This has to be one of the most charmingly weird, frankly unclassifiable discs I’ve heard in a while. Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs manage to pull together a collection that should sound like a mess, yet it’s a rather enjoyable one. The music goes from lo-fi disco tracks (which for some reason, remind me heavily of the ur-supergroup Big In Japan) to outtakes from a later-era David Bowie session. This is a gritty gem of a disc. The only shame is that it took me six years to come across it.
This one-track release was in my queue while I was doing some work, and when it came on, I assumed it was a track of Spanish cold wave from the early 1980s. Toronja, as it turns out, is a Chilean project from this year, and they manage to do a good job making a sound that is at once fresh and vintage.
Record label and magazine La Souterraine offer the best indie music coming out of France these days. Their latest release by Suzanne Belaubre is bound to be a cold wave masterpiece. The tracks are short and the production is excellent, if sparse. That sparseness works well with the music, and it gives the music an odd, very French, electro-pop vibe to the tunes. It’s a quirky album, but well worth hearing a few times.
From the bio: Allan J. Kimmel (aka Departure Street) is an American/French solo electric guitarist based in Paris France. He plays alternative ambient and neo-folk music with shoegaze & American blues underpinnings. I could not have said it more succinctly. This is not my first time reviewing Allan’s wonderful guitar work. I featured his previous release, Two Islands In The Heart, in March of 2020. This album is one filled with clouds of guitar ambiance which relaxes and doesn’t get too much in the way of one’s thoughts. There continues to be a shoegaze or very minimalistic indie rock-flavored guitar…
Tom Carter was the guitarist of improvisers Charalambides, one of the heirs of fine Texas psychedelia. His new album, Beautiful Savior, comes as a pleasant, hopeful respite after being inundated by moronic ‘devil’-related titles. Is this an acid-Christian album? Who knows? The tones from this album speak for themselves. The music is beautiful, sparse and has a hazy, relaxed feel to it. It clocks in at around 30 minutes, which is far too short for enjoying such a blissfully folky album which reminds me so much of John Fahey.
I would never have come across Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, a Guadalajara, Mexico-based band without the help of my new friend, Ali, whose taste in music is absolutely impeccable. There is something wonderfully retro about the band, who reference a lot of bands like the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, and even Joy Division in the track Unificado. A worth release.
A good remix album should have the same song remixed by several pros and not sound a thing like the original. I think Nigel & Derek of Tunnelmental have pulled it off in this three-track album. The original track is a bouncy raver with the sampled refrain, “Life is a state of mind.” I can agree with that. Track two is remixed by Tony Byker, whose previous remixing work I’m not familiar with, but he ups the bpm to make this into something actually dancefloor-ready. The final track is a house-style reworking by Derek which closes the EP quite well.
κτίρια τη νύχτα (Buildings At Night) release an album of mostly instrumental music, though vocals peek through now and then, complementing the shower of guitars that mixes shoegazer, lo-fi, and, believe it or not, a touch of the 4AD Records sound. It’s a subdued, dark album, maybe not something I would listen to everyday, but it may well serve as a soundtrack to a dark, quiet evening.
Wow! Imagine a mangling together of Gang Of Four, early Wire, an angry Birthday Party and all that is good in post-punk, and you would have the bones to make Trigger Cut. The tracks are minimal, punchy, and full of distorted angst. I’ll have to hear the rest of this album, but you can indulge in four tracks of brutal music right now. I point you to my favorite track, Solid State. Enjoy!
It is my great honor to present the first featured release of the blog. This album comes to us from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It is not what you would expect from the country, as most marketing of music shows Mongol folkloric culture melded together with everything from heavy metal to rap, most of it working well, but also letting off an air of cod exotica. This release by Magnolian is radically different from what most of their countrymen are producing. This is more of a breezy folk-rock touched gently with post-rock, a combination that works surprisingly well. The vocals and lyrics…