Released as a limited-edition four-LP set, including the music on two CDs — a total of 42 tracks, running for over 157 minutes — Arve Henriksen’s The Timeless Nowhere mainly comprises new recordings and unreleased material dating from 2007 to 2019. (Only the live recordings from the 2017 Punkt festival have previously been available, by streaming or download.) Not a compilation of past releases, it serves well as an overview of the trumpeter’s work and explorations. Each of the four albums has its own title (Captured Under Mountainsides, Acousmograph, Cryosphere & Towards Language — Live at Punkt ), sleeve design by Rune Grammofon’s Kim Hiorthøy, and distinct identity, meaning that they could easily have been issued separately.

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The unreleased tracks all live up to the exceptional standards of Henriksen’s past releases, none giving any indication of why they were not released before. Just as importantly, each album hangs together well, never sounding like flung-together out-takes. Aside from Acousmograph—on which Henriksen is heard alone on various instruments—the other three albums feature contributions by names familiar from the trumpeter’s past albums, including samplers Jan Bang and Erik Honore plus guitarist Eivind Aarset who crop up across the three albums, notably with Henriksen in a quartet on the Punkt album.

Captured Under Mountainsides opens proceedings in fine style. Its music reflects the striking beauty of the scenery in western Norway where Henriksen grew up; the distinctive timbre of his trumpet—instantly recognisable after just one note—eloquently conveys a complex mix of happy-sad emotions including nostalgia, melancholy, wistfulness and loss. Many of the melodies have a quasi-religious feel, notably “Bedehus—House of Prayer” on which Henriksen’s keening voice is painfully moving. Suffice to say, one piece of information instantly puts everything into perspective: the album is dedicated to the memory of Henriksen’s brother Kjell-Ove Henriksen.

In complete contrast, Acousmograph, with Henriksen alone, is more experimental and exploratory, a pot-pourri resembling an artist’s sketchbook. The eleven tracks include field recordings from various locations, pieces inspired by a selection of other musicians and composers (including Carl Nielsen and Krzysztof Penderecki), and one composition, “Dimly Lit Frescoes,” made for a Supersilent installation at the Ultima 2017 festival. Overall, the album has a sparser feel, with Henriksen often playing keyboards—piano, celeste, harmonium, synthesiser—or using field recordings to create soundscapes, over which his trademark trumpet or voice is added. Despite the tracks’ diversity of sources, they gel together remarkably well.

One of Acousmograph‘s tracks, “Pathless Forest,” is described as “adjusted in Punkt studio by Jan Bang and Erik Honoré,” a reminder of the role played by “adjustment” in the creation of Henriksen’s music… Which leads neatly to Cryosphere, on which Bang (aided by two of his students from the University in Agder, Kristiansand) re-used, re-layered, re-mixed and re-invented recordings which Henriksen had made with percussionists Audun Kleive, Helge Norbakken and Ingar Zach, in the process including material dating from concert performances in 2012 and 2014 as well as drum samples. Given all of that, questions about who did what and when become difficult to answer, but also largely irrelevant; it is far better to judge the end-products rather than unpick the creative processes that led to them. On that basis, as with everything here, Cryosphere must be judged a success as—once again—Henriksen’s trumpet and voice are perfectly framed and displayed to best advantage, pure and true.

If the other albums present issues of attribution, the conundrum presented by Towards Language—Live at Punkt is as large but different. The original album, Towards Language, was studio-recorded in 2016, with Bang and Honoré constructing environments for Henriksen to be heard in. At the 2017 Punkt festival, the Henriksen-Bang-Honoré-Aarset quartet played a live set based on that album—not a note-for-note copy of it—with Bang and Honoré using live-sampling. The album was later mixed by Honoré at Green Room in Oslo. The resulting album is different to the original release but makes a first-rate, complementary companion-piece to it. The two sound good one after another, the effect being similar to listening to a recording and then a creative DJ remix version of it.

Long-standing aficionados of Henriksen can buy this set with confidence, safe in the knowledge that it contains no shocks but fits neatly into his oeuvre, shedding new light on some of his past work. Henriksen newcomers, wanting to know what all the fuss is about, can easily begin here.

Personnel: Captured Under Mountainsides: Arve Henriksen: trumpets, vocal, piano, synthesizers, organ, electronics (1-12); Erik Honoré: keyboards (8); Skúli Sverrisson: bass (10); Hilmar Jensson; guitar (10); Jan Bang: live sampling (8, 12); Max and Filip Friman-Henriksen: additional percussion sounds (11); Acousmograph:- Arve Henriksen: trumpets, vocal, piano, celeste, harmonium, synthesizers, field recording, sounds, electronics (13-23); Cryosphere:- Arve Henriksen: trumpets, vocals, electronics and synthesizer (24-32); Jan Bang: sampler, live sampling, beats, treatments, programming (24-32); Helge Norbakken: percussion, cymbals, djembe, shakers (24-32); Ingar Zach: grand cassa, objects, cymbal, brushes, water percussion (24-32); Audun Kleive: drums (24), hand drum (30), percussion (28, 32); Walter Laureti; synthesizer (27, 29), treatments (29), string programming (32); Kristian Isachsen: programming, treatments (26, 27); Eivind Aarset: guitar (32); Towards Language – Live at Punkt: Arve Henriksen: trumpet, voice (33-42); Jan Bang: samples, live sampling (33-42); Erik Honoré: live sampling, synthesizer (33-42); Eivind Aarset: guitar (33-42).

Recorded live at Orlyonok concert hall, Moscow, April 12-13, 1989. It’s an officially-sanctioned limited release (300 only!) of the band’s first Moscow gig, which was the third of four dates behind the iron curtain in April ’89 at the very end of the Daydream Nation tour.
Feelee Records haven’t skimped on the package either, it’s a well-pressed double in a heavy gatefold and includes reproductions of the original concert poster and concurrent Sounds magazine cover & article. It’s a strong soundboard recording, with any minor quibbles – maybe a touch spacious (hall acoustics?) with little audible crowd noise – long-forgotten by the end of the first side and, if anything, it just gets better from there, culminating with a blistering Eliminator Jr.

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01. Untitled [04:55]
02. White Kross [03:00]
03. Candle [05:13]
04. Kissability [03:22]
05. Silver Rocket [05:44]
06. Eric’s Trip [03:20]
07. The Sprawl [09:16]
08. Cross The Breeze [05:45]
09. Teen Age Riot [04:38]
10. Hey Joni [04:24]
11. The Wonder [05:05]
12. Hyperstation [07:23]
13. Eliminator Jr. [03:45]

With their fourth album, 2019’s monstrous bi/ Mental, genre-warping punk band Le Butcherettes went through the emotional wringer investigating mental illness, inter-generational trauma, and family strife. Led by the explosive presence of vocalist/guitarist/band founder Teri Gender Bender, the group wavered stylistically on that album between shadowy electronic/rock hybrids and all-out arena rock ragers.
The 7-song EP Don’t Bleed pushes Le Butcherettes’ restless muse even further, getting into new sonic territory on almost every track while connecting the material with loose themes of womanhood, shame, and revenge. The project opens with a lo-fi, demo-like snippet called “Wounds Belong to Me.” Consisting of only vocals and a spare…

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…guitar riff, the brief song recalls the same jittery energy of Patti Smith’s best work. The shabby recording offers a contrast for what follows, with the huge drums, synth touches, and blasting power chords of songs like “Tunisia” and “Out for You” sounding like outtakes from bi/Mental. Le Butcherettes use other songs on the EP to explore different production approaches. The anxious and slippery “Don’t Bleed, You’re in the Middle of the Forest” stacks layers of vocal overdubs on top of a sinister groove, creating an ominous atmosphere as Gender Bender sings of a metaphorical hunt taking unexpected turns. “Love Someone” and “Boom” are both primarily electronic tracks, moving away from the band’s more spirited rock impulses to a more reserved, almost pop approach. “Boom” in particular sounds worlds away from almost any Le Butcherettes material that preceded it, with Gender Bender’s crystalline vocals alone with a hissy, minimal electronic beat.

Don’t Bleed continues the tireless creative development Le Butcherettes have been chasing since their formation. By the end of the EP, they’ve touched on everything from spare blues to Portishead-styled electronic melancholia. Any of these tracks could be hinting at what the group’s next album will sound like, but if their discography up until this point is any indication, it will probably sound completely different from anything they’ve done before.

In the times long before Oasis and certainly before indie music made much of an impression on the public consciousness and wallet, Alan McGee’s Creation Records carved something of a niche for itself, by championing fey psychedelic guitar-pop revivalists. Rishi Dhir’s Canadian space cadets, Elephant Stone clearly have quite a fondness for those times, by immersing themselves in that sound with their latest album, Hollow. However, not content in tipping their collective hat to McGee’s acid eaters from the 1980s, Elephant Stone have flown even further into the psychedelic firmament, by making it a concept album.
Hollow tells the post-apocalyptic tale of a group of wealthy escapees’ attempt to colonise the mysterious New Earth from their spaceship…

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…Harmonia, after mankind’s catastrophic laying waste to our home planet. Needless to say, these adventurers are soon doomed to repeat humanity’s short-sighted mistakes, guided by a tendency towards greed, stupidity and theocracy. However, with Elephant Stone’s gentle trippy guitars, sitar, tabla and children’s choir, Hollow’s sound is not one that suggests destruction and inter-galactic disaster. Far from it.

The tunes of Hollow are altogether more suggestive of sunny afternoons sipping special tea and smoking exotic cigarettes. In fact, “I See You” is airy and mellow, while “The Clampdown” is tuneful and laidback and not at all reflective of lyrics that muse about religious maniacs abducting children in the night. “House on Fire” even picks up on the melodic groove of the Stone Roses’ debut album. However, our space refugees finally opt for a return to planet Earth with the Beatles-ish “A Way Home” and a hope for some kind of final redemption. So, maybe like Lewis Carroll’s famous Alice and her trips to Wonderland and through the Looking Glass, Hollow just turned out to be a trippy dream after all.

In 2013, Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner formed Elkhorn, a duo capable of unspooling mesmerizing long-form guitar improvisations. With Sheppard on 12-string acoustic and Gardner handling six-string electric, their sound is capable of evoking both calm and eerie danger. Over the course of several albums, they’ve stuck to a fairly consistent formula.
The Storm Sessions signals a slightly different sound, and it’s one that can be attributed to manpower. As a result of circumstances beyond their control, Sheppard and Gardner have invited their friend Turner Williams into the fold. Williams, who records under the moniker Ramble Tamble, found himself snowed in with the other two guitarists “on the night of an emotionally important gig” (so says the press release, which…

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…mysteriously fails to elaborate). Thus, a weather-inspired collaboration was formed.

Stuck with instruments to play and nowhere to go, this duo temporarily became a trio, recording two side-long improvisations (titled “Electric One” and “Electric Two” with each side split into three separate subsections) totaling roughly 45 minutes. Adding to the duo’s guitars, Williams contributes electric bouzouki on one side and shahi baaja on the other. The latter instrument, the name of which translates to “royal instrument”, is an electrified and slightly modified version of the Indian bulbul tarang, a type of Indian zither with keys added to alter the pitch of the strings. Williams’ presence adds a unique element to the sound, but it doesn’t drastically alter it. Rather, it deepens what’s already a captivating template.

The triple layer of sound is used to haunting effect from the very beginning. Williams enters the picture gradually, taking advantage of his instrument’s haunting, drone-like qualities, eventually adding a more distorted sound profile as the first side progresses. Sheppard and Gardner successfully join forces in the kind of way that two long-time collaborators usually do – it’s almost like osmosis, a thick slab of dark pastoral folk with the electric guitar reminiscent of Jerry Garcia’s intricate improvisational style. Williams darts in and out with plenty of interesting, unique ideas – he clicks with the other two immediately, and it never seems like an unwelcome intrusion.

While the three musicians seem to move in all sorts of directions but never to the point of breaking free of each other, there are moments when they gel beautifully as one cohesive unit. That is particularly apparent in “Electric Two (Part B)”, as a subtle, almost strobe-like staccato effect overtakes them. The effect is hypnotic, and most likely, something of a happy accident within the freeform improvisational structure.

Great albums have come out of the most unusual circumstances, and with The Storm Sessions, Elkhorn proves that it’s possible to take an unforeseen episode and turn into a transcendent evening of pure, unfiltered inspiration. Rarely has a blizzard sounded this good.

One might mistake this 2020 album on Métier as contemporary music, but its origins extend back to the height of the avant-garde in 1975 when the Astraea Ensemble was formed by composers Sofia Gubaidulina, Vyacheslav Artyomov, and Viktor Suslin, who improvised on Eastern folk instruments in these visionary recordings. Heard from two vantage points, Astraea employed exotic percussion and pitched instruments in their experiments in raw sonorities, as in Archipelagos of Sounds in the Ocean of Time (1977), woven together in various combinations with electronic sounds as abstract studies of rhythm and color. Another take is the otherworldly or mystical nature of the soundscapes, particularly the electronically modified Death Valley (1988), which, with its distant tones…

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…and steadily pulsing bass, is perhaps the most haunting track of the disc, aided by trombonist Miles Anderson’s eerie melodic fragments. Between them is the diaphanous Dolcissimo (1980), an electroacoustic piece that seemingly bridges the first and third tracks by combining elements from both in a free fantasy utilizing all the group’s resources.

This is Astraea’s sole recording, and for decades, it was only available in Russia, so this digitally mastered release receives its world premiere here, making this rarity available to all adventurous listeners.  — AMG

Inks, the 8th solo album on Ultimae from AES Dana (Vincent Villuis), shares much with other releases on the Lyon, France-based imprint: impeccable production values, handsome visual presentation, and musical sophistication to name three. One thing sets it apart, however: its pronounced clubby dimension. While ambient textures and deep atmospheres are key parts of the sound design, Inks grooves much harder than Ultimae’s recent full-length releases. Certainly its rhythm-centric character and considerable bass weight do much to recommend the release.
Inks is a solo production by Villuis, a self-taught electronic music composer, bass guitar, and samplist, except for two tracks where writing and production credits are shared,…

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…respectively, with Mahiane (French DJ Sandrine Gryson) and Miktek (Greek electronic producer Mihalis Aikaterinis). However much the material delves into groove-centric music, be it techno, drum’n’bass, dub, or house, it never wholly loses its identity as an atmospheric production.

With Mahiane aboard, “Inks” opens the album in ambient scene-setting mode, with field recordings and the like lending the material an outdoorsy feel, until a thudding bass figure enters two-and-a-half minutes in, the move immediately intimating that Inks will be more than an atmospheric tapestry. The cut grows harder-hitting as it advances when a muscular downtempo beat pattern joins the bass throb to intensify the music’s thrust.

Miktek and AES Dana combine for the punchy drum’n’bass-inflected attack of “Unfold,” with strong echoes of Bola-styled IDM-electronica also part of the mix. “Nuphar Log” keeps the momentum going with a propulsive blend of techno and dub, Villuis’s artful command of production design never more evident than in this dynamic floor-filler. “Peace Corrosion” grooves as hard, the feel this time closer to house than techno, even if dubby touches seep into its thunderous swing. Elsewhere, “Akacie” arrests the ear with both its alluring downtempo strut and the richness of its textural design, while “The Gradual District” provides a rare respite from the beat-driven presentation with a stormily swirling ambient soundscape.

Consistently exploiting tension-and-release, Villuis shapes the album material so that it comes at the listener in waves, segueing smoothly between restful ambient and aggressive rhythm episodes. With pauses separating the tracks, Inks isn’t presented as a mix, though the character of its material clearly suggests it could have been. Be aware upfront that the journey is long at eighty minutes, but the trip’s also consistently scenic and engrossing, especially when the fine balance Villuis achieves between ambient soundscaping and club music is so masterfully actualized.

Jacoti Sommes is proof that you can make boundary-pushing art in the humblest of places. A native and resident of Columbus, Ohio, the multi-instrumentalist and composer has spent his career deconstructing genre and reassembling its base parts to build new and stranger hybrids. Sommes’ first solo album, 2018’s Ubermensch, is an excellent fusion of hip-hop, electronic, and ambient that sits somewhere between Aphex Twin’s twisted circuitry and the breakbeat IDM of Boards of Canada, even venturing into the vocoder-drenched psychedelia of Black Moth Super Rainbow at times.
On Travel Time, Sommes mines synths and drum machines to create an experimental electronic record that pulls equally from funk and ‘80s dance music, consistently finding…

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…forward-thinking ways to break from the familiar sounds he’s refashioning. “Pulse Start” is the electro-funk score that Miami Vice needed, its ominous opening of deep, foreboding chords giving way to an uptempo dance track that reimagines the punchy analog drums and synth bass of old to sound like they’re streaming from a galaxy light years ahead. On bouncy dance track “Everything is Fine,” Sommes both complements and then disrupts the propulsive beat with a piano solo and barrage of drums. Moments like these, as well as the modern drum patterns on tracks like “I Got Your Back,” prove that Travel Time is not simply a pastiche, but an attempt look to the future using the sounds of the past.

Arborist started as a solo project for singer Mark McCambridge but evolved into a five piece band for the recording of their first album Home Burial. The addition of guitars and piano enriched their sound. Now, on A Northern View the line-up has been completed by the addition of a violinist. What results is a sweeping sound, complex with melody, all held together by McCambridge’s poetical approach to songs. It’s also a political statement about the position of Northern Ireland, in an increasingly not United Kingdom (the northern view in question).
One of the aims of the album McCambridge explains was to create a sense of nervousness “Melody is still paramount, but I wanted the listener to work for it a little more. I wanted there…

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…to be an uneasiness beneath even the lush melodic parts.”

This unease is in place from the first 30-seconds of album-opener, ‘A Stranger Heart’. A cinematic instrumental lulls us into a sense of security until it abruptly stops. McCambridge leads the track with vocals not dissimilar to Colin Meloy of The Decemberists. It’s an epic-feeling song and the lyrics are rich: “I hung-out in the arteries for you to come, with the taste of your blood on the tip of my tongue”.

We are treated to many tracks on the album that are filled with McCambridge’s subtle delivery of imagery, on title track ‘A Northern View’ he sings “I wandered through a blizzard of cherry blossom trees” ably backed by sweeping guitars and poignant violins.

On ‘The Guttural Blues’, a repetitive tune on piano sends us into a meditative state with lots of intricate lyrics thrown in “the tinctured blood on my throat, the mark of the sword-swallower” amongst the chorus “F**k their language”.

However, Arborist are not a band to let you rest on your laurels. The song ‘Taxi’ is a stunning spoken poem celebrating the story-telling tradition in Ireland and the Northern Irish accent. It’s a mesmerising, if unsubstantiated tale about McCambridge’s Dad’s cousin, Henry who apparently suggested to Thin Lizzy that they turn ‘Whiskey in the Jar’, an Irish traditional song, into a rock song. The backdrop of violin and the whispered lyrics from ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ create a ghostly backdrop to the tale.

‘From the Sagging Bough of a Maple’ is lush and relaxed and showcases Arborist’s ability to create beautiful songs crafted with strings and simple vocals.

Yuvi Havkin’s second Stones Throw full-length maintains the dreamy feel of his previous releases, but it seems far more focused, even as the producer’s scope has clearly expanded. He titled it Spiritual Sleaze as the album is highly informed by his yoga and meditation practices, yet it’s “dirty and bouncy” compared to his past work. While there’s nothing ribald about the release, the grooves are considerably firmer this time around, and it doesn’t always feel like the tracks could just slip away or dissolve at any moment. While Rejoicer‘s music always resists categorization, encompassing jazz, funk, ambient, and psychedelia, Spiritual Sleaze feels closer to R&B than hip-hop, particularly due to the presence of guest vocalists on several tracks. KerenDun’s gentle flow complements…

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…the bubbly thump of “Song for the Spirit Flights” and the calmly surreal “My Beans,” while iogi’s morning reflections on “Up in Flames” sound like Toro y Moi delving into the world of library music. The standout is “Lemons,” a slick, clap-heavy beat with bold, questioning vocals by Jenny Penkin. She also confronts mortality on the sublime “Earth Talk,” which features trippy bass work by Sam Wilkes. “Third Eye Jungle Run” is the record’s most up-tempo track, with a light, steady beat caressed by smooth guitars and cascading violins.

Spiritual Sleaze is never a demanding listen, but it’s far more thought-provoking than most music that’s this easy to chill out to. It’s also a significant step up for Rejoicer, and it’s his most inspired, accomplished work thus far.

These New Puritans, since forever, have had an imposing reputation – not helped in the slightest by their increasingly bizarre, increasingly imposing musical style. It wasn’t enough for them to kick their career off by sounding (mostly) like the mutant offspring of The Fall and Sonic Youth, they had to push the boundaries of their sound further out into the darkest realms imaginable.
Field of Reeds, their magnum opus, was a masterpiece of folk horror – an occult, baroque monolith made up of the blackened remains of a burning neo-classical church. It was hideous, and incredible, and unsurpassable. Instead of pursuing the sound of that record (how could they? Who could?), they switched out the some of the classical elements for buzzing electronics,…

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…and pursued a polished yet harrowing industrial sound on last year’s Inside the Rose. Now slimmed down to the sibling duo of Jack and George Barnett, Inside the Rose showcased a brutal, uncompromising commitment to pushing their listeners into the deepest, darkest recesses of their minds.

This new record, The Cut (2016-2019), is a decade-closing compilation of music that serves as a ‘sister release to Inside the Rose, and is, in essence, a large collection made up of new music, orchestral ‘interludes and reworkings’, and remixes. Featured guests are Ossian Brown (Coil), Andrew Liles (Current 93, Nurse With Wound), and Scintii (a Taiwanese singer-producer, who was also featured on Inside The Rose).

The record opens with “The Mirage”. It has a thunderous drum battery, throbbing sub-bass coils and (creepiest of all) a children’s choir singing existential questions at you. If “Another Brick in the Wall” had been written for A Nightmare in Elm Street, this is what you’d end up with.

“Infinity Vibraphones Orchestral Mirror” and “Beyond Black Suns (The Cut Version)” (both reworkings of songs from Inside the Rose) are, in their new presentations, both on the languid side of TNP’s sonic spectrum, but they both have serrated edges, leaving your nerves in shreds. “If I Were You (Love at the End of the Human Age)” is a symphonic, rich trip-hop balm to salve the wounds of the opening tracks. It has a Massive Attack/Portishead darkness, but it’s also incredibly rich and elegant.

The ‘piano mirrors’ of last year’s “Anti-Gravity” and “A-R-P” are both as rich and poignant as the originals. “A-R-P Piano Mirror” conjures the deep, saturnine hues of Depeche Mode, if they were stripped of their more schlocky gothic affectations. Orchestral and choral synth patches introduce “Sphinx In Pieces”, before it grows outward like some kind of Protean monster, incorporating relentless drums and a spiralling sense of doom brought about in no small part by the monstrous crescendo.

Current 93’s Andrew Liles threatens to be the star of the album with his two remixes. The first, an ‘ambient’ remix of “Beyond Black Suns” evokes memories of early ’80s movie soundtracks, while the second, a “#MeToo” mix of “Inside the Rose” allows him to draw on his Nurse With Wound experience to make a ripping, industrial/acid-techno shredder out of the source material.

This is a haunting – and haunted – collection of tracks that were simply too good to withhold from an audience. The reworkings are essential, the remixes vital. This is one of the only ‘companion’ albums released in recent memory that could have any claim to being just as good – if not better – than its sibling. The Cut serves to enrich, embolden and reinvigorate the sounds of Inside the Rose, reopening wounds that have only just healed. Where These New Puritans go from here, nobody can predict, but you can guarantee we’ll be along for the ride. — thelineofbestfit.com

…includes four rare or previously unavailable songs: ‘Happy in the Hollow’, ‘The Willo (Sonic Boom remix)’, ‘Strangulation Day (Cosey Fanni Tutti remix)’, ‘Move Through the Dark (Daniel Melero & Yuliano Acri remix)’.
To say cosmic five-piece TOY hit the ground running is an understatement.
Debut single “Left Them All Behind”, cuts “Dead and Gone” from their self-titled debut, and “Too Far Gone to Know” and the shattering title track of their second album, 2012’s Join the Dots, showed a band unafraid to splatter flourishes of prog over their krautocky shoegaze canvas to jaw dropping effect.
Losing original synth player Alejandra Diez, a key contributor to their earlier material, resulted in a slight misstep with the 3rd album,…

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…2016’s Clear Shot; as they bedded in new keyboardist Max Oscarnold (also of The Proper Ornaments), his more direct, jagged playing contrasted sharply with the freeform style of Diez’s performances on previous records.

Thankfully, that has proven to be a mere blip. Happy in the Hollow is their most satisfying work to date, doubly notable for its being the first record the band have produced themselves. Opener “Sequence One” showcases the metronomic stylings of Charlie Salvidge brilliantly, while bubbling arpeggios and liberal slashes of post-punk guitar accompany vocalist Tom Dougall’s stream-of-consciousness lyricism. A booming 4/4 is dropped slightly offbeat on top of the track in an apparent nod to the leftfield trickery of the producer of their first two albums, Dan Carey.

While Clear Shot was shorn of the idiosyncracies that endeared TOY to so many in the first place, HITH is crammed with ornamental flourishes that augment the music. “Mistake a Stranger” takes warm synths and adds cold and creeped out theremin sounds; the white knuckle punk fury of “Energy” has Dougall presenting smacked out verses as if reciting poetry, while the latter half incorporates John Cale influenced violin drone, all topped off with Salvidge’s inhuman percussion skills.

Overall, HITH is a mellow, exploratory affair, with drum machines, acoustic guitars and bottleneck slides being dreamily deployed at key moments to break up the Krautrock churn. It was clear after their previous album that TOY needed to shake things up a little – nothing drastic, just a slight reboot – and by doing so on Happy in the Hollow, they find themselves right back on track. – thelineofbestfit.com

There are 23 ‘seas’ on the moon. None of them have water in them, they’re just vast balsamic plains, volcanic eruptions once mistaken by astronomers too quick to identify their darker colouring. There are 20 so-called ‘lakes’, too. Their philosophical and mythological nature is the thesis of Latvian artist and composer Agata Melnikova’s second full-length, Sea to Sea, under the alias Sign Libra.
It’s the kind of music you can imagine would be playing at you in a downtown massage parlour to disguise the fact that you’d remortgaged your life for the simple pleasure of being hit by wooden sticks in an off-white towel. But there’s some homespun warmth in Melnikova’s strange celestial quest that makes you leave feeling psychically cleansed and in Libran balance.

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Viva the horoscope renaissance.

Completely free from restriction (Sign Libra’s last album was written for a contemporary ballet at the Latvian National Opera), Sea to Sea is a sprawling expanse bereft of the soft static beat of Antinote releases past). Melnikova’s synthesised cartography renders the ‘Sea of Islands’ full of surrealist sensibilities, a subtle car-crash of Laurie Anderson, Glasser and Grimes with an enchanting vocal hoot. The landing site of Apollo 11 glugs with everything from Krautrock’s “kosmische” to new wave, as each plain is mapped in a largely nonsensical aural voyage over melismatic drones and crisp kick drums.

In a very literally otherworldly soundscape, it kind of sounds like Melnikova’s taken the moon and smoothed its surfaces with a potato peeler: intergalactic anthems for unmapped waters feel beautifully unspooling, if rarely divergent from track to track. There’s still enough space to get lost.

One of the guiding principles of punk rock has always been “Do It Yourself,” but that doesn’t mean “Do It All By Yourself,” which is one of the reasons why 2020’s New Arrows, the second album from North Carolina’s pogo merchants Personality Cult, is a decided improvement over their self-titled 2018 debut. On the first album, Personality Cult was in the truest sense a solo project for frontman Ben Carr, who not only sang, played guitar, and wrote the songs but handled most of the accompaniment. The LP was tuneful and energetic with just enough sharp edges in the guitar work to keep it from sounding safe, but after Personality Cult started attracting some attention, Carr put together a band that could tour in support, and 2020’s New Arrows has a muscle,…

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…spark, and drive that make it a more satisfying effort than the one-man-band edition of the group. Like the first album, New Arrows leaves no question that Carr worships at the altar of the Buzzcocks; his breathless chainsaw guitar patterns and streamlined yet hook-laden melodies are cut from that band’s cloth, but Carr’s focus and intensity is his own, and his songwriting chops are on point (as a declaration of love, “I’m a bit of an addict, and you’re the pill under my tongue” has most of the competition beat).

Guitarist Stephen Svacina, bassist Johnny Valiant, and drummer Colin Sneed give the performances a taut kick that fills out the tunes brilliantly, and Carr’s performances build on their strong foundation, while Jeff Burke’s production puts their buzzy fury on tape with no-frills clarity. Ben Carr already had a fine resumé with his work with Last Year’s Men and Natural Causes, but New Arrows takes Personality Cult to the next level, and it’s plenty of strong, revved-up fun.

Classically trained, yet club-ready, Ema Jolly (aka Emika) is one of the most interesting and unheralded figures in music today. A melding of Czech and British heritage who found a home in Germany, her first couple of albums for Ninja Tune struck a vein of brooding vocal dubstep before she launched her own label in 2015 with Klavírní, an album of minimal solo piano compositions. Ever the creator, Jolly has since released her first symphony, 2017’s Melanfonie, two more electronic-based records and given birth to her first child.
Klavírní Temná marks the end of a particular chapter, and possibly the beginning of a new one. While the style and title are direct references to her first album for her own imprint, “klavírní” meaning piano in Czech while “temná” means…

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…dark, it’s also the last album to be released by Emika Records. At the time of this writing, she hasn’t announced what she has planned next, but given her limitless creativity, it’s bound to be something incredible.

Recorded at her home studio in Berlin while she was pregnant, Jolly made Klavírní Temná “in a state of ultra hyped-up creativity combined with a massive fear about losing [her] identity or creativity as an artist once [she] would become a mother.” Afterwards, she dedicated the album to her daughter. Having heard it from the inside first, her daughter apparently knew it so well that after she was born, she walked in on her mother listening to a test pressing, touched Jolly’s stomach and said, “Mummy.” The sound had become as comforting as her mother’s heartbeat, a veritable extension of her aura.

While the rest of us may not have such a personal connection to it, Klavírní Temná is distinctive. The improvisational piano melodies of each dilo (moment) float along unhurriedly, awash in subtle, atmospheric effects, like Erik Satie if he traded absinthe and Parisian cafes for an opium den and a laptop with Logic pre-installed. It balances an ominous feel with moments of ethereal enlightenment, gently fractured by digital tweaks like a tattered flag on a forgotten pole. As a headphone listen, the emotionality of it all is almost overwhelming. Someone needs to give her a feature film to score.

A collaboration between Sabrina Ellis (A Giant Dog) and Sean Tillmann (Har Mar Superstar), Heart Bones‘ retrofuturistic synth pop borrows colorful elements from the likes of ’60s girl groups, disco, psychedelic pop, and ’80s new wave while devising something all their own.
Before forming Heart Bones, Minnesota-based Sean Tillmann was the force behind such acts as Calvin Krime, Sean Na-Na, and quirky indie soulster Har Mar Superstar. Down South in Austin, TX, Sabrina Ellis was already known for bands such as Sweet Spirit and indie rock outfit A Giant Dog. Working long-distance, they teamed up for Heart Bones in 2018. Featuring mixing by John Congleton (Lana Del Rey, Angel Olsen), their first album, Hot Dish, arrived on Love Online Records in early 2020.

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Both in concept and approach, Sean and Sabrina share many commonalities: long histories of genre warping and adopting evolving personas to embody these progressions, celebrating wildness and theatricality night after night throughout grueling tour schedules. And all this expressed in the persistent tension of dark themes made melodious, a move that the true specialist knows will always make the struggle for balance feel deep and real.

…after years of both participating as central figures in their own city’s thriving and collaborative music communities, they fused all these commonalities, their inclinations for sly raunch and camp facades as a means of revealing vulnerabilities.

In the end, if you’ve steered your evolution with any modicum of self-awareness and decency, the coolest thing, the coolest way to be, can basically be summed up as fun and positive. And shockingly, compared to the common youngster’s notions of cool, this hard-won coolness actually has very little to do with brooding. The public demonstrations of brooding cool by adult rockers, with their insecure and clumsy demonstrations of interior depth, are nothing compared to the wisdom to overcome that simple impulse to brood. It’s too easy given adulthood’s many disappointments and regrets. Who cares? But summoning the spirit to give joy back to the world? That’s a noble mission.

And none of that is simple. Has the common word “Loneliness” ever been sung in such a soaring manner as the chorus of “Open Relations?” “Little Dancer” has everything I ask of the life-coach podcasts I depend on, but with a spoonful of skeptical humor. Beginning to end, the arrangements of Hot Dish reinforce this blending of shaded and contradictory moods by balancing different eras of pop music with intentionality and attention to detail that makes it all feel historically inevitable: something truly New, achieved by the skillful means of combining Familiar elements we all already love. — broadwayworld.com

Two EPs and now two albums into their career, Ruiner finds Brooklyn based trio Wilsen (comprised of vocalist/guitarist Tamsin Wilson, bassist Drew Arndt and guitarist Johnny Simon Jr) coming of age with a brilliantly moody and mythical record.
The follow-up to 2017’s beautiful debut album I Go Missing in My Sleep, Ruiner begins with its captivating title track – a supressed, dark swirling mass of atmospheric guitars make way for Tamsin Wilson’s vocals, poised and fresh set against the rest. It has a much clearer, defined sense of melody than much of their previous material. “Ruiner” wraps you up, it’s urgent rhythms striding towards something stronger but just as subtle. The stormy turbulence of the keys and the swelling of the chorus bring Wilson’s vocals to…

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…the front and back again, like waves tipped by high speed winds. Basically, as album openers go it’s a winner.

The fiery pacing “Birds II”, the gentler but still spinning “Down” and defiant confidence of penultimate number “Fuse” follow in the title track’s reverb heavy footsteps. As does standout single “Fleeting Fancy” which, according to Wilson, is “a song for the soft-spoken. Quietness can be mistaken for insecurity while it’s often the opposite – it’s being comfortable in your own presence without needing to be heard at every moment.”

Quieter moments on the album can be found in songs like “Align”, “Wearing”, “Bird” and album closer “Moon”. “Moon” still finds Wilson’s voice fed through a crackling vintage filter but it stands starker than anywhere else on the record, a more intimate exposure of the narrative. It meanders, a little too lethargically at times, softly – a gentle lullaby outro. Elsewhere “Wearing” and “Align” take a more acoustic guitar driven path with echoes of that Laurel Canyon sound – they’re warmer, hazier, more predictable and less distinguished but no less gorgeous.

“Birds” hits you mid album – a stripped back short affair which grips you through its absence. It’s a void where Wilson’s voice breathes and simple ideas are played out intensely and intimately before they run flawless into next track “Moving”.

“Moving” is a deliberate and focussed number that has an mysticism to the way its presented, a calmness that plays out across twinkling synths, haunting notes and the reassurance that “you will love one another.” Then suddenly sounds fractiously ripple off one another and come back, as if magnetised and the aforementioned “Birds II” hits. “Moving”, like “YNTOO”, in transporting you to an entirely different place and mood – both representing perhaps the most balanced tracks on the album.

Produced, recorded and mixed by Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, SASAMI, Bon Iver), Ruiner is a quietly tumultuous storm of a record, and as “Fleeting Fancy” articulates, “Quiet’s not a fault to weed out.” It’s a fully immersive 40 minutes of dark atmospherics and designed for a focussed listen for those willing to give themselves up to the music entirely. Each song has so flawlessly been designed to lead into the next. The only downside to this congruous vision is that it can drag a little in places, but we suggest you surrender to the current, hold out against those drifting moments and let Wilsen take you with them.

A lot of ugliness lives in Unlovely, the third full-length record from Boston-based trio The Ballroom Thieves. The world is burning (“In the Dark”), there’s anger (“Homme Run”) and pain (“Don’t Wanna Dance”), and a cacophony of bad news envelops you (“Unlovely”). On top of all that, liars are everywhere: A selfish swindler is at the center of “Vanity Trip,” and liars are the cause of exasperation on the closing track “For Hitchens” — “Why do you let them lie to you?” the trio ask.
And yet, Unlovely is lovely. The Ballroom Thieves face the ugly and unjust found in personal and public spheres with unflappable energy, and in turn they’ve made a dynamic album. Unlovely embodies the comradely atmosphere of a protest.
Track-to-track, The Ballroom Thieves’…

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…arrangements maintain a similarly playful energy but they never quite sound the same. With songs ranging from quiet folk ballads to boisterous rock tracks with a smattering of horns, Unlovely is a sonically sprawling record, but by always being anchored with The Ballroom Thieves’ calls for justice, it rarely feels unfocused. The smartly titled “Homme Run,” for example, is one of the more stripped back songs from the record, with Calin Peters’ vocals and Martin Earley’s waltzing guitar rhythm at its center, while “Begin Again” is a scraggy rock track with guitars that screech and bellow, but both tracks underline the need to dismantle the patriarchy.

A contrast between the dark and the light is a focal point of Unlovely as the band wades through contemporary disharmony but pairs it with buoyant melodies. In the final moments of “Tenebrist,” a funky rock track whose title refers to a painting style marked by the vivid contrast of dark and light tones, The Ballroom Thieves come together and state what feels like the core of Unlovely: “We need the dark to know the light.”

Could it be? Is it really possible that one of the most innovative collectives in modern music could stoop to making a throwback soul record? (Perhaps they should have recruited Joss Stone as a guest vocalist.) Sarcasm aside, it’s obvious that a soul record from a group like Jazzanova is quite a different proposition from the usual retro rot. So confident in their middle age that they feel no need to innovate (at least, purely for its own sake), the Berliner sextet ends up delivering one of the best soul albums of the era (or any other). True, the influences may be easy to spot — Philly soul here, Motown there, plenty of ’70s progressive jazz with taut strings or breezy woodwinds — but with arrangements as accomplished as these are, and productions that crackle as gloriously…

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…as these do, the group can rest comfortably with their theft, genius as it is. Each track has a vocal feature, which might disappoint a few dance fans, but as with the first Jazzanova production LP (In Between), listeners won’t spend long wishing they could hear instrumentals of these songs. The caressing vocalist Paul Randolph is responsible for a large share of the highlights, while Jazzanova must be proudest for snaring the smooth soul maverick Leon Ware to appear on a cover of his own “Rockin’ You Eternally,” with backing vocals from fellow Detroiter Dwele. (Still, Phonte from Little Brother is responsible for the record’s greatest feat — delivering a fine soul vocal on the opener “Look What You’re Doin’ to Me,” then rapping just as well for “So Far from Home.”)

It’s to be expected that Jazzanova would turn in excellent productions with every track, but what’s most impressive about Of All the Things is the work that Jazzanova haven’t made their forté in the past — songwriting, arrangements, and the pairing of each vocalist with a song that works perfectly for them. (Credit for much of the songwriting and arranging for horn or strings goes to Stefan Leisering.) Whereas in the past, Jazzanova’s preeminence was obvious on the surface, Of All the Things displays their subtle powers for music-making.  — AMG

Hastur, the sixth chapter in Cryo Chamber’s annual H.P. Lovecraft homage series, takes no time at all establishing its macabre character. Picking up where the earlier Cthulhu (2014), Azathoth (2015), Nyarlathotep (2016), Yog-Sothoth (2017), and Shub-Niggurath (2018) left off, the latest begins by placing the listener within a cryptic zone eerily reminiscent of the kind Lovecraft himself would have fashioned for one of his stories. As in the past, a legion of label-associated artists are involved, the label quick to clarify that Hastur isn’t a compilation but rather a collaboration: for more than a year, twenty-plus artists linked studios and worked together to fashion the recording, its two parts totaling two hours and twenty minutes.
Taking part are Atrium Carceri, Mount Shrine,…

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…Dead Melodies, Flowers for Bodysnatchers, Ruptured World, Ager Sonus, Dronny Darko, ProtoU, Neizvestija, Dahlias Tear, Northumbria, God Body Disconnect, Council of Nine, Apocryphos, Wordclock, Gydja, Kolhoosi 13, Creation VI, Darkrad, Ugasanie, Alphaxone, SiJ, and Sphäre Sechs—pretty much the full Cryo Chamber roster, unless I’m missing someone. No matter: the material produced by those on hand is true to the label’s dark ambient ethos through and through. Occasionally emerging from the engulfing mass of synth washes and electronic textures are traces of identifiable instrument sounds, an electric guitar texture here and the scrape of a violin there.

Gloomy sounds drift through decaying ruins and dilapidated temples in cities destroyed eons ago, the reasons for their collapse impossible to determine, and phantom voices faintly intone incantations from long-forgotten tongues. Cavernous rumblings and muted howls give way to ghostly drift and static-encrusted transmissions of alien origin. Sounds of dead bodies being dragged across the floor give way to lulling, mist-cloaked passages suggesting the glacial march of ghouls through wintry landscapes—and that’s just disc one. With clangorous episodes rising from the murk and bells portentously tolling and winged creatures screeching, the second half perpetuates the tone and style of the first while also often upping the intensity level and hallucinatory tone. The material rumbles and convulses aggressively for much of it, the contributors showing few qualms about effecting the deepest plunge into the Lovecraft realm. In both halves, transitions between sequences occur seamlessly, so smoothly the change from one to the next often happens without one noticing.

Crafted as it was, it’s well-nigh impossible to know who did what, musically speaking, though it’s certainly conceivable that a Cryo Chamber devotee would be able to identify the handiwork of each artist as it appears. Channeling one’s energy in such trainspotting-like manner seems to me wrongheaded, however, when the project is fundamentally predicated on material being sculpted collectively. You’re probably better off giving your attention to the music, pure and simple, and allowing its diseased sounds to infect you. Dim the lights, turn up the volume, light the incense, close your eyes, and for two hours you might start to feel as if you’ve somehow ended up at the centre of a Lovecraft story, be it “The Thing On the Doorstep,” “The Dunwich Horror,” or some other equally chilling nightmare. — Textura