Issue 69 / 6 June 2025
Your essential DIY electronic music beano – Track Of The Week: Telepathic Fish 90s ambient compilation + Good Stuff: Hologram Teen, Lake Ruth, Repetition Repetition, zakè double-bill + more
Here’s the news where I am. Moonbuilding is taking a month off in July, returning to the fray on 1 August. A sitting-around-doing-nothing holiday is booked and I figured I’d go the whole hog have an extended break. Don’t worry, there’s no slacking. Plenty to do. Including whipping up adverts for August.
I want to be able to put DIY artists/labels in front of as many people as possible. By funding the newsletter through ads rather than subscriptions I can do that. The Moonbuilding audience is growing all the time, so if you’d like to see your wares in front of a large, engaged audience who are totally tuned into this world an ad here makes perfect sense. Details of how to advertise are here.
Half-Price Sale: Sign up for a June ad before next Friday and you can have the remaining three weeks of the month for £75. Bargain.
Righto, happy June. Happy reading.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 69 Playlist: Listen on BNDCMPR
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Support Moonbuilding: The fighting fund
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BARBARELLA ‘Barbarella (The Irresistible Force Remix)’
Taken from Various Artists ‘Telepathic Fish: Trawling The Early 90s Ambient Underground’ (Fundamental Frequencies)
Photo: Andy Eccleston
So this is quite a thing. The track above is The Irresistible Force remix of Sven Väth’s 1992 Harthouse-released banger. The Irresistible Force is, of course, Mixmaster Morris who made some of his very finest work under that nom de plume. Anyway, the track is taken from a new compilation that celebrates Telepathic Fish, “the seminal underground South London ambient party”, which was the brainwave of four East Dulwich housemates who gained quite a reputation as the Openmind collective.
The quartet of the late, much-missed Chantal Passamonte, illustrator David Vallade, computer programmer Mario Aguera and friend of Moonbuilding Kevin “DJ Food” Foakes, provided visuals and tunes for some of the earliest chill out events in The Capital. Along with the helping hands of Coldcut’s Mat Black and the aforementioned Mixmaster Morris, their guests would also include the likes of Aphex Twin and visual enlightenment specialists Hex. Openmind even had their own zine, Mind Food, which ran to four issues. A new fifth issue accompanies the limited edition bundle release of the compilation and features material from the first four issues plus “additional unseen ephemera”. I’ve seen a copy and it is brilliant. It has that early naïve thrill of doing your own thing, being a master of your own destiny and spreading the word about your little corner of the world. Doesn’t matter if you don’t have the skills, the learning curve is often steep, but it’s the doing that counts. Wonderful stuff.
Openmind were regular guests on Coldcut’s legendary Solid Steel show on Kiss FM and Kev would go to be part of the DJ Food with Coldcut and Patrick “PC” Carpenter, before taking on the name as just himself. Kev also carries on the Openmind name under which he designs to this day. For more about the Openmind collective, there’s a great piece by Kev here along with a gobsmackingly good mix, one of their Solid Steel appearances from September 1994 with Mario playing the first hour and Kev the second hour.
The album itself is great with tracks from Nightmares On Wax, Global Comm, Caustic Window there’s also The Orb’s 14-minute remix of Keiichi Suzuki’s ‘Satellite Serenade’, the ‘Trans Asian Express Mix’, which I’d not heard before. The set is released on 5 September and comes as a gatefold vinyl double with a 20-page insert or, and this is a killer package, a limited edition bundle, so that’s the double vinyl, gatefold sleeve with insert, plus the 44-page Mindfood 5 fanzine, a 60-minute Float III mixtape and an enamel pin badge. Just take my money will you.
fundamentalfrequencies.bandcamp.com
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
HOLOGRAM TEEN ‘Captain Fluo’ (Hologram Opera)
I don’t know why, but it feels like Morgane Lhote’s Hologram Teen project is only just getting going… it’s actually been up and running since her debut album, ‘Between The Funk And The Fear’ on Poly Youth, back in the more innocent times of 2018. 2018! What’s more, this is her fourth solo record. How can any of that be possible?
Morgane’s sound is very her. Just look at those publicity shots. The huge smile, the pink lips, the day-glo background, the brightly coloured Mondrian-y ear rings, the twinkle in her eye. Her records sound like she looks. This one even looks like she sounds, coming as it does on Bright Yellow vinyl. There has always been a “neon glow” to Hologram Teen, but here it seems to glitter. This feels like her most complete offering to date. The previous outing, 2022’s ‘Day-Glo Chaos’, was close, but ‘Captain Fluo’, which is released on Hologram Opera, a new label she’s set up with LA pals Holy Sun Opera House, is the real deal.
The 11-tracker is a love letter to 1980s Paris. Say no more, right? This “disco-fueled odyssey captures the pulse of a city alive with underground energy, record store discoveries, and the exhilaration of growing up as a gay teenager in a world of music, freedom, and self-discovery”.
Guess what? It sounds just like that too. I interviewed Morgane for this release and we talked about how tracks like ‘Donovan Magic Orchestra’, ‘Pack Ur Patience’ and ‘Why Ya Wanna Wait’ are funky in the way Daft Punk are funky. I wondered if it was a specific French thing. “Absolutely,” she exclaimed. So how does she explain it? “French people never outgrew or got over disco. I can guarantee you that if you go to a house party in France nowadays ‘Boogie Wonderland’ will get played within five minutes. It should be the French national anthem.”
Which explains a lot, but there is so much more that has gone into this record. She told me how she grew up listening to French pop, disco, and new wave on the radio, which was constantly on in her house. There’s a track called ‘Fréquence Gaie’, which is one of the radio stations she used to listen to. “It's still going, surprisingly,” she says. Aged four, her parents also brought her a turntable and the latest hit records on vinyl, which was some forward thinking. “I had the French version of ‘Heart Of Glass’ on seven-inch,” she told me, “and I remember the cover used to scare me because Debbie Harry had too much make-up on!”
Her parents played quite the role in shaping their daughter. The were huge music fans. “My mum passed away two years ago,” says Morgane, “but she was a big music fan, she was the biggest Rolling Stones enthusiast you’ll ever meet. She named my brother Donovan and I also inherited her cat, which she called Bowie!”
So this is formative stuff, especially when Morgane reaches her teens and the bright lights of Paris are calling.
“The whole ‘Captain Fluo’ album is about growing up in Paris and discovering its underground musical scene and independent record stores in the 1980s: ‘Danceteria’, the closing song on the album, is an homage. This is my interpretation of what I listened to as a teenager: a mixture of disco, new wave, and French pop, put through an oddball filter.”
It’s all here, all of it. Even a love song to manga, which again is prevalent among French kids as the TV stations would buy up cheap cartoons and play them all day long. The track ‘Actarus’ is a tribute to the pilot of Goldorak, a UFO robot guardian, who was Morgane’s hero.
And she’s my hero. This life-affirming stuff, you can feel the pleasure in everything she does, but here there is a deeper message. This is about growing up and finding your tribe, it’s about being an outsider in less tolerant times and discovering worlds where you feel at home. And it’s about finding all that through music and it being all the sweeter for it. This is such a brilliant record, as the notes say, it’s “a celebration of nostalgia, nightlife and the boundless joy of disco music”. Absolutely love this.
GOOD STUFF #2
LAKE RUTH ‘Hawking Radiation’ (Dell’Orso (CD) / Feral Child (LP))
A fourth album for Hologram Teen, a third for New York three-piece Lake Ruth and this newsletter is in danger of turning into a Poly Youth love-in. Even though there’s not been a release from Dom Martin’s peerless label since… * hang on, just looking… * Self Modifier’s ‘Lozells Drone Survey’ in the Sound Effect series over a year ago, it’s a label that always looms large. It released Hologram Teen’s debut album as I was saying above, and the 2016 Lake Ruth debut album, which came out so long ago it was on Dom’s pre-Poly Youth outfit, The Great Pop Supplement. Their sophomore outing, ‘Birds Of America’ in 2018, arrived on post-Poly Youth label, Feral Child as does the vinyl version of this, with the CD release being very ably looked after by Guy Sirman’s excellent Dell’Orso label. Righto, love in over, down to business. Oh, hang on, just need to say that Nick Taylor artwork is lush. But when isn’t his work? Never, that’s when.
You will have noted that the trio of vocalist/lyricist Allison Brice, multi-instrumentalist Hewson Chen of The New Lines and Holy Fuck drummer Matt Schulz have taken their sweet time with this follow-up to the rave-reviewed ‘Birds Of America’ and are rolling out the excuses to match. It’s to do with the pandemic, says Allison… which was five years ago… and “two of the members making recent interstate jumps”. By which I think they mean they moved house. Fair enough, but how long does it take to move house?!
Worth the wait? Oh yes. Dom calls it soft psych, so it’ll sit alongside the likes of Stereolab, Broadcast and The Soundcarriers, especially with Allison’s sweet vocal. It feels to me like the sort of thing Jim Jupp at Ghost Box would’ve liked on his label. It has that sort of vibe, that kind of timeless could-have-been-made-in-any-parallel-universe type of feel. The way the backing track of ‘An Offering’ doesn’t seem to quite sit with the vocal really draws you in. As I often say, vocals aren’t really my thing, but this stuff is captivating.
Allison talks about how she wanted a “celestial and cinematic narrative” and she has it here by the barrowload. That artwork is maybe a pointer, but much of the lyrical content is inspired by the stories about Californian UFO religion/cult Heaven’s Gate, where members believed they would be ascending to an alien craft behind the Hale-Bopp Comet during its closest approach to Earth in 1997. Their final act was a coordinated series of ritual suicides that took the lives of 39 members. It’s an incredible tale, the survivors’ stories, as Allison says, are heartbreaking. There’s one couple, Frank Lyford and Erika Ernst, who joined the cult as a young couple, he escaped towards the end, she died in the mass suicide. The lyrics to the rather chirpy ‘From Erika’ are her last words to Frank.
The whole thing, despite the extremely heavy yet fascinating subject matter, is like this. It’s such an upbeat record, full of infectious melody, swirling keys, skittering rhythms and bright guitar. The notes say there are touches more familiar to fans of 60s bossa nova, something like the sleek ‘The Next Level’ does have an easy ‘Girl From Ipanema’ kind of swing and that feel is there for sure. As such, it’s an immediate record, poppy even, the title track does indeed rattle along in fine Stereolabby fashion. There’s nothing here over four minutes and you rip through the 12 tracks in under 40 minutes, which is the perfect length for a album. One side of a C90.
GOOD STUFF #3
REPETITION REPETITION ‘Fit for Consequences: Original Recordings, 1984–1987’ (Freedom To Spend)
I’m a big fan of New York’s RVNG Int label and their Freedom To Spend imprint and I don’t write about them nearly as much as I should. I will endeavor to fix that as they have an almost constant stream of great releases and some proper belters heading our way. LA’s Repetition Repetition, or Rep Rep as the cool kids are calling them, were minimal synthesist Ruben Garcia and guitarist Steve Caton who made “cosmic art rock minimalism/maximalism”, releasing their work on a series of cassettes in such limited numbers that no one really noticed. Well, that’s not true, there was Harold Budd. Ruben would write letters to Budd saying he thought his band would be of interest. Budd eventually agreed to breakfast and they ended up jamming, with several tracks on their self-titled 1985 debut featuring the name of the legendary composer. Amazing really.
So here we have a collection of tracks from their total output pressed onto wax for the very first time. That output was just three cassettes, ‘Repetition Repetition’ (1985), ‘Lakeland’ (1987), and ‘The Machinist’ (1987), released on Ruben’s own Third Stone label. These guys were way ahead of the curve. What’s really incredible is how this record just slots straight into the here and now. This is not music that sounds out of place in 2025. ‘The Machinist’ is a 14-minute mediation, a keyboard line repeating over and over, Steve’s guitar gliding, Hillage-like, over the top, and could have been recorded yesterday for all I know.
It’s really great stuff. ‘Lakeland’ is superb, that reverb-y Budd-y piano is lovely and the gentle swells have a rather Eno feel to them, while the cascading synths of ‘Seven And Seven’ are rather Reilly. Nothing wrong with encountering the ghosts of minimalist legends when it’s done this well. This vinyl release also comes with ‘Over & Over’, a supplementary collection of the band’s material on a limited edition cassette… just looked and, of course, it’s sold out. I’m sorry about that. Like I was saying, there’s been some neglect on my part as far as the RVNG Int stable goes and that stops here. They have some exciting stuff on the way that I will let you know about in a timely manner so you can avoid the dreaded sold out message. I’m quite annoyed I’ve missed out on the ‘Over & Over’ tape myself.
freedomtospend.bandcamp.com / rvng.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #4 / #5
36 & ZAKÈ ‘Stasis Sounds For Long-Distance Space Travel III’ (PITP)
ZAKÈ | SPIETH | GUENTNER ‘Arcadia’ (Affin)
Our great pal Zack Frizzell over at Past Inside The Present HQ in Indianapolis has not one, but two records under his zakè alter ego doing the rounds at the moment and both are corkers. 36 & zakè’s ‘Stasis Sounds For Long-Distance Space Travel III’ on his own PITP label has such brilliant artwork you’re going to want to see if the tuneage is equal to such delights. Those who know the series, made in collaboration with Dennis “36” Huddleston, will already know the answer to that question. ‘Stasis Sounds I’ was released in January 2020, right on the cusp of the pandemic that confined us all to our cabins. The idea of a record that allowed us to escape not only the real world going on around us, but our solar system too very much appealed. While the notes don’t go into detail, they say that first release “inspired countless internal voyages, soundtracked the creation of a best-selling novel, and led to the development of a brand-new piece of music software, among other things”.
It’s an influential piece of music for sure which was met with rave responses from listeners and positive reviews across the board. The follow-up came in 2022 and both, as Zach explains, “reflect on the uncanny feeling and abstraction of being adrift, far from safe harbour” in all senses of those words. This third volume finds the space travel expedition complete it five-year mission as we approach the orbit of a potentially habitable planet. It’s a work in two movements, ‘Final Approach’ and ‘Blue New World’, funnily enough, Moonbuilding was nearly called Other Blue Worlds.
As you’d expect from PITP, it’s lovely stuff. ‘Final Approach 5’ feels Eno-ish, ‘Apollo’-like almost. It’s weightless, floaty, just hanging there like vast spacecraft that have traversed galaxies tend to do, while ‘Blue New World’ feels tense. You find yourself holding your breath as it shimmers to life in the hope this place could be a new home.
Next up is ‘Arcadia’, a debut collaboration with Joachim Spieth and Markus Guentner released on Joachim’s German-based Affin label. I say debut collaboration, Zack does seem to have worked with everyone in ambient world in some capacity or other so it is surprising when he finds people of this quality who he hasn’t yet worked with. This really is quite the meeting of heavyweights. Markus we’ve talked about before, you’ll maybe know him from his various contributions to Kompact’s consistently excellent Pop Ambient series, or for his tech-house cover of Talk Talk’s ‘Such A Shame’. Bold. Move. Apparently Pet Shop Boys and Sven Väth (a second mention in this week’s newsletter for him) are big fans. We’re fans of Joachim’s Affim label and he also came to prominence through contributions to those Pop Ambient collections. He also featured in The Orb’s ‘Back To Mine’ mix, which is how he pinged on most people’s radar for the first time. He also has a really good blog called Focus where he profiles many of the artists who have released on his label in a bid to give electronic artists a voice and a face. Which is exactly what the plan was with Moonbuilding. Great minds.
The record, the record. Yes. The notes say “each artist contributes a defining element to the album’s sonic architecture”. If you’re wondering what each brings to the party, it’s zakè with emotive soundscapes, Spieth on the meticulous minimalism, and Guentner arrives with the vast, atmospheric layers. Since last week and Gordon Chapman-Fox’s ‘Very Quiet Music To Be Played Very Loudly’ on Castles In Space’s new Lunar Module imprint, I’ve been doing just that quite a lot with ambient releases. It works a treat being made to listen to this stuff properly. The impact of ‘Arcadia’ at volume, especially a track like ‘Luster’ that shivers with sub-bass, is something you need to prepare yourself for. Loud is the new quiet.
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THE ROUND UP’S HANDY ROUND UP
‘Mr Norris Changes Brains’ (Eskimo Recordings) is a record I’ve had on quite a lot since it arrived in Moonbuilding HQ a while back. It’s a psych compilation, 42 tracks across double vinyl or triple CD, that sees the magnificent Mr Richard Norris in his natural habit and he’s turned in a proper crowd-pleaser here. It follows in the footsteps of releases by the likes of Bill Brewster and Psychemagik on the Belgian-based Eskimo label that not only “reveal the contents of their record bags, but something about themselves too”. Richard has real pedigree when comes to psych. Fresh out of college he worked at legendary label Bam Caruso where he got hands-on with their almighty magazine ‘Stranger Things Are Happening’ (which I wrote all about in the looooong sold out Issue One of Moonbuilding. It’s also the title of Richard’s very fine memoir). It’s a job that saw him hook up with Genesis P Orridge to make the legendary proto acid house album, ‘Jack The Tab’… during the sessions for which he met Soft Cell’s Dave Ball and The Grid was born. I could go on. One half of Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve with Phantasy Sound’s Erol Alkan, runs his own deep listening Group Mind label… he is a top dog.
Here he serves up “a dizzyingly wide-ranging collection that explores the further out there reaches of worldwide psychedelia and dancefloor mayhem”. With the best will in the world you’re not going to have heard many of these tracks, which is the beauty. I’ve loved letting it play out stopping in my shoes when something catches my ear. The first set, ‘Chapter 1’ is great. Trifle’s cover of Manfred Mann’s infectiously catchy ‘One Way Glass’ is something you’ll be playing three or four times before you can move on. If you’ve not heard the track before, no it’s not the theme tune to ‘The Last Leg’, that’s the Shirley Bassey-sampling Public Enemy’s ‘Harder Than You Think’. Spencer Mac’s organ-drenched ‘Ka-ka Baya Mow-Mow’ is a treat too. The whole thing butts 60s tracks up against more contemporary stuff, US outfits ride alongside music coming out of everywhere from Turkey to Paris. Niche is where it’s at. This is proper niche and a real treat.
Just a quick catch up with some of our regular customers – Jo Johnson is going to be turning up shortly with this month’s offerings from her slow album project ‘Alterations’, but while you’re waiting, and remaining true to her promise to get more music out this year, she has new mix via Barcelona-based radio station HOC Radio. “This one includes quite a bit of unreleased and forthcoming material,” says Jo, “including a track by me that quietly hints at a bigger project”. Which is exciting. You need to keep your eyes and ears on Jo at all times, she’s really is coming up with good this year.
Fields We Found, the musical sub-division of quiet details’ Alex Gold, serves up the latest installment in the ‘Resolve/Relate’ series. ‘Resolve/Relate 5’ is another long-form piece designed for deep and close listening “performed live in a single take, straight from machine to tape”. It’s made on a modular system, ARP 2600m and various effects and includes the stasis dub version, which tends to be a shorter reinterpretation of the same sounds. You need to spend time with these recordings, the main version here is over 23 minutes, which when you focus is very cathartic. I’ve not tried this at volume yet, a la Gordon Chapman-Fox’s recommendation, but I will.
What with it being a new month, there’s a new Women Of Ambient mix from the ever-brilliant Cynthia “Marine Eyes” Bernard. This month she’s changing things up and instead of a continuous mix, she’s embracing Bandcamp’s new playlist feature. It’s not actually a new feature, the new part is the ability to share. The problem with it, for me at least, is you can’t share anything on a playlist you haven’t paid money for. I’d be broke in a week if I used it! It’s a shame, I love Bandcamp, obvs, and it would be great to be able to curate playlists from anything on the site and I know those lists would get listens. But I can’t. I do buy a fair bit of stuff, putting the money I don’t earn from doing this where my mouth is, ahem, but I’m going to stick with my playlists on BNDCMPR for now. Cynthia has also provided some really great annotation and embedded tracks on her Cloud Collecting Substack for the playlist, see link below. There’s some work here that I do need to check out. We need another day in the week don’t we? Oh and there’s interesting news on the Substack about a new project Cynthia and husband James are involved with called Almost An Island along with Kenneth James Gibson.
Anyway, her playlist is here…
bandcamp.com/marine_eyes/playlist/women-of-ambient-june-25
And her Cloud Collecting Substack is here…
cloudcollecting.substack.com
One more for this week. This is a real curio and very good it is too. Wampís of Guayabal & Aboutface’s ‘Los Bosquesinos (People of the Forests)’ (Coordinates) finds Brighton-based Ben Kelly, Aboutface, serve up a fundraising release to help fight illegal deforestation and ecoide across the rainforest territories of the Wampís people from the Peruvian Amazon. “During a month living in the Amazon Rainforest, Aboutface and the Wampís community collaboratively captured field recordings, music instrumentation and traditional Wampís Nampets – ancient songs sung from the perspective of animals living in their rainforest environment”. Those songs have never been hear outside of their communities before, which is pretty incredible. Here Ben creates four tracks from improvised performances using these recordings. The results are captivating. The Nampets are so beautifully melodic and tell stories of ‘Wancha’ (fish), ‘Manchi’ (grasshopper), ‘Pinchichi’ (hawk) and ‘Wanasu’ (mountain lizard). It’s hard to understand how such peaceful music and such beautifully melodic songs arrive against a backdrop of the indigenous population trying to protect their land from illegal goldmining in the region. The Guardian wrote about their plight in March. Read that piece here. The least we can do is listen and read about the plight of these people. I’m sure that any money raised from buying this delightful release would be well used and much appreciated.
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
i know how much work goes into this, thanks for sharing!
thanks for including resolve / relate 05!