Issue 42 / 08 November 2024
This week's essential DIY electronic gubbins... Track Of The Week: Moreish Idols + Good Stuff from Lili Holland-Fricke And Sean Rogan, Scions, Anadol & Marie Klock, Maps And Diagrams + more...
Another week flashes by. My big discovery since we were last here has been Richard Headland’s Record Shop Stories newsletter, which is really great. And not just because his latest adventure is in my local. It leaps out because it’s so well written, and that’s because it’s by an actual writer who are becoming a rare commodity, especially online. We should cherish people like Richard. Please support his fine work if you can.
Talking of fine writers, I got my hands on Vivien Goldman’s new book this week. It’s a brilliant collection of her music journalism, there’s a big review below, just keep scrolling down. Vivien wrote for Sounds, NME and Melody Maker during a ripe period, mid 70s through to the early 80s. Her work absolutely leaps off the page, she not only writes with warmth, but she manages to put the reader in the room. And if that room happens to be CBGBs with Talking Heads all the better.
A bit of any-other-business if you don’t mind. We’re closing in on 1,000 subscribers, which would be an amazing milestone. If you know someone, two people, three, who would like Moonbuilding please send them our way. We’d be very grateful. They can subscribe at moonbuilding.substack.com. It’s all for a good cause.
Righto, that’s me then. Happy reading.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 42 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/1d8aea70
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MOREISH IDOLS ‘Slouch’ (Speedy Wunderground)
Photo: Caspar Swindells
I like the story of how South London-based five-piece Moreish Idols came together. They originated at Falmouth University, the product of a no rules project instigate by guitarist Tom Wilson Kellett where anyone could join, musicians or not, so long as they asked. Think Portsmouth Sinfonia with guitars. He says it was “one of the worst ideas I’d ever had, and also one of the best”. You can imagine. Out of that though came Moreish Idols who, once they’d all graduated and coalesced in London, set about getting serious… until the pandemic stopped them in their tracks. It was no bad thing, there were a couple of pre-Covid singles, but things weren’t quite jelling. Regrouping once the coast was clear, they came together with a new kind of energy, with rehearsals often the only time any of them were leaving their houses. You can see how that might focus minds. The output too was up a notch, which was compounded when Dan Carey and Speedy Wundergound heard their new tracks and snapped them up chop chop.
Interesting fact. Their bass player is Caspar Swindells whose dad is the renowned nightlife photographer Dave Swindells. I was only talking about him with someone earlier this week. Dave’s work is great, he was the nightlife/clubs editor at Time Out and as a result he documented the nocturnal comings and goings in the Capital for years. His work is always worth a rummage. Caspar, unsurprisingly, does all the band photos. So anyway, back to the band… there was the ‘Float’ EP in summer 2022, which was followed by last year’s ‘Lock Eyes And Collide’ EP, both produced by Dan Carey, and described by Norman Records as “a heady fug of punk, kosmische, funk, jazz and dub”. In October, ‘Pale Blue Dot’ had the honour of being the 50th single release from Speedy Wunderground and now we have a new track, ‘Slouch’, which surely must be pointing at an album heading our way in 2025.
‘Slouch’ also happens to be the best thing they’ve released so far. Locked down krauty groove, like Can 21st century style, infectious hook. You can hear they’ve been building to this, they clearly have the songwriterly licks, but here they click sonically too. It sounds great, crisp and clean, as you’d expect from Dan Carey. Really interesting to see where this lot go next. Oh and keep and eye out for album news, there’s a tour scheduled for March 2025 (tickets here), just saying.
‘Slouch’ is out now on Speedy Wunderground
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
LILI HOLLAND-FRICKE AND SEAN ROGAN ‘Dear Alien’ (Melodic)
It seems like it’s been a while in coming does this. I wrote about ‘Dear Alien’, the first track taken from this collaboration between cellist Lili Holland-Fricke and producer Sean Rogan ages ago. Issue 34 in fact, 13 September. Ages ago. It was our Track Of The Week. Back then, as the summer heat faded, I was still getting the office windows open in the morning and letting the music tangle with the sounds of the outside world. Love all that and this album fitted the bill perfectly. A quiet, gentle record that could drift in and out on the breeze. Josh at Melodic felt much the same and called ‘Dear Alien’ his go-to early morning record. Twins. It’s such a beautiful offering. The more I listen the better it gets. I love the sighing cello of ‘Half Blue’ as it melts into glitchy electronics, the quirk pop of ‘Dear Alien’ still sounds brilliant, the meeting of Lili’s sweet voice and Sean’s harmony, the tune picking a path through scratchy guitar, warbling keys, electrical interference and even beats. The composerly ‘Dawning’ feels like Max Richter’s discordant little brother, while ‘Slow Thing’ really does a number on you as it starts out like sugar and evaporates into a sinister, dark squall. I mentioned ‘Seem Asleep’ in the Track Of The Week piece and that still thrills. Again their voices work together beautifully over a shimmery drone that emerges blinking into the light, very, very slowly. Explodes isn’t the right word for all this, it’s more like fireworks with a long fuse, the slow burn then the pop. They’re a lowercase kind of band, but they need to be shouting about this in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS.
SCIONS ‘To Cry Out In The Wilderness’ (Idee Fixe)
I’ve been enjoying the off-kilter sound of Scions, a Canadian ensemble made up of members from minimalist chamber-jazz quartet New Hermitage, drone-hymn duo Joyful Joyful (drone-hymn! I will be checking them out) and producer/composer Michael Cloud Duguay (which is great name, my daughter has a friend whose middle name is Moonbeam, Cloud is as good). With a collective drawn from all over the place it’s no surprise there’s all sorts going on here. Opener ‘Moss Lung’ is a drone that sounds like a ghost ship hoving into view, sails flapping, wind blowing, it’s scary as fuck. It gives way to ‘Even When All Was Silent I Was Never Alone’ which opens with a sax that reminds me of Bernard Hermann’s ‘Taxi Driver’ score, before a devotional voice appears to announce the title. The near 10-minute ‘To Cry Out In The Wilderness’ is rather lovely as it builds from a drone to picking out a bassline and adding a guitar part which lilts for a captivating narrative to take over. I don’t know if you recall, a few months back we covered Ghostwriter’s ‘Tremulant’, which took evangelical hymns and spiritual songs and reconstructed them making a record that sounded both old and new. This is along much the same lines. There is real skill on show here. The centrepiece is the incredible ‘Fight Song’, it’s almost singalong and reminds me of Radiohead’s ‘You And Whose Army’, it has the same sort of clout. When it gives way to an instrumental section, it gets excellently avant-garde, a detuned radio kicks in halfway before the empowering refrain of “When we go down / We go down / We go down swinging” kicks in. It’s the sort of thing that makes you want to stand on tables and cheer to be honest.
ANADOL & MARIE KLOCK ‘La Grande Accumulation’ (Pingipung)
Sometimes you can have too much information with a release. You need a degree of information, enough for the listener to hang their coat on, not so much they feel like they’re never going to see the bottom of the page. I like the notes that come with Anadol & Marie Klock’s ‘La Grande Accumulation’. “Anadol and Marie Klock,” it says, “have teamed up for a joint album.” True. “They met two years ago at a festival in England crowded with violent seagulls and outsider musicians.” A nice slab of factual information. “Klock being prone to barking on stage and Anadol not laughing at jokes she doesn’t find funny, they straight away had the intuition that they would meet again.” Which doens’t help much but is like a lovely dream. Do check out the video for ‘Sonate Au Jambon’, which lives at the rather unsettling end of your dreams. Or mine at least. My French isn’t too hot, but I know it’s about ham. And there’s something about ducks too. Berlin-based Anadol is a psyche synth folk artist from Turkey, but based in Berlin, while Marie Knock, from the north-east of France, but based in Paris, is a lo-fi neo-chanson singer and multi-instrumentalist. She is also quite rude too judging from the look of her Bandcamp. They make such a good pairing. I love their sound, kind of Bontempi goes wonk. Again, my French lets me down here, but you suspect from track titles like ‘Sirop Amer (La Goule)’, so that’s ‘Bitter Syrup (The Ghoul)’, the lyrics aren’t as sweet and innocent as they sound. Not sure what to make of ‘Sabots Triviaux’ (‘Trivial Clogs’) though. The album cover is also full of intrigue, the pair are pictured under a tree holding hands, with Marie sat on bags of maybe cement, in what looks like a building site. Like I said, you can have too much information, but you can also have too little.
MAPS AND DIAGRAMS ‘Islands’ (Handstitched*)
Handstitched*, love that asterisk, is the work of Cambridge-based Tim Martin and it’s a real treasure. His work as Maps And Diagrams is likewise something special. He’s been at the coalface for a good couple of decades and is rather prolific should you want to catch up. His ‘Polytuft-Tech’ album on Benge’s Expanding Records from 2003 is essential listening if you ask me. And coming right up to date, he appeared on quiet details in February with ‘If All Will Be Lost’, which the label described as Maps And Diagrams “at their most nuanced within constantly evolving landscapes, delicate and beautifully textured miniatures fading in and out of view”. Which is what Tim does. You do have to be on your toes round here sometimes. There’s a guy called Chris Snow who also calls himself Maps And Diagrams. He’s an artist based in Shropshire who makes really lovely prints where illustration meets Ordinance Survey. Not to be confused, but they should collaborate maybe. Anyway, as I was saying earlier, you can have too little information, or in fact none. There’s nothing to go on here, other than the title, ‘Islands’ and the track titles, which are all… wait for it… islands. There’s some interesting ones – for example, Klovharun is where the Finnish Moomin creator Tove Jansson and her partner Tuulikki Pietilä spent their summers. They were an openly gay couple long before it was legal in Finland, which obviously makes them gay icons around the world. Their cottage on the island was donated to the local heritage association in 1991 and it is still rented out as an artist residence in the summer. The track itself is rather beautiful too. I could sit here all day looking up each island, there’s 14 tracks here, but that’s part of the fun of records like this. I say record, it’s a CD and, as always, the release comes in a very limited edition with each sleeve being hand-made by Tim. This one is a collage built from old maps, which brings us back to the other Maps And Diagrams chap. They really should think about that collaboration.
RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI ‘Facadisms’ (Black Knoll Editions)
You can feel the foreboding in Rafael Anton Irisarri’s work. The New York-based composer/producer/mastering engineer whisks up ambient, classical and experimental electronics to make these vast slabs of sound. His people describe the work as oceanic symphonies, which I really like. As a mastering engineer, he’s seen the work of people such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Terry Riley, William Basinski, Grouper and Devendra Banhart pass through his Black Knoll studio. I guess you don’t work with the sounds made by those people and not learn anything. Black Knoll Editions is his newly formed label and he’s announcing it with a bang. Well, not quite a bang, more like a shuddering wall of sound. ‘Facadisms’ sounds absolutely huge. The eight-minute ‘Control Your Soul’s Desire For Freedom’ is wave after wave of deep heavy drones that build into a gigantic swell before breaking and building once again. It’s almost machine-driven shoegaze at times, like on ‘The Only Things That Belong To Us Are Memories’ and the beautifully musical ‘Forever Ago Is Now’. Think Ulrich Schnauss, only furious. It is seriously tense stuff. The record itself is a “passionate expression of the artist's feelings on geopolitical themes”, which is always an interesting aim for instrumental music. The idea formed on tour in Italy when he clocked a diner in Milan called Il Mito Amerciano, which was probably meant to be The American Dream, but literally translates as The American Myth. It sparked a series of ideas that turned into a record that is more pertinent this week than when it was conceived. Rafael talks about how freedom is “a cruel illusion crafted by the elites” and asks if the American myth has finally run its course. We’ll see over the next four years I guess.
THE ROUND-UP
I really need to get through a bunch of releases this week. I’ve a bit of a pile-up and I’ll feel a lot better once I’ve got it off my plate. So much good music coming at you seemingly all the time eh?
Following up their 2020 debut album, Melbourne’s Bananagun return with ‘Why Is The Colour Of The Sky?’ (Full Time Hobby). Their first album of retro folky psyche is really cheery, but this second outing, some four years on from ‘The True Story Of Bananagun’, carries the weight of various Covid-based issues and “a great period of personal change” for frontman Nick van Bakel. Not that it sounds glum, far from it. You’d have to say the first album sounds more carefree, more party-party, but this one still presses all the right buttons in all the right places. Check out ‘Free Energy’ on our playlist. It’s a corker.
bananagun.bandcamp.com
Summerisle’s ‘Circle’ isn’t usually my thing. It’s very acoustic, totally folk-fuelled, but the Sheffield duo of Sally Doherty and Frank Birtwistle come recommended by friend of Moonbuilding Robin Rimbaud so I wanted to give it a listen. Sally studied Fine Art film making before turning to recording and performing and her work does feel very visual. She’s composed for TV and Radio 4 dramas, which makes sense. She’s also pals with Richard Hawley and sang on my favourite song of his, ‘Tonight The Streets Are Ours’ so, you know, there’s something in the air calling me.
summerisleuk.bandcamp.com
In a total shift of the pace, Portland-based The Body have a new album, ‘The Crying Out Of Things’ out on Thrill Jockey. This is such a rude awakening after the gentleness of Summerisle, above. Guitarist/vocalist Chip King and electronics/demon percussionist Lee Buford really bring the noise on this, their umpteenth long-player. I think it might album number 25, but don’t quote me. The opening track, ‘Last Things’, will make you feel a bit like Pete Murphy in that Maxell tape ad. It starts off all repetitive beats/tribal drums and after about a minute and a half it stops for breath before letting rip with both barrels. It’s a total onslaught of sound. No other way of describing it really. There’s lots to like here, the rhythms are great, as are swamps of noise the pair make. Just two people making this much racket doesn’t seem possible, but The Body are proof that it very much is.
thebody.bandcamp.com
Dave Shooter of Preston’s world-famous Hymns For Robots night sent me over his new Guerrilla Biscuits EP ‘Single Joining Bridge’, which I unwittingly played a part in seeing to fruition. Dave says he’d been getting bogged down trying to figure out how he could improvise live to make his music, but started to realise he’d been using it as an excuse not to release stuff. His nudge to get on with it came from reading the Polypores interview in the latest issue of Moonbuilding. Bless you Dave. The always welcome kit list and run down of his new process is on his Bandcamp should you be interested. I think it was worth all the angst, because the EP is cracking. The tracks are lengthy, nicely ambient housey too with plenty of deep rumbling bass as witnessed on the likes of the twinkly ‘Donut Economics’. Keep up the good work, sir.
guerrillabiscuits.bandcamp.com
A lovely email landed from Nico at French label Un Je-ne-sais-quoi who wanted to introduce us to Tachycardie’s ‘Musique Pour Structures Sonores Baschet’, which is the work of musician, composer and visual artist Jean-Bapriste Geoffroy. He composed the album on Baschet sound structures, a unique set of instruments created by the Baschet brothers. The instruments are sculptural as well as practical, as curious to look as they sound. There’s an incredible photo taken for Life Magazine in 1962 that’ll give you some idea. You’ll find that along with a load more information about these bizarre instruments here. The record itself was made at the Baschet barn in Saint-Michel-Sur-Orge in September 2023 during a sound research residency and it’s fascinating. Those quirky instruments really do make some great noises.
unjenesaisquoi.bandcamp.com
I’ve not mentioned Mortality Tables for at least week, high time I did then. We’ve had extracts from Andrew Brenza’s ‘Pod’ set to music by Alka before, but this is the full thing in a set, a limited edition CD narrated by Andrew and soundtracked by Alka as well as the 'pod' book itself so you can read along like those Disney long-playing records you had as a child. A thoughtful release as always from MT.
mortalitytables.bandcamp.com
Hutchinson, Minnesota is home to the Shady Ridge label, which is where you’ll find ‘Symphonien’, the latest offering from Portsmouth-based Simon Heartfield. It’s a long way to go, but Simon is no stranger to label hopping. We’ve clocked him working with Keith Seatman in the past and releasing on quality outlets like Moolakii Club. ‘Symphonien’ is a proper synth workout, I especially like the bright tubular bell tinkles on opener ‘Guides To Water’.
shadyridgerecords.bandcamp.com
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‘Rebel Musix, Scribe On A Vibe – Frontline Adventures Linking Punk, Reggae, Afrobeat And Jazz. Selected Music Journalism 1975-2024’ Vivien Goldman (White Rabbit)
Following the untimely death of my Melody Maker pal Neil Kulkarni earlier this year, the idea of creating anthologies has been mentioned a few times in the music journalist circles I move in. With the sort of distance we have from the heyday and not so much heyday of the printed music press, we should hopefully be seeing more and more writers pulling together and publishing their old work. There is the memoirs, most recently-ish from people like Ted Kessler, Simon Williams, Chris Charlesworth and James Brown, but collections of actual published work would be more than welcome. Here’s hoping we’ll see Neil’s work in a book soon, it’d be a great place to start.
The nostalgia cycle is 30 years, which is why interest is peaking in the mid-90s right now, but I think any kind of throwback to music press is more than welcome. I’ve recently started republishing some of my work in this very newsletter. Much of it won’t have been seen since it was first published and I’m enjoying digging through it all and making it available with a bit of distance and some added context even if no one else is.
The case for writers putting together collections of work is more than made with the publication of Vivien Goldman’s ‘Rebel Musix’. Her CV is almighty – she started out as a PR at Atlantic Records and then Island where she worked with Bob Marley before jumping the tracks to become a journalist. Never sure if PR to hack is poacher turned gamekeeper or the other way round.
Wikipedia says she wrote for a title called ‘Cassettes & Cartridges’, which is a mag that needs rebooting if ever there was, but Vivien went on to fry much bigger fish. She talks about “the unique privilege” of “shuttling between the Big Three rock weeklies”, which was indeed unique. Mere mortals worked for one and one only, exclusively. Vivien worked for all three, Sounds first, where she was features ed, before adding Melody Maker and NME to her bow. Her beat was “rebel musix” (after the Bob Marley song, but with an “inclusionary x”), “musical territories seen as the margins – punk, reggae, Afrobeat and jazz, uninteresting to my colleagues – proved to be my native habitat” she writes in her prelude. It’s hard to imagine being uninterested in those areas, but I guess it was a win-win for Vivien. Especially when you look at who she wrote about. The collection is a joy. Much of it is taken from “the few ferocious years from the mid-70s the the early 1980s”, by which point, she notes, she was making music herself with The Flying Lizards and then with Eve Blouin as new wave duo Chantage.
‘Rebel Musix’ is one of those titles where just the contents has you wanting to read it all at the same time. You will find yourself clocking names, flicking ahead and before you know it you’re lost in a piece published in Sounds in 1977 with Talking Heads, where Vivien finds herself at a CBGBs show and having lunch round Chris and Tina’s place, or maybe you’d prefer an encounter with George Clinton from Melody Maker in 1978 or The Slits from NME in 1980. Or or or.
There’s a great piece about The Pretenders from Melody Maker in 1980. Vivien lived in Ladbrook Grove, in what she describes as “a long-running bohemian commune”. It was the crash pad of choice for many of her friends, including Chrissie Hynde, who was a fellow NME scribe pre superstardom. The insight offered in the piece feels like you’re getting privileged information. Which of course you are.
Vivien has a wonderful easy style of writing. It sounds simple, but she tells stories about what happens around her and does it with such ease it almost makes me envious. Writing like that isn’t easy. She also hits the nail on the head about what really chimes with reading much of this work. “Unlike today’s more grown-up, ‘professional’ journalism in which every artist has to be introduced and contextualised,” she writes, “my pieces of the time fling around band names with the in-crowd confidence of one who knows their significance will be understood; if you were reading this rag, you were either hip to them already, or were damn sure going to find out what was up before next week’s edition hit the stands.”
Boom. Reading the inkies made you feel like you were part of a gang of older, cooler kids whose conversations you were desperate to understand and be a part of. So, like Vivien says, you needed to get up to speed and find out what was being talked about. Which of course was all part of the thrill. When I was at Melody Maker there was an edict from up high that we had to reference anything in our copy that was pre-1990. You can imagine how that went down. Most of us had grown up with the inkies’ omerta, we knew the drill, it was in our bones. Being told to explain and reference was anathema to us.
As well as being standalone pieces, ‘Rebel Musix’ also tells a story, “one that traces the connectivity between musix over time”, with Vivien approaching the work thematically rather than chronologically and arranging them into sections. Chapter 5 is ‘The New York Crew’, which looks at the rich musical tapestry from which the punk scene emerged over there and, in turn, what came from that. It include encounters with George Clinton, Public Enemy, Grace Jones, Richard Hell, that great Talking Heads piece and Patti Smith. There’s chapters on pre-punk (Eno, Wyatt, Can…), punk (Pistols and The Clash from 1977, PiL from 1979…), She-Punk (a potted history in 50 pages or so from The Raincoats to Pussy Riot…), you get the picture.
It seems like every book I’m writing about at the moment is essential, my goodness there’s been some spectacularly good titles this year. In the deluge, this is one that could easily pass you by, but don’t let it. Vivien is such a skilled writer who worked through such a rich period of musical history that these pieces are far too good to miss. One for the Xmas list. If you can wait that long.
A MESSAGE FROM THE MOTHERSHIP
***MOONBUILDING ISSUE 5 IS OUT NOW***
Bloody hell! Will you look at that? MOONBUILDING, Issue 5, is a scorcher. On the cover, depicted by 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 your ears.
Yes, we are giving you a 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 recent Castles In Space opus ‘There Are Other Worlds’.
Want to try before you buy? No bother. 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 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 Steven Appleby’s brilliant Captain Star cartoon strip.
This issue also features a pile 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
Thanks for the recommendation, Neil, it's much appreciated. Glad you found Record Shop Stories, because it also means I've found Moonbuilding Weekly. Love it when you meet like minds on here...