Issue 49 / 17 January 2025
The essential DIY electronic music beano – Track Of The Week: Edvard Graham Lewis + Good Stuff: Wil Bolton, Randomcat, Ogle, Please Close Your Eyes, Jamie Lee, Mark S Williamson + much more
Hello there. Welcome to 2025. Happy New Year! I hope everyone is fighting fit and raring to go. It’s going to be a good year. I can feel it in my bones.
Lots has happened since we were all last here. We racked up 1,000 subscribers just before Xmas, which was very exciting. Thanks to everyone who signed up, especially those who pledged money. The aim is to try and keep this whole show free and support it with advertising. Want to advertise? All the info you need is here. We’re already booking into February so don’t hang around.
It seems that BNDCMPR, which I use for our playlist each week, is completely broken and needs moving to a new server. It’s such a great little tool, I hope it gets fixed soon. Lon, the guy who built it, is looking for devs to lend a hand. If you can help, his details are on the site, link above. I’d be very grateful!
Finally, it’s been an entire year since we set all this in motion for the first time. My ramblings on the latest DIY electronic releases only have a home because of you lot, so thanks for being interested and helping to spread the word.
Happy Birthday Moonbuilding Weekly!
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 49 Playlist: No playlist this week 😭😭😭
Moonbuilding Tip Jar: ko-fi.com/moonbuilding
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EDVARD GRAHAM LEWIS ‘Switch’ (Upp Records)
In the whirlwind end to last year, I totally missed the announcement of Edvard Graham Lewis’ new solo album on his own Upp label, so named because he’s based in Uppsala, Sweden, these days. A core member of Wire since their formation in 1976, bass player, lyricist and vocalist Graham Lewis, as you will know him, adds to his solo canon with ‘Alreet’, which is set for release on 24 January. Goodness, that’s next week! Time is flying already. Soon be Christmas.
Graham is no stranger to side hustles outside of the Wire mothership and there’s a slew of offerings under his own name, in collaboration as well as under nom de plumes. I spent a happy time rummaging around and refreshing my memory with projects like Duet Emmo, which is Graham and Wire bandmate Bruce Gilbert - who together are early 80s experimental/industrial powerhouse Dome - and Daniel Miller.
We’ll tackle ‘Alreet’ more fully next week, but it’s great as this second single taken from it suggests. ‘Switch’ is, his people say, “the album’s sultry pop moment”. Lyrically smart, the wordplay reminds me of Blancmange’s Neil Arthur, while musically you can’t help feeling that this is what Peter Gabriel might have become had he taken the more experimental path rather than the full-blown chart behemoth route. All power to Graham who turns 72 next month and is still turning in great, forward-facing music. It occurs to me that next year will be Wire’s 60th birthday, which is pretty gobsmacking, especially when its members remain this vital after six decades at the coalface.
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
WIL BOLTON ‘SOUTH OF THE LAKE’ (QUIET DETAILS)
Starting the year as they mean to go on, qd flew out of the traps last week with their first monthly offer of 2025. ‘South Of The Lake’ comes from Manchester-based Wil Bolton and is inspired by a spring road trip he took in South Korea. The tracks, he says, are drawn from “moments of stillness and quiet in temples, nature reserves and a tea garden”. The recordings centre around field recordings made on location and augmented later by all manner of instrumentation, everything from stones and pine cones from Korea to an OP-1, Buchla Easel Command and an Arturia Microfreak.
It is glorious stuff. ‘Sun Tree Trail’ is utterly lovely, you can almost hear the rays of sunshine dappling on the ground. As if to underline the point, as I was typing an email landed from Wil where he said he’d made a couple of videos in the actual locations that inspired the tracks. There’s one for ‘Sun Tree Trail’ [youtu.be/NcUfQmNC-lo], which is exactly what I was imagining. Musically, it comes on like Penguin Cafe limbering up, you almost expect the track to suddenly burst into a song, which of course it doesn’t because it doesn’t need to. It’s great just as it.
The qd action doesn’t stop there though. Not content with high-grade content coming off the label every four weeks, Alex is upping the output from next week when he releases the first a new monthly series that sees him releasing a long-form piece from his own Fields We Found project (expect an album from FWF on the quiet details later in the year). I’ll tell you more about all that next week when that first outing lands. It promises to be a bit special.
GOOD STUFF #2
RANDOMCAT ‘EP1’ (CAFE KAPUT)
I’m such a fan of Cate Brooks, more so if that’s possible recently due to her wonderful ‘Prismatics’ album from late last year that paid homage to the commercial/TV music of the early-mid 80s, that moment where tech was on the cusp of giving way to computers. I did a very rare interview with Cate for Electronic Sound’s Brief Encounters column in December, which was great. Anyway. Randomcat is a new project on Cate’s Cafe Kaput label that is described as being “shrouded in mystery” and a project “born from the pure joy of experimentation”. Is it Cate? You’d imagine so, but if it is, it’s not like anything you’ve heard her do before. ‘EP1’ is five versions of a track called ‘Abubua’. The original is beat heavy and has a kind of wonky R&B/nu jazz groove, with a scatty vocal dusting the top. As the EP goes on the sounds get increasingly mangled. First it gets “slowed+reverb”, which is very slurry, “chopped+screwed” is a fitting description. The ‘polx’ version is more Cate-like, a bright, beatless ambient swirl that shimmers and shivers, stretching out over 11 minutes, while the closing ‘windopaned’ takes the source material to a whole other plane with a delightful drone
GOOD STUFF #3
OGLE ‘THE BLUE WINDOW’ (PRESTON CAPES)
Preston Capes were keen to get the party started and released their first offering of the year from Rome’s Giulio Fontana on New Year’s Day. Sorry I wasn’t at my desk, but I was still padding around in my pyjamas and nowhere near thinking about doing any work. Orge is a name we’re hearing increasingly and no wonder. Having played in bands before working on solo electronic outings, his instrument of choice is the Buchla Easel Command, which he handles masterfully. Dedicated to his son Mylo, ‘The Blue Window’ is “a soundtrack for the imaginary journey of a boy who’s been catapulted into a fantasy dreamscape of perilous quests and odd encounters with strange creatures”. Giulio has a similar ballpark vibe to Polypores, both the thinking and the execution.
GOOD STUFF #4
PLEASE CLOSE YOUR EYES ‘MUSIC FOR FLOATING’ (MORTALITY TABLES)
Talking of labels who have come flying out of the gate this year, it won’t surprise you to hear that Mortality Tables are absolutely not mucking around and have two releases under their belt already. What’s more, they’re both physical releases too. The first comes from Please Close Your Eyes, which is Oliver Richards who you may recall recorded as Goodparley for a while. He talks about how he sees ‘Music for Floating’ as his first album and it’s the first time he’s consciously composed work rather than creating work “improvisationally and instinctively”. Not sure improvisationally is a word, but fair play, it should be now. With a title like that it obviously inspired by Eno, but as Oliver says, “ I don't make music for airports, I make music for floating”. He does. It is floaty.
GOOD STUFF #4a
JAMIE LEE ‘CIRCUITS FROM SOFT FREQUENCIES’ (MORTALITY TABLES)
‘Circuits From Soft Frequencies’ by multi-disciplinary artist Jamie Lee is a 19-minute recording of his sound installation of the same name “which examines the materiality of sound and how it affects bodies, things and spaces”. I’m not quite sure “things” is a technical term, but who am I to talk, I use it as well as “stuff” all the time. The installation uses field recordings from sites around the South East of England, in particular sites featuring huge, concrete sound mirrors. “This archaic technology,” explain the label, “which features on the cover of the release, was designed to sense the sonic vibrations of aircraft during wartime. You can see the installation here, which sort of helps you understand what you’re hearing. The little images are on the wall are intriguing aren’t they? On its own the sound is very shimmery and bright. This is the sort of thing I really love about Mat Smith’s label. He caught the installation at a gallery local to him in Milton Keynes and must’ve known straightway he wanted to document it. Which is just part of what his ever-inventive label is all about.
GOOD STUFF #5
MARK S WILLIAMSON ‘FOLKLORE, FACTS AND FABLES 3: SHAPESHIFTERS’ (FORGED RIVER)
Spaceship’s Mark Williams has been busy of late with his ‘Folklore, Facts And Fables’ CD series that kicked off towards the end of last with ‘1: Seabirds’, a five-tracker that came with an illustrated zine “featuring facts and folkore about the featured birds”. Must say I’m keen to discover some folklore about storm petrels and the arctic tern. The series heads off to deal with archaeologists whose studies have been “ essential to our exploration and understanding of prehistoric sites” in volumes 2 and 2.5, also both with zines, which, by the way, look great. Now we have volume three, which explores shapeshifters, “the creatures of folklore often have the ability to change their shape”. Fascinatingly, Mark say he’s also using the series to experiment musically. And boy, he’s not kidding. You will no doubt be aware that his music is generally on the gentle side. For ‘Shapeshifters’ he trawls back to his teenage years and draws on the heavy metal he was listening to. We all went there. I was a Kerrang reader for a time, early teens. I went to Monsters Of Rock at Castle Donnington in 1984 and saw a legendary line up that included AC/DC, Van Halen, Ozzy, Gary Moore and, bottom of the bill, Motley Crue. So this really is a departure for Mark. I love it. He carries it well and will appeal to all those about to rock. We salute you.
THE HANDY ROUND UP
We’re two weeks into the new year and I’m already up to my chuff in new releases. Let’s see how clear I can get the decks before I run out of typing time…
Released on Christmas Eve Eve, Veryan’s ‘Paper Hearts EP’ is too good to leave in last year. It’s a beautifully delicate piano-driven three-tracker from the anonymous Scottish artist. The powerful melodies of the title track are especially good, while ‘Gossamer’ really is just that and you don’t get more literal than closer ‘Soft Lights Dance On Walls’. The whole thing feels wintery, a happy, hopeful wintery at that. Veryan does seem to have found a new energy since her excellent quiet details release ‘One Universal Breath’ last summer. Very much looking forward to seeing where she takes her sound this year.
veryan.bandcamp.com
Another offering that popped out between Xmas and the New Year saw Loula Yorke serve up a live album that collected recordings from two captivating shows from last year. ‘Live Compendium’ was recorded at the Make Much Wenlock Weird mini festival at The Edge Arts Centre on 8 Nov and at the Boundaries Festival in Sunderland Minster on 23 Nov. As always, the release comes with comprehensive notes from Loula herself and some thoughts from Moonbuilding’s Neil Mason. Oh, hang on, that’s me! Well, I had to fill my spare time at Xmas somehow. It’s also a physical release coming as a limited edition CD, which unbelievably hasn’t sold out yet. Hurry! It’s a great document form one of our most brilliant live artists.
loulayorke.bandcamp.com
Christmas Day saw Mexican label Facade Electronics serve up their annual various artists label sampler, this one being ‘Sampler IV’. It features downtempo cuts by artists from all over the place, Mexico of course, but also Vancouver, Paris, LA, Texas, Indiana, Belgium, Japan… The bubbling 'Moors Lament' from LA’s Subxet is rather lovely and Tijuana’s Supersadfish do a nice line in fizzy crackling experimentalism, but there’s much to like here. Looks like there’s lots to explore on this label’s Bandcamp page too. Should keep up quiet for a while. This DIY electronic music lark permeates all corners of the world does it not.
facadelectronics.bandcamp.com
We are making progress with the listening pile… Boxing Day saw Belgian label Alles turn out ffaux’s ‘Tongues’, which a supporter on their Bandcamp page described as a “beautifully deadly release”. Coming on cassette, it is dark, but tunefully so, opener ‘Beneath The Skin’ is rather lovely, even when the prickly vocal kicks in. It feels very current, the dark cousin of something that might be chart-bound. Only a lot more experimental. You’d wager that Billie Eilish and Finneas would look on admiringly too. It’s such a rich soundworld.
ffaux.bandcamp.com
Earth Speaks’ Matthew Hiram dropped me a line from Minneapolis saying nice things about Moonbuilding and pointing me in the direction of his ‘Earth Speaks At Gold Beach’ release, which he says “isn’t just an album, it’s an act of sonic conservation”. Love that. He explains that it’s an exploration of “environmental sound art, weaving field recordings from the Northern Pacific Ocean with mindfulness practices to create a deeply immersive soundscape”. The full 42-minute outing is designed, says Matthew, “to connect listeners with the rhythms of nature” and you find yourself utterly tuning in to the might of the Pacific Ocean over a prolonged listening session. I’ve talked about the way this kind of work lives in my life before. It’s usually on in the Moonbuilding office early in the morning. Having the waves crashing around while the house is so quiet has been a treat. I grew up in Norfolk, where the coastlines are breathtaking, and in various places very much under threat from coastal erosion. The beach, and access to it, at a delightful place called Happisburg (pronounced Hazeborough, yes I know) has changed beyond recognition in my lifetime. I was so pleased to read about Matthew’s work here and how every album sold supports the North Coast Land Conservancy, helping to preserve Oregon’s coastal ecosystems. Matthew has another release coming up soon, which I will of course be happily writing about. matthewhiram.bandcamp.com
OK, so I’m almost up to date and the pile is almost cleared). Tim Martin’s wonderful Maps And Diagrams welcomes the new year with ‘Gleichstrom’ (Handstitiched*), the CD of which, with its delightful handmade collages, is already sold out. There’s something especially lovely about what Tim does. It feels like he’s built a whole little world with his gentle music and delicate artwork. It’s a world I very much like.
handstitched.bandcamp.com
Our first newsletter of the year wouldn’t feel right without a mention for our Past Inside The Present pals over the pond. I don’t know if you spotted it over Xmas, but they launched a 24/7 radio station, which we have been listening to a lot. You can find it here. Their first release of the year comes from Brock Van Wey’s ever-reliable bvdub. He is, the label explains, a long-time scholar of Eastern ideas and literature and the tracks on ‘13’ “represents one edict or idea from chapter 13 of the ‘Tao Te Ching’, the foundational text of Taoist doctrine, which promotes humility and freedom from desire as the core elements of a peaceful existence”. The label say “at times, we hear echoes of the hardware-based works of pioneers like Global Communication and The Orb”, which is precisely what I was thinking. It has that kind of quality about it. And talking about a peaceful existence, I’m sure it’s something we can all get behind, especially with events in the States next week when Trump begins his second no doubt turbulent term in the office. You read that he’s a lame duck president because he can’t stand again, but who knows what’s going to happen. His first term wasn’t exactly uneventful. Fingers crossed for a peaceful existence.
pitp.bandcamp.com
Sure you’ve seen the latest issue of Electronic Sound, which I was kindly asked to contribute to. It’s a detailed look at our world, what they call grassroots electronic music. What strikes me reading it is that there’s so much great music about that everyone’s take is different. Look at the list of 101 Bandcamp acts featured in the mag, how many do you know? I know about a quarter of them. In the old days, there used to be a consensus. An end of year list would deal in, there or thereabouts, the best albums of the year. These days, everyone’s list is entirely different. I read this piece recently that says more music is being “released” in a single day now than came out in the whole of 1989. Which is mind blowing. The point is, I’m always grateful when various artist titles like ‘31.9522° N 35.2332° E – a compilation for MAP’, a whopping 35-track collection to raise funds for the Medical Aid for Palestinians charity, comes along because it allows me to get up to speed on another swathe of DIY artists. I do apologise if it was you who sent this over, but I can’t remember who did, nor can I find an email! Thank you whoever it was, because it’s very good. There’s not many names here I know, the ones I do are really excellent though – Scholars Of The Peak, Thought Bubble, Xylitol, Drew Mullholland, Pulsliebhaber, Revbjelde. It’s going to take a while to work through the rest, I’m currently enjoying the epic 12-minute drones of Eclectic Listens and the fourth worldisms of Concrete/Field. Sure I’ll be reporting back on many of this artists again at some point down the line.
319522n352332e.bandcamp.com
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‘APHEX TWIN – A DISCO POGO TRIBUTE’ (Disco Pogo)
This was published just before Xmas, when everyone was pretty frazzled, so hasn’t perhaps had the love it deserves and well, full disclosure, I have a piece in it, but don’t let that you put you off. It certainly doesn’t detract from how flipping good it is.
There is, as I’ve pointed out on several occasions before, a kind of movement in publishing to take journalism that in the olden days would have graced the pages of the music press and package it up in a book. A title like Ben Murphy’s ‘Ears To The Ground’ (Velocity Press) is a prime example. It’s a book about the meeting of field recording and electronic music, so people who use field recordings in their work, rather just field recordists. Rather brilliantly, Ben has organised it into standalone chapters, which are like extended features, 20 of them. It’s a heck of lot of work - that’s 20 interviews to prep for, conduct, transcribe and finally write up - but writing books is a heck of a lot of work… if you’re doing it on your own.
The Disco Pogo twist is don’t write the book on your own, get a load of top-notch music writers to help you. So here we have a mighty tome full of “interviews, essays and features from the best music journalists working today”. Ahem. Indeed, the book has a total A-list of contributors. As well as the Disco Pogo crew, there’s wise words from the likes of Matthew Collin, Jon Savage, Helen Mead, Craig McLean, Ted Kessler, Piers Martin, Joe Muggs, Ben Willmott and many more.
Disco Pogo, in case you’ve missed it, is a twice-yearly dance music-based mag from the excellent people who brought you Jockey Slut back in the day. It was such a great mag, I was at Muzik mag at the time and was always a little jealous of the way they always had things musically spot on, but managed to present it with such good humour, great writing and maximum mucking about.
The folks behind it - Jim Butler, Paul Benney and John Burgess – are all onboard for the reboot and it shows. Disco Pogo is treat if you’ve not seen it. They cover off old and new stuff with a mixture of brand-new writing and reprints of old pieces. They’re six issue in and there’s a few left on their website should you need to get up to speed. You do need to be quick! I know Issue Seven is underway, don’t hang around when that pops up in the spring.
Anyway, they’re also in on this book lark and they’re getting rather good at it. First out of the traps was their Daft Punk tribute, which is now in its second edition and is a mix of old pieces from Jockey Slut, including the duo’s first ever interview in 1994, along with newly commissioned work that covers every aspect of our second favourite musical robots (after Kraftwerk, obviously). ‘Aphex Twin – A Disco Pogo Tribute’ takes that same formula, so every piece Jockey Slut ran (apart from “the short and unprintable ‘last-ever interview’”, which of course wasn’t his last…) and freshly commissioned work, and applies it to the myth and legend of Richard D James. And boy is there myth and legend. Indeed, Mark Hooper provides us with a romp through some of the more unlikely tales surrounding Mr Twin from how he worked down a Cornish tin mine like his father, to how he was going to buy a Russian submarine for 50 grand, to his insistence that The Face interview him at his local Sainsbury’s only for him not to turn up.
When ‘Aphex Twin – A Disco Pogo Tribute’ was published there did seem to be a little disquiet that the book didn’t feature a new interview with the artist himself, but that was to entirely miss the point. In his opening letter, editor Jim Butler says Aphex was approached about contributing (a request I had on the table more than once when I was at ES where the answer was always a polite no thank you) and while he kept quiet council in this case too, the understanding is that “via furtive back channels, he’s helpfully contributed”.
Even without fresh Aphex word fruit, there is so much here to enjoy and among it some excellent behind-the-scenes first-hand accounts from writers who spent time with him over the years. The excellent Ted Kessler recounts his four encounters for Lime Lizard and later NME, while Piers Martin tells of his decade following the Rephlex Disco Assault crew around. On top of all this there’s new essays about each album, my piece looks at his imperial phase and compares and contrasts ‘I Care’ and ‘Richard D James Album’ with a little help from his old mucker, Mike Paradinas.
What else do you need to know? It’s a proper slab of a book, hardback, 274 pages, you don’t want to go dropping it on your foot, it’s £30 and worth every penny. If you’re lucky you’ll also get a free Aphex sticker sheet too.
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 © 2025 Moonbuilding
great edition! thanks for including qd28 wil bolton and mentioning the upcoming fwf, so looking forward to sharing it with everyone 🙏❤️