Expand your taste in music. Based in Beijing, China.
There is such a gentle lilt to the voice of Nata Boundriver of Ясный-Svetly that I can imagine this being what Kate Bush or Hope Sandoval sounding like if either had fronted post-rock era Mark Hollis or some band specializing in ethereal, ghostly music. A sublime listen.
It’s not often that I run into a combination of black metal and shoegaze music (blackgaze), but Japan’s Isiliel is such a beast. For black metal, the vocals are rather elegant and symphonic. Interesting and well done.
Henri Giraffe works under a score of pseudonyms (this is one of them, obviously), but what is impressive about the release is that it is some of the freakiest lo-fi space rock I’ve heard in a while.
No reviews today thanks to a busy schedule, so some reggae will suffice for today.
Dead Can Dance singer Brendan Perry released this masterpiece of an album for 4AD Records in 1999. 23 years later, the label is offering the album as a download, CD and LP with bonus tracks from a performance recorded during 4AD’s infamous 13 Year Itch residency at the storied London venue in 1993
You may wish to lower the volume a bit for this one. Gold is a magnificently harsh noise-rock band out of Leeds, U.K., whose brutal take at experimental music is both ear-blasting, yet strangely soothing at the same time. A full album is coming in November.
Syriana are an interesting project released by Real World Records. Here’s the back story, courtesy of the label’s Bandcamp site:
“In 2010 Syriana’s album The Road to Damascus presented a musical reflection by Nick Page & Bernard O’Neill of their take on the geopolitical landscape surrounding Syria at the time. Sadly their assertions that a third cold war was being initiated in that region were proved to be true and the conflict and upheaval that followed destroyed much of the rich cultural heritage of the region and dispersed millions of its people.
Now in 2023 the new Syriana album 1325 Ibn Battutah plots the three decades that a lone traveller journeyed through known world, from Morocco to Syria, Turkmenistan, India, Africa and Spain and once more home to Tangiers. Sadly Nick Page passed away before its completion but it will be released later this year.”
Cousin Silas and his merry band of collaborators continue to impress with massive compilations of ambient music. He, and all bands associated with him, are worth a deep listen.
One of the benefits of being in Beijing at a high-grade academy is that I run into some rather brilliant young minds who are turning me on to great local music, case in point being Mimik Banka, who listeners would compare their music favorably to acts like dream pop and pop-psych bands like Dream Academy during their less somber moments and Khruangbin in places, and something radically their own in other spots. Perhaps my new favorite Chinese indie band at the moment.
Yet another vinyl masterpiece, reissued to perfection, comes to us from Wewantsounds. This gem features a big player in the St. Louis jazz scene, Luther Thomas. From the label’s press release:
“A gang reunion, an effort of revitalization, a headbangers’ blowout, a legendary “lost” recording, a snapshot of its time, prophetic of sounds to come – Funky Donkey is all those things, but worth attention most ’cause after 50 years it’s still fun to hear. Alto saxophonist-ringleader Luther Thomas and his St. Louis cohort comprising the Human Arts Ensemble live large on this album, conveying as if right now the sense of adventure, ambition, spontaneity and freedom resulting in a hard-core musical experience, suggesting others try the same.
In the early 1970s the St. Louis jazz scene had enjoyed a renaissance and suffered a talent-drain. It was known then and today for the Black Artists’ Group, a cooperative which, through a local arts support program generated in part by the great dancer-choreographer-ethnographer Katherine Dunham’s Performing Arts Training Center had given rise to composer-saxophonists Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and Hamiett Bluiett (later, 3/4s of the World Saxophone Quartet) among many other creative musicians, dance and theater troupes and new arts presenters.”