Five more slices of music, this time with a bit of a left-field sound art flavoured experimental feel….

1: Poppy H – Grave Era (Cruel Nature Records) – Almost want to call this delicate, fragile, it isn’t though, this is quietly strong, rather beautiful, soothing, some of it is deliciously minimal, the almost dusty sound on Shahid & Irfan is wonderful, it all is actually. Brilliant production, if production is the right description, real art of sound, minimal, painterly, about the space around the sound as much as the warm sound itself, kind of Super Eight feel to it. Gorgeous.  

“Multi-instrumentalist, field recordist and producer Poppy H captures sound and music via an openly recording phone, before mixing and mastering on the same device. This ultra lo-fi approach befits H’s improvisational and instinctive tendencies on this,his follow up to debut album “NOTHING IS PERFECT, EVERYTHING IS PERFECT”, which The Wire described as showing that “true strangeness comes in the minutiae of unexpected places, the rattle and hum of analogue media or the hubbub of childhood memories.”

“GRAVE ERA” draws a line in the sand between domestic and global conflict; in a world where overpriced flat whites and skinny lattes are served against a rolling backdrop of death, destruction and displacement. A class war rages externally and internally as H moves around the UK capital voyeuristically bottling fleeting exchanges, an outsider looking in, before heading to the eastern most point of the country to chant aloud, and onto his own living spaces where the familiar assault of modern appliances and construction work meet melancholy and hauntingly hopeful passages of improvised and crafted electronic and acoustic compositions”.

Bandcamp

2: Zac Bauman – Bell Jar – Apparently this album came out back in 2017, do we have rules about how late an album review can be around here? I think the only real rule we have around here is that rules are for breaking and while we really are more about what’s coming out next week that what came out sic years, as the member of Moon Letters who sent this link to us said, “I was wanting to share my friend Zac Bauman’s album, Bell Jar with you.  I met him in ’09, and he also opened forMoon Letters on our tour last year. The album was released in ’17, but I’d love to see it get heard by more folks.  It’s expansive chamber-folk influenced by Brian Wilson, and Leo Kottke”. 

There’s lots going on on Bell Jar, bits of folk, hints of something near bluegrass, at time it gets somewhere near sound art, the first track Over and over is probably not the best place t ostart, a little polite, maybe  but give the whole thing a try, let the songs work their way in, Nothing Like a Rolling Stone, the third track is really where things come to life in a more adventurous way. Zac Bauman, from California, is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, and recording artist specializing in intricate fingerstyle guitar arrangements and layered ‘baroque pop’ bedroom recordings. There’s some colourful detail here, once you get in there, it really is a delight, a pleasure, a treasure of just really enjoyable songs, tunes and warmth and yes, country-flavoured, beautifully-jeweled baroque pop.  

Bandcamp

3: Charlie Butler – Wild Fictions (Cruel Nature Records) – Do adore the way Loose Duke repeats and almost loops in such a positive way, actually the whole album does, another Cruel Nature release, a (tape) label always worth checking out – “Charlie Butler is a Lanarkshire based artist who began a series of solo releases in 2021 exploring psychedelic, ambient, heavy and hypnotic sounds alongside being a member of Cody Noon, Neutraliser with Mike Vest, Mothertrucker and Head Drop. He has had work published by Weird Beard, Cruel Nature, Fuzzed Up & Astromoon, and Panurus Productions. Wild Fictions sees Butler exploring similar territories as his previous guitar-based works, but with dominant keyboards and synths creating a motorik kosmische air with touches of Recurring era Spacemen 3 / Sonic Boom’s Spectrum” – Once again the sound here is spot on, perfectly textured, humming in just the right way, actually it starts with what sound like pipes that lead you gently  forward towards around thirty minutes and four very fine instrumental tracks, Four strong forward moving pieces of almost droning almost Krautish construction, four tracks that slowly build, four tracks well worth your eartime…  

Bandcamp

4: Antistatic - Love the way this one goes slightLY Strav on us toward the end of the one eight minute track we can actually hear ahead of the release (via Bandcamp) , do like the delicate strength, the insect buzz, the gentle touch, the power…

We look forward to hearing more, here’s what the label, the ever good Cuneiform, have to say…

“No machines were harmed in the making of Relics, Antistatic’s first full-length release. In fact, no machines were used, beyond those necessary to record this young Danish quartet’s music. The precision and intricacy of the band’s carefully stacked rhythms might suggest that loopers and drum machines played some part in Relics’ creation, and they did—but only as inspiration.

“Our music wouldn’t have been made if it hadn’t been for drum machines, or industrial machines in general,” says guitarist Laust Moltesen Andreassen.

Despite it being their debut, the group already play with a rare and unified sense of purpose. As can be heard here, they use their carefully honed skills in the service of a collective sound that fully deserves that often-overused term, unique.

What you won’t hear are exactly the things that most rock bands depend upon. Andreassen and Mads Ulrich are hyper-intellectualized exponents of what Keith Richards once called “the ancient art of weaving”, bringing two-guitar interplay to new levels of complexity and sophistication. At times bassist Janus Bagh takes on the timekeeping duties of a bass drum or orchestral timpani, while Soren Høi’s carefully tuned drums embrace melody.

Ulrich has developed a very personal style of playing in which he often smacks the strings to elicit floating harmonic clouds. Andreassen, in turn, plays almost exclusively finger-style, using different muting techniques to get dry, percussive sounds that are reminiscent of the lutes and idiophones he encountered while studying and travelling in West Africa.

It’s as if Antistatic is a rock band that’s been repurposed as a percussion ensemble, an observation the musicians happily accept. This is rock / ‘zen funk’ with a very distinctive, dry performance edge!” 

5 : Anatomy of the Heads – One twenty-five minute piece of soothing music, warm soundscape, It does effortlessly ascend, it does, if truth be addressed, sound like lots and lots of things that quietly drone and hum and slowly float past us, they or he or her or whoever sent the link to this piece of music, made some extraordinary claims about the music, and while not really backing up all the rather silly claims (I’m guessing they’re kind of tongue in cheek claims), The Unknowable and Incomparable World does kind of warmly gently glow in a positively welcoming way for twenty-five relaxing minutes or so. I mean.we have heard all this, or things very much like this, so so many times before, it is kind of satisfying though, the three of them, for they are. so we now see, a three piece from Germany,- the three of them are hitting just the right organic tone, the right pitch, the right slightly foggy rather rewarding twenty-five minute note… without ever being anything groundbreaking or revolutionary, it will more that do and yes, well worth you down time… Links / Bandcamp