Issue 4 / 9 February 2024

DIY electronical musical goodness galore... Album Of The Week: Plant43 ‘Luminous Machines’ + Emile Facey interview + new release round-up + Track Of The Week from Shunzo Ohno + more...

Feb 09, 2024

It’s our one month anniversary today. Well, we’ve published four newsletter, which I guess is the same thing. When you work on a monthly title you soon come to understand that not all months are born even. You dream of the five-weekers.

Anyway, as I’ve said before there is something special about a weekly deadline. I’ve worked on daily newspapers and monthly magazines too and the buzz isn’t the same. I’m already finding myself really looking forward to Friday morning and the newsletter going out and I’ve written the flipping thing. And all this only works if you’re here, reading all this, so if you are enjoying Moonbuilding Weekly, please help spread the word. Tell your friends, tag us on social media, forward the newsletter to someone with the little button below, mention us in your own mailouts, send us a comment, or just drop us a line to say hello. It all helps.

We’re currently plotting and scheming well into the spring (spring! Can’t wait) as there is a new issue of the print version coming along in April-ish. So if you’re an artist or a label and you want to feel the full force of the Moonbuilding love now is the time to get in touch, send us your Yum codes, or just wave alluringly from the jetty...

Righto, lots to do. Let’s crack on. Happy Friday.

Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com

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PLANT43 ‘Luminous Machines’ (Plant43)

Wild generalisation incoming. There are two types of people who make dance music. The faceless producers who can knock out a banger. You know, what you hear at the gym, in shops, on daytime radio. And then there’s the other kind. You know when you’ve come across their work because there is a common ground they all seem to tread. More often than not the foundations are the same. One way or another Kraftwerk seep in.

It was their first UK TV appearance that really fried the circuits. It was on ‘Tomorrow’s World’ in 1975 (it’d be six years before they made it to ‘Top Of The Pops’). “Kraftwerk hope to eliminate the keyboards all together and build jackets with electronic lapels which can be played by touch,” explained the presenter. Doesn’t matter if you were around in 1975 to see it because it sent ripples out across the generations. It was an event that was like Ghostbusters crossing the streams. The message was understood.

Kraftwerk were, of course, at the very heart of the electro explosion that entranced people like Plant43’s Emile Facey. First album he bought? ‘Street Sounds Electro 8’ (on cassette, natch). Around the same time he watched ‘Breakin’’ where a breakdancer gets jiggy to ‘Tour De France’. Mind blown.

And here’s the thing about artists like Plant43, while they can slay floors, there’s a whole other something else going on here. A deep understanding of where all this comes from, and more importantly, where it can go.

Which brings us to ‘Luminous Machines’ (finally! Cue sound of our reader cheering). Emile’s eighth Plant43 long-player consists of 16 tracks, eight floor-bound and eight more ambient pieces. It’s not an A-side/B-side thing, the tracks are interspersed, like a soundtrack. You can’t help thinking ‘Drive’, it has that noir, neon-lit edge about it.

Emile reveals the eight cinematic tracks were created during a trip to play at Tresor in Berlin in April 2023. “There was an atmosphere in the city that I felt compelled to capture,” he explains. “It was a warm but grey and rainy day, the neon lights glowing faintly in the mist as people rushed from door-to-door under umbrellas, trams were quietly gliding in and out of an elevated station platform while various other smaller vehicles busily scurried around the entrance to a giant shopping mall.”

He set about soundtracking the scene, considering how we rely on transportation and the need to create new machines that transport us around without polluting our planet. Hence ‘Luminous Machines’, a “16 track cinematic epic”, which indeed it is. The vinyl version is just the eight, full-length electro rubdowns, and for sure tracks like ‘Haunting The Depths’ with its taut beats, grumble of a bassline and ‘Big Brother’-like synth melody, or the intense ‘Fixed Point Rotation’ that sits just on the right side of moody will be very welcome in DJ boxes.

And it’s a very fine outing if you left it at that. But the interludes elevate all this. The disjointed almost-tune of ‘Incinerate Emotion’ feels like it should be a lot bigger than its 90 seconds, like it could just build and build, while ‘Surface Transport Announcement’, a minute-long intermission that washes you in waves of warm sound and ping-pongs like the beginning of an announcement is very cool indeed, likewise the lovely tinkles and swells of ‘Soft Glow’.

Emile coaxes a great deal of warmth from his arsenal and there’s an intelligence at work here that really appeals. We’re back to Kraftwerk. The people who know, know. They are our Beatles. ‘Phosphorescent Headlights’ is a proper thrumming electro belter that radiates that Kraftwerky knowingness. It’s not homage, it’s just built-in. This a such a very pleasing record on so many levels. (NM)

‘Luminous Machines’ is out now on Plant43 Recordings. It comes on limited edition transparent fluorescent pink vinyl and a download card for the eight additional ambient tracks

VOLUME ONE>ISSUE FOUR: PLANT43’s EMILE FACEY

Label big cheese, electro legend, live artist, designer, DJ, Tresor resident, promoter… is there anything all-round excellent human Emile Facey can’t do? We talk about how you get a residency at Tresor, cinematic delights and the possibility Foo Fighters will be making an Eno-esque album anytime soon…
Interview: Neil Mason

Hello Emile, how’s things? February already. Time flies eh?
“I’m quite glad February has come around already as it feels like spring is getting closer. Time is strange, isn’t it? Recently it seems to go very fast and very slow simultaneously.”

So then, the new album ‘Luminous Machines’. It doesn’t seem like 10 minutes since the ‘Reflection / Reaction’ trilogy. Is that how it feels to you?
“The first part of ‘Reflection/Reaction’ came out in June last year and I wrote most of the material between the tail end of 2022 into the early part of 2023 so it seems like a long time to me. I write new music all the time, my mental health suffers if I don’t.”

Do things have to be like that these days? Just keep the releases coming?
“Sometimes it can feel like there’s a huge amount of new music around, but I think it’s actually always been that way. It’s just that in today’s world it’s so much easier to access it all. I feel like we’re living in a very interesting time where musicians have control of what they put out and when. Patreon and Bandcamp have given creatives a platform where they can set their own pace and have a direct dialogue with their audience about it too.”

On top of all that, you’re the label too, which must make life interesting? You have to worry about EVERYTHING!
“Yeah, there is a lot to think about. When I was a teenager I couldn’t decide if I wanted to study music or art. I’d had lots of music lessons when I was really young and got interested in art and design later on. I eventually chose to go in the visual arts direction and studied illustration and graphic design. Once I’d started a career in visual art I concentrated on making music in my spare time. Now I’m in a position to do both the design and the music, which I enjoy a lot. It gives me another way to express myself and I can create stories using both mediums together.”

Right, let’s get down to the album itself. You’re a resident at the legendary Berlin club Tresor this year. Bloody hell, eh?
“Yes, it’s super exciting! I love playing there, the sound system is incredible and they take great care of the artists. No phone cameras are allowed so people are there for the musical experience. The first resident show will be 30 March and I’m really looking forward to it.”

How did it all come about?
“I never went to the old Tresor, but had been to the new location as a punter before they booked me and really enjoyed the space. My first gig there was in June 2022 and it was my first international show after the extremely long break from playing live because of the pandemic. I got an email out of the blue from them asking me to play and I jumped at the chance. I figured out a way to play a live set using lots of small pieces of kit, which meant I could take everything in hand luggage. The first show went really well and after that they booked me regularly up until the end of 2023. I must have been doing something right because towards the end of last year I got the news that they wanted to make me a resident.”

‘Luminous Machines’ is kind of born out of that, right?
“Absolutely, as was the ‘Reflection/Reaction’ trilogy. When live gigs started to come back after the pandemic I listened to my previous live sets and while I still really liked them, I felt they didn’t quite capture how I was feeling at that moment. It’s really important to me to express myself through my music and one thing I’ve learned through meditation is that every day is different. As I change and my emotions come and go it really helps to capture that, and the closer I am to a show the more I feel like I’m really expressing myself when I play.”

You describe this album as “cinematic”, how so?
“I’ve always been into cinema. The combination of moving images, music and sound effects was captivating for me as a child. In the 70s and 80s my parents took me to see lots of films. ‘Star Wars’, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, ‘ET’, ‘Close Encounters’ and ‘Back To The Future’. John Williams’ music in particular made a huge impression on me. Then I heard Vangelis and fell in love with his movie scores. I’ve always loved the way that albums and soundtracks could take you on a journey and I used to listen to a lot of full albums while I was rendering artwork. Those musical journeys can really help me get into a creative flow state.

“On one visit to Berlin in 2023 I arrived a day early and I felt compelled to capture the atmosphere in the city. It was a warm, but rainy day and people were rushing from place to place under umbrellas while the city lights glowed softly through the fog. By the end of that day I had several short atmospheric pieces that gelled perfectly with the dancefloor tracks I’d written to play at the club. I’d written quite a bit of beatless music before, but these were almost like sketches in sound.”

The album consists of eight dancefloor tracks and eight more ambient pieces?
“That’s right. The double vinyl edition only has the dancefloor tracks as I wanted it to be DJ-friendly. Having short, beatless tracks on the records is something that can catch you out when you’re playing vinyl in a club so I settled on the idea of keeping the dancefloor tracks on the vinyl and making the digital version the full 16 tracks.”

And the treat is you’ve got the floorfillers sat alongside more soundtracky pieces. What made you realise they worked together as a whole?
“I’m glad you think it works! I’ve experimented before with putting short atmospheric tracks on my releases, ‘Mycology 3’ is a good example. Those tracks were studio experiments that I included to bring more atmosphere to the release. ‘Luminous Machines’ was an extension of the same idea, but the story I was telling was being told over a whole hour. It was a challenge to arrange and get the right flow, a bit like editing a sequence of scenes in film.”

I was interested to hear how you wrote the album… you write before gigs?
“When I’m preparing for a gig I always write new material. Some of it makes it to the set. There’s something quite magical about playing something new, knowing it didn’t exist a few days beforehand. I tend to only play each track for two or three minutes in a live set so they often need a bit more added to them before they become finished pieces. I normally do that once I’m home from the gig.”

All this reminds me of Luke Sanger. He’s been increasingly making standalone ambient work…
“I know Luke’s work, it’s great and I always enjoy it when people experiment with different styles of music. I love Surgeon’s experimental work as Anthony Child and his collaboration with Daniel Bean as The Transcendence Orchestra. I do have four of my own beatless or ambient albums out already. The first one, ‘From Deep Streams’ came out in 2018 on Shipwrec. The follow up to that ‘The Countless Stones’ was the first album to come out on Plant43 Recordings. There’s ‘Vaulted Arches - Live at Bleep43’, which is a recording of me playing live at the beautiful crypt of St James’ Church in London and most recently there’s ‘Silver Streams’.”

So you’re no stranger to this world…
“I’ve been organising deep listening events with my wife, Jo Johnson, Daniel Bean and a group of friends as Bleep43 since 2015. At the last event, in December, we invited Ana Quiroga, Loula Yorke and Imaginary Softwoods. At previous events we’ve had Sarah Davachi, Jonathan Fitoussi, Bana Haffar, The Transcendence Orchestra, Rrose, Datasette and Polypores. We have another one coming up on 18 May in London.”

It’s interesting that you’re equipped to switch between styles. Where does that come from do you think?
“It’s just what comes out! I guess the first time I wrote a whole album without beats it was a bit like meditation for me. I would just sit down in the studio with no preconceived idea of what might happen. I did one track in that style and then a lot more happened quite swiftly afterwards. I had no intention of releasing any of it to start with. It was just for me at first. After a while I realised I had an album so I sent it to Shipwrec who signed it up immediately and put it out as a double gatefold vinyl. I’ll always be grateful to them for believing in it.”

You can’t imagine Foo Fighters serving up an Eno-esque ambient album can you?
“I feel like musical genres are merging more and more recently. People weren’t expecting André 3000 to put out an album of improvised flute music and I love it when artists do things you’re not expecting. I’ve always listened to tons of different music - classical, minimalism, pop, hip hop, thrash, death, industrial and drone metal, techno and drum & bass have all been obsessions of mine over the years. It all goes into the inspiration pot and somehow comes out as Plant43.”

Thanks so much for your time Emile, much appreciated.
“Thanks for talking with me, listening, and good luck with Moonbuilding Weekly. It’s been a really interesting read so far.”

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SHUNZO OHNO ‘In The Sky’ (WeWantSounds)

A proper source of fascination, Matt Robin’s WeWantSounds label has released much out-there/utterly brilliant music over the years.

His latest various artists outing is ‘Funk Tide’, a “versatile selection of sunny jazz funk gems recorded between 1978 and 1987 for the Japanese Electric Bird label”, which has been getting a decent outing of late on the Moonbuilding hi-fi. It really is sunshine music, which is good because we’re not seeing much of the real stuff round here at the moment.

Compiled by Tokyo-based DJ Notoya, who has unique access to the label’s rich catalogue, the album is a follow-up the equally brilliant ‘Tokyo Glow’ where he dug around in the Nippon Columbia back cat. The album is out on 15 March. For more visit wewantsounds.com and wewantsounds.bandcamp.com

Got an upcoming release? Send it our way. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com

GOOD STUFF #1
PATRICK CARPENTER ‘Electric Envelope’

Held this over from last week as it’s one that needs some serious attention. Patrick Carpenter, or PC as some will know him better as, was an early member of the Ninja Tune posse known as DJ Food. Back in the day, DJ Food was a collective consisting of Coldcut’s Matt Black and Jonathon More along with PC and Kevin Foakes, the latter now being the sole custodian of the name. Originally, it was one Coldcut’s many pseudonyms used to get around releasing music outside of their major label handcuffs. Bear in mind that Coldcut’s legendary ‘Journeys By DJ’ mix was the work of the DJ Food quartet (“It was just us doing a radio show,” Kev said matter-of-factly when asked about it once). The major DJ Food project was the ‘Jazz Breaks’ series, which ran to umpteen influential volumes. Kev credits PC with bringing the musicality to that series and listening to these recordings, which he’s made over the last 15 years, you can hear what he means. When you also consider PC left DJ Food to form The Cinematic Orchestra you can perhaps get an idea what’s in store here. It’s lovely stuff. Apparently several labels have been keen to release this over the years. Seems PC got fed up of waiting and just bunged it out there. Looks to me like it’s still a best-kept secret on Bandcamp and it really shouldn’t be. Do tell your friends.

minestroneofsound.bandcamp.com

GOOD STUFF #2
MAPS AND DIAGRAMS ‘If All Will Be Lost’ (quiet details)

It’s hard to believe that it’s quiet details release time again but then we are marking our first month of Moonbuilding Weekly today. Time flies doesn’t it? So anyway, here we have the prolific Tim Martin as Maps And Diagrams. Tim, who runs the Handstitched* label, has been at this game for over 20 years and has released on labels such as Static Caravan, False Industries and Fluid Audio. I know Maps And Diagrams from 2003’s ‘Polytuft-tech’ on Benge’s trailblazing Expanding Records. Really need to write about Expanding at some point, such a frontrunner in all this. Anyway, Maps And Diagrams. Tim talks about this record being “an environment of lowercase composition” and working with the concept of “quieter sound”, which is a lovely way of saying it’s a little less busy sound-wise. And it is, well, very peaceful. Same time, same place next month for another quiet details release. I’ll suggest to the label that they should go weekly so we can then fully align.

quietdetails.bandcamp.com

GOOD STUFF #3
DOGS VERSUS SHADOWS ‘Thrown Like A Switch’ (Human Geography)
IIt feels like it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything from Lee Pylon’s Dogs Versus Shadow and then you look at the Nottingham noisenik’s Bandcamp page. I like that he calls himself a “dystopian sonic nuisance”, nice. Anyway, I don’t think he’s been to bed since New Year’s Eve. There’s so much stuff here. On 27 Jan there was ‘All Stem And No Stalk’ and ‘Rooftop Surgeon’, so that was last week. This week, there’s the pipe organ drones of ‘I Can See The First Stars Amongst Cloud [For Kali Malone]’, ‘Yr Ded’ which he says is “evoking the never lost sounds of pissed-up 90s industrial techno gone wrong” and then there’s the ‘Fortunately, No Way’ EP which has a kind of Cabs vibe about it. Maybe meets Flying Lizards. You can certainly sing ‘Money’ over the top of it. On top of that there’s this on Human Geography. “It’s a work that began life based around discovering some old dictaphone tapes online,” says Lee. “Incorporating samples from these in amongst industrial sounding noises, end of life tech and end of your tether dreamscapes ended up a week later as a finished album very well suited to the cassette format.” Blimey. What will next week bring?

human-geography-recordings.bandcamp.com

GOOD STUFF #4
RUPERT LALLY ‘Sculptures’ (Modern Aviation)
A third outing for Will Salmon’s Modern Aviation tape label, Rupert Lally serves up the melodic ‘Sculptures’. It kind of serves as a counterpart to 2022’s ‘Wanderweg’, which was his lockdown wandering around and exploring the countryside of Switzerland where he lives with his family and dog Nala. Here he gets out and about again in the backwaters around his home this time focussing on the sculptures located in the forests between Bremgarten and Wohlen. The label is offering a ‘Sculptrues’/’Wanderweg’ cassette bundle, last time I checked there was one remaining! Chop chop.

musiqueparavion.bandcamp.com

Quick rattle through a few other bits and bobs… Last week we mentioned Home Normal’s Ian Hawgood’s album ‘Here’ with Stefano Guzzetti and this week we’ve got something from another Ian Hawgood collaborator, East London-based Wil Bolton. ‘Null Point’ is released on The Slow Music Movement, which I have to admit isn’t a label I know. I will be exploring thoroughly. The label say they donate a percentage of their revenue to the excellent Client Earth in order to “try to make a difference”. Fair play to them. Anyway, they encouraged Wil to create a beat-led, ambient release and the resulting ‘Null Point’ is rather good. He says the beats are constructed from “thuds, clicks and crackles sampled from a vintage seven-inch record of heart sounds”. Add modular synths, Mellotron loops, tape delays and the result is very listenable indeed. theslowmusicmovement.bandcamp.com

Following up ‘Platforms’, their debut EP from last summer, London/Warwickshire duo Lyndhurst release a new EP called ‘Caves’. The first one had quite the role call, topping out with an airing on Stuart Maconie’s ‘Freakzone’, always love hearing him mention Moonbuilding so we know what a moment that is. Liking a lot what Lyndhurst have to offer. It’s kind of trip-hoppy post-rocky trancey stuff with, as the gents say, hooky melodies. Their email also says “Oscar and Dan are, as ever, available for interviews, remixes, playlists and luxury product endorsements”. Very droll. Like the cut of their jib. This is indeed good stuff. lyndhurst.bandcamp.com

Last but not least, Cephid’s debut album, ‘Sparks In The Darkness’, is worth a listen. The project of Wiltshire-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Moray McDonald, it’s nicely prog in a kind of Jarre sort of way. You suspect Jeff Wayne’s ‘War Of The Worlds’ may have played a part in his upbringing. It’s all very dramatic. He’s also caught the attention of OMD who asked him to remix their ‘Kleptocracy’ single which is due out in March. cephid.bandcamp.com

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TRAVEL MAN

Really been enjoying Travis Elborough’s ‘Atlas Of Unexpected Places: Haphazard Discoveries, Chance Places And Unimaginable Destinations’ (Aurum), which has recently made an appearance in paperback.

He’s written a bunch of quirky travel books along these lines including ‘Atlas Of Improbably Places’, ‘Atlas Of Vanishing Places’ and ‘Atlas Of Forgotten Places’ and reading them is like escaping into a dream-like world. It’s a really lovely paperback too, kind of pulpy, all black and white, full of maps and images and small print, which I’m a real sucker for.

Travis is what they call a popular culture historian, his enjoyable ‘The Long-Player Goodbye’, which explored the history of the LP, was right up out street. More curveball but no less curious are his ‘The Bus We Loved: London's Affair With The Routemaster’ and ‘Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles’. I mean, you want to read those, right?

Anyway, in ‘Atlas Of Unexpected Places’ he tells very readable pocket-sized tales about all manner of weirdness, which are all attached to a location. There’s the incredible tale of how Vaseline was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania, during the US oil rush in the 1850s, while the story of how Henry Ford created Fordlândia, an entire town in the Amazon rainforest, is one of those stories you sort of know but can scarcely believe each time you hear it.

Love books like this. This is great stuff.

quartoknows.com

DISCWORLD

Nostalgia doesn’t half move fast. How long ago was it that we were getting all moon-faced over FiiO’s portable cassette player, you know, the one that echoed the colour scheme of the original Sony Walkman. Forget all that, the Discman revival starts here.

And what with 2024 being the year CD becomes cool again, it’s great to see a new portable player in town. The Moondrop Discdream looks way better than anything you will have owned in the 90s. And you’ve got to hope it’s more reliable. The story goes that a couple of years ago a “veteran audiophile” joined Moondrop’s R&D department, turns out he worked on the development of the original Discman. It was apparently quite the challenge as a CD player has moving parts that read the info on the disc. Much like a record deck. And you wouldn’t carry a record player around, would you?

Anyway, seems the tech has moved on since the 90s and the Discdream has an “electronic data cache” as well as physical damping that should eliminate vibration errors and skipping issues. The reviews are pretty positive so far. The finished thing does look great. That full-size window so you can see the spinning CD is very cute. Like most things these day, the Discdream is also multi-purpose working not only as a DAC, but there’s a micro SD slot that makes it a digital player too.

It’s a snip at $199 although you might have to hoover around a bit to find one. There was a limited launch last year, but not many units made it to retail due to production/supply delays. There’s a full launch this month and I’m seeing some European retailers saying they’re expecting stock 7-14 March. Good luck getting your hands on one. Let us know how it is if you do?

moondroplab.com

OFF YOU TROT

If you’re at a loose end this Sunday afternoon (11 Feb, 1-7pm) get yourself down to ‘Are You Being Served’, an “indie label department store” at The Betsey Trotwood on London’s glittering Farringdon Road. It’s such a great boozer, spend many a night tucked away in there in the old days. It can only be improved by being stuffed full of DIY labels for the afternoon.

They’ll be stalls on all three floors and it features some peachy labels – our good friends Clay Pipe and WIAIWYA will be there, along with the likes of Tapete, Bureau B, Fika Recordings, Gare Du Nord and a slew of labels were are going along to investigate including Precious Recordings Of London, Spinout Nuggets, Skep Wax, Upset The Rhythm, Scratchy, Blitzcat, Sad Club, Blang and probably a few others.

There’s also a load of DJs and live acts including Clay Pipe’s Frances Castle (3pm) and Pete Astor (15.30). With it being a pub there’s also food and drink so you can make an afternoon of it. Sounds great doesn’t it? See you there.

thebetsey.com

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A MESSAGE FROM THE MOTHERSHIP

The current issue of MOONBUILDING is full to the gills with the good stuff. On the cover, star-in-the-making Maria Uzor, we profile label-of-the-moment quiet details, there’s an incredible interview with Captain Star creator Steven Appleby, and Ghost Box’s Jim Jupp gets busy with our There’s A First Time For Everything questions.

We review a big pile of releases from labels including Castles In Space, Woodford Halse, Persistence Of Sound, Assai, Ahora, DiN, Werra Foxma, Ghost Box and many more. There’s a column from The Orb’s Alex Paterson and the world-famous Captain Star cartoon strip.

This issue’s CD is ‘The Moonbuilding Miscellany – Volume One’, which is put together by CiS supremo Colin Morrison. It’s a belter featuring tracks from the likes of Lo Five, Lone Bison, Twilight Sequence, Ojn, NCHX and more, have a listen below…