Back catalogue: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: Latest instalment in Soul Jazz Records' journey into the underground music of New York City in the 1980s, this time focusing on the electronic dance/post-punk mutations and proto-electro music that originally came out on mainly small D-I-Y labels. Today the new wave of New York art/rock groups such as DFA, The Strokes, the Rapture, Juan McLean, James Murphy, The Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs all have their roots in this early 1980s New York noise music scene. This album features text, original photos and interviews documenting this amazing period. New York Noise 3 is compiled and annotated by Stuart Algabright, an important participant in the New York music scene during this period and features music from Implog, Suicide, Snatch, James Blood Ulmer, Dominatrix and many more. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the East Village of New York City, aka Downtown, became a hot-bed of musical and artistic ideas. In this small ten-block area practically every musician was also an artist, every artist a film-maker and every film-maker was in a band. Experimental music clashed with the aftermath of punk and groups such as Snatch, Dominatrix and Implog blurred the boundaries of art, punk and dance music. New York City at this time featured a bewildering array of musical communities: the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx: the punk scene of CBGBs and Max's Kansas City (Ramones, Talking Heads, Television): the emerging art music scene of Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson: the underground disco scene of David Mancuso's Loft, Larry Levan's Paradise Garage; The free jazz loft scene (James Blood Ulmer, Rashied Ali) and the nu wave art/rock scene of James Chance, Lydia Lunch et al. The artists featured here created new music influenced by all these scenes.

Review: Since leaping to more electronic ground with 2015's 'Dilate', Vessels' futuristic latest offering 'The Great Distraction' sees them plotting a course through neon-lit, industrial flecked music with its feet firmly in both post-rock and IDM, ambitiously drawing from and blending elements of the two. Highlight single 'Radiart' burns slowly, stacking up pulsating and hypnotic layers akin to Immunity era Jon Hopkins. Other tracks, such as opener 'Mobilise' and 'Position' take a more intense and polyrhythmic approach, repurposing their previous math-rock work. The production goes from feeling cavernous to incredibly close, and these deft shifts in space succeed in highlighting the build-ups and the peaks that punctuate the album. Though Vessels' sound may have changed lanes, this is an engrossing and panoramic album by a band not content with resting on their laurels.