Tag: Lo-Fi

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Roy Montgomery – Roy Montgomery 40th Anniversary 2021 LP Series

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- Audiotherapy

The tracks currently available are some of his best instrumental work in some time, and some of these tunes border on spacious prog-rock or psych.  Everything sounds full and rich, rather than stripped down and lo-fi.  It’s Roy all by himself, at his best.  This project is ambitious, but judging by the quality of the first series of tracks, this set will be a worth addition to his incredible audio output.

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Jodi – Spherical Distortions

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 all, as one can hear Stockhausen’s powerful influence as well as touches of the music of The Beatles (naturally, as they were as huge in South America as they were everywhere else) and The Beach Boys (listen to some of the vocal harmonies and you will notice what I mean.

I’ve said this before in the past, not perhaps on this blog, but on the previous one: we live in an amazing time where so many of these lost artifacts see the light of day and show us what might have been with just a little more development and a push from more forward-thinking record labels.

Thanks to Guerssen for their continued support of freak rock.

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George Christian – África em mim

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 musical formation for my guitar experimentation. And with that, I wanted to connect myself with symbols that identified inspirations from African culture based on my Afro-Brazilian status, being from Bahia, Northeastern and also Afro-descendant Latin American. I did not want to think of Afro-Brazillity from a too traditional perspective. I wanted to dialogue with experimental diasporic sounds, or from today’s Africa itself: Tuareg blues, Jamaican dub, Afrofuturism and Arab experimental music were my starting points. I had as journey partners César Blax Costa and Edmar Silva in alchemical tracks, which choose percussion as an improvisational center. “África em Mim” is an album that wants to invoke the struggle of capoeira (with the touch of the iúna learned directly from Mestre Nenel), to pass through allegorical territories of diasporic listening until reaching the universe, astrology, science. There is no freedom without a fight. And “África em Mim” is an invocation to the struggle, rethinking ancestry through the future.

He is among a group of composers whose every work I have enjoyed listening to.

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DidJaws – Home Made Techno EP

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.

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Venus Berry – Shibari

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.

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Secret Agent – Mata Hari EP

Combining surf rock, garage rock, touches of psych and having a generally lo-fi vibe to it, Mexico City’s Secret Agent combine a couple of cool instrumentals with two sung tracks, including the title track, Mata Hari, featuring Vince Montes Rivera, which you can listen to below:

 

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Neon Noodle – Swamplands

Neon Noodle mixes lo-fi noise with what sounds like horror soundtracks, touches of vaporwave and a bass line that reminds me of something one could hear out of an early 80s garage post-punk or experimental cassette demo.  It’s crunchy, but interesting.  I’d like to see how Neon Noodle develop as time passes.

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Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs – Bonus Disc

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.

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κτίρια τη νύχτα – ΣΧΕΔΙΟ ΠΟΛΗΣ

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.

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Music Podcast

Music You Need To Hear Podcast – 5 Treasures – January 11, 2021

We will be featuring 5 tracks of the day every week.  Our first foray includes the following tracks:

1. Ibibio Sound System – Joy (Idaresit)
3. Dadamah – Brian’s Children
4. Alessandra Celletti – Sayyid Dance (Dedicated To Mrs. Gurdjieff)
5. Taylor Deupree – Canoe