I suppose you’re still going to require some kind of editorial introduction to this page? You always do, why is that? Next you’ll be demanding we proof read the damn thing. You’ve got four pieces on three albums just down there and I’ve got place to be or at least gallery walls to bang my head against and a whole load of things I should have done last week or yesterday or washing up, the washing up needs to be done and well, said that last time as well, got to g oto Leytonstone to see a man about some paper bags.

Huge Molasses Tank Explodes – III (Tidal Wave Records) – The new album by Italian psych-kraut band Huge Molasses Tank Explodes pretty much does what you’d expected a self declared psych-kraut band to do, all creamy swirly mellow kind of easy on the ear locked on, a rather seductive sound, a relaxed sound, some might say a relatively modern 90s shoegazing thing. Huge Molasses Tank Explodes are apparently a psychedelic quartet from Milan. The band are named after a headline in the Boston Post, an article reporting the Great Molasses Flood thattook place in Boston on January 15th, 1919, when a huge tank exploded flooding the northern area of the city. There’s is a rather satisfying blend, a refined one, a very easy on the ear one, there is little more that needs to be said… band to do, all creamy swirly mellow kind of easy on the ear locked on, a rather seductive sound, a relaxed sound, some might say a relatively modern 90s shoegazing thing. Huge Molasses Tank Explodes are apparently a psychedelic quartet from Milan. The band are named after a headline in the Boston Post, an article reporting the Great Molasses Flood that took place in Boston on January 15th, 1919, when a huge tank exploded flooding the northern area of the city. There’s is a rather satisfying blend, a refined one, a very easy on the ear one, there is little more that needs to be said about the rather enjoyable psych-kraut band…

Bandcamp

Efterklang – Things We Have In Common (City Clang)  – They promised so so much in their early days, those parades they took us on were glorious, we loved them, played them on radio, drooled over them in print, and then, well, they kind of watered it all down, took all the adventure out of it. Now and again a new album or a new song would land in our inbox or pass by and not really do that much, we’d politely leave it along, we’d mutter words like ‘disappointing’ or ‘Coldplay’ to ourselves and wonder about artistic compromise and where did their grand ambitions go before moving on without saying or playing anything. This latest album has been here for a couple of days now, I have no idea how many they’ve made sing 2007’s Parades, quite a few I imagine, this is the first one that has really held us in any kind of way, this one held our attention yesterday and again today, this one has something. I’ve had it all again all morning, I was rather enjoying it but then I put Parades on and those gloriously choral undertones of Polygyne and those beautiful layers of instruments and the warm ambition of it all, the almost perfect vision of it, all those voices, those tingly bits, those sky-touching bits that lead us to the delights Mirador, the magic and oh where did that band who made such a beautiful album go? And here we are with their new, seventh studio album Things We Have In Common – I have checked how many they’ve made now, and yes there are hints, little details of the band the Danish trio once were, this is the first new album they’ve made in the fourteen years since that has held us, the first to really pull us in again. It still feels too polite, too nice, I guess there’s something in the easiness of it all, some kind of beauty in the simplicity and the way they still kind of glow and yes Plant does swell in a rather beautiful way and yes those earlier trademarks are still just about here, there are things in common, and yes Leave it All Behind is quietly gorgeous. Efterklang in 2024 sound easy, they sound nice, they’re pleasantly uplifting, Things We Have In Common is probably their best album in sometime, it is the first we’ve felt like saying something about since the days of their parades, it still feels polite, it still feels lightweight, a little too ‘nice’, it does feel like their best album for quiet some time, it is rather enjoyable, it is the first one that’s held my attention for a long long time, it still makes me just want to go listen to Parades again and again though

Bandcamp / efterklang.net

Daniel Inzani – Selected Worlds (Hidden Notes/Tardigrade) – Out as a limited edition triple vinyl release as well as a CD and download at the start of September 2024, a rather large collection of works for small chamber ensembles and solo piano so it seems. Now in all honesty, we really haven’t realistically got the time to plow through a triple album of classical work, beside te fact that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day, we don’t have the knowledge  to offer you an informed opinion. yeah, we might got to the proms now and again, we can recognise the big guns, but we don’t really know our Brahms from our Liszt. I mean this sounds like good quality standard issue classical music, all very soothing, all very nice, hardly cutting edge though, we’re not talking Stravinsky’s stabbing thrash here, we’re not talking John Adams avantness, we’re not jumping out of skins and getting all excited about what is very very nice, very pleasant, the label sent it in and kind of demand coverage in the way record labels do, “it’s a bit of a beast…The monumental and ambitious debut triple (three in one!) album by composer and pianist Daniel Inzani” they said, you’ll like it they said, and we do, it is all very very nice, if I had the time I’d happily leaving it running all day, We have an advance stream, mostly the chamber material, a couple of the piano pieces,nothing from the third disc that kind of looks like it would have been more relevant to us and our readers,,, 

“Disc 1 (Form) can be described as Neo-Impressionist work for small chamber ensembles, following on from the music of his chamber quartet Spindle Ensemble. Disc 2 (Lore) features experiments with an extended ensemble of 7 strings, piano and percussion: “It feels like an abstract soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist, where each piece is a theme that could describe a character, a place or a scene. The name ‘Lore’, as in folklore, felt like a good way of capturing the spirit of the music’s story telling nature.” – Daniel Inzani
The final Disc 3 (Play) is Cinematic Jazz Prog at it’s finest with Daniel’s 8 piece band of horns, drums, keys, guitar and tuned percussion”.

“Listeners will hear influences from the likes of Mingus, Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Ravel and Moondog in Inzani’s music but might also find the soundtracks of Morricone and Jonny Greenwood nestled alongside the loose freeform leanings of Alabaster dePlume (whom Daniel has previously released music with), the contemporary jazz of Kamasi Washington and the unique collaboration by Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders (minus the electronics perhaps.)”

Kind of sounds like they might have been better off releasing three separate albums and hitting us with the “Cinematic Jazz Prog at it’s finest” but hey, what do I know about running record labels? Oh hang on, there’s a file of downloads hidden over there, oh, life really is too short, “The three vinyl discs act as albums in their own right, each with different sets of musicians, instrumentations, genres and intentions” so they say, so who, besides his family are going to want to shell out for a triple album if there three discs don’t really relate to each other?  Answers on a postcard to someone who’s ever made it to the end of a triple album, I really have, not even a Yes release. Actually the third disc is very cinematic film soundtrack music, it is yet again, all rather nice and yes, there is depth, there is something, not sure it I’d call it “jazz prog” but it is rather good… “Daniel Inzani is a composer, pianist and bandleader based in Stroud, UK”.

Bandcamp       

                      

Duster – In Dreams (Numero Group) – Santa Cruz’s revered (so it says here) slowcore outfit Duster return today with a surprise new album, today being the last Friday of August 2024. In Dreams is the slow moving rather atmospheric band’s fifth full-length record and one that, once again, so it says here once more, “continues their inclination of sonically capturing an open-ended question”. Question is, what has kicked things off for them with the Tik Tok generation, a slice of lucky right time right place or something more? Don’t ask me, the only Tik Tok we know anything about is Tik and Tok, the 80s South Coast Robot crew, social media is mostly an antagonism around here.

In Dreams, besides being an album title used many times before by many bands, is thirteen slow moving almost formed songs that I guess could be described as trademark Duster –  that slightly dark but never that dark thing, that not quite droning guitar thing, those layered textures that sound a little (but never too) lo-fi, those hints of introspective lyrics you can’t quite catch at times,  It is mostly about that very sparse very atmospheric sound, an almost less is more thing, those elements they pull together to make sound rather like no one else. It is an almost empty sound, lots of space, abstract, not too abstract, never too anything really, certainly not in too much of a hurry and if you have the time, kind of quietly rewarding….   

out now digitally out in December Physically / You Tube