Issue 43 / 15 November 2024
Your essential DIY electronic music dispatch - Track Of The Week: Sunroof + Good Stuff from Loula Yorke, Xeno & Oaklander, Sam Annand, Bit Cloudy, ADRA + Melody Maker Albums Of The Year 1997 + more...
Friday again is it? Righto. First up, a quick one about friend of Moonbuilding Paul Cousins who has a show opening next weekend. ‘Atomised Listening’ is an interactive sound installation that explores our relationship with technology once it has become obsolete. Paul describes it as “a sanctuary of sound”. Anyone who has seen him play live will know what he means. He says the new show turns you from a listener into a performer. “From a mixing desk surrounded by tape machines, you’ll create your own interpretation of a large sonic sculpture,” he tells me. Sounds amazing, if you’ll excuse the pun. It’s at Stone Nest, a former chapel on Shaftsbury Avenue in London's glittering West End, tickets are a fiver, book here, and it's on 22/23 November. We’ll remind you. Want to see your message here? Email us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Like a lot of people, following events in the US last week I’ve stopped using Twitter/X. It’s served me well over the years, but I can’t be doing with that far-right conspiracy theorist’s guff any more. It’d be nice to be able to find all our people in the same place, like the old days when Twitter wasn’t owned by such a twatter, so let’s see what bubbles to the top. You can find Moonbuilding on Insta, Threads and Bluesky, do come and say hello. If you think there’s other platforms we should be on, do let us know.
Any other business? Always! Firstly, we’d love to get to 1,000 subscribers before the year is out. We’re not that far off. Please tell your friends about us, people can subscribe, for FREE, at moonbuilding.substack.com. Secondly, Moonbuilding remains free thanks to the kind souls who advertise. If you’d like to join the kind souls club and see your wares in front of lots of lovely people, we’ve got limited slots available in Novemeber and throughout December. Drop me a line if you’d like to know more.
Same time, same place next week? Good good.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 43 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/36e8282e
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SUNROOF ‘Brotherly’ (Mute)
Photo: NEOMR Media/Marta Ruly
Sunroof are the utterly captivating side hustle of Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones. I’ve seen them do this live and it’s a wonderful thing. They sit opposite each other, like chess grandmasters, I mean they are grandmasters of a kind, and between them is a pile of gear and myriad leads and cables that they use to wrangle electricity into a joyous racket.
Their latest journey into sound is ‘Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 3’, which you won’t be surprised to hear is a third volume of their electronic music improvisations. It sees the duo continuing their adventure according to the parameters they set out before creating volume one. The rules are they will only use their Eurorack set-ups, all the tracks have to be improvised, with nothing pre-planned or rehearsed, and the results are recorded on just four channels, two each, with no overdubs.
It occurred to me last week, when writing about Vivien Goldman’s fantastic book, that I’m guilty of music press speak. She talks about how she’d “fling around band names with the in-crowd confidence of one who knows their significance will be understood… you were either hip to them already, or were damn sure going to find out what was up”. One of the reasons I started Moonbuilding was to make sense of this DIY scene, to give names to the people making this incredible work. I’d be amazed if anyone reading this didn’t know who Daniel and Gareth are, but if you don’t, boy are you in for a surprise.
Daniel Miller is the big chief of all this, not Moonbuilding, but the very blocks it was built on, which date back to 1978 and his fledgling Mute label. Everything in our DIY world is in some way connected to Daniel. Moonbuilding had a different name originally, it was called Decoy Avenue, which is the road in north-west London where Mute Records started. It was Daniel’s mum’s house and the address was on the back of all his record sleeves. There’s a lovely connection back to those days on this new record in that the opening track, ‘Splendid’, was recorded using the same TEAC four-track machine that Daniel bought secondhand in the late 1970s to record The Normal’s ‘Warm Leatherette’. Which is pretty mind-blowing.
Producer Gareth Jones has been collaborating with Daniel since 1982 when he was asked if he fancied working on Depeche Mode’s ‘Construction Time Again’. He did, of course, you don’t say no to something like that. The pair would utilise studio time after the band had left for the day for their own sessions, which I think I’m right in saying were just for fun. In 2019, they recorded a couple of hours of improvised modular sessions, which prompted Gareth to ask “Are we actually going to make a record together before we die?”. They actually were.
They’ve made four records now, three volumes of ‘Electronic Music Improvisations’ and a live album, ‘Live In London And Frankfurt’, from last year. Which brings us back to where we came in. As I was saying, the live outings are a total treat as they tend to play in intimate venues and it is as captivating to watch close up as it is to hear. Keep an eye out for dates, I can’t imagine there won’t be any what with an album coming out and all.
‘Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 3’ is released by Mute on 29 November
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
LOULA YORKE ‘November Mixtape’ (Truxalis)
This week I’ve got a full set of my must-have recurring monthly releases. There’s three, as you are probably well aware by now. First up, the wonderful Loula Yorke and the seventh edition of her monthly mixtape. Said it before, and I’ll keep saying it for as long as it takes, but Loula is brilliant. You can feel the love poured into every second of these releases. For those who don’t know, each month Loula makes a 40-minute “psychedelic audio essay” that takes you on a journey through what’s happening in her world, both real life and audio-wise and she expertly marries all the sounds she collects, everything from field recordings to new music, into an essential monthly listen. The whole thing comes with very detailed sleevenotes, which are as much of a joy as the piece itself.
The November tape starts with the spooky sound of a muntjac deer calling in the darkness. I’ve lived in the sticks before and you hear all sorts at night. Hedgehogs, I discovered, are incredibly noisy. There’s a properly avant-garde section with Eric Thompson reading two stories at once. Later on, Michael Aspel makes an appearance. Interestingly, Eric Thompson (Emma’s dad) narrated ‘The Magic Roundabout’. There are so many nuggets in each piece it makes my head spin. There’s a section that uses the rhythm of her dishwasher while she can be heard, faintly, practicing in the next room. The chat in the notes is of how a friend’s relationship was tipped over the edge by dishwasher etiquette.
There is also a lot of music in each one. Here there’s ‘Untitled #20A’, ‘Untitled #20b’ and ‘Untitled #20c’, which are, I guess, like glimpses into an artists sketchbook and you’ll also find a live version of the ‘Volta’ album track, ‘The grounds are changing as they promise to do’, from a show at bleep43 in Hackney last year. As she says about these tapes, “a sound work cannot unfold without time, I am inviting you to spend some of that time with this piece”. It’s an offer you shouldn’t refuse. I can’t tell you how much I love these mixtapes.
GOOD STUFF #2
XENO & OAKLANDER ‘Via Negativa (In The Doorway Light)’ (Dais)
Bloody hell! You have to love a bit of Xeno & Oaklander and this, their eighth long-player, is an absolute belter. The opener, the title track, comes at you like they’ve just dumped their foot all the way down on the gas. It absolutely flies out of the traps from the very first second. The duo of Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride have really consolidated their place at the synthpop top table over the years. Their New York studio was a place of wonder, just one look at the analogue gear in there and you could smell the electricity coursing through the ancient wires. They’ve since shifted the operation to what is described as a “modernist Connecticut home fashioned into a two-story synthesiser laboratory and mixing studio”, which sounds great doesn’t it? The album itself is described by their people as “technicolor widescreen anthems of the cybernetic age” and is inspired by “the study of what not to do, a negative image of a positive, the other side, the other”. No, me neither really. What you need to know is it’s rip-roaringly good. Their retro-fuelled synthy missiles have always had a sense of drama and ‘Via Negativa (In The Doorway Light)’ is no different. ‘The Unknown Side’ feels like a distant cousin of some chart-bound hit by A-ha, while the stand-out, ‘O Vermillion’, could be a long-lost Vince Clarke-penned Depeche Mode hit. This record does not let up for a second, which you have to love. The energy coming off it could power a small town. Excellent stuff. As always.
GOOD STUFF #3
SAM ANNAND ‘Cupar Grain Silo’ (Blackford Hill)
Ran out of writing time last week, but here’s one I missed that really deserves a mention. Whenever you see a release on Blackford Hill you know you’re going to get something that stands out for one reason or another. Sam Annand’s first release for the label is billed as blurring the lines between ambient electronica and sonic history. Which is a bold statement. Fortunately, it’s proper gobsmacking stuff. Cupar Grain Silo is, well, a silo in Scotland that was built in 1964 as a sugar store and used briefly for grain before it was closed in 1971. It’s huge, at 60 metres high it towers over the Fife countryside and has remained empty for decades. So what do you do with something like that? Enter Sam Annand. In 2014 he was given access to the silo as part of a project to study “a series of highly reverberant locations across Scotland”. I have no idea what the need for a project like that was, but you know, these are the things that make life more interesting. Turns out the silo had a reverb time, how long sound takes to decay or fade away in a closed space, of 36.5 seconds. You want perspective? That’s around three times longer than that in York Minster and St Paul’s Cathedral. So what do you do with something like that? You “experiment with musical compositions which responded to the unique acoustics of the silo space” of course. In other words, you take a modular synth system, a Roland Juno-6 and a bowed ride cymbal into the place and mess around. “The acoustics are immediately noticeable when climbing the ladder into the main chamber”, explains Sam. “The sound of your voice begins to circle around and above you, inviting you to shout, clap and bang objects to excite the space into revealing its intimidating architectural voice.” Musically, Sam goes on to explain, chords can be constructed in time by hanging successive single notes in the air. Which is a bit of head fryer. The results are all rather beautiful. ‘Cartesian Percussion Pattern’ has the feel of something that edges the dancefloor, with flecks of Moroder showing their hand now and then, and the whole record shimmers with the warm reverberation that made it possible. Originally recorded in May 2016, 'Cupar Grain Silo' is released on vinyl with an accompanying booklet of imagery and essays. As always with Blackford Hill, the printed materials are of the highest quality. The music isn’t too shabby either.
GOOD STUFF #4
BIT CLOUDY ‘The Visitation Plays’
The work of East London producer Martin Thompson, Bit Cloudy is something you might have caught out the corner of your eye before. His work is top-notch and really should be more front and centre than it is. Martin says ‘The Visitation Plays’ was made “while reading scripts and biographies of the television playwright Dennis Potter” whose work often dealt with “unexpected visitors who evoke or embody devils, angels or long-lost children and become agents of psychological and spiritual transformation”. You’ve got to love that sort of thinking and application. This isn’t a guy who shrugs his shoulders and says he makes imaginary film soundtracks. Martin’s music occupies a space I like very much. He says the album “draws obliquely on post-rock, techno, psychedelic pop, acid house, serial composition and trip hop”, which isn’t leaving much out admittedly. I’ve always thought of this kind of thing as nu rave. It draws on that bright 90s sound, those crisp, clear melodies and warm, intricate beats, but it brings something new to the party. It’s dance music, Jim, but not as we know it. The opener, ‘Tension Hex’, is a great example. It has flecks of early Oakenfold, those huge-sounding power chords he used to employ to great effect, but it’s all kind of off-kilter, wonky, like it’s being viewed from a distance. Which of course it is. This is rave music for those who were there, filtered though the mists of time. But Bit Cloud goes a step further and mixes it all up. ‘Coronation Crack’ is something you wouldn’t be surprised to hear getting an outing on Planet Mu and I really like the squally almost soulful ‘Benchmark’. The downtempo acid-y ‘Venus Tumble’ is lovely, while ‘A Definite Distance’, with its rich repetitive chords and the building synth lines, sounds like Underworld’s little brother. If you’ve not discovered Bit Cloudy yet, you’ve been missing out. Time to catch up.
GOOD STUFF #5
ADRA ‘Music For Psychiatric Wards (and Fluid Structures)’ (ADRA)
That is an attention-grabbing title is it not? It’s the work of Andy Abbott, who is more readily associated with Leeds noisemongers like the brilliantly named That Fucking Tank and Nope. He also makes more minimalist offerings as ADRA and just happens work as an interdisciplinary artist on a variety of socially engaged projects, one of which was as a sort of artist in residence in various Yorkshire psychiatric wards. Once a week for three months he would turn up and play music all day. “There's spaces where people might congregate, or hang out in or pass by, and I wanted to be in those spaces,” explains Andy. “It felt like I was soundtracking the ward, or even busking in it, rather than being like, ‘Right, you've got to come and do this activity with me’. I just thought I'd go in there and respond to the atmosphere.” And ‘Music for Psychiatric Wards (and Fluid Structures)’ is what he did. It is so utterly peaceful and calming I’m surprised these places didn’t want him in permanently. As part of the project he also created an Ambient Accessible Music Board, what he describes as a “musical fidget board”, which helped patients collaborate. Here it is…
He’d also leave instruments out and invite people to join in spontaneous jam sessions if they wanted. Which all sounds like great fun. All the tracks are numbered and untitled, with just the name of the lead instrument. The choppy ‘IV. Untitled (Organ)’ and the delicately warm ‘V. Untitled (Electric Mbira)’ are especially good, but the whole thing needs listening to with one eye on the story behind it all. Andy reveals his dad had been in such a ward towards the end of his life and he says that lend the project “a slightly more emotional connection rather than just doing droney abstract music”. I notice that he supported Ex-Easter Island Head recently, which gives you a good idea of where this music all sits. Great work, sir. An artist very much keeping an eye on.
ROUND UP
Cheating here slightly, but the second of my regular monthly listens comes form Marine Eyes, California-based Cynthia Bernard, who does the wonderful Women Of Ambient mixtape. She’s taking November off, which anyone with a regular schedule of publishing stuff will totally understand. I’m way overdue time off! So anyway, to fill the gap there’s a guest mix doing the rounds from the end of October that she did for the Sundays Are For… series, curated by the Delayed label in Brooklyn. It’s a beautiful piece of work as always. “I hope you enjoy this miniature world to live in for an hour of your day,” she says. It’s here…
There also happens to be new Marine Eyes EP out this week. 'Songs For Incense' is, well, songs for incense. Earlier this year, Cynthia was commissioned by a Chinese incense company to compose music for a product launch. It sounds like such a good brief as she received detailed prompts from the company to accompany the different scents. She set about making field recordings that reflected the “natural environments suggested by the prompts” - a summer evening at dusk, ice melting, etc, and they were incorporated into the recordings. The work is so calm, as is everything Cynthia does. “I love how music can elevate everyday rituals, such as burning incense,” she says in the perfect quote for someone working for an incense company. But I know what she means. Music makes everything better. People like Cynthia and Loula Yorke are essential. Listen, like, follow, tell them how great they are. And, you know, spend some money on their releases. Do whatever you can to support their fine work.
marineeyes.bandcamp.com
There’s a few bits and bobs appearing like ‘Pink Warm Belly Of A Dying Sun’ (Adventurous Music). The Mortality Tables-released ‘pod’ features author Andrew Brenza narrating his book soundtracked by alka to great effect and here we have the work of sound artist Prairie (Marc Jacobs) soundtracking the narration of Aint About Me (Lukasz Polowczyk) whose spoken word piece here “explores the grotesque, awe-inspiring beauty inadvertently lodged inside the real and mediated nightmares of our times”. They describe the work as “verbal paintings” and Lukasz does have one of those voices that’s made for telling darkside stories like this. But it’s not just audiobook with some tunes, there’s some great audio fuckery on the last track, ‘Coney Island Whales’, which leaves you feeling really unsettled. Disco dancing isn’t on the cards, but this kind of sound art is always very welcome. He’s an interesting artist is Lukasz, we’ve featured him before. He had an album/book out called ‘Noise In The Key Of Life’ a couple of years back. It was proper headphone type of listen - field recordings and diary entries meets jazz in a 24-minute track. He is not one to do things by halves, so this release is accompanied by an exhibition at OFF SPACE Richard Sorge Strasse 79 in Berlin, which I believe opens today, and there’s a book coming too in Feb 25.
adventurousmusic.bandcamp.com
Tomoyoshi Date and Bill Seaman’s ‘Duet’ (quiet details) is the third of my regular monthly listening appointments and it’s a delightful collaborative effort, what the label describe as “a masterclass in electro-acoustic composition”. The work is in six parts, six duets that centre around the piano with each piece passing backwards and forwards between the artists. Interestingly, Tomoyoshi was heavily involved with the five-LP Ryuichi Sakamoto tribute ‘Micro Ambient Music’. Work on this release was going on side-by-side and listening to ‘Duet’ you can’t help feeling Sakamoto’s influence rubbed off more than a little.
quietdetails.bandcamp.com
Arizona duo Trees Speak return to Soul Jazz with ‘TimeFold’, their sixth album on the London-based label. “This new album,” says the release notes, “builds on their signature blend of hypnotic krautrock rhythms, post-punk angularity, and experimental soundscapes while venturing into new terrain by blending influences from avant-garde electronics to ceremonial sound forms”. There is a lot going on here. Take a look at that artwork. It’s like some Klaus Schultz album cover. The duo talk about influences spanning pioneers like Jarre, Tangerine Dream and Stockhausen, Italian and French horror cinema and Musique Concrète. There’s even a bit of spoken word chucked in for good measure. Have they left no stone unturned? What I really like is the tracks are brief, almost like they’re sketches. There’s a couple around the four-minute mark, the rest are in the one-three minute range. ‘Emotion Engine’, with it rumbling bass line and ‘Psyche State’, with it’s plinky-plonk harpsichord and sinister tone, sound like the theme to stylish 60s TV show, ‘Prodrome’, with its moody sax, sounds Bernard Hermann-y, the guitar-y drone of ‘Entity System’ is almost post-rock and the wonky swirl of ‘Cybernetics’ is delightfully hypnotic. We are running the full nine yards here. There is a lot to take in, and lots to like about ‘TimeFold’.
soundsoftheuniverse.com
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MUSIC PRESS LISTS… PART ONE
I’ve been thinking about the Moonbuilding Albums Of The List a lot lately. I’m used to thinking a lot about lists. The music press is nothing without lists and we’d make them constantly at Melody Maker. Albums, singles, greatest this, best that. Everything was lists. I recently found two lists in my “archive” (folder on old hard drive full of files) that made for interesting reading. It was for a 100 Greatest Records Of All-Time rundown. Issues like that worked really well because no one agrees with you, your post bag would explode overnight, other publications, radio and sometimes TV would pick up on it and everyone wanted in on the ensuing row. The publicity was good.
The problem we had with lists was the Melody Maker editor was single-minded to say the least, so whenever we had any kind of rundown we were on a hiding to nothing, his list was always going to dominate. For example, the end of year list in 1997 had Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’ as our Album Of The Year, except it wasn’t when the issue came out. It was usurped by The Verve’s ‘Urban Hymns’, which was pretty daft looking back. I can’t even remember why it was changed. I seem to recall NME were going with ‘OK Computer’ and we needed some clear water. In fact, ‘OK Computer’ was No.2 in the NME end of year chart too, pipped by Spiritualized’s ‘Ladies And Gentlemen…’, with ‘Urban Hymns’ as No.3. I found the full list (see image above), which makes for good viewing.
1. The Verve ‘Urban Hymns’
2. Radiohead ‘OK Computer’
3. Super Furry Animals ‘Radiator’
4. The Charlatans ‘Tellin’ Stories’
5. Spiritualized ‘Ladies And Gentlemen…’
6. Black Grape ‘Stupid Stupid Stupid’
7. Roni Size And Reprazent ‘New Forms’
8. Oasis ‘Be Here Now’
9. Supergrass ‘In It For The Money’
10. Kenickie ‘At The Club’
It was a Top 50 Albums Of The Year, which gets more interesting the further down it you go. The way these lists worked was all the writers sent in their picks for the year, in order, 1-10, might have been 20, and some poor sod then made a master list. I’m starting to think that poor so was me in 1997, it wouldn’t surprise me as I was albums editor at time. The editor didn’t give a hoot about much outside of the To 10 so there was scope for subversion. There’s some records in there that leap out as being my choice. Laika’s ‘Sounds Of Satellites’, Stereolab’s ‘Dot And Loops’, Death In Vegas’ ‘Dead Elvis’, Labradford’s ‘Mi Media Naranja’, Billy MacKenizie’s ‘Beyond The Sun’. They all reek of me.
And if you think that sounds messy, we also used to do a Readers’ Poll edition. A time-honoured tradition that stretches back decades and is guaranteed to have hacks banging their heads on a desk and wondering what the point of all their wise words of musical wisdom was worth when My Life Story or whoever were bagging the Readers’ Single Of The Year gong, or something.
So anyway, at some point, and it was total folly, we did a Greatest Records Of All-Time list, which was always going to cause ructions. I’m not sure we didn’t do this more than once, but I’ve found a list that was in The Maker in 2000. The Top 10 goes like this…
1. The Smiths ‘The Queen Is Dead’
2. The Stone Roses ‘The Stone Roses’
3. Nirvana ‘Nevermind’
4. The Beatles ‘The Beatles’
5. Radiohead ‘The Bends’
6. The Beatles ‘Revolver’
7. David Bowie ‘Hunky Dory’
8. Oasis ‘Definitely Maybe’
9. Primal Scream ‘Screamadelica’
10. Sex Pistols ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’
Holy shit, right. OF ALL TIME. No wonder the readers took pen to paper. I’m surprised the writers didn’t too. The NUJ should have pulled us out on strike after that shitshow. The letters page must’ve been full for months after this. I need to dig out some back issues, except I threw them in the recycling in the early 00s during a house move. Idiot. If you happen to have back issues of The Maker, death rattle period (1997-2000) do let me know?
Stating the bleeding obvious here, but ‘The White Album’ isn’t better than ‘Revolver’, ‘The Bends’ isn’t better than ‘OK Computer’, I’d love to hear the argument for that. It’s unlikely you’d find many who could name three bands better than The Beatles, let alone it be Nirvana, The Stone Roses and The Smiths. The Smiths! Never has a band fallen so far from grace.
The point of all this was to show you my personal list that fed into this final list. We were asked for our Top 30 albums of all-time. We should’ve published the writers’ lists instead. Mine is fascinating, and I will be picking it apart, but I’ve got massively distracted and that will have to wait until next week now. I didn’t quite realise how much all this still rankles with me. More next week…
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
Anything with the title "Music For Psychiatric Wards (and Fluid Structures)" is definitely worth checking out! Thanks again for these amazing round ups of music! Something to look forward to every Friday morning.
Moonbuilding is my new favourite zine