It seems like Donny Vegas has been listening to all the right post-punk records for my taste. One can hear influences of early Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, a touch of Throbbing Gristle, and yet, by some odd miracle, it sounds both fresh and lo-fi. A quirky release, but I like this. Thanks to Filip of Z Tapes for the magnificent suggestion.
Starry Earth is a record label out of the United Kingdom offering lo-fi electronic artists with stunningly beautiful minimalist artwork and packaging, releasing cassettes as well as digital downloads. Of Sun And Rain were of particular interest, as the music is hauntingly sparse and engaging.
If you can believe it, this Czech EP was recorded by a 17-year-old kid who has a profound appreciation for bedroom pop, new wave and indie. He’s quite a decent storyteller, and despite the lo-fi production, there’s a lot of charm in this album.
Ty Segall is a garage-rock music phenomenon, and this album shows him at his beat-rock best, mixing garage, psychedelic rock and the aforementioned beat music this album oozes. Remarkably raw and impressive.
miserable.noise.club is a collective of incredibly talented musicians based in Jordan, China and the US + other collaborators in East Asia and the Middle East. The music they make is, by some miracle, a solid blend of experimental music, a paean to post-punk and lo-fi psychedelic rock. It’s hazy enough to remind me of some of the great music coming out of New Zealand in the late 1990s revolving around luminaries such as Roy Montgomery or The Dead C. Once the radio podcast begins, I have a feeling these folks will be featured heavily. Very impressive. Much respect to Abood…
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-…
Guerssen Records out of Catalonia, Spain is known for putting out some amazingly weird psych and lo-fi music, but this one has to be one of the most charmingly weird ones in their catalog. Two Paraguayan brothers of German origin, Joern and Dirk Wenger, self-released an album in 1971 called Pops de Vanguardia and had a deal with EMI-Argentina for a series of albums which came out and gained them a bit of fame, but Joern was also a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, so you know his weirdo bona fides were going to be solid. This album does not disappoint at…
Our friend and colleague George Christian Vilela Pereira has released an album that I could only describe as mellow strumming psychedelic noise with elements of Krautrock and instrumental psych that one could have found in Japan in the late 70s and early 80s. The lo-fi feel of the recording adds to the hazy pleasantness of this album. According to George Christian’s notes, this is a paean to the African influence in Brazil and on his music. He explains it clearly here: This album came up with a basic motivation in mind: to show how much Africa there is in my…
DidJaws is a French lo-fi IDM producer who works with his compositions in an absolutely stripped-down manner, without the overproduction and cute tricks that some IDM-related artists rely on. This feels raw, and the ideas coming out of these songs feel fresh. Not a bad release at all, and it makes me wonder what work he could do with full production capability. Let’s see how his work develops.
This is perhaps the coldest of cold wave releases I’ve ever had the pleasure of reviewing. Venus Berry is the nom de plume of Anouk Allard, who is not only a musician but has a background in visual art. Her style covers not only the aforementioned cold wave which the French seemed to dominate during the 1980s, but also aspects of modern synthwave, electro and a weird sort of avant-pop that reminded me of Isabelle Antena. She is joined on this album by Antoine Sapparrart on bass and Jules Méli on guitar. Quite an enjoyable album.