Back catalogue: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: On Aurelia, shoegaze duo Deary show their evolution since their 2023 debut, embracing a more collaborative approach that results in a richer, more cohesive sound. The EP's six tracks, including singles like 'The Moth' and 'Selene', reveal a newfound maturity in both production and songwriting. With Slowdive's Simon Scott lending his drumming talents and mastering expertise, the record blends influences from classic styled shoegaze bands mixing with the duo's distinct dream-pop sensibilities. Tracks like 'The Drift' bristle with urgency, while 'Dream Of Me' dips into trip-hop, evoking Portishead. Lyrically, Aurelia explores themes of transformation, reflecting the band's personal and artistic growth, making it a striking follow-up to their debut.

Review: Gunter Stoppel, founder and owner of Equinox Records, takes us on a wild trip into all forms of beat making on The Artless Cuckoo Vol. II, which arrives eight years after the still revered first volume. Ambient, downtempo, psychedelic soul, trap, boom bap and plenty more all feature and showcase his many talents, as well as how the hip hop genre at large has grown and evolved in the years since its companion LP came out. The record is released in a very limited quantity of 100 hand numbered copies and arrives on new label Further Down The Line, founded by John Raincoatman and Aaron Thomason.

Review: Carrying the torch for bittersweet post-punk introspection like few others of her generation, Carla dal Forno has always captivated through the strength of her songwriting. That she also successfully channels the sound of the DIY 1980s is a bonus. On her third album, dal Forno has settled in rural Australia and the album reflects a drastic shift in her circumstances since being in the cut and thrust of Berlin and London. There's space for more open, light-touch songs to match the brooding, low-register tracks she made her name on. But in essence, dal Forno remains true to her muse, meaning returning fans will be more than satisfied with the latest step on for one of the finest singer-songwriters in contemporary post-punk.

Review: Dead Sound is collaborative project featuring Marco Sterk (aka Young Marco) and Berlin-based pop-auteur John Moods, two artists with existing links to the Music From Memory label, Sterk being part of the trio Gaussian Curve and Moods released the 2022 album Hidden Gem with The Zenmenn. The eight tracks here are delicate and atmosphere-laden, drawing on everything from reverb-soaked, harmonic folk - 'Eye In Disguise' - to the Geiger counter rhythm and low-in-the-mix mutters of 'Force of Nature', like an understated Throbbing Gristle if such a thing could be imagined. If you enjoyed Trentemoller's recent reinvention of shoegaze, Scandi synthpop and post-punk on Dreamweaver, then this will be well up your street.

Review: With 2021's Infinite Granite taking a sharp left turn into the realms of hazy, luscious dream-pop, eyes have been pointedly fixed on San Francisco blackgaze heroes Deafheaven ever since, with many of their fanbase pondering where to next? The answer is their highly anticipated sixth full-length, Lonely People With Power, which finally showcases the band freed from all creative restraint and audience expectation, marrying their equal and effortless understanding of black metal malevolence and shoegaze ethereality, even allowing frontman George Clarke to make full use of his recently discovered vocal range. Howling shrieks and delicate crooning weave around one another on the euphoric heft of 'Heathen', whereas 'Magnolia' offers up one of their most succinctly black metal cuts to date, radiating with the caustic aura of Emperor's more proggy latter-day output. Forgoing their usual post-rock penchant for a small number of tracks all clocking in at approximately ten minutes, the numerous cuts (12 in all, marking the most of any Deafheaven album to date) prioritise instantaneous delivery on their most sprawling and musically diverse collection yet, fusing their harshest and most accessible sonics into one monumental victory lap touching upon everything from black metal to shoegaze, dream-pop, thrash, post-rock, emo, screamo and post-punk.

Review: Deepspace's 'Neon Blue Utopia' is the 16th album from the Brisbane-based artist is a heady brew of ambient electronica, spacewave and post-rock, conjuring a dreamlike world like a cyberpunk film score filtered through a kaleidoscope. 'Utopia=Visions' sets the tone with its expansive soundscapes and shimmering textures, evoking a sense of awe and wonder. Tracks like 'Parkour on Lazarus Heights' and 'Rainy... Precinct' paint a vivid picture of this futuristic metropolis, with their pulsating rhythms and otherworldly sounds capturing the city's vibrant energy and neon-lit glow. 'Entering Aquarium Prefecture' and 'Bubble Echolalia District' delve into the surreal, their off-kilter rhythms and disorienting soundscapes suggesting a world where reality is fluid and dreams are tangible. The album's second half continues the exploration, venturing into darker and more experimental territories. 'Floor 426-B' and 'Empty Office Space' hint at the city's hidden depths and the lurking shadows beneath its gleaming facade. A proper journey through a world of sonic imagination, this is an immersive and evocative soundscape-fest.

Review: Scottish electronic oddity Murray Collier returns on his own Real Landscape imprint - the sole preserve of this production alias - for a self-titled outing. His fifth release under the moniker certainly confirms what we already knew; this project is the work of a musical auteur, and is every bit as unique to the talent behind it as the label and EP name. Attempting to describe what's here isn't easy, then. 'The Conversation' uses mechanically precise percussion to lay out its otherworldly groove. 'Thin Ayrshire' goes lo fi and psychedelic, a track that sounds almost like a rural ritual being performed by a lost humanoid species. 'I'll Get To Hiding' is delightfully lackadaisical in vibe, strutting, shuffling, and stepping its way through what could be categorised as pop-r&b fed through the weird machine, and even that wouldn't come close.

Review: The Great Regression is a new 10-track long player from Brighton five-piece Ditz. They only came together back in 2015 and soon launched their first EP before undergoing a number of changes of line-up. Before that they had already established themselves with fine singles like 'Gayboy', 'Total 90' and a cover of Peaches' 'Fuck The Pain Away' and now back that up here with abrasive but accessible sounds. Steve Lamacq on BBC Radio 6 Music is a big fan and with social commentary as good as it is on 'Ded Wurst', so are we.

Review: The Durutti Column prove just how fertile the North West England music scene was during the mid-late-1970s and through the 1980s. Taking their name from an anarchist military movement active during the Spanish Civil War, the band was formed by Vini Reilly, who brought together a bunch of players from the nascent punk and post punk scene, and managed to turn heads in the process. One of which was Tony Wilson. One of the first acts to sign to his now-legendary Factory Records, they would remain on the imprint until its demise, by which time the project had become a solo thing for Reilly, whose name was already shorthand for risk taking with bold ideas. Take this record, for example, veering from Southern Mediterranean folk to experimental indie, sample-based rock-opera and more, it still defies expectations.

Review: "People have described their music as ambient, although that's a description they don't care much for. It's certainly atmospheric and there's something about their sunny-sounding guitar that seemed appropriate to a book that, although published in 1927, didn't become popular in America until the 1960s."
So says writer and director Gerard McInulty about The Durutti Column, the group he drafted for the soundtrack to his 12 Stars group production of Treatise On The Steppenwolf, first staged in Glasgow in 2003. This is what that sounds like - call it what you like, essentially it's just beautiful music to captivate and enthral, without insisting on itself - and you also get an additional trio of extended movements that were used to score the Human Avatars art installation at MOSI, Manchester, in 2005. Ace all round.