Described as, “Letters read aloud over AM radio, quiet guitar through motel room walls, loud electric guitar in summer basements, gravel parking lots in the rain, train sounds,” there was no way I wasn’t going to pay attention to this release. Real Live Tigers is a project started by Tony Presley. His voice reminds me, ever so slightly, of Stuart A. Staples of Tindersticks, but with a more lo-fi, folksy feel to it.
FRI$ʰPREͶ₵E are a project related to Cumsleg Borenail, who process the artwork for this release mixing vaporwave and witch-house. A pleasantly freakish disc
The magnificent Kalamine Records introduces us to yet another astounding ambient music composer, E-Clark Cornell. As his Bandcamp site says, this is music “…that celebrates the Intellectual, and intelligence in making Art.”
Legendary Be Bop Deluxe guitarist Bill Nelson is still producing music at an alarmingly wonderful rate. This disc is a reissue of an album that came out as a limited-edition release in 2011, and the sound is vintage Nelson.
George Mukabi was a giant of a man who brought music styles from all over East Africa, specifically Malawi, into his oeuvre, making a sound that was unique among African guitarists. This is a digital reissue which first turned up on Mississippi Records some years back, and is currently being published by Olvido Records. I don’t know if the labels are related, but the sound is crisp and the music is joyful.
For those of you old enough to remember the seminal French cold-wave band Clair Obscur, this album relates. From Cocoon’s Bandcamp site: “Cocoon is Christophe Demarthe’s project. It continues Clair Obscur’s attempt to shift the frameworks of performance and reception, using the means of electronic music, video and performance.”
From the band’s Bandcamp site: “Passepartout Duo is formed of Nicoletta Favari (IT) and Christopher Salvito (IT/US), who since 2015 have been on a continuous journey travelling the world’s corners, engaged in a creative process they term “slow music”. Having been guests of many notable artist residencies and with live performances in cultural spaces and institutions, their evocative music escapes categorisation. With no fixed abode their musical pilgrimage brought them to Japan first in 2019, which prompted a deep connection to Kankyō Ongaku ‘environmental music’, a genre in which Inoyama Land is often associated with, soundtracking the duo’s first immersive…
The Misty Shore Duo are Chen-Hui Jen & Jacob Sudol, with Jen performing on piano and Sudol performing with computer electronics. The duo perform the works of Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, Michael Pisaro and one of Sudol’s own compositions. For electroacoustic music, each track has an amazing warmth to it.
I am proud to say I have been a fan of Brume, Christian Renou‘s nom-de-guerre, for well over 30 years now. He was one of the first experimental musicians who captured my ears, and through all the formats he ever published (including DAT, which I would love to see made available again one day), he always managed to get a rough edged musique-concrète sound that made for intense listening.
A quick warning ahead of time – do NOT put this in your hi-fi stereo system. Love 666’s latest album is about as lo-fi as it gets, and considering the audience chatter, this has to be a live recording. The music is harsh, brutally in-your-face noise-rock that bands like Les Rallizes Desnudes or some of Keiji Haino’s side project fans are going to be very much into.