The Focus Group – Stop-Motion Happening. Latest from Ghost Box. TFG specialise in a particular brand of cut & paste sampling, with loops overlapping to sometime disorientating effect. But there’s something weirdly compelling about it too: https://soundcloud.com/ghost-box/sets/stopmotionhappening
Moon Duo – Occult Architecture Vol. 2. They could do this stuff in their sleep now, and most of this sounds like that’s exactly what they’ve done.
Jon Brooks – Autres Directions
Spaceship – A Prospect Of Loughton Brook
The Myrrors – Hasta La Victoria
Jane Weaver – Modern Kosmology
Pye Corner Audio – Prowler. Vinyl only release, found on Spotify. A bit undistinguished to be honest compared to the masterful Stasis.
Wire – Chairs Missing. Probably need to pay more attention to this than I did while cleaning out the loft, but really liked the first track, almost sounds like it could have been from the contemporaneous Hawklords album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dudr9Yx4lQ
Can – Out Of Reach / Can. The late 70s outliers that tend to get passed over. Can themselves disowned OOR for a long time, and it’s easy to see why – it’s not awful, but it is pretty directionless and flabby, with some surprisingly dodgy playing. Can on the other half is two thirds of a decent album, the playing much tighter again. As with other ‘later’ albums, Eno & Byrne owe them a serious debt.
Listen With Father:
Talk Talk – The Colour Of Spring. The first ‘non-rock’ album I bought in my metal/prog teenage years. I loved ‘Life’s What You Make It’, and gratifyingly so do the kids.
Queen – Greatest Hits. The UK’s best-selling album of all-time. My youngest would approve.
I is for…
Immense – Evil Ones And Zeros. Some concerted archival flicking this week. Immense (shit name) were from Bristol, coming just after the whole Flying Saucer Attack scene had fizzled out. It dips a bit in the middle, but this is actually a pretty great example of muscular post-rock, somewhere between Mogwai and Billy Mahonie. Guessing they’re forgotten now (and even at the time they were quickly over-shadowed by their label mates Sigur Ros), but definitely worth a listen if you like this kind of stuff: https://immense.bandcamp.com/album/evil-ones-and-zeros
Insides – Clear Skin. Another one of those bands who’ve been mostly forgotten, but were bigged up by certain writers in the press at the time. This is a 40 minute single track build around repetitive minimalist motifs, nice if not amazing, but... they were paralleling what the likes of Tortoise were starting to do in the US, and I seem to recall they were an influence on Broadcast? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4H7FtKsPzw
Ilk – Canticle. For a couple of years, I was mildly obsessed with Richard Youngs, and this is a self-styled ‘prog’ album he made with a friend in 2004. There’s a slightly ramshackle home-made feel to it (like much of RY’s output), but it’s surprisingly slick in places, folky vocal harmonies plus clangourous guitars and simple keys. My favourite bit is where they bare-facedly nick the start of Rush’s ‘Xanadu’, quite an audacious piece of prog-signalling from an artist more usually to be found in The Wire. https://soundcloud.com/vhfrecords/sets/ilk-canticle-vhf-87
Live:
Hey Colossus / The Wharves – New River Studios, Manor House. I’m still not completely sold on the new album, but the songs really came to life (and other such clichés) played at top volume in a small room, as invariably is the case. Must investigate their back catalogue more, a couple of absolute brain-blasters I didn’t recognise. Nice to see The Wharves too, a bit quirky, but that lady certainly hits the drums hard.
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