I can’t think of a music more joyful than ska. Jamaica’s finest export (next to reggae and its sub-genres, of course) is wonderfully represented on this compilation put together by the legendary Kingston-based record label Studio One. Lee Perry, Delroy Wilson and The Wailers feature prominently on this comp, and the tracks were produced by the inimitable Clement “Coxsone” Dodd. Pure joy, this one.
This Z Tapes release left me floored. Rapt are a folk band out of London who have an ethereal sound which reminded me of musicians like Nick Drake fronting a band on 4AD. Think, perhaps, of a more airy-sounding This Mortal Coil gone neofolk. The sound is folky without being stale, and adding elements like shoegaze and dreampop make for a rich, rewarding listen. I really like this.
I think it’s impossible to overestimate the important place Roy Montgomery has in the annals of New Zealand’s experimental rock scene. Thanks to his work on labels such as Kranky Records and Drunken Fish, he has quite a high international profile, and it helps that the music he’s produced for so many decades is nearly impossible to pigeonhole. This latest project will be four CDs or LPs released in stages throughout 2021 and 2022: February 5, 2021 – Island of Lost Souls July 30, 2021 – That Best Forgotten Work October 22, 2021 – Rhymes of Chance January 14 2022-…
Soundtrack composers don’t seem to need films to cue inspiring, haunting scores anymore. Take, for example, the new double album by Californian composer William Ryan Fritch. The story that goes along with this fabulous artifact is as impressive as the music is. We let the label, Lost Tribe Sounds, tell the story below, courtesy of their Bandcamp site: ‘Built Upon a Fearful Void‘ was an album seemingly fated to never be completed. For the last 8 years the album had been recorded and either lost or discarded three times; a leak that water logged and ruined most of the half…
The guitar, all by itself, can serve as tool for making a haunting orchestra’s worth of sounds. My good friend Santiago Fradejas, now resident in Kent, of all places (!) presents a mini-LP’s worth of brooding, swelling, lilting soundscapes. There is a menacing element tying the album together, as though one was taking a stroll near the 6th ring of Dante’s Inferno.
Igra Staklenih Perli were one of the greater monster progressive/psychedelic rock bands to come out of Yugoslavia (the band themselves were Serbian) during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and though some of their work could be seen as taking cues from legendary western groups like Pink Floyd, I hear elements of Can, Hawkwind, Jimi Hendrix and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, about the only metal period I like short of Black Sabbath. The only gripe I have with the album is the low mix. Music like this should be listened to at high volume, so the punch…
Dyerwave is a stand-alone genre sitting inside of synth-wave, which has produced a number of appealing artists who bring 1980s visual imagery and marry it to dystopian visions of the future. The artist responsible for this release, Amid The Ruins 1453 is a Serbian composer and fellow Orthodox Christian who has expressed admiration for philosopher, Christian apologist, conspiracy theorist and radio talkshow host Jay Dyer. The music is appropriately bleak, and would work well for fans of Vangelis (during the period he was composing the score for Blade Runner) and a more warped disco of Giorgio Moroder. One could also…
I have to catch up and see what has been going on with our friends at Alrealon Music. This release is two tracks of a horrifying soundscape that conjures up images of characters like Pinhead from the classic horror movie Hellraiser. Though the movie had no effect on me (I grew up watching far better horror movies from Spain and Italy), the music JOHN 3:16 (perhaps my favorite, and certainly the most hopeful, verse in the Bible) conjures up left me feeling slightly uneasy. Disturbingly enjoyable.
Today we were given the honor of being featured by the independent music radio, magazine and record label Meticulous Midgets, who were also kind enough to reference my old blog, A Miscellany of Tasteful Music, in the past. Meticulous Midgets not only have a fine magazine, but publish some of the best new indie music coming out of Russia these days.
What a remarkable work this is. The Hauchzart Ensemble includes our dear colleague Wilfried Hanrath, who plays guitar, bass, drums, beats, synth and electronics on this album, along with Matt Getchell, who also provides electronics, synthesizer and beats. This album takes quite a journey, starting off with a track that, if you can believe it, reminded me of the better aspects of bands like Michael Cretu’s seminal electro-pop band Enigma. It sounded like a very accessible piece of electronic pop, which was a good start, but then the musicians started to really surprise me with elements of bands like Tuxedomoon…