Partisan レコード& CD

Review: Folktronic singer-songwriter Beth Orton turns her focus inwards on her new album 'Weather Alive', manifesting a pathetically fallacious sound drawing on the natural environment and the use of a secondhand piano bought thriftily in Camden Market. Spring-boarding from the ambient, spoken word acoustic textures of her earlier projects, which used guitar and extensive production, this album is pure upright piano and voice. Just like Orton's righteous flight from London, this is cloud-floating music for nomads.

Review: Sun's Signature is one of the many diasporic offshoots of the dream pop world trailblazed by the Cocteau Twins and bands like them. The collaborative project of the Twins' Elizabeth Fraser and Bunnymen/Spiritualized percussionist Damon Reece, the duo's debut EP - now reissued on vinyl a year after its digital debut on Partisan - came as a unique curveball for either artist. Five tracks of distinctive chamber pop whirl away on the hi-fi, playing out in a midst of synaesthetically yellow-tinged dream haze, with forensic traces of trip-hop and film music to boot. Afraid netiher of folk harmonies nor huge-roomed drum workouts, the likes of 'Apples', 'Bluedusk' and 'Make Lovely The Day' are sure to go down as enduring additions to the dream pop continuum.

Review: Sun's Signature debuted in 2022 as the collaborative project of Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser and former Bunnyman Damon Reece, who together had made an effortlessly godly five-track opus of the same name. Fraser and Reece are both musical and life partners, and on this masterwork, we hear the enduring swells of love play out in both detail and abstraction. The likes of 'Underwater', 'Bluedusk' and 'Apples' came as satisfying follow-ups for fans of either, or both, artists' careers, being smoke-filled, impressionist songs made up of impeccable recordings and exquisite multi-instrumental playing. This expanded edition is a limited CD version, containing further electronic remixes by six esteemed reworkers and soundtrack artists, including CUTS, Hinako Omori, Will Gregory and LUMP.