graden stands head and shoulders above almost all the rest in the list of Sweden's finest pianists and modern jazz masterminds.
Together, as you might expect, they make beautiful, sometimes sweet, occasionally mournful, always heartfelt music that refuses to sit in classical or jazz camps, and instead straddles the two while reaching for the stars in search of whole new tones that have never, or rarely, been discovered before. Really special stuff you'd be a fool to ignore, and crazy not to fall head over heels for.
Review: Arv & Miljo conclude their decade-long journey of "noise-poetics" with a final album full of field recordings that serve as a tribute to underground culture and the experiences they've shared. Their work has been central to Gothenburg's music scene in its mix of ambient, drone and found sounds, all of which have contributed to a unique map of contemporary Swedish experimental. This self-titled long layer features some pieces that are among their most non-musical and focus on diegetic sound snippets to capture "endless summer nights, great people seeking more, and hazy underground encounters." It's a hallucinogenic, emotional form of storytelling that embodies the essence of their creative journey.
Review: Arv & Miljo's new album delves into radical environmental activism and draws from the Swedish Plogbill movement's early 90s actions alongside Earth First! and Earth Liberation Front. Mixing monologues, interviews, protest songs, and site recordings with raw kosmische synth music, the pair crafts a mesmerising audio collage. Chaotic yet harmonious, disorienting yet soothing, the album reflects dedication, passion, and the spirit of change. Originally a limited CDR release in 2021, it quickly became a highlight in Arv & Miljo's discography. Now on, Jorden Forst offers a multi-faceted journey through environmental activism and the human spirit's resilience.
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