Log #190 - Strum, Swoosh and Glitch

Loscil - First Narrows

Loscil - Sea Island

Monolake - Silence

Ulrich Schnauss - Goodbye

Arovane - Tides

Tycho - Awake

I feel my music listening is heading off into a new direction at the moment with the player starting to be dominated by ambient artists over the last few weeks. Something similar happened just about 18 months ago when I started listening to Fennesz, Gas, William Basinski, and Stars Of The Lid, and from the German 70s scene, Cluster and Harmonia and their collaborations with Brian Eno.  

The fleeting gratification offered by mere snippets and trifles.

They were the more mainstream artists, if you can call anything mainstream in this genre, but in addition I alighted upon other artists in the somewhat underground world of "sound design" or "sound art", like James Joys from Belfast and Keith Berry from London. The former's album Glyphic Bloom nearly won my album of the year title for 2019 and deserves a listen (a recent twitter post by the artist bemoaned the fact that no one hears his music and he may as well "toss it into the sea") - with just 38 monthly listeners on the dreaded Spotify, for someone with so much talent, this is distressing, but not surprising - some of this sort of music demands effort and that's an effort many people are not prepared to invest these days. More the shame though, as anything that takes effort often yields greater long term satisfaction in comparison to the fleeting gratification offered by mere snippets and trifles.

This time around my resurgent interest in (recent experimental) David Sylvian, (post rock) Talk Talk and (digital guitarist) Fennesz has led me to some new artists including Tycho (aka Scott Hansen) from San Francisco, Monolake (aka Robert Henke) from Berlin, Ulrich Schnauss also from Germany, Arovane (aka Uwe Zahn) from Germany again, and Loscil (aka Scott Morgan) from Vancouver, Canada. Being from Germany, or Berlin especially, with that town and country's musical pedigree, would seem to offer an advantage in this electronic field.  [..or being called Scott? Ed]

Clean, sharp and minimal.

Ok, on to the music. Well, and the art. The artwork for these types of albums is almost universally brilliant. It's very much part of the overall aesthetic. (Stars Of The Lid won my album cover of the year in 2018). Scott Hansen of Tycho is actually an established graphic designer and all his album covers are beautiful (and themed). Awake graces the top of this post. The others aren't bad either - usually clean, sharp and minimal, like the music therein.

Strum and swoosh.

Tycho and Ulrich Schnauss share the most similarities. I've heard their music be described as "strum and swoosh" - highly reverbed guitars over lush synth pads. The music takes a bit of a pounding in the press (my favoured Pitchfork magazine doesn't think much of Schnauss calling his music inconsequential). Some Tycho albums have been compared to Boards Of Canada but I can't hear much similarity within Awake. 

Both Schnauss and Tycho are indeed fairly mainstream and easy listening but it's so well done I find it instantly likeable. I tell you what it reminds me most of - both in sound, and in design, is Jean Michel Jarre's 1970s work. I think it will sound great in the car. Will it still offer interest in 6 months' time, or 5 years? If I keep this blog up for that long I'll find out.

Monolake, Loscil and Arovane, are ultimately all a bit more interesting. From this first brief fly past I'd say Arovane seems to be the most upbeat and mainstream - his Tides album dates from way back in 2000 - it's amazing to think such sharp, modern, experimental music, dates from 20 years ago. 

Then Loscil is the most still and ambient. I love both his albums sampled here - beautiful and interesting. Containing some real organic instruments, and fascinating sound effects, over modestly lengthed drones and loops that seem to merge into each other. First Narrows in particular is great - I like the way the same theme seems to return to different tracks throughout the album. This is no spring chicken either, dating from 2004.

A sonic delight.

Then in between the two you get the glitch and wash of Monolake. Silence is a sonic delight - it's not necessarily music, but it's not unmusical either. Rhythm takes precedence over melody - rhythms that are imparted by very subtle sound effects and pulsing elements with merely a hint of actual percussion. I don't know what it is really, but it's endlessly fascinating on the ear. I've heard elements of Monolake's style elsewhere, but it's hard to describe where. As a standalone album it's pretty unique. I read a review elsewhere that suggested Silence should be one of those albums hifi showrooms use to demo the dynamic range of their sound equipment. 

As you can tell by the dates of some of these releases, all these artists are well established and have a wealth of back catalogue which I'll be deep diving into in the coming weeks.

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First Narrows by Loscil - A Subtly Beautiful Listen

Electronica is by nature ephemeral. It didn't take long for the Future Sound of London to sound like the Retro Sound of Nowhere In Particular, for example. So while it might be the case that today's cutting edge laptop constructions will sound anachronistic in a few years time, it's nice to know that some music being made at the moment won't have that problem. Which is where this album comes in. This is the third effort by Loscil (aka Canadian Scott Morgan), and the first to use 'real' instruments (and 'real' musicians) alongside computer generated constructions. I've not heard the other two, but if they're anything like this one, I'm keen to get them on the stereo as soon as possible.

Despite his use of digital elements, Morgan doesn't go for the usual jumpcutting, pasting and glitching beloved of the laptop crowd. This is calm, unhurried stuff; warm, fuzzy and expansive. In the opening tracks, drum machines shuffle away gently under gauzy drones and synth pulses. Nothing much happens, but it happens beautifully. Later, electric piano, cello and guitar turn up to improvise sketchy, spare melodies or spin out lush, plangent chords, sometimes sampled and fed into Morgan's slow moving, dubby constructions. It's here that an Eno-esque feel creeps in; sometimes the rigorously gorgeous miniatures of Another Green World or Before and After Science, at other times the faintly jazzy bits of his collaborations with Harold Budd.

Like the domed one, Morgan never allows his music to lapse into mere prettiness. He doesn't subvert conventionally melodic material with digital noise bursts (a common trick these days), or underpin it with irregular rhythms. Instead he strips down and stretches his chords and melodies into a melisma of foggy drones and slow tonal shifts. It's often gorgeous, but there's a vague sense of unease abroad for much of the time; a faint, unresolved tension which catches the ear even at background levels.

It's this mix of beauty and vague threat that makes First Narrows a subtly beautiful listen.This is music that seems to be out of time, like Morgan's contemporaries Stars of the Lid or Pan American and (speaking from experience) an ideal soundtrack to watching the restless cloudscapes of early Summer. Float on.

Lifted with creative commons thanks from https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/52rg/

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Log #189 - This Music Just Feels Right Right Now

William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops III

Low - Double Negative

William Basinski - A Shadow In Time

Jan Jelinek - Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volumne II (CD 1)

Fennesz - Agora

Music for our times?

This Ambient Top 50 list from Pitchfork has opened me to lots of great ambient music over the last 12-18 months: https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9948-the-50-best-ambient-albums-of-all-time/?page=5

The William Basinski appears at No. 3. Aphex Twin No. 2. 

Similarly this IDM ("intelligent dance music" as opposed to, or as a sub category within, EDM which stands for the more generic "electronic dance music") Top 50 is great too, and overlaps a fair bit with the Ambient list: https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/10011-the-50-best-idm-albums-of-all-time/?page=5

Jan Jelinek is at No. 7 on this one. 

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And It's Goodbye From Ulrich Schnauss

Ulrich Schnauss presents the final part in his trilogy of electronically ethereal albums. As their names – Far Away Trains Passing By, A Strangely Isolated Place and now Goodbye - suggest, his productions invoke the idea of a bleak, but worthwhile, journey. His music could be for an outing that involves the body physically moving (the ideal tape for a long car ride), or a static body allowing the mind to truly wander. Ultimately the same outcome is achieved, a deep sense of introspection initiated via a soundtrack of delicate beauty.

A beautiful and emotive soundscape.

The first two albums were released on the small German electronica label City Centre Offices, but, as a testament to Schnauss’ success and veneration, this album has been picked up by the much larger Independiente label. His tracks have been used by luminaries such as Nick Warren and Sasha on their mix albums, and his own remixes range from Depeche Mode to Long-View – the English band for whom he has recently taken over keyboard duties. Schnauss utilizes lead singer Rob McVey on Shine; an eerie orchestral epic, where layered vocals melt together with cyclic drum beats to create a beautiful and emotive soundscape.

Goodbye may, at times, put you in mind of sirens drawing sailors to their downfall, but that’s not to say that this isn’t an uplifting album. The dissociated vocals are seamlessly combined with fragile chord progressions, tribal rhythms and textured electronic noise to create an album filled with optimism. The two tracks which make up the finale, Goodbye and For Good, emphasise the message of the album; a valediction at the end of the journey. Hopefully there will be a reprise sometime soon and this is not goodbye, for good.

A creative commons review from https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/gj54/

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Log #188 - Paddling In The Shallows

Just the one new entry this week: David Sylvian's mate Fennesz's sumptuous Agora album released this time last year. It sounds like the cover - shimmering watery ambience washing up over sand. Just four tracks of around 9 or 10 minutes each it's fairly modest in ambient length terms. There is less of the glitchy guitar distortion made famous on his Endless Summer album with Fennesz opting for a more Enoesque sensibility.

The experimental musician’s sweeping, ambient album works in small, fascinating ways from moment to moment but has a cumulative force that is unlike anything he’s done in years.

Pitchfork (8.5)

There is just a doubt about this music. It sounds simple (like the Jam or OMD did when I was a school kid getting into prog rock). It's the sort of music I feel I could have a bash at on my own laptop - for instance I certainly couldn't reproduce Supper's Ready in a million years for goodness sake but a few drones - no problem! There is skill required of course, and ambient music contains many hidden delights not always evident on first listen, but I do figure a Physics or Computer Science degree would be more useful than a Music one.

Anyway that's beside the point. On hearing Agora one of my first reactions was "this is just the sort of music I want to make." Is that the same as "...want to hear"? Well, yes it is pretty much - I'd rather listen to Agora than Supper's Ready so that's all that matters really.

Talk Talk - The Colour Of Spring

DJ Vadim - Soundcatcher

Four Tet - Rounds

David Sylvian - Blemish

David Sylvian - Everything And Nothing (CD 1)

Fennesz - Agora

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Log #187 - Moving Post Rock

Still working through my Mark Hollis/David Sylvian phase. On the Hollis side we have the Talk Talk crossover album The Colour Of Spring which is growing on me rapidly. It's not as beautiful as their follow up Spirit Of Eden but contains some classy melodic pop pointing the way towards their new "post rock" direction. 

[Incidentally I was directed towards an album by a band called Slint (Spiderland) which was mentioned in the same breath as Spirit Of Eden as an equivalent "post rock" offering, um errr, it's ok but not in the same class pop pickers]

Want to know what post rock is, was? Here's a list featuring both Slint and Talk Talk. Honestly though I fail to see much resemblance between Talk Talk and Godspeed You! Dark Emperor for instance.

Turning to David Sylvian we have Blemish which I believe was his first truly experimental album coming in 2003, 4 years after the relatively straight forward Dead Bees On A Cake. Lots more to discover in this unusual sounding record. Apparently, not that I have noticed yet, the ambient instrumental album that featured in Log #185 Wandermude was based on this one. There is also a remix version of Blemish. I will be intrigued to play all 3 together at some future point. Blemish is further reviewed here.

Talk Talk - The Colour Of Spring

DJ Vadim - Soundcatcher

Four Tet - Rounds

David Sylvian - Blemish

David Sylvian - Everything And Nothing (CD 1)

David Sylvian - Everything And Nothing (CD2)

Summarising much of his best music up until the year 2000 Blemish is supplemented this week with a complete playing of the double Everything And Nothing which is a superb retrospective. Lush music brilliantly produced this is a great primer for new fans maintaining a pleasing continuity despite the range covered.

DJ Vadim's Soundcatcher is a superb lo-fi down tempo dubby mashup. Love it. Four Tet's Rounds is a little more reserved with some great melodies. Two top electronic pioneers. I haven't heard any better albums from either artist, so wondering if I have chanced upon their respective bests?

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Log #186 - Two Hermetical Geniuses - Hollis and Sylvian

Talk Talk - The Colour Of Spring

Nitin Sawhney - Beyond Skin

Talk Talk - The Party's Over

Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden

Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go

David Sylvian - Everything And Nothing (CD2)

“I want to write stuff that you’ll be able to listen to in 10 years’ time”.

Mark Hollis

Notwithstanding the slightly overbearing 1986 drums Talk Talk's The Colour Of Spring was a groundbreaking album for the band signalling the way towards the two jazz rock ambient classics that would follow.

They only made 5 albums but 3 of them certainly achieved Hollis' aim and more.

The Party's Over (1982)

It's My Life (1984)

The Colour of Spring (1986)

Spirit of Eden (1988)

Laughing Stock (1991)

Not a bad discography for a band who were compared to Duran Duran when they first started out (although this was more a marketing ruse than on account of any wishes of Hollis and his bandmates). Indeed many of the closest neighbours on the Talk Talk music map do relate more to their inception than their later albums:

Interestingly though David Sylvian does sneak into the chart over on the left hand side. I hadn't really related the two before this current run of magazine playing but the connection is now very obvious to me - Sylvian's Everything and Nothing is a brilliant retrospective which manages to cover many of his greatest and best known tunes up to the year 2000 (just before he started going much weirder) including some collaborations and Japan pieces, plus some outtakes and unreleased tracks for the dedicated fans too.

The Nitin Sawhney album (his only I possess) makes fleeting appearances at the blog, mainly on account of the marvellous Tides piano track.

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Log #185 - A Wonder Of Mood, David Sylvian's Wandermüde

Last week, although I liked it, I bemoaned the fact that David Sylvian's experimental Manafon album might have been better without singing. This week my wishes were granted with his 2013 follow up Wandermüde which turns out to be a pure ambient piece, with indeed no vocals. 

David Sylvian - Wandermüde

David Sylvian - Manafon

Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock

Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden

Bonnie Prince Billy - Pond Scum

This instrumental collection is blended throughout and delivers cascades of haunting tones, flooded with pools of tranquil retreats and gentle showers of suspense.

igloomag.com

Wandermude (literally translated as "tired hiking" - not google translates finest hour Ed.) is indeed a gem of ambience, one of the nicest I've heard actually. The record is extremely still, consisting of percussion less drones that hardly change at all, just in very subtle ways. Most movement is heard on the final track Deceleration which is quite startling in comparison with its distorted guitar chords that sound just like Fennesz's work on Endless Summer. I've heard Sylvian has collaborated with the Austrian electronic maestro so no doubt it is him here too although it's very hard to find any information about Wandermüde anywhere.

The album is actually a collaboration between Sylvian and German sound artist Stephan Mathieu and I wonder how much Sylvian was involved actually as apparently the crux of the record is reworkings of Sylvian's Blemish album from 2003. Sounds intriguing and Blemish will definitely be one I'll be checking out next.

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Album Review - The Simmer Dim by John Martyn

The Simmer Dim is both great and poor. In the first place the playing and the repertoire is superb making it potentially one of John Martyn’s greatest live albums, however secondly it loses a significant number of brownie points on account of the poor sound which is of barely bootleg quality.

First the songs. The Simmer Dim (the name refers to the summer twilight in the most northerly part of Great Britain) captures Martyn playing 80 minutes worth of his greatest songs in one coherent solo setting thus meeting a gap in the market I’m not aware is fulfilled by any other official releases.

We are treated to five tracks from the One World album, some on straight acoustic guitar like wonderful versions of Couldn’t Love You More and Certain Surprise, and some guitar effected including Big Muff (dedicated to Margaret Thatcher), Dealer and a One World which segues into an edited version of Small Hours also known as Anna. And of course centrepiece is a masterful 18 minute Outside In where Martyn coaxes soaring melodies from his guitar while grappling with echoplexed rhythms that threaten to run away with themselves.

The performance is book-ended by Over The Hill and May You Never with Martyn slapping his guitar strings and bending the notes with more percussive vigour than the studio versions. Indeed Martyn’s acoustic guitar playing is a revelation peaking for Seven Black Roses a traditional finger picking tune harking back to his The Tumbler album.

Leave it at that and you’d have, with all the One World songs, an album probably greater than Live At Leeds or On Air its closest comparisons.

However the recording. I’m all for intimacy and rawness but this is too visceral to pass muster as an official recording. Taken from a one off gig at the tiny Lerwick Folk Club in the Shetland Islands in August 1980 the recording captures not only Martyn on stage but also every other noise in the intimate room, even a baby crying (which is quite amusing to be fair)!

Martyn is indeed on form in song and between song sharing light hearted and witty banter throughout albeit much of it is inaudible. Martyn seemed to have this slightly schizophrenic personality where he could appear a bit of a drunken yob whilst speaking — making silly noises, putting on mocking accents and berating his band members (Live At Leeds sported a parental awareness sticker on later releases) — yet effortlessly switching into beautiful playing and singing. Here he sounds like he’s enjoying himself lapping up the close adoration and the general pub like ambience lends an extraordinary warmth to the proceedings.

Not for the fainthearted but The Simmer Dim is a fascinating insight for the keen fan.

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Log #184 - Sylvian Span

Steeleye Span are another band, new to me, that cropped up through reading the excellent Electric Eden anthology of English music. A shout out on Twitter suggested Below The Salt was a good place to start.  At first it sounded a bit too folky for me but it gradually started to resonate as I tuned in to the Sandy Denny era Fairport Convention vibes.

Steeleye Span - Below The Salt

David Sylvian - Manafon

Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock

Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden

Bonnie Prince Billy - Pond Scum

Manafon (a place in Wales) is a very unusual album. Top marks for David Sylvian doing something so left field it defines categorisation. But is it even music? It sounds like improvisations. In fact it sounds like avant garde ambient minimalism (with a jazz flavour) but with singing. Make of that what you will!

The parish of Manafon, Wales

For the first few listens I didn't really like it. But after a while I started to enjoy it, not in the sense of listening to music, but as an... experience.

But I wonder if it would be better just as instrumental music, like previously reviewed avant garde ambient albums by sound artists like Keith Berry and James Joys? Sylvian's very low key singing is sort of superfluous and distracting.

An interview with Sylvian reveals my impressions were well founded: "There was nothing written when we went into the studio – this was very much free improvisation. So, the selection of the group of musicians for each improvisation was paramount. I recognized on the day which pieces could work for me. The process was that I took the material away and then wrote and recorded the vocal line over in a couple of hours. So I couldn't analyze my contribution and that in a way was my form of improvisation – and I enjoyed the rapidity of response."

It sounds like the approach Van Morrison took with Astral Weeks. 

Genius or pretentious? I can't decide - it's certainly no Astral Weeks but nevertheless an intriguing listen which I will return to, along with some of Sylvian's other recent albums (Manafon dates from 2009).

Not a huge leap from David Sylvian to Talk Talk, especially when we are talk talking the band's final two albums; the "post-rock" masterpieces Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock - two albums of beautiful shimmering magnificent music topped by the late Mark Hollis's sensitive vocals.

More Bonnie Prince Billy listening in the player here with Pond Scum the 2016 offering of  BBC John Peel sessions, reworkings and covers, from this prolific artist aka Will Oldham. The renderings are stripped right back and thus even more relaxed and morose than usual.

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Log #183 - Two Sides Of Bonnie Prince Billy

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Union Cafe

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Music From The Penguin Cafe 

Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go

Soft Hair - Soft Hair

Jerry Paper - Like A Baby

Bonnie Prince Billy - Summer In The Southeast

Bonnie Prince Billy's The Letting Go album fondly reminds me of his Lie Down In The Light album (which followed). Fairly down tempo and relaxed, as with most of his albums, The Letting Go contains one of my favourite Bonnie songs, the haunting Cursed Sleep, with its amazing video...

The beauty and eccentricity of The Letting Go doesn't provoke deep absorption or self-reflection so much as a kind of fond familiarity.

Pitchfork 

Indeed, perhaps not Bonnie Prince Billy's most daring album but he is effortlessly great in almost anything he does. I haven't yet come across an album that has disappointed...

Which takes me on to the live album Summer In The Southeast. This is stunning. Not least as it was so unexpected. Whereas The Letting Go's easy vibe is typical Bonnie Prince Billy this noisy heavy warts and all rock gig from 2005 is a new Bonnie Prince Billy to me (in fact I'd never heard of the album until it popped up on a youtube feed I was listening to one evening).

Boosted by electric guitar from collaborator Matt Sweeney BPB reinvents his back catalogue with "a delightfully drunken racket of tangled guitars and thunderous percussion" (Pitchfork). The sound verges on grunge or even punk and reminds me of The Velvet Underground. So hardly representative of any of his albums I've heard, or I imagine most of his gigs, nevertheless an exciting addition to the Bonnie catalogue. A great find. 

The other new entry this week comes from LA producer Jerry Paper. This came on to my radar via the unusual Soft Hair album. I was in a Brighton cafe one afternoon and this music came on and the weird distorted electronica sounded to me just like Soft Hair. I asked the patron and he told me it was Jerry Paper. Name lodged in notebook and album investigated forthwith.

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Log #182 - Welcome To The Penguin Cafe

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Union Cafe

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Music From The Penguin Cafe 

Tangerine Dream - Zeit

Soft Hair - Soft Hair

Brian Eno - Ambient 4 On Land

Lift To Experience - The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (CD 1)

Two excellent albums spanning the career of instrumental chamber group The Penguin Cafe Orchestra this week. Music From The Penguin Cafe was their debut album released in 1976 on Brian Eno's fledgling Obscure Records label. It's fully reviewed here>>.

Union Cafe was the original band's fifth and final album released in 1993 before band leader Simon Jeffes' premature death in 1997. The double album takes the listener through a variety of styles - classical, minimalism, jazz, swing and experimental - yet does hold together as an enjoyable whole.

Various versions and offshoots of the original ensemble under the names The Anteaters, The Orchestra That Fell to Earth, and Penguin Cafe (with Simon Jeffes' son Arthur), continue to record and tour today.

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