Issue 16b / 3 May 2024
In part two of this week's blast of DIY electronic goodness... Track Of The Week: Swansither + Good Stuff release round-up, 'Neu Klang' book review and more...
Hello again. Here’s part two of this week’s newsletter full of brilliant music to get you to the BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND *looks outside, still honking it down*. I’ll tell you what, it’s good job no one has got a weekend away booked in this kind of weather. What? Oh, I have. Sleeping is always good, right?
If you missed part one this morning, here it is… https://moonbuilding.substack.com/p/issue-16a-3-may-2024
Right, I’m off to pack my weekend bag. Wellies and all.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 16 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/ff058f91
Buy us a pint: ko-fi.com/moonbuilding
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SWANSITHER ‘Keep To The Path’ (Castles In Space Subscription Library)
Been waiting for this album from Tom Kennedy’s Swansither to land for a while. ‘The Slaughtered Lamb Sessions’, which is released on vinyl by Castles In Space Subscription Library, was recorded in the actual pub used for the classic scenes in ‘An American Werewolf In London’.
“It’s the first horror movie I ever saw, when I was 12 or 13 years old,” reveals Tom. “It had a huge impact on me, and ever since I have thought of country pubs in terms of how much they felt like The Slaughtered Lamb.”
The Slaughtered Lamb isn’t actually a pub, but a cottage in Wales owned by the mother of Tom’s friend Lara. One day a film crew knocked at her door looking for a location to use for the film’s exterior pub scenes.
“Many years later, Lara offered me the cottage for a few days, to go and write some music,” says Tom. “Not only would I go there to write music, but this would be dark and scary music inspired by scenes from the movie and written inside The Slaughtered Lamb itself. This would be a ‘Heart Of Darkness’ kind of trip.”
And so it proved. When Tom arrived to record, the place hadn’t been lived in since Lara’s mother died in 2017. There’s plenty of ghost stories about the cottage, which Lara shared, you know, in order to add to the atmosphere.
“Despite Lara’s warnings, I was not prepared for the actual experience of living on my own, in an old creepy cottage,” says Tom. “When I realised that the entire village was uninhabited, and that I was the only living person around, I got into a strange kind of feedback loop of isolation and writing scary music.”
The album was created in two and half days of what Tom describes as “frantic recording” before he decided to pack up go home before he lost his mind. The above video came later when Tom hit on the idea of syncing his new music up with the actual film.
“During the video import process on my very old computer, the files became insanely corrupted and glitchy and I think it suits the music better,” says Tom.
We agree.
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
STEVE COBBY ‘Fuck No’ (Déclassé)
It’s been a year since his last LP, ‘The New Law Of Righteousness’, but it seems longer. The world, you see, is a better place when there’s a new Steve Cobby album to enjoy. For those who don’t know, Cobby was one half of the 90s downtempo breakbeat mavericks Fila Brazillia. I loved Fila. There’s not a duff album in their back catalogue and their remix work was almighty. Anyway, Cobby continues the mission, ploughing a solo farrow these days and releasing records that just stop you in your tracks. I don’t think I’ve ever fired up one of his releases and felt disappointed. And ‘Fuck No’ isn’t an exception. Opener ‘Silent Windmills’ is pretty much an electro track, with a sweet Cobby trademark melody piled on top. The street chatter and the raspy synth funk of ‘Sepulveda’ feels very NYC block party, while all that’s missing from the low bass rumble of ‘United States Of Africa’ is Barry White on vocals. And those beats on ‘Chūgi’ are insane. You need to turn that one up LOUD. It always takes me a while to listen to a new album by Cobby, there’s a lot of rewinding to listen to tracks again. I am a bit of a fanboy.
GOOD STUFF #2
BELBURY POLY ‘Fellfoul’ (Mulgrave Audio)
Got an email from Jim Jupp recently. “I’ve just recorded a Belbury Poly soundtrack for a new audio drama on Bob Fischer’s Mulgrave Audio label,” he wrote. Bob, as you will probably know, is a reformed BBC local radio presenter who writes extensively for the likes of Electronic Sound and Fortean Times. Which is apt because ‘Fellfoul’ is the second radio drama from Mulgrave Audio and it kind of falls between those two stools. A nicely listenable 13-minutes long, written by Andrew Orton, it tells the story of Eleanor Wood, a woman who finds respite from her dull home life in the fictional fantasy land of swords and sorcery called Fellfoul. It’s the first of an intended range of ‘Little Hauntings’ releases. If you know Bob and Belbury Poly you don’t need to know much else about this. Sounds very cool on headphones I have to say.
GOOD STUFF #3
THE DARK JAZZ PROJECT ‘The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari’ (Irregular Patterns)
The excellent Andrew Spackman, who you may well know as Cars From The Future or SAD MAN (no need to be so SHOUTY), dons his Dark Jazz Project hat for this reimagined soundtrack to Robert Wiene’s 1920’s silent horror classic. Don’t know if you caught it, but the soundtrack has recently been reimagined by one Karl Bartos. I wrote about that when it was released a couple of months back. It is one weird record. Like a bad ‘Switched On Bach’. The conclusion there was that Kraftwerk were very much a sum of their parts. Anyway, the reason ‘Dr Caligari’ is ripe for reinterpretation is that the original orchestral score by Giuseppe Becce has been lost since the 20s. There’s been some great cracks at it, Bill Nelson’s 1982 ‘Das Kabinet’ is one of my favourites. I can now add this delightfully avant-garde outing that “brings its quixotic brand of harsh jazz noise, electrical blasts and pulsating beats to create a barrage of sonic invention that perfectly imbues the troubled subconscious of the movie”. Yup.
thedarkjazzproject.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #4
THE BALLOONIST ‘A Quiet Day’ (Wayside And Woodland)
And so to a record that is the total opposite of the above, ‘A Quiet Day’ is a delightful project by Ben Holton from epic45. The idea is really going to chime round these parts. A child of the 80s, Ben set about exploring his hazy memories of those lost days of childhood, the ones where you’re off school sick or Sunday. Sundays used to go on forever. With tracks entitled ‘Midweek Rain’, ‘Pebble Mill At One’ and ‘Afternoon Ceefax’ you can see where Ben is coming from here. Afternoon Ceefax had me. The hours you could spend on that, it was the 80s version of doom scrolling. Trying to get the football scores via Ceefax. Interminable. “Musically,” says the accompanying spiel, “there are traces of Teletext and Ceefax library music, the ambient jazz of Pat Metheny and other ECM artists, the gentle and dreamlike electronica of Suzanne Ciani and the atmospheric home recordings of founding Genesis member, Anthony Phillips”. I hardly need to say it, but it does have that feel of early Ghost Box. What’s not to like? They’ve picked the perfect release day for it too. The grey skies have set in, I can hear the rain on the roof and I’ve got this playing in the background. Lovely stuff.
GOOD STUFF #5
VIBRATION TAPES ‘Vibration Tapes’ (Luddite Tapes)
I’m not sure I’ve got that title right. I think it’s just called ‘Luddite 2. Vibration Tapes’. Or maybe it is ‘Vibration Tapes’ by Vibration Tapes. Dunno. What I do know is I like it. My new favourite label, Luddite Tapes, whose debut release from Microgamma Bold Extended was such a treat, follows it very hot on the heels with release number two. From the description (“Recorded and mixed in Doncaster”) I’d stick my neck out and say this is label boss Mat Handley. Go on, deny it Mat. For those who missed it, Luddite specialises in “home dubbed tapes recorded only with equipment available in 1983 or before”. There’s other rules, like “We will not have any presence on social media. You will not see posts from related labels (eg Woodford Halse) mentioning Luddite”, a rule they bent to destruction almost immediately last week, which made me laugh. Anyway, the releases are exactly what you’d expect them to be. There’s four tracks here (a cassette EP!) recorded last autumn with some interesting sound credits including “old new age tapes” and “field recordings made in various railway stations and industrial units”. You can imagine, right? I love this label.
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SOUNDCROWD
Another week, another brilliant book to add to your ever-growing reading pile. This week’s offering is Christoph Dallach’s ‘Neu Klang: The Definitive History Of Krautrock’ (Faber). Presented as an oral history, it’s one of those books you feel is very much needed. First published in German under the title ‘Future Sounds’ in 2021, it’s been translated into English by Katy Derbyshire for Faber.
What immediately strikes you is that there’s too many names the author interviewed who are sadly no longer with us – Can’s Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay, Cluster’s Dieter Moebius, Klaus Schulze. It’s vital these people got to tell their stories and that they’re represented in histories like this. So many artists like this aren’t going to be so fortunate. So hats off to Christoph for that.
The list of interviewees is indeed impressive – along with krauty pioneers, Rodelius, Schmidt, Rother, Bartos (no Ralph as per), Irmler and so on, Christoph adds the likes of Brian Eno (a rare interview), Steven Wilson, Iggy Pop, Daniel Miller, Stephen Morris, Jean-Michel Jarre, Simon Draper and Julian Cope, who all add much to the tale.
Organised into dates, 1950s, 60s and 70s, and then broken down into chapters, which by the 70s is a list of incredible bands, it’s a captivating read. As always with this kind of thing, the early years stuff is fascinating. Rough Trade’s Nigel House appears during a discussion of the name krautrock and hits the nail on the head. “As a record dealer,” he says, “I’m very grateful for the word ‘krautrock’, because I can put all the interesting German music from back then in one section.” And he’s right. Hands up who doesn’t have a rifle when you see a browser marked “krautrock” in a record shop?
There are also some very sobering post-war truths laid bare too. Alexander Von Schlippenbach, one of the pioneers of European free jazz and a pal of Jaki Liebezeit from his jazz days tells of how when he started school they were still expected to say ‘Heil Hitler’. Reading the likes of Roedelius, Liebezeit, Czukay and Schmidt talking about their experiences of the Third Reich is very chilling indeed. That krautrock evolved out of a need for that young generation of Germans to assert themselves, to prove they weren’t like the people who went before them, is a stark reminder of what the country went through immediately post-war.
Jazz was banned by the Nazis so its resurgence after the war was a protest, it was the music of freedom and the sound of rebellion, which is why almost everyone who went on to pioneer krautrock has a jazz band in their past. You might think the chapter devoted to hair is a bit of lighthearted fun, but again that was a rebellion. Long hair says Warner Music’s European CEO Bernd Dopp “meant you’d fought and won, against your parents, your teachers, most of your classmates and the mainstream as a whole”.
And we’ve not even got to the main attractions yet when the book works through the stories of the key players, the likes of Tangerine Dream, Amon Düül, Faust, Can, Connie Plank, Kraftwerk, NEU!… This is a cracker of a book about so much more than just the music. Essential reading.
faber.co.uk / Moonbuilding bookshop
BROOM WITH A VIEW
Staying on the books tip, one of my favourites from last year, Cathi Unsworth’s ‘Season Of The Witch’ (Nine Eight) sees its paperback edition published today. Happy publication day! While I do like a hardback, paperbacks are so much friendlier on the shoulders when you’re lugging a pile around with you. Less selfishly, this is a must-have even if you only have a passing interest. Which is the thing about a lot of these books. Authors like Cathi are so skilled they can pull in those who weren’t die-hard goths. The other thing I’m noticing these days about books is that they are very personal takes on the subject. Here Cathi puts her distinctive spin on the history of goth. It’s not a definitive history because it’s not supposed to be. She traces a line through the bands who “slipped through punk’s open door and out into imaginative landscapes beyond”. The whole gang is here, from The Cure, Bauhaus and Birthday Party to Soft Cell, Sisters Of Mercy and Cocteau Twins, not to mention Echo & The Bunnymen, Lydia Lunch and The Cramps. She also offers a guide to gothfathers/gothmothers (Driscoll, Crowley, Nico and the like) and tackles the social history, how it came up hand-in-hand with Thatherism and why this most atmospheric of music spoke to an alienated generation. Aren’t they all? It was harder in the old days though. Just was. Get your copy in now so that you can mark International Goth Day on 11 May with some conviction.
cathiunsworth.co.uk/ Moonbuilding bookshop
STALL OF INDEPENDENCE
A bit of a heads up so you can clear the way for a visit to the first Independent Labels Market of the year at Coal Drops Yard in London’s glittering King’s Cross next Saturday (11 May). As usual there’s an absolute avalanche of stalls including big boys and girls like Ninja Tune, 4AD, Third Man and Matador, but there is plenty of representation from the small but perfectly formed labels we cover here. Expect the likes of Clay Pipe, WIAIWYA, Sonic Cathedral, Nonclassical, Melodic, Houndstooth and so it goes on. Best of all there’s always labels that are new to me and I like nothing more than making a new discovery. The whole shebang runs from 11am-6.30pm. The supporting cast includes the London Brewers’ Market, a craft maker and artists corner as well as DJs and live music showcases all day long.
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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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