Issue 35 / 20 September 2024
Your essential DIY electronic music lowdown... Track Of The Week: GLOK/Timothy Clerkin + new releases from Polypores, Beautify Junkyards, Photay, Wyndham Research Institute, Joe Higham + more
I’ve had an interesting week full of old music press friends for various reasons. It got me thinking about my Melody Maker work and how it was probably only read once in the week it was published. Which is almost 30 year ago. Gulp. I thought it might be interesting to share some of it again and see if we can’t discover some great lost 90s/00s music into the bargain. In this week’s newsletter I’ve republished an interview with Tokyo’s Buffalo Daughter from 1996. Let me know what you think. Plenty more where that came from…
Just a quick reminder before we get down to The Good Stuff. The new Polypores album, ‘There Are Other Worlds’, is out today. It’s an incredible record and it’s also the sister recording to Moonbuilding’s exclusive Polypores release, ‘The Album I Would Have Made In An Alternate Universe’. All the tracks were made during the same sessions, and I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t have one without the other. You can read about both albums in the latest print edition of Moonbuilding where Stephen Buckley talks us through them. Get your copy of the mag and CD at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com
Happy Friday. See you next week.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 35 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/c0a68d83
Moonbuilding Fighting Fund: ko-fi.com/moonbuilding
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GLOK/TIMOTHY CLERKIN ‘Empyrean’ (Bytes)
Another Track Of The Week for the Dorchester-based Bytes label who are knocking it out the park of late. The other week we pointed you in the direction of the title track from the new Minotaur Shock long-player, ‘It All Levels Out’, which is top notch, as is the whole album, which is due out on 16 October, and here we are again with an upfront preview from GLOK/Timothy Clerkin’s ‘Alliance’ album, set for release on 8 November. GLOK will need little introduction being the full-blown electronic alias of Ride’s Andy Bell, Timothy Clerkin you might not know. He’s a producer and heads up Manchester’s Insult To Injury label, which like Bytes is a Ransom Note Records spin-off “aimed at the slightly noisier side of life, whilst retaining the in-house DIY ethic”. The pair crossed paths when the label was enlisting remixers for GLOK’s ‘Dissident’ album. Timothy took ‘Projected Sounds’ and turned the “Neu!-meets-Steve Reich original into a tripped-out, slo-mo acid house wonder, ‘Voodoo Ray’ for the shoegaze generation”. Wow eh? They met in real life at the funeral of Andrew Weatherall, who they both knew. Listening to the whole album you can hear there’s something of the Weatherall about it. The artwork is rather good too, coming from the pen of our very own Nick Taylor. He’s such a talent is that boy. Anyway, the first track taken from the album for your listening pleasure is called ‘Empyrean’ and it comes complete with a rather delicious video (see above) from photographer/filmmaker Jean De Oliveira.
‘Alliance’ is released by Bytes on 8 November
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
POLYPORES ‘There Are Other Worlds’ (Castles In Space)
It’s been a while in the waiting has this one. I’ve had this album for a long time and listened to it loads. I’m so pleased that it’s finally in the wild. I’ve dissected ‘There Are Other Worlds’ in detail in the latest issue of Moonbuilding, the mag (have I mentioned it? Get yours here… moonbuilding.bandcamp.com), so forgive me rattling on a bit. Stephen Buckley is such a musical force you can’t help but be sucked into his world. His way of thinking is as much of a joy as the music that comes from it. Here he talks about his “unmanageable imagination” and how he became “hyperfixated” on alternate reality games and the idea a person can experience “a degree of brain-change” and how we can all experience other worlds. Big stuff. And it’s these other worlds that are the focus of this record. The thinking revolves around Joseph’s Mathent’s ‘Ong’s Hat’, which is worth spending time investigating. It’s a book, a work of fiction, and one of the first alternate reality games, but it started out as an internet conspiracy theory. It involves a group of maverick Princeton professors who discover a theory for inter-dimensional travel and while experimenting they accidentally send someone to a parallel world. Do look it up, it’s brilliant.
And here is Stephen zones in on those ideas. What if these portals could be anywhere, “What if I followed a magpie down a wormhole that existed in a patch of dandelions?” he asks. You know, there aren’t many artists who create worlds this compelling around themselves. The Ghost Box and Clay Pipe universes do it, but Stephen is out on his own, he is a unique talent. When you listen to him talking about his work it’s so compelling, he is a true artist. And then there’s the music. ‘There Are Other Worlds’ could only be Polypores. The fizz and frantic bubble of ‘Reality Hacking’, the jaunty skip and jump of ‘Gold Form’ or the hectic to and fro of ‘The Warp Zone’ couldn’t be anyone else. These tracks build rhythm where there is none. Not a drum in sight and yet this work has a groove. But it’s not all like this, there’s the gorgeous bubbling drone of ‘Earth 2’, the serene drift of ‘Virtual Forest Worlds’… I could go on. And if you think this is good, which it is, very, there is a whole other album from the same sessions just waiting for you. It’s called ‘The Album I Would Have Released In An Alternate Universe’, which is very clever when you think about it, and it comes with the latest issue of Moonbuilding magazine, I might have mentioned it?
GOOD STUFF #2
BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS ‘NOVA’ (Ghost Box)
… and talking of Ghost Box and other worlds, this fifth long-player from Lisbon’s Beautify Junkyards, their third for Ghost Box, finds them on thrilling form. Sort of picking up where we left off with Polypores, the band talk about how lyrically the songs “explore a surreal and abstract dreamscape, taking stylistic cues from situationism, Dada, cut-up and the wider reaches of the psychedelic imagination”, which is also reflected in Julian House’s glorious cover artwork, which draws inspiration from the revolutionary underground press of 1960s Europe. The meticulous research that Julian puts in is admirable, but you expect nothing less from him. The vocals here are up a notch, with duties being shared by João Branco Kyron and new singer Martinez. I’m loving the ‘Dancers Reward’ where the vocal has flecks of Mark Hollis about it and the track itself feels almost Talk Talk-y. The big difference here is the whole thing sounds more electronic, it has a thrum to it, it crackles with energy, like it’s plugged into the mains. You can hear it on the gentle ‘Sonora’, which is utterly beautiful as is ‘Here Everything Is Still Floating’, which is almost Portishead-y. That’s not to say they’ve discarded anything that’s gone before, as they point out, “this in not machine music”. The drumming and percussion is sublime, as is the guitar and bass work, as always. The edge could be the addition of Bernard Loopkin, who augments João’s keyboarding and the pair combine to “evoke a world of 60s/70s soundtracks, library music and vintage electronica”. Sounds great eh? It is. It really is. There’s guests here too. Almighty guests. Paul Weller appears on a Ghost Box release for the second time (answers on a postcard) singing and playing guitar on ‘Sister Moon’, while royalty turns up in the shape of Dorothy Moskowitz of United States Of America who co-wrote and sings on ‘Turn The Tide’. Finally, labelmate Jess Chandler of Midlake and Mercury Rev, whose own Pneumatic Tubes releases on Ghost Box turns up with his flute on ‘Groundstar’. There’s a reason Ghost Box are now three albums deep with Beautify Junkyards. They get better and better. This is their finest moment yet.
GOOD STUFF #3
PHOTAY ‘Windswept’ (Mexican Summer)
Some weeks it’s hard to believe how high the bar is set when it comes to quality releases. I took a summer break from Album Of The Week picks and have yet to get back in the saddle. To be honest I’m glad I didn’t have to pick this week. We’re three releases into The Good Stuff and any one of them would be worthy of Album Of The Week. All three have been on very heavy rotation since they arrived at Moonbuilding HQ. ‘Derecho’, the first single from this, Photay’s fifth album, was our Track Of The Week back in July when I talked about the “sonic warmth” of Evan Shornstein’s music. ‘Windswept’ sees the LA-based producer offering up a gloriously rich release. It’s a record about the wind, “powerful, deep, unpredictable and at times overwhelming in spirit”, which is often the case with his music too. Here we skirt those delicious far edges of the dancefloor, the dark corners, without ever going full disco. It’s got a groove for sure, see a track like ‘Air Lock’. It has a delicate drum ’n’ bass lick to it, which gives way to the sweetest melody before ushering in the breaks again, while ‘Zephyr’ builds from a whisper to a funk-fuelled stalker and then there’s the aforementioned ‘Derecho’ with its Kraftwerk-y bass thrum and what sounds like a wind chime solo. Evan tells me it’s the headstock of a guitar “with a little clock in it. I found it at my folks place when I was visiting and recorded a voice memo of me plucking the strings”. Even knowing that, I still like to think it’s a wind chime solo. I’m sure many of you probably read Electronic Sound, in the new issue (the Suzanne Ciana one) I interview Photay for the Brief Encounters column. He is as delightful as his music. Love this.
GOOD STUFF #4a
THE WYNDHAM RESEARCH INSTITUTE ‘Pale Phantoms: Approved Extracts From Mission Archive Epsilon’ (Preston Capes)
A double bill from the Woodford Halse stable now, starting with The Wyndham Research Institute whose cover artwork by Owen D Pomery really caught my eye. I went off in search of his work, which he describes as “architectural narrative” and it’s all rather lovely. He’s also has several graphic novels under his belt that I will be exploring. Hope we see more of his stuff gracing releases round here. The music is created by ‹1 and JG Sparkes, “two seemingly sentient terran creators specialising in the fields of radiophonic vibration and Bradburian synapse imagery”, which sounds good. Apparently, the four cycles featured here are to be used for the “onset of sub-REM sleep, essential for interstella travel”. You can perhaps imagine how that sounds and yes, it is right up our street. It’s four drones, but they mutate with some lovely noises. Favourite cycle is ‘Cycle I’, which sounds like it’s almost alive.
GOOD STUFF #4b
JOE HIGHAM ‘Light Seekers’ (Woodford Halse)
I missed this when it came out at the end of August, and it’s along similar lines to The Wyndham Research Institute. Joe talks about the idea of photographers looking for the perfect balance of light and image and how when you see contact sheets there are often lots of very similar images, but only one with a red chinagraph mark around it. He talks about his process, which is the sort of thing that I love reading. Love finding out how other creatives work. Here we have half a dozen pieces created on a small modular set-up (kit list on the Bandcamp page for “gear freaks”) and performed in one take, with no overdubs. Two of the tracks even came about while testing out new modules. Despite such a strict set of rules, the rewards on ‘Light Seekers’ are many. I love how the title track unfurls itself, starting out in a very different place to where it ends up nine minute later. Lovely stuff.
GOOD STUFF #5
ALI DADA ‘SUM’ (YNFND)
… and talking of Dada, which we were with Beautify Junkyards, remember?, Ali Dada are a trio of Swiss “intergalactic experimentalists” who “lean on a Dadaist theme for the late-night, jam-inspired and smokey beat-laden trip to the cosmos”. You like this already don’t you? The opener, ‘Abolish The Police’, with its slow-mo ukulele, sounds like The Grid on 33⅓ or even slower. I had an old record player when I was young that was my mum’s when she was growing up and that had 16 rpm at one end, 78 at the other. You can imagine. Ali Dada is the work of Orlando Ludens (guitar, bass, ambient soundscapes), MFJ Rulla (beats, modular, soundscapes, synths, field recordings), Max Licht (brass, trombone, synths, food, spaces, heart) and a variety of guest, “experimentation is the trio's constant” and ‘SUM’ is the result of a “meta-level of jams and associative distillation”. It’s brilliantly out-there in places. The title track is reggae meets brass, there’s a jazzy feel throughout with twangy double-bass and sqorking horns spread liberally, but there’s also a dance sensibility here too, I really like ‘Ohnedi’, which is sort of trip hoppy, R&B-y. But only sort of. Make plenty of room in your life for this sort of thing. Liking this a lot.
A ROUND-UP IN A ROUND-UP
The Moonbuilding inbox continues to be filled with really lovely emails from people discovering us for the first time. Among then this week comes Ryan and Arielle from North Carolina’s Ingrown Records. They send me a bunch of links and yum codes as a hello gift and described a few of their recent releases for me in a few words, which made me smile. One was “sci-fi plonkytronics from Vietnam”, which I will be reaching for soon, another is “samples, synth, silly”, which likewise will be getting an airing. I’ll report back. Their “small label of love” will be celebrating 15 years next year, which is no mean achievement. If you want to sample their wares, try the most recent release, Black Wick’s ‘\\VIDEO//|\\DRONED//’. Love a bit of vapourwave and this record shudders with it. ‘Comes And Goes’ made me laugh, because it, well, comes and goes, while ‘Even More Disturbing… **’ is unsettling, the spoken word is really creepy. ingrown.bandcamp.com
‘Only Hinting’ (Kranky) is the full-length debut from Detroit duo Clinic Stars who, it says here, “create downer-pop balladry and featherweight shoegaze”. There’s some nice alliteration in their press materials, their previous two EPs, ‘10,000 Dreams’ and ‘April’s Past’, are said to capture a “similarly swooning slowcore palette”, which is a lovely use of words. I also like “full-length debut from Detroit duo”. My pal Nat over at Sonic Cathedral would approve of this I think. Eh Nat? Those guitars sound so soft and gentle yet at the same time they are huge and shimmering. It’s one of those albums that gets better the further in you venture. It’s kind of a cumulative effect, and that delicious Cocteaus sound is never, ever a bad thing. The title track is where to head first. Which reminds me, I have Simon Raymonde’s book on my desk. More about that soon. I’ve got a bit of a book backlog at the moment. kranky.bandcamp.com
Liverpool’s Andrew PM Hunt pops up as Dialect on New York-based RVNG Intl with ‘Atlas of Green’. This is very RVNG if you know the label’s output. It also comes out of Bidston Observatory, which is quite the hotbed. Based on the Wirral Peninsula, it’s an old observatory that is now an arts centre and we’ve seen both Anni Hogan and Ex-Easter Island Head talk about it recently. Well, here’s another a record shot through with the magic of that place. According to the label, Andrew has a “sonic sphere” and the album imagines “a young musician named Green working in a future dawning era where lost signals and enduring impulses are unearthed from the sediments of technology and time”. That “sonic sphere” is a sound that is very future-facing, loving the melodic ‘Born Through’, which seems to be one of those tunes that just grows, like he’s got a box of instruments that he keeps dipping into as the track builds. Impressive stuff. rvng.bandcamp.com
Always enjoy a bit of Not Applicable. Here we have the free jazz of Scarla O’Horror’s ‘Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses’ featuring the electronics of Isambard Khroustaliov, which is a name I always look out for when odd shit like this lands, his name is a sign of quality and distinction, as BEF used to say. They accompanying notes say jazz and electronics have collided on many previous occasions, you know, Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, “this, however, is a unique meld”. Big talk there. Of course, there’s technology at the heart of this. Recorded in a day, “their improvisations were based on material generated by synthesisers configured to ‘listen’ and respond to what the instrumentalists were playing, material to which the musicians responds in turn”. Think about it for a bit, I had to. The results when you consider the process are pretty incredible. not-applicable.bandcamp.com
Last up, another Swiss act. We’re doing a lot of cross referencing this week eh? There was an album by In Flagranti a while ago that I loved. ‘Sprezzatura’ was a woozy sampletastic romp of a mixtape that served up a minute or two of each track, which all had a number so you could order a full-length download if you liked what you heard. It was a homage to a Rimini record store that sent out cassettes of the new releases each week, including a minute of each tune, you ordered what wanted and paid on delivery. It was back in 2017, innocent times. That was their fourth album, ‘Silver Jubilee’ (Codek) looks like their hundredth. I exaggerate, but they’ve been busy since 2017. Think of In Flagranti as the kind of the Swiss Soulwax. This new offering celebrates their 25th anniversary and is described as “a new album of unusual sound mischief”. Wouldn’t expect anything less. The title track is thumping. Dancing shoes on. codekrecords.bandcamp.com
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So here’s an idea that’s been brewing – reprinting pieces I wrote for the music press in the olden day, especially Melody Maker where I worked from 1996-2000. I wrote so much during that time, everything from cover features to downpage reviews, most of which will only ever have been read the week it was published. Maybe it’s time those pieces had another airing and along the way we might rediscover some of the gems I was writing about back then.
These days my archive is a computer folder full of old text files and not a big pile of lovely newspapers. In a moment of extreme brain fade I dumped most of my issues of Melody Maker when I was moving house in the early 00s. What. An. Idiot. I’d love to publish the original print pieces. I should get myself on eBay and start shopping for back issues, right?
Anyway, first up is a Maker Breaker new band piece from August 1996…
BUFFALO DAUGHTER
Sonic Pop Stampede
THE day our Japanese is good enough to hold a proper conversation with Tokyo’s latest musical export will be a very happy one. It might mean those of us who forgot to learn another language will actually understand what makes Buffalo Daughter tick.
Spanning 12 tracks, ‘Captain Vapour Athletes’, their rather splendid long-playing debut for the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal imprint, is a glorious mish-mash of samples, loops, beats, guitars, scratching, squelches, crying babies, short wave radios and belting tunes. Genres? Forget it mate. You ain’t heard anything like this before. What it’s all about is another matter entirely.
Sat in the bar of a central London hotel clutching their Game Boys, the three-piece Buffalo Daughter stare blankly at a struggling hack. What we want to know is. . . everything. Lucky that Mike D, half Beastie, half Grand Royal head honcho is on hand to clarify things. . . sort of.
“They’re from Japan,” he states helpfully. “They use the mini Moog synthesiser, the 303, drums, bass and turntables. For me, their live show is beyond their records. They’re fairly indescribable obviously.”
Obviously. Let’s try another approach. How did they end up on the newly crowned coolest label on the planet?
“When Luscious Jackson were in Japan,” explains Buffalo guitarist/vocalist/303 mistress, Sugar, “we went to see them in concert because we like their music. We’d released two CDs on a Japanese independent label so we took a CD to give to Jill [Cunniff, Luscious bass player]. We didn’t know her, we were just fans. When she got back to New York, she faxed us to say she liked our music or something like that and then maybe she gave Mike D our CD and he also liked it.”
And he describes them so eloquently.
“Indescribable?” laughs Sugar. “Hahahahahaha. Is that what he said?”
“Our sound is new rock, electronic rock,” offers turntable wizard, Mooog.
“We like many different kinds of music,” picks up bass player and electronics girl Friday, Yumiko. “Old electric music, rock, American rock, alternative rock, German rock. . . Faust, Can, Kraftwerk, Alec Empire’s Digital Hardcore, Atari Teenage Riot. . .”
Any clearer? No, thought not. This’ll nail them down. . . let’s talk songwriting process.
“Yumiko writes a song,” begins Sugar, “then Mooog gets some kind of inspiration from the song and I get the framework and then we play it. That’s it.”
But that’s not even the half of it. The Buffalo Daughter live experience is as much of a revelation as their recorded incarnation.
“We expect dancing at our shows,” reveals Mooog. “Even if we can’t see the audience doing it, we know they’ll be dancing in their brains. it’s different every time because we like to improvise. We just see how it goes. . We could be there all night if it’s going well.”
“We’ll keep your seat for you,” grins Yumiko pointing in our direction. No need, we’ll be dancing in our brains out right down the front.
I have no recollection of doing this interview. I was obsessed with the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal label and did an interview with Mike D all about it. I met him in a cafe near his UK publicist’s office in west London. I have a vague recollection of being in a big hotel in town and interviewing some of the bands on the label, that must’ve been when I did Buffalo Daughter and I vaguely recall talking to Ben Lee. I’ve also interviewed Sean Lennon and Josephine Wiggs, who both released early doors on the label. There might have been a label showcase maybe, although I can’t recall where. I’ll have a dig around. If anyone else can help my failing memory I’d be grateful.
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
The track of the week is so good, it's worth listening to at least twice in a row. Glad to be reminded about Beautify Junkyards too!
& More stuff from your archives is always welcome, because there is always so much music everyone has missed from the past.