Issue 32 / 30 August 2024
This week's essential DIY electronic releases... Track Of The Week: Bogdan Raczynsk + Good Stuff round-up... Andrew Wasylyk & Tommy Perman, Lines Of Silence, Drew Mullholland & Garden, Lia Kohl + more
Coming back from holiday always means there’s a fair bit of tail-chasing. I still feel like I’ve not quite caught up with myself, but I’m almost there. There’s a bumper release round-up below that collects a whole pile of stuff I’ve missed of late. Best get your listening head on.
As you tend to do when there’s a full plate, I’ve been obsessing over the small stuff. Like what’s the best time to send this newsletter? 9.30am seems good, it’s in your inbox early doors. Gives you the whole day to ponder your new release purchases. What about 8am to coincide with Bandcamp releases? I quite like the Friday PM slot, 3.30pm, as it seems to mark the start of the weekend. Or what about lunchtime? We’re trying that this week. I think I will probably conclude that I don’t know. Let me know what you think?
Just a reminder that the new issue of the print version of all this, a lovely 48-page A5 zine full of interviews, reviews, release rounds ups as well as an all-new Polypores album, is available at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 32 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/68844429
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BOGDAN RACZYNSKI ‘newdiv’ (Disciples)
Rephlex alumni Bogdan Raczynski is a curious one. After drifting off in the mid-00s, he seems to staging something of a comeback. A very welcome one at that as far as I’m concerned. The Polish/American artist is firmly tangled up in the legend of Aphex Twin and like Aphex he peddles his very own bicycle of nonsense. The notes that accompany his new album, ‘You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever’, which is due out on Warp archive label Disciples in October, are a good example. “We’ve asked Bogdan on several occasions for more background information on the creation of these tracks,” says his people, “but received a different answer each time.” There is then a list of five one of which “might be true, thought it’s equally possible that none of them are”. The explanations say the new album is the result of Bogdan asking AI to make an EDM album, they originated in a bid to crack the mood/chill/coffee/gym algorithmic playlist market, they were commissioned for a Tesla ad, the music is over 10 years old and the music was made one weekend in early 2024. Who knows? His last album, 2022’s ‘ADDLE’ on Planet Mu, was his first new music in 15 years. So either he’s suddenly become prolific (not unheard of, when he debuted in 1999 he kicked out three albums in a year) or he’s found a cache of old stuff worth mining. The whole thing comes with a QR code that leads you to an “ever-evolving” page on his website that may (or may not) delve a little further into what it’s all about. Whatever, the new album is glorious and as this lead track shows it follows the more melodic work of the Planet Mu release than the high-octane hyperactive jungle you might know him best for. It’s a release you should very much be looking forward to.
‘You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever’ is released by Disciples on 18 October. disciples.bandcamp.com
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
ANDREW WASYLYK & TOMMY PERMAN ‘Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On’ (Clay Pipe)
This one has been on the Moonbuilding stereo for a while. Both of these Scottish composers you should know. Andrew Wasylyk has been wowing with his Clay Pipe releases for while. His last one, ‘Hearing The Water Before Seeing The Falls’, was his best yet, while Tommy Perman is a mainstay on the brilliant Blackford Hill label. They both bring very different skills to this collaborative outing but they compliment each other perfectly. Over to the label… “The record is rooted in Perman's ambient-acid-house grooves and multi-textural percussion built from sampling the knocks, clangs and creaks of Wasylyk’s upright piano.” It’s as good as that sounds. Everything feels bright and breezy, Balearic almost, which isn’t something you expect from Clay Pipe. The opener ‘Climb Like A Floating Vapour’ is almost dancefloor, you can hear the stripped down remix. Likewise with the grooves of ‘Communal Imagination’. The beautiful thing about this record is that great as Tommy’s grooves are, Andrew’s piano is more than up to matching it. It’s a real yin and yang, where electronic meets acoustic and you’re not sure which you like best because they meet so perfectly. You could take them separately as well as together. A remix version isn’t a terrible idea. Hannah Peel did it brilliantly with ‘Particles In Space’, a remix of her ‘Mary Casio’ opus. There’s something very pleasing about electronicness meets acousticness, especially when it’s done properly. These two do it properly. Very properly. Favourite track is currently the full-blown electronic/acoustic mash-up of ‘Spec Of Dust Becomes A Beam’ or maybe it’s the mellow groove of ‘Remain In Memory Full Of Light’. Love those titles. My album of the year contenders list continues to grow.
GOOD STUFF #2
LINES OF SILENCE ‘The Long Way Home’ (Analogue Trash)
We mentioned Lines Of Silence when they dropped the first track from this long-player a while ago and we’ve been looking forward to this long-player landing. LOS was the solo outlet of Todmorden-based David Little until he hooked up with Scissorgun’s Dave Clarkson. This is a third album, but the first in this configuration and it’s a leap and a bound from his previous solo work like the long-form soundscapes of 2022’s ‘Stations Of The Sun’ on Dimple Discs. There’s a proper krauty vibe throughout and it crackles and purrs in the all right places. As we mentioned before, the project was re-energised after David met Faust/Ulan Bator’s Amaury Cambuzat on an experimental music retreat in the Pyrenees in May 2023. Which sounds like something we’ve made up. Cambuzat remixed the title track for them and the rest followed. The “kosmische surf rock” of ‘Tzip Tzap!’, the Can-like groove of the title track, and talking of Can it seems the melodically mellow ‘Phantom Galaxy’ was based around a Jaki Liebezeit groove. And then there’s the 20-minute plus ‘Withens Clough’ that they say is “reminiscent of the feel of Miles Davis’ ‘He Loved Him Madly’ and Eberhard Schoener’s ‘Meditations’” and is inspired by David’s beautifully foreboding local reservoir in the Calderdale moorlands. This is great stuff, a proper record that should be listened to from start to finish. It’s only available on CD at the moment, no vinyl which is a shame. Guess that 20-minute track is throwing a spanner in the works! Records like this are what vinyl was made for.
linesofsilenceband.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #3
DREW MULLHOLLAND & GARDEN GATE ‘Night Blooming Flowers’ (Subexotic)
One I missed last week in my post-holiday haze. Hauntology grandmaster, Mount Vernon Arts Lab’s Drew Mullholland, teams up with Garden Gate’s Timmi Meskers for a trans-Atlantic backwards and forwards producing “a series of iterative compositions where each artist would share a foundation and the other would expand or edit, accruing and removing layers until a shared sense of completion was reached”. Garden Gate, whose wonderful ‘Magic Lantern’ on Clay Pipe earlier this year is still getting a regular outing at Moonbuilding HQ, is described as drawing inspiration “in equal parts from the tarot and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop”, which is pretty much nail on the head for this. Add a pinch of ‘Tales Of The Unexpected’, think creaking doors and things that go bump in the night and you’re there. ‘Night Blooming Flowers’ is apparently the story of a botanist in search of a rare flower that only blooms in the night. “Although a diligent and learned practitioner of science, the botanist is nevertheless unfamiliar with local lore. This proves to be their downfall.”
GOOD STUFF #4
LIA KOHL ‘Normal Sounds’ (Moon Glyph)
No, I’m not just mentioning this because the label it’s released on Portland’s Moon Glyph label. It never hurts to have a “Moon” in there somewhere though. ‘Normal Sounds’ is a record that is based around, well, normal sounds, “field recordings of human-made, non-musical sounds”, you know, a fridge buzz, a car horn, shopping till beeps. Sounds that are intended to be heard but not really listened to. Chicago-based Lia then uses a palette of cello and synths to mimic these sounds “offering them to the listener in a new light”. This is the sort of stuff we love round here. Rather than leaving us guessing, she wears her heart on the song titles. ‘Airport Fridge, Self Checkout’, ‘Car Alarm, Turn Signal’ with Ka Baird on flute, ‘Car Horns’ featuring Patrick Shiroishi on sax… you get the idea. It sounds like it could be abrasive, but it is rather lovely. Taking repetitive sounds, like a car indicator, and souping it up musically works so nicely. I especially like the mix of ‘Ice Cream Truck, Tornado Siren’. You will be please to learn that US ice cream vans also play recognisable tunes. Her previous work using recordings of AM/FM radio as centrepieces also bears investigation. “Kohl brings out beauty in the world’s inane noise” say her people. She really does.
GOOD STUFF #5
MARKUS GUENTNER ‘Kontrapunkt’ (A Strangely Isolated Place)
Following the triptych of ‘Theia’, ‘Empire’ and ‘Extropy’, dark ambient maestro and Kompakt’s ‘Pop Ambient’ mainstay Markus Guentner returns to ASIP with ‘Kontrapunkt’, a collection of eight collaborations featuring headline names such as Joachim Spieth, Karen Vogt and Abul Mogard, which is billed as “a meeting of two drone titans”, paints quite an image doesn't it? Anyway, this is, as you’d expect, seriously accomplished stuff. The opener, ‘Vanish (Featuring Joachim Spieth)’ is especially powerful, building towards sonic peaks that punch hard. There’s a couple of notable vocal outings here, the beautiful sound of the aforementioned Karen Vogt on ‘All Light Will Remain’, and the powerful choral sweeps of Hollie Kenniff on ‘Presence’. As is the case with ASIP releases, it’s a lush package and comes spread out across four sides of vinyl. Delicious.
astrangelyisolatedplace.bandcamp.com
THE ROUND UP’S ROUND UP
Another week, another delightful Past Inside The Present release. ‘Kairos’, the second album from Berlin trio Ausklang follows their PITP ‘Chronos’ debut, not exactly hot on the heels as there’s a four-year gap between outings, but as we like to say round here, good things come to those who wait, right? It’s a little more proggy, more post-rocky, than you’d expect from PITP, but that’s a good thing. Don’t want anyone getting complacent do we? One of the touchstones is Labradford, a name I’ve not heard in a while. Note to self to re-investigate. I’m liking ‘Kairos’ a lot, it veers from the pomp of the title track which fair explodes towards to the end (“a buzzing, thrashing crescendo” say their people) to the brooding ambience of ‘Ventus’. One of those windows-open records. pitp.bandcamp.com
Totally overexcited about this. Fire Engines’ ‘Chrome Dawns’ (Cherry Red) double CD set collects together the entire Codex Communications/Pop:Aural output of the legendary Edinburgh unit. Chucked in for good measure are some outtake odds and sods, two Peel Sessions, their debut live show at Leith Community Centre, an Edinburgh Fringe appearance… they were famous for their 30-minute live sets, they couldn’t play for longer, didn’t have enough songs. This really is epic stuff. I’ve said many before what a genius Davey Henderson is. I love everything he’s ever done. Win, The Nectarine No. 9, The Sexual Objects... I first discovered Fire Engines via their ace cover of ‘Fascist Groove Thang’, which is here, while ‘Candy Skin’ remains one of the greatest pop songs ever (play it loud). No Bandcamp to fill your boots with, but this CD set seems stupidly cheap at £14.99. I wouldn’t hesitate if I were you. Utterly essential. cherryred.co.uk
Another one I missed last week from label de jour Mortality Tables (read about them in the current issue of Moonbuilding mag!), Please Close Your Eyes is the artist formerly known as Goodparley, or Oliver Richards. He was the first artist to release on the label and here they welcome him back with a new project. It’s something of a reinvention and finds him examining his contemplative style and utilising new sounds and textures. On the strength of ‘Nibiru’ and ‘Heaven On The Fourth Floor’ so far so good I’d say. There’s more where this came from as these are the first of four projects planned with the label. mortalitytables.bandcamp.com
You can never have too much acid in your life. Richard Bevan and Joshua Doherty’s Posthuman/I Love Acid/Balkan Vinyl empire should be very high on your list of priorities if that statement is true. Their new ‘Cranker’ 12-inch, featuring two tracks ‘Acid Cranker’ and ‘Stab Cranker’, is a total belter. The edition of 100 hand-stamped red vinyl sold out in the blink of an eye, of course it did. posthuman.bandcamp.com
I might have mentioned Bristol-based B Of Briz before. Her brand of “philosophically inclined” wonk-hop captures the imagination in the same way as Mike Skinner did when he first swept to power. Her new single ‘Car Crash Boy’ isn’t your standard fare. It’s smart stuff, both lyrically and musically. “This song is about the guy who gains some insight and all of a sudden he’s knowledge boy,” she writes. “It’s about trying to maintain humility even when you’re trying to share some new knowledge or insight.” I think we all know a car crash boy. bofbriz.bandcamp.com
We mentioned Netherlands-based Machinefabriek the other week as Rutger Zuydervelt was involved in the excellent Associated Sine Tone Services album, which if you missed it is well worth a visit. Here he’s back with ‘Omval’ (Flag Day), a 30-minute “hardware jam” that he made quite quickly following a live show. He was trying to recreate the atmosphere of the show. “Of course,” he says, “it turned out completely different”. He says the result has the organic quality of live with the complexity of the studio. machinefabriek.bandcamp.com
The ever-reliable Ian Hawgood caught my attention with ‘Sketches For A Friend’ (Home Normal), which is dedicated to “a friend who has quiet details and gold for a soul”. Surely I don’t have to tell you who that is, I feel like I write about him and his label nearly on a weekly basis. “Somewhere along the line,” writes Ian, “I forgot that making music for friends I love was how I connected to them and the world itself.” It’s such a lovely sentiment and such a nice to do. It’s just four tracks clocking in at eight minutes, there’s a full mix, which is a proper sit back and soak it all up moment for your day. homenormal.bandcamp.com
Right, almost caught up with myself. That’ll teach me to take holidays. I love the sunshiney funk of Jon Dickinson’s Fingerwolf and while ‘Bigger On The Inside’ (Moolakii Club) was out last week, it’s going to be one we’ll be listening to for quite some time to come. “Cinematic electro-dubfunk” he calls it. Tune in, turn it up really loud and let the sunshine in. I notice there’s a live date, the Switched On weekender in Whitby, which runs 8-10 November. I bet this is good live. fingerwolf.bandcamp.com
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LINDSAY READE 'A Continual Farewell – My Life In Letters With Tony Wilson' (Omnibus)
Last year, Audrey Golden’s ‘I Thought I Heard You Speak – Women At Factory Records’ (White Rabbit) showed us the Factory Records story hadn’t been completely rung dry and here, Tony Wilson’s first wife Lindsay Reade shows us another side we perhaps weren’t aware of.
In 2019, Lindsay was asked by the Science And Industry Museum in Manchester if she’d like to contribute to an exhibition where she would be presented as one of five key women in the Factory story. While she was rummaging for artifacts to include in the show she discovered “a whole tranche of correspondence from Tony, mostly on very thin Factory notepaper”.
For the trainspotters, that’ll be the FAC 7 stationary, which featured the early “bar graph” logo created by Peter Saville in 1979, rather than the second generation logo, featuring the 1984 “factory” graphic as used on the FAC 115 stationary.
Anyway. Married in 1977 and divorced six years later, it’s fair to say Lindsay and Tony’s relationship was stormy and here she lays it bare. Letters are hugely personal so publishing them in a book is bold. Your first thought is why? Helpfully Lindsay explains in her introduction. She says the book is a “raw and truthful exposure” of her life with Tony, but beyond the book being a way of preserving Tony’s letters, she hopes that “the account of my marriage downfall could possibly be of benefit to someone else in their own personal life”.
It is quite the cautionary tale. And the thing is, the alarm bells should’ve been ringing before they even became a couple. When they first met, at a party in Altrincham, they were both with other people, but were immediately drawn to each other. Lindsay wasted little time ending it with her boyfriend to be with Tony, Tony not so much, saying his girlfriend was going to India and he’d like to wait until after she was gone. Nice.
There’s an incredible tale of the relationship he was in, before the India-bound girlfriend, with Thelma McGough, who was married to, and had children with, the poet Roger McGough. The relationship ended after Roger sent Tony a letter appealing to him “to return his wife”. That letter isn’t included here, you can bet it was a corker. Hopefully Thelma is writing a book, she has such a great story to tell. Google her.
So 'A Continual Farewell’ is mere pages old and we’re already open-mouthed. It does of course get worse. What’s fascinating is how Lindsay weaves the demise of her relationship with the rise of Factory. She provides a detailed narrative alongside Tony’s letters that often streams of consciousness dotted with literary references, which she says she often “fell short of understanding”. In fact, writer and broadcaster Bob Dickinson, who provides the book’s foreword, says that Tony saw himself as a stream-of-consciousness writer, like the Beats, like Kerouac and Ginsberg. In his dreams, eh? He comments that Tony’s letters “sound like his TV scripts – he writes like he knows he’s being watched, and not just read”.
In the book, while her marriage was falling apart, Lindsay walks us though the ‘So It Goes’ TV shows, the Factory night at the Russell Club, the ‘A Factory Sample’ EP, The Hacienda… and of course there’s her affair with Howard Devoto, which was depicted rather crudely in the ‘24-Hour Party People’ film. It was much more than a quickie in a toilet cubicle, for Lindsay at least, but none of it stopped Tony, a serial shagger, from playing the cuckolded husband ad infinitum once he found out.
And of course, there’s the entire Joy Division story. Goodness, that is raw. Lindsay was close to Ian Curtis and Annik Honore and wrote ‘Torn Apart’ about his life for which Annik provided her with Ian’s letters. It is a book very much worth reading. As is this. It’s one for the Factory purists that’s for sure. There’s a lot of detail here, but aside from the facts there’s an incredible amount of human emotion at play, which are made very real with the intensely personal letters. Reading some of them almost feels like eavesdropping. But when hasn’t the drama of everyday life left us gripped? It’s a unique point of view and again, like Audrey Golden’s book, it presents a story we think we know so well in a brand-new light.
A MESSAGE FROM THE MOTHERSHIP
***THE NEW ISSUE OF MOONBUILDING IS OUT NOW***
Bloody hell! Will you look at that? The new issue of MOONBUILDING, Issue 5 for those of you who are counting, is here. Yes, we’ve taken our sweet time, but it is very much worth the wait.
On the cover, with another cracking illustration from the untouchable Nick Taylor, is the awesome Polypores. In our free-wheeling chat we get right under the hood of Stephen James Buckley’s musical operation, offer up a listening guide to help you safely navigate his extensive back catalogue and we also have an whole new Polypores album exclusively for you.
Yes, you read that right. We are giving you a freshly minted, not available anywhere else new album called ‘The Album I Would Have Released In An Alternate Universe’, which happens to be the sister recording to his forthcoming Castles In Space album ‘There Are Other Worlds’. Read all about it in the new issue where Stephen talks you though it track by track.
If you’d like an extract from our Polypores cover feature interview where Stephen Buckley talks about his formative influences, which probably aren’t what you’d image, you can do that here… moonbuilding.substack.com/p/issue-28a-26-july-2024
Elsewhere in the new issue, there’s a profile of our new favourite label Mortality Tables, Pye Corner Audio 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, including Loula Yorke and Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan. There’s a column from The Orb’s Alex Paterson, which starts off about Jah Wobble and ends up about Andrew Weatherall, and an all-new instalment of the brilliant Captain Star cartoon strip.
We’ve gone book crazy of late and this issue features a shit-tonne of great book reviews (that’s great books, reviewed, rather than the reviews being great, although they are pretty good). There’s a cracking chat with Justin Patrick Moore, the author of ‘The Radio Phonic Laboratory’, and a bonus chinwag with the world’s finest music journalist, Mr Simon Reynolds.
You will be kicking yourself and quite hard if you miss out on this issue. The virtual shop doors are open now at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com for your purchasing pleasure. Don’t delay, this magazine ain’t going to buy itself. Call it scarcity marketing if you like, but snooze and you lose.
Moonbuilding Weekly is a Castles In Space publication.
Copyright © 2024 Moonbuilding
nice to see Kontrapunkt inside!
Thanks for featuring Markus’ new album Neil 🫶