Issue 34 / 13 September 2024
This week's essential DIY electronic music missive... Track Of The Week: Lili Holland Fricke & Sean Rogan + new releases from James Murray, A'Bear, 400 Lonely Things, Ghostwriter + more
There was a really lovely piece about the Moonbuilding universe that appeared totally out of the blue last week. It’s fascinating hearing what other people make of our world. Written by Steve Thorp as part of the ‘Odd Finds’ series on his Ziggy’s Lament Substack, it was a voyage of discovery piece and was such a spot-on assessment of what Moonbuilding is, I wanted to share. Hope you don’t mind. I mean, if you can’t blow your own trumpet and all that. You can find the piece here… Steve is also involved in an excellent-looking mag of his own called Unpsychology who have just published Issue 10. You can find that here.
Some news from the mothership. The long-awaited new Polypores album, ‘There Are Other Worlds’, is locked and loaded for a 20 September release on Castles In Space. Which is next week. It’s one heck of record, the sister recording to our exclusive Moonbuilding release ‘The Album I Would Have Made In An Alternate Universe’. All the tracks were made in the same sessions so either set could have ended up being the vinyl version. I’m still not sure which one I like best.
You can read the story about the releases in the latest print issue of Moonbuilding where Stephen Buckley talks us through both albums. Not actually talks, he talked to me about them and I wrote it down. You’ll have to read it.
Get your copy at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 34 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/aa405a98
Moonbuilding Fighting Fund: ko-fi.com/moonbuilding
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LILI HOLLAND FRICKE & SEAN ROGAN ‘dear alien’ (Melodic)
Image: Beck Cooley
I often rattle on about listening to the gentler end of the music covered here with the office windows open. I like listening quietly first thing, steaming cup of tea on the go and the sounds coming out of my speakers mingling with outside noises - planes passing on their way to Heathrow, birds in the back garden trees, a dog bark, a bin lorry in the next street, work on a nearby loft extension, there’s even a distant piano some days… it all goes into my mix.
When Josh from Melodic sent over ‘dear alien’, the debut long one from Lili Holland Fricke and Sean Rogan, he described it as “ever-mutating vocals, pedal warped cello and tape-looped guitars pushed through glitchy, electronic distortion”. He had me there really, but then he said “it’s instantly become my go-to early morning record”.
It’s on Melodic so was always getting played, but his early morning recommendation had me firing it up straight away. And guess what? It’s instantly become my go-to early morning record.
Manchester-based Lili Holland Fricke is an experimental cellist who uses electronics and voice to “weave unusual textures and sounds, with words that evoke dreamlike images and feelings”, while producer/songwriter/guitarist Sean Rogan (from Manchester but based in London) prefers “realness over ‘screen time’”, his mission is to capture performance as truly as possible. You can see why this partnership works so well. And you can hear it too.
This first offering, the title track from the album, is a delight. Ambient experimental pop their people call it and ‘dear alien’ is as pop as they get. It’s almost a proper song, almost. Lili’s softest of soft vocal picks out a melody while flecks of guitar trace a rhythm, a bass joins in, almost not there, while a ghostly electronic tick underpins the whole track. Their voices tangle, a cello yearns, a drum machine kicks in. It’s sort of an out-there This Mortal Coil, stripped right back and turned down low. Shimmery is what it is.
There’s another track, ‘Seem Asleep’, which is similarly showstopping, it seems to wobble on its own axis. I love how they create these half-songs and how they seem to drift in on the breeze, catching your attention with a sound, a rhythm, of their own. But more about the rest nearer to release date. In the meantime, open those windows and get this taster on.
‘dear alien’ is released by Melodic on 8 November
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
JAMES MURRAY ‘Weeds’ (quiet details)
Is it another month already? These quiet details releases don’t half come round fast. People say they don’t know how I do what I do, likewise, I don’t know how Alex keeps his foot on the qd pedal quite as he does. September’s offering is a return to the label for James Murray who graced the label along with Home Normal’s Ian Hawgood under their Slow Reels guise, qd15 if you’re counting those sort of things. ‘Weeds’ (qd23 catalogue number fans) sees James back on the label on his todd and I think that makes it the first time there’s been a repeat appearance. And who better than the Slowcraft label big chief to bring the noise. ‘Weeds’ he says is a kind of sister album to his ‘Soundflowers’ release from spring 2023. For that release he used a generative compositional approach centred around the popular 16-track Torso T-1 algorightmic sequencer added to which there was a bunch of analogue hardware, an ARP Odyssey, Arturia MicroFreak and so on. “Thus,” explains James, “analogue layers grow from synthetic seeds”. Which is neatly put. Using a similar line of thinking here, he says “I've dialled back some of the intentionality and let generative methods take more of the lead compositionally”. There is of course a connection between his synthetic seeds and the ‘Weeds’ of the title. Each tracks is titled after a weed – ‘Ragwort’, ‘Larkspur’, ‘Mallow’ etc and each is “a loose study of various structural, cultural or biochemical aspects of each plant’s nature and reputation”. Multi-layered and detailed, James’ music, as the label points out, “is engaging and demands close listening, and at the same time meditative and powerfully hypnotic.” As usual with qd, it’s a heck of piece of work.
GOOD STUFF #2
A’BEAR ‘Glammy Racket’
There are starting to be so many listening parties on Bandcamp they’re causing conflicts. For example, last night at 7pm did you tune into the quiet details bash to listen to James Murray’s offering or did you join South African-born, Australian-raised and London-grown Janine A’Bear for a playback of her new album, ‘Glammy Racket’? Interesting fact, she hosted the party, pre-show, from the bar at the album launch for Paul Cousin’s ‘Oxide Manifesto’, which was on a big boat in London’s actual Docklands. Turns out there was a guy in her listening party who was also at the show! Anyway, we need some sort of collective diary for playbacks to avoid these clashes. I’ll set it up shall I? I first became aware of A’Bear at Buried Treasure’s infamous ‘The Delaware Road – Ritual And Resistance’ event at New Zealand Farm Camp on Salisbury Plain in 2019. What a night. People packed out the maze of bunk houses on the remote army base to see some incredible performances. A’Bear among them. It was before she’d released a thing, her debut ‘Ear Of The Heart’ followed in 2020 and she’s been building on her “whirlwind of psychedelic poly-rhythms, distorted bass lines and warped vocals”, as I described it in Electronic Sound, ever since. In that piece I also said “A’Bear’s not going to disappoint”. Don’t like to say told you so, but… this new seven-tracker, her second album, not only has a brilliant title, it feels like her most complete and accomplished work to date. She riles against a world of “complete clutter, online bombardment of the senses” and reminds us to “stay grounded and find your own way – no gear and all the ideas is the way”. ‘Glammy Racket’ moves from the dancefloor-fuelled clang and clatter of the title track to the gentle vocal-led ‘What Remains’ to the swirling Moroder meets The Workshop of ‘Conjure’. The rise of A’Bear is coming together nicely by the sounds of it. Really love this.
GOOD STUFF #3
GHOSTWRITER ‘Tremulant’ (Sub Exotic)
This reads as one heck of a line-up. Mark Brend has collected around him a revolving cast of contributors for his Ghostwriter project since 2009. This new record, his third LP, created over several years, ropes in historian Suzy Mangion, “psych folk Anglican bishop” Andrew Rumsey and Americana vocalist Michael Weston King. Add to that the title, ‘Tremulant’, is a device on a pipe organ that “varies the wind supply to the pipes causing a fluctuation in their amplitude and pitch, producing a tremolo and vibrato effect”, and well, hands up if you’d like to guess what on earth this all sounds like. The record is a collection of church music, brought outside the church. Mark describes them as “experimental renditions of evangelical hymns”, which is very helpful. It’s just five tracks, but boy, what tracks. The whole thing is captivating. The opener, ‘Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down’ isn’t quite as advertised. It was first recorded in 1931 by Blind Joe Taggart and covered by the likes of Willie Nelson and Robert Plant. I’m trying to think if there are hymns about Satan. Sure someone will tell me. Mark had only wanted songs written to be sung by church congregations but Michael Weston King persisted. It’s great, reminds me of Gavin Bryers’ ‘Jesus Blood’. There’s two tracks herethat clock in at 10 and 16 minutes respectively, ‘I Stand Amazed’ and ‘The Anchor’, both are brilliant. The accompanying notes are as equally curious as the release itself. “At no point during the recording,” they say, “was any combination of Suzy, Andrew, Michael and Mark in the same room together”. Which took some thinking about. If you’re after something a bit different, Mark Brend is your friend. Love that artwork too.
GOOD STUFF #4
400 LONELY THINGS 'The New Twilight' (Cold Spring)
Cold Spring seem to be mellowing in their old age. There was a time when you’d only expect the darkest of the darkside to emerge on the label. Prefix any genre with drone, doom, dark or death and Cold Spring would be a natural home. Well. I don’t know where it started, but it seems they’ve been branching out of late. There was the welcome reissue of BEF’s ‘Music For Stowaways’ last year for starters and only last week there was the ‘Broken Allures’ LP from Jac Berrocal, David Fenech and Vincent Epplay, which you’d be tempted to call freeform krautrock. 400 Lonely Things’ Craig Varian digs deep for ‘The New Twilight’. He’s a horror fan, especially of the stuff released during the VHS boom years of the 80s, and it’s those films that provide him with the material for this work. He samples the unlikely moments in horror films. If it was ‘Psycho’ it wouldn’t be the shower scene, more likely something from the lead up to the death of Arbogast, the private eye. While he has created whole albums from single films before, this, his 17th long-player, focusses on the horror genre as a whole, with each track focussing on a different film. Have fun working out which films. The label really nails it saying the music is “sublime analogue microdoses of vintage genre and exploitation audio sampled and filtered through the darkly ambient, melodically droning, melancholic nerd soul”. So there.
GOOD STUFF #5
JONATHAN ROPER ‘As The Text Tells’ / GOOD VALLIS ‘The Tellings’ (Spirit Duplicator)
Spirit Duplicator double-bill ahoy. For those playing catch-up, Spirit Duplicator stepped in when Nick Taylor and Paul Bareham’s wonderful Miracle Pond cassette label went on hiatus. The label, which is run alongside a small press creating pamphlets and books, hasn’t let us down. I was gong to say it’s been a while since we’ve seen a release, but the last double-bill was only in March. Shows how little grip I have on the concept of time. It’ll be Xmas soon, right? These two releases are fantastically quirky. Good Vallis’ ‘The Tellings’ is a story by Anthony Day, “told by an assortment of voices”, which are then blended into what the label calls “a fragmentary soundscape stitched together from found sound, atmospheric recordings, and samples treated with an errant hip-hop sensibility”. Sounds great eh? The label say it’s unlike anything else out there at the moment. Hands up who’d like this sort of thing on Radio 4’s ‘Book At Bedtime’? Next up is Jonathan Roper’s ‘As The Text Tells’, which again is spoken word, this time it comes served up straight. Written and presented by Jonathan Roper, an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu in Estonia, here he reads from a new collection of poems, his retelling of the story of Alexander The Great. It’s the first in the label’s series of work by folklorists. Don’t let it be said that we don’t do variety round here.
A ROUND-UP IN A ROUND-UP
It’s always a good day when there’s a new Sarah Davachi record. ‘The Head As Form’d In The Crier’s Choir’ (Late Music) is a conceptual suite and “an observance of the mental dances that we construct to understand acts of passage; the ways that we commune and memorialize and carry symbols back into the world beyond representation”. Not entirely sure what any of that means, but it’s sounding rather fantastic as ever. Her work increasingly sounds like it should be radiating out of a place of worship, especially when she hits the pipe organs as she does here. There’s some great detail in the accompanying notes about the organs used, there’s four, the oldest of which was built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1864 and is located in the incredible-looking Église du Gesù of Toulouse, France. I always think Sarah is under-appreciated, she really should be a notch or two above such is the quality of her synthesis. Oh and there’s a listening party tonight for this at 7pm BST.
sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com
Covering singles/EPs has always been tricky. I’ve always wanted to cover more but I just can’t figure out how to do it when there is, currently, still only 24 hours in a day. Get that sorted and the world is my extended playing lobster. Anyway, that said, I’ve got a few short players for you this week. I first met LA composer Cato Gilmour when I was doing a film soundtracks piece. I think it was around the story of how the late/great Johann Johansson was unceremoniously booted off the ‘Blade Runner 2049’ job. Cato, who holds his own in that murky world, shed some serious light for me and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. ‘The Search’ is part of an ongoing series of archival releases from him. He says it brings his love for 70’s German electronic music to the fore and was recorded during a period from 1980-81. His contemporary work sounds vast so it’s interesting to reach back and hear where it all came from. This was originally made for his debut album on Norwegian label Mind Expanding Records, which folded before that release happened. Sliding doors eh? I wonder what might have been different if that record had made it into the world. All this is happening on his own Kiite Records these days. Do keep an eye.
kiiterecords.bandcamp.com
Next up is this newly minted outing of A Man Called Adam’s ‘Estelle’ (Other). I’m such a huge fan, I first met Sally a long, long time ago when she was doing press for her own fantastic Other label. They are utter trailblazers in so many ways. ‘Estelle Special Edition 2024’ celebrates the 30th anniversary of this brilliant cut appearing on José Padilla’s legendary White Isle compile, ‘Café del Mar Volume One’. The original full-length version along with the Sensory Productions mixes are all here, but it’s the three previously unheard versions that Sally and Steve recently uncovered on an old DAT dated 1994 that really ping. Their ‘AMCA Censer Remix’ is a “languid, chill R&B workout” that they totally forgot they made, while the ‘7 Inch Edit’ and ‘Extended Mix’ are deliciously sparse, really stripped back with Eddie Parker’s flute popping. That bassline still gives me goosebumps. I say this is a single, but there’s eight tracks here clocking in at getting on for an hour of music. I’ve had it on repeat a fair few times and lost entire mornings to it. I never tire of A Man Called Adam.
amancalledadam.bandcamp.com
Pleasingly, I’m getting an increasing amount of email in the Moonbuilding inbox from people who are discovering our little world, saying nice things about it and sending in their own releases for me to listen to. Everyone seems to say sorry for bothering and how I must get a tonne (metric) of emails. I mean, I do, but I’m very keen on hearing from them. Preston-based Myths And Monsters dropped me a lovely line pointing me in the direction of the ‘Beyond’ EP. It’s always interesting to take a look at the tags on people’s Bandcamp pages. Here it’s “chiptune”, “darksynth” and “8bit”. Nice. I was obsessed with chiptune, it doesn’t seem to be around quite as much. Good to see it’s alive and well. There are elements here, you can the bright melodies across this three tracker, and it comes mixed in with this really intriguing epic prog sort of vibe. Of the three tracks it’s the 80s flecked swirl of ‘Every Multiverse’ that has me hitting repeat. This set also comes on a “Multiverse” mini-CD format, with both unique artwork and unique variations of some of the songs. I hope you clocked that this is all rattling your way out of Preston. We all know they’re putting something in the water up there. mythsandmonsters.bandcamp.com
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ALASTAIR MACDONALD JACKSON ‘Dear Smash Hits, We’re From Scotland! An Alternative History Of Zines & DIY Music Culture (1975-2025)’ (Earth Island)
First things first, this is the exactly the sort of book Moonbuilding was hoping to be writing about when we were but a few scribbles of an idea in a notebook. That title! Just take my money. Brace yourself, I’m about to bang on.
As with most books that land at Moonbuilding HQ, I start with a flick through the pages. I opened this one at the back and lost a good chunk of an afternoon reading through the extensive Appendix... but not before I’d flicked through the ads for other Earth Island publications.
It’s not a publisher I’ve encountered before. Based in East Sussex, they work with a “punk rock ethic, which has resulted in a varied catalogue of wonderful titles on alternative subjects”. In the same package as this book, they kindly slipped in ‘This Is My Everything’ by Christian Späth (thank you!), another new title that tackles life in a band on the DIY hardcore scene in the late 90s/early 00s. Not a world that I know much about, but I will soon.
‘Dear Smash Hits, We’re From Scotland!’ covers the world of DIY zines and music culture from 1975 right up to 2025, next year, which should be an interesting read! The book centres round author Alastair Macdonald Jackson’s formative years growing up on the Hebridean island of Skye in the 80s and how he managed to mainline the alternative culture springing up not exactly around him, but in the same country at least, despite his own remoteness.
His introduction sets the scene perfectly. He says that it was common to hear pop stars complaining about growing up in the suburbs. He says Siouxsie Sioux was forever “going on about how awful it was to grow up in Chislehurst, a grand total of 14 miles from London city centre”. “You want to have tried living 630 miles from London,” he adds where he travelled 46 miles to school and back every day, 126 miles and a ferry crossing to the nearest record shop and he didn’t even know where his nearest music venue was.
So ‘Dear Smash Hits, We’re From Scotland!’ is kind of survival guide mixed with a comprehensive history and takes us through the the myriad zines that brought news of punk, new wave, indie and beyond to the bright-eyed and bushy tailed north of the border. It kicks off with Brian Hogg’s seminal Bam Balam, which first appeared in 1975 and was the inspiration for Mark Perry’s Sniffin’ Glue, there’s Ripped & Torn from the late 70s that counted one Edwyn Collins among their contributors and there’s the story about Sex Pistols’ designer Jamie Reid selling off his Suburban Press magazine in 1975 and moving to the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, writing a music column for left-wing Skye-based newspaper The West Highland Free Press before his old pal Malcolm McLaren invited him to work on a new project he had going on.
All this and we’re barely 20 pages into this fascinating title. There’s chapters on the crucial role of women in the development of Scottish independent music, the ripples caused by NME’s legendary ‘C86’ compilation, the rise of cassette labels and the enduring appeal and continued rise today of all things DIY. The book features an absolute raft of new interviews with a who’s who of Scottish indie acts (The Rezillos, The Pastels, Shop Assistants, The Bluebells, BMX Bandits, Soup Dragons, The Vaselines plus more) as well as with many of the names behind the labels and the zines that got behind the whole thing.
I love that Alastair considered NME, Melody Maker and Sounds too mainstream when he decided in the early 90s that he should probably be a music journalist. “I’d never paid much attention to the bozos who hacking it out for NME, Sounds or Melody Maker,” he writes. “The music journalists of the inkies always seemed like old bores who couldn’t just enjoy music without applying a bit of Bartes or Gramsci to give the impression of their intrinsic and great intellectualism”. He clearly never read Melody Maker during my days there. Anyway, he set up his own zine, Hype, to cover the growing Highland club scene, complete with free cassette.
The previously mentioned Appendix is worth its weight in gold acting as an index of zines, complete with illustrations, as well as a decent bibliography that includes academic papers, blogs and podcasts he has drawn from. This is a book that couldn’t be more Moonbuilding if it tried. If you like what we do here, you’re going to love this. Talk among yourselves, I’m going to be pouring over this for some time to come.
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.
Copyright © 2024 Moonbuilding
Thank you so much, Neil! Great writing, as always.
Thanks Neil, much appreciated :)