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Yen Tech's second album is fully eye-popping cyber-theatrical medieval deconstructed nu-metal. Like Amnesia Scanner banging out Slipknot covers with Siri and Arvo Pärt in a distant space prison.
'Assembler' is a bizarre record, even for SVBKVLT. Yen Tech's debut "Mobis" was a future-facing hi-tech party rap deconstruction, all blitzed trap and vaporwave shimmer. 'Assembler' is completely different proposal, addressing the post-COVID world with growling anxiety and lavish, multidimensional digital fireworks.
Hoarse semi-human vocals are meticulously painted over hydraulic, machine-gun kicks, drunken synth drones and simulated choirs. Techpilled harpsichord chimes resonate over swirling, supernatural soundscapes, while alien chatter butts heads with disembodied artificial voices. 'Herd immunity' a voice echoes on 'Leech', as unsettling drones build through clouds of white noise.
Yen Tech takes Amnesia Scanner's dystopian deconstructed airlock club template and de-bones it to fit the actual dystopia of 2021. Jarring, fanged and packed with sneering nu-metal adjacent attitude, 'Assembler' sounds as awkward and genre-allergic as an algorithmic playlist. It's an uneasy listening experience that's both familiar ('Extinction Game' is almost chart-ready future pop) and defiant all at once.
Growing up in deindustrialized Providence, Rhode Island of the 1970s and 1980s provided NYC-based composer and interdisciplinary artist Gavilán Rayna Russom access to derelict subterranean spaces including the mile-long East Side Rail Tunnel. The tunnel's reverberant darkness would produce distinctive sensory effects and host Russom's formative experiences of interpersonal connectedness, liminality, transgender identity, anti-capitalist desire and state repression. Secret Passage – an absorbing, memoiristic work by Russom, whose synthesis-based practice fuses information and expression into organic wholes – draws on memories of "unsupervised autonomous zones where I tasted the possibilities of a world without surveillance," as she writes in the liner notes. Inspired by "this beautifully neglected place," the music resounds with ghostlike echoes and raw pulsations. Russom utilizes synthesizers, field recordings and voice to illustrate hallucinatory revelations of the city's lightless undercarriage. Each track of Secret Passage, originally released as a limited cassette on Voluminous Arts, is dedicated to a friend – entwining personal liberation with collective discovery. The East Side Rail Tunnel has been inaccessible since the 1990s, the result of urban development and gentrification.
Inspired, wholly unexpected collaboration between legendary singer songwriter Mark Lanegan and Ecstatic maverick Alessio Natalizia aka Not Waving - a timeless, modernist fusion of barrel-aged narratives and diverse, experimental backdrops, RIYL Scott Walker, Conny Plank & Moebius, David Sylvian...
Following Not Waving’s stellar recent recordings with Jim O’Rourke, Colin Potter & Jay Glass Dubs, ‘Downwelling’ finds him in a striking Pas de deux with alt. rock god Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, QOTSA). It’s one of those rare link-ups that truly transcends the sum of its parts, with Not Waving’s rolling range of nuanced electronics acting as backdrops for Lanegan’s smoky barritone storytelling. Delivered in a husky but pliable voice that has come to define the American alternative rock scene since the early ‘90s, Lanegan inhabits the songs with a reserved presence that has served him well for decades, but which has never been heard in quite this context.
Pairing music recorded by Natalizia between London, Italy, and Paris over the past five years, with vocals recorded by Lanegan in LA, the duo arrive at dreamy non-place that’s not defined by geography or time. Instead the album offers a timeless insight into human behaviour, as reflected in the sleeve art details from the ‘Lights of Canopus’, a Persian version of the ancient Indian book of animal fables, the ‘Panchatantra.’ Thanks to Lanegan’s classically dusty tone - famously described as being “scratchy as a three day beard yet as supple as moccasin leather” - and the breadth of Not Waving’s production, the results draw listeners deep into the artists’ shared plane of world-weary but quietly hopeful conception, emphasising the power of closeness and empathy.
Their songs come on like waves lapping a shore that’s ever-shifting, ever the same. This cycle is epitomised on the opener, ’Signifying The End’ with Lanegan’s raspy tone met by honeyed synths, before scaling the nocturnal heights of ‘City Of Sin’ and coolly channeling Suicide in ‘Burn Out Babylon.’ The waters calm again for ‘Persimmon Tree’ suitably set to harp-like arps, while the deathly croon and impending throb of ‘Murder In Fugue’ comes to rest in the serene resolution of ‘The Broken Man’ in a manner that’s entirely modernist but speaks to eons of human emotion.
Echoing everything from latter-days Scott Walker to David Sylvian at his most strung out, and even the odd energy of Moebius, Conny Plank & Mayo Thompson’s ‘Ludwig’s Law’ album, or the arcane creak of John Duncan’s ‘Bitter Earth’, Natalizia & Lanegan’s efforts will surely realign listeners presumptions of both artists and place them in a category all of their own.
James McVinnie has a good claim to being one of contemporary classical music’s pre-eminent organists. He’s worked with artists from across the musical spectrum - Philip Glass and Richard Reed Parry but also Nico Muhly, Hildur Guðnadóttir and Oneohtrix Point Never - and has released records on Naxos and Bedroom Community.
Tom Jenkinson is an equally impressive figure. You’ll likely know him best as Squarepusher, or perhaps through his work leading the band Shobaleader One, but Jenkinson also has some serious chops as an arranger and composer - he’s had his orchestral works performed at venues like London’s Royal Festival Hall and collaborated with Olivia Coleman for the CBeebies ‘wind-down’ ambient broadcast Daydreams.
Back in 2016 McVinnie and Jenkinson got together to create a piece called The Secret Life Of Organs. With Jenkinson writing the music and McVinnie performing, the show debuted at the Royal Festival Hall and subsequently toured the UK. Now The Secret Life Of Organs has been revised into an LP entitled All Night Chroma.
Working again with the Royal Festival Hall’s 1954 Harrison & Harrison organ, these recordings take full advantage of the huge array of tones that the instrument has to offer. Drones, trilling melodies, reedy flutes and choppy chordal motifs are just some of the sounds on offer here. Tracks like ‘Flutes’ recall harmonious pieces by Louis Vierne or Charles-Marie Widor while more challenging entries such as ‘Bombardes & Cymbel’ turn towards 20th Century leaders like Olivier Messiaen. Elsewhere on All Night Chroma the slowly-shifting sands of ‘Voix Celestes’ nods to contemporary voices like Sarah Davachi.
On All Night Chroma the union of James McVinnie and Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher/Shobaleader One) produces a set of ambitious contemporary organ works.
Rugged budgers from FUMU, Kassem Mosse, Raster-Noton regular Grischa Lichtenberger, LDWG and Sensu appear on the abridged 12” pressing of Youth’s acclaimed ‘Sports’ comp
Siphoning highlights from the 16-track showcase CD (which also featured strong tackle by mutant experimental techno bods including Turinn, Peder Mannerfelt, CVX, Iueke and many more beside), this 12” sampler now places some of the comp’s firmest dancefloor joints onto vinyl.
Up top your boy Ludwig a.k.a. LDWG kicks off with the brutal bass gnaw and drunken master bashment lurch of ‘DRM1MKIII’, next to the slow, arid, gutted hunch of ’Silica Gel’ by Kassem Mosse - affiliate of Youth boss Andy Lyster from his meandyou. days - and the viscous swagger of Raster-Noton regular Grischa Lichtenberger.
Down below, smog monster FUMU takes control with a hollow-belly industro bashment workout ‘FM’ that sounds like Geins’t Naït meets Craig Leon in an iron silo, and Belgium’s Sensu recoils the grotty slow electro slog of ‘MHG’. Shame they missed off some of the CD’s other highlights but mustn’t grumble cos there’s some choice gear inside.
BLQLYTE is the debut LP by Zeroh on Leaving Records. From its opening whisper of "culture is a baby" followed by a euphoric but frightening blast of sound, BLQLYTE moves with the unpredictable energy of a psychedelic trip, where apocalyptic soundscapes and mutated R&B vault between shamanistic musings on mortality and earthly matters of modern day Los Angeles. The mood is heavy, hanging in the air like rising waters building to a catastrophic flood. Zeroh's ninja like voice seamlessly transforms throughout tracks like a Greek chorus, tackling speeding thoughts and introspections in a stream of consciousness cascade of vocal flows and techniques that are both wordy and soulful. Perhaps classifiable as a rap album, BLQLYTE inhabits its own experimental, deeply personal zone in the orbit of Leaving Records' genre free ethos.
The album, created over a period of six years, highlights a story of Zeroh's growth. He says that during this period, "it was like something happened to me and it shook me up, and then it woke me up, and I kind of started to come to." He's aided by FR/BLCK/PR on "Metacine," a hypnagogic tour de force encapsulating BLQLYTE's intricate, anagogic aesthetic. FR/BLCK/PR's Regan Farquhar unleashes a devastating spoken word piece in a trippy, intensely hallucinogenic collaboration that also highlight's Zeroh's unique and exciting voice behind the boards. Zeroh's BLQLYTE plays on the contradictions and duality of life, an examination of the silver linings and beautiful traumas that can alter our understanding and perception of reality.
Slowdive’s Simon Scott debuts his new ‘Index' project with a visceral new sound that absorbs and transmutes political, ecological and psychic dread into a caustic, dissonant style of drone and textural sculpture for iDEAL Recordings, a worthy follow-up to last year’s ’The Sacrificial Code’ album release on the label by Kali Malone. Recorded in Los Angeles between 2016 and 2019, and featuring the voice of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, it’s a multi-layered album that comes highly recommended if you’re into anything from Throbbing Gristle to Ilpo Väisänen, Arthur Russell to Basic Channel.
‘Kainos’ sees the veteran UK composer, field recordist, drummer and mastering engineer explore a prism of formative musical influences from the post-industrial music of Coil, Throbbing Gristle and early Black Sabbath, to the non-musical and conceptual inspiration taken from the turmoil of Brexit - including recordings of the Houses of Parliament - thru to the radical feminist scientific writing of Donna Haraway, and the conceptual vigour of Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto, ‘The Art of Noises’.
The album’s title ‘Kainos’, from the ancient Greek meaning “new” or “fresh”, characterises Scott’s efforts to glean something practical from the world’s current state of chaos, enacting a tectonic shift from bucolic sonic signifiers to signposts of the post-industrial world that could hardly be more apt at at a time when electronic and ambient music are prized for their safe and sterile wallpaper qualities, rather than a potential to evoke and invoke more powerful feelings.
Based around modular synth-mangled recordings of the Houses of Parliament during the prelude to Brexit, Scott’s compositions take these fractious debates as building blocks for the album’s caustic improvisations and compositions, ranging from convulsive clangour to pulsating tracts of strobing distortion and gutted, lurching-rhythms riddled with the voice of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, before eventually resolving with a more spacious, textured sense of relief by the album’s close.
Highly atmospheric industrial drones and haunting, cinematic treatments on this amazing, previously unreleased score from L.I.E.S./ Gravats mainstay Krikor Kouchian for Jean Epstein’s silent 1920’s French avant garde classic, a big tip if yr into Eliane Radigue, Ø, Kevin Drumm, Elodie.
Krikor summons spooked-out and glacial sounds in this superb, as-yet-unreleased soundtrack for the 2014 redux of Jean Epstein’s pioneering, silent 1920’s avant-garde cinema classic. The 1927 film ’Six Et Demi Onze’ tells the tragic romantic tale of two brothers who, unbeknownst to eachother, fall in love with the same woman. A timeless psychological narrative involving suicide and lies ensues across the film’s grand locations, but on his soundtrack Krikor prefers to home in on the internal thoughts of the film’s central protagonists, outlining a claustrophobic atmosphere in some of his most subtle and affective soundtrack work, which follows from a panoply of scores for everything from an Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary, to films on Franco-Saudi geopolitics and fantasy sci-fi. It’s arguably Krikor’s finest endeavour in this arena.
Recording for the score was made on portable recorders and laptop, which serve to heighten and intensify a “huis-clos” (“behind closed doors”) effect. Limned in sferic and plasmic tones, the 12 pieces suggest scenes and sensations of intrigue, loss, and paranoia. The results were pre-planned and mapped to the film’s edits, but ultimately Krikor improvised the parts, adopting a more classical, non-linear approach with cranky old upright piano for the other scenes, capturing a mix of subliminal instinct and more measured articulation.
The results weigh up as Krikor’s most elusive and haunting solo missive, mirroring a wealth of classic French film music and avant-garde minimalism, and serving to slot neatly on Boomkat Editions’ vinyl series beside soundtrack (and related) works by HTRK, Ø, and Akira Rabelais.
Suction Records welcomes Roger Semsroth back to the label - having previously released 2 full-length albums with us under his retired electro-pop alias, Skanfrom. “Grøndal” (suction051) is the debut vinyl release under a new alias, Nordvest. These days, Semsroth is best-known for his stark and minimalist techno project, Sleeparchive. The material on Grøndal - icy, melodic, and mostly beatless - is comprised of tracks that were originally released digitally as Sleeparchive, via Bandcamp. The releases were met with general disinterest from Sleeparchive fans, prompting Semsroth to re-brand them as Nordvest, before removing them from Bandcamp altogether.
We’ve chosen 11 highlights from 3 of those digital albums, “Rooftops & Chaotic Streets”, “Scribbles”, and “Sleepless”, for a cohesive 11-track LP of austere, synthetic ambience. Think Tangerine Dream as reinterpreted by Incunabula-era Autechre, and you might be getting somewhere close. While “Rooftops & Chaotic Streets Seven” recalls Sleeparchive, and “Sleepless Six” could very well be a lost Skanfrom track, the rest of the LP clearly warrants a new alias - Nordvest is a new side of Semsroth that we haven’t heard before.
Following 2020’s debut album ‘Zoom’, upsammy returns to Dekmantel with a dualistic four-tracker called 'Bend', incorporating familiar sonic palettes and novel paths carved out in times of isolation.
Where Zoom channelled upsammy’s conceptual depth, Bend leans into artistic intuition, juxtaposing the floral and martial, propelling along her signature sound of textured electronica. Lilac chimes rise and fall along the melodic Flutter and Metallic, while the sinister creeps from Spat and Worm’s spacious cracks. All in all, Bend discloses upsammy’s versatility yet again, ever-shifting as the ambiguous modernity she continues to wander - an artist able to shift through the complexity of modernity with rare grace.
Left Ear are re-introducing another ten lost tracks from Nicholas Georgieff and Virgil Work, St Louis' basement electronics duo Workdub.
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The release spans material from 1989-95 and includes recordings from their sole LP and both cassette albums. Workdub’s music hardly fits into a vacuum and some might even say it’s otherworldly. Tracks like “Reach for the Stars” and “Lunar Module” reflect dreams of space-age exploration, all the while their investigation into drum machines, synthesizers, samples and digital fx’s matched with their organic live instrumentation work to create a unique atmospheric dubbed out sound.
