Issue 66 / 16 May 2025
Your essential DIY electronic music beano – Track Of The Week: Polypores + Good Stuff: Bill Nelson, Pye Corner Audio, Ian Boddy & Erik Wøllo, Jonathan Sharp, The Music Liberation Front Sweden + more
Don’t know about you, but the flurry of recent Cabaret Voltaire activity is beyond exciting. This week marks the 50th anniversary of their first-ever live show, which took place on 13 May 1975 in the Students’ Union Refectory at Sheffield University. Jon Downing at the ace Doitthissen label kindly filled me in on celebratory events to mark the occasion at the uni. Running until 18 May, there’s a fan-led exhibition of memorabilia, screenings of the Peter Care’s film ‘Johnny Yesno’ and tonight there’s a live show featuring acts that channel the spirit of The Cabs, so that’s Russell Haswell, Prangers and making their live debut, Synth Club, a Steel City supergroup… oh, and Cabaret Voltaire founding members Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson will be in conversation with journalist Daniel Dylan Wray. I know, right. Info here.
As if that wasn’t enough, this week Mal and Chris announced they’ll be marking 50 years of the band with a live show at Forge Warehouse on 25 October as part of the city’s Sensoria Festival. It is, of course, already sold out. If that doesn’t get you worked up, what will? I’ve been on a Sheffield frenzy of late I know. Maybe I won’t mention it in next week’s mailout. Then again…
Happy reading.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 66 Playlist: Listen on BNDCMPR
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POLYPORES ‘Whorl’ (Cracked Ankles)
video: Yin Wrong
Polypores has been going about things a little differently of late, which is great to see. He’s been releasing on labels he’s not released on before (see last November’s ‘Unlimited Lives’ on the Texas-based Aural Canyon) and he seems to be embracing new experiences, be it beats in his live shows, or indeed, searching out entirely new audiences to perform for as was the case the other week at the Cracked Ankles Records weekender in Preston. The label operates at the heavier end of things, you know, guitars and all that, so it’s a bold move on both parts to hook up.
Seems to have paid off though. “An incredible event, sold out and tons of fun,” said Stephen. “I was new to pretty much everyone there so hopefully I blew a few minds, or at least raised a few eyebrows.” I’m sure he did. He’s in Manchester tonight, at The Carlton Club as part of the Noodlr x Hymns For Robots event of which he says “I’ll be playing stuff you've not heard before… dancing is good exercise so bring your favourite shoes”. Tickets are here.
This seems, to me at least, to be an all-new Stephen Buckley. You’d do well to catch him while he’s in this sort of exuberant mood. But I digress, as always. Back to those Polypores new experiences. ‘Whorl’, which came out last week, is his first-ever single. Ten years in and he starts releasing singles. It’s a fabulous track, it’s kind of his pop moment, relatively speaking. The track is under five minutes, melodically driven, beat enhanced, beautifully upbeat, pure Polypores.
It comes with a wonderfully quirky video by Hong Kong-born, North West England-based animator, illustrator and printmaker Yin Wrong. More about her here. The download version features the two-tracks from the lathe cut (‘Whorl’ / ‘Whorl The Loop Meets Itself’ and four really great versions taken, as Stephen puts it, “from different sonic viewpoints”. So ‘Whorl Collapsing’ is all wobbly and slo-mo, ‘Whorl Frantic Phase’ is just that. And yes, while that lead track is 4.51, if you play the lot back-to-back it is neigh on 30 minutes of music. And what music.
‘Whorl’ also happens to be the lead single from a forthcoming album, ‘Cosmically A Shambles’, which will be released on Cracked Ankles on 13 June. I like what’s going on here. A lot. Wait until you hear that album.
polypores.bandcamp.com / crackedankles.bandcamp.com
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
BILL NELSON ‘Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam – Deluxe Boxset’ (Cherry Red)
Finally. I’ve known this has been coming for a long time and at last it’s here. Has it been worth the wait? You bet. ‘Quit Dreaming’ is one of my favourite albums of all-time so a boxset edition was never going to disappoint. The funny thing is I often meet people who look at me blankly when I talk about Bill Nelson. If he is a best-kept secret, you are in for the treat of your musical life.
‘Quit Dreaming’ is a record that, along with ‘Dare’, is almost entirely responsible for my love of electronic music. But it’s not just me. It’s a stone-cold classic and I’d suggest it was hugely influential on a generation of music makers. What’s more, the original version, vinyl and cassette, came with an entire bonus disc, ‘Sounding The Ritual Echo (Atmospheres For Dreaming)’, which was my entry point to ambient music. I was too young for Eno’s ‘Music For Films’ in 1976 and ‘Music For Airports’ in 1979. Bill was my Eno. And it wasn’t even his best ambient album.
So, you’re wondering, what’s the occasion for this three-CD/Blu-Ray deluxe boxset? I wondered that too. When you consider the original was released in 1981, this set is either a year early for its 45th anniversary or four years late for its 40th. I interviewed Bill earlier this year when the set was originally due for release and marking an anniversary hadn’t occurred to him. Best not let it bother us either, eh?
‘Quit Dreaming’ was recorded in 1979 and was intended to be the second Red Noise album, but the leap from Be Bop Deluxe proved a bridge too far for both Bill’s US and UK label so the follow-up was shelved. The recording process was quite unusual. Not only is the record chock-a-block with electronics, which for 1979 was pretty trailblazing, but it was recorded by just Bill and producer John Leckie in a village hall… outside of which they had parked the famous Rolling Stones’ mobile studio.
“I was living in West Haddlesey, near Selby, at the time,” Bill told me. “I had worked with the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio when recording Be Bop Deluxe’s ‘Drastic Plastic’ album in the South of France. I liked the idea of recording in places that were not ‘proper’ studios. The village hall was just a few hundred yards from my home so it meant I could walk home after a day’s recording and walk back the following morning.”
There’s some incredible photos of the village hall in the booklet. The place is packed with kit. There’s a great story that they had to halt the sessions once a week for the regular ladies keep fit class. I’ve often wondered if that was true and if so did they have to tidy up beforehand?
“Yes, that’s true,” Bill confirmed. “We just moved things out of the way or put some of them in the truck.”
So what do you get here? Well, along with the original album, freshly remastered for the occasion, there is an additional 53 bonus tracks that include new 5.1 surround sound and stereo mixes of the whole album (taken from the original multi-track master tapes by uber producer Stephen W Tayler) along with a previously unreleased Piccadilly Radio session from 10 March 1981, a Peel Session from 2 June 1981 and a bunch of single-only tracks from the period. There’s also a fantastic 68-page booklet that you’ll be pouring over for a fair while. I mean, who do you give your money to, right?
Musically it’s quite hard to talk about a record I’ve listened to very regularly since I first bought it in 1981. I think what I liked about Bill is how left field he was without being uppity. ‘Quit Dreaming’ sounded off-kilter, but it was built into killer pop songs. He was the XTC it was ok to like. They were somehow too knowing, too arch. This is what I wanted all my music to sound like. Not actually sound like, but I wanted everything to be imbued with what Bill had, a kind of quirky, left-field infectiousness.
The album produced four singles, the first of which, ‘Do You Dream In Colour?’, I remember hearing on Peel and it stopping me in my tracks. What was this voodoo? That insistent tsk-tsk beat, the plink-plink-plonk melody, that irresistible wobbly vocal, and the title! He is one for a title is Bill. I mean, ‘Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam’ is brilliant isn’t it? It’s an old 1950s American advertising slogan.
There isn’t a dud track on ‘Quit Dreaming’. There’s the other three singles, ‘Youth Of Nation On Fire’, ‘Living In My Limousine’ and the wonderful, ‘Banal’, all corkers, there’s ‘Decline And Fall’ which is one of the greatest new wave songs ever, the singalong ‘UHF’, the sounds-like-an-80s-hit-all-day-long ‘White Sound’ (that breakdown! The sax!). Over on the ‘Singles & Sessions’ set the hits keep on coming. I love ‘Atom Man Loves Radium Girl’ from the ‘Do You Dream In Colour’ EP and the bouncy ‘Banal’ b-side, ‘Mr Magnetism Himself’ with its vocoder backing vocal is such a joy of a song. I could go on. And on. Look, just buy this boxset.
billnelson.bandcamp.com / cherryred.bandcamp.com / cherryred.co.uk
GOOD STUFF #2
PYE CORNER AUDIO ‘Lake Deep Memory’ (quiet details)
I’ve said this before about the quiet details releases and I’m going to say it again. This is qd34, we’re 34 releases deep into the series and Alex has the temerity, the audacity, to casually drop in a release by Pye Corner Audio. It blows my mind how good this series is that you can drop in a big gun like this 30-odd releases down. Arguably, you could say Alex does it all the time, every month, but there are names that stop you in your tracks when they casually get dropped in – zakè, Ian Boddy, Polypores, Loula Yorke.
The label describe ‘Lake Deep Memory’ as Martin Jenkins’ Pye Corner Audio “at its most beguiling and polychromatic”. It’s inspired by a trip to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala where Martin played a festival last year, as you do, I’m always playing festivals in Guatemala.
This isn’t your usual clobber from PCA. His recent work – the Lapsus collection of his ‘Where Things Are Hollow’ series from earlier this year, his excellent Ghost Box outing ‘The Endless Echo’ from late last year, a few very pleasing standalone tracks on his Bandcamp page – have all been beat-driven. Here we go totally, 100 per cent ambient. The tracks are allowed to stretch out too, nothing under six minutes, but mostly around the seven/eight-minute mark.
The lake, explain the label, is “a place that’s spiritually important to the local people, and you can feel how some of this influence made its way into the music… this is a completely immersive and mesmerising journey through metaphysical dreams – a stunning journey from a brilliantly talented and expressive artist.”
Yup. Agree with that. I love the shimmer of ‘Beneath The Noise Floor’ and the way there’s this kind of almost rave like clang in the background. It feels like it could go off at any moment, but of course you know it’s never going to. It is one of those albums that grows the deeper in you go. The first two tracks are barely there, the opening title track starts with a watery field recording and the whole thing just builds from there, slowly, assuredly, Pye Corner Audioly.
The cornerstone is the the wonderful ‘Infinite Symphony’, which again starts off promising maybe something else might happen. Tense strings sweep, an almost melody appears, a pensive single piano note chimes and those sweeping strings build until there’s an almost melody, that could grow into something kind of Vivaldi-like. That piano reappears and you hold your breath as the strings swell into something very beautiful.
This is all excellent stuff, another triumph for quiet details and being able to pull a rabbit out of the hat like this 34 releases into a series is seriously impressive. I am starting to wonder about other big guns who could show up on qd. I’ll start a list.
GOOD STUFF #3
IAN BODDY & ERIC WØLLO ‘Transmissions’ (DiN)
That’s lovely artwork isn’t it? A linocut by Elisabeth Østensvik. Anyway… Norwegian ambient guitarist Erik Wøllo is a name familiar to DiN fans. He’s featured on four collaborative albums with DiN boss Ian Boddy, the last of which was a little while ago, ‘Revolve’ from September 2022 in fact. So it’s a welcome return then for Erik. And on ‘Transmissions’ they’re also popping back to territory previously visited.
In the autumn of 2012, the pair were invited to play at the Electronic Circus Festival V in Guetersloh, Germany, which was recorded and released in 2014 as ‘EC12’ (you see what they did there?). That release featured live takes of tracks from their ‘Frontiers’ album along with 30 minutes of entirely new material. Here, they repeat the trick. In April 2024, which was last year for those like me who are starting to have little concept of time, Erik was invited by Ian to make his live UK debut at Liverpool’s Capstone Theatre and play a show alongside him as part of DiN’s 25th anniversary celebrations. Both Erik and Ian played solo sets and came together at the end for an hour-long live collaboration and it’s this set that forms the basis of ‘Transmissions’.
The live show consisted of new versions of tracks from their previous albums. “Taking the original pieces as their starting point,” say the notes, “the duo played reworked and extended versions of these tracks with Wøllo getting the chance to play some wonderful guitar solos that take the music to a whole new level.”
This is classy DiN stuff, you have to admire Ian in his pursuit of quality collaborations and how he is so open to experimentation. I’ve said this before, but there’s a reason we like synths and it’s the limitless sounds they produce. I’m one of those peasants who thinks guitars, with their six strings, have a pretty limited range. Compared to synths. It’s an old row. Queen disagreed and had a disclaimer on their albums that stated they didn’t use synthesisers and The Human League were the opposite and announced no guitars were used on their albums (there was one on ‘Dare’, played by Jo Callis to trigger a synth sound, but you know).
Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of guitar music and I like a guitar solo as much as the next person, but here, on a track like ‘Colony’, Erik can get a little ‘Hotel California’ if you know what I mean. Nothing wrong with a wig-out, but his work is so much more interesting when the guitar isn’t sounding like a guitar, like on the atmospheric ‘Ice Station’ or the epic ‘Revolve’ where the guitar initially appears to sound like orchestral strings. And having said all that about guitar solos, the closing track, ‘Apogee’, delivers a face-melting solo over some equally heavy groove-driven sequencing from Ian. Has to be said that his modular work throughout is, as always, exemplary.
GOOD STUFF #4
JONATHAN SHARP ‘Neon Night Ride’ (Spun Out Of Control)
Well here’s a shoo-in if ever there was. That artwork says it all really. I’ll get my coat. In the notes, Jonathan, whose work as The Heartwood Institute or his brilliant ‘Divided Time’ LPs under his own name should be familiar to anyone round these parts, he nods at the synth-heavy soundtracks of Nicholas Winding Refn films especially ‘Drive’. He talks about John Carpenter and 80s video classics like ‘The Bronx Warriors’ and ‘Cobra’. “Any why not throw in some stylised automobile carnage too, like ‘Gone In Sixty Seconds’ and ‘The Driver’?” he writes. “With all this swirling around my head I realised what I’d come up with was an 80s synth soundtrack to a glossy LA-set tale of violent gangs and spectacular car chases.” Has he ever. It’s such a ripe Spun Out Of Control release you can’t imagine it coming out on any other label really. And will you look at that fantastic Eric Adrian Lee artwork!
Musically you know what you’re going to get here don’t you? ‘Christina’ is an instant classic, there’s a slow build until a thrumming, thrilling arpeggiation dominates, you can almost hear the growl of an engine as something fast and eight-cylindered rolls into view. There’s a couple of idents that are a delight. ‘Dreams In Chrome’ tip-toes its way through a minute and half, while ‘Neon Highway’ rasps like a dozen lanes of speeding traffic. I love the sinister growl of ‘Don’t Make Any Trouble’, three deep resonant notes over and over as a string swell grows and a melody picks its way carefully through. I really like how minimal it all is, relying on the warmth coming off the synth sounds he’s generating. ‘Sleepless’ is really beautiful, just a low rumble, a piano chord resonating, a single note keeping time and a spooky melody plinking over the top. And best of all, as is the way with this fine label, it comes on cassette in two variants. There’s Ocean Spray Blue and Pink Smog Sunset. Decisions decisions.
GOOD STUFF #5
THE MUSIC LIBERATION FRONT SWEDEN ‘Peter Saville’s Wrapping Paper’ (Submarine Broadcasting Company)
Michael Shambotic is a man on fire. I’m trying to work out how many releases he’s had so far in the 20-25. I think this one makes four. Two on Static Disc, one on Bernard Grancher’s Astra Solaria, that’s nearly one a month right? Just needs another double bill somewhere or other next month and that’ll be six. So what do we have here? The notes are helpful in this regard. “What you have here,” they say, “is avant-garde, anti-pop, with an exquisite balance between a very elegant classical ensemble and a psychedelic composition that even AI couldn’t imagine, but is still full of many ear worms and hooks to stimulate the mind.”
It is, it is. ‘Music For Cello, Metallophone, Timpani And Feedback Part Two’ is rather lovely, a circular swirl that has echoes of Terry Riley… which is then followed by a strummy guitar song about a dog called Bob… which is followed by ‘Shamstar Nico’, a tense, nervous shiver of track, like something out of a film… which is followed by ‘Boat, Bikes And MRIs’, an almost melodic cloud of sound… then there’s a reprise of ‘Music For Cello…”, a part one.
The whole thing does feel like a soundtrack, not to a film, that would be quite a strange film, but as the notes explain, it’s the soundtrack, or at least backing tape, to your daily life. It’s meant to be listened to “with other things happening around you such as microwaves, air fryers, extractor fans, dishwashers, hoovers, BBC News, you and friends talking, birds singing, dogs barking, motorways humming, boats clanging… let it all just meld into the song and make it yours.” Which is rather wonderful isn’t it? I often listen to ambient work with the windows open and let the outside sounds drift in, but this is something different. I like the thinking. You can imagine having it playing low on headphones as you wander round a supermarket or run to catch a train. You own personal soundtrack. He’s good like that is Michael.
submarinebroadcastingco.bandcamp.com
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THE HANDY ROUND UP
‘Spaces 2’ is another masterful compilation overseen by the good folk at Dustopian Frequencies. As you might’ve guessed, it’s a second volume of their ‘Spaces’ series “where artists were invited to depict imagined environments of their choosing in music”. Polish producer/DJ Alegria opens proceedings with ‘World Out There’, his first excursion into ambient music. You can hear what he usually does over on his Bandcamp page, it’s a tune you might recognise. Elsewhere, there’s Manchester’s Moston Priory with the foggy, Morse code-y ‘Welcome To The Priory’, New York noisester Niacinamide has you on the edge of everything with the cracklefest ‘Abandoned In Their Panic’, while tucked away on the end there’s an excellent offering from the brilliant Veryan called ‘Wrong Turn’, which goes to work on a field recording of a road complete with speeding cars. It’s always an interesting label is Dustopian Frequencies.
The ever-modest Waxing Crescent arrives with ‘Periapsis’, a rather fine debut outing from Sunderland-based Ellis Clasper, which is a pretty great name. As we were saying the other week, it takes a brave label to take punts on new artists. It’s such a hit or miss pursuit, you don’t know what is or isn’t going to sell and like we were saying, it’d be nice to be able to do all this and not lose money. I don’t think the label’s Phil Dodds is going to be out of pocket on this. It feels nicely contemporary, bright, quick beats, cute distant vocal, rumbling bass, something you’d find on Planet Mu or hear on the New Music Mix (Tom/Deb, when you play this do say you read about it in the BRILLIANT Moonbuilding Weekly won’t you? You’d hope they read this, missing out if not, eh?). I especially like how tracks like ‘Lighter’ and ‘Now’ melt away, drums stops, track kind of floats for a while. I really like the drum sounds and the programming here, especially the bright as buttons cymbals on ‘Sertraline’ and ‘Nervous’, which feels a bit ‘Kid A’ to me. Good stuff, keep an eye on that name.
The penultimate release from Mortality Tables’ LIFEFILES series, LF29, comes from Xqui who we were only saying nice things about the other week with the the release of their Talk Talk homage. As you will surely know by now, LIFEFILES is a collaborative project, creative exchanges label big chief Mat Smith calls them. They consist of recordings made by Mat and shared with artists who respond however they like turning in a new piece of work for release on the label. It’s been such a cool project, there’s been three seasons and artists have included the likes of Simon Fisher Turner, Veryan, Andrew Spackman, Dave Clarkson, Maps, Elizabeth Joan Kelly, boycalledcrow, Sulk Rooms, Gareth Jones and more. There’s two tracks here, ‘Charing Cross Underground’ and ‘Reverb Underground’, both based on recordings made by Mat at… wait for it… Charing Cross Underground Station on 27 November 2021. These recordings sound very subterranean. Lots of echo, of course.
Been trying to get a mention of Material Object’s ‘MONO’ (Old Technology) in the newsletter for weeks, but I keep running out of time. The bulk of all this tends to get written on a Thursday. Some weeks are better than others. This week it’s not even the cat’s teatime and I’m right down here, which is unusual. Anyway, Slovenia’s Material Object has fans in high places. ‘Colour’ from April 2024 attracted a Bandcamp comment from one Loula Yorke. “Love the untangling angularity, winding and unwinding the tension,” she said. ‘MONO’ is six unique movements of mono synthesis, which I’m not sure I could tell the difference if it was stereo. But no matter because I am really enjoying the 23-minute ‘Science Acid’, which has some nicely acid sounds on board. Old Technology is great label if you’ve time for an explore. It stars people like Anthony Child, The Transcendence Orchestra and Bea Brennen.
Another record I’ve been trying to get in for a while is OUTRENOIR’s ‘Insane Ghosts’ (Hublotone). They’re French duo of Marie-Pierre Rixian and David Fenech, whose name you might recall from the ‘Broken Allures’ album on Cold Spring last year. David teamed up there with Jac Berrocal and Vincent Epplay with guest appearances from Jah Wobble and Cosey Fanni Tutti. So anyway, this is what he gets up to with less people involved. I guess you’d call it dark ambient, it’s very brooding and it helps that the spoken-word vocals from Marie-Pierre are in French. It lends a certain je ne sais quoi. I like their description of what they do. “Industrial downtempo, steady kicks, cold percussion, field recordings, and electric guitar feedback,” the notes say, “punctuated by flashes of warmth inspired by British dub – evoking the spirit of an imaginary collaboration between The Bug and This Heat.” I like that comparison. The whole thing is deliciously wobbly, it kind of flutters, shivers almost, with quality. It’s so listenable, yes it’s dark, but there’s a calm to it, a real peacefulness. I particularly like the funky percussion on ‘In A Vast Ocean’ and the drum machine groove on ‘It Is You’ is especially cool. Really nice work.
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 qd34 Pye Corner Audio 🙏💛