Issue 55 / 28 February 2025
Your essential DIY electronic music beano – Track Of The Week: Snapped Ankles + Good Stuff: Andy Bell, Jo Johnson, bdrmm, Yoker Moon, The British Stereo Collective + more, more, more!
One of the things I like about a weekly deadline is how each issue of often completed by skin of my teeth. It may look serene on the surface, but underneath I’m paddling like mad to get to 10am on a Friday morning. There is a joy to be had in turning out work that fast. Working on the inkies in the old days, you had very little time to think, so the writing, which we did in quantity, was almost a gut reaction, an immediate response to something. Live reviews were more often not written and filed before it was even light the next day. I loved all that. Work also tended to appear with mistakes and all, it was all part of it, it only added to the immediacy. On a monthly publication you could pour over the copy, on a weekly it got edited, but it just needed to be done and out there. What I’m trying to say is that this week’s words have been written faster than usual so please excuse any fluffs.
I’m trying a new approach on the funding front today… the £1 fighting fund. It’s simple, if you’re enjoying Moonbuilding Weekly please consider chucking us a quid. If everyone who read this did, we’d be in very good place indeed.
Anyway, have a happy Friday. See you next time.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 55 Playlist: Listen here
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SNAPPED ANKLES ‘Pay The Rent’ (The Leaf Label)
Photo / video: Louise Mason
You just don’t get bands like Snapped Ankles anymore. Which seems daft to say when we have Snapped Ankles, but they very much operate in a microcosm all of their own. Here the post-punk disco-dancing forest-themed wood lovers are making their return to action with a second track from their forthcoming album, ‘Hard Times Furious Dancing.
This track, ‘Pay The Rent’, is brilliant, as is the video, which makes me think of The Banana Splits, only on very heavy drugs. This latest track, a throbbing, thrumming, rattling belter, is a commentary on how the cost of living crisis is putting a squeeze on the arts. The band are, they say, “dancing at the misery of the situation”, aiming their ire at Brexit, which they point out “has compounded issues, and made life as a touring band almost impossible to sustain”.
In a Brexit-busting bid, the Snapps have got a Kickstarter underway to help fund their upcoming tour. The project will only be successful if it reaches its goal by 23 March. The total currently stands at £1,585 of a modest £3,500 ask. Please chip in if you can.
There are some choice incentives for would-be backers. A crisp £20 gets you a pre-show meet and greet on the tour or a signed setlist, £30 sees you owning one of the log synth holders, while £250 will make you the proud owner an authentic ghillie suit as worn on the tour (can be washed upon request) and for £3k you can have a 60-minute private performance anywhere in the UK. I mean, what are you waiting for?
The sharper knives among you will know the album title comes from ‘The Color Purple’ author and poet Alice Walker’s 2010 collection ‘Hard Times Require Furious Dancing’, a book written for the times we were living in. Dunno, seems like little has changed since 2010. The times we are living in now seem much weirder. Snapped Ankles have now kindly provided the soundtrack.
‘Hard Times Furious Dancing’ is released by The Leaf Label on 28 March
snappedankles.com / snappedankles.bandcamp.com / theleaflabel.com
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
ANDY BELL ‘Pinball Wanderer’ (Sonic Cathedral)
A third solo album under his own name, but this one is a little different. The two previous Andy Bell outings, ‘The View From Halfway Down’ and ‘Flicker’, were based on tracks he’d been accruing since the 1990s, here we get eight brand-new tracks and it’s all killer, no filler.
I’m starting to think eight tracks is just about the perfect album length and here we have exhibit a. While I don’t (yet) have this on vinyl, I suspect it works a treat. Four tracks a side, the first side dropping in the smash hit single (if we still had proper charts, this would be such a hit) ‘I’m In Love…’, a cover of The Passions’ ‘I’m In Love With A German Film Star’. Yup, you read that right. “I went through a stage of playing the guitar part for that song at every Ride soundcheck,” says Andy. “[Phantasy label boss] Erol Alkan has always maintained it’s ‘proto shoegaze’ and I agree.” Cute cover version well taken would normally be enough. This one goes a step further. It features Dot Allison on vocals (“I booked her to DJ at a club night in Sweden in about 2004, she levelled the place by playing ‘Ace Of Spades’ by Motörhead at 3am and we became mates.”) and rather stunningly Neu!’s Michael Rother on guitar. “I met him at his show at the Barbican last February and asked him to remix the song,” explains Andy, “but instead he decided he wanted to play guitar, which took everything to a whole new level.” Doesn’t it just.
Dealing a hand like that on track two is bold. Many would just pack up and go home after that. Not Andy Bell. Six tracks to go and the shimmery low-key ‘Madder Lake Deep’ leads you into side closer, the epic eight-minute head-frying ‘Apple Green UFO’. The influence is heavily Can, or The Stone Roses, same thing really. We used to call Happy Mondays Can too. Andy happily admits to having a “default Stone Roses influence”, I mean who doesn’t? It’s such a brilliant track, the notes from his people say it’s what ‘Second Coming’ should have sounded like. If only. There’s flecks of ‘Screamadelica’ in there, The Beta Band too. There’s such a cool brass section. If only Weatherall were still among us, his remix of this would’ve been peachy.
And there’s the end of the side a. Which is a good job, you need a little time to catch your breath. Flip it over and off we go again. You’ve already sort of forgotten how good that Berlin cover is and side b is going to double down. Andy talks about the flip side being the “pure vibes” half. Yup. It opens with the title track, a flower-powered finger-picking instrumental that has a delicious minute-long intro and an utterly charming melody. ‘Music Concrete’ is pure vibes, wonky synth lines, shuffling beat, funky bassline, it’s all good, while closer ‘Space Station Mantra’ is a slow-built motorik thriller. It is a record of two halves for sure, neither of them lacking in goals. The decision when you get the vinyl is which way round to listen, vibes side first, then songs, or songs side first melting into vibes. Decisions decisions.
As an aside, you like an aside don’t you? So I write the Brief Encounters column for Electronic Sound. It’s a quick interview, a snapshot of where an artist is at around the time of a particular release. Andy Bell did it for the release of ‘The View From Halfway Down’. It’s one of my favourite interviews for the column with one of my favourite-ever questions. He talked about the clarity lockdown gave him to finish the record. Somehow, I knew he’d also got a lot of DIY done, so I asked if there was a particular satisfying job he’d like to share… “Thank you so much for this question,” he exclaimed like a man who was desperate to talk DIY. “I was quite pleased with what I did with the shed. There had been a huge hole in the roof for five years and I finally fixed it, I constructed a new roof and re-did all the felt, finishing off by painting it a lovely sage colour. But my finest moment was a piece of skirting board going around three corners, which I managed to cut correctly without a mitre saw.” Just brilliant. I mean where else are you going to get that kind of insight? He is so clearly a top chap. That his records are equal to that is a deep pleasure. The Albums Of The Year list has a new addition.
GOOD STUFF #2
JO JOHNSON ‘Alterations 2: Variance’
This is the second track from Jo’s ‘Alterations’ album, which is being recorded and released on a monthly schedule right up to the full 10-track CD coming out later this year. Each new track comes hand-in-hand with a release of some accompanying “selected remnants”, so discarded audio she makes on the way to the finished track, reworks as well as notes and photos from the whole process. All this comes your way each month for a £3.70 subscription. This month you get ‘Alterations 2: Variance’, which is an altogether fizzier cut than last month’s ‘Alterations 1: Unbroken’. It’s that thing, I think, where you offer up something new to an audience. All artists have done it. They have no idea how the first fruit of a new venture will be received so it’s an anxious moment. ‘Alterations 2: Variance’ feels more upbeat, there’s a positivity here that I think has probably seeped into Jo’s work after that first outing was warmly greeted. The track is just under eight minutes and teeters on the brink the whole time. It starts with chirpy tones rubbing up against dark, warm ambient sweeps, each looking to settle but not quite doing so before giving way to new tones that weave along, almost cheerfully, cutting in and out of the intermittent dark sweeps as the whole thing builds towards its squally conclusion.
In with the bundle this month comes three ‘Remnants’ tracks, one of which is accompanied by an animated video, which is nicely minimal. And finally there’s the notes, which I really, really like. Jo provides some great context around the recordings. This track started with photos, video and recordings at her local wildlife reserve (see the video). I love hearing artists talk about process. This month Jo talks about her work pattern and the early starts, which I can relate to. I’ve taken to working very early in the mornings too. Jo calls it stolen time, which it kind of is. There are no other demands on you at that time of day, the same is true of working late at night, but as Jo points out she’s “normally too tired”. Me too.
As I mentioned last month, you won’t be able to stream any of this music for free throughout the project. It’s a bold move. The idea is simple enough, offer the work to subscribers only, keep the monthly cost down and drive numbers. The more money coming into the creative coffers this way means less needs to be earned elsewhere, which in turn means more time spent on the work that really matters. It’s a model I really want to see working for more artists.
There is certainly a first wave who are dipping their toes in these water. There’s Loula Yorke’s brilliant monthly mixtape, a snapshot of her life and musical practice along with extensive liner notes about the recordings, which are subscription-only (it’s nearly March, her new tape lands early for subscribers, - more about this month’s offering next week). There’s quiet details with their monthly ambient interpretation by a different artist of the label’s name, beautifully curated and with collaborative artwork from the label’s Alex Gold… who has recently launched a new monthly series of works by his Fields We Found project. And then there’s Mat Smith’s Mortality Tables, who don’t have a precise monthly schedule, but they release such a feast of diverse audio in intense bursts of activity it often seems like it.
Long gone are the days when an album had the longevity to keep an artist busy for a couple of years, with single releases, tours and the like. The music world has changed and as listeners we change with that. There’s something very cool about artists serving up new music on a very regular basis. It feels like those other long-lost days when the inkies would hit the news stand every Wednesday or Tuesday if you were in London. You could buy NME and The Maker on a Tuesday afternoon if you were in the West End. That felt very good. So anyway, all power to those experimenting with how and when they release their work. I’m right behind you.
GOOD STUFF #3
BDRMM ‘Microtonic’ (Rock Action)
It’s been interesting watching Hull outfit bdrmm make their way through all this. I’m not sure how many of us heard their 2020 Sonic Cathedral debut ‘Bedroom’ album and thought they’d end up on Mogwai’s Rock Action label for the follow up ‘I Don’t Know’ three years later. It does seem to have worked out for them as with that change of label came a morphing of their sound. ‘I Don’t Know’ was recorded in the same studio with the same producer (Alex Greaves) as their debut with the band claiming the difference was the influences had got much broader. I remember reviewing it and noted they’d been listening to everyone from Steve Reich to Boards Of Canada to “Thom Yorke’s electronic stuff”. “While the shoegaze foundations are still very much in place,” I wrote about to drop a housing metaphor, “they’ve build a new extension full of strings, synths, samples, beats and the like.”
If you needed to hang a tag, it was still a shoegaze record and so is this, their third long-player, but again they’ve taken a step forwards. “The last album was essentially like a bridge between the two,” explains the band’s Joe Vickers, “with that one we knew what we were trying to do but with this one we've fully cracked it.”
And I think they have. Where the other two albums were tentative in places, not fully sure of themselves perhaps, ‘Microtonic’ sounds grown up, it certainly feels fuller, and once again it’s recorded with Alex Greaves at the helm which seems to working well for them. A seal of approval comes in the shape of Working Men’s Club’s Sid Minsky who lends his vocal to the the judderingly dark opener ‘Goit’, which gives way to the bright as buttons dancefloor-fuelled ‘John On The Ceiling’. I really like the rave-y chops in ‘Clakycat’ and ‘In The Electric Field’ featuring Olivesque from Manc trio Nightbus actually made me jump on first listen when it suddenly, unexpectedly, springs back to life towards the end. Likewise, the noisy built up of ‘Microtonic’ is very pleasing. It’s still shoegaze, it still has that shimmer, but there is a breadth and a confidence to the sound that perhaps wasn’t there before. The difference is neatly summed up by frontman Ryan Smith. “I think we've gone from people saying that we sound like other bands to hopefully people saying this is what bdrmm sound like,” he says. I think he’s right. Three albums in and they’re only just getting going really.
rockactionrecords.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #4
YOKER MOON ‘Mood Studies: PS-20’ (Waxing Crescent)
Yoker Moon is Ross Prentice, solo artist and guitarist in delightful Glasgow post-rockers Deer Leeder, and with ‘Mood Studies: PS-20’ he presents “a series of raw meditations, improvisations and experiments, recorded live, and centering entirely on the broken beauty of a malfunctioning Yamaha PS-20 paired with a Chase Bliss MOOD mk2 effect pedal”. I do like how folk in guitar bands peel off into electronic music side-hustles. It’s often very revealing, but I’m not for one moment going to try and pick apart how Ross gets from Deer Leader to Yoker Moon. I would like to know a little more about his malfunctioning PS-20 though. Has he tried a well placed thump or jiggling stuff about or failing that calling the AA? The PS-20 is a piece of 80s kit know for its charming lo-fi sound and much loved by dream-pop indie bands like Beach House, which I don’t think means much to Ross judging by this.
We’re again looking here at eight tracks here, which as I’ve said today once already is perfect listening length. Ross conjurers up sketches like ‘First Meeting Of The Organ Circle for Better Days’, which is a twitchy drone that could break into ‘Music For A Found Harmonium’ at any second. Said it before, will no doubt say it again, but Phil Dodd’s label is a real little treasure. The things you find, like this. I really like the slightly hectic ‘May You Always Find The One In Turbulence’, which is quite turbulent. There’s a rhythm threatening to take over in there too. And of course there’s a moon in the title, which means I’m going to listen. Yoker is apparently a place in Glasgow. The things you’re learning today just by reading this newsletter eh?
waxingcrescentrecords.bandcamp.com
THE BRITISH STEREO COLLECTIVE ‘Starburst: The Album’
It’s always good to see Phil Heek’s The British Stereo Collective doing the rounds and here they are with a tribute to Starburst magazine. Now, Phil is one of those tricky buggers who fully occupies the world of the imaginary soundtrack and a solid job he does of it too. You might therefore be forgiven if you thought this was one of the worlds he’s plucked from his impressively over active imagination, but no. This one is real. Ish. Well the magazine is at least. Starburst is British sci-fi mag launched in 1977 and carries the tagline “The World’s Longest Running Magazine of Fantastic Films & Television”, which it can lay claim to even though it folded in 2008 before being relaunched in 2011 as a digital only title and returned to print in 2012. I mean Moonbuilding is the world’s longest running magazine of independent DIY electronic artists and labels. But I split hairs, it is always good to print magazines doing well, delighted to see Starburst is going great guns.
Anyway. I know all this because this album is being sold in the Starburst online store, which is where I spotted it first. I think anyone clocking it anywhere else would be forgiven for being tugged into Phil’s flawless parallel world. He is very convincing. I guess on the Starburst website they have to play it with a straight bat as the work, design-wise and musically, is so convincing it could be mistaken for the real deal.
So the blurb says it features 18 tracks inspired by the fantastical worlds the mag has documented since it first set out. The album artwork comes courtesy of the legendary film poster artist Graham Humphreys (‘Evil Dead’, ‘Nightmare On Elm Street’, ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, etc etc) and the package includes a 24-page “lost” issue of Starburst from an alternate 1979 reality featuring “articles on all the imagined cult TV and movies featured on the album”. Busted Heeks! Hoisted by your own wotsit eh? Honestly, the whole thing looks great though, really spot on. Which is no surprise if you’ve seen Phil’s graphic design work before. Musically, it’s excellent fun too. Phil really goes to town on these theme tunes. You always want to see some of these shows that he’s been dreaming up, especially when the themes are this good. ‘The Righteous’ has an uplifting feelgood theme, I’d watch a show called ‘Moonbase Britannica’ whose theme tune is proper rocket on the launchpad stuff, while ‘Galaxy Pirates’ is a belter, very grand. There’s even a couple of Starburst stings and a ‘Theme For Starburst’, every magazine needs its own theme tune, right? Wonder what Moonbuilding’s would sound like? Something like ‘Mr Benn’ most likely.
thebritishstereocollective.bandcamp.com
THE HANDY ROUND UP
I’ve been neglecting Mortality Tables so far this year, I’m sorry. They’re on their third release of the year with LF26, the 26th installment of their LIFEFILES series that label chief Mat Smith tells me is now in its final throes. ‘Wedding Piano’ is the sixth release of this final series and it comes from Ultrachill, “an ongoing experiment in microtonal soundscapes by Chris Robins Kennish”. As usual, the work is derived from a recording made by Mat and handed over to the artist to tinker with. The accompanying notes are brief, but we learn from them that the piano in question was played by Chris and “recorded covertly” by Mat after the wedding of Dan and Emma Leach in Hove on 14 August 2024. I love what Mat and his chosen artists get up to. As I was saying earlier, it’s great that there’s labels like MT pushing at the boundaries like this.
mortalitytables.bandcamp.com
Recorded in what you can only imagine is a state-of-the-art complex, Andrew Firth’s Garden Shed Studios in Shipley conjures up images doesn’t it? Andrew has been recording and releasing for a while and his Bandcamp page is worth a rummage. There’s a nice radiophonic-y feel to his work. Look out for ‘The Whitechapel Sound Survey 2022’ that combines “immersive 3D binaural recordings of the urban sounds of Whitechapel and Spitalfields and incorporating electronic ambient music”, and ‘Radio Row’ from last year that is “themed on the streets, buildings and old radio shops of New York City.” His latest outing, the tongue-twisting ‘Cincinnati City Central Subway System’, takes us below the streets of the Ohio city where there is, apparently, a network of tunnels and stations that have laid abandoned since 1928 when the project ran out of money for multiple reasons. It’s one of those things you see and think ‘Yeah right’, the product of an active imagination, but no, it really does exist. I like Andrew’s work, the thinking and the execution are great. He’s making ambient suites that tell stories, a mix of field recordings, found sounds and composed electronic goings-on, it should very much appeal round these parts.
andrewfirth.bandcamp.com
One of the reasons I set up Moonbuilding was that I wanted to give some context to DIY artists and the music they were making. And that included a bit of pseudonym busting. While I appreciate that some artists use them for good reason (only recently I unwittingly outed someone and had to beat a hasty retreat), many are working like that and going unnoticed. Hopefully you are a little wiser for reading all this. Anyway, I think I’m safe in saying that Lookout Mountain Laboratory is Jonathan Sharp. No one reads this far into the newsletter, so it should be OK. If you’re reading this, thank you! Jonathan’s work under this own name you should know as it’s great. Evocative sound dairies with memories drawn from his formative years, the ‘Kensington, 1974’, ‘Divided Time’ and ‘Divided Time 79’ albums on Castles In Space are standout releases. ‘Redacted Files - One’ from Lookout Mountain Laboratory finds him heading into more experimental territories, armed, with a Buchla and Serge Modular for company. It’s ambient-y, very atmospheric and full of pulses and flickers, shudders and swirls. The project began a year ago and it’s ticking away nicely. Well worth checking out.
lookoutmountainlaboratory.bandcamp.com
I have to press send very soon, but just a quick one to finish with. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be returning to this label as it’s another one that’s taking the monthly release model and running with it. Graintable’s ‘Blue Flax’ is the third release from ambient label Music to Watch Seeds Grow By who provide “a soundtrack for quiet moments of sowing, nurturing and witnessing the slow, rewarding process of growth”. Each release is from a different artist and each one has been gently filling the Moonbuilding office on our early morning starts. This one especially resonates because Portland-based Graintable, aka James Cooke, created these 10 tracks in the transitional hours of dawn and dusk. Based on the Blue Flax, “a resilient flowering plant celebrated for its delicate blue blooms and medicinal applications” it’s also native to the US Pacific North-West that James calls home. It says here he has created “10 intricate ambient pieces that reflect the plant's dual nature of part healer, part object of wonder”. Very nice it is too. More about this lovely label soon no doubt.
musictowatchseedsgrowby.bandcamp.com
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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
Excuse me, but the original "I'm in Love with a German Film Star" is by the Passions. Love from Berlin, though / Otis https://youtu.be/iLn_oMd1DQU?si=3UsHGJDbxtxjVuZD