See: The video for Matt Emery’s ‘Raindrops And Blood Spurts’: the scarlet fire of battle as reimagined for solo cello
THE EXCELLENT Surrey composer Matt Emery, a leading light over at Injazero Records for four years or so now working at the more deliciously experimental edges of modern composition, is launching an EP project entitled the Spotlight Series, in which he looks to investigate and put the spotlight on an instrument in turn, really explore …
See: Rachel Sermanni – ‘Swallow Me’: graceful, spiritual and lighter than air, it’s the title track from her June EP
BRINGING new life into the world and fresh hope for a budding spring, Strathspey folkie Rachel Sermanni is all set to drop her first EP in what feels like too long, actually, too long; and she’s throwing up the windows on that forthcoming release with the bell-clear offering to the fates of “Swallow Me”, which …
Track: Portico Quartet’s gliding ‘Terrain II (edit)’ unveils a three-part suite of a new album in late May
PORTICO QUARTET, whose Jack Wyllie we last encountered in these pages at the end of last summer with his exhilarating Afro-ambient project, Paradise Cinema, reconvened at their East London base during lockdown, the events that swathe us necessarily informing the new music they began to fashion. The world we all suddenly precipitated into necessitated a …
News: Seefeel’s mid-90s’ Warp and Rephlex material gets repressed, expanded and there’s a new compilation too; hear the Autechre remix of ‘Spangle’
SEEFEEL, the brilliant British dub-ambient-electronica outfit who recorded beautiful, eerie and hypnotic work for Too Pure, Warp and Rephlex through the Nineties are the subject of a long-overdue reissue campaign, arriving in May – and there’s a comprehensive new compilation, too. The band, who released the hallucinatory and dubby Quique for Too Pure in 1994, …
See: The superfly retro video for A Certain Ratio’s ‘Keep It Together’
THE WHOLLY rejuvenated, fully on the groove A Certain Ratio have dropped another track from the forthcoming ACR:EPA, the first of a series of EPs following in the slipstream of last year’s superb ACR Loco – as if you needed reminding that they are wholly on fire again. (Doubting Thomases: by god, they so are). …
Track: Possum invite you to the psych ‘Gala At The Universe City’ – climb aboard and get your head ready for their second album
TORONTO PSYCH-space explorers Possum are gearing up for their second album in July for Ideé Fixe, and if you’re at all down with the du-jour King Gizzardy multicoloured six-string swirl, you’d do well by booking a place on their particular magic carpet ride. Here’s a first single from that high-summer long-player, “Gala At The Universe …
See: Attawalpa – ‘Please Take Care’: Prince-like suave grooves herald London producer’s new EP
SUAVE groove; deep, profoundly bass vocal hooks, a smooth and implicit funk that crosses over into indie with a twanging hook – is that your bag? If so, please gather round for the first offerings for 2021 from London’s Attawalpa, “Please Take Care”, the video for which you can watch below. Attawalpa is the way …
See: Jade Jackson – ‘6FT Changes’: a Californian country lament for the disconnect of social distancing
JADE JACKSON, the husky-voiced country singer-songwriter who’s been making waves with her particular caress of the country form since Gilded, her 2017 debut for ANTI-, has dropped a softly haunting new tune looking at the socially distancing rules that keep us from the intimacy of touch. With a delicate hush she sings: “Six feet changes …
Album review: Christine Ott – ‘Time To Die’: French composer returns to Gizeh for a modern compositional masterclass
Without a doubt one of the most potent voices in modern composition today, Christine Ott is as happy to push right out into dark, even industrial-infused experimenta as she is to play a straight bat with absolute confidence in the deeper classical tradition and the wider avant-garde palette; she can do it all, if she chooses, and when she breathes the ondes Martenot into life; there really is no one to touch her
Album review: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles – ‘Keys’: pull up a pew for bluegrass instrumental delight
You know what the best thing about Keys is; for all its intimacy, the focus wholly on how the two players and their instruments mesh,a real joy in creation rings through. William Tyler, Black Twig Pickers, Jack Rose fans; please come on over and pull up a pew