Issue 33 / 6 September 2024
This week's essential DIY electronic music missive... Track Of The Week: Minotaur Shock + new releases from Paul Cousins, Luke Sanger, The Hardy Tree and more + new Soft Cell book ‘Bedsit Land'
Right then. Following last week’s sweating of the small stuff, it seems that you’d like new release picks in the morning so you can go record shopping during your lunchbreak, which makes good sense. So I’m going to be sending the Good Stuff mailout at 10am on a Friday. See how it goes. I can get on with sweating other small stuff now, which I will probably share at some point.
After taking the summer off, Bandcamp Friday returns today. I know because my inbox has just imploded. It is undoubtedly a force for good, putting more money in the pockets of artists and labels can only be welcomed, but it is just too much music coming down the pipes on one day. So rather than try keep up, I’ll be business as usual, picking out the best new releases in the knowledge that whatever you buy, whenever you buy it, you will make a difference to someone, somewhere.
Of course, if you wanted to line our pockets, 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 a whole new Polypores album, isn’t sold out. I know, incredible isn’t it? Get yours at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com or if you happen to be in London you can grab a copy in real life from the excellent magCulture, a short-ish stroll from Angel or Farringdon and well worth a visit. Hang on to your payment method of choice in there though, too many goodies for magazine fans.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 33 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/be12c463
Moonbuilding Fighting Fund: ko-fi.com/moonbuilding
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MINOTAUR SHOCK ‘It All Levels Out’ (Bytes)
It looks like it’s all about the crockery for album number 10 from Minotaur Shock. ‘It All Levels Out’ sees Bristol’s David Edwards getting reflective, “a meditation on getting older”, which comes to us all when you realise birthday’s don’t go backwards. It’s mine today, happy birthday to me. If I had a badge that said how old I was, I don’t think I’d be wearing it. It’s not a big birthday, but it feels like a big number. Now who’s meditating on getting older?
Anyway, the label say this is this most personal album yet, which is always a good sign. Personal we like. They also say this is “the closest to a pure ambient record he has made”. We’ll no doubt pick over all that when the album gets its full release in October and I’ve started the research, listening to the back cat in order, starting with his ‘Chiff-Chaffs And Willow Warblers’ debut from 2001. I’ll report back. 2001! I was young in 2001. I would’ve worn the birthday badge that year.
What I can tell you straightaway about ‘It All Levels Out’ is it’s a lot gentler than something like ‘Orchard’ or ‘Mino’. There’s a great track that I’m hooked on called ‘Memory Crates’, which sounds like not all of the parts of a house banger. There’s chords and a melody and that’s it. It’s really lovely.
Anyway, you’ll have to wait a little while to hear that. Ahead of the album’s full release in October, the first fruit is the title track, ‘It All Levels Out’, which is a very delicate affair. It begins with a fragile piano wander that circles around as soft string sweeps build underneath. In fine Minotaur Shock style, it’s a melodic treat, so serene and peaceful. And there’s much more where that came from let me tell you.
‘It All Levels Out’ is released by Bytes on 16 October
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
PAUL COUSINS ‘Oxide Manifesto’ (Castles In Space)
This one has totally crept up on me. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that London-based ferric hero Paul Cousins was mesmerising a live crowd with his tape loop tricks at the launch of his first album, ‘Vanishing Artefacts’. When I say tape loops, I’m not talking Robin The Fog summoning audio demons from thin air, what Paul does is at the very opposite end of that. The Yang to Robin’s Yin. Paul describes this second collection as “sound paintings and sonic experiments on 1/4-inch tape” and his process as “compose, deconstruct to tape, perform, reconstruct”. The results are these incredible beautiful vignettes that you can’t really believe are created on loops of tape. Loving the swirling Terry Riley-isms of ‘Floating Arithmetic’ and the delightful melodic thrum of ‘Tessellation Pact’. The glitching and slurs of the bass heavy ‘Dismantling The Milieu’ are a real delight. This is beautiful stuff. But you have to see him doing this live. And luckily for you there is an album launch party next week at a venue called Theatreship, which sounds like quite a place. It’s a historic cargo barge with over 100 years of service, which is now an arts space, a theatre ship no less, and is parked up in London’s West India Docks. Tickets here
GOOD STUFF #2
LUKE SANGER ‘Dew Point Harmonics’ (Balmat)
Luke really is mellowing in his old age as increasingly it’s his chilled out work that’s attracting the attention. There’s a raft of notable releases if you’re playing catch-up. Try the Serein double whammy of ‘Ancient Pathways’ and ‘Global Horizontal Irradiance’, the wonderful ‘World Of Inherent Noise’ on Miracle Pond or ‘Salt Water Motifs’, one of the very early releases on quiet details. With ‘Dew Point Harmonics’ he returns to the Barcelona-based Balmat label, whose very first release was Luke’s ‘Languid Gongue’ in 2021. It’s a great label if you’ve not come across it, lovely artwork by José Quintanar across all their titles and a mix of names you will recognise and artists awaiting your discovery. Here Luke picks up where he left off with ‘Languid Gongue’ and provides what the label describe as a “bewitching collection” that “slips unpredictably between consonant repetition, poignant melodies, and gnarled bursts of noise that catch in the ear like burrs in hiking socks”. Which is quite a description is it not. Much of Luke’s quieter work draws on the world around him and here he delivers tracks conceived while walking on the Norfolk coast with his dog, early doors if the title of the opener ‘6am Beach Walk’ is anything to go by. Really loving the glitches and slurs of ‘Terraform’ too. For those who do know his rip-roaring floorfilling side as Luke’s Anger or Duke Slammer, well, he can soundtrack your after-hours sessions too. That said, it’s not all mellow fellow, there’s the mutant sounds and cute pops of ‘Poppers’ and the hectic dash of ‘Universal Vibrational Frequencies v3’ towards the end of the b-side.
GOOD STUFF #3
BRIAN DUFFY ‘Instead Of Faint Praise’ (Buried Treasure)
Bear with, I fear I’m going to go on a bit about this record… Birmingham’s Brian Duffy is the loose-cannoned maverick behind Modified Toy Orchestra and The ZX Spectrum Orchestra, both of which need exploration if you’ve got some spare time today. On his CV, he lists working with Martyn Ware and The BEF, which he describes as “feeling like a guitarist being asked by Jimi Hendrix to join his band”. Sure Martyn would enjoy that description. Brian has also produced Seeland, the electronic supergroup meeting of Brum heroes Plone and Broadcast. He was great friends was Broadcast’s late, great Trish Keenan to whose memory this new album is dedicated. His choice of instrument here is very much one extreme to another. The iconic Roland System 100 is a long way from circuit-bent electronic toys and that’s what this is entire record is made, no MIDI, everything played by hand or “triggered from the System 100’s own 12/24 step control voltage and gate sequencer into Logic Pro for multi tracking”. No idea what that means, but it sounds good. Brian talks about how he would turn to the System 100 for solace following Trish’s untimely death in 2011. “Trish and I often discussed the value of having limitations and constraints when starting a new piece of music,” he says. “So I began recording with those conversations in mind.” He would set himself a challenge, like not using any sound processing devices made prior to the synth’s manufacture in 1975. CB radio and broken hi-fi kit were repurposed into tape echos and spring reverbs. A car-boot sourced Telefunken reel-to-reel and a Sony tape machine became the main preamps and were also used for distortion. “EQ and compression came from an ex-BBC Glen Sound outside broadcast module”. Again, no idea what that means,but sounds cool. The label says think late 70s pioneers like The Human League mkI, Daniel Miller, Fad Gadget etc. I mean say that is like capnip round here isn’t it? ‘Echo’ is a gorgeous slo-mo swirl of a track, ‘Everything You Gave Me Was Good’ is like a synthpop hit in the making, 40-odd years too late. The title track is so very good, could well have been an obscure early Human League b-side. Which sounds like damned by faint priase but you know, ‘Circus Of Death’ was a b-side, right? Oh and big up to the excellent Buried Treasure label for releasing this. They were one of first of the new wave of DIY labels that I began noticing back when I started writing about all this. So it’s your fault Alan Gubby. I blame you. ‘Instead Of Faint Praise’ comes as a limited edition of 100 on blue vinyl with an A3 poster of Brian’s System 100. Chop chop, it’s going to sell out fast.
GOOD STUFF #4
JAC BERROCAL, DAVID FENECH, VINCENT EPPLAY ‘Broken Allures’ (Cold Spring)
Here’s an interesting one from the always on the money Cold Spring. It’s a label that is well worth keeping an eye on if the dark/experimental end of things is your bag. They also reissued BEF’s ‘Music For Stowaways’ so you know, suprises up sleeves and all that. Here experimental musicians/producers Fenech and Epplay have paired up once again with Berrocal, a revered artist in the French avant-garde scene, for a fifth long-player and the label say it’s their most coherent release to date. It also comes with some very high profile guests in the shape of Cosi Fanni Tutti and Jah Wobble. You do kind of wonder how that happens, where the connections lie as there doesn't seem to be anything that connects them all when you skim their impressive biographies. Wobble’s distinctive deep, sleek bass rumble features on the title track, but it’s the Cosey tracks that stand out, course it is. Berrocal is known for his specific trumpet sound, as is Cosey, which is as good an excuse as any to make contact. She features on three tracks, offering up lyrics, vocals, electric guitar and her own cornet playing. There’s the thrum and throb of ‘Tones Of Blue And Red’, the street-stalking stomp of ‘Outspoken Caress’ and the wonky instrumental ‘Viva Hacienda’, which recalls, as Cosey puts it, “her time recording with Throbbing Gristle”. Which having read her books I’m not sure is a good thing or a bad thing. Sounds great though. Very noisy, very krauty.
GOOD STUFF #5
THE HARDY TREE ‘All The Hours’ (Clay Pipe)
Frances Castle’s Clay Pipe label is such a treasure, an oasis of calm in a world that seems beyond hectic. Just look at my Bandcamp Friday inbox will you. Here we have the latest in the label’s mini CD series and it’s Frances herself as The Hardy Tree with a 20-minute track that “captures the passage of a day, from dawn to dusk”. There was a listening party this week where someone described the track as “like a pastoral Sabres Of Paradise”, which I really liked. Sorry if I’ve nabbed that off you. Drop me a line if it was you and I’ll credit you with your fine creation next week. The piece itself was initially composed for a live performance in London in February and Frances will be performing it live again on 14 September at The Lexington, Pentonville Road, London, when she’ll be supporting Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman, whose album came out last week and is such a magical piece of work it could have only come out on Clay Pipe. That is a live show that shouldn’t be missed if you’re anywhere even close to north London next weekend. Feel a bit like Ticketmaster this week. No gouging here though, nope. Tickets here.
THE ROUND-UP’S ROUND UP
Still hoovering up a few missed releases form the last few weeks and this quite a piece of work. Dream Division & The Library Of The Occult Electronic Orchestra’s ‘A Rose in The Garden Of Winter’ (Library Of The Occult) sees LOTO big cheese Tom McDowell’s Dream Division solo project morph into a full-full blown band, an all-star line-up featuring the good and great who have appeared on the label, including The Garden Gate’s Timmi Meskers and members of The Hologram People, The Psychic Circle, Men From Spectre and more. It’s wonderful stuff, let’s call it psyche Giallo for the sake of argument. Loving the hi-octane Moroder-flecked ‘Technicolor Terror’ and ‘Blood Banquet’. When are the lives shows? We’ve got a ticket racket going on over here. libraryoftheoccult.bandcamp.com
Season Two of Mortality Table’s LIFEFILES series continues at pace with ‘Void Concrète’ by super producer Gareth Jones who has the likes of Depeche Mode, John Foxx, Wire, Erasure and plenty more besides notched up on his production belt. More recently he’s half of Sunroof, the modular wigout with Daniel Miller. A third volume of their excellent ‘Electronic Music Improvisations’ is due soon apparently. You know the Mortality Table drill by now. Big chief Mat Smith supplies field recordings for guest artists to do what they see fit with. So the source recording from which Gareth weaves his magic here was made “in a concrete void under H6 Childs Way, Milton Keynes, a bridge which runs over the West Coast mainline tracks and the A5 road”. All very industrial. Must have appealed to a man who has produced Einstürzende Neubauten, and indeed the track sounds suitably transporty – little whizzes of sound, great clanks of machines, all very transportative. mortalitytables.bandcamp.com
Last week it was The Fire Engines, this week it’s Altered Images… welcome to retro corner. Altered Images were the first live band I saw, aged 13. They were incredibly loud, so loud my ears rang for absolutely days afterwards. It was so great. Here their first two albums get a welcome reissue by Demon coming as half-speed remasters from the original stereo tapes. With ‘Happy Birthday’ mostly produced by The Banshees’ Steve Severin and ‘Pinky Blue’ by Martin Rushent, the records are a world apart and I still love both of them. This is the axis where they stopped being a mini Banshees and took on the electronic sheen that was all their own. I maintain that ‘See Those Eyes (Long Version)’ remains one of the greatest remixes of all-time. Little did I know in 1982 that remix and indeed the whole of ‘Pinky Blue’ was made in the same room as ‘Dare’. Comes as vinyl, which are the pure unadulterated LPs, or as double CDs, which have a disc of extra tracks, no newly unearthed material, but Martin Rushent’s brilliant dance remixes are there. Oh and there’s ‘Disco Pop Stars’, which is the funked up version of their first single. I could go on, but I will spare you. demonmusicgroup.co.uk
As it’s the beginning of the month it is time to visit the wonderful Richard Norris for his latest ‘Music For Healing’ offering. For those who have missed this, each month he offers up free meditative recordings for your listening pleasure. Feel free to give them to your yoga teacher and rid us all of that awful supermarket chill stuff they play. Here we get over 40 minutes of music using just two sound sources – a crystal bowl tuned to 432 htz and a Fender Stratocaster running through a Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe pedal, guess what? Yup, it’s also tuned to 432htz, which Richard explains is the “miracle tone and is said to be in harmony with the natural vibrations of the universe. See if it works for you.” richardnorris.bandcamp.com
Last but not least, Drunk Keith! It’s the work of Crystal Palace-based artist, producer, singer and songwriter Keith Robert Haworth who has been creatively active since the 90s and is clearly a man who likes an exclamation mark. An early band was called HunkyDory! before he went solo as The Protagonist! releasing an album called ‘Pink Fuzz!’. The provocatively titled ‘Perfumed Ponces!’ is quirky stuff. Nothing wrong with quirk, especially when it’s this well done. The instrumental opener ‘Over And Overture’ starts off all drifty and punches its way out with deep basslines and snappy melody. The vocals, which are kind of theatrical, arrive on the showtime drum and bass of ‘Concrete Jungle’, which comes on like something from a Terry Gilliam film. There’s a darkness here for sure, an edge. It’s like musical theatre dragged down a south-east London back alley for a good kick-in. We look forward to ‘Drunk Keith! The Musical’. drunkkeith.bandcamp.com
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PATRICK CLARKE ‘Bedsit Land – The Strange Worlds Of Soft Cell’ (Manchester University Press)
‘Bedsit Land’, by The Quietus editor Patrick Clark, comes at a very well trodden tale with a fresh pair of eyes. In his introduction, the author admits that he was born in 1994, which only saw him arrive squawking into the world a decade after Soft Cell split, their chart-hogging glory days long gone. Of course, as historians will tell you, you don’t need to have built Stonehenge to write about it.
And when you think of the water under the bridge over the last 40 years there is a mine of information to draw upon and that’s precisely what Patrick does here. As well as his own interviews, conducted via the day job, he delves into the archives to draw on the words of over 60 contributors, including Marc and Dave themselves and a slew of their closest friends and colleagues.
The title itself has you asking what strange worlds did Soft Cell occupy? In his introduction, the author talks about the band being “attracted to weirdness, and to whom weirdness was attracted” and says their career was shaped by “the primal pull of artistic expression constantly being buffeted and occasionally blown off course by the the turbulence of fame”. In the back of the readers mind is what would Soft Cell have been had ‘Tainted Love’ not done what it did?
So this isn’t quite a biography, with Patrick shaping the narrative to his own ends, nor is it a oral history in that there is much interaction from the author, but it all works rather nicely.
I’ve said this before, the interesting thing about books at the moment is how they are snapshots rather than definitive tomes, with each chapter being extended features that allow the writer to really stretch their legs. If you were writing a magazine piece, even a chunky one, you wouldn’t be afforded the space to go into the sort of detail you get here on their respective seaside town upbringings or their art education at Leeds Polytechnic like you get here. Nor would you get the lengthy rumination on Stevo, the deconstruction of the northern northern soul scene, the history of London’s Soho or the in depth look at ‘Top Of the Pops’ and how the world shifted on its axis when Soft Cell appeared.
The chapter on the New York scene and the influence of Cindy Ecstasy and her little pills is great. I love the indignant Dave Ball quote saying the idea ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ was made on drugs was “absolute nonsense. That album was a totally drug-free affair”. He doesn’t miss a beat, adding that with remix album ‘Non-Stop Exotic Dancing’ that suggestion “was closer to the truth”. Dave is a real master with the quotes. Talking about how he felt after the band’s final live show before disbanding in 1984 he says, “I didn’t really feel anything. I’d had so much coke, I couldn’t even feel my nose”.
'Bedsit Land’ is first in a new series from Manchester University Press under the banner of British Pop Archive. Bodes well for the titles to follow.
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
A MESSAGE FROM THE MOTHERSHIP
***MOONBUILDING ISSUE 5 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.
The virtual shop doors are open at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com for your purchasing pleasure. This magazine ain’t going to buy itself.
Moonbuilding Weekly is a Castles In Space publication.
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