Seance Centre Canada レコード& CD

Review: Third time around for Beverly Glenn-Copeland's superb 1986 LP Keyboard Fantasies, which Invisible City Editions reissued last year. Since copies of that pressing are hard to come back, this fresh reissue should be welcomed. Musically, it's something of a killer curio: a set that sees Copeland adding weary, folksy vocals to melodious, synthesizer-based backing tracks. Stylistically it's a little more diverse than that, sitting somewhere between art-rock, lo-fi synth-soul, '80s synth-wave and new age ambience. The looseness of the instrumentation and production is particularly alluring, as is the "home-made" feel of Glenn-Copeland's heart-aching songs.

Review: Ontario, Canada based Seance Centre returns with a collection of songs by Californian voice artist and poet MJ Lallo. The works on this double LP compilation were all recorded in her home studio between 1982 and 1997, where she used digital processing techniques to create harmonising mantras layered with drum machine rhythms. Although Lallo's flight path is distinctly her own, her journey converges with other travellers as diverse as Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Stereolab, William Aura, Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Gertrude Stein and even Terry Gilliam - whose film Brazil was a big influence on her.

Review: Philip Sanderson is an electronic musician from the UK that has been producing since 1977 and the founder of Snatch Tapes. Presented by Canadian retroverts Seance Centre, On One Of These Bends is a collection of unreleased songs, soundtrack work and obscure cassette-only pieces from the 80's which reflect Sanderson's shift in focus from DIY electronics to film scoring. By the end of the decade, he was making short experimental 8mm films himself and itt was a departure from the industrial music he had been making with his group Storm Bugs, having more in common with Nino Rota and Henry Mancini, albeit as seen through a DIY lens.