Yeah, I know, lumping all these recordings and pieces of composition that people have spent ages putting together all into one pigeonhole on one page is kind of lazy. I know, I know, this is people’s art, this is people’s lives this is a disrespectful way of doing things but hey, there are only so many hours in the day and our inbox is out of control and we never asked for any of this, all these composers, studio artists, wordless creators, instrumental studio pieces that, I suspect, are far easier to make now technology allows, all these things that come our way on a daily basis, blink and another five arrive, step outside to take the air beyond the overheating Organ bunker and a bucket load more land here, an inbox bursting with instrumental composition all melding semi-ambient stew of have I heard this one already and gawd, no, just crank up some Sammy Hagar, surely there is only one way to rock? Now I’m no musician, I have no interest in how any of this is made or who is using what to make it, I’m not going to sit here and stroke my chin and bore the arse out of you analysing any of it, I couldn’t care less how they did it, how it was made – I do care about where it was made, a piece of music made in Norwich is surely going to taste different to a piece of music made in Istanbul and I do very much care about the result, the finished piece of art (why do so many of them wrap their art is such bad art, why do most of these pieces of work come wrapped in such throwaway artwork, so many thrown together at the last minute ill-considered album covers, is the art wrapped around your art not important?) , Didn’t really like any of the art wrapped around these releases (so I put one of my own paitnings at the top of the page)

These releases have been mounting up, we’ve been exploring them, they do mostly peak for themselves and these are the picks, “peak for themselves”? I kind of like that, I was attempting to type speak for themselves but they are the kind of peak, the best of peaks of our instrumental music in-box mountain and when you really do listen they really don’t deserve to all be lumped together on one page like this. Think of it as a carefully curated group show, pictures at an exhibition, imagine  Modest Mussorgsky’s Promenade between each release while I go find out what else I missed in the inbox while I was busy with exhibitions of my own… 

Wil Bolton – Swept (Audiobulb) – Swept, we are told, “is an exploration of emotional turbulence, resilience and rejuvenation. Created with electric guitar, modular and analogue synthesizers and pedals, most of the sounds were recorded at the start of the global pandemic. The album is bookended with field recordings made from the artist’s garden in East London. It opens with the sound of tarpaulin sheets on a neighbouring construction site swept by heavy winds during Storm Ciara, shortly before the first UK lockdown, and closes with the sound of birdsong after rainfall, signalling hope for better times..”

If there is emotional turbulence, then it is rather peaceful, reflective, outwardly beautiful turbulence – peacefully mellow, refined, almost glowing with that hope Will Bolton talks of. Slow moving, never heavy in any sense of the term, always a pleasure, dense but never too dense, just the right (light) consistency, a perfectly basked cake. The kind of cake that requires no effort in terms of the person eating it or listening to it or letting it flow around them. It may or may not be a piece of work that is part of a visual experience,we are dealing with the audio here though, and in terms of an album, a body of work, a collection of pieces music, this has depth, it has substance, it invites you in and holds you there in a most rewarding manner, this is beautifully warm…     

“Wil Bolton is a London-based artist and musician. He makes predominantly sound-based artworks for both CD releases and installations, often enhanced with video or photography. His audio work uses guitars, acoustic instruments, vintage keyboards and effects to create warm and emotive melodies, fragmented and submerged among beds of droning ambient textures and environmental sounds.” More via Bandcamp

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Stereocilia – Crystalline – “Stereocilia is Bristol based guitarist and composer, John Scott. John uses his guitar and live looping techniques to create dense, rich layers of sound…” Crystalline is an album that does all the speaking needed, yes I know that’s lazy of me and yea I know that could be said about any piece of music, any piece of art, but composition like this really is a language beyond words and while the layers and looping and guitar effects and the peddle pushing might not be that radically different to the many things like this we’ve heard before, there is something about John Scott’s way of doing his thing though, especially in the inward looking beauty of the eleven minute closing piece Our Future Died In Your Past….  More via Bandcamp

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Shida Shahabi – Deep Violet Of Gold’ by Shida Shahabi, a piece of music (and a video) from the album Living Circle, an album that’s due out on Fat Cat Records offshoot label 130701 / later this June, somewhere around midsummer’s day so it would seem…

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Stockholm-based composer Shida Shahabi returns with her second album (it says sophomore here on the press release, enough with the Americanisms). The press release tells us ‘Living Circle’ is “a wonderfully rich and accomplished new work that resonates with a powerful depth and viscerality. Where the warm, homespun piano of her 2018 debut, ‘Homes’, drew widespread praise and announced her arrival as a bold new voice, ‘Living Circle’ sees the artist pushing forwards into deeper, more expansive sonic realms. With tracks stretching longer and slower, and her piano lines less ornate and dominant, ‘Living Circle’ is a heavyweight album and a must-hear for fans of Stars Of The Lid, Sarah Davachi, Max Richter, Labradford, etc. Released via FatCat’s 130701 imprint on June 23rd on vinyl, CD and digital formats, it is preceded by a live show supporting A Winged Victory For The Sullen at London’s Barbican Centre on May 13th” – which, considering the press release landed here on June 12th is kind of useless unless the PR company or the label have re willing ot lend us their time machine. Actually we can’t tell you much more about the album, the press release only came with the video, a video that seemed worth sharing on this Sunny Summer’s Monday morning. We’ve only heard the one nine minute piece that came with the video, reallt can’t comment on the rest of the album. 

Here’s some more from the press release…

“Patience is a virtue, and in Shahabi’s world things generally move at a gentle pace. You’ll hear this in her music, in which delicate piano and cello lines trace spellbinding melodies amid the cavernous depths of vast, richly textured drone waves, and you’ll see it in her lifestyle, an unhurried, considered existence to which nurturing is central, whether of her family, herself, her work, or the plants she grows. Good things, as they say, come to those who wait, and Shahabi clearly understands the axiom’s truth. Hers is a lusciously sensitive music. Using a piano prepared with felt (to create a damped sense of closeness) and intimately captured via clever microphone placement and a subtle prism of tape delay treatments, the simple, gentle beauty of her compositions is striking. Uncluttered and unhurried, a deep warmth seeps through her music’s every note.

Born in the Swedish capital in 1989 to Iranian parents, Shahabi grew up in a home filled with the sounds of both ‘70s Persian pop and classical works, and would pick up pieces on the family piano by ear without having the patience to learn from sheet notation. As her tastes developed, an early ear for punk and grunge shifted towards more esoteric, experimental flavours – among them The Cure, Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine. From age eleven, Shida began experimenting with her own simple compositions, noting how “it was like doodling, but became a way to spend time when I was bored, and I did it for long periods, provoked by pure pleasure.” Following four years studying fine art at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Art, she began freelancing as a musician with numerous local artists and bands, and found herself composing music for dance, cinema, theatre and fine art contexts, as well as taking her first steps as a solo artist. Discovered by Stockholm label Sing A Song Fighter, her album recordings were sent to 130701 who, blown away by their quality, co-released her ‘Homes’ debut in October 2018.

Despite taking almost five years between albums, Shahabi has hardly been resting on her laurels. There have been tracks on an EP split with 130701 labelmates Resina and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch alongside a joint UK tour, as well as ‘Shifts’, her own five track EP in 2019, not to mention the release of film scores and other commissions – including a reworking of Beethoven’s ‘Piano Sonata No. 26’ in 2021 for Deezer’s ‘Beethoven Recomposed’ project – and carefully selected live performances, from Max Richter’s Reflektor Festival at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie to Film Four’s Summer Screen season at London’s Somerset House. Having scored several short films, Shida recently graduated to working on full features – for Charlotte Le Bon’s award-winning ‘Falcon Lake’ and the SpectreVision production ‘Lovely, Dark and Deep’. She also scored a prestigious new contemporary dance production, ‘Sylph’, choreographed by Halla Ólafsdóttir for Sweden’s Cullberg company, which premieres in May.

Following a string of rare but brilliant live performances and with her music having racked up millions of digital streams, ‘Living Circle’ finally arrives to answer the building anticipation. Recorded and produced by Shida and Hampus Norén, it was pieced together between 2021–22, with recordings made in several Stockholm spaces – at both Shida’s home apartment and studio space; in the octahedral Skeppsholmskyrkan church; and finally at Grammofonstudion in Gothenburg, before being expertly mixed and mastered by Francesco Donadello (Jóhann Jóhannsson, Dustin O’Halloran, Hildur Guðnadóttir) at Berlin’s renowned Voxton Studios.

Whilst previous releases were created via minimal approaches and clear conceptual framing, ‘Living Circle’ arose out of a more gradual and intuitive, organic process. “I wanted a vaguer framework,” says Shida, “not always knowing what the next step would be, and seeking a wider and longer format. It arose partly from improvisation and partly from sessions spent working and talking through what sounds that felt interesting and what the core of the material wanted to say. I don’t think the tracks would sound the way they do, if it wasn’t for me giving the process time and letting things rest, without being quickly packaged or defined too much. Working ‘in the dark’ like that puts you in a more vulnerable situation. But that complexity and vulnerability also created other outputs and made the process strangely more fun.”

Without radical reinvention, ‘Living Circle’ sees Shida continue to pull her music forward. From the sparser unadorned piano of ‘Homes’, through ‘Shifts’ which first featured cellist Linnea Olsson – a wonderful foil and now a fixture in Shida’s live show – and into her piano-free soundtrack work on ‘Lake On Fire’ and ‘Alvaret’, there’s been a consistent sense of expansion and refinement of her craft – exploring different instrumental sources; dialling deeper into subtle atmospheric detail and spatiality; learning how to say more with less. On ‘Living Circle’ that journey, and the time she has allowed it, has led to a hugely impressive work that feels both vast and nuanced, radiating a masterful sense of confidence and control.

With an increased focus on ambient texture, drone and extended duration, four of the seven tracks stretch beyond seven minutes in length. ‘Kinsei’ might open the album on a decaying piano note, yet it’s almost fifteen minutes before the instrument audibly enters as the title track powers slowly and assuredly forwards, feeling like a pitched down take on Radiohead’s ‘Pyramid Song’ whilst recalling ‘Futo’ from her ‘Shifts’ EP, in its powerful and emotive interlocking of piano and cello. Where it does appear, Shida’s piano playing is pared back and more repetitive/ less ornate than before. In another shift, she incorporates choral elements for the first time, with ‘Deep Violet of Gold’ and ‘Aestus’ featuring the voices of Julia Ringdahl, Nina Kinert, Sara Parkman alongside her own. Double bassist Gus Loxbo also plays on six of the album’s seven tracks, whilst Olsson’s cello is increasingly foregrounded. Across the LP, there’s a deeper layering and weathering of sounds, with distorted surfaces blistering and peeling away on ‘Deep Violet Of Gold’ and the more synthetic, Blade Runner-esque ‘Tecum’; the former at times nudging closer to the saturated/ overdriven tape of Ian William Craig’s reel to reel processing and delight in gritty materiality.

As Shahabi points out, silence also plays a vital role in the album. Suffused with an elegant melancholy, it allows notes to linger and melodies to unfurl at a speed that reflects the record’s making. Eerie but uplifting, imposing yet redemptive, it succeeds in being as expansive as it is intimate, as still as it is fluid, haunting those who hear it long after the music’s quietly faded. Glacially paced and powerfully resonant, ‘Living Circle’ is an important reminder of the joys in taking a measured, patient approach to the art of creation. There is, let’s not forget, nothing like being in the right place at the right time, especially if ultimately the goal is to achieve something timeless.

‘Living Circle’ is released on 130701 on 23rd June on vinyl and digital formats. The album will be released in Scandinavia via the Sing A Song Fighter label. More via Bandcamp or FatCat

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Requiem – POPulist Agendas (Mutineer records) – Something a little more dense in terms of this page and the pace of the day. The part of the forthcoming album we can taste ahead of the album’s August release , take us into thicker spaces, something a little more rhythmically challenging, almost industrially edged, a raw touch … once again more via Bandcamp      

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Meredith Bates – Tesseract (Phonometrograph) – The whole point here is we really don’t need to clutter up these page with too many words, this latest meredith Bates album, the quasi-orchestral landscapes, the gentle movement of it all, the pieces really do do all their own talking, it is an evocative set of compositions, a rewarding set of mostly darker colours… Find it on Bandcamp

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Henrik Meierkord – Geschichten – “Henrik Meierkord is a Swedish musician based in Stockholm, experimenting with different genres. With the cello as his main instrument, he also masters viola, double bass, guitar and numerous other instruments. His keywords in making music are pause, vacuum of time, the unconscious, consciousness, dream, meditation, a way of avoiding direct thoughts and reality”.

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And we could go on here, it is rather like being in a chocolate shop, we have eaten too much now, we really do need a slice of toast or a piece of cheese or some screaming vocals or a four to floor slice of soul or something off the first Moxy album and the pigeons are pecking at the door and we have no control over the situation and there’s probably more aroving in the inbox as we speak and did I ever tell you I made an instrumental improv album? It was back when I had somehow had The Enid dumped on me by their esacaping manager, Working with The Enid was certainly “interesting”, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, who was worse? Anton and his Brian Jonestown Massacre and his public death threats or the nightmare that was the often unpleasant (sometimes, but not every often, very nice) Robert John Godfrey? Anyway, Robert turned up one night, about 2am in the mornnig actually, he wanted to dump a load of equipment, including the biggggest synth I’ve ever seen, it belonged to someone he had just kicked out of the band, just before he went all Acid House for a bit, Anyway, we knew the sacked musician in question and we knew he wouldn’t mind us plugging in the monster jumbo jet flightdeck of a synth in and there was a four track to hand and so an improv album was made sometime in the mid 90’s. Limited edition of one on cassette that almost certainly needs to be reissued, maybe a run of five this time? Here’s some Mussorgsky…

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