Issue 100 / 20 March 2026
The essential DIY electronic music lowdown: Track Of The Week: Lorelle Meets The Obsolete + Album Of The Week: The Leaf Library + Xylitol + The Eyes And The Mistoids + Caminauta + more...
So you know that last week I said we were busy lining up live session downloads for paid subscribers? Well, the first one has landed.
Moonbuilding Weekly is entirely free and will remain that way. The idea has always been to expose DIY artists and labels to the biggest audience possible. It currently goes out to 1,800+ people, which is great. But free subs don’t pay the bills. People who take out paid subscriptions due to pure kindness, they pay the bills. So we wanted to do something for them.
Yesterday our paying subs took delivery of the showstopping 40-minute ‘Live From Moonbuilding HQ’ session by the brilliant Field Lines Cartographer (thanks Mark for letting us use it, you’re the best). We’ll have a new session each month and we’re working on some other tempting audio delights too. Don’t miss out, subscribe today. Your welcome email contains instructions on nabbing the Moonbuilding Session download.
Rob Fitzpatrick is back on the beat this week and he’s casting his well-tuned ears over our Album Of The Week. I’m really enjoying having other people write for the newsletter. It’s buying me time to do other things, like line up live sessions!
As you may have also noticed, this issue is a bit of a milestone what with it being our 100th issue. We’ve done a few more than 100 as in the early days the newsletter came in two parts, which we called a) and b). But who’s counting? It says 100 up there so 100 it is. We should’ve celebrated somehow, right? Anyone got any good ideas? How about I see you all down the pub later?
Righto, that’s me then. Happy reading.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 100 Playlist: Listen
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LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE ‘Progreso’ (Sonic Cathedral)
Photo: Amani
We love a bit of Mexican duo Lorelle Meets The Obsolete here at Moonbuilding HQ. The Jagz Kooner remix of their ‘Regresar / Recordar’ single from last year, the original of which was the opening cut on their excellent ‘Corporal’ album, was our Track Of The Year. So yeah, we like a bit of these two.
Coming as a limited edition neon violet 12-inch, their new ‘Corporeal’ EP features said Jagz remix on wax for the first time. Which is reason enough to cough up. New track ‘Progreso’ is another reason to part with your hard-earned. The EP is heading our way because Lorelle Meets The Obsolete are too. You see, 1 May is the first date on their extensive UK/EU tour, which opens up at at the Fuzz Club Festival in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands if you weren’t sure. I wasn’t. Had to look it up.
It is one heck of a tour that runs for almost the whole of May. After Eindhoven, there’s 14 UK dates, back to back. Their first day off is 18 May! That is hardcore touring. By the time they hit Rich Mix in London 13 May they will be a well oiled, finely tuned live machine. Can’t wait. Their day off sees them flit from the UK to Europe with dates in France, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Phew. Followed by a long rest I’d imagine.
The new EP features four cuts, two brand-new tracks that pick up on the themes and mood of the album. There’s the abrasive, dirty “dystopian bar rock” of ‘Producción = Destrucción’ and our Track Of The Week, ‘Progreso’. And then there’s that storming Jagz remix and a remix of ‘Control’ by Swedish producer Mythologen that comes on like Depeche Mode at their darkest.
‘Progreso’ is a cracker, very Lorelle Meets The Obsolete. It drifts beautifully for the first two and half minutes, a pleasingly growly bassline with perky melody picking its way over the top before Lorena’s dreamy vocal arrives. You can feel it building, growing, and boy does it deliver when those drums appear a minute from the end.
“This is one of my favourites,” says the band’s Alberto González. “I love that the drums only last a bit. We’ve tried to have this mood before in our discography, but we never succeeded until this time.”
They very much have succeeded.
The ‘Corporeal’ EP is released by Sonic Cathedral on 1 May. For more Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, including tour tickets, head to linktr.ee/lmto
THE LEAF LIBRARY ‘After The Rain, Strange Seeds’ (Fika)
Words: ROB FITZPATRICK
About 10 years ago, I was walking through Soho when I happened to stop and actually pay some attention to what was displayed in the window of the Sounds Of The Universe record shop: James Brown and Van Morrison, John Coltrane and Fela Kuti, Lee Perry and Radiohead. I was struck at the time by how many of these records were the same longed-for items I’d cherished, picked over, listened to, and sold 20 years beforehand in the record shop I’d worked in, back when SotU was still Soul Jazz, a small corner store on Ingestre Place where I’d pick through cut-outs and imports.
Perhaps, I imagined, that when I really looked, rather than just glanced as I wandered past, there’d be mainly new things in the window? Perhaps I hoped there would be? Perhaps I’d just never really considered The Continuum previously? For, on one hand, there is an argument that there are no separate eras in our collective existence, never mind just the music we react to emotionally.
Those classic records are as alive and as powerful right now as they were in 1968 or 1971 or 1995. These particular sounds from the universe all help to highlight the smooth fabric of time itself – somewhere, an ever-lasting creative conversation is taking place between those open enough to hear it. On the other hand, the sheer weight of increasingly valuable IP in the world’s music catalogues means we live in a time saturated by the old and the proven, a place where the new can struggle to be heard.
It is befitting, then, of a record that aims to explore the twin grand themes of memory and place that The Leaf Library’s striking new album reminds me of both. However, and this is another great part of how music is magic, my memories are entirely different to theirs.
Londoners Kate Gibson and Matt Ashton are 11 years into the story of TLL now and ‘After The Rain, Strange Seeds’ is album four. Guitars thrum and thrash melodically, vintage keyboards hum and sigh, wheeze and drone, drums swing between motorik precision and blissful, cymbalic free-flow and Gibson’s double-tracked voice floats like a cool haze above it all.
I feel like I know these people, even though I don’t. In fact, I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever so much as seen a picture of The Leaf Library before, but in an earlier age they’d be wrapped in stripy t-shirts and sport impressively swishy fringes. I’ve just looked and they don’t – but that’s because it’s not 1994 anymore.
Despite that, echoes of the past are all over this record, because some things are just so good we’ll never let them go. And nor should we. Some ways of putting sounds together are so potent they propel us into another space entirely. With this in mind, I can only applaud how ‘Still Moving’ is so Stereolab. I immediately felt like I was back at The Sausage Machine in Hampstead. This is a pure and unashamed blast of drone-pop heaven that will grab and delight you, because not only is it done so perfectly, but the idea itself is so rich with possibilities you hope 50 other bands write something just like it.
Not for nothing was the album mixed by Tortoise’s John McEntire, someone whose work with both the mighty ‘Lab and Yo La Tengo has so helped define the parameters of where these sounds can thrive. Consequently, it’s also a big Yes to ‘Catch Up, Isobel’, a piece which balances weight and weightlessness so effortlessly it transported me back to hearing Pale Saints’ ‘In Ribbons’ album for the first, glorious time (32 years ago, fact fans!). I can only thank TLL for that. Interestingly (perhaps only for me, but I like this sort of thing), the press release suggests this track shows the band “reconnecting with their jangly guitar roots, after a few years of trying to distance themselves from the indiepop tag”. Well, I’d say they’ve nailed that desire.
But there’s so much more sonic space covered. ‘Carry A River In Your Mouth’ pulls and pushes with the aura of Anne Briggs weaving in and out of a Robert Kirby string arrangement, while ‘The Reader’s Lamp’, still rich with strings, is a soft burst of ever-shifting hooks and melodies, like The Beach Boys multiplied by The Go-Betweens.
It’s entirely appropriate that an album that so alerts us to those themes of memory and place closes with a track called ‘There Was Always A Golden Age’. It’s a song that draws on electronica, dub, space-rock, and both sunshine-pop and chamber-pop, then deftly ascends into this glowing, smoky-folk figure. In Ye Olden Dayes this sort of thing used to be called record collection rock, but everyone has access to everything now and, frankly, we’re better off for it.
All these beautiful forms are there to be explored, examined, and played with however you see fit. There’s no time limit on a good idea, so go nuts everyone.
Got something you need to tell us about? email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
XYLITOL ‘Blumefantasise’ (Planet Mu)
Hold tight, I’ve got things to say about Xylitol, who we’re big fans of here at Moonbuilding HQ. This is the second long-player for Planet Mu from the rather skilled Catherine Blackhouse and with it her work makes another shift, and takes another stride forwards, more of which shortly.
We featured the first track to be taken from this album, ‘Falling’, as our Track Of The Week a little while back. As I said then, her work tugs on the retro coattails, taking me back to my days revelling in jungle/drum ’n’ bass in the mid/late 90s. What Catherine does is take those breakbeat roots and work in a very now-sounding brew of drones, swirls, and the like around them.
It’s all rather beautiful. There’s a track called ‘Melancholia’ where you can hear this clash… no, it’s not a clash, that would imply something abrasive and it’s not at all like that. It’s a meeting, a melding, a melting of ideas. The track starts with simple chords, like a breeze blowing in, something that catches the the curtains on a spring day. The beats sit low in the mix until a glorious sub bass kicks in at around the minute mark. All the while those waves of sound swirl like smoke. There’s a couple of short sketches, ‘Tilted Arc’ and ‘Halo’, which are both delicate whisps of sound, the sort of thing that underpins these recordings, but in their purest form, acting almost like breathers in the set.
On top of Catherine’s obvious skill, there are a couple of other big pointers as to the quality of this release. I seem to say this over and over, but good people always know good people. The collaborations here are spot on. The opening track, ‘Chromophoria’, was originally by Sculpture’s Dan Hayhurst and remixed and produced into a new shape here by Catherine. The accompanying notes describe the track as “pulling whirling eddies of musique concrete into a slice of sublime aquatic jungle”. You can hear that Sculpture wonk and how Catherine’s input acts like scaffolding around it.
Even more interesting, and it’s almost like we plan these things, but ‘Bowed Clusters’ was written by The Leaf Library’s Matthew Ashton and again remixed and produced by Catherine. The notes describe it as pulling his “radiophonic folksong into a dark and disorientating breakbeat workout equally indebted to Source Direct as to Broadcast”. Big talk right there. But it is really great, an almost siren synthline rings out over and over as Catherine gets to work with some beautifully funky drums around it. The bassline is sublime, the ethereal vocals are a real treat. I love the chaotic ending as everything tries to slip away, but seems to hang on, with rewinds, fades, slurs, the lot.
I think the real thrill here, for an old drum ‘n’ bass head like me at least, is how meticulous Catherine is with her beats, they are spot on, there’s such a groove on show throughout. ‘Melancholia’ really kicks. I love the shimmer synth she has running around the beats there too.
There are further influences on show aside from the jungle breaks though. She talks about garage and kosmische and “elements of early central and eastern European electro”. She specifically mentions Sarajevo-born Belgian-based Mia Prce who works as minimal synth composer Miaux. She calls her “a kindred spirit in terms of her directness and melancholy, as well as her lightness of touch” going on to say she is the “single biggest inspiration in the shift between ‘Anemones’ and ‘Blumenfantasie’.”
Which is interesting. Miaux’s work is really great, but it’s about as far from drum ’n’ bass as you can get. She was “reared on a psychedelic diet of Krautrock and similarly serpentine music by her artist parents”, which is where the parallels can be drawn. Do check out Mia’s work, it’s here.
“I think the shift of mood and palette is quite apparent,” says Catherine, “even if our music is very different in how it presents.” You can hear the influence throughout, in the sounds, the swirls, the synthlines, but it’s most clear in ‘Mirjana’, which features a drum break from Amon Duul II’s ‘Archangel’s Thunderbird’. The beats get slowed right down, everything slows down in fact with the track taking a rare dip below 160bpm.
This is a record that totally resonates with me. Love it. I’d even go as far to say it’s a pretty strong Album Of The Year contender. It’s on the list that is for sure.
GOOD STUFF #2
THE EYES AND THE MISTOIDS ‘The Beware Gallery’ (Waxing Crescent)
I do seem to be increasingly writing about Phil Dodd’s Waxing Crescent label and for good reason. He’s been hitting it out of the park with his recent releases. Phil tends to deal in the quirkier end of things, with work that demands to be listened to. I mean, you’re not going to sticking a lot of this stuff on as background music for your next dinner party, but you know.
That said, The Eyes And The Mistoids do make this kind of infectious jazz that I would be quite happy smoking after-dinner cigars to, if I did such things. Which I don’t.
We’ve covered The Eyes And The Mistoids before. He’s something of a mainstay at Waxing Crescent. It’s the work of Lancashire’s Stuart Smythe who employs a modular set up to underpin his rather funky piano jams. His last album, ‘Luna Terra Sol’ from April 2025 was mastered by one Stephen James Buckley, as is this outing, which tells you much. We talked about that last release being “melodically lovely” going on to say that “the modular backing tracks sound great, full of weird wonks and electrical-powered grooves”.
‘The Beware Gallery’ operates much along the same lines. The opening track, ‘Moist Frangipane And Instantaneous Coffee’ really sets up the mood. That growling piano lick, running the same four bassy notes round and round, really reminds me of Vince Guaraldi, whose music I love. He’s the guy who did all the music for the Charlie Brown cartoons. The lovely ‘Rhizome Zone’ is very much along these lines too, almost like it’s from some 1950s musical, while ‘Prelude For The Planets’ sees Stuart and his piano going it alone and coming on like Rachmaninov. He is a very decent player it has to be said. There’s a track at the end called ‘85 Hour Experimental Film’ that comes in a “Director’s Cut” seven-minute plus version, which is mesmerising.
On these tracks, the piano leads, but Stuart is equally capable of turning in snarling modular beauties like ‘The Future Of Steam’ that really builds to a forceful crescendo. I really like the slow bass rumble that sits underneath the gentle piano that sets up shop on ‘Snails That Failed’. It’s like there’s something sinister in the background just waiting to escape. And indeed there is when at around the one minute mark the whole track just erupts.
This is, once again from The Eyes And The Mistoids, refreshingly great stuff.
waxingcrescentrecords.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #3
CAMINAUTA ‘Unseen Dimensions’ (Wayside & Woodland)
Let’s dial things down a little with this beauty from Wayside & Woodland. There’s a great press shot that comes with this. It features “south American field recording sonic textualist” Caminauta in the wild. She’s sat by a tree, with a laptop on a stand and one of those audio controller pads next to her. What else do you need to know, eh? Well, the label describe her work as “organic, kosmische nature-core” and say it is “a tonic for these times”. It is seriously lovely.
She presents some extensive notes with the release, which are worth taking in. She talks about how she left her hometown in Uruguay to live in “an old summer house in an isolated retirement community located on the coast at the Brazilian border” between 2020 and 2024. It’s a path she chose “in order to immerse myself and fully continue my life as a music composer and sound artist”.
I have questions… “isolated retirement community”? Take another look at that press shot. She is not, even remotely, retirement material so what gives? “In this old house by the sea,” she writes, “I spent countless nights writing music huddled in the dark and the cold. Feelings of uncertainty often plagued me, and thoughts of doubt and despair loomed over me at times”. Questions? Oh yes. It sounds, well, not very nice. It sounds monastic. Without the monks.
On a more positive note, she does say that “despite everything my passion kept me going, kept me searching for myself” and that it’s all “been a process of transformation”. Which is all good. She talks about how living like that has “opened to me a path of finding my voice through the nature of things”. Long walks, birds, the wind in her face, all that. “It gives me a feeling as though time has stopped,” she says. “It feels atemporal, nostalgic, but it also gives me a strong sensation telling me to embrace my artistic ambitions”. Whatever it takes for the muse to strike I guess. My muse lives in a snug office with a sofa and Tesco quite nearby.
You’d say that the results here are maybe worth the investment as ‘Unseen Dimensions’ is, as I said, seriously lovely. It reminds me of the cloud collecting/Echoes Blue compilation ‘Gentle Voices’ from the other week. Caminauta would be well at home with the work on that collection.
The sparkling ‘Flow Like A River’ glistens like water in the sunshine. It’s funny, even without knowing the title you can hear the water somehow. There are several tracks like that. ‘The Night Listens To You’ finds spooky guitar twangs like something Lynchian lurking in the ‘Twin Peaks’ woods and ‘Dusk Veil’ shivers with the onset of the dark. There’s great lightness here too. ‘The Peace Of The Wild Things’ shimmers with light, a delicate guitar line being picked out over warm synth drones. There’s a lot of guitar here, picking, twanging, tumbling. It’s especially good on closer, ‘Your Face In The Reflection Of The Lake feat Stella Cartographer’ (Field Lines’ cousin?) where you can hear the strings scratching under fingers as they slide up and down frets. It’s very peaceful. Which is surprising when you consider the apparent discomfort in the making of.
It’s such an interesting record, musically the quality shines through and it also happens to be rather thought provoking too. What would you do for your art?
waysideandwoodlandrecordings.bandcamp.com
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THE ROUND UP’S ROUND UP
Another month, another quiet details release. How Alex keeps these things coming I don’t know, he says, sat writing another weekly newsletter that’s rapidly heading for the 5,000 words mark. People say, ‘How he keeps these things coming I don’t know’. It’s just what we do I guess, right Alex? The latest qd offering, which is number 47, comes from Laurie Osborne’s Appleblim, which I’ve always thought is a great name. Laurie has form, along with Sam Shackleton he founded the Bristol-based dubstep label Skull Disco. As an aside, Zeke Clough was the label’s go-to illustrator/designer. His artwork graces many a DIY release these days, especially CiS releases. ‘Liminal Tides’ is Appleblim in ambient mode, of course. Alex at qd calls him “a true stalwart of the underground” and describes the album as “a vast and kaleidoscopic trip through psychedelic dubwise exploration”. As the days really begin to draw out and we’re enjoying unseasonably nice temperatures, this is the perfect soundtrack for open windows. Those deep bass shimmers, the synthy judders, the shivery washes of rich sound. He pulls out all the tricks here. I love the gentle almost dubby breaks on ‘Warmth’, which the previous two tracks, a 15-minute run-up, have been ushering you up to. Masterful.
Preston-based Printy, whose name derives from his small design and print business, dropped me a line this week asking if I’d listen to his debut long-player ‘The Space Between’. Anything coming out of Preston is worth a little ear time. With the wealth of DIY talent up there, you’d be daft not listen. There’s powerful musical ley lines up there let me tell you! Printy says he studied music tech in the 90s, but life got in the way and the music making fell by the wayside. Then, a couple of years ago, he started recording again. He dipped his toes in with several releases that he describes rather honestly as ‘meh’. He thinks ‘The Space Between’ is different though.
The eight tracks here have taken him a year to complete and they’re already paying off with some local radio/BBC Introducing plays under his belt. His sounds is kind of ambient housey, it’s all very mellow, very nighttime, and you can feel the 90s seeping through. Certainly no bad thing. ‘Down Detector’ is very film soundtracky for the first couple of minutes, ‘The Point Of No Return’ comes on a little like a remix of The Art Of Noise, all scratchy vocal samples and slo-mo handclap drums. It does feel a little computer-driven, but he’s certainly pointing in the right direction. Keen to see where he goes next with all this.
I must apologies to Sheffield-based, one-time All Seeing I member David J Boswell who sent me his new album ‘Going Down Slow’ last year. Ahem. It came out in January and has been missing in action on my listening pile for months. I am sorry. I’ll tell you about the listening pile one day. Anyway, ‘Going Down Slow’ is a really quirky offering, a mix of folk, blues and electronics. So opener ‘Casual Encounter’ has Bozz playing guitar and singing, while chipping away underneath is a softly spooky synth backing trying to sneak its way up in the mix. Less covert, more overt is something like ‘Tall Skinny Girlfriend’ that has a tsk-tsk drum machine, synthy squelching and a lovely arpeggio that builds so nicely. It’s very lo-fi, almost demo-sounding. You can really hear the songwriting skill on something like ‘On The Right Track’, which you can imagine sounding almighty with some production chops on board. ‘Better Days’ too is rather lovely. It sort of reminds me of very early doors Badly Drawn Boy. Those brilliantly bonkers first three EP3s and his utterly chaotic early live shows which were very funny and then suddenly he’d play something like ‘It Came From Ground’ or ‘I Need A Sign’ and everyone would go, ‘Oh right’. ‘Going Down Slow’ feels like that. It’s such a curious mix you can’t help being charmed by it.
MOONBUILDING ISSUE 6 … SOLD OUT
Holy cow. MOONBUILDING Issue 6 is completely sold out, so it isn’t available from moonbuilding.bandcamp.com Sure someone will try cash in via Discogs soon.
Let’s look at what you missed, although it is still available digitally of course. Our cover star, illustrated by the peerless Nick Taylor, is the unstoppable force that is LOULA YORKE. In our bumper interview we talk about how she got here and where she’s going. As usual, it is an in-depth piece that lifts the lid on the brilliant mind behind the excellent music.
We meet Loula at her home in Suffolk where we have a proper rummage around in her world, musically, humanly, psychologically, probably even a bit metaphysically. It is a cracking read and really opens the doors on what makes this most remarkable artist tick.
As always the issue comes with an accompanying CD. This one is a Loula Yorke collection called ‘How Did We Get Here’, which is compiled by artist herself and charts her rise and rise. The resulting 11-tracker will take you on a journey through her career to this point and it is utterly, totally, absolutely, exclusive to Moonbuilding.
Elsewhere, there’s a great chat with Clay Pipe Music supremo Frances Castle as we profile her wonderful label, A’Bear gets in on the There’s A First Time For Everything act, we round up an absolute mountain of recent releases and serve up our thoughts on the best albums from the last few months, which feature Loula Yorke, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan’s Gordon Chapman-Fox, Cate Brooks, 30 Door Key and Sarno Ultra.
We talk to ‘This Is Memorial Device’ author David Keenan about ‘Volcanic Tongue’, his debut collection of music writing. He is one of the last generation of music writers who could actually call themselves journalists. He talks a lot of sense and his work is a shining example of what music writing should be. It’s an unmissable interview.
Elsewhere, we round up an absolute mountain of recent releases and point you in the right direction of some mighty fine independent magazines and books. The Orb’s Alex Paterson tells us about his ‘Top Of The Pops’ experience when he appeared on the legendary show performing ‘Blue Room’ in 1993. I say performing… There’s a new Captain Star cartoon strip from the brilliant Steven Appleby. I constantly have to pinch myself that this strip, that I first read in the NME in the early 1980s, is now in my little magazine.
Find us at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com.
Moonbuilding Weekly is a Castles In Space publication.
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Happy 100th edition! Thanks for including qd47 Appleblim - and yes mate, it's just what we do :)