Back catalogue: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: Miami-born contemporary guitarist Bill Orcutt is known for his infatuating blend of blues, punk, trance and noise. With the release of Four Guitars Live on CD, he could've easily convinced us of this being a rare and long-forgotten artefact, of a proto-drone artist from the Deltaic 1960s. In reality, this was first incarnated in 2022 under the recorded name Music For Four Guitars, and Orcutt's establishing brand of doom-blues-trance-minimalism could invite artistic comparisons as far-fetched as Steve Reich or Rachika Nayar. But his sound is more nostalgic, seeming to predict emo and pysch both "before" and after the fact of the genre's establishment. Fittingly Reichean, Orcutt forms one part of a quartet here, performing the record in its entirety live at Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht, 2023.

Review: Cited by Pitchfork as one of the best shoegaze albums of all time, the self-titled debut LP from Brooklyn's Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener (better known as Bowery Electric) marked a significant turning point in mid-90s indie rock, as several acts began to approach the genre with much more brazen experimentation and a sonic disregard for accessibility. Fusing elements of trip-hop, ambient soundscapes, harsh drone and walls of impenetrable fuzz, into a muted seance of deceptively inviting yet hypnotic post-rock, this long overdue reissue serves to refill a vacant spot on many an avid collector's shelf, whilst hopefully educating newcomers to an outfit as pioneering as Slowdive and overlooked as Codeine. If you're a studious observer of the Numero Group output and you've yet to encounter Bowery Electric, you could run the risk of having your shoegaze card revoked.

Review: Deepspace's 'Neon Blue Utopia' is the 16th album from the Brisbane-based artist is a heady brew of ambient electronica, spacewave and post-rock, conjuring a dreamlike world like a cyberpunk film score filtered through a kaleidoscope. 'Utopia=Visions' sets the tone with its expansive soundscapes and shimmering textures, evoking a sense of awe and wonder. Tracks like 'Parkour on Lazarus Heights' and 'Rainy... Precinct' paint a vivid picture of this futuristic metropolis, with their pulsating rhythms and otherworldly sounds capturing the city's vibrant energy and neon-lit glow. 'Entering Aquarium Prefecture' and 'Bubble Echolalia District' delve into the surreal, their off-kilter rhythms and disorienting soundscapes suggesting a world where reality is fluid and dreams are tangible. The album's second half continues the exploration, venturing into darker and more experimental territories. 'Floor 426-B' and 'Empty Office Space' hint at the city's hidden depths and the lurking shadows beneath its gleaming facade. A proper journey through a world of sonic imagination, this is an immersive and evocative soundscape-fest.

Review: This concept album is a sonic odyssey into the depths of an acid trip, capturing a multitude of states of consciousness and profound internal emotions. It's a rich experience, best appreciated in different mind states and with full presence. The album is rooted in psychedelic/space tock and Krautrock, with touches of psych folk and electronic elements. It features acoustic guitar, delicate flute, harp-like instruments, bells, and assorted percussion, creating a lush and textured soundscape. The music is mostly instrumental, peppered with occasional vocals and spoken word, reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh. The standout track 'Silence' exemplifies the album's excellence, though all tracks are commendable. The album delivers a dark, atmospheric, and hypnotic sound. Percussion, flute, organ, guitars, and early electronics create proto-industrial sound collages that captivate the listener. DOM, consisting of Gabor and Laszlo Baksay, Rainer Puzalowski, and Hans-Georg Stopka, evolved from the beat/psychedelic band Set Mind. Regulars at Dusseldorf's underground clubs like Creamcheese, they shared the stage with early Kraftwerk and Can, cementing their place in the Krautrock pantheon. This mostly looked over album is a great find for those into progressive rock music.

Review: Second time around for Cosmic Assault, Californian guitar god and sometime Chrome member Barry Johnson's ninth album as Helios Creed. Something of a hard-to-pigeonhole classic, the album combines his ravaged and acid-fried hard rock and psychedelic metal sound with elements of industrial music, horror soundtrack style synths, and all manner of decidedly cosmic and intergalactic sounds. As a result, the set attractively veers from intense, mind-man gling workouts rich in heavy riffs and elongated guitar solos ('Cosmic Assault', 'Rise'), exotic excursions ('The Master'), and more immersive explorations of the outer reaches of the aural universe.

Review: This is a solo album in the true sense of the word. It's comprised solely of Ava Mendoza's raw virtuoso avant rock guitar playing and - on two tracks - her passionate voice. The Brooklyn-via-Oakland musician is also known for being a skilled collaborator, with the her band Unnatural Ways having earned a stellar reputation, but limiting the spotlight to herself alone here serves to elevate the searching, personal themes on the record. Mendoza's is famed for her virtuoso guitar technique, with lightning-quick tapping, use of feedback and tremolo up there with the best in the business. This is a melange of classical, free jazz, blues and noise, to name a few. With technique this strong, it's no wonder she's been setting the New York experimental scene alight over the past few years. And with The Circular Train - merely her second solo album - we can hope there's many more to come.

Review: Formed in Rome way back in 1966, Musica Elettronica Viva are something of an enigma: an avant-garde collective whose exact line-up is shrouded in mystery (it changed over the years by all accounts but confirming who founded the group has proved difficult) and whose released works tend towards the experimental and undeniably out-there. The Sound Pool was recorded in 1979 and surfaced on vinyl a year later. It's an undeniably odd but defiantly impressive four-part work that blends tape loops, avant-garde noise, distant drumming, discording free-jazz horns and pots-and-pans percussion. It sounds like it was recorded live, in a gigantic, reverb-heavy room, and is as experimental and avant-garde as they come. An under-celebrated classic of its type.

Review: Australian minimalist-jazz trio The Necks return with a powerful exploration of stillness and decay in the for of their new album, Bleed. The record features one lone 42-minute composition in which the band masterfully delves into the beauty of space and subtle transformation. Through their unique blend of minimalist jazz, The Necks continue to craft a distinct sound that shows subtle evolution and makes for another striking chapter to their extensive body of work. Bleed is all about giving over to the meditative journey where every note and pause evokes the profound complexity of time and impermanence, all while showcasing the trio's remarkable ability to evoke plenty of very real emotion despite the minimal nature of their evocative sounds.

Review: Some 15 years on from the release of their debut recordings, Public Service Broadcasting hit album number five, The Last Flight, a lightly conceptual affair inspired by the story of pioneering female navigator Amelia Earhart's ill-fated 1937 attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by plane. It cannily follows the narrative of Earhart's final flight, moving from the heart-aching orchestral swell of 'I Was Always Dreaming' to the poignant, sample-splattered ambient heartbreak of 'Howland' (a reference to the spot in the Pacific where her plane reportedly went down), via jangly indie-rock ('Towards The Dawn'), jaunty mid-60s beat-pop joy ('The Fun Of It'), folksy laments ('The South Atlantic') and grandiose indie-pop ('Electra').

Review: Finish dub techno powerhouse Joachim Spieth welcomes UK artist Rhubiqs to his well-regarded Affin label for a debut appearance that sinks you into a widescreen world of ambient lushness. His Aegis of Silence album takes cues from divergent sounds like post-rock and soft ambient as well as drone and even modern classical. It's an ever-shifting soundscape with smeared pads and nostalgia dreams, half-remembered thoughts and a sense of mood that ranges from escapist and blissed out to more ominous and paranoid.

Review: Shellac's sixth studio album, To All Trains, is a demonstration to the band's distinctive sound. Recorded over several years and mastered by Bob & Steve at Chicago Mastering Service, the album features Shellac's trademark minimalist sound, characterised by asymmetric time signatures, repetitive rhythms, and angular guitar sound. Albini's and Weston's surreal, bitingly sarcastic lyrics add to the album's unique atmosphere. With its complex and unconventional approach to music, To All Trains showcases Shellac's mastery of their craft and their unwavering commitment to their distinctive sonic vision.

Review: Epic alert! New York industrial gods Swans' latest single is a 19-minute behemoth that unfurls like an overwhelming emotional landscape. Gira's gravelly voice takes centre stage, enveloped by the steady churn of droning guitars and atmospheric textures that build to a blistering intensity. 'The Healers' and 'I Am A Tower' highlight the band's mastery of long-form tension, each section holding, stretching, and twisting in a way that feels like a momentary release, only to be swallowed by the next wave. It's a slow, deliberate unfolding of sound that's both hypnotic and punishing. This isn't music for the passive listener; it's exhausting yet utterly immersive, teasing out tension and reflection in equal measure. If you didn't know already, consider yoursefl warned.

Review: Krautrock is a long established genre whose name has recently been questioned. Whether or not it is a slur is an ongoing conversation. The music labelled as such has become iconic, with books like Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler and Alan and Stephen Freeman's Crack in the Cosmic Egg diving deep into its nuances. The debates over 'Krautrock' v 'Kosmische Musik' only add to its allure and Krautrock Eruption by Wolfgang Seidel explores some of these distinctions. The compilation presents tracks from twelve albums, focusing partly on Bureau B's catalogue, and entirely essential for fans of this sort of sound.