Today, we’re not so much reviewing things here as much as just gathering the best of all these musically experimental things that insist on landing in our over-full in box on a daily basis. Today we’re simply cherry picking, gathering and sharing, posting up the sounds and the signposts, the links and some of the vital background information. You don’t need a review every time do you? If the music is featured you know we think it worth our time and space as well as yours, you know we only cover the best things and really, good art should be way out beyond mere words and all that dancing around the buildings that the architects impose on us all. Anyway, there’s no time to be here tirelessly spending hours and hours reviewing everything, there’s paint to thrown and frankly no one funds any this, all these labels asking us to review their releases, to shout about their Kickstarters or to plug their Bandcamp Fridays, to push their “product” and tie in with their marketing plan, do they think we get our electricity free? That we don’t have rent to pay or pigeons to feed? Real life and art hats come way before the time-eating Organ hat these days. We don’t get any support for any of this, we don’t get paid to do the radio thing, we don’t even get expenses in terms of that radio show, and annoyingly we hardly ever see the labels or bands sharing the pieces we do write, and we certainly don’t want to clutter up our pages with all those awful adverts. If you don’t like the way we do things these days then hey, you could always try doing it yourself. There’s simply isn’t always time to critically review every piece of music or every piece of art we think is worth supporting and so today you just get five pieces of rather fine music to check out, hope you find these five as rewarding as we do…    

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Here’s some footage of the always rewarding Christine Ott, Christine is part of a new band, a trio called The Cry. The Cry have a debut album just coming out, more details and more importantly, the music, ca nbe found underneath the video, we’ll let Christine and The Cry kick off this gathering of five musical things, that’s the cover to their new album just up there…….

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1: The Cry are “a new improvising trio comprised of Christine Ott (Ondes Martenot, piano), Mathieu Gabry (keyboards, effects) and Pierre-Loïc Le Bliguet (drums, percussion). This debut release was created in November 2022 and it falls between avant-garde jazz, krautrock and progressive instrumental music.

This self-titled record holds multiple textures and the density of the music here offers a constantly renewed listening experience. These sounds sculptures are born in the moment and the trio play out compelling polyrhythmic movements immersed in an electro-acoustic magma.

To present the album more precisely, we give the floor to the three protagonists:

Mathieu Gabry: “In a way, the first track sets the tone… ‘Fire of Love’ is a nod to the documentary film of the same name and a tribute to the lives of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. The couple travelled the planet guided by their passion for volcanoes, and the film is a wonderful adventure story about the unknown, living together and our relationship with the elements. In the twenty minutes of improvised music in that track, there is a kind of fusion going on, between us, between certain styles, something very telluric and very human at the same time. It’s an idea that I think corresponds well to this musical epic. But then again, maybe it’s a coincidence… and the fact that Christine and I saw the film a few days before the recording maybe gave it a title!”

Christine Ott: “The record opens with this warning cry that seems to come from the bowels of the earth, or from our bodies. Unless it is a call, an invitation to enter this magma, an analogical cry that I play here on a Korg MS20 with effects and very organic sounds I love. Playing this instrument opened up new horizons for me and offered me a great freedom of play. This beautiful meeting revealed to us a completely unexpected record… For some months, I had in my mind to invite Pierre-Loïc to join us and play together. I heard him playing before and I was very impressed by his sensitive playing and his amazing groove. With Mathieu we had the chance to see his graduation concert, and we were very impressed by his interpretations of drum pieces by Andrea Mazzariello or Glenn Kotche (Wilco). It was powerful and delicate at the same time. So when we met to play together at Downtown Studios just for a day, we three didn’t know what would happen. The Cry is a testimony of this magical moment of pure improvisation.”

Pierre-Loïc Le Bliguet: “The Cry is a trio that speaks to me and that I understand, I feel almost at home. The record reminds me of bits of old Porcupine Tree, Esbjorn Svensson Trio or Gogo Penguin somewhere, but with a very singular language; the long temporalities, the treatment of timbres in morphing, all this process of evolution and metamorphosis… I hear a lot of things, and obviously a lot of groove, which is at the centre of all my convictions and conditions everything I play. I’ve always been attracted by the collective aspect of music, the various vibrations that it can give rise to. And I often ask myself this question: why and especially for whom do we play our instrument? With The Cry, we’re right in the middle of it, as I sometimes feel that the record is an instinctive reflection of a moment while being loaded with great depth and hidden meanings.” 

More via Bandcamp

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2: Cláudio de Pina & Andrew Levine – now this feels rather Messiaen, this is meant as a compliment, or maybe the out there Guy Evans bits on Van Der Graaf’s Plague of Lightojuse Keepers, an event bigger compliment – “Aether Ventus is an album that explores the intersection of historical and modern musical techniques. The album features Cláudio de Pina on the Portuguese historical organ (1792) of Ajuda’s church, using his own extended techniques developed specially for this instrument, intertwined with the electronic sounds and menagerie of Andrew Levine’s unique modular synths and theremin.

Pina and Levine endeavour for a new element, which in their imagination constitutes a mix of wood, metal and wind —Ventus—, with electricity and electromagnetism —Aether—. The result is a unique soundscape that blends the traditional and the contemporary, creating a…” Read on

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3: Gustav Kwarts – On a French label out of Toulouse (BLWBCK is a three-headed label, based in Toulouse, France. Releasing music since 2010). Do rather like this warm peaceful drone, it comes with a reassuring glow. The thing about music like this, and we do get so much of it landing here, is that it so hard to find the words, but then, if music like this was easy to put into words it really wouldn’t be worth writing about. I does quietly evolve, slowly unfold, gently shape-shifting, rather gorgeous actually. There’s more about it (via the label) underneath the Bandcamp.

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“Concrete Lake is the debut album by the multidisciplinary artist Gustav Kwarts. The title perfectly encapsulates the essence of his mineral drone music, soft like granite, where you can explore the idea that bathing in magma could be a pleasant experience. It resulted from Kwarts’ initial experiments with a Korg synth, which he discovered at the place he was renting in Durankulak, a costal village near the border of Bulgaria and Romania. True to his artistic dogma of embracing limitations, Kwarts’ approach to music is raw and instinctive. He used a single stereo track, without a soundcard, mix or edit, relying solely on the mastering skills of Aurélien Prévost to refine this crude material. Amidst the surges of distortion and its inhospitable landscapes, Kwarts still allows burning melodies to emerge, creating a soothing chaos that portrays an ambivalent beauty. He told me that after trying the instruments for the first time, he became trapped for three or four days, day and night, nearly losing his job. 

“The only way to listen to the result was to plug the instruments into my Zoom recorder; otherwise, I don’t know if I would have thought to record it from the beginning. I was forced to stop to fulfill my obligations, but then I felt like a crackhead waiting for his shot of dron”

In our last correspondence, he told me he used a part of his last paycheck to buy the synth and pedal set from his host. “I had to bring them back with me. I can’t stop no

4: Yann Tiersen has Kerber Complete on the way as well as a tour that’s happening in a rather different way. Kerber Complete will be out in September 2023 via Mute, here’s a taste, more about the tour down there….

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Kerber Complete will collate Kerber, Yann Tiersen’s 2021 album built on modular synthesis and sampling; 11 5 18 2 5 18, the modular recomposition of Kerber; a brand new solo piano recording of Kerber and an album of remixes and reworkings from the likes of Terence Fixmer, Beatrice Dillon and Laurel Halo, as well as remixes by Tiersen of NEU!, Keeley Forsyth, Michael Price and Simon Fisher Turner & Edmund de Waal.
While 2021’s Kerber saw Tiersen incorporating modular synthesis and sampling into the recording process, his follow up album, 11 5 18 2 5 18, was born from further experimentation in the studio as the artist prepared for a performance at Berlin’s modular and synthesiser festival, Superbooth. Using samples as his source, Tiersen resampled, reprogrammed and recomposed existing audio to create entirely new tracks unrecognisable and decontextualised from their original versions. Kerber Complete brings the story a full circle as he compliments the two albums with remixes from across Kerber and an album of newly recorded piano versions of the tracks – piano being the original source of the samples for Kerber.

Album details

Meanwhile Yann Tiersen & Quinquis are currently sailing around the coast of Scotland on a unique summer tour that has so far seen the two Breton artists travel from their home in Ushant to Ireland and up to the Faroe Islands, for a tour of Celtic lands performing in pubs, churches, record shops and community centres along the way. On their sailboat Ninnog – named after a medieval mother superior, who travelled from Wales to Brittany becoming a protector of women and a champion of sustainability and forestry – they will continue their journey with dates that includes an ecovillage in Scotland, and a Welsh festival. Read the tour manifesto to find out more about their aims, and watch a short film about the tour.

The tour is intended as a direct political statement on the ecological impact of large scale touring, inviting us to examine established methods of touring and performance. With several shows already booked over the summer, the artists have invited communities to suggest places for them to perform along the route – churches, communes, pubs, squats, beaches and gardens – with the aim of offering an alternative way to experience performance, for both the audience and the artists.

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5: Meredith Bates has a new album – “Tesseract picks up where If Not Now left off, and follows that album’s psychedelic, quasi-orchestral landscapes all the way out to their dark horizons. Like its predecessor, Tesseract occupies a monumental scale, swelling over two CDs. Her shimmering cascades of treated strings remain a crucial element, yet there’s newfound volatility and a steadfast commitment to investigating texture here. Bates’ vocabulary within the noise sphere is impressive and evocative; in her hands it proves to be just as malleable and expressive as any other technique in her repertoire. There are certainly moments of bluster and friction, but Bates makes use of the full spectrum available within the domain of pure sound. Her distant creaks and dim crackling pull the listener deeper into her gradually blooming structures, as other textural passages engender a sense of intrigue or suspension. It’s a welcome and disquieting contrast to the threads of bowed lyricism that link these six pieces.

Bates’ melodic material is more kaleidoscopic than ever on Tesseract too, thanks to her unique resourcefulness with electronics. Listeners do hear violin—there are several gorgeous sections where its natural timbre comes into focus—but they also witness it transforming into everything from a waterlogged piano to distant celestial bells, and from a pipe organ to string orchestra”. Nick Storring / Riparian Media

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And seeing as we mentioned it up there, one of the finest pieces of music ever and one of the best performances of that very fine piece of music…

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