experimental
ALBUM REVIEW: Lama Lobsang Palden and Jim Becker – ‘Compassion’: Chicago meets Tibet in exploratory fusion
Compassion is a complex, often beautiful and sometimes challenging work, exploring the interstices where Tibetan healing meets Chicago instrumentalism
TRACK: Haiku Salut to release two short film scores – “Pattern Thinker” is out today
DERBYSHIRE’S brilliant post-folkrock trio Haiku Salut will be releasing two new ten-minute tracks over the next week, both in response to a commission by Live Cinema UK, in which the three-piece was set the task of rescoring archive shorts from the British Film Institute National Archive. The first, “Pattern Thinker”, soundtracks the 1940 black and …
TRACK: Samuel Sharp – ‘Fireworks From The Tower’: beautiful and dubby sax impressions
COMPOSER-saxophonist Samuel Sharp – an artist who has mostly up to this point released his work under the nom-de-musique Lossy, and whose collaborative curriculum vitae includes live work with artists as diverse as Hackney Colliery Band, Brooklyn indie rock outfit Augustines, and the poet Hollie McNish, and studio session and remix work with Radiohead’s Phil …
TRACK: David Lord – ‘Cloud Ear’: Chicago-style free guitar jazz teases for new LP
ON THE other side of the guitarist spectrum from the strut and stomp are the outliers, dogged explorers of the fretboard, scholars of the instrument’s sonic complexity. Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Fripp, James Blood Ulmer, Pat Metheny can be found at this end of the rainbow; along with more recent luminaries like Chris Brokaw, Yonotan …
ALBUM REVIEW: Paradise Cinema – ‘Paradise Cinema’: shimmering, vivacious, percussive, Afro ambience
Paradise Cinema, the self-titled project of Portico Quartet’s Jack Wyllie, sings of new Afro-ambient futures to immerse in. It’s vivacious, swathing and haunting
SEE: The beautiful visuals for Ólafur Arnalds’ ‘Woven Song’
ÓLAFUR ARNALDS is preparing for his new album, some kind of peace, to hit turntables across the world on November 6th; and he’s followed the beautiful noir of previous single-track teasers “Back To The Sky” and “We Contain Multitudes” with another stunning audiovisual drop in “Woven Song”; let yourself be dazzled down at the end. …
PREMIERE: JR Samuels – ‘Doomer’: fine porchside guitar soli outta Philly
JR SAMUELS has been involved in the indie and underground scenes of the North-Eastern United States for the better half of a decade now. While resident in Ithaca in New York’s Finger Lakes back in 2015, he tickled the six strings in fine lofi outfit Izzy True and also steered the good ship Sweet Baby …
Track: Oliver Coates releases new track, ‘Honey’, from forthcoming album
TO CALL Oliver Coates a cellist tells you nothing at all. Oliver Coates is a musician whose work connects the circuits at the edge of dance and classical worlds. It’s not crossover, it’s not fusion, it’s experimental, rewiring sounds in a dangerous and delectable way (ask Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood) … and yes, he …
TRACK: A Lily – ‘Slept Through The Storm’: complex minimalism for a dark time
JAMES VELLA is, like the rest of us, concerned with the horrifically dark period we’re living through right now: the anxiety, the mental privations. The storm. We all need to find a way through: on October 16th, under his recording pen-name A Lily, he releases an album advocating his complex and seductive musical approach to …
TRACK: Lama Lobsang Palden and Jim Becker – ‘Blessings’: where acoustic postrock meets Tibetan chant
2020, eh? As it wearies on, the need for music, the need for the good things, for stillness, to find our own thread to follow through it all, becomes ever more necessary. An album, then, as much 2020 as it perhaps 1968 is the forthcoming album on Drag City from Lama Lobsang Palden and Jim …