New:
Urthona – Hearing Secret Harmonies. Thanks to CitizenSmurf for flagging this, anything describing itself as ‘heavy rural’ has to be worth a listen, and indeed it was. I don’t usually have too much time for improv/ambient/drone stuff, as there’s already more such releases on Bandcamp etc than there are stars in the galaxy, but this did have that special something – particular guitar tone, progressions etc
Mutoid Man – Bleeder. 80s/90s-inflected progish metal, some of which reminded me quite strongly of The Beyond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbUbJNuJmLc, who were excellent, but nobody bought their records…
Landshapes – Heyoon. Another 80s/90s throwback, this time to Throwing Muses era 4AD – as such, it’s unsurprising they’re on Bella Union. Pretty cool, I may well have loved them 25 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Muno5h8WOWs
Liberez – All Tense Now Lax. Eek, experimental music ahoy, but again, harking back to an era when ‘experimental’ meant challenging, but not completely unlistenable. Scratchy strings Vs melodic piano, kind of arty industrial.
Ben Chatwin – The Sleeper Awakes. Soundtracky stuff, tasteful but not dull. Mogwai/Piano Magic fans will enjoy.
VA – Cherrystones: Critical Mass. Actual 80s stuff, of an obscure post-punk bent. Couple of tracks of particular interest – Rizzo (sounds as NY punk as you like, but actually ex-members of German group Jane): https://soundcloud.com/touchsensitiverecords/rizzo-i-dont-care and Chandra (super snotty vocal delivered by 12 year old, with hilarious/sinister lyrics): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HtP7sy8pWs
Archive:
Forest Swords – Engravings. Liked this a lot more on revisiting, first few tracks are especially excellent, like a dubby DJ Shadow, but the best is left til last: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7qbpFUabN0
Motorpsycho – The Death-Defying Unicorn. Also got more out of this on returning. Inevitably a bit sprawly, but there’s some fantastic Crimson-esque skronk in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfXr8L-iA78
Black Sabbath – Sabotage / Technical Ecstasy / ‘Country Girl’. The transition from Sabotage to TE is fascinating in its own way, like a band suddenly and almost completely bottling it (though the signs were clearly there on the former). I’m pretty traditionalist in that Sabbath can only really be Sabbath with Ozzy, but ‘Country Girl’ with Dio does have a tremendous riff.
Radio 2 Prog prog with Tony Banks, who always reminds me of Prince Charles for some reason, coming over as he does like an aggrieved member of the Royal Family. Played a lot of ‘Supper’s Ready’ – still shit after all these years, and TB seems to conveniently forget that VDGG had already done a similarly interlinked song suite the previous year with ‘A Plague…’, which it goes without saying was also far superior.
Live:
Gwenno/Tender Prey – The Social, London. TP, who on album is essentially Laura Bryon, turned into a proper power trio live, and pretty rocking they were too. Gwenno did her Welsh space lady thing again, with added sarky commentary between songs. Have just discovered she used to be in the Pipettes, which meant nothing to me, but they apparently had a couple of minor hits a few years back.
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