Issue 67 / 23 May 2025
Your essential DIY electronic music beano – Track Of The Week: Cate Brooks + Good Stuff: Retep Folo & Dorothy Moskowitz, Luke Abbott/Lotte Betts-Dean/Jack Wyllie, Luddite Tapes, Audio Obscura + more
Won’t keep you, it’s a lovely day and we all need to be outside. I seem to have become part of the Indie Mag Fest gang run by the fine people at Tonic mag. They’ve taken it upon themselves to collect together a bunch of lone-wolf publishers and put us in front of interested readers. Last weekend we were at The Royal Society For Arts’ Fellows’ Festival. We had a constant stream of such interesting people stopping by for a chat and to buy a mag. I loved the reaction when I told people what Moonbuilding was all about. It really chimed in a creative environment like The RSA. So hello if you’re joining us for the first time today after discovering us at the weekend. You’re most welcome.
In other news the new print issue of Moonbuilding has come along in leaps and bounds this week. If some midnight oil gets burnt, I *think* it’ll be done [mumble mumble mumble] so it’ll be out in [mumble mumble], which I’d be happy about. It’s looking rather lovely I have to say. Can’t wait for you to see it.
Anyway, Here we go again. Some cracking releases this week. Happy reading.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 67 Playlist: Listen on BNDCMPR
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CATE BROOKS ‘Aspects From The Window’ (Clay Pipe Music)
Moonbuilding seems to be on something of a Cate Brooks kick of late. Her Café Kaput label has been releasing some excellent work, only the other week we led with a brilliant collection of The Advisory Circle lost tracks from 2007-11, ‘Advisory Circle Archival 1’. If you missed it, my review and a little chat with Cate is here.
And here she comes again with a new Cate Francesca Brooks album on her natural home, Clay Pipe. I say natural home, she has two outside her own label, the other being Ghost Box. I mean, you can’t quibble with friends like that. I’ve spoken to Clay Pipe’s Frances Castle for the new issue of Moonbuilding and we talked a little about Cate. “I think I’ve put out more records by Cate than any other artist,” Frances told me. “She is very inspiring, always super creative, never repeats herself and her production is beautiful – just a joy to work with.”
And a joy to listen to. The new album, ‘Lofoten’, which is out on 27 June, is inspired by Norway’s Lofoten Islands, a distinctive archipelago in the Arctic Circle full of dramatic mountains, open seas, secluded coves with fishing villages made up of brightly coloured houses and, of course, there’s the midnight sun.
More about all this when the record, which is gloriously good, gets released, but the interesting thing is Cate has never visited these islands. She was intrigued after listening to a story set there and, after further research, found herself drawn to its stark beauty. “I fell in love with creating an impression of somewhere I would probably never visit, but felt a real affinity with,” she explains.
You’ll get a good idea of what to expect from the album with ‘Aspects From The Window’, but honestly, I’ve had the record for a couple of days now and I can’t stop listening. Cate is absolutely top tier in this world. Do not miss out on this.
‘Lofoten’ is released by Clay Pipe on 27 June, but it is on pre-order NOW. Look at that incredible Frances Castle artwork will you, and there’s an enamel badge if you’re quick. This will almost certainly sell out before it’s released.
For details of how to bag your copy visit claypipemusic.co.uk
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
RETEP FOLO & DOROTHY MOSKOWITZ ‘The Afterlife’ (Buried Treasure)
One of life’s truisms is when Alan Gubby’s Buried Treasure label releases something, you should listen. His label rarely misses a beat. One of the Moonbuilding Albums Of The Year in 2024, Brain Duffy’s ‘Instead Of Faint Spirit’, was a Buried Treasure release. This year we’ve had a collection of long-lost Arcadia Library tuneage, ‘The Tower’, an EP by Matthew Shaw who was sentenced to live and work in Bill Drummond’s Curfew Tower in Northern Ireland as well as a sleaze-fuelled EP from Jake Vegas and pals and now there’s this.
‘The Afterlife’ first appeared as a CD in March 2024 and followed a sold-out seven-inch EP from the previous year. It also came as a bundle with a tea towel, which I’m kicking myself for missing as the artwork comes from the brilliant Moonbuilding mag illustrator Nick Taylor. So that was the CD outing, this is the vinyl release. Yeah, yeah, you’re thinking, here comes the cash-in for an album, heck for music, that’s been kicking around since 2023. You’d be quite wrong. As always with Buried Treasure, it’s the thought that counts. Firstly, this version has an accompanying tote bag. Love a tote bag, secondly, it’s a whole new version of ‘The Afterlife’ featuring three previously unreleased tracks and two alternate mixes across the 11 tracks on the vinyl (a delicious translucent pink if you’re wondering).
Retep Folo is The Owl Report’s Peter Olof Fransson – do you see what he’s done there? Very good – and, fanfare please, The United States Of America’s Dorothy Mskowitz. ‘The Afterlife’ is, as you can imagine, one heck of a record. Dorothy, who is a mere 85 years old, lends vocals, words and “additional music”, which I like the sound of. Music in addition the music already there, nice. In the words of the label, along with guests Emily Brown Soldberg, Svante Sjostedt and Dorothy’s grandson, Hudson “Boom” Persson, the album conjures “avant-garde yet deceptively melodic chorales and dream-like mantras soaked in waves of 1960s psychedelia with fuzz guitars, pastoral acoustics, buzzing synths and hypnotic percussion… an album rich in arcane sound, eerie mysticism and urgent prophecy”. Who needs music journalists when the label writes like that, eh?
They sure talk a good game. You do want to hear what “urgent prophecy” sounds like, right? I love the previously unreleased ‘Chaos Is Come’, which has a kind of bossa nova Suicide feel to it, that has to be Dorothy’s influence, while the instrumental version ‘The Awakening Of Love In The Spring’ (without the original haunting woo-woo vocals) comes on like a time warped theme tune to ‘Tales Of The Unexpected’. The whole record has that drifty, dreamy, haunty, otherworldly vibe. it all feels so mellow you can imagine it soundtracking your earliest of early mornings or latest of late nights. I especially like the shimmering ‘The Black Hill Suite’, a movement in five-parts, from the CD version, but only one part, ‘Falling Skies’, makes it on to vinyl with an alternate mix that inhabits a kind of Portishead-y fever dream world.
The centrepiece, what the whole shebang builds to, is the same whatever version you listen to. The epic title track is a drifty paean – fueled with rich organ chords and chanting, it’s almost liturgic – over which Dorothy weaves her magical narrative of space, of rivers of light and exploding suns. I thought there was some bird song in there, but I’ve got the windows open.
This is the sort of carefully thought out, beautifully executed and musically delicious release we’ve come to expect from Buried Treasure. Can’t recommend this enough. It is truly lovely.
GOOD STUFF #2
LUKE ABBOTT / LOTTE BETTS-DEAN / JACK WYLLIE ‘Endless Joy’ (Salmon Universe)
I am absolutely loving this from Salmon Universe, who have been rather quiet of late. Sounds like they’ve been keeping their powder dry. When I see the name Luke Abbott there’s usually a frisson of excitement for what I am about to receive. Luke hails from Norwich, a city I know well. Went to school there, worked in a record shop there, left and came back and left. And came back and then left again. Norfolk does have a pull. I studied James Joyce’s ‘The Dubliners’ at A Level. The irony of studying a book whose central themes of paralysis, stagnation and a feels of being trapped was not lost on us, aged 18. The story of Eveline, who almost escapes to Argentina with her lover, but ultimately doesn’t, was a warning shot across all our bows.
My connections to the county does mean Norfolk artists get bonus points from me. Nik Void has them, as does Nathan Fake and Beth Orton too. We used to go to the same parties as teens. Back to Luke Abbott then. I tend to think of his Border Community releases first, the utterly fabulous ‘Holkham Drones’ from 2011 or 2014’s ‘Wysing Forest’. I was a big fan of his dancefloor excursions as Earlham Mystics (two EPs in 2017 and that was that), but I think my favourite work of his is the collaborative Szun Waves project. Here he teams up with a bandmate and associates for something rather special. Luke brings the piano and modular synthesis, Jack Wyllie lends “delicate saxophone touches smattered with FX”, while Richard Pike, brother of Szun’s drummer Laurence, co-runs Salmon Universe so he’s on label duty.
The third member of the musical trio is renowned Australian-bred London-based classical vocalist Lotte Betts-Dean who lends “darker, spacious voice and computer manipulations”. She’s a mezzo-soprano, “a leading interpreter of contemporary repertoire, art song and chamber music”. Here she draws on her “amplified voice and electronics” side, which I guess is very much the contemporary repertoire.
The album is inspired by the writings of Julian of Norwich, in particular ‘Revelations of Divine Love’, some of the earliest surviving English language works attributed to a woman, alongside solo prepared piano works, written and performed during a residency at Britten Pears Arts in Snape Maltings, Suffolk. Suffolk is the badlands.
It’s a fascinating collection, hauntingly beautiful and extremely powerful. Lotte’s voice is extraordinary, and here it’s used as an instrument itself, treated in the same ways the sax and piano get mangled, but also delivered like a vocal, upfront. The title track, the penultimate cut of the set, is the focus here. It is glorious, an urgent push and pull, bubbling synths arpeggiating away with Lotte high-noting above them, way above them, it’s the sort of thing that has you holding your breath as it builds and builds to a show-stopping crescendo.
The trio are making their live debut this weekend, the first show you’ll need a time machine for as it was at The Norfolk and Norwich Festival last night. Lotte is making a quartet of appearances as an Artist In Residence and the program talks about her solo Voice Electric show where she sings “groundbreaking 20th Century works by Scelsi, Feldman, and Schwitters, to 21st Century pieces that draw on medieval plainchant, experimental electronica and techno”. Out of my depth with some of those names, but that sounds like a total treat. Shame it was also last night.
A little easier to get to is a show on Sunday, when you’ll find Luke, Lotte and Jack at Servant’s Jazz Quarters in London. Tickets for that one are here. I do hope the album’s title track is their set closer. It’ll bring the place down. Long story, but I’ll be was in London on Thursday and I’ll be in Norfolk on Sunday so I’ll miss both shows, for which I am very sorry.
GOOD STUFF #3
’LUDDITE 6. COLOSSAL LETDOWN’ (Luddite Tapes)
It’s been a little while since we’ve had a release from Luddite Tapes. The first rule of Luddite Tapes, don’t talk about Luddite Tapes. The last release was back in Feb, Leopards Of White, which was Adrian Newton of the Evergreen Music label, whose releases on upcycled cassettes we’ve covered a few times.
Interestingly, he put on an ambient afternoon in Wimborne last weekend, as advertised on Moonbuilding Weekly, and over 70 people turned up. In Wimborne! I’d like to take full credit for that. If you’d like to advertise, drop me a line. “We were certainly treated to a great series of performances,” Adrian told me, “hopefully there will be a compilation album to come as a record of the event.” Will keep an eye out for that. There’s a couple of new releases on the label too that I need to get on the listening pile.
Anyway… back to Luddite Tapes, I’m so easily distracted. ‘Luddite 6. Colossal Letdown’ is a Philip K Dick-inspired drone fest from Charlie Butler, who records as… Colossal Letdown. I do like the Luddite naming convention, but it causes me problems when I’m wondering what the title is and what I should put quote marks around.
You’ll recall the conceit of the label is nothing can be used for recording or the artwork that wasn’t around in 1983. I dropped Charlie a line to ask about his offering.
“I recently stumbled across the Luddite Tapes Bandcamp page and was really inspired by the brief and the music people had made so far within these constraints,” he told me. “I enjoy making music under a lot of limitations as I find it weirdly inspiring.”
He says he’s really pleased with the results of this latest outing, in fact, he thinks it’s one of the best things he’s done. You can be the judge of that, his Bandcamp page has plenty to work your way though. I need to have a listen there too.
“Musically,” he continues, “I took inspiration from Philip K Dick's ‘Now Wait For Last Year’. I felt the weird, disorientating, drug-induced time travel described in the book lent itself well to minimal, noisy synth drones and also tied in with the time-warping Luddite Tapes brief.”
Charlie’s kit list is impressively minimal. A Jen SX1000 bass synth and Boss DD3 delay pedal and a Stylophone.
“Not much of the Stylophone is audible in the final mix to be honest,” says Charlie. “It was all recorded on a Tascam Portastudio cassette four-track, which I also used to create a feedback loop with the DD3 in to make some fun racket.”
The result is some mighty fine jiggery pokery, exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to find on Luddite Tapes. There’s four tracks, around 40 minutes of madness, so fits nicely on a cassette. I think of the four tracks I like the squally ‘Reegs’ best, it sort of throbs like the life support of a distant spaceship and there’s little almost tunes trying to break through but never do. It melts into the closing 20-minute-ish ‘JJ-180’ that slowly morphs into the darkness, sounding even more like the low rumble of a intergalactic carrier trundling through deep space.
It’s only out today, but the first run of 30 cassettes sold out in double quick time so the label saw fit to go to a second edition, which consisted of two tapes. “One copy has gone to a friend” they say, the other one was snapped up chop-chop. I love that this still happens. In the early days of all this you’d be chasing sold out releases all the time. Be lovely to get back to all that.
GOOD STUFF #4
AUDIO OBSCURA ‘As Long As Gravity Persists On Holding Me To This Earth’
After over a year’s silence, Norfolk-based (scores extra points, ker-ching) Neil Stringfellow dusts down Audio Obscura for a fresh cassette release via his own Bandcamp page.
So why the long wait? Neil tells me that while last year was full of live shows it was a frustrating time as it masked what he describes as “a long creative block”, hence nothing being released since the brilliant ‘Acid Field Recordings In Dub’ on Subexotic in April 2024. It was a record that appealed as much for the title as the woo-woo music within.
Neil says that he was helped out of his creative fug after a period of self-reflection that led to a new project for Mortality Tables, which should be with us in September. Mat at MT has already enthused to me about the release, looking forward to hearing it. Neil says the project “helped drag me out of the creative void and I came to music fresh and new.” So in late 2024, a new rush of ideas and creativity flowed and the result is ‘As Long As Gravity Persists On Holding Me To This Earth’.
It opens with a track called ‘Pyramid Song’, which is bold. I keep thinking I’ve been hearing bird song in tracks all day and it turns out I had the windows open. This one happens to have a lot of birdsong, among other field recordings, so I’m not going entirely mad. There’s a couple of dogs just gone off, 101 Dalmatians style, just checked, they are outside and not on the record. The track does have that feel of the Radiohead song, the tentative piano, the tension and release, the choral voices, an almost melody trying to leak out. Rather winningly, he revisits the track later on for a reprise in ‘Pyramid Variation’.
It’s a solid start but the title track that follows, second track in, is proper stop you in your tracks. A drone that breath in and out, rising and falling, an emotional violin, more choral vocals soaring.
I love the pacing too. It’s all very mellow and then it seems to go off like a rocket 15 minutes in, half way through ‘The Weight Of The World’, with warm, louche beats, jazzy squalls and a really lovely sub-bass. Lots going on here, like a dream world Mardi Gras has just passed through your head. After that it all settles down again, shimmering this way and that, blipping and beeping here and there, until ‘Held On Air’ opens up to a distant, insistent, pounding beat that comes from waaaaaaay over there and never actually arrives. Fading, fading.
If this is what Neil broke his creative with, it bodes well, very well in fact, for what’s coming down the pipes from him. Audio Obscura are one of our real treasures. Next stop, September.
‘As Long As Gravity Persists On Holding Me To This Earth’ is released tonight, 23 May, at 7pm on the Audio Obscura Bandcamp page audioobscura.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #5
ANCIENT PSYCHIC TRIPLE HYPER OCTOPUS ‘Put Emojis On My Grave’ (Not Applicable)
You know me by now, I’m hardly going to ignore a release by an artist calling themselves Ancient Psychic Triple Hyper Octopus now am I? Better still, their debut album, ‘Put Emojis On My Grave’, is being released by Not Applicable, which is a sure sign this is going to be one heck of a ride and then some. And yes, it “boldly explores AI and improvisation on an album of freely improvised, experimental electroacoustic music”. I’m please to say the thinking behind this is as out there as the execution.
A little digging and, well, well, it’s the work of the brilliant Isambard Khroustaliov, aka Sam Britton, on electronics, Alex Bonney on trumpet, bass recorder and Strohviol (looking that up now…) and Will Glaser on drums and percussion. “This is a music which eschews traditional musical composition,” say the notes. No shit. “It seeks instead, adopting the language of AI’s deep learning failures and glitches, to imagine how AI could make a positive contribution to the creative process.”
These guys know their stuff. Sam has been messing with machine learning and generative composition for years, but this, THIS, is off the chart. It’s funny in places, incredibly funny. You can somehow imagine a track like ‘Drinking Songs Of The Quaidacabondish’ (you tell me those titles are AI generated too!) being played by the Teletubbies, each one not listening to other and doing their own thing. You do need to be a very decent musician to play like this. You can hear in the guts of a track like that the interactions, the playing off each other and the jazz sensibilities.
What does it sound like? I mean, have a listen, but you know how AI images look a bit off? It sounds like they look. How can you resist a track called ‘1,000,000 Bongos’. It’s a jazz squall to start with, Alex’s trumpet firing off all over the place, he almost seems to play ‘The Last Stand’ at one point and seems to catch himself. While underneath, well who knows? Being a drummer and playing like this must be a challenge. I think Pierre Henry would recognise this as musique concrète. The notes point you in the direction of the melodicism of Don Cherry, which you can hear, there’s Ornette Coleman in there too for sure.
I think you kind of want to know if there is any AI at all in this or if they’re playing as if they are AI. And if they’re doing the later, how do they know? Which harks back to what I was saying earlier about Sam being fascinated with this stuff for years. This is the logical conclusion. It is equal parts rather beautiful – there’s a passage early on in the closer ‘Blue @-@ Tailed Jackrabbits’ that is gorgeous, warm symbols splashes, trumpet, shimmery electronics – and a little scary. “A beautiful album and a cry of hope” say the notes. Or a cry of help when the Teletubbies get stuck in. I love shit like this.
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THE HANDY ROUND UP
It’s always a good day when there’s a new Stereolab album. ‘Instant Holograms On Metal Film’ (Duophonic UHF Disks / Warp) was never going to be a surprise once the band revealed they were playing a couple of live shows at the end of the year. That’s turned into pretty much touring the world for the rest of the year. I’ve had the album on a few times this week and it’s been filling the Moonbuilding HQ with those familiar and very welcome Stereolab tones. Favourite track at the moment is the lovely ‘Melodie Is A Wound’ or the rattlingly good ‘Electrified Teenybop!’ instrumental, which is a proper swirl of synths.
It’s been a week for stuff being sold out on pre-order. It’s difficult to know what I do with pre-orders. I do tend to know what’s going up when, but you won’t be able to hear most of it until it’s released, which sort of defeats the idea of rounding up the best stuff out this week, you know, that you can buy and listen to right now. Maybe I just need to round them up somewhere. Thing is, the hot ticket items tend to sell out in a flash so all I’d be doing is sending you places to look at something that’s already sold out. For example, The Utopia Strong released ‘Collapse’, the third in their self-released Alphabet Of The Magi series this week. We’ve not seen one of these two-track vinyl outings since Feb 21. They come as a limited edition of 250, hand-numbered with screen-printed artwork and stamped UT logo. Highly sought after loveliness in other words. They released it on 21 May, which was Wednesday, gone by Thursday. No point me telling you about it here because you ain’t getting one. You can Listen to the two tracks, ‘Love’ and ‘Lucifer’ though. Very good they are too.
Here’s some broadening of our horizons. Moonbuilding really is getting to places other newsletters can’t reach! The Moscow-based Tape To Tape label pointed me in the direction of their new release ‘Eš’ by Moscow-based sound artist Atoraye. It’s the work of “half-Assyrian, half-Pontic Greek and diasporic nomad Geo Kotanov”. Lots of complex heritage ties there. I’ll leave you a Google to sort those out. The music explores a trip to Istanbul on one side of this cassette release, while over on the other side Geo explores his grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s. It’s compelling work, the four tracks on the a-side are middle-eastern flecked and rather sombrely funky on ‘llatu’, while the flip’s exploration of memory loss finding the track decaying and breakdown as it progress. Well worth investigation.
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.
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Really enjoying this playlist, Neil. The last two tracks especially. Cheers. Tom