Like most (all?) of Sly & the Family Drone’s output for me, Walk It Dry is far beyond words. (cue more words…) It batters. It’s relentless. It can be heavy as fuck (heavier than most). And it can convey a quiet stiletto sense of dread.I put this on to wake me up.I put this on…
Is it me, or is this a bit creepy? Title track aside, this album consists of the six-part Loftopus, a 31-minute suite that begins minimal, gets gradually less so, layers accreting upon layers, threatening by the end to become almost lush but in reality is more like a sonic quicksand, gently but inexorably drawing you…
An otherworldly set of tunes channelling a loosely-assembled freak-jazz vibe. A broken-noir soundtrack, oddly disturbing and full of disintegrating ennui. An avant blues-jazz kaleidoscope; each crystal facet inevitably evolving into the unexpected. The piano scaffolding of Fixed, embracing a landscape out of phase, shifting, blurring, with no secure or predictable footing. The empty, damp streets…
So, in the spirit of been there, done it, got the t-shirt, I was fortunate enough to see one of Phicus’ early live performances* (maybe even the first – ooh!). And much as I like their recordings to date, it’s this one that best approximates the rush, the energy, the feeling of waves and eddies…
This recent release on the RVNG Intl label finds Colombian-born sound artist Dalt, now residing in Berlin, taking you on a journey to a sonic world that doesn’t really sound like anything that is out there these days. A delicate balance between ambient, avant garde and low key electronica, her seventh album sounds like the…
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…
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…
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,…
