Issue 11 / 29 March 2024
This week's DIY electronic goodness... Album Of The Week: Kevin Pearce + interview, Track Of The Week: Will Gregory Moog Ensemble + new release round-up + more
Happy Good Friday! Do you do Easter eggs today or on Easter Sunday? There’s some controversy in our house. I did think about taking this week off seeing as a long holiday weekend was looming, but there’s no chance when there’s a bucket-load of listening still in my pile. I guess it’s what Jesus would have wanted. I’ve just had a look and Christmas is a Wednesday this year. Maybe I can have a week off in December.
The big news this week is we’ve taken our first advert. A huge thanks to Woodford Halse for being our debut advertiser (you’ve always been my favourite label). Get in touch if you fancy some advertising action of your own. We’re also looking for a newsletter sponsor. Very engaged readers and reasonable rates all round.
Ok, that’s me then. I’m off to lobby for Easter eggs being handed out on Sunday. But should it be before church or after?
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
PS Here’s this issue’s playlist… bndcmpr.co/a8afc9f7
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KEVIN PEARCE ‘Science Fiction Ballads For The Lost Generation’
(Castles In Space)
It all starts with Vangelis. Most things round here do. So there was Kevin Pearce listening to the ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack one day when he wondered what a soundtrack made up of songs would be like. “I imagined a film, lost myself in that thought and went for it,” he says. The result is ’Science Fiction Ballads For The Lost Generation’. More of which in a minute.
As well as a love of Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, Kevin is also a keen golfer despite having a heart attack, aged 33, while playing in 2018. Something like that changes you. He says he’s much more positive now. He mentioned it in an interview with Electronic Sound. “Everyone says it’s great that I recovered, but I feel more like I un-covered a part of myself I didn’t know was there,” he said. “The sun shines a lot brighter now than it did before… although that’s probably because of global warming.”
Making light aside, you can hear the sunshine in his work. It’s very much in ‘The Sound Of Science’, the project he made with Dean Honer a couple of years back. As part of his rehabilitation, he wrote and recorded an album as Sun Cutter, which is soulful indie kinda stuff. Very melodic, very melancholically uplifting. Here’s the thing though, ‘Science Fiction Ballads’ is pre-keeling over, which is curious as it is full of the sunshine.
He recorded the album as an experiment and it languished on a hard drive, forgotten, for five years until he rediscovered it while searching for something else entirely. “I really enjoyed listening back to it and thought it had something about it,” offers Kevin. Well, it does have something about it. And not just the stunning Nick Taylor artwork and the wibbly-wobbly “gravity hole” vinyl.
It starts gently with ‘Memory Loss’, a simple but effective offering that has a flicker of early Peter Gabriel about it before it builds into an electronic shimmer complete with a choir. A CHOIR. One track down and you’ve already felt the ambition of this record.
It’s proper album, immensely listenable from start to finish. “It’s a set of wonky, emotional songs, beautifully performed and arranged” is how the label see it. They’re not wrong. There’s the fluid bassline and snappy drum machine of ‘Crazy Universe’, the hauntingly majestic ‘Canada Water’ and tippy-toey soundtracky ‘Reeds’. I love the closing salvo of ‘Moonbeams’ and ‘Sundial’ – the former is a huge, euphoric pop song with a swirling, soaring chorus that stops dead, giving way to the instrumental latter, which sounds like a call to prayer caught on the wind. It reminds me of the full-length version of Boo Radley’s epic ‘Wake Up Boo’ and the way a classic pop song can melt seamlessly into something else entirely.
The music of Kevin Pearce lends itself well to those sort of fun and games as the bonus, digital-only remix set proves. ‘Sundial’ gets an incredible 13-minute rerub from the almighty Field Lines Cartographer, which fair takes the breath away. Offerings from Heartwood Institute, Keith Seatman, The Twelve Hour Foundation, the Werra Foxma folks aren’t far behind. Of course, the beauty of a good remix is that it highlights the quality of the original and here that is writ large. I’ve taken to listening to it all in one go, proper album first, remix album next.
‘Science Fiction Ballads’ is quite the package. The look, the feel, the sound, the bonus remix tracks. This is what a release should be like these days. Impressive. [NM]
’Science Fiction Ballads For The Lost Generation’ is out now on Castles In Space
KEVIN PEARCE
In a chat that runs the full nine yards, we go from folk music to science teachers and erupting volcanoes to heart attacks, golf, Gabriel, Bowie, ‘Blade Runner’ and going to the supermarket in a flying car…
Interview: Neil Mason
Your background is quite beards/knitted jumpers. How did you make the jump to electronic music?
“I’ve always listened to all genres of music, from classical to hip hop, from folk to electronic. I think for me my main interest is in the songwriting and experimenting around that, taking it in whatever direction seems to fit at the time. Kind of like dressing a song differently so to speak.”
What role did Dean Honer and The Sound Of Science play in all that?
“I’ve done quite a bit of electronic music with Dean with The Sound Of Science project, Skywatchers and I Monster. Dean does have a great collection of synthesisers so it’s definitely helped me to experiment with different sound palettes.”
You also work as Sun Cutter, tell me about that project?
“I had a heart attack five years ago at a young age and the knock-on effect was the Sun Cutter project. I wanted to do something a bit less cliquey than some of the solo work under my own name. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some nicely moody tracks with Sun Cutter, but I think the overall feel of the work is one of positivity, togetherness and overcoming hard times. Looking to the light.”
So what makes ‘Science Fiction Ballads’ a Kevin Pearce record and not a Sun Cutter one?
“I think it’s the scale of misery that separates the two! Ha-ha!”
You had your heart attack while playing golf. It hasn’t put you off the game?
“My golf addiction is still going strong. Got my handicap down to 19 now. I like the fact that as a game it’s stupidly hard and I think there is a certain catharsis in that. It helps my mental health too, being outside for a good few hours with no phone or screen in front of me. It feels like unplugging from the madness of society for a bit.”
‘Science Fiction Ballads For The Lost Generation’ is a great title…
“Ever since I was a boy, I’ve always loved sci-fi and the worlds your imagination can get lost in, be it comics or films. I feel that there often great life lessons in these stories, which makes for compelling art. In terms of ’The Lost Generation’ I think we find ourselves in a strange time in history. We’re at a crossroads with everything from climate change to the affects of rampant capitalism and the almost insular nature of the embedding of social media in our lives. I think it could go one way or the other now. Complete change for the good or some absolute horrors to come. I feel that we are floating around, lost and looking for some kind of direction to head in. Maybe we can find it through music, art, films, or maybe we can find it meeting a pal for a brew and having a good ol’ chat.”
The album has been a while in coming. You actually made it five years ago?
“Yeah, I recorded it in my studio as an experiment really. Just for me at first. I’d forgotten I’d done it, but rediscovered it on an external hard drive and had a full listen through. I really enjoyed listening back and thought it had something about it. I played it to Colin from Castles In Space and he loved it. In a way it felt like we’d dug it up out of the sand. Like an audio fossil or something! I’m pleased it will be out in the world and hopefully some folks enjoy it.”
Can you describe what it is you do on this record? Give me the elevator pitch!
“I played everything on this album from synths to drums, guitars to running a whole song through a VHS tape. I did everything apart from a few backing vocals that I managed to get my other half to help out with. Her name is Rebecca Hammond and she has an incredible voice, but is rarely interested in showing it to the world.”
The label says the record has “echoes of early Peter Gabriel and ‘Hunky Dory’ era Bowie”, that’s some big boots to fill eh?
“Indeed. I think if I could fill very tiny boots that looked similar to their giant ones I’d be happy.”
Favourite Gabriel album?
“I really like ‘Us’. The songs ‘Come Talk To Me’ and ‘Washing Of The Water’ both move me in completely different ways but are equally powerful.”
Favourite Bowie album?
“Oh, ‘Blackstar’. I think he saved his best to last. I remember the first time I heard the track ‘Blackstar’. Blew me away. Just the innovation and ideas on that song, the structure, its seriousness and its cheekiness in places too. Perfection.”
You don’t sit down and think, “I’m going to make a song that sounds like so-and-so”, how does it happen?
“Like all musicians I guess we all soak up a bits of music we like and the odd bit of influence just seeps through into the work.”
You also took inspiration from the ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack…
“I had this idea once when listening to Vangelis’ soundtrack for ‘Blade Runner’. I wondered what a soundtrack of songs would be like and could I do it? I didn’t have a film to do it to so I imagined one in my head, lost myself in that thought and went for it. What came out was ’Science Fiction Ballads For The Lost Generation’.”
‘Blade Runner’ is ubiquitous round these parts, why does it resonates so much?
“Its atmosphere.”
Can you remember your first encounter with the film?
“I think I was around 10 when I first saw it. I just remember the visuals hooked me and I loved all the oddities in the film. I think they got it just right for whatever reason.”
It was set in 2019. Why do you think the imagined future doesn’t measure up to the actual future?
“I think in many ways it does. We now have a world that is increasingly going to be swamped with AI and many of us have the feeling we are being chased down by something, be it bills to pay or arseholes in daily life. I see it as a metaphor.”
Are you disappointed that we’re not driving flying cars and all that by now?
“Very much so. Roads are dangerous, it’d be way safer flying about up there, plus I could get to and from doing the food shop faster.”
‘Science Fiction Ballads’ is a heady brew already, is there anything else you’d like to throw into the mix influence-wise?
“I have a lot of love for Kraftwerk, Boards Of Canada and Burial to name a few. I think little bits of those acts may be in there somewhere.”
There’s an accompanying remix EP, what was the thinking behind that?
“Colin suggested it and I was open to seeing what other journeys the tracks could take sound-wise. I love the outcome and different takes on the music. It helps open them up to to another life.”
What’s it like having someone remix your work? Is it a bit like someone else choosing what clothes you’re going to wear?
“Yeah, in a way! But I have terrible dress sense so its probably for the best.”
I hear there’s also a Sound Of Science remix album on the way?
“Yes, I’m excited about that. There are some really interesting reworkings from some very excellent artists. Some very well-known, some under the radar, but all brilliant.”
What would Mr Lewis, your old science teacher, make of ‘Science Fiction Ballads For The Lost Generation’?
“I think he would have liked it. He liked anyone with a flicker of imagination so hopefully he would have seen it in the work. We didn’t cover sci-fi in lessons, but once I’ve built my time machine I plan to go back and suggest it.”
Have you got to see a live volcano yet?
“Not yet, but it’s on the bucket list.”
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WILL GREGORY MOOG ENSEMBLE ‘Young Archimedes’ (Mute)
News arrived this week that the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble will be releasing their debut album ‘Heat Ray’ in the summer via Mute. I had a double-take as the ensemble has been around and performing together since 2005, surely this couldn’t be their debut album. A little poke around reveals a digital-only release on the Bower & Wilkins label, Society Of Sound. Looks like that could be a live performance, there’s some Handel and Bach in there along with a bunch of Will Gregory compositions.
Anyway. Debut album it is. ‘Heat Ray’ is inspired by the life and times of Archimedes, the Greek mathematician. It seems during the lockdowns Will became fascinated with Archimedes, digging into his life and watching online lectures. “Scratch any of these maths gurus,” he says, “and it turned out Archimedes was their favourite mathematician. I wanted to find out why.” The album is due out on 14 June.
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
GARDEN GATE ‘Magic Lantern’ (Clay Pipe)
With her third long-player, New York-based Timmi Meskers sees her Garden Gate project find a very natural home on Frances Castles’ Clay Pipe label. Her last album, ‘Blood Mansion’, was on Library Of The Occult, which was a close match. Clay Pipe though is perfect for ‘Magic Lantern’. “Timmi specialises in electronic 60s-inspired spooky soundtracks,” Frances told me. “I really like what she is doing.” I really like what she’s doing too. The project started as a collaboration between Timmi and her author pal Roan Parrish. Initially they shared work to inspire each other, Roan serving up prose, Timmi responding with musical themes. The pair soon ended up with a score to an audiobook anthology of Roan’s work called ‘Strange Company’. I think if you listen to Timmi’s music, you’ll kind of get a feel for Roan’s books.
‘Magic Lantern’ is a collection of the work that appeared on the audiobook. They’re described as neo-classical library pieces with analogue electronic elements, which they are, but they’re so much more. There’s a gentle beauty at work here and no wonder. Timmi talks about how halfway through the recording process her long-term relationship broke down. “I found myself grasping at any beauty I could find in the hope that it would spill into my music,” she says. Do you know what? It does. It very much does. Beautiful stuff, but then this is Clay Pipe. Oh, and do check out Frances’ Substack too, you’ll find a lovely interview with Timmi over there and a piece about the sleeve design for ‘Magic Lantern’ too.
GOOD STUFF #2
WILKS ‘Left Hand Drive’ (Bricolage)
Glasgow’s Bricolage label is well worth keeping tabs on. They’re quietly going about their business and many of their releases are by artists that will be new to you. Well, they’re new to me at least. It’s a bold choice to showcase new talent, but John from the label told me they’ve had a tonne (metric) of demos over the last 18 months and this year they have the room the schedule to, in his words, “give a chunk of them a home”. Wilks is Cheltenham-based producer Nick Wilkinson, who some of you might know from his Radio Free Matlock show ‘Inner Depths’ (billed as “electronica and much more on those occasional fifth Tuesdays”. Fifth Tuesday!). His music making sees him mix drum ‘n’ bass, garage, ambient and electronica to make a very tunefully mellow brew. Liking this stuff. Liking it a lot.
GOOD STUFF #3
CHELIDON FRAME ‘Flatline Voyages’ (Difficult Art And Music)
Another label you might not be aware of but one that is very much worth checking in with is Lewes-based Difficult Art And Music. Label chief Daniel Hignell-Tully has a knack for spotting the good stuff when it comes to the experimental end of things. His releases are always interesting and usually come with a good tale. With Chelidon Frame we find ourselves back in the good old days of lockdown with the artist navigating the short wave spectrum and capturing “number stations, Iran radios, Chinese traditional music, beacons, radio hams”, building hauntingly gentle soundscapes from the results. Daniel has got a cracker coming up by an old school Devonshire rave unit called Polygone. And like I said, it comes with a good story.
difficultartandmusic.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #4
MASAL ‘The Galloping Cat’
Following up the excellent record they did with Andy Bell last year for Sonic Cathedral, ‘Galloping Cat’ is the latest outing from harp/synth duo Ozlem Simsek and Al Johnson. There’s a lot of labels flying around these two. As well as harp/synth duo, there’s krautrock meets Turkish psych, which I have to say is quite appealing. Ozlem is a Turkish multi-instrumentalist whose middle eastern background meets western classical music and that all blends quite nicely with Al’s psychedelic electronics (you might know his solo work as Alien). It says here “they weave harp, theremin and electronics into beautiful aural journeys”, which they do. I mean it must be the first time anyone has described a theremin as beautiful. In the right hands clearly. Very much liking the Cocteau Twins-like vocals on ‘Ouroboros’, which is also a very nice word to type.
GOOD STUFF #5
Audio Obscura/Loopatronica ‘Daylight Saving’ (Wormhole World)
Two very fine artists, one release. Here Audio Obscura’s Neil Stringfellow and Looptronica’s Jez Thelwell (who you will also know as the brains behind the Moolakii Club Audio Interface label) team up for a split release featuring five tracks each with the theme of, well, daylight saving. It’s released on Sunday, the night after the clocks go forward an hour. Yes, we might have lost an hour’s sleep, but it ain’t getting dark the wrong side of 7pm again until October. And that is something to celebrate. If only it would stop bloody raining. The pair say, “this isn’t the end of the journey however, as the clocks also go back’ every October - so look out!”. Very clever.
THE GOOD STUFF ROUND-UP
A quick whizz through what else has been grazing my ears this week before I get embroiled in the great Easter egg wars. Ben Chatwin, collaborator and producer with former Album Of The Week people Kinbrae, pops up this week with an album of his own. Or it might have been last week. Probably was last week, so many releases last week. Whatever, ‘Verdigris’ is the first outing on his own Disinter label. On the strength of this, it’s a label that should be good. I like the description of how he uses “an arsenal of compressors and saturators to build layers of grit and grime”. It’s a big sound, “music as dense as it is deep”, but there’s also a lot of emotion here. Makes me laugh when people say machine music is cold.
benchatwin.bandcamp.com
Brandon Invergo was a DJ with “moderate success” in the mid-00s Chicago techno scene and his new release, ‘Bringing On The Eschaton’ (Moon Atlas) sounds like it’s been beamed in from the future sound of Chicago. After the DJing, he moved to Europe to pursue a career in science, but in 2021 he popped back up with a load of archival releases. Seven volumes in fact. Then last year he turned in an EP, ‘Four Lamentations For Dancefloors’, his first new material for over a decade. Here he continues the trend serving up two new extended pieces in which he “confronts ever-impending doom with a sonic onslaught”. Yup. It has to be said, it is full on.
moonatlas.bandcamp.com
It was only the other week that I was saying how much I like the combination of brass and electronics. Well, I also very much like cellos and electronics. Blame Oliver Coates. Here, New York-based Mizu uses pulsing electronics, field recordings and layers and layers of cello on ‘Forest Scenes’ (NNA Tapes), her second long-player. It’s a really beautiful piece of work, all very delicate and peaceful, until you get towards the end and in come the beats. ‘The Way To Yonder’ is great in the way it tugs on the dancefloor, and then the doors get blown off with the full-tilt dissonance of ‘prphtbrd’ which features techno producer Concrete Husband (great name, that).
iammizu.bandcamp.com
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HAINES MANUAL
You may know Luke Haines from The Auteurs, the brilliant Black Box Recorder or more recently from his many and various wild solo releases. His ‘New York In The 70s’ album is a proper favourite at Moonbuilding HQ. I’d totally forgotten this, but when I was at Electronic Sound we released an entire Luke Haines album, ‘Freqs’, as a cover mount. He owns the frequency 43 hertz, which is a story for another time.
A story for now is his new book, ‘Freaks Out!’, or ‘Luke Haines Freaks Out!’ (Nine Eight) for the gag to work properly. It’s not his first tome, there’s been a few, they’re all highly entertaining. ‘Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In It’s Downfall’ is a good place to start. ‘Freaks Out!’ is part memoir, part manifesto, and part kind of history of popular music where Haines tells the story of “pivotal freaks” in a journey “exploring how the ‘freaks’ infiltrated modern culture”.
It is solid stuff as we’ve come to expect from Luke Haines. The chapter titles are as entertaining as his case for the march of the freaks and the copious footnotes that follow. There’s a chapter called “The Psychedelic Dawn Of Hank B Marvin And The Shadows”, one called “The Fall can no longer be freaks” and assorted titles like “Mad Bob From Margate”, “Limp, You Bugger, Limp” and so much more. You want to read this already, right? I’ve read these chapters and am often none the wiser, but feel thoroughly entertained all the same. As Luke Haines says, “Remember: Rock ’n’ roll is a deadly serious business. It is also very funny.”
You do half wonder how a book like this ever got commissioned. I’m almost certain Luke probably thought the same. That there are people in this world who can make this sort of thing happen and think it is also a good idea can only be a positive. We salute you.
Nine Eight Books / Moonbuilding Bookshop
YOU GOTTA HAVE…
Supporting my fellow independent publishing pals, I wanted to point you in the direction of the brilliant Faith fanzine. It’s a house music mag co-founded by the legendary Terry Farley along with fellow house heads Stuart Patterson and Dave Jarvis. The original Faith was published from 1999-2012 and was resurrected in 2020 to great effect. These boys really know what they’re doing. I love the design and it’s a great read too.
They recently posted about tough times. “It may have appeared like we’d stopped with the fanzine,” they wrote, “but the truth is it’s increasingly difficult to fund and publish this free dedication to house music that we love to do. Rather than put out an issue at the back end of last year that wasn’t up to scratch, we chose to hold fire and put all our efforts into making the first one of 2024 as good as it can be.”
So seven months on from their last issue, pre-orders are now up and running for the Spring 2024 issue and it’s a doozy, a Frankie Knuckles special. The mag is pay what you like, you just pick up the postage. But we don’t want you doing that. If you can, please chip in when you order, it all helps Faith keep doing what Faith does best.
Pre-order the Spring issue at store.defected.com
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The current issue of MOONBUILDING is full to the gills with the good stuff. On the cover, star-in-the-making Maria Uzor, we profile label-of-the-moment quiet details, there’s an incredible interview with Captain Star creator Steven Appleby, and Ghost Box’s Jim Jupp gets busy with our There’s A First Time For Everything questions.
We review a big pile of releases from labels including Castles In Space, Woodford Halse, Persistence Of Sound, Assai, Ahora, DiN, Werra Foxma, Ghost Box and many more. There’s a column from The Orb’s Alex Paterson and the world-famous Captain Star cartoon strip.
This issue’s CD is ‘The Moonbuilding Miscellany – Volume One’, which is put together by CiS supremo Colin Morrison. It’s a belter featuring tracks from the likes of Lo Five, Lone Bison, Twilight Sequence, Ojn, NCHX and more.
Moonbuilding Weekly is a Castles In Space publication.
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