Riot Season Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Oli Heffernan's ever-evolving project, Ivan The Tolerable, joins Riot Season for two captivating albums that explore the beauty of entropic drift. Recorded swiftly as a quintet, Heffernan enlisted Christian Alderson on drums, John Pope on double bass, Kevin Nickles on flute and saxophone and Ben Hopkinson on electric piano. The first album was Vertigo, a dense and disorienting work reminiscent of Sun Ra meets Exploding Star Orchestra. In contrast, Water Music evokes serene landscapes with sounds of waves, creaking hulls, and gentle winds, blending influences from Laraaji and Natural Information Society. Bob Fischer of Electronic Sound Magazine describes Water Music as a "beautifully soothing psychedelic jazz album" perfect for a summer daydream.

Review: We find ourselves lost in kosmische textures, dark jazz motifs and brushup drums, as Ivan The Tolerable (Oli Heffernan) edges us ever deeper into his singular sonic world with An Orphan Form, where wide scapes and underbrushed moodiness leaves us in an identifiable yet not entirely placeable place. There's a sense of constant movementicircular rather than linearias the music unfurls like a dream slipping just out of reach. Synth lines wobble and stretch, field recordings emerge from the mist, and the sounds of nature act as subtle anchors amid the abstraction. It's a spiritual detour after the cheekier tonalities of his various earlier cassette albums for the likes of Cruel Nature and Ack! Ack! Ack!.