Albums, more albums, new albums, albums we might have missed, albums that aren’t quite out yet, this is, in the words of those Dust Junkies, a non-stop operation, partly a tiny bit of a catch up

Mandy, Indiana – I’ve seen a way – Did we ever get around to reviewing the recent Mandy, Indiana album? We seem to have been listening to them, throwing them on playlists and such all year, I rather like the mystery of them, they sound like they’re from Paris, not Indiana, they are actually from Manchester, they’re a rather beautiful, rather velvety four-piece experimental noise band that, so we’re told, “formed out of the fertile Manchester scene”, although if it is noise then it is a quiet noise, a refined noise. They have a gloriously lush sound, a rather refined thing, refined really is the word. A glowing thing, I guess they can turn up the noise when they needs to, noise is never the weapon.  

“Crucial to the album are effects wrought upon the sound by a clutch of unlikely off-site recording locations with novel acoustics, including screaming vocals emitted in a Bristol shopping mall and live drums recorded in a cave in the West Country – the latter session interrupted by literal spelunkers. Other sessions happened in Gothic crypts, where the band’s physical bass frequencies and experiments with volume competed with underground roadworks and upset a yoga class above. I’ve seen a way is a manifesto for these moments of openness and disruption, with sessions in more controlled studio environments spliced with spontaneously captured lo-fi phone recordings, including a field of Swiss cows captured by McDougall while hiking: Fair elaborates that “these locations offered something acoustically, but would traditionally be thought of as having the ‘wrong’ characteristics for producing a ‘good’ recording. These spaces imprint on the sound: It’s not about a lack of access to more traditional recording spaces – it’s about us capturing things happening in a specific place at that moment.” 

Feels like this album or tracks off it been playing here more than most band’s tracks that have been encountered in this rather full-bodied musical year, Mandy, Indiana paint it in a different way, there’s something about the manner in which they put it all together, the way it all adds up to something just a little more. Love their textures, the lush velvet feel of it all, the electronic mystery, the time travel, the time it all takes, and the fact that, although names could be picked out as vague reference points, they don’t really sound or feel like anyone else. I like their mystery, her mystery, what is she on about? Do like the warmth of it all when it could so easily be a cold affair. Love the sinister rush of Drag (Crash), the frantic way it builds up, and Pinking Sheers has just been running around heads all year, never a case of être fatigué or whatever she might be singing, do like that some of it sounds exotic, some of it sounds feral, some of it sounds almost spiritual, love the textures, music you want to touch, to run your hand over. Some of it is deliciously lush, from somewhere else, somewhere they wouldn’t let you and me into, somewhere you might just get to grab peek inside now and again. This is a fine fine album, maybe more a fine set of tracks, fine piece of art rather than an album, whatever it is, this is something rather fine.  

Bandcamp

Polar Son – Wax/Wane – A band from Brighton, a big bold sound, a sound that’s quietly evolving, progressive in a very Radiohead kind of way, dramatic, full bodied, adventurous, subtle. There’s a lot more depth to what they’re doing than most bands going down this road, they occasionally touch on Muse but we can forgive that, never as bombastic as the Indie Queen and far more refined, Polar Son have a brooding sound, cyclical. kind of like the way they’re going, how they’re evolving from the heavier thing they once were, like their math-inflected guitar riffing with the gentle electronic soundscapes underneath, yes, it is all very Radiohead but they are bring something of their own to the whole affair.

Bandcamp / released on Friday 8th December.

And ….

Edwin R Stevens – God On All Fours (Ankst) – Some of this sounds quite insane, some of it sounds like extracts from a diary you’re not supposed to find, some of it sounds like stories from the local North Wales news papers, bicycle-lock murders as a result of a stolen bike while he was in the shop buying his wife’s tampons? Some of it sounds (lyrically) messed up, some of it sounds personal to the point of prying, now and again it gets a little like Syd Barratt in the reality of 2024 walking around a town in North Wales and I have no horse in the race I don’t really know who  Edwin R Stevens is and a glass of wine is not a cup of tea and it was Klaus Kinski who brought me here, now they were a fine fine band, never did get to see them but we did get to write about Klaus Kinski and play them of the radio and memory suggests that they were rather excellent. Here’s what it says on the Bandcamp page

“Emerging from behind the shadow of his “singer/songwriter” alias, Irma Vep, Stevens perhaps reveals more of himself as a human being than ever before. If Irma Vep’s overpowering compulsion was for self-analysis bordering on self-flagellation (as hilarious and thrilling as that often was), under his own name his stories seem more well-rounded, more honest. It’s telling on album closer ‘Some Things Are Best Left Undone’, a cover of his own song as Irma Vep. The same song, a beautiful ballad, is rendered here simply and boldly with piano and voice in contrast to the scratchy guitar version recorded 10 years ago. It might be an intertextual joke given the song title but we can afford Stevens his own private mirth given the killer last line of the song and album: “the horse you rode in on just died and I swear I saw a tear in his eye / You thought that he might try say goodbye but he didn’t and you wonder why.” Whereas the Stevens of 2013 might have covered up the core of his message with self-deprecating tape hiss or guitar brutality, here Stevens is telling his story, straight. His story, it turns out, is not one solely populated by ghouls, distortion and compulsion but one that we can all, horror of horrors, relate to. Just people doing people things, fucking up, stressing and relieving, living crooked or living straight.”

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Teeth Of The Sea – Hive (Rocket Recordings) – This one has been kicking about here for a couple of months as well, hey, we’re doing some desktop cleaning before the year ends, it came out in October, it wasn’t in all honesty a priority, it kind of got pushed to one side, it is more than worthy of mention before the year ends though and yes, it is all rather nice.

This is all rather nice, nice in a nice way, not an ironic way, not a smartarse way, nothing worse than someone saying your art is nice, “if grandma says your painting is nice then rip it up and throw it away!” said Peter Prendergast, No this isn’t nice in an insulting way, or event a Minty way, it is just very very nice. Hive is easy on the ear, it has a warm flow, some of it sounds like classic film soundtracks from the 1970’s, some of it sounds like a lighter grade of Ozric Tentacles or relaxed space rock, must admit a lot of it sounds like many (many) things we’ve heard this year (or most years come to that, it is kind of timeless), it all rather nice in an easy listening (mostly) instrumental film soundtrack kind of way. Nice one.  Find it on Bandcamp

Musta Huone – Valosaasteen sekaa – “The music of Musta Huone, is difficult to pin down. What started off in mid-2010s as primitive lo-fidelity rock soaked in punk and black metal influences, has developed into a free-roaming hybrid mutation drawing inspiration from Kraut rock, 90’s alternative and noise rock and experimental electronic music” so reads the biog bit of the side of their Bandcamp page and that probably sums up this album rather nicely. “difficult to pin down” is no bad thing, the new album sounds like music made by people wanting to challenge themselves, music made by people of a curious nature, people who don’t want to (artistically) stand still.   Some of it sounds frantic, some of it sounds wired like it stayed up way too late and drank far far too much strong black coffee, it kind of feels like they’re still trying to find a musical identity, they’re fusing rather a lot together, there’s bits falling off, bits sticking out in awkward ways (that’s no bad thing either). Musta Huone are from Helsinki, Finland, although they could be from anywhere. That closing ten minute track is an impressive piece of forward moving noise that bookends the album in a very positive way…  Bandcamp

Sam Gendel & Marcella Cytrynowicz – Audiobook – Do we talk of soundart? is this composition? Very little is offered by way of explanation, is it improv? What do we have here? Whatever it is it is rather positively warm in a deliciously minimal kind of way, it flows in a rather different way, some of it touches on minimal avant-jazz flavours, all of it it delightfully textured but you really don’t need us dancing around the architecture here when you can just press the play button…

As we wrere saying up there, It really is a nonstop operation..

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zU-VxwxgNgA%3Fsi%3D6nJuyJ2jOACa2fa-