Tag Archives: Drone

Digitalis

21 Jul

Since we covered Sanstro Xtro’s Fountain Fountain Joyous Mountain back in February it appears that the folks at Digitalis have been busy. The last few months have seen Brad Rose’s Tulsa-based stable positively brim with beautifully textured, subtly enveloping releases, and there’s not been a dud amongst them. It’s fair to say that if the label were a tortured metaphor, it would be a cup literally overflowing with sonic treats. Anyhow, rather than cover each album individually like the diligent scribes we wish we were, it seems apt (and far easier) to just post some of our favourites.

So what better place to start than with Rose himself? He’s just put out a second record in three months under his Charlatan moniker and it’s another beauty, picking up from where the glacial Voyagers left off. Amongst the delicate pulses and woven electronic textures, the opening track, Lime Beauty, stands out, purring and chugging its way through a dream-like ten minutes of coruscating synths and reverb drenched drum machines.

Not content with running a label and several musical projects, Rose has also had a hand in the remastering and reissue of Jurgen Mueller’s 1982 release, Science of the Sea, a record which, in it’s paean to all things aqueous, presages an awful lot of ambient and experimental electronic music from the past three decades.

Vacillating between past, present and future in both sound and name, Motion Sickness of Time Travel’s latest set has caused quite a stir with us. Following up on her brilliant debut, Seeping Through the Veil of the Unconscious, Rachel Evans’ new record is a powerfully hypnotic affair, embracing hushed Liz Harris-esque vocals and woozy synth washes to create a seductive, ether-haze aesthetic. Check out the eerily gorgeous video for standout track, Day Glow, as well as the whole album, below.

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Image is by Carla Fernandez Andrade

Jewel in Denial

5 Jul

Shit, remember Jewel of the Nile? The long-awaited (alright, it came out a year after the original, but the prefix sounds good) sequel to the box office smash hit (ok, it made a bit of money but wasn’t huge) Romancing the Stone? With the scintillating on-screen partnership (fair enough, watching them kiss was like seeing puppies get crushed by logs hurtling downstream in a flash flood) of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner? YEAH?! Well, the name of this band/guy/artist/musician is a jewel as well! MENTAL.

It’s good though. Really good. Proggy and psychedelic and hypnagogic and forceful and meandering and intense and utterly unique and original whilst constantly referring back to and referencing and suggesting things you’ve heard a million times like 80s cop thrillers and budget sci-fi movies and that  kind of overblown psych-rock-jazz-fusion that you possibly hate cos your lame uncle (the one who lives in Tunbridge Wells and has a beard and African masks on his wall but always votes Tory and you always know that politics is going to come up at Christmas dinner and you hate it but you see it coming a mile away and still there’s nothing you can do about it) likes but that’s kind of what makes it great. Hippies wearing Ralph Lauren chinos and tin foil helmets and neon lycra sweatshirts and doing the robot dance to visuals by the combined psyches of Vangelis, Brian Eno and Eric Clapton. Argh, I don’t know what to think any more. And that is good.

Here are my two probable faves off their new album so far:

Noveller

28 Jun

A year or so ago when I went to see Parts & Labor at Corsica Studios I was pleasantly surprised by the arrival of a new band member. Partly because this new member enriched the already awesome set with an added layer of swirling, jarring, distorting effect loops, but primarily because she was really fit and played her guitar like she was masturbating aggressively. Recently I discovered that she’d since been pursuing a solo career and has put together a couple of EPs of equally gorgeous and disturbing drones and I was happy about this, because she’s great.

Sarah Lipstate: Swoon.

If you’d like to hear what she does you can catch her on Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/noveller

Buy her new EP here:

http://boomkat.com/cds/223875-noveller-red-rainbows

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