Oct 22 2020 October 22, 2020 October 22, 2020 NoComment by Dave Foxall

Cyrino, Iwao, Koole & Scarassatti – Disputa e Guerra no Terreiro de Roça de Casa de Avó

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Scratching, scraping, pecking… noises creep in, noises scurry out… …paranoia, stubbornness, tentative ire, a tense dialogue, a semi-declared insouciance. A machine expressed in sound – a marvellous clockwork noise-making mechanism equipped with instrumental innards; all loose and rattling in the right places. The sound of a factory staffed by mice. A documentary of miniature fantasti-fictional…

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Sep 29 2020 September 29, 2020 October 8, 2020 NoComment by Dave Foxall

Tàlveg – Arbori

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This is exploratory music. Not in the clichéd review sense of three musicians striking out for new territories (oh, those brave, brave musicians!), no. More a case of an audio environment for us, the listeners, to explore. These guys know exactly where they are and what they’re doing – they know the architecture and ambience…

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Sep 17 2020 September 17, 2020 October 1, 2020 NoComment by Dave Foxall

Karin Johansson & Lisen Rylander Löve – Arter

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More of this kind of thing! When the (apparently) primary instruments in a duo are piano and tenor saxophone, you expect tracks like Blåkråka and Blodrostmossa: freely-improvised interplay between familiar sounds (though even these have a different kilter to the usual free improv fare). And if Johansson and Rylander Löve had stuck to that palette,…

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Jul 30 2020 July 30, 2020 July 30, 2020 NoComment by Dave Foxall

On Dog – Dielectric

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On this third release, On Dog’s compositional approach is salted with improvisation and the sound palette adds synthesizers and electronic textures to create eleven tracks of utter individuality – one second pure ebullience, the next complex sorrow, the next bobbing for past references to turn inside out… On Stray Dogs I, Bon’s flute saunters, whimsically…

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Jul 28 2020 July 28, 2020 July 28, 2020 NoComment by Anthony Osborne

Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit – Axis/Another Revolvable Thing

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Masayuki Takayanagi New Directions Unit Axis/Another Revolvable Thing Blank Forms Editions 2xCD, LPs This is the second of Blank Forms’ rather wonderful Masayuki Takayanagi reissues, following on from their release of the epochal ‘April Is the Cruellest Month’. Available on both CD and vinyl, the CD version of the album assembles, for the first time…

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Jul 08 2020 July 8, 2020 July 8, 2020 NoComment by Dave Foxall

Francesca Naibo – Namatoulee

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It starts with a cry, a gentle howl… a void, as all the air pours out of the universe. Unfurling like an alien flower emerging from an egg, an elegant and unknown bloom, a couple of minutes in and the opener Mae Lougon could introduce Kubrick’s 2001. Peering into that abyss, what you see is…

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Jul 01 2020 July 1, 2020 July 9, 2020 NoComment by Dave Foxall

Cath Roberts & Alex Bonney – Live at HYG

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OEM are putting out some great live recordings, recently. Put this one in the same bracket as the trio of Arch One performances released at the end of April. Like those, this set from the Hundred Years Gallery is concise (half an hour is enough time for shape and statement to emerge, but still succinct),…

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Jun 29 2020 June 29, 2020 July 9, 2020 NoComment by Samuel Goff

Grey Wulf – S e e i n g, Vol. 1

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How best to approach a review of a new album by Abdul-Hakim Bilal? For any other reviewer facing this conundrum of how best to tackle a musician and composer with as many guises and musical shapeshifting aliases as Bilal could be intimidating. For this reviewer, someone who knows Bilal and has bled, cried, toured and…

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