Issue 15b / 26 April 2024
In part two of this week's blast of DIY electronic goodness... Track Of The Week: David Boulter + Good Stuff new release round-up, our playlist and more...
Hello again. Friday afternoon already? Are we all here? Good, good. If you’re clock-watching, waiting for the weekend to land, here’s part two of this week’s newsletter full of brilliant music to get you there.
If you missed part one this morning, featuring Matthew Collin and his new book ‘Dream Machines’ which tackles the history of British electronic music, it’s here… moonbuilding.substack.com/p/issue-15a-26-april-2024
So then, the weekend starts here. Or at least just over there in a little while.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 15 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/b18920f0
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DAVID BOULTER ‘The Arboretum’ (Clay Pipe)
Another week, another Clay Pipe Track Of The Week. What can you do when a label is hitting so many home runs? I promise that next week’s track won’t be on Clay Pipe. So anyway, those of you who caught the listening party for David Boulter’s new album ‘St Ann’s’ on Wednesday night will know what a treat his new full-length is.
The Tindersticks man has been quiet for a while, busy with his film soundtrack work. There was the mini-CD release ‘Factory’ at the back end of 2022, but his last full LP was 2020’s ‘Yarmouth’. I guess 7 June when his new one ‘St Ann’s’ gets released can’t come soon enough. The album once again deals with place as it’s his tribute to the Nottingham council estate, famously some of the poorest social housing in England, where he grew up.
“Crumbling, cramped, and full of damp,” he writes, “we had a shared toilet in the backyard and no bathroom, some of the houses were without hot water, it was freezing cold in winter. Everything seemed black and white.”
Eventually the estate was bulldozed, 340 acres were cleared and 30,000 temporarily rehoused while a new estate was built.
“We moved to the new St Ann’s when I was six,” offers David. “There were two indoor toilets! A bathroom with a shiny white ceramic bath that you could fill whenever you wanted. Central heating, and a small garden at the front and back of the house. We had our own shed, and a cherry blossom tree just over the fence. Everything came into colour.”
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
DAWN CHORUS AND THE INFALLIBLE SEA ‘Reveries’ (Sonic Cathedral)
Four years since first Dawn Chorus outing, ‘Liberamente’, and it’s very much been worth the wait. ‘Reveries’ is the handiwork of Zach Frizzell (aka zakè of Past Inside The Present, a label we seem to mention on an almost weekly basis… still loving that Marine Eyes album from last week), Marc Ertel, and Damien Duque (aka City of Dawn). It takes their previous guitar drone-driven outing and evolves it. Which isn’t quite the right word, but hey, it’s Friday, gimme a break. The sound is awash with string-based arrangements which have a quality and a sophistication that make you feel at peace. The talk in the blurb is of a record that “pulses like a hibernation heartbeat”, with tracks that “pull together an evolving cast of orchestral instruments into a comforting devotional”. I mean, it does, they do. It is a huge sigh of a record. So what are they doing on Sonic Cathedral, the home of shoegaze? Well, a clever person somewhere has dubbed what DCATIS (snappy acronym there, sounds like a government department) do as “dronegaze”. There’s T-shirts. Oh yes. And they have a point. Just listen to how the title track, which opens the record, unfurls over nearly 10 minutes. ‘Reveries’ comes on glorious solid orange vinyl of which there are not many copies left on Bandcamp from an edition of 500. Best get a serious shift on if you want to snag this beautiful piece of work.
GOOD STUFF #2
MICROGAMMA BOLD EXTENDED ‘Microgamma Bold Extended Part 1/Part 2’ (Luddite Tapes)
Well here’s a surprise. Earlier this week and totally out of the blue, Woodford Hale’s chief tape spooler Mat Handley unveiled a brand-new label, Luddite Tapes. Submissions are now open, but there are rules. The label, says Mat, will only release music played and recorded on equipment available in 1983 or before. “No exceptions, any divergence from this rule will result in rejection”. This goes for the sleeve too. The artist must supply a list of all equipment used for verification purposes. The work will be released on tapes dubbed on domestic cassette recorders with generic home-produced artwork. There’s no social media, Woodford Halse and its associated labels will not be talking about Luddite. It’s just like Fight Club, but with music. Brilliant eh? First fruit is Microgamma Bold Extended, which is our pal Pete Gofton so you can perhaps imagine the sort of madness that lies within these two sprawling home-recorded monsters. Pete says the brace of 16-minute tracks were recorded in the 90s. “The sound of a 1990s north-eastern tweenager cosplaying as Hood, The Dead C and Faust,” says Pete. It is the sound of everyone you knew with a guitar and a Tascam Porta 01 going nuts. Oh this label is going to be a lot fun.
GOOD STUFF #3
ONEPOINTTWO ‘Voyages Extraordinaires’ (Human Geography)
It’s always a treat when a new OnePointtwo album lands. Transmitting out of Thessaloniki in Greece, Konstantinos Giazlas makes music that draws from all over the place, everything from radiophonic pioneers to krautrock, shoegaze, psychedelia… you never know what you’re going to get. He talks about always trying to emulate a musical journey into space and this one has that ‘Event Horizon’ dark rumble vibe. ‘Ferat’ is simmering pot of electronic shuddering, ‘L'Île Mystérieuse’ feels like a vast spaceship drifting in a distant galaxy, while the hectic flutters of ‘Plongeur’ feel very sinister. It’s all inspired by the Jules Verne adventure novels of the same name and uses loops taken from a portable mono tape recorder, field recordings and samples from 1970s Greek pops songs. Which, you know, sounds great. The result is “unconventional immersive soundscapes” that invite the listener “to be part of an imaginary world where technological advancements, innovations, environmental awareness are bridging past and present helping us to face challenges and adversities, showcasing the human spirit of resilience, determination and problem solving”. We admire the ambition.
human-geography-recordings.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #4
PHIL DODDS ‘Many Moons Ago’ (Waxing Crescent)
Phil, as you will know, runs the Waxing Crescent label and here he shares his own music. These tracks were recorded in 2009-10 and have lived on a “dusty USB stick” ever since. With Phil turning 40 back in January he set himself a few goals to celebrate, one of which was to share this music. The original plan was to find a home on another label, but why have a dog and bark at the moon yourself? So here we are with these tracks being released on his own label. There’s a run of three tracks that I’m really loving – there’s the wonk jazz vibes of ‘Seven Up ft Propa’, it’s got that Beasties ‘In Sound’ feel. Likewise, ‘Let’s Leave ft SB Live’ sits a mellow rap/vocal over a seriously groovy number and ‘Lifted ft Qman1’ swirls and crackles like it’s thumbed a lift with early Planet Mu. Oh, and yes, I will write about anything moon-related. As with all Waxing Crescent releases, this will be released this evening. Happy belated birthday Phil!
waxingcrescentrecords.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #5
ROSIE TEE ‘Night Creature’ (Kikiora)
Hailing from Birmingham, Rosie Tee is both an actual person and the name of a four-piece band. Their live outings are described as “cinematic” and the artists they’ve supported – the likes of Stealing Sheep, Submotion Orchestra, Flaminggods and The Orielles – would suggest that yes, this is the case. Their sound is a full-blown blend of prog, folk, psyche and electronica. This debut six-track mini-album follows a string of well-received singles and will no doubt be equally frothed over. Tee, the person, has Polish heritage and you can feel those folk roots in the melodic thrum of the title track that fair rattles along, while ‘Wishbone’ is what Tee describes as “a fragile ode to a folkloric female spirit living beneath the house”. It’s the debut release on the band’s own label and they describe what they do rather nicely as “an avant-pop cryptid”. I mean it exists, I can hear it, which world it exists in is probably a whole other question. Good work.
THE ROUND-UP IN A ROUND-UP
Very much liking Scholars Of The Peak’s ‘The Peak EP’. It has that bright and breezy melody-driven sound of say The Twelve Hour Foundation. The church bells at the beginning of ‘Dickey’s Skull’ are interesting. They belong to St Thomas Beckett Church bells in Chapel-en-le-Frith, a “six full circle ring with tenor 11cwt in G”. I know this because it turns out Scholar Of The Peak’s Drew is a bell ringer in training. We had an interesting chat about his craft. “I’m still what you'd class as a ‘newer’ ringer,” he told me, “but I've rung three quarter peals so far - that's 1,260 changes of the order of the bells, taking around 50 minutes.” His advice for anyone attempting that is to make sure you nip to the loo before you start. Keen to see where all this goes as Drew is already thinking how he can apply some ringing methodology to his music. thescholarsofthepeak.bandcamp.com
So here’s something to explore. If Missing Scenes is anything to go by, looks like there’s a vibrant electronic scene in Portland, Oregon. Following the ‘Moon’ series of singles (yes, yes, I know, anything moon-y) comes ‘Who Is This For’ (Varia), a long-player in two parts, or nine depending on how you look at it. It opens with ‘Who Is This For’, a five-part ambient suite followed by the four-part ‘≈238,000 mi’ and is the kind of thing I very much like having blipping and thrumming and rumbling away quietly as I go about my business. Missing Scenes played what sounds like an interesting show a couple of weeks back at Megalith PDX in Portland with Andrew Anderson, whose work focuses on “quiet repetition, drone and patient change” and Hyalithe who make “raw black metal”. Quite the change of pace there. Interesting crowd too I bet. missingscenes.bandcamp.com
Swedish electronic duo, the brilliantly named Gidge serve up five-track EP ‘Tundra’ (Atomnation), which I’ve been enjoying. Their music is “shaped by field recordings of nature that is both comfortable on the dancefloor and in a more relaxing environment”. Indeed. Expect mellow beats, moody chords, haunty vocals samples, twangy guitars and eerie atmospheres. One look at their Bandcamp page tells you much, it’s very nature-y, lots of trees and forests of the north of Sweden there. The EP features ‘Bleak’, their last release following their 2022 album ‘New Light’, along with four brand-new tracks. Lots to like here. gidge.bandcamp.com
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SPACE RAVERS
Happy second edition publication day to Jim Ottewill’s ‘Out of Space: How UK Cities Shaped Rave Culture’ (Velocity Press). Originally published in 2002, the book explores the role of clubs and their relationship with the environments around them, which is such an interesting take. But this is no armchair chin-stroking. The author is a renowned journalist who has used his skills to fine effect, getting out into the field for a nighttime tour of the UK and the club culture it holds. From Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow to what he calls “lesser known meccas” of Todmorden and Coalville, he catches up with venue owners, DJs and promoters to find out what makes a club thrive and asks whether a place can influence the sound that comes from it. In light of the pandemic, from which many venues never recovered, all this is especially pertinent now. In this brand-new expanded edition Jim has also added an entirely new chapter that looks at Birmingham. As with all good things, the book has spawned a Substack newsletter called ‘Deeper Into Outer Space’, which is very much worth a look.
WAVE HELLO
Birmingham’s Seventh Wave Festival, run by the fine folk who do the Mixcloud radio show of the same name, takes place this weekend and they have one heck of line-up ready and waiting. The event, which takes place over three days at The Castle And Falcon in Brum, features The KVB and TVAM on Friday night and Transglobal Underground on Saturday, but it’s the Sunday all-dayer that is going to catch your eye. Running from 2-11pm, the line-up is stellar. It features the holy trinity of Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, Field Lines Cartographer and Polypores along with Apta, Sulk Room and Lo Five. Talk about dream line-up. It really doesn’t get much better than this. Tickets are an absolute snip at £17.50 (plus booking fee) with the music getting underway at 3.15pm. On the dot. As the organisers say, “If you’re a fan of all things electronic then The Seventh Wave events are probably for you”. There’s no probably about it with this line up.
Seventh Wave Festival / Tickets
LISTENING IN A BOX
If you’re stuck for something to do this weekend and you happen to be in London,
it’s the last weekend to catch Max Cooper’s installation at the pop-up digital art house on Granary Square in King’s Cross. The Observatory (“a dichroic pop-up space that breaks art from the confines of traditional gallery spaces”) features a series of audio-visual pieces by Cooper that seek to “explore feelings of more positive wellbeing”. There’s 14 works by the artist along with a series of collaborations featuring Thomas Vanz, The McGloughlin Brothers, Quayola, Uisato and Yoshi Sodeoka. The whole thing is put together by a company called Creative Giants, a Brighton-based creative agency born out of Glastonbury Festival’s Shangri-La. It’s interesting stuff, the founders Simon Vaughan and Ben Kearns talk about “consistently striving to ignite conversations and inspire change through our creations”. “The Observatory,” they say, “is not a spectacle installation nor is it just another immersive digital experience. It has been created to provoke thought, elicit emotions, and foster a sense of connection with both the self and the world around us.” Sounds well worth a visit, right?
The Observatory / Creative Giants
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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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