Review: Detach Recordings is proud to present their third EP, 'In Order To See' by Nekyia. Following releases on re:st, UVB-76 and Voidance Records, the Italian producer further explores his introspective sound, joining the dots between experimental psychedelia, dark ambient and post-drum&bass. Opening with the heavy, drone-driven 'Meta' and 'Leave Your Flesh Behind', the pace soon quickens with 'Breaches', a driving 170bpm collaboration with Books (re:st, Detuned Transmissions). The pressure increases on the B-side with a fierce remix by Sam KDC (Auxiliary, Samurai, Sublunar). The EP closes with 'Form Constants', a 2017 dub unavailable until now.
Review: The work of 1990s German electronic group Neural Network is titularly apt for the times. The mood around public-facing AI like ChatGPT and DALL-E has aroused much anxiety and curiosity of late, and they're only the tip of the iceberg. Surprisingly enough for new listeners, though, they'll find that the work of Neural Network - renowned for their contemporaneity with the likes of Biosphere and Autechre - is serene compared to the current mood of AI furore. These 'Excerpts' highlight the bulk of their work made between 1993-1995, which, unlike their former albums, didn't gain label / distributor traction at the time.
Review: Cult experimental outfit Nurse With Wound has had their Alas The Madonna Does Not Functiion 12" cut to picture disc for this special reissue. It has also been beautifully remastered by Andrew Liles and is one father band's more rhythmic and musical offerings. It joins the dots between their earlier and second phase work and sounds as good now as it did over 30 years ago. This one-off pressing comes in a lovely die-cut sleeve with Babs Santini artwork to make it an extra special collector's edition.
Review: For the second release on New York City's Peace Anthem Records, Annie Garlid
Aka UCC Harlo - a viola player and singer from Connecticut, living in Berlin - joins NY Graffiti for what the label so eloquently described itself as 'Ketamine-paced grooves, baroque miniatures, hazy-humid sonics, and dub inflections'. On the A side, you've got UCC Harlo serving up the minimal atmospherics of 'Let's See' awash in shimmering FM synth aesthetics, followed over on the flip by the evocative breaks of 'UN' by NY Graffiti, not to mention each of them delivering a remix of the other's track.
Russell Haswell - "Heavy Handed Sunset (Autechre Form Conversion)"
Viviankrist - "Creatures"
Powell Tillmans - "Stairwell"
NHK - "Binah"
Russell Haswell - "Hypersonic"
Review: Diagonal celebrates its 13th anniversary with a 4x12" release, highlighting both long-time label artists and notable collaborators. LP1 kicks off with a dark, atmospheric remix of Russell Haswell's 'Heavy Handed Sunset' by Autechre, transforming their 2016 version into something more intense. Label boss Powell joins forces with Turner Prize winner Wolfgang Tillmans for a quirky pop experiment, while NHK and Viviankrist deliver moments of striking beauty. Russell Haswell's nod to Cybotron rounds out the set, embodying the boundary-pushing, eclectic spirit that Diagonal has championed for over a decade.
Heartbreak Of A Broken Stitch (feat Harriet Morley) (2:37)
SM_FID (2:26)
Everything Ends With An Inhale (1:29)
Cement Skin (2:42)
Pixel Petals (2:52)
Slammd (interlude) (1:42)
Closer (3:12)
Terrence's Time Bomb (2:05)
Fragmentary (Eraser) (3:03)
Inside My Head (interlude) (2:12)
Still (feat Dawuna) (2:06)
Fawning (interlude) (2:02)
Kiss Me Again (6am In Helsinki) (feat Bennettiscoming) (2:39)
Review: Spanish producer Nueen and Manchester vocalist and rapper Iceboy Violet, who you might well recognised from appearing on Hyperdub releases by the likes of aya and Loraine James, come together for a collaborative work that follows the story of a four-year-long relationship. As you can imagine, therefore, it takes in peaks and troughs, emotional highs, depressive lows, and plenty in between that will all feel all too familiar to anyone who has ever fallen in and out of love. Drill-laced beats are laced with intimate melodies, and excitable chords spiral out of control while a menacing ambience percolates up from below. It's a powerful listen with a relatable narrative.
Review: New York artist Aaron Landsman and former Swans guitarist Norman Westberg kept vigilant watch with Night Keeper, a full nocturne named after Landsman's play of the same name. First performed in Spring 2023 at The Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens, with performer Jehan O. Young serving as narrative steward, the original piece filled the space with spoken word, projections, choreography, and music, moving between dim light and darkness. Now the recorded version posterises the performance, as Westberg's original texture-scapes come raggedly coiled around sombre loops and samples, as Young's laryngeal monologues course across the record's rough 44 minutes worth of gloaming. Inspired by sleepless nights and the wandering of the mind, Night Keeper lifts the lid on the wee small hours as would a well camouflaged nightjar, inviting listeners to embrace the subdued chaos of the dark.
Review: Even many years after his sad death, the global audience for Nujabes' music continues to grow. To honour the tenth anniversary of his passing, Hydeout Productions asked Haruka Nakamura to create a tribute album and encouraged him to move forward while preserving Nujabes' timeless essence. The project began with the release of the music video and 7" vinyl of 'Reflection Eternal' and now the full album Nujabes PRAY Reflections arrived featuring Nakamura's reinterpretation of Nujabes' melodies through piano and guitar. This is not a traditional cover album, but new music inspired by Nujabes with artwork by Cheryl D. McClure that blends both artists' creative worlds.
Review: Named in honour of an experimental silent movie of the early 1920s, Polish duo Nanook of the North are a unique proposition: a collaboration between composer/violionist Stefan Wesolowski and electronic musician/guitarist Piotr Kalinski that defies easy categorization. Heide, the pair's second album, was recorded pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and its' musical blend of effects-laden ambient electronics, simmering strings and acoustic guitar motifs was reportedly inspired by "wildness and untamedness". It's a genuinely brilliant, ultra-atmospheric affair that uses repetition magnificently (a nod, we'd argue, to American minimalism) and benefits from guest contributions from mezzo-soprano Margarita Slepakova.
Review: Secret Circuit's Eddie Ruscha and Rub N Tug's Thomas Bullock joined forces as Laughing Light Of Plenty for an EP back in 2008, and followed it up with an album on Whatever We Want Records in 2010 which largely got lost in a warehouse stock malfunction. Now Emotional Response are doing the right thing and giving the record a second airing under the duo's alternative alias The Naturals, and it's not hard to see why they wanted to do the reissue. Loose and funky, but also deliriously psychedelic and indebted to the 1970s golden era of songwriting, this is a quintessential Emotional record if ever we heard one.
Review: Ceremony Of Seasons drops its first two releases in quick succession and after Ross Gentry's inaugural ambient wine pairing, Brett Naucke now repeats the trick. He has written this lush ambient long player "to be paired with Conjured In Shadows, a Mendocino-grown, carbonic macerated Nouveau wine from the 2022 harvest." It is a superbly organic soundtrack with found sounds and plenty of evocative designs all bringing to mind a warm day outdoors on 'An Open Secret', celestial skies on 'A Glass Touch' and autumn melancholy on 'Private Life'. The flipside explores the rest of the season with icy melodies and candle-lit sounds that evoke hymnal solitude.
Review: Russian avant-garde sculptor namesakes Naum Gabo, AKA Jonnie Wilkes of Optimo and mastering engineer James Savage, drop their inaugural album, 'F. Lux.' The pair delve deep over eight tracks of cavernous ambiance, pummeling industrial techno and barren, windswept synthscapes, which are perfectly alluded to by Scottish painter Andrew Cranston's surreal artwork. In turns introspective and oppressive, the pair ditch their usual stylistic sensibilities for something altogether more longform and enveloping, allowing for full immersion in the cavernous soundworld. Highlights include opening wormhole 'Aora' and the deeply tense grindhouse resonances of the aptly named 'Hebust Cometh'. Wicked and bad.
OrlandO Et La Tempete Viral SymphOny Redux (15:53)
OrlandO ShOegazer Strides TOwards FiascO (7:30)
Rampage At The CapitOl OrlandO Viral Tempest (1:55)
SlOw OrlandO Et La Tempete Viral SymphOny Redux (8:42)
OrlandO UndOne By ScOrnful DOg Star (11:33)
Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu Viral SymphOny Plague (GrOundless StOrm) (4:37)
Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu Viral SymphOny Plague (Tempete De Merde) (2:42)
Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu Viral SymphOny Plague (La Nausee) (3:29)
Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu Viral SymphOny Plague (WOrld Whirlwind) (1:48)
Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu Viral SymphOny Plague (COsmic DOOr) (3:37)
Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu Viral SymphOny Plague (Weep NO MOre) (3:54)
Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu Viral SymphOny Plague (HerOic COjOnes) (11:44)
Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu Viral SymphOny Plague (Ars LOnga Vita Brevis) (13:11)
Review: Pentiments continues its work spotlighting post-conceptual artist and writer Joseph Nechvatal. They have already dropped a retrospective Selected Sound Works album that spans 1981-2002 and now comes a companion across two slabs of wax that focus on more recent audio works. This is in cahoots with Andrew Deutsch and it makes use of anonymous reading of Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando' as an anchor point around which the "virus-modelled artificial life audio material" from Nechvatal's 2006 piece viral symphOny: the enthrOning is reanimated. The second then uses a rather controversial record performance of Antonin Artaud's radio play To Have Done with the Judgement of God which the artist takes apart and reweaves into something radically new.
Review: Istanbul born, Berlin and Copenhagen based artist Nene H (real name Beste Aydin) had amassed a hardcore following for her slew of early releases. She then finally came good on all her promise with a debut album that blended bass, techno and plenty of her own cultural heritage. Ali arrived in 2021 but only now lands on wax via Incienso. It's an album that processes personal grief and mourning with melancholic melodies, moody grooves and introspective soundscapes that allow for deep thought processing. At times psyched out, at others manic, and always alluring, it's a real triumph.
Review: Since its release way back in 1968, The Perfumed Garden has become a much-discussed cult classic. It's certainly a unique offering, with the whole thing built around Indian vocalist and poet Chitra Neogy's sultry and expressive spoken word interpretation of a centuries-old erotic text that has been likened to the better-known Karma-Sutra. Neogy's spoken word vocals, which often come drenched in reverb, are simply sublime, with some tracks consisting merely of these inspired readings. Where the album really comes alive, though, is when her words are given musical accompaniment - think sitar, tabla, strings and more - from an ensemble of experienced Indian musicians. An oddball gem that's well worth further investigation.
Review: Legendary kraut and prog rock duo NEU! aka Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger make the 50th anniversary of their self titled debut album with a special reissue all formats. This limited edition picture disc format is one for the collectors for sure. The music still sounds fresh with its mix of heady ambient and lazy grooves, driving motor kicks and psyched out sounds all making for perfectly immersive listening. Weird and wonderful and unbelievably avant garde for 1972, it remains one of the most impressive debut albums of the era.
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