Perusal #83: megiapa, Stylianos Ou, Devon Church, Dragonflies…
September 16, 2026
In review: a world of sonic discoveries. Dominic Valvona
Photo by Robert Macaisa for Off the 405, Courtesy of Getty Museum
An Ambiances Magnétiques Label Double-Bill
Super Scintillant ‘Tarot’
Érick d’Orion’s ‘Mes fantômes’
(Ambiances Magnétiques) Both Released 25th September
Two similar(ish) spheres of influence and conceptual works from artists aligned with the Canadian label’s “adventurous music-making” aesthetic this month. Only appearing recently on my radar, the Ambiances Magnétiques platform is based on and around the province of Québec; it’s stock in trade to showcase interesting, explorative and avant-garde releases from both some heavy hitters in the form and burgeoning fresh talent.
Firstly, the debut collaboration between the performer, electronic musician and artist Nicolas Bernier and his foil, the notable bass clarinettist, lecturer and professor Mélanie Bourassa, Tarot. With everything that title might allude to, from its Kosmische and early analog conceptual traditions to its hermetic and esoteric connotations, its symbolism and prophetic omens and warnings, that umbrella is used amorphously to explore and shape electroacoustic and modular apparatus conjured atmospheres and descriptions manipulated, or so it sounds, in real time.
Both partners on this sonic mystery and sci-fi adventure, draw upon their extensive backgrounds; Bernier with both his merging of musical and artistic projects, and his extensive prolific catalogue of collaborations, including with leftfield underground hip-hop Antipop Consortium con-founder Beans, and Bourassa with her study and teaching, and depth of experiences working with the Québec Symphony, the Metropolitan Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony and Violons du Roy.
Crossing the classical, the avant-garde, even hints of jazz with that “super scintillant” of electronic sparks and effects, the signal from Bourassa’s bass clarinet is routed directly into Bernier’s “rig”, allowing him to control the parameters of his system using her output. That’s the underlying method that sets in motion a both alien and reimagined pastoral investigation of the instrument; transduced and transformed from its familiar bass-y tones and higher flutiness and cyclonic flutters to sound both of its tradition and yet astral and part of the Fourth World legacy of Hassell and Roberto Musci too.
Fibres, metallics, space craft mechanisms, counterflows, the tubular plastique and unsettling whispers move around or directly reverberate off the bass clarinet’s audible finger work, its space bird-like cries, duck billed croaks, its squeezes and piped melodic spirals and song.
There’s one point where the clarinet travels almost to Egypt – not without diverting via NYC Gershwin and a stalk in the bush -, another where the instrument reminded me of Park Jiha’s work, Sakamoto and Arve Henrikisen.
It’s a both kinetic and improvised entwinning of the two disciplines and their scopes to perform a contemporary ballet of machine engineering and the acoustically amplified and breathing. A stellar futuristic whisk and more majestically adroit collaboration of mystique and atmospheric stirrings that can sometimes being near hymnal and other times unsettling or at least filled with a sense of in trepidation.
Delving much further into a metaphorical Venn diagram of supernatural and paranormal alluded untethered jams, Érick d’Orion‘s septet assemble of eclectically concentrated musicians’ tune into the psychic to communicate with old and new apparitions. I say apparitions, but this is a live (by the sounds of the audience appreciation) draw of influences, inspirations and record collections plucked from the ether or pulled from past experiences to march and rollick all over any semblance of preparation.
The multi-disciplinary audio artist, composer and improviser of note has shared his skills and exploratory travelling mind with such notable company as Evan Parker, Martin Tétreault, Otomo Yoshihide, Robin Fox, Ilpo Vaisanen, Alexandre St-Onge, Sam Shalabi, Günter Müller, and eRikm. An enviable and diverse list that now comes in handy on this expedition beyond the paranormal.
Gathering together Marie-Pierre Brasset on synths, Émile Boucher Cloutier on percussion, Michel Potiron on electric guitar, Réal Gagnon on drums, Stéphane Beaulieu on electric bass and Nicolas Gobeil on trumpet for an invocation and dance with the phantoms of past musical excursions and memories (both the conscious and unconscious kinds), Érick plugs into a Fortean amplifier to create an Acid Mothers Temple-Last Exit scuff and splash of Poltergeist activity at a Sly & The Family Drone punch up with Fugazi and The Pop Group.
Over two sides (though my edition came with an unnamed bonus track) the troupe of sonic psychic investigators communicate with feedback and foldback invoked ghosts, unholy disorder and knocked transmissions from beyond even Mina Crandon’s imaginative cons, before the tempo, the direction of travel changes towards a sudden lilted sympathetic echo of Don Cherry’s cornet trumpet that soon apes the bugle call of some lost fort in a matinee film. But then, just as you get a pause in the action, a handle, we roll up into the freeform drumming prowess and wild kit turnouts of Milford Graves and Tatsuya Yoshida. But again, we then leap into the gargled revved-up attitude of hardcore and jazzgrind, of a leaderless and instrumental live Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys pulling out a knife on the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
And that’s only track one, ‘Spectres’: which to be fair is over twenty minutes plus in duration. ‘Ectoplasm’ is shorter but no different in its mix of ideas and improvised scope, starting with occultist atmospherics, Faust-like ceremonial ominous punctuations, and metal shredded guitar. However, it takes hold of a groove of a kind, or a momentum; a space rock flight of fantasy over Tangiers, with elements of Hawkwind and Amon Düül II and the Arabian desert trumpet evocations of Lee Morgan and Chet Baker. Metallic whips lash at the spectacle, whilst electronic apparatus concoct zips, the bass a growl, and the drums scuff and gallop towards the demonic icon.
I will just mention that third track, which begins with a hand drums and group effort embrace of Afro-funk before switching to the esoteric procession and ending up once more in the hardcore and jazzcore realms of free enterprising dread: it actually reminded me weirdly of Wicked Lady, and also has an air of prog and metal about it too.
If Ill Considered and Scarla O’Horror spent more time skateboarding in the late 1980s or hooked up for a musical collaboration with Laddio Bolockos and Massacre than this might well be the result. And if that doesn’t pique your interest then nothing will.
The Bordellos ‘Oh Nora’
(Metal Postcard Records) 11th September 2026
No, not a tribute (as I initially thought when seeing the title) to Nora Batty the pinny wearing, wrinkled stockings and hair nut costumed stoic and hard-faced muse of Compo in that quintessential English comedy of life in a Northern town, Last Of The Summer Wine, the protagonists of this latest song from the maverick family band, The Bordellos, are two star crossed lovers/singers sharing the same name; neither of whom are aware of each other’s romantic infatuation with the other. Both Nora’s – one an aspiring younger singer trying to crack the music industry, the other, in her mid-sixties, finding a newfound cult status after her 1970s flopped LP is picked up by a new generation, and once again appearing on stage – love one another from a far without knowing it. And it’s that relationship, or the simultaneously tantalising and both hand-wrung agonising over the prospects of what could be that are so movingly and whimsically sung about on this latest single.
Taken from what could be (if the band’s co-founder and the vocalist and acoustic guitar player of this song, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, ever gets the time) a larger planned musical entitled ‘Oh Nora – A Small Town Story’, this single sets the lo fi sympathetic plaintive tone; a sort of grim up North version of folkish-country Dylan with a lilted lean towards Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Mrs. Robinson’, and yet unmistakably low rent English kitchen sink romance. Brian’s son, Dan Shea (of Vukovar and Beauty Stab fame, also known to have penned the odd piece for this site over the years) can be heard weeping a haunted malady of steel pedal wanes and quavers, whilst Uncle and brother Ant Shea completes this disenchanted but romantic trio on harmonica and vocal harmonies.
Perhaps one of the band’s most charming, less acerbic and jokey polemics on the state of the nation, yet set to small town suspicions, bigotries and the unwillingness of some to accept change, Oh Nora’s central characters are used to demonstrate a continued sneering and outright homophobic prejudice to same sex relationships and of openly gay people in close-nit communities: especially in towns long since left to rack and ruin by not only Tory policies but Labour’s too.
There’s a real tenderness here, even nostalgia (though not for the 60s of homosexual criminality, nor the early 70s when artists were obliged if not forced to hide their sexuality even in a supposed “gender-bender” age), yet it’s saved from being truly saccharine by The Bordello’s signature lyrical takes on the everyday detritus of pop culture, of fumbled love affairs and the innocuous habits that immediately conjure up life in a Northern town of old: This is a liaison that is quintessentially both English and Northern.
It remains to be heard what can be expanded upon, but The Bordellos certainly have the groundings for a sweetened if self-depreciating propounded musical.
Devon Church ‘The Shame Of Winnipeg”
(Ruination Records) 18th September 2026
Taking its cue, I’m sure, from Leonard Cohen’s (written with his collaborative foil Sharon Robinson) languorous rile at the rotten state of the world, ‘Everybody Knows’, NY producer and songwriter Devon Church encapsulates the underlying sour and the disenchantment of that 1988 anthem to despondent protestation and cynical beguilement.
Originally released on Cohen’s I’m Your Man LP, and if anything, a resounding triumph of the poet’s disgruntled take on the stench of the times and the decades previous (a contemporary chime with the AIDs epidemic of course, but also with long held musings on both relationships and religion, thrown in with corruption), it’s since become a totem; a go-to for wised-up film producers and directors on the hunt for that one song that so sums up the times.
But Devon doesn’t just write a long love letter to that iconic tune, nor just snatch its sound, but delves deeper into the catalogue to reprise that sort of Med Greek Island holidaying and retreated Cohen vibe too; a subtle breezy adoption of sun-kissed adult louche new wave, rock and troubadour vibes that called be described in some instances as yacht rock. Then again, inspired by his early adoption analog, mic and keyboard purchases during the Covid pandemic, Devon also adopts a shimmy chimmy sound of swimming and faux-Latin presets, a flange-y and phaser-ed embrace of Isaak and Lynchian noir and a subtle borrow of the Aussie sound that became synonymous with Crime And The City Solution, and some of the Bad Seeds work during the later 80s.
Despite hanging out with the Millennials, feeling their pains and carrying their withering gripes – as laid down by the Frankfurt School, Reductionist and Deconstruction theorists –, Devon’s tone seems more boomer, or even Generation X; his influences obviously for the music and activist poetics and polemics of the ageing Boomer class of Cohen, Scott Walker and even Dylan (really hearing some chimed evocations of his 80s works). But it’s actually executed with a smoothness and maturity that might be beyond Devon’s years. He certainly seems to thread if not make obvious connections across the generations and years like Dylan; his reference points and slogans in a lucid if sometimes vague coalesce that attempts to wrap up the last century and the slow collapse of humanity and society in the face of capitalism’s battle with feudal technocratic authoritarianism, globalism, the drag of neo-liberalism and both a crash that still hasn’t ever been resolved and a pandemic that pretty much destroyed everything we know and hold dear (form our jobs to relationships, most obviously our health mentally, and our suspicions about those who hold high office).
How this pans out can be summed up on the open ‘Back From The Grind’ salvo at the rich, the multinational companies, the online titans, and the unedifying prospects of having to earn one’s own living in very discouraging and bleak roles: well, earning your paltry, just living salary to feather the beds of those at the very top pf the chain – that old adage that money trickles down, which might have been true decades ago, doesn’t cut it in the 2020s. I say a salvo, but Devon has turned his (I quote) “The body is the engine of the economy” mantra into a cooly and sexy indolent and disarming Marxist despondent grudge at those who would force him to leave his lover’s embrace (and more) and his own bed to clock in. To a signature cool wave and the pad drums and pre-sets of his Korg Mini Pop analog drum machine (if we’re being specific for tech heads, a SR-120 wooded panelled edition of the Japanese’s companies early drum machine, brought out in 1976) and that Isaak noirish ‘Wicked Game’ borrow, one of Devon’s many guests pull up to offer sighed breathless harmonies and confessions.
In a similar mode, albeit recalling for me, vocally, Babybird and both voice wise and musically Aldo Struyf’s Belgian psycho-killer super project Creature With An Atom Brain, ‘Neon Genesis Fidel Castro’ and its Western-Gothic mood weaves the Communist’s muses and champions in with a loose connective spook of apportions and UFOs. Paying metaphorical gratitude’s and reparations to the Civil Rights heroine of the desegregation crisis of November 1960, ‘Ruby Bridges’ is tied together with further lyrical broadsides at capitalism’s failures, and the narcissist crisis of our online era; An American almanac that reaches from the start of one decade – starting off with Bridges place in history, bang in the middle of policy and racial changes as the first African American student to attend the previous “Whites-only” William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana – to finish on the dying embers of a civil rights and generational uprising at the other – referencing the pied piper of alt-counter-culture malevolence and chemical fuelled Manchurian candidate bloody sacrifice, Charlie Manson. Musically it all sounds a bit like a lo fi Spector Girl Group in bed with Dylan at a Black Panthers benefit.
I could easily write about every single track on this album, such is the abundance of musical layering and topics to unpick, but will briefly just mention the cooed caressed feminine accompaniments on the Heyme recalled and shimmied diaphanous new age curtain call title-track – a reference maybe to Kent Monkman’s exhibition of the same name in that city, or just because it’s yet another rile against those pesky colonists that took the land from its indigenous folk -, and the definitely Yacht Rock vibes of the Mediterranean lovesick Cohen-esque ‘Jamie Joins The Priesthood’. The latter is a story of protagonists, and the disappointments and despondent fatalistic chasms of expectation – a kind of Millennial Catcher in the Rye perhaps? There’s one bit where the female voices seem to mimic a reimagining of the Stones’ ‘Paint It Black’, though with all the medicinal meds I’m taking these days to stay alive, I could be hallucinating this.
There’s a mention of the Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly in the press notes and briefing; his signature flange-y and dreamy guitar pining’s and playing style being compared to Devon’s. A good call, but I’d throw in Kevin Ayers perhaps too, a little of Crime And The City Solution and of course the new wave school.
Biblical propositions, fables and bad omens are grafted to a louche and languorous spectre and cerebral backing that Cohen would possibly smile at. It’s a deep listen on some levels, but tuneful and pleasant at every turn; less a whine really and more a sophisticated, mature (that voice both often gravelly and filled with life experiences of and wry knowing; not so much miserable as making sense of how society came to its current crisis) observation to these trying times and the cultural malaise.
Dragonflies ‘S-T’
(Dark Horse Records/BMG) 18th September 2026
Drawn together under the fluttered magical and dreamy wings of Dragonflies, foils Dhani Harrison and Nigel Godrich make hay as the dream collaboration.
Touching base at different points in their respective careers, Harrison originally reached out to Godrich for “guidance” on what would become his second solo album, Innerstanding. This was during the concentrated, time-on-their-hands, period of the Covid pandemic. Fast forward a few years and invited by Godrich to shape a collaboration together in his Brixton studio, Harrison channelled his inner light whilst his creative partner shaped the results in real time. All of which was augmented or accompanied by the sensitive swells and lower case scored strings of the famed Canadian composer and arranger David Campbell, and the added shaken and shimmered percussion of Godrich’s Ultraísta and Atoms for Peace bandmate Joey Waronker.
Just a cursory glance at the enviable CVs on paper is more than enough to whet the appetite and rally anticipation. Godrich with his producing and engineering prowess, working and guiding everything from Radiohead’s highly influential and experimental catalogue to records by Beck, R.E.M., Pavement, U2, Arcade Fire, and Paul McCartney. As a musician in his own right Godrich has helped instigate both the cross-Atlantic experimental rock trio of Ultraísta with Waronker and Laura Bettison, and the international supergroup Atoms For Peace with oft foil Thom Yorke, Flea, Waronker (again) and Mauro Refosco – God knows how the dairies and commitments align for that one.
Dhani….well, apart from the near obligatory mention of his late iconic father and former Beatle, George – perhaps also proving a pressure to bear on those slim shoulders; to live up to that legend would fuck with anyone’s confidence – , the musician, composer and singer-songwriter has carved out a solo career for himself, whilst also fronting his own thenewno2 band, and joining another supergroup lineup, the Fistful of Mercy, with Ben Harper, Joseph Arthur, Jim Keltner and Jessy Greene.
Lauded quite rightly by the industry, at this point in both their careers they could choose or dismiss whatever projects they want. So, it’s encouraging to see – wished on by fans alike – that they’ve pulled together their talents, their aspirations, as well as more bluesy plaintive woes and concerns for a fragilely and honestly projected psychedelic trip-hop experience: a balance of organic intuition and the synthesized that works rather well.
Their titular debut opens with the dreamily Floydian via Radiohead ‘Slower’, which also recalls a softer and more trippy‘Sätt att se’ by Dungen and both the suspended slow “tiss” sounded drums of Portishead and the vocal delivery style of their frontwoman Beth Gibbons (credited as one of the trip-hop inspirations for this album). At this point Harrison’s voice is in a psychedelic mode, but they can also sail close to the delivery, cadence, mood (and production wise, the electronic accompaniment too) of early 90s David Sylvain, especially on the more minimalist step-padded and ghostly Radiohead-esque piano drifted ‘Straight Line’: you could throw in an essence of Mark Hollis to that equation too. It’s an amalgamation of spiritual yin, plaint vulnerabilities, disarming polemics against the material world, and the feminine; interwoven with the instinctive, near organic if synthesized and electronic backing of Godrich.
I found the whole thing surprisingly soulful, with touches of modern R&B to be found permeating amongst the very on-trend 90s influences (UNKLE for sure, but as I already referenced Radiohead, and also Lamb and some of the early Mo Wax releases). Harrison’s sensitive soul gives it a unique direction and when needed a certain elevation above the wallowed dystopian lament of signature trip-hop: I’m aware it’s not always like that, but anything Portishead wise, or that features Thom Yorke, could be said to encourage such moody inspection and a certain sorrowful tone.
Anyway, as a collaborative project Dragonflies seems both confidently experimental but also bankable and appealing enough to crossover the generations and fractured scenery of the present leftfield genre. I’d call that a success and expect to hear more from both Godrich and Harrison in the future.
Leenalchi ‘Sugungga’
(Luka Bop) 2nd October 2026
K-pop’s saccharine and vacuous domination eclipses all, delivered through its TikTok friendly vessel. And it would seem, as we are led to believe in the West, that this is all South Korea has to offer creatively and culturally at present. But there are thankfully many alternatives, including the ensembled septet of Leenalchi (very important so as not to multilingually astute and respectful in the company of South Koreans or your international friends that you drop the “L” and pronounce the moniker as “EEE-nal-chi”) who transform the age-old traditional form of pansori with a taste of the eclectic and hot-wired wildness and funk of the contemporary. You could say it was a colourful alternative to the performative pop music of K-pop, which leaves many of its acts’ soulless throwaways, exhaustively worn out and replaced by the next shiny and ever younger next big thing.
Instigated or led by composer extraordinaire (incredibly successful career at the vanguard of South Korean cinema with scores for Train to Busan, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and The Wailing) and indie scenester of repute (one such band, SsingSsing apparently “clocking up” nearly ten million views for their Tiny Desk Concert) Jang Young Gyu, the Seoul-based septet merge playfulness with the theatrical on their fantastical reinvention of storytelling, poetic yearning and surrealist posed tapestries of allegory and metaphor.
Jang (just to complicate matters further, its occasionally written as Youngkyu Jang) corrals the talents of singer, songwriter, and artist EJae on bass, Oh Hyung Suk on drums, and the quartet of Park Soo Bum, Ahn Yi Ho, Ra Seo Jin and Choi Su In on vocals. And together, this big sound can both bombastically or in more sophisticated strains inhabit both visceral worlds of influence; from stage acted folk, the unveiling plays of yesteryear, to the slicker finger-snapping funk and electronica R&B of a more contemporary climate.
Firstly, a little background on the band’s main focus and sound. Pansori’s etymology can be broken down thus: the “pan” part can be translated as an open space or a place where many can gather, whilst “sori” could be interpreted as singing, a sound, or song. The form itself dates back to the 17th century, with its settings, characters and situations rooted in Korea’s Joseon period (the longest and very last imperial dynasty in that region’s history, a period that ran from 1392 until 1910), set, at that time, in the capital of Hanyang (present day Seoul). It’s believed to have evolved from the expressions and narrative songs of the shaman; remaining for much of its existence as a purely oral tradition until the 19th century pansori acquired ever more sophisticated literary layers: A popular form by then with the urban elite. But through increasing rapid industrialisation and modernization in the next century and the explosion of Western influences on the musical culture this ancient storytelling tradition began to fade. However, there would be a revival in the 1960s with pansori securing its survival and posterity as a National Intangible Cultural Property.
Over the course of that history, pansori has retained, if evolved, its original performance set-up: stories are both sung or spoken by a single female or male performer called either a “gwangdae” or a “sorigun”, accompanied by a seated drummer (called a “gosu”). The spoken parts are called “aniri” and the sung parts, “chang”, and both are usually mixed into each performance, which can last anywhere up to eight hours in duration! The double-headed barrel shaped drum (a “buk”) can be said to emit a rattling sound, played as it is with a drumstick in one hand whilst the opposite hand maintains the rhythm.
With stylised speech, narrations and gesticulations both cyclical tales of love across class divides mix with more satirical and witty observances of the fantastical and surreal. Updated and thrust into a new millennium no less, Leenalchi home in on the anthropomorphism aspects; namely with the album’s leading single, ‘Crying Softshell Turtle’, the tale of the titular character’s quest to cure the dragon king. Through a thumped backbeat, synthy zaps, 90s indie vibes and tribal voices, a magical, if gory in places, fairytale unfolds: our protagonist turtle brings a sacrificial rabbit filled with medicinal greatness to the court with a beseeched implored promise and contract: “I beg you to open his belly, and I pray to God there is a liver there. But if there isn’t a liver, you can execute my whole family and tear me to pieces, and I won’t have any regrets.”
From the symbolism of courtly fairytales to the ridiculous, Sugungga opens with the silly mantra of ‘Mao Mao Mao’: more “mewl” “mewl” “miaow” than communist chairman propagandist. Sliding M People-esque soul-pop sidles up to guttural theatre and the paddled plastique. In a similar mode, yet far more disco and funkier, ‘Tiger Is Coming’ sounds simultaneously like kabuki and something from the Mongolian steppes. ‘A Fish Map’, with its funky duck bass lines, could be a toss-up between Bootsy Collins, Basement Jaxx and International Pony.
Touches of psych, a very removed vision of R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, electronica and pop match with a diverse register of vocals either agitated, dramatically acted, hysterical, throaty, bluesy, mulled and heavily accented. It’s different for sure. A harmonious funkified union that congruously revives an old tradition, still breathing and most importantly, still relevant in a technological divisive, anti-humanist world of AI and screen time indoctrination. It’s possibly even best experienced with friends and a dancefloor; its playful spirit whimsical yet showing depth without losing its energy and infectious call to shake that booty.
megiapa ‘Intentions’
(International Anthem) 25th September 2026
A match made in the heavens of soulful humanistic futurism and beat-making, the linguist, producer, visual artist and vocalist megiapa seemed destined to join Chicago’s renowned International Anthem label family. Making an album debut on that community hub’s platform, the Ohio-born soulstress gathers together material imbued, inspired and brought together on the Chicago underground beat scene; sounds forged and created through regular spots at the Push Beats, Open Beats and Fresh Roasted showcases, and from sharing the stage with such notable company as Sev Seveer, Radius ETC, Elijah Jamal Asani and DJ Moppy.
Leaving Chicago for L.A. in 2023, megiapa was soon embedded in that city’s “low end theory” imbued underground and leftfield hip-hop and jazz scenes; namely in the enviable company of such luminaries of the form as Madlib, Flying Lotus, Daedelus and Georgia Ann Muldrow – I can hear the latter’s signature to a degree laced throughout Intentions. And so, this becomes an album born of both cities, the finishing touches galvanised on the West Coast but starring a cast of contributions from across state lines, brought into the studio as both an additional band and chorus of voices and vocalists.
That relationship with International Anthem was originally inaugurated by the community leader, curator, radio broadcaster and DJ, King Hippo (the alias of Alejandro Ayala) who wove megiapa’s beat making soulful sounds into the label’s live presentations. There would be subsequent openings for the roster’s recording artists Makaya McCraven, Bottle Tree and Ben LaMar Gay.
From initially creating music in headphones at home and through the use of the popular audio editing and recording app Audacity, that sound has blossomed and expanded to now incorporate a full band of musicians (more or less) and host of networked foils. Step forward bassist (though a multi-instrumentalist too) and artist The Growth Eternal; Sudan Archives collaborator and pianist Ahmed Muhammad (aka Kafari); the cross-generational L.A. community institution, Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra musical director and drummer Mekala Session; producer, composer and artist Telemakus; trumpeter, producer and composer Will Miller (who goes under the Resavoir project); and percussionist Allakoi “Mic Holden” Peete. Completing that gathered ensemble is the vocal pool of Aankha Neal (of the notable eclectic spiritual Voice of Creation choir), Blvck Spvde, 10.4 ROG and others.
Fluidly congruous with vocals both diaphanously porous and soulfully experimental, megiapa’s sound is floated and chicly layered up with melodious R&B, jazz, hip-hop, funk and celestial. From not so straight-shooting smooth soul of either a 90s or a further back 70s vibe to crystalised fantasies aboard sci-fi funkified UFOs and beat manipulations of the already mentioned Madlib but also Madegg and J Dilla kind, there’s an abundance of lyrical and musical ideas expressed and played with throughout the album’s fifteen-track running order (track number fifteen, a beautifully marooned pop-soul electronic love paean entitled ‘Together Forever’, in this case, and on the version I was sent, is marked down as a bonus).
That voice, which is at the centre of this whole enterprise, can change from soul diva to just the echoed reverberations of the non-worded, an essence in fact at times, or the multi-layered; sometimes reminding me of Khruangbin and Janelle Monáe, and at other times of NicoTheGodess and Martina Topley-Bird. In fact one voice or voices that came to mind was the Rotary Connection, who happen to be covered effortlessly well and dreamily on this album with a steel drums-like and willowed fluted oasis lush take on their most famous psychedelic-spiritual-soul tune ‘Black Gold of the Sun’ (for the pedantic, this gold-standard neo-soul classic originally featured on the 1971 LP Hey, Love; the inaugural airing of the group’s The New Rotary Connection change in moniker).
Cascades and the sprung are cross-patched with Prince and slick noodled funk, as perfectly floated bulb-shaped crystal notes from a jazzy electric piano, a distant hand drum rhythm reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye, the sound of futurism, the laughter and sampled memories, recalls, healing balm and reassurance of friends, and both ends of the romantically alluded spectrum (from declarations of love to plaintive soul yearns of coping with and enduring bad relationships and the self-absorbed personalities of old lovers). Every single element, ingredient of which is all just so; placed to near perfection in its flow: and that’s despite the more staccato and not so much broken up but eloped and changing beats and rhythms that add a subtle friction or point towards more exotic and off-world planes.
In short: astral soul for the beats’ generation. A most satisfactory organic ear, attuned to the stars, the cerebral and the soul, and perfectly settled within the International Anthem family.
Stylianos Ou ‘Moodtoxicosis’
(Jollies Records) 10th September 2026
Nothing concentrates the mind or leads to anxious panics like a cancer diagnosis. But the Athens published author, article contributor, visual artist and trick sonic experimentalist Stelios Papagrigoriou has transduced his treatment (the ordeal of a thyroidectomy) for thyroid cancer into dadaist and fantasy arcade game symphonic spurt and cut-up of manipulation and discombobulation.
In no way wishing to make this about my own pains and travails, I can sympathise having been diagnosed at the start of the year (and spent much time in hospital) with an autoimmune disease that had attacked and damaged my kidneys, and then on release suffering a stroke. Just like Stelios completing and wishing to capture the exact moments of the worst and most hallucinogenic abstract pains of his illness on his laptop in hospital, hooked up to monitors, I was writing and trying to keep this site afloat and running whilst recovering from a biopsy, prodding, tests and various medicated experiments: unlike our Greek patient, my writings stayed within the lines of the barely coherent despite my cognitive issues and the constant exhaustion.
In an avant-garde mode, Moodtoxicosis processes and then releases the procedure and its effects like crazy sonic and vocalised microbes and cells bursting to escape and wreck mischief, havoc and tricksiness. With title references to adjacent or causal conditions (the ‘Hashimoto’ of ‘Hashimoto’s Cave’ namechecking a deliberating autoimmune disorder that attacks the thyroid gland) and medicines used to alleviate it (the ‘Levothyroxine’ of the ‘Levothyroxine Lament’ used to treat an underactive thyroid) fitted alongside various described metaphorical fortresses of the mind state and beastly phantoms, the tripping illusions and hallucinations of a time spent fighting off and repairing the inner and physical vessel that’s gone through hell are turned into a both near cartoon and Fluxus musical mania.
The Art of Noise meets Taito on a drug bender; the Aphex Twin’s own form of sound drukqs makes play time with Zappa; the haphazard sporadically bursts into song against a soundscape of scanners and distorted signals. Yes, this is both a crazy and fitting experiment in bubble gum game boy platforming, conceptual sound forms, floppy disc voices, the dreamy and tine plucked – coming unstuck or in a spindly condition of chirped and pinged chimes. And within that description there’s an abundance of unusual and transmogrified noises and tonsil gymnastics and hysterics.
Get well Stelios (that should be Stylianos Ou if we are to be true to the alias), and never lose that zest for experimental reinvention that’s served you so well.
Here’s the message bit we hate but crucially need to keep going:
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The Perusal #62: Kotra, Niton, Ruth Goller, The Dark Jazz Project, Martin Tétreault…
December 3, 2024
A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
PHOTO CREDIT: PAULA RAE-GIBSON
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Kotra ‘Grit Light’
(I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free)
As Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine depressingly continues unabated, passing the 1000 days mark a few weeks ago – which also happens to near enough coincide with the Ukraine’s commemorations of the Holodomer, a timely reminder of “mother” Russia’s destructive despotism and politically sanctioned revenge policies -, it falls upon labels like the electronic artists Dmyto Fedorenko and Kateryna Zavoloka’s I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free to spread the sound of the sonic resistance. A soft power, a cultural emissary of that country’s experimental scene, the profits from its roster of artists, which includes both its founders, are donated to several self-defence and humanitarian foundations and local volunteer activists.
To paraphrase the opening from my 2024 review of Fedorenko (appearing under his Variát moniker) and the harsh and confrontational Japanese artist Merzbow’s Unintended Intentions collaboration, nothing concentrates the mind more than witnessing the brutal barbaric dystopian-scarred landscapes of war-torn Ukraine, and the carnage, loss of lives in the meat grinder of a bastardised WWI battle for survival. The fear, destruction of this conflict has been transmogrified into the abrasive, concrete debris soundscapes of nightmares on both that album and others; the Berlin-based Fedorenko appearing under a number of different guises, channelling heavy abstractions of sophisticated, industrial, intelligent techno and dance music across a swathe of concepts and works.
Escalating into the broader war many had forewarned, but unless willing to accept capitulation, further violent barbarity and the military conquest of even more of Eastern Europe, the Baltic nations and Balkans, there is no real painless conclusion to this invasion. Trump’s boastful rhetoric is just that. But worrying all the same, as negotiations, which can’t truly be anything other than favourable to Putin in any scenario offered, seem very likely in the New Year. The transactional President will want to wrap this horrifying, economically destructive war up, and so there is a rush now for both sides to gain their territorial footholds (the Ukraine’s incursion and hold over swathes of the Russian Kursk region will be vital in any deal negotiated; one of the country’s most successful military coups, and almost in itself the sole campaign that unnerved and setback Putin’s war machine the most). At long last the UK and America have given the go-ahead for long range missile attacks – though confined to the Kursk region. But it has come at such a late stage, even too late, just as the encumberment Ukraine supporting Biden administration is about to leave the White House. If delivered sooner alongside the delayed Leopard tanks and the F-16s (or in the numbers that President Zelensky asked for), we may very well be seeing the Ukraine in a much more favourable position. As it is, one of the only leverages that Trump could have used, those long range ATACMS, has been played. And what the Ukraine needs more than anything else is manpower.
Still, Putin’s Russia has failed to bully the Ukraine into subjugation and defeat. Russia’s military, for all the world to see, has been shown up on the battlefield and forced into sacrificing untold numbers in suicidal missions to gain mere yards of empty landscape. Drones have had the better of the Russians across the trenches and out at sea against the Black Sea fleet on numerous occasions. And in recent months, they’ve been joined by anywhere between ten to eleven thousand troops from North Korea in an attempt push the Ukrainians out of the Kursk. But even more unnerving and dramatic for the Russians is the unfolding events in Syria, which have taken Putin’s ally Assad by complete surprise. Insurgent/rebel groups opposed to the Syrian dictator have, even to their own astonishment, gained a vital foothold in Aleppo – the first time the Syrian government has lost control of the strategic and important city since the start of the civil war. A stretched Russia is currently bombing the hell out of them. The world is hanging on to see what happens next.
Bearing testimony to what has taken place and what might be about to happen in 2025, Fedorenko once more takes on the guise of another of his many faces, that of Kotra, to charge up the electrodes and electrical barbed wire with another heavy bass suffused and industrial techno album of electrification, force fields and buzzed machine hive activity. From dissonance and pulverizing bass noises a rhythm is hewn and honed; a buzz and scaffold of signals, of invisible forces and currents fused together with a bounce.
Carried across an hour-long immersion of sonic forbode and shuttered, tubed, kinetic and frazzled IDM-styled beats, there’s a thematic atmosphere of heavy payload alienness and humming, engineered and motorised machines. Some of these sounds mirror the ominous buzz of drones in the theatre of war, and others, the propeller-like hovered flight of bombers. In short, picture Rob Hood or Jeff Mills on Tresor, maybe even Basic Channel, collaborating with Carter Tutti Void whilst caught up in industrial scale warfare. I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free have proved their worth in exporting such electronic experimentation to an international audience if nothing else. But this truly is music with a serious intention, forged in the darkness of barbaric invasion, from those who fight culturally and physically for the survival of their country’s identity.
Niton ‘11’
(Shameless Records/Pulver und Asche Records)
A connection to the Island of my birth, the Italian-Swiss trio of Niton bears the name of the small village on the Isle of Wight where Marconi famously and successfully transmitted some of the first wireless waves. On the 23rd of January 1901, on the verge of a new century, just a day after the death of Queen Victoria and that enduring epoch, the Italian inventor’s transmission reached from the southernmost tip of the Island to Lizard in Cornwall. By the end of that same year Marconi would attempt to reach America.
As we locals pronounce it, “Knighton” – which is really confusing as there is an actual Knighton on the Island too; we differentiate them by calling the latter “K-nighton” -, Niton lies close to the more famous and larger one-time Victorian resort of Ventnor on the southern coast. Marconi’s picturesque spot is the site of St. Catherine’s Lighthouse, looking out to the great beyond, where no land can be sited, and all that lies ahead is the expanse of the English Channel. Many have attached significance to this location over the years, and this experimental electronic-acoustic group have decided to adopt it as a link from one age to the next; of progression, the sense of opportunity and technological advancement against the implications of more foreboding era in which democratized altruism has turned into a dystopian nightmare.
Choosing a significant date of correspondence, “11th January 1901”, from the lead up to that successful experiment, the trio invite the French-born British composer, multidisciplinary artist and researcher Olivia Louvel to run Marconi’s written words through the Fortean radio set on the opening atmospheric piece from side B of their newest, and fourth, album. Currently (or so when I looked it up recently on Louvel’s own site) studying a PhD at Brighton – where coincidently I worked before making the move to Glasgow in 2015 – in the interplay of voice and sculpture across that University’s fine arts and sound art departments, the award-winning artist doesn’t just read aloud but transforms the material by playing with the language, from Italian to English and vice versa. Historical timelines are recalled but also erased by blankets of foggy time, separation and vaporous disembodied elements, as Louvel sounds both of that Victorian-on-the-cusp-of-a-new-century era and yet futuristically oblique.
A reference to that date, but also the number of collaborative artists taking part for the first time in expanding Niton’s sonic investigation and freedoms, 11 marks the group’s tenth anniversary and new approach.
Widening participation with an international cast, electronic violinist Zeno Gabaglio, analogue synthesist Luca Xelius and “amplified objects” manipulator El Toxyque work with both noted veterans and exciting burgeoning artists across a diverse range of genres and disciplines to provide something different; avenues, turns, peregrinations toward the surprising, intense or avant-garde.
Just to pluck out a few examples, the twin contributions of the Casablanca singer-songwriter and solo artist Meryem Aboulouafa and the award-winning Swiss poet, Babel festival for literature and translation founder/artistic director Vanni Bianconi open the album by airing an Italian poem read out and mystified with poignancy and pain of the bittersweet over a wispy mirage of amorphous Arabian and North African desert stirrings. But it’s followed by a complete change in direction with the glitch kinetics and quarks, the Duchampian bicycle wheel spokes turning and rattled, and drum smacked, punched and physically handled abstract ‘Spin-orbit interaction’, which features the experimental drummer-percussionist Julian Sartorius. There are experiments too that sound like a very removed vision of jazz with the English saxophonist John Butcher channelling Mats Gustafsson and Andy Haas strained sucked dry vibes and Krononaut-like abstract chills, visitations and alienness on the alternative Bureau B label-esque ‘I was dying’. And the Ex and Dog Faced Hermans guitarist Andy Moor provides resonating copper stringy wrangle, scraped and scratchy lines, carries, sustained hovers that sound like a fusion of the Red Crayola, Derek Bailey and Yonatan Gat on the psych-jazzy and mysterious living, breathing entity ‘Huella infinite’.
But perhaps the most out-there of these collaborations is with the Cameroon shaman Achille Ateba Mvando, who both ceremonially and excitable utters and dances the ancestors Bantu rituals to a combination of traditional hand drums and handclapped rhythms and more modern buzzes, glitches and starry projected ambience – reminding me in some ways of both Bantou Mentale and Avalache Kaito.
Transcribing a feel, a sense of history, invention and amorphous globalism, Niton and their foils/partners converse with the past whilst venturing further into electronic experiment and soundscaping on an immersive album of sonic atmospheres, investigation and evocation.
Ruth Goller ‘SKYLLA’
(International Anthem) 6th December 2024
For those that missed out at the time on the Italian-born but London-based composer, bassist and experimental vocalist Ruth Goller’s 2021 debut LP, those gracious folk at International Anthem have pressed another batch of vinyl copies: Such was the initial demand, and three years on, a clamour to own Goller’s inaugural soloist fronted album, that it felt right to make it available again. Originally released on longtime collaborator Bex Burch’s Vula Viel Records label – also, confusingly, the name of the composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker’s group -, SKYLLA showcased an inner lucidity of expressive vocalisation and pinged, plucked, spindled and resonating bass guitar harmonics that garnered a host of plaudits.
But this timely reissue arrives in the wake of Goller’s impressive scope of activities since that album’s release, and just a few months after the release of the follow-up, SKYLLUMINA. The CV is way too prolific to list in its entirety here, but the expletory composer and bass player’s most notable credits include two of the most important and influential groups to set off a jazz renaissance in recent years, Acoustic Ladyland and Melt Yourself Down. Goller has also performed with such luminaries as Kit Downes, Sam Amidan, Marc Ribot and (Sir) Paul McCartney, and plays with both Let Spin and Vula Viel. And just in the last month Goller teamed up with the German drumming and saxophone TRAINING combo of Max Andrzejewski and Johannes Schleiermacher for the wild, tumultuous, wrangled and strange, yet also melodic and dreamy threads to knot album – a collaboration so good that it makes this year’s choice albums list, which goes out in the next week.
In an experimental, expressive and often otherworldly atmosphere – like a cross between introspective cerebralism, the alien and, later, the near chthonian and darkened –, Goller’s Nordic/Icelandic-like vocal utterances, soundings and spatial harmonical airings mirror the vibrating and trebly harmonic twangs, pulls and language of both the electric and double-bass. Accompanied by the attuned, often choral and tripsy sprite vocals of Alice Grant and Lauren Kinsella, the odd caught recognisable word is entwined with coos of the pastoral, the neoclassical, ethereal and pronounced and instrumental gangly strands and shuttered and bassy sonorous reverberations.
You could imagine Bjork, flanked by Susanna and Hatis Noit, conducting an alternative ceremony or a Northern European pagan woodland choir to the experimental bass guitar work of Jaco Pastorius and evocations of dal:um, Gunn-Truscinski, Ramuntcho Matta and on ‘In more turbulent times, she managed to take the perfect shot’ a touch of Refree – there’s what I can only describe as a transmogrified feel of the Iberian to this track. The vibes on the final third part of the album are more ominous, almost menacing, and recall the work of Scott Walker and Boris; albeit with more untethered, lighter voices floating about.
If any of that sounds like an invitation to rediscover Goller’s unique entwinned dance and abstract airs of voice and bass then you’d better make sure you get that copy ordered pronto, as the last time it sold out quickly.
To coincide with this reprise, Goller and filmmaker Pedro Velasco have created a suitable visual abstract swim of a video for the album track ‘What’s really important she wanted to know, pt. 2’. Filmed entirely underwater at a local public pool, the conceptual feelings of both floating and swimming in an abstract liquid are cut to the harmonic pings, padded springy climbs of the music.
The Dark Jazz Project ‘5’
(Irregular Patterns)
After a prolific fluctuation of identities and experiments, the singular maverick electronic and art-house boffin Andrew Spackman hung-up his former SAD MAN alias (after a splurge of numerous releases over the last five years) a few years back to crunch the codes of jazzcore under The Dark Jazz Project title.
‘100% political, 100% jazz, 100% dark’ we we’re told, this most recent platform for Andrew’s often sporadic leaps in electronic music and crushing techno filament cut ups is about as removed from that jazz tag as you can get. Any semblance to jazz has been lost under a heavy tubular and granular transmogrification of the ominous, mysterious and, well, dark. And after three albums in that mode, and after another change in the direction of travel with this April’s cult (re)score of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Spackman drops a surprise album of material that further expands the boundaries – the only recurring theme being that you won’t find a shred of jazz.
Album number “5” combines the apparitional dance music and pop synth vocals of seafarer’s ghosts, dream creations and new age with the techno of the Artificial Intelligence series, House music and a range of sounds that can only be described as whistled pipes, magnetic, kinetic, crystalised and bassy.
Beneath, above and consumed by metaphorical and thematic waves, a shipping forecast of hallucination, ethereal allure, and the emotive is transduced and transmogrified through Spackman’s unique apparatus. For glimpses of Radiance Basic Channel, the acid of LFO, and dreaminess veils of epic45 morph into spells of Mixmaster Morris and 808 State on the 90s meets Ibiza entranced ‘The Boat Is Sinking’ – no, not a screaming tumult of shipwrecked fear and danger, but far more soulful electronic mirage of haunted dance music.
Tracks like ‘Too Far Away’ weave giddy high octave, near cartoonish, EDM singing with Depeche Mode and Mark Franklin, and the spatial counterpoint between space age fantasy and the more unsettling ‘Testpiece’ sounds like acid rain hitting a windowpane whilst Moroder sequences a trip through the mists of time. The opening thwack turn rhythmic, drum pad crunched metallic spindled ‘Thunder’, features turnkey twists and a strange, obscured sound source horn that sounds like something from Eno and Jon Hassell’s “possible musics” explorations.
For a reference and theme, Spackman maps out a new sound by utilising the plaint songs of love lost upon the waves. Meanwhile, the album’s artwork, credited to B.S. Halpern, illustrates the density of commercial shipping throughout the world’s oceans. But, as with so many of Spackman’s projects, those prompts are transformed into something alien and cerebral, yet also striking, discombobulating. I will say, it is among his most soulful and melodious works to date. A layered album of many strands musically and sonically, the voices, mostly ghostly but in a nice melodic dreamy way, go well together with the balance of electronic forces. Considering, and I lost track a while back now, that Spackman has probably released nigh on fifty albums and pieces since this blog started, he continues to equally surprise and develop.
Xqui & Dog Versus Shadows ‘Dwell Time’
(Subexotic) 6th December 2024
Mundane behemoths of consuming spending, the Arndale chain of America-style shopping malls, first exported to UK shores in the early 1960s, provides the environment and atmosphere for the latest project by the sonic partnership of Xqui and Dog Versus Shadows.
Lancashire artist Xqui will need little introduction to regular followers of the Monolith Cocktail. The highly prolific artist, occupying a liminal space between ambient music, sound art, musique concrete, field recordings, hidden source material, found sounds and voice experimentation/transference, has frequented my reviews roundups for years; always playing catch-up, he no sooner releases one project than another arrives along the pipeline a week or two later. But featuring for the first time on the site, Dog Versus Shadows is the nom de plume of the Nottingham-based and no less prolific Lee “Pylon”, who switched roles from platforming an abundance of experimental electronic sounds as the host of the underground radio show Kites & Pylons (broadcast on Doncaster’s Sine FM) to making music himself.
As part of a trilogy of shopping centre albums, made by a host of experimental contemporary artists for the Subexotic Records label, this duo transduces the innocuous consumption and day-to-day thoroughfare of such commercial spaces into J.G. Ballard style dystopias, the sci-fi, esoteric, playful, and inter-dimensional. Defined as the length of time a shopper spends in a shopping centre – from the moment they enter till the moment they leave -, the language of capitalist spending theory, “Dwell Time”, is enveloped by the synthesized, warped, mechanized and consumed atmospherics, sine waves, filters, effects, degraded surface sounds, rhythms, chemistry, liquids and data of electronic music.
Whilst no particular Arndale centre is named or made obvious – there were 23 of them built, from Aberdeen to Dartford -, the most infamous is probably Manchester, which was devastated by an IRA bomb in the mid 90s. Closer to home – well Lee’s anyway, there’s also one in Nottingham. Derided, quite rightly, for their original brutalist and unsympathetic architecture, and the way they popped up over the rubble and dust of far more congruous, loved Victorian High Streets, they’ve often served as the blights of modernity, a totem for all modernist ills and the degradation of far less consumerist-obsessed times, when shopping was a gentler and more localised affair. From the lay-out to displays and choice of pipped “muzak”, the Arndale – a portmanteau of its architects Arnold Hagenbach and Sam Chippendale – meccas of pointless spending lure the consumer into an artificial, alternative reality in which time, location doesn’t exist.
Here, the duo emphasis this dreamier fantastical but alien and looming ominous despair, balancing indoor water feature idyllic whimsy and enchantment, the projected paradise of shop display Flamingos with forbode, unease and the surreal. And so, they somehow express the hallucinatory transfixed shopper’s gaze at plastic exotica, so entranced that for a moment they zone out into a weird void, or, make something as ordinary as roller shutters, the mechanisms, and drudgery of opening or closing up take on something far more dramatic and overbearing – there’s what sounds like a enervated lash or whip that trashes away indolently throughout. ‘Bargain Bin Shuffle’ takes on a sort of train-like rhythm, whilst the retro ‘A Fancy Electronic Gadget’ tweets and bobbles like something from the minds of Bruno Spoerri and Nino Nardini. Weirdly, the title-track sounds like an ethnographic Dadaist take on Javanese music.
Mark E. Smith once prompted a Northern uprising over these encroaching dystopian examples of rampant consumerism, on his 1980 track ‘N.W.R.A.’; lyrically picturing the day it was razed to the ground (which nearly happened 16 years), with “security guards hung from moving escalators” – rather strong. Chiming even then with the loss of community shops to such temples of commercialism, it marked a worrying change in habits and spending powers. Xqui and Dog Versus Shadows channel such apocalyptic concerns, protestations and the mundane and artificialness of such environments into something approaching a both playful, retro, knowing and sci-fi soundtrack of transmogrified muzak.
Various Artists ‘Fauna’
(n5MD) 10th December 2024
A deeply connective reminder about what we owe to the natural environment and its wildlife, the newest compilation from Oakland-based label n5MD finds roster signing Franck Zaragoza (otherwise known as Ocoeur) curating a curious and emotionally pulled gathering of congruous ambient peregrinations, scores and vapoured sensibilities that abstractedly, or otherwise, fall under the topic heading.
The label statement drives at humanities growing divisions, pursuit of consumerist and selfish pleasures, destructive consumptions and exploitation of the planet. All this at the expense of our animal friends; our lengthy historical relationship one of detachment to their pain, emotions and needs. Released on International Animal Rights Day (December the 10th), and with proceeds going towards the French organization L214 (taking their name from the French rural code in which animals are described, or translated, as “sensitive beings”, this group’s origins grew out of a campaign to abolish the cruel practices of foie gras, and mass industrial scale meat and dairy production), Fauna gathers together the work of an international host of mostly solo electronic and neoclassical composers, musicians and duos. Many of which have released or continue to release music on the Californian label.
It’s curator himself, Zaragorza, lends a beautifully cooed and vaporous ambient evocation to the compilation. The French minimalist, known for his introspective pieces and soundtracks for video games and documentaries, appears under his long-standing Ocoeur moniker with the rather pleasing and drifted ‘Second Chance’.
But the album opens with the Turin artist Memory Noise, who ushers in the collection with the recollected vapours, adult and children’s voices of laughter and play, airy and surface atmospheric ‘L’ora’, which reminded me of both the Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 LP and Eno. Memories resonate amongst the sine waves, shrouds of time and melodious textures on this stirring piece.
Within the fields of ambient music and its many pathways there’s examples of artists using subtle if deep and sonorous neoclassical piano (the Athens born but France-based multimedia composer of note, Zinovia Arvanitidi’s capitulating and heavenly play of elemental nature ‘Light And Clouds’, which is exquisite and moving, and reminded me of both Hania Rani and Nils Frahm), and what sounds like guitar (Micah Templeton-Wolfe, otherwise known as Stray Theories, use of a lingered and drifted guitar line on the glassy chimed, deep thinking if broody ‘Veil’ adds a touch of Land Observation to a Boards of Canada backdrop).
In the more ominous category, the Sardinian composer Martina Betti scores a dramatic psychogeography of welled suspense and lament and foreboding electricity on the incredibly evocative ‘Invisible Cities’. Whilst there’s a real hymnal beauty and emotional felt pull on Mikael Lind’s patter-like melodies and searching lullaby turn heightened strings stirring ‘Fur and Feathers’ – think a lamented tearful Sigur Ros collaborating with Harold Budd; one of the compilation’s highlights for me.
An emotional ambient coalesce of like-minded artists, aiming to make the world a better place, and to rebalance our neglective relationship and dominion over those we share planet Earth with, the benevolent Fauna is a gift, a magical and often mood-shifting immersive draw of top-quality stirring electronica.
Martin Tétreault ‘Vraiment plus du Snipettes!!!’
(DAME/Ambiances Magnétiques) 6th December 2024
As the exclamation marks denote this is the third such volume of retrieved archival experiments produced via an apparatus of record player, cassettes, radio and various surface sounds from the free improvisation Québec innovator Martin Tétreault. With over sixty releases under his belt there’s a lot of material floating about: a lot of it previously unused.
Although there’s been considerable gaps in this series, which initially began back in 1992 with the limited cassette collection Snipettes!, followed by a “reprise” in 2007 after that inaugural instalment was re-released on CD, the latest volume continues to draw upon the idiosyncratic turntablist’s more “irreverent” sonic, dialogue, concrete and musical collages. For there is levity, a sense of fun, playfulness, wit in the way each avant-garde etude, passage or improvised performance is spliced (more in the sense of how it sounds than actual methodology) and put together.
At the centre of it all, or most of this play, is the turntable, which often sounds as if it is being impeded or led astray through pitch and speed manipulation and covered or wrapped by hidden materials. Less Qbert or DJ Shadow and more Basquiat or Nam June Paik qualifying for an avant-garde version of the DMC World Championships, captured extracts of serious theory, science, philosophy, lectures, the state of consciousness are morphed, twisted or shunted by a lifetime of accumulated snippets from TV, radio, cartoons, theatre, the opera, the rock concert and the art world. High meets low art, popular soundtracks meet the Afro-Cuban, and retro futuristic predictions of computer power, of domed utopias and the like come up against the mooning, the loony and ridiculous.
At times it plays out like Fluxus skits, and at others, finds a new rhythm and groove bordering on Afro-jazz or no wave or even funk from the transformed source material. A bastardised jazz-prog-noodling Zappa can suddenly also evoke Django Reinhardt fronting The Fugs; an informative French speaker is taken over by staccato nylon-strung Caribbean music and an off-kilter transformation of the Tango; Michèle Bokanowski “cirque’ comes to town under a bendy hallucination of shooting effects and Library music zaps; an echo of Jef Gilson is lost in the background cacophony of classical theatre; articulated ideas on science and reality sit next to feminine coquettish French annunciation and the scraping, rubbing and distorted abrasion of paper; and retro computerised calculus and sci-fi is paired with the spooky gothic theatrics of Edgar Allen Poe. These are just some of the happy accidents or intended results (in my mind) of these often humorous and amusing snippets. The uninspiring concrete mundanity of loading the tape recorder and other mechanised clicks, the dialling of an old telephone, stretch the imagination, whilst also stretching the listener’s patience in what can only be described as another of these Tétreault teases or in-jokes.
Originally these recordings would have been directly recorded on to a reel-to-reel, bypassing any mixing console. And so all the “quirks” the surface noises, the fizzes, crispy crinkles and muffles are kept as part of the makeup, the character; as Tétreault puts it, in keeping with preserving as much of the original recordings as possible.
Reanimating and morphing a diverse range of collected fragments from lessons in hypnotising to Marx Brothers like nights at the opera, and from echoes of the Art Ensemble of Chicago to recontextualised lofty addresses and sketches, Vraiment plus du Snipettes!!! is in many ways an antidote to the seriousness and earnestness of this art form.
Facilitated by the Canadian Ambiances Magnétiques – just one of the many labels that gathers under the Distribution Ambiances Magnetiques (or DAME as it is known) platform umbrella – this third collection of fragments, variations further cements Tétreault’s playful and experimental legacy, whilst also introducing a new generation to his pioneering work in the field of turntable-led, but also radio and cassette tape, exploration and transference. I’d recommend to anyone interested in Philip Jeck, Christian Marcley, People Like Us and Milan Knizak.
Black Temple Pyrämid ‘Frontier Plains Wonderers’
(Cruel Nature Records)
Someone could easily dedicate a blog to just reviewing the output of Cruel Nature Records. This onslaught of a label catalogue can boast of around 58 releases in 2024 alone, ranging from the sublime to barracking and raw, the kosmische to avant-garde.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea has already dipped his toe into the prolific giving waters, reviewing a couple of records from the November schedule last month, but I’m going to pick up on a returning entity, the obscured Black Temple Pyrämid, who featured on this site back in 2021 with the veiled atmospheric acid-hippie folk, post-punk and kosmische style The Hierophant album – released on the most brilliant underground label Submarine Broadcasting Co.
Details remain succinct, but opening gateways into cultist worlds, imbued by the Teutonic luminaries of acid, trance krautrock, the Pyrämid seem to broadcast from Colorado. This latest album was previously “nestled” amongst a number of releases held together within Patrick R. Pärk’s Desolate Discs hexalogy, released back in October. Now uncoupled in its full visionary glory, the experience is one of hallucination, the paranormal, the pagan, the hermitic, the entrancing, the disturbed and alien.
Across a quartet of both rhythmic and soundtrack-style preignitions, the mood is one of mysterious immersion, occultist weird folk, of amorphous sounds from different geographical realms and vague religious atmospheres; starting with the near sinister industrial steam-pressed tunnel slow-beaten and clang-reverberated ‘Fishers Peak Worship Song’, which could be a slowed down version of a monotonous Neu! traveling down a metallic corridor with Fritch and A.R. & Machines until the krautrock vibes become overbearing, eating away at this Faust-like march.
‘6,651 Days’ (which I think I’ve calculated as eight years and a few months) is an oddity and off-kilter dance of Krautrock-jazz, Bex Burch and Brahja-like Ethnic fusions, and American Monoexide elements, whilst ‘Alchemy of Emptiness’ draws, at first, on John Carpenter and Goblin, before a supernatural fusion of Current 93 and Drew Mulholland passages emerge. You can throw in a transformed version of techno 2-step, steely effects pedal Ash Ra Tempel, ethereal spells of renaissance hermitic invention and the sound of a guitar being sawed or sheared on a workshop grinder.
The finale is a 23-minute soundtrack of twisted dirge-y post-punk and mystical pagan ceremonial rites and mood music. Suffrage, the state of it all, this traditional whole side of an LP spanning score keeps a constant smirched and gloomy rolling, beating rhythm whilst adding or subtracting, or congruously moving into varied passages of the choppy, the skippy, mystical, pained, recollected and at the very end a droning stained-glass ray of hope. I’m calling this is an atmospheric convene between The Legendary Pink Dots, a more subdued GOAT, the Velvets and Nature And Organisation.
Pitching it just right as always, Black Temple Pyrämid invoke mystery, thought and the abstract feelings of “loss” and “mid-life growth” in a temporal framework of visions.
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