experimental
Album Review: Peace Flag Ensemble – ‘Everything Is Possible’: sublime and intimate jazz-toned portraits from the Saskatchewan sextet.
Saskatchewan sound sculptors Peace Flag Ensemble are a band who always seem to go about things quietly. No Fanfares, no bombast, a musical collective whose fluent jazz-toned, post rock dynamics thrum with soft power. They aim for an intimate impact. Their shimmering debut ‘Noteland’ from 2019, balanced ambience and improvisation exquisitely, conjuring up justified Keith …
Album Review: Être Ensemble – ‘Sans Toi’: Joni Void’s leftfield collective take a looping, twitchy, journey of despair and beauty
Jean Néant aka Joni Void, sonic collagist, producer and beat-maker may be most visible as the persona responsible for three singular Constellation albums (‘Selfless‘, ‘Miss En Abyme’ and 2023’s ‘Everyday Is The Song’), but running parallel is their enablement of collective musical invention around Montreal and beyond. Être Ensemble is one of those partner projects. …
Track: Squid at their jittery and experimental best with new single ‘Building 650’
Squid’s latest single, “Building 650,” is a dizzying concoction of post-punk and art rock that defies easy classification. Released ahead of their third album, Cowards (out February 7th, 2025, via Warp Records), the track continues the band’s tradition of bending, breaking, and outright ignoring musical conventions. It’s the sound of a band unafraid to experiment, …
Track : Peace Flag Ensemble preview upcoming album with the intricate ambient jazz ballad ‘The Past Is What Changes The Most’.
Now here’s some news that makes looking beyond the festive maul less difficult. Saskatchewan sound sculptors Peace Flag Ensemble have announced that their new album ‘Everything is Possible’ will arrive via We Are Busy Bodies on 7th Feb. This will be their third for the label and the fascination will be in finding out in …
Track/Video: Maud The Moth previews new album ‘The Distaff’ with the cathartic ‘Siphonophores’.
Celestial, ethereal , bestial and brutal, woven with beauty and darker mysteries, you need a tapestry of adjectives to describe the music of Maud the moth. The project of Spanish-born / Scotland-based pianist and singer-songwriter Amaya López-Carromero, each Maud the moth album has been unapologetically ambitious but not at the expense of connectivity. Her songs …
Album Review: boycalledcrow –‘eyetrees’: More heartfelt hauntological pop from a singular sound artist.
There’s something reassuring about the music of sound artist boycalledcrow regularly sneaking through all the noise and getting some attention. It restores faith that singular, outsider work will always find its way to listeners who want something less defined, tinged with eccentricity and creative determination. It also suggests the lineage which extends from Syd Barrett …
Album Review: Iván Muela –‘Ether’: a subtle and sublime merging of neo-classical and experimental music.
Writing a review of pianist/composer Iván Muela’s latest album ‘Ether’ feels almost like a redundant endeavour. Here is a recording likely to affect the listener differently each time they tune in, so any attempt to describe the music will only capture that one single encounter, the next time your emotions may shift. So perhaps the …
EP Review: Millsart – Powerland
Part 6 in the Axis Expressionist series The relationship between our star, the source that gives us life and the land we occupy during this transcendental process is one of sensitivity and compassion. Topography and rock settlements are positioned as conductive posts of energy. An energy line wrapping around a planet that straddles between …
Album Review: Michael Scott Dawson – ‘The Tinnitus Chorus’ : A poignant and moving ambient statement crafted through collaboration.
Saskatchewan sound artist and producer Michael Scott Dawson is someone who’s both artistically prolific and restless. A stalwart for the Torontonian We Are Busy Bodies label, he’s released three solo albums plus two other records as a lead member of post-rock minimalists Peace Flag Ensemble, and all since 2020. But Dawson’s momentum has been cruelly …
Album Review: Federico Balducci & fourthousandblackbirds –‘Succulent Succubus’ : probing and powerful philosophical-drone music bursting with ideas.
Writing about any music released via the defiantly unconventional Difficult Art and Music imprint should not be a straightforward undertaking and maybe the task exposes the gaping flaws in the reviewing game. What is good, why compare, what is shallow, why is this deep and who says so? All a reviewer really does is say …