Issue 110 / 29 May 2026
The essential DIY electronic music lowdown: Track Of The Week: Isobel Anderson + Album Of The Week: Danalogue + Lines Of Silence + Bluetech + Ben McElroy's ‘Allotment Tapes' + more
We have a Moonbuilding EXCLUSIVE this week in the shape of a full LP visualiser for our Album Of The Week, Danalogue’s ‘Teleportations’, which is rather exciting. You’ll find it below along with the review and we’ll be spreading it around via our socials, as the young people like to say. Finlay Milligan is also in the house today with a cracking review of the album. We are spoiling you are we not. That’s not a question. We are.
We’re into the last few days of this month’s Moonbuilding Session made at the launch of Paul Cousins’ ‘Vanishing Artefacts’ album in 2023. Paul works with reel-to-reel tape machines and prepared tape loops that he transforms on the fly into breathtakingly beautiful music. A new session will be with our paying subscribers on Monday. These are the very fine people keeping this newsletter free for everyone. They are the best. You too can be the best for just £3.50 a month.
Oh, and for those of you wondering, there were indeed yeti suits at the SFA show last weekend for ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’. See here.
Happy reading.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 110 Playlist: Listen
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ISOBEL ANDERSON ‘Fray (Everything, Everywhere, All At Once)’
Photo: Emilia Martin
The story so far. You may know Isobel Anderson as the woman-on-a-mission behind Girls Twiddling Knobs, an operation that aimed to address the gender imbalance in music tech and production with a bunch of invaluable resources such as music tech courses, workshops and podcasts. In Isobel’s words, GTK “combined practical skills training with cultural change, creating accessible routes into recording, production and creative confidence for thousands of learners worldwide”. Incredible stuff. There’s a great interview with her about it all in Issue 4 of the print version of Moonbuilding. But all good things come to an end and GTK closed its doors in 2025 after five brilliant years shaping the future of electronic music. It does live on as an archive though, which you can find here.
So what does Isobel do next? Well, she’s getting properly stuck back into making her own music, which took something of back seat during the GTK years, unsurprisingly. If you know her work it really does need to be front and centre as she is wildly creative and technically spot on as you’d imagine. For example, do check out her soundscape-y ‘Hyperterrestrial’ EP from back in March here.
So anyway, this week sees the release of her new single ‘Fray (Everything, Everywhere, All At Once)’ from her forthcoming album ‘END TIMES’, which is due out in the autumn and will be her first long-player in nine years. It was made across four stays in a caravan at the edge of the Dungeness Nature Reserve, will tell you more about why nearer to its release, and moves between “abrasive beats, incantatory melody and electroacoustic drift.”
The single is in the former category, an ear-bashing audio treat and tackles what Isobel describes as “the grotesque frivolity and sensory whiplash of scrolling online… constantly ricocheting between horror, consumption and spectacle”. Yup.
The notes say ‘Fray’ is “built from chopped-up sounds of rips, crashes and thumps, layered with compulsive social media scrolling and manic happy hardcore-inspired synths”. Happy hardcore synths? What is not to like?
The video is quite unsettling too I have to say. Isobel seems like such a level-headed sort, but look what lurks underneath. Unhinged. More about all this when the album lands, but for now marvel at the magnificently bonkers sound world of Isobel Anderson.
DANALOGUE ‘Teleportations’ (Castles In Space)
Words: FINLAY MILLIGAN
Did you know psych-jazz group The Comet Is Coming took their name from a BBC Radiophonic Workshop track, which scored a 1981 BBC TV film of the same name? In true weird British sci-fi fashion, the story followed the ghost of Edmond Halley who’s been cursed to ride the comet he gave his name to as it’s approaching Earth. Trite metaphors about large bodies of rock streaking across the sky, burning brightly for a time before disintegrating into nothing aside, it does feel strange that The Comet Is Coming is no more.
I remember when they were the fresh, upcoming innovators of electronic music. The trio consisting of saxophonist Shabaka “King Shabaka” Hutchings, keyboard whizz Dan “Danalogue The Conqueror” Leavers, and drummer Max “Betamax” Hallett rocketed onto the scene with their psychedelic fusion of nu jazz, Afrobeat, space rock, and funk - initially with 2015 EP ‘Prophecy’, then with their Mercury Prize-nominated 2016 debut album ‘Channel The Spirits’.
Channel spirits they certainly did, their star-sailing sound evoking Sun Ra in all his glory, with an asteroid belt of influences that pulled from retrofuturism, Flying Lotus, post-punk, and the aforementioned BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Two more EPs and two more albums followed, before the band decided to call time. The comet had been and gone. But the music-making continued.
Shabaka Hutchings now goes it alone under his King Shabaka moniker, fully embracing his saxophone with three solo records to his name. Dan Leavers and Max Hallett still record heady drum-propelled synthscapes together as Soccer96 (a duo that actually predates The Comet Is Coming by a year). And now Leavers is carving out his own path as Danalogue (minus “The Conqueror” suffix) with ‘Teleportations’, his sparking debut solo outing on Castles In Space. And honestly, what a debut.
While being mostly known as one of the three cosmonauts of The Comet Is Coming, Leavers is far more. He’s become part of the furniture at the Total Refreshment Centre, London’s melting pot of the contemporary jazz scene, through which he met Alabaster DePlume (Angus Fairbairn) and made their vibrant funky collaborative record ‘I Was Not Sleeping’. He’s been on production duties for the likes of Snapped Ankles and Rozi Plain, has performed sessions for 6 Music’s Gilles Peterson, Mary Anne Hobbes, and Steve Lamacq, scored the Dreamcast-inspired PlayStation VR game ‘C-Smash’, and his tunes have featured in the likes of Michaela Coel’s critically acclaimed comedy-drama ‘I May Destroy You’. All this, while still tinkering away as part of Soccer96. And now there’s this debut solo album.
‘Teleportations’ is sprinkled with a similar cosmic dust that covers The Comet Is Coming, albeit from a different part of the galaxy. The album smacks you across the chops before you’ve even got to the music. Just look at that sleeve. The gorgeously iridescent work of graphic artist Nick Stewart Hoyle (known online as Signalstarr) has graced the covers of a number of analogue synthesists, including OGRE Sound and Field Lines Cartographer. That almost retrofuturist figure, draped in a sharp triangular cloak, backed by a hazy Technicolor gradient sky and glowing UFOs.
It should come as no surprise that this record is heavily influenced by science fiction. ‘Teleportations’ is inspired by astral travel, theta brainwaves, and collective consciousness - and if that wasn’t enough, there’s an accompanying short story that depicts “an advanced lifeform capable of converging brainwaves into an iridescent stream of consciousness and slingshotting across space”. Leavers has really gone all-out on this, and it’s all the better for it.
Musically, ‘Teleportations’ practically bleeds 1970s retrofuturism and German kosmiche, but Danalogue also name-checks Terry Riley, Wendy Carlos, Joe Meek, and Mort Garson as influences on the record. There’s also a kit list for those inclined, which includes a Juno-60, Oberheim, and Jupiter 4. Leavers was keen to use vintage analogue gear for their limitations and imperfections, as well as a “time bridge” to “earlier eras of electronic experimentation”. An ethos shared by many an electronic musician, but utilised here in a way that makes the album a science fiction record from every single side.
From the off you know you’re in for a treat. Opener ‘Awakening On The Planet’ bubbles like the primordial stew of a distant world, eager to foster life of its own, as bright synthlines soar like rising suns. The stage is set. ‘Mother Of Mars’ hisses into existence as twinkling arpeggios glint alongside a blinking satellite - a looping singular tone that calls out to ‘Far Beyond The Sun’, a ballad in the vein of Flying Lotus. Leavers’ wistful vocals follow head-nodding percussion, before we’re treated to a Mort Garson-esque synth solo. Three tracks in and ‘Teleportations’ is already this exciting.
‘Moebius Triptych’ twists and folds like the strip it’s named after, a buoyant synth melody snaking around motorik, cymbalic percussion. It has a fervour that climbs higher and higher, before shuddering into silence. I’m a huge fan of how literal ‘Arrival At Rho Ophiuchi’ sounds. Rho Ophiuchi is a star system in the constellation Ophiuchus, around 460 light years from Earth. The way Danalogue uses his analogue gear to paint a vivid aural picture is sublime. You can imagine a spacecraft cruising through a dust cloud, approaching the blinking lights of a cosmically rural space station, as crackles of static and interference bleeds through the ships radio systems.
It’s standout tracks like this that sets ‘Teleportations’ apart from others albums in the genre. And while ‘Out Of Phase’ and ‘Earth Remembrance Day’ have a sombre air to them, they’re no less sanguine. The former would fit perfectly on a The Comet Is Coming record, with Leavers deploying alien-like vocals – clearly a distant relative of ET who’s spent a lot of time with Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Thomas Fec. ‘Earth Remembrance Day’ is just that – mournful lament to our home planet that is clearly no more. Was it nuclear apocalypse? Climate disaster? We’ll never know. We’re in Danalogue’s universe now, and it’s somewhere very far away.
Is it trite to make a shining star metaphor? I’m not sure I care at this point. With ‘Teleportations’, Dan Leavers has composed a multi-faceted forever-burning supernova of a debut. It’s meticulously crafted, thoughtful from every angle, and an absolute delight. The comet may have come and gone, but thank god Danalogue jumped off and is here to stay. Album Of The Year? It’ll certainly be up there.
LISTEN ALONG WITH OUR EXCLUSIVE FULL ALBUM VISUALISER…
Got something you need to tell us about? email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
LINES OF SILENCE ‘Lines In Opposition!’ (Sprechen)
I don’t know what was going on with me earlier this month, but I do seem to have missed a bunch of releases that were out in the first week or so of May. I was obviously distracted by something shiny, pro gets like that here sometimes, being overwhelmed with work is nothing new. It’s funny, sometimes there’s so much to do, doing nothing is often the default setting. I don’t know if you hope things will get done that way, dunno. Anyway, I totally missed the release of Lines Of Silence’s ‘Lines In Opposition!’ and that won’t do because flipping heck, it’s good.
We’ve covered Lines Of Silence before. They were the solo pursuit of Todmorden-based David Little until he roped in Dave Clarkson, who should need no introduction round here, for ‘The Long Way Home’ LP in 2024. So that was the third Lines Of Silence LP, which makes this one number four or number two for the new-look line-up.
We said of the last release that it was proper record, that should be listened to from start to finish. That goes double for this outing. This one is even more listenable. With the last outing there were a couple of lengthy romps, notably ‘Withens Clough’ that clocked in at 20 minutes plus. There’s nothing like that among this new set of tracks. This is their pop album. No, really it is.
Lines Of Silence wear their influences proudly, they talk about classic kosmische and krautrock influences that underpin their work, which are more than apparent throughout – we’re talking Faust, Cluster, Kraftwerk and Harmonia, Can, Neu!, you know the drill. Hang on, there’s an exclamation marks in the album title and it’s just occurred to me is a nod to Neu! Yeah, yeah, I’ll try and keep up.
I really love how the record is a pedal to the metal blast for the first four tracks, lets call it the A-side. The pop side! There’s some belting work. Opener ‘Wolf’ entices you in with a drifting swirl of an intro that explodes in a rip-roaring Liebezeit beat that gives way to the title track featuring the vocals of Andrea Parra that gives things a taste of Stereolab on the tongue.
And then the flip gets ‘Hounds Of Love’ or ‘Low’, you know, a pop side and a more experimental side. They talk of “electronic shamanic soundscapes where sounds of krautrock exists in harmony alongside drone-esque ambient excursions”. And with that they add to their influence list the names of Aphex Twin and the esoteric DJ sets and radio shows of Andrew Weatherall, which is really interesting. There’s a whole bunch of Weatherall’s monthly NTS show that span 2018-20 online here that are well worth reinvestigating. I pop one on quite regularly. They are incredible. And of course, only going as far as Jan 2020 means these sets are some of his final work, which adds a whole other level.
The B-side here, and yes it is available on vinyl, comes on like a Weatherall set winding up, or winding down. It opens with ‘A Life Examined’, which is all ambient drones and swirls, it feels like a breather, or an intro, which gives way to the beautiful build of ‘Aesthetik’ that shudders and phases before simple bass, beats and soaring guitar arrive. You can hear the Aphex/SAW influence in the rolling bassline, squidgy synths and mellow breaks of ‘Transcendental Radiation’ while the pulsating closer ‘The Unity Drone’ wraps things up nicely.
Like I said, these boys really do make records for listening to (I mean surely everyone does, right?), but Lines Of Silence do it with such style, with such thought, you really should make time to just sit and listen to this, nothing else, no distractions, from start to finish. You won’t be disappointed.
linesofsilenceband.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #2
BLUETECH ‘Petite Constellations’ (DiN)
We edge ever closer to DiN100 with this, DiN96, from Seattle-based Evan Bartholomew and his Bluetech project. Knowing Ian Boddy like I do, he won’t be letting DiN100 slip by without a fanfare. And rightly so. Stay tuned!
So ‘Petite Constellations’ is a split outing with Evan’s own Behind The Sky label handling the vinyl and DiN serving up the Digipak CD. Bet that artwork looks great on the vinyl version. This is his second offering on DiN following on from ‘Liquid Geometries’ from 2018.
It’s interesting, sometimes I don’t read the press notes before listening. I didn’t do that with this. I’ve had it on a fair bit over the last few weeks and have clocked the titles, there’s lots nature-y words, vapours, plasma, lumen… ‘Hyperborealis’ is glorious, it feels like flowers growing, reaching for the light or the sun shining on a meadow of crops gently swishing in a breeze. It makes me think of Bill Wither’s ‘Lovely Day’ for some reason. The things music does to you never ceases to amaze does it.
The thing with Evan’s work is you can flit from beautiful melody to sublime arpeggiation in the blink of an eye. ‘Nebulous Cosmid’ does both. The arpeggiation is deep and throaty, a thrum you’d call it, and over the top dances a sublime melody, you can almost hear the keys pimping. It all feels very organic, in the same way Polypores makes wrangling electricity feel alive.
And then you read the notes.
“The album was conceived as a subtle homage to Mort Garson, specifically his album ‘Mother Earth’s Plantasia’. It is a series of vignettes, both cosmic and microscopic in scale. It is unabashedly melodic, with contrapuntal analogue synth lines that weave and intertwine around each other.”
Goodness, it sounds exactly like it says. Exactly. It is proper Mort stuff, it feels very 70s in places, like on opener ‘A Study In Vapors’ which has a mewling synthline dancing all over the rich arpeggiation. There’s ‘On The Cusp Of Dissolution’ which is epic in scale, very CS-80-soundng, very Vangelis. Huge though. I’d suggest pumping up the volume, it sounds so rich. There’s an obvious soundtrack flavour to Bluetech’s work. You’d love to hear a track like on the big screen. Not least because it would sound awesome over a huge sound system. There’s some lovely little bubbly blerps in it too, almost Radiophonic Workshop-like.
There is a retro vibe to proceedings for sure. The street-stalking ‘Chronal Anomaly’ is underpinned with a very 60s vibe, there’s some proper bubbling synths and there’s a real meow of a topline that really likes the limelight.
There are moments like this that are stand up and cheer good. The interesting thing is there’s nothing that you feel is being milked. The longest cut is 4.02, which is some going. It’s pop songs! If it were me making these sounds I’d be tempted to let them romp away over the horizon long after I’d gone to bed.
I’ll leave the final thought to the notes. “Subscribing to the concept of ‘as above so below’, whereby the microscopic world mirrors the realms of the macrocosm, there is so much detail in these compositions that will slowly unfurl their beauty over multiple plays.” Which is totally true. The more you listen, the richer it gets. Brilliant.
dinrecords.bandcamp.com / behindthesky.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #3
BEN MCELROY ‘Allotment Tapes #5 – I Wanted The Trees (with Gail and Peter)’
Staying with the nature theme with have release number five in Ben McElroy’s wonderful ‘Allotment Tapes’ series. Quick recap, Ben is based in Nottingham and in January he kicked off a monthly series exploring St. Ann’s Allotments through field recordings, conversations and film/music. It is the oldest (in use since the 19th century) and largest allotments (670 plots over 75 acres) in Europe and has a rich and varied history. St Anns? You will recall that David Boulter paid tribute to the council estate he grew up on in the same area of Nottingham that defined his formative years. Sure he is well aware of said allotments.
Each month Ben has a different audio adventure on the site and they’re very wonderful. Although there are certainly synths here, Ben is more lo-fi/experimental folk than electronic, but it’s my party and he’s coming in if I say so.
The May tape visits the double allotment plot of wife and husband Gail and Peter. The notes here are really important. I think as is the case with much field recording work, a written description of what you’re listening to is a helpful starting point. Ben writes especially good brief descriptions of his work. He explains that “Gail’s plot sits behind Peter’s and is only accessible via his. They’re both amazing, but very different – Peter’s is an immaculate growing space, all neat rows and a beautiful little pond, which he says becomes a home for a plague of frogs every year. He’s been there 24 years and has seen a lot of change on the site”.
He goes on to talk about Gail’s plot, which he says is “much wilder, trees and self-seeding ground cover, shaded by a cliff and populated by all manner of figures, statues and decorations... in the recordings she talks about the necessity for this type of of plot as the ground was unusable for growing veg after years as a dumping ground”.
Sounds great doesn’t it? Ben does make little films if you want more a visual stimulus of these incredible-sounding places. Head to his website or YouTube channel for more. So there we go, scene set nicely and off we go.
We meet Gail first in opener ‘I Wanted The Trees’ where she explains how her allotment was when she first came to it. “Car parts, car doors, chairs, you name it, this had it… and he said there’s nobody been in it for 30 years, well, it had basically become a dumping ground.” The track has warm strings and while Gail isn’t chatting Ben chimes in with some lovely guitar picking. It’s a lot like the Bluetech record, it just feels earthy. There’s a mournful sqeezebox that opens up the brilliantly titled ‘Chickens And Twirly Things’, which is punctuated by the said chickens and has something of a Penguin Cafe feel to it. It could well be a harmonium, which always makes me think PCO. I’m simple like that. The chat is lovely here, it’s Gail again talking about her decorations. She mentions that they’re twirly rather than clangy, although when we meet Peter on ‘Ain’t Got A Shed (But I’ve Got A Greenhouse)’ you do hear that his wife has been decorating his garden too with something more clangy.
I really love the sound design on ‘Ain’t Got A Shed’. The track opens with Ben’s guitar playing and suddenly a violin strikes up, but just for a couple of notes before the whole thing is detuned like a radio, tuning back in and we’re with Peter. It’s wonderful work.
The last two tracks are a joy, ‘The Roots Were Like This’, is delightfully pagan as it builds to a crescendo, while ‘Peter’s New Hedge’ is not only a brilliant name for a band, but it’s a wonderful conclusion. A piano refrain dances gently over and over as Peter talks us through his hedge craft. Rewinding to repeat and then a looped operatic voice strikes up. A beat fights to escape in the muffled distance. It’s like a remix, the idea of which makes me smile so much.
I mean the whole thing is a joy. The twittering of birds, the droning of strings, the chatter, the charm and the love of not only the music-making craft, but the warmth of the allotment holders just radiates out from this delightful work. It’s such a small thing, having a piece of earth to call you own, but the riches it brings are enormous. Ben’s ‘Allotment Tapes’ only compound that.
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THE ROUND UP’s ROUND UP
Talking of earthy, which we do seem to have been doing a lot in this issue, can I point you in the direction of Penelope Trappes’ ‘Opvs Novum: A Requiem Reworked’ (One Little Independent), which is, well, as the title suggests a reworking of her incredible ‘A Requiem’ album, which was Album Of Week round here last April. I thought it was this year, but I’ve just looked and it was definitely last year, April 2025! Time really is accelerating at quite an alarming rate. You’ll have no doubt picked up on the tracks that have been teased from this release. The magnificent Saint Etienne version of ‘Platinum’ is something to behold, as is Julia Holter’s version of ‘Thou Art Mortal’, which closes the set, and Gazelle Twins and PRIZMA9’s ‘Sleep’, which is not a lullaby. Nope. I would not be going to sleep to that. Elsewhere Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder turns in a version of ‘Caro’, a very dark throb of electricity that could’ve come out of Western Works circa 1979. The whole thing isn’t so much a remix set as a meeting of kindred spirits who serve up, as the notes point out, “glacial drones”, “gothic unease”, “industrial pulse”, “haunting ambience” and “dream state pop”. Disco dancing it is not, very good is absolutely is.
The shaper-eyed among you will have noticed Missing Scenes have been advertising their latest album ‘Do The Dead Sing? (Varia) in the newsletter of late. Missing Scenes is Portland-based Robert Hunter who for 20-odd years has been crafting “meticulously detailed yet free-flowing and expansive soundscapes” and he does it very well. This year he is on something of a mission. From 3 April to 31 October he is releasing a song a week, which sit under the umbrella of ‘Do The Dead Sing’. Order the digital album and you’ll get all the tracks so far… I make it nine if you count today’s offering… and then a track a week between now and 31 October. Which is such a great idea. And all for $8. I mean, people, come on. Form a queue. There’s something about turning up in inboxes once a week that satisfies a deep need within me. It’s what Moonbuilding Weekly is about, it’s scratching a very deep itch within. Likewise, the idea of getting a new track from an artist who maybe new to you each week resonates with me too. Hope it does with you. So anyway, Robert talks about this series of tracks being inspired by “the dark literature and strange stories I’ve cherished over the years, including works by authors like King, Oates, Crace, Wharton, Langan, Du Bois, Wehunt, Dick, Enriquez, Lovecraft, Ligotti, and many others who inhabit that unsettling space between beauty and dread”. This is Library Of The Occult territory, so if you like anything over there, make your way over here waving dollar bills as you approach. Check out the eight-minute spooker ‘Sümpfe’ for a good idea of what to expect. Eight bucks for nine tracks now and one a week until October. It’d be rude not to. Nice artwork by Lucas Allen Cook too.
Staying Stateside, I got a very welcome email this week from 1.44mb label boss Alex Dragonetti about his label’s latest release. You may recall that Alex’s Philadelphia-based label specialises in releases on floppy disc. It takes some skill making music for floppy disc (max space, 1.44mb, natch) because of how much everything is compressed. If you think Spotify sounds shit, this is not the format for you. The clever thing is, the artists recognise and celebrate the limitations. The latest offering is from “North England native and multimedia artist” Andrew Wood whose ‘RadgePacketRemorse’ is a “sonic de/re-constructions of place and memory with field recordings, electronic samples, and more”. But not much more, wouldn’t fit on the disc, see. The tracks are location specific, not that’d you’re going to be guessing where from the titles… ‘FraudTeamTwo’, ‘PiedrasBlancas’, ‘4am Manufacturing’ and so on… there are some titles that sound like locations, ‘Bainbridge’, ‘BurbankChimer’, ‘Stroad&Steeple’… The album follows on from his 2024 self-released ‘To Ward Off Disease’ and it’s rather trance-like. You need to let yourself drift on his soundwaves, soaking up the muffled voices, the the cut-up sounds, the drones, the occasional tune emerging from it all. There’s a game of ‘What’s The Time Mr Wolf’ in ‘Bainbridge’ I think, and the boat emergency procedure announcement at the end is quite chilling. Love stuff like this I have to say. The label is well worth an explore.
I’ve been trying to fit ‘Affin Ambient Works (2022-2026) (Affin) into the newsletter for a few weeks now, so I’m pleased I’ve finally got there! Affin is the Stuttgart-based label of ambient kingpin Joachim Spieth so you know this collection of work drawn from the label’s releases between 2022 and 2026 is going to be spot on. Best of all it comes as a continuous 80-minute mix by Joachim himself. Across 20 tracks, there’s work from Joachim (of course, why have a dog and bark yourself eh?) alongside the likes of our great friend zakè from Past Inside The Present, Markus Guentner, rhubiqs and others. It’s quite the piece of work. With no beats to trip you up, mixing ambient work is no less skillful. Here you can’t feel the joins, which is what you’d expect from a quality artist like Joachim. It’s a really nice one to have on late at night is this. The Moonbuilding office has felt its calming power more than once.
Staying in the same ballpark and sticking with our European mainland friends, we have another various artists collection, ‘Shade Rather Than Light: Anthology | Four’, from Barcelona’s See Blue Audio. The idea is, much like labels such as DiN do, to offer a compilation of tracks drawn from the label’s previous releases. See Blue do this every 15 releases, so this is release number four in the series. Again, the 16-track collection comes as a two-hour mix, this time by Dark Train’s Kate Bosworth. It’s worth noting that the third collection was mixed by DJ SpaceTerrapin from ‘It Came From Enclosure Three’. Kate also provides her trademark handwritten tracklisting for the release which is a nice touch. Tracks here include names you may well know such as Substak, f5point6 and Rhombus Index as well as new names just awaiting your discovery. I was drawn to ‘Dorian Tapestry’ by Droning Cats with NRV. Which is two acts. Droning Cats is such a good name. The track sounds like a very gentle fog horn warning oceanic traffic of the bad weather.
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 is trying to cash in via Discogs.
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 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.
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Thank you so much for lovely review!