experimental
Album Review: Yalla Miku –‘2’: an energetic, ‘post-world’, sonic cocktail direct from the Bongo Joe community.
If ever there was an imprint that was more than just another indie record label it’s Bongo Joe. A musicians’ collective, a community, a shop and watering hole, a barometer of Geneva’s underground scene, an epicentre for ‘post -world’ music, this cutting-edge Swiss co-op is now in its tenth year. Fitting then that Bongo Joe’s …
Album Review: Jessica Moss – ‘Unfolding’: The Montreal violinist/composer’s most incisive, inspirational statement to date.
Violinist and composer Jessica Moss has always made instrumental music that speaks out. Her essential work does more than reflect times, events and tragedies, it engages with them and voices our emotions about what is being witnessed or endured. Her last two studio albums, ‘Phosphenes’ from 2021 followed a year later by ‘Galaxy Heart’, captured …
Album Review: Joe Harvey-Whyte & Paul Cousins – ‘In A Fugue State’: A contemplative dreamscape of pedal steel and tape loop alchemy.
Joe Harvey-Whyte may be a go-to pedal steel player (Liam Gallagher, Billy Bragg, Josephine Foster, Nilüfer Yanya and more) but as a multi-instrumentalist and solo artist he’s been calmly extending the cosmic-country boundaries beyond its imagined cosmos for a while now. Working with Sheffield based guitarist Bobby Lee, he’s helped conjure up two mind-stretching kosmiche-americana …
Album Review: Yara Asmar – ‘everyone I love is sleeping and i love them so so much’ : Extraordinary electro-acoustic stories crafted from simple things.
Tinkering, testing, tuning and transforming, Yara Asmar is a restlessly inquisitive multi-instrumentalist. Since her debut release on Hive Mind, ‘Home Recordings 2018-2021’ the Beirut- based musician has used music boxes and metallophones, accordion and toy pianos to sculpt her sonic narrative. It’s not Art Ensemble avant or Cage-ist experimentalism powering her practice though, the pull …
Album Review: Dun-Dun Band -‘Pita Parka, Pt. II: Nim Egduf’: Minimal riff magic and warmly woven improv melodies from this exceptional ten-piece.
Dun-Dun Band are a ten-piece ensemble from Toronto assembled by eclectic sound-maker and guitarist Craig Dunsmuir. An associate of the long song maestro Sandro Perri, check the Off World and Glissandro 70 projects from a while back, Dunsmuir has been diligently probing the possibilities of repetitive and juxtaposed rhythms in his work for well over …
Album Review: Rún’s exhilarating self-titled debut – an alchemic forging of psychedelic doom and dark folk.
The darker hues of metal, folk and other musics enticingly converge on the self-titled album from new Irish trio Rún, released by those perennial psych-rock discoverers at Rocket Recordings. A threesome of significant like-minds, all pivotal to the island’s leftfield scene, Rún brings together vocal artist Tara Baoth Mooney, Dublin composer/performer Diarmuid MacDiarmada and drummer, …
Track/Video: Tape looping soundscaper Blank For.ms previews incoming album with the gently powerful ‘Formed By The Slide’.
It seems a long way from big band composition to becoming a tape loop/analogue wiz but that’s the trajectory Brooklyn based musician Tyler Gilmore aka Blank For.ms has journeyed. Schooled in jazz he moved to New York where he hooked up with Conservatory buddy and pianist Jason Moran to work on large ensemble arrangements. But …
Album Review: Me Lost Me –‘This Material Moment’: Jayne Dent’s avant-folk takes another great leap forward.
As the Broadside Hacks/ Shovel Dance Collective avant-folk momentum rolls on, it does well to remember that Newcastle’s Jayne Dent aka Me Lost Me has been stretching those traditional boundaries since the release of her inspired debut ‘Arcana’ way back in 2018. An album set in a trad frame but with a feisty experimental intent, …
EP Review: Millsart – Space Outside Space
Axis Expressionist Series vol.8 The meaning of this concept (Space Outside :Space) lies within your answers to these questions. Providing the questions are considered with honesty, the true meaning of what “Space” refers to becomes revealed.There are no right or wrong answers, just reactions based on your view and angles on the mechanisms of life. …
Album Review: I Am Fya – ‘Homeland’: A future dub, avant pop, deep searching story that makes for vivid listening.
Manchester’s I Am Fya’s new audio-visual album ‘Homeland’ is a project that’s been evolving for some time. She swaggered into the electronic, avant-pop arena with the punchy ‘A Womxn’ debut in 2019, a dark dub, twitchy glitch, post-mod RnB drill down into socio-sexual dynamics. It was some announcement followed up by a string of forceful …