Issue 57 / 14 March 2025

Your essential DIY electronic music beano – Track Of The Week: Silver Y + Polypores, Kate Carr, Conflux Coldwell, The Music Liberation Front Sweden, Onepointwo and much more!

Mar 14, 2025

It’s been such a quiet year so far for books, which, compared to last year, is a surprise. I do have a small pile building, but the difference is noticeable. There are some crackers on the way though, including ‘Volcanic Tongue’, a collection of David Keenan’s music writing, and there’s a lovely book about Sheffield’s famous Studio Electrophonique due in April, while in May there’s an Arthur Baker bio that I got yesterday and am very much looking forward to reading. If anyone is publishing a Moonbuilding-adjacent title in the coming months, do let me know.

I’ve been getting notifications of a delivery all week, but had no idea what it could be. It was such a treat when it arrived because it was a Kraftwerk care package – a 50th anniversary ‘Autobahn’ pictures disc and accompanying very cute 7-inch single. In return I obviously agreed to mention they’ve just embarked on a huge US tour featuring impressively upgraded graphics and stage set, tickets here if you’re Stateside. For those in the UK there’s just the one show this year at the Forever Now Festival in Milton Keynes on 22 June. Again, tickets on the above link. They’re very much worth seeing, even if it is just Ralf these day. It’s like seeing The Beatles if you’re of the electronic persuasion, and they always play all the hits.

It looks like BNDCMPR is finally back up and running after it fell over last year. The question now is do I stick with buymusic.club for our playlist or swap back to BNDCMPR? I’ve made this week’s playlist in both and included a poll so you can decide. A poll eh? Exciting times.

OK so that’s me. I’m off to do something else now. Happy reading.

See you next time.

Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com

Issue 57 Playlist: Listen on BNDCMPR or BUY MUSIC CLUB
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SILVER Y ‘Rest Home’ (Bytes)

A first release of the year for Bytes, which is a label you need to keep a close eye on for several reasons. They released that brilliant Seagoth album last year, the one that was nestled comfortably in the Top 10 of the Moonbuilding Albums Of The Year list. You never know when they’re going to unleash something that brilliant again so best not take your eye off them. The other thing I like is there isn’t especially a house sound at Bytes, it’s a label driven by the good ears of big chief Joe Clay… they’re home to Andy Bell’s GLOK project, they’ve released stuff by Deadly Avenger, Minotaur Shock, A Lily, Franz Kirmann… and it all holds together under the one umbrella. So while the gamut they run is broad, you are pretty safe in the knowledge that if you like one of their releases you’re probably going to like them all. It’s no mean trick.

Which brings us to their latest find. Silver Y is Sicilian multi-instrumentalist/producer Laura Caviglia and Bytes are set release her debut album, ‘In the Depths’, next month. More about the album as a whole nearer to release, but the first fruit from that debut is very good indeed. ‘Rest Home’ has an almost Jon Hopkins/Floating Points feel to it. You know, it sits at the classy end of dance music. It sweeps and swoops for a while, gently, until a thud and hand clap emerge from nowhere and the whole thing swirls deliciously. In the accompanying notes, it say during the composition process Laura was listening to a lot of ambient adjacent work, like Grouper, Biosphere and Bowery Electric, which isn’t a name you see as often as you should. She also mentions Rival Consoles, which is always a namecheck that catches my attention. There’s some very good musical taste in evidence and it shows in the end product. The album is going to be worth the wait.

‘In The Depths’ is released by Bytes on 25 April

silverymoth.bandcamp.com / bytes23.bandcamp.com

Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com

Words: Neil Mason

GOOD STUFF #1
POLYPORES ‘I Wish There Was A Place Like That’ (quiet details)
The one we’ve all been waiting for, right? Apart from maybe Eno, which I’m sure quiet details are probably working on or, at the least, have thought about. That would be something wouldn’t it? The incredible thing about this label is that it seems no matter how many releases they tuck under their belt, they’re always able to pull something incredible out of the bag. Sorry about the mixing of metaphors there, but you know what I mean. Not that anything qd do is fluff or filler, it’s all killer gear, but the very nature of a project like this, where there’s a new release every single month, means a lot of labels would front-load a project like this, get the big-gun releases out early doors and then have a so-so long tail. You’d see it a lot in the 90s with the tidal wave of mixtape type albums – you know the sort of thing I’m talking about don’t you?

None of that is the case with qd, it’s the Goldilocks of record labels, everything they do is just right. I love how, in the third year of the project, they’ll just casually release a showstopper like this. They do it all the time. They had a run of consecutive releases last year that went Loula Yorke, Plant43, James Bernard, Veryan and James Murray. Nice work, really nice work.

So to Polypores. Stephen James Buckley is an artist I’ve written about a lot, and with good reason. He’s worth writing a lot about. He’s on the cover of the current issue of Moonbuilding, I might have mentioned it, and the interview we did is one of the favourite pieces I’ve written in a long time. More about that in a minute. First let’s tackle this latest release. So this is qd31, 31 releases, and they’re able to go, look, it’s Polypores. What a label.

The tracks on ‘I Wish There Was A Place Like That’ are drawn from extended improvisation sessions. “I took the best sections of these,” writes Stephen in the release notes, “and used them as the basis for the tracks, adding a few extra parts to develop them and add to the texture.”

Which is what he did, what he’s turned in is as extraordinary as ever, it’s as if the man channels electricity like some magic trick. The opening ‘Open World’ sounds like he’s gone all ‘Close Encounters’, calling to our visitors from Preston. There’s a lot of loops and repetition here, which is mesmeric. “I experienced audio hallucinations during a lot of these recordings,” offers Stephen, “voices emerging from the music. Hopefully the listener will experience some of this too.”

The chaos that the epic 14-minute ‘Zones Unknown’ descends into is quite something. It builds and builds, the bright warm patterns turning over and over until they disintegrate, or more evaporate into a cacophony. And then you go from that squall into the sublime ‘Look At Orchid Swimming With Wasps’, I love the tinkly motif that blossoms towards the end, wish that went on longer. The title is such a classic Stephen title too.

I might have mentioned he is on the cover of the current issue of Moonbuilding. Have I mentioned it? Incredibly, the issue isn’t sold out… the interview with Stephen is a total joy. I love how his head works, we talked about track titles and where they come from. “So I have a big list on my phone called ‘Polypores track titles’,” he told me. “The list is absolutely massive. It goes on for ages. So phrases I've got written down here are... there was only the sky and the crack in that sky... headlessness... more stars behind the stars... bag of bugs... inter-dimensional hopscotch... doom scrolling... wildlife... snow globe... bluebird of happiness... a meme being born... soft rock… there's loads, some that I'll never ever use, but it kind of puts me in that place.”

And then with his music he puts us in that place. Of ‘I Wish There Was A Place Like That’, qd’s Alex Gold notes that “this is some of the finest synthesiser music we can have the pleasure of experiencing – kaleidoscopic, consciousness-expanding and life-affirming”. He’s not wrong. It is incredible stuff, Stephen is an utterly unique talent. I could listen to him forever.

quietdetails.bandcamp.com

GOOD STUFF #2
KATE CARR ‘Rubber Band Music’ (Flaming Pines)
Kate Carr’s Flaming Pines label has had a busy start to 2025. Just counting up the releases and there’s seven either out or lined up. I’ll just rattle through them quickly, which will also catch you right up. When Kate is releasing stuff it is always worth listening. So first fruit of the year, coming at the end of Jan, was ‘Organelles’, a collaboration with Matt Atkins that tackles what a cell (organelles are a sub-unit within a cell that perform a specific function) might sound like. “A miniature world of speculative microsound,” they say. Next came [something’s happening]’s ‘Buzz’. The notes say what sounds like field recordings and spoken word with one-word titles like ‘Hold’, ‘Flinch’, ‘Circle’ capture “the unpredictability and wonder of the everyday” which is “both raw material and point of departure for [something's happening]”. A proper curio that I’ve been revisiting for a little while in the hope of working out what it is!

Upcoming is dogs versus shadows ‘Ghost Artery’, Tam Lin’s ‘bluelight, no voice’, Luca Masciuti’s ‘Bayt Yakan’ and Andrey Kiritchenko’s ‘Ultra Marshes’, more about all of those nearer to their release dates, but the main attraction today is Kate Carr’s ‘Rubber Band Music’, which is what it says it is. “Experiments with building and playing rubber-band noise boxes.” This massively appeals to me. It seems that for the past year, Kate has been making, playing and experimenting with “noise boxes utilising rubber bands and springs”.

I don’t know why it reminds me of this, but as part of my Fine Art degree I spent a fair amount of time making small sculptures out of paperclips. They were mostly spindly looking figures twisted out of wire and just left lying around. I never talked about them, never showed anyone else, never documented them. I really wasn’t suited to art school, a place where showing off was maximal. Essential even. No wonder I came out of it wondering what that was all about.

The sleeve of this release (see above) is one of Kate’s noise boxes. It looks so great. You just want to play with that don’t you? Well, there’s a limited edition of the album comes with a fully functioning noise box… sign me up! Kate says they’re individually made, each one is different and the box comes fitted with a contact mic and mono 1/4-inch socket for amplification. Amazing. And of course, they are completely sold out. Rightly so.

So anyway, this release collects together some of her recording experiments using these fabulous-sounding inventions. And no, it’s not some crazy lady twanging away at elastic bands and pinging springs, although that would be quite good, especially if she sang too. Nope, this is all rather lovely. Tracks have titles like ‘little slingshot’ and ‘spring back and creak’ all named after the noises they made. In ‘small and strained to breaking’ you can hear that a rubber band or metallic spring is involved, but mostly it’s gentle washes and burbles of sound rippling away. I especially like ‘these desk-bound daydreams’, it makes me think of the little things we create, that we make, like my sculptures, like Kate’s boxes, and the simple pleasures they provide. The closest you come to hearing a box au natural is right at the end of closer ‘let’s snap and break’, where there is some rather tuneful twanging. Great stuff, but when isn’t it from Kate Carr and her rather wonderful Flaming Pines label.

flamingpines.bandcamp.com

GOOD STUFF #3
CONFLUX COLDWELL ‘The Sunshine Miners’ (Woodford Halse)
Michael C Coldwell is someone I’ve written about previously, but who dropped off my radar. Not his fault, mine. It happens, people become more or less visible for various reasons. Michael is a Leeds-based musician and artist who is part of the Crooked Acres label (“Arcane arts and electronic experiments”) and the Urban Exploration collective. All of which I’d recommend you investigate fully. I’ve written about both the label and interviewed Michael for Electronic Sound. And it’s your lucky day because neither of those pieces are behind their sodding paywall. Think of it as an unexpected freebie. The Crooked Acres Label Profile is here, am I’m pretty sure the Brief Encounters piece, which is here, was about the ‘AM’ album in 2017.

It says on Michael’s Bandcamp page he works at Leeds University where he “conducts research into the hauntology of media”, which I didn’t know and would like to find out more about. I’ve got a cracking book along those lines that I’ll be writing about quite soon (time! I need more time to do all this!).

Michael’s work always tended to point me in the direction of a new discovery or two and I’ve been looking at his Bandcamp page this week to see when I lost contact. There was a cool album in 2023 on Subexotic called ‘Memorex Mori’, which repurposed an old box of knackered VHS tapes featuring some of his very early work that I knew about. Before that there was ‘The Phantomatic Coast’ also on Subexotic and there were occasional forays, I can see why the drift. He properly popped back up for me towards the end of last year, appearing on the soundtrack for ‘The Jettison’, “a weird retrofuturistic horror film about AI, made with AI”. He appears alongside labelmates, Urban Exploration and Megalithic Transport Network. The film is weird, goes without saying really where AI is involved. It does throw up some staggering dystopian imagery though and is an homage to Chris Marker’s time-travelling art film, ‘La Jetee’, which isn’t a film I know but will be looking up. See, he’s at it again, sending me off down wormholes.

Here he arrives on Woodford Halse with ‘The Sunshine Miners’, an exploration of the disappearance of industrial landscapes near his hometown of Leeds. “Many country parks and wildlife reserves in this part of Yorkshire have a hidden history as quarries and open-cast mines,” explains Michael. “This was the domain of the ‘sunshine miners’, who worked the coal seams above ground, an oft-neglected part of Britain’s industrial story.” Musically, ‘The Sunshine Miners’ is almost the sequel to the aforementioned ‘The Phantomatic Coast’. That record dealt with the North Sea reclaiming England’s East Coast and is also a soundtrack to a film Michael made called ‘View Form A Sunken Island’ where “a haunted sense of place was also evoked using field recordings, tape loops and samples from salvaged equipment and old media – another kind of mining, in a way, searching for sunshine in the dark.”

‘The Sunshine Miners’ embraces that Coldwell mix of field recordings, dark ambient composition and compelling narrative. There is a warmth and a musicality to his work though, you can hear that in the melody that emerges through the clank and clangs of ‘Bower’s Bimble’ or that tunes in and out during the epic opener ‘The Linesway’. He is a skilled composer is Mr Coldwell. And, well, you always learn something from his work. I didn’t realise this, but the last coal-fired power station in the UK at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, shut its doors for the final time last September. Sat close to the M1, I’ve driven past that place loads of times. It’s an awesome size, dominant on the skyline. Quite what the whole Trump/Ukraine/Russia thing will do for our ambitions to power ourselves here in the UK without coal remains to be seen. This chapter might not be quite closed yet.

It’s all such interesting, thoughtful stuff. So pleased that Michael C Coldwell is back on my radar and pinging away nicely.

woodfordhalse.bandcamp.com

GOOD STUFF #4 / #5
THE MUSIC LIBERATION FRONT SWEDEN ‘Watson Is In Heaven Now’ (Astra Solaria)
ONEPOINTTWO ‘Rec.Collapse’ (Astra Solaria)
A double bill to kill for, except there’s no killing required as you can just buy them off the lovely Bernard Grancher and France’s premier DIY electronic music label. Amazing. First up, comes The Music Liberation Front Sweden, who look unstoppable this year. How many releases have they seen so far in 2025? I should know this sort of thing, right? There was one on Luddite Tapes, but that might’ve been last year, two on Static Disc ‘Le Beat Route’ and ‘Turn Of The Century’. There’s also, on the same label, ‘Electronic Watusi Boogaloo Mixtape’, which is a mix of stuff from Michael’s late 90s/early 00s label. Well worth a listen is that. And now we have one on Astra Solaria, with more to come. A quick recap? No problem. The Music Liberation Front Sweden started out in the 90s as a collaboration of various artists on Michael Evill’s label (see above mixtape). He really has started this year with a bang. And after doing this shizzle for over 30 years to still have that sparkle is no mean feat. Nor is turning in this much quality in such a short period of time. Watson was Michael’s family pet. They had him from a puppy and he sadly died recently, heading for the great backyard in the sky, hence the title. He can be heard through out these recordings. “If you listen carefully,” says Michael, “you’ll hear him sniffing microphones, squeaking toys and barking in the garden”. But he’s not alone, there’s sound sources here going back 30 years from Athens, Berlin, Malmo and Portsmouth, all the glamorous locations. “I’ve placed memories of friends and times not forgotten into the music,” adds Michael. It is, as I’ve said, quality gear. I always look forward to Michael’s lengthier wigouts. Here there’s two – ‘David & Trish Luddite’ that romps home at 11.34 (minutes and seconds rather than PM) and ‘Silver Diamond Dog’ that tips the clock at just over 11 minutes. The former is quite a thing, a kind of tense experimental wall of sound art piece that slowly opens up into a tune, while the latter is a looping repetitive melodic swirl of a track that dissolves into a mournful shudder of strings, a heartfelt tribute to their old pal. He does tunes does Michael, ‘Stars With Scars’ is a skronky groove machine bleeper. Love it.

The second Astra Solaria release is from Onepointtwo, who you will know by now is Thessaloniki-based Konstantinos Giazlas. I’m a big fan of his work, especially liked his Woodford Halse-released album ‘Θέρος’, Music For Spaces’ on Subexotic and the self-released ‘Frequencies’. He adheres to no one style, you think you’re getting ambient and a thud-thud-thud beat kicks in. He talks about his work as trying to create “a musical journey into space, time, memories and frequencies”. He says influences range from 1950s experiential sound, krautrock, lush shoegaze melodies and modern electronica. Well, he is the very definition of modern electronica. Here he gets stuck in straight away. It’s a pretty noisy release for him. “rec.collapse came together in a way that felt necessary at the time,” he explains. “Maybe that’s where the darker tone comes from. It wasn’t so much a conscious departure as a reflection of things breaking down, reforming, evolving and cycles.” The opening track here, ‘Bug-frag’ is a squally, buzzy clanker, ‘Minusloop’ gets further out on the noise, a proper bassy siren of a loop going off while underneath sweet melodies begin to emerge. There’s a kind of weird ‘Being Boiled’/‘Fade To Gray’ feel to ‘oscill8’, that bass synth tawng is really infectious, you want it to tip into a tune, but it never does, it just hangs there tantilisingly. I’m not surprised Bernard has picked up on this for his label, it is very much cast from his mould of electronics. It is a different side to Onepointtwo, but that’s why his work intrigues. Nice job.

THE HANDY ROUND UP

Double bills seem to be a thing of late. As if releasing one album in a week isn’t enough. Not quiet a double bill as they are released on different days, one last week, one this, and on different labels, one on Past Inside The Present and one on sub-label zakè Drone, but it’s all close enough for tennis. Zakè & Almøst Silent (PITP’s Zach Frisell and from French France, Guy Teixeira) collaborate for the first time on 'Wind Rust' (zakè Drone). This is fascinating stuff. Guy used a Lyra-8 “that mimics natural and generative processes, making each creation a kind of ‘living organism’ through interaction with its user. From there zakè took the stems and build the tracks through random selection. It’s powerful stuff, opening track ‘Thence’ is a tense 17-minute intro to their process where “bows pull on strings in tactile, sustained tones, while rustling hisses and reverberant field recordings roll across the stereo field.” zakè says the sessions developed in his studio while outside relentless American mid-western winds lasts for days. “From my studio,” he says, “I could hear the howling outside, and it became an integral part of the final atmosphere.” It really did. You can feel the power of nature in these tracks.

New York-based dronemeisters Black Swan unveil ‘From the End of Time’ (PITP), which also has weather at its core. “An eerily desolate wind forms the base layer for swells of disembodied choirs, haunting piano, mangled tapes, and scores of other unplaceable, vividly textured sounds”. It is just as magnificent as that sounds. The powerful, choral-led ‘Overture’ really sets out the stall for this hour-long, captivating journey into sound. Despite not writing many words about it, this is perhaps the release I’ve listened to most this week. It is such a gorgeous sounding release, it just sounds so rich and so powerful like it will just blow you away if you don’t hang on to it. A hard recommend.
zakedrone.bandcamp.com / pitp.bandcamp.com

Oh, and talking of PITP, Marine Eyes has a new monthly mix available. I’ve not mentioned her excellent monthly mixes for a little while. I’m sorry Cynthia. This one, March 2025, arrived last weekend on International Women’s Day and marked four years of her now monthly series. The full, continuous mix is available for subscribers only via the Untitled app… I’m not quite sure what that is, I’ll either figure it out or someone will explain. Look, it’s getting late here, I need to sleep… You should sign up for Marine Eyes’ Cloud Collecting Substack so that when I forget to tell you how great she is, she can do it herself.
cloudcollecting.substack.com

Another double bill comes from the Montreal-based Constellation label, who are home to the wonderful Godspeed You! Black Emperor, which is a good enough excuse as any to thoroughly investigate their back catalogue if you ask me. Start with Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra, who feature assorted Godspeed types, including co-founder Efrim Manuel Menuck who I’m a big fan of. Do check out his ‘Pissing Stars’ solo album, it’s great. ANYWAY. The two latest offerings from the label… first up is Joni Void’s ‘Every Life Is A Light’. But it’s not Joni as in Mitchell, it’s like Johnny and is the alter ego of French-British producer Jean Néant. This is such a warm record, full of the producer’s trademark samples and guests from around the world, although the vibe is Japanese. His work is a melting pot of, well, what doesn't go in? It says in his bio it includes “elements of electronic and sample-based beats, rap and hip-hop, psychedelia, musique concrete, plunderphonics, ambient, drone, glitch, minimalism and electro-acoustic/improvised music”. All bases covered there. Start with a track like ‘Du Parc’, which is wonky kind of concrete with a trip-hop feel and dubby stylings. Canadian producer/visual artist T. Gowdy’s ‘Trill Scan’ follows his acclaimed 2022 album ‘Miracles’ and is on a similar tip to Black Swan (see above) with his choral/medieval music meets analogue electronics. There’s even a lute on the record. A lute! Turns out he sang choral music professionally in New Jersey, before studying classical guitar in Montreal. Interesting stuff and very contemporary despite my description making it sound otherwise.
jonivoid.bandcamp.com / tgowdy.bandcamp.com

Running out of time, as always, but I really need to mention Veryan’s new release as part of the latest LIFEFILES series from Mat Smith’s Mortality Tables label. ‘The Dark Tower’ is based on recordings made by Mat at St Helen’s Tower, I Undershaft, London, EC3A 8EE on 19 April 2024. Mat is nothing if not precise. It was a construction site and in this 17+ minute piece Veryan uses sounds that match those of the building work. “So,” she says, “the drums are created from me striking a ladder and then I used that to build up the main drum part.” Her lovely piano sits at the centre of this piece and she lets everything else just swirl around it, slowly disintegrating as the track plays out.
mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

Finally, a quick mention for the utterly brilliant Jo Johnson who has a storming mix out this week for the Monument podcast and their Waves series. She can just do no wrong at the moment and long may that continue. The mix starts with Éliane Radigue, moves through Pauline Oliveros and takes in Jo’s partner in crime Bea Brennan along the way, KMRU features, Fields We Found, Humble Bee, Luke Sanger… phew eh?
soundcloud.com/monument-podcast

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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.