Constellation Records
Album Review: Steve Bates – All The Things That Happen: Elemental sounds for a wild world.
Some ‘ambient music’ can often come across as ambivalent, leaving the listener floating but uncommitted, relaxed but possibly underwhelmed. ‘All The Things That Happen’, the debut solo album from Canadian musician and sound artist Steve Bates (available from Constellation 23rd September), could superficially pick up the broad ambient tag except this fine record gouges out …
New Track/Video: Art Rock violinist Jessica Moss previews new album ‘Galaxy Heart’ with the dramatic ‘Uncanny Being’
Montreal based violinist and composer Jessica Moss is a musician of significance, fundamental to so much and a touchstone for creative dedication. A member of the seminal post punk ensemble Thee Silver Mt. Zion for fifteen years and contributor to recordings by the likes of Vic Chesnutt, Big/Brave and Sarah Davachi, she shifted focus to …
Track/Video: Electronic explorer Steve Bates previews his avalanche of sound with ‘Destroy the palace’ from soon-come album ‘All The Things That Happen’
Steve Bates, Canadian musician and sound/video artist, has the biography of someone restlessly in pursuit of possibilities. His background as a key figure in the Winnipeg anarcho-punk community through the 80s to explorer of more avant/experimental territories over the past decade has been expressed through an evolving catalogue of music, curation and art works. Probably …
Album Review: T. Gowdy – ‘Miracles’: electronic music for mind and movement.
Canadian producer and audio-visual artist T. Gowdy is not one to tweak or tinker. His way is to probe forensically, to submerge deeper into the possibilities of synthesis and synthesised, to think it through. Such intense application infused his lauded ‘Therapy with Colour’ debut for Constellation with a hypnotic resonance which uncurled as you listened. …
Track/Video: T. Gowdy previews ‘Vidisions’ from new album ‘Miracles’ –peak kinetic motivation.
Sometimes electronic music can get short circuited by its own intellectualism, where high concepts and technical processes become the focus. Canadian music producer and audio-visual artist Timothy Gowdy’s work may take the profound as a springboard and it certainly involves a fair share of technological high jinks but these aren’t the defining features. What makes …
Album Review: JOYFULTALK – Familiar Science: a dazzling alt-jazz beat connection.
Multi-disciplinary artist, composer and musician Jay Crocker (JOYFULTALK lead-protagonist) works with combinations and reactions, fusing elements with care and microscopic attention to create the surprising but coherent. The last impressive JOYFULTALK release for Constellation, ‘A Separation Of Being’, took the chiming gamelan complexity, ringing peals of electronica and turbulent strings, then scaled things up to …
Live Review: Jason Sharp – The Rose Hill, Brighton 3.05.22
Even before the live music began there was a sense that something extraordinary was about to happen in the snug confines of the artsy Rose Hill pub on Tuesday night. The stage was set, dismembered guitar, clamps and vintage vox amp to the left, a yawning cabinet to the right, sprawling with leads that buried …
Meet: Inspirational electro-acoustic saxophonist Jason Sharp ahead of his upcoming UK/Eu solo tour.
You might have missed saxophonist Jason Sharp’s elemental and elevating album ‘The Turning Centre Of The Still World’ released as it was at the backend of the pandemic in August last year. His third release for Montreal’s mighty Constellation label marked an emboldened exploration of his craft, melding his sax playing with electronics using his …
Track: The alchemy of sound – Jay Crocker aka JOYFULTALK previews his dazzling alt-jazz album ‘Familiar Science’ with ‘Take It To The Grave’
Multi-disciplinary artist, composer and forward thinker Jay Crocker (aka JOYFULTALK) can take the elemental and elevate it to something fluid and surprising. He’s an alchemist of sound. That last release for Constellation Records, A Separation Of Being, took chiming gamelan complexity, ringing peals of electronica and turbulent strings, then scaled things upwards to new heights. …
PREMIERE: JOYFULTALK release audiovisual odyssey ‘NEW BIOLOGY’ for Constellation
MONTREAL’S Constellation Records, home of such outrock greats as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band and Do Make Say Think, have been running a neat little thing for a while now, whereby they commission a new audiovisual single from an artist from the roster, and release it every …