Issue 70 / 13 June 2025
Your essential DIY electronic music beano – Track Of The Week: Dot Allison/Lomond Campbell + Good Stuff: Loula Yorke, Bea Brennan, Polypores, Ian Boddy, Steve Queralt + more
I’ve spent this week getting a little bit closer to Moonbuilding Issue 6, the printed mag version of all this, being done. It’s not finishing touches just yet, but I’m not far off. More news about that soon! Exciting eh? Well, I’m excited.
We’ve got two issues to go before our summer break. To celebrate, if you sign up for a June ad before next Friday, it’s buy one ad, get one ad free. Details here.
Righto, that’s me for another week. Happy reading.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 70 Playlist: Listen on BNDCMPR
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DOT ALLISON ‘Weeping Roses (Lomond Campbell Remix)’ (Sonic Cathedral)
This is a taster track from ‘Subconsciousology’, a reworking of Dot Allison’s entire 2023 ‘Consciousology’ album by Lomond Campbell, who is charmingly billed as electronic producer and machine maker. More about the “machine maker” bit in a moment.
The clue to what he’s done with this remix set, which is released by Sonic Cathedral on 25 July, is in the title. It’s “deeper, darker, dancier”. Example? Sure thing. The original of ‘Weeping Rose’ is a rather gentle lament, folk-fuelled, picked out gently on a guitar with Dot’s lighter than air vocal over the top. Lomond has chucked it in the blender that’s for sure. It’s an absolute acid house banger now. “It was the last one I remixed,” says Lomond, “possibly because It was the only track I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with.” Worked out nicely I’d say.
I love stuff like this. Some of my favourite ever records are full album remixes – The League Unlimited Orchestra’s ‘Love And Dancing’, Global Communication’s ‘Pentamerous Metamorphosis’ reworking of Chapterhouse’s ‘Blood Music’, Soft Cell’s ‘Non-stop Ecstatic Dancing’, an expanded edition of which landed at Moonbuilding HQ recently. It’s getting reissued so expect more about that soon.
Righto, machine maker then. Lomond lives and works at his recording studio, The Lengths, a modernist building created from a derelict 1960’s primary school on the edge of a loch in the Scottish highlights. It looks idyllic. It’s also where he makes his sculptural music-making machines, which you can hear on his releases. Have a rummage here…
He uses these fantastic creations live to great effect and if you’re at The Edinburgh Fringe this summer you can see for yourself as Lomond has a new show. It’s called MŮO and it’s powered by cosmic radiation from deep space, which is captured by The University Of Glasgow’s muon detectors and turned into sound and visuals by Lomond’s marvellous machines. I mean, come on. That’s unmissable, right? Details are right here…
‘Subconciousology’ is released by Sonic Cathedral on 25 July
dotallison.bandcamp.com
lomondcampbell.bandcamp.com
soniccathedral.bandcamp.com
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
LOULA YORKE ‘The Book Of Commonplace’ (Truxalis)
Here we go then. Brace yourselves. This is the first of two Loula Yorke releases this summer that are going to blow your socks off. Together they mark the end of her year-long, monthly mixtape project. In August there’s a double album, ‘Time Is A Succession Of Such Shapes’, but first there’s ‘The Book Of Commonplace’, a best of her monthly mixtapes, a greatest hits if you like, and it’s an utter masterclass for anyone working with field recordings.
I’ve loved Loula’s monthly mixtape installments and more than anything I’ve enjoyed watching them morph before our very eyes. Those early sets were lengthy excursions with an anything goes, freewheeling approach and slowly they changed, being first more focused on a theme and then more compact in length. It’s been a journey for Loula as well as us. And what this drawing to a close of the series has done is open up other avenues that she will be unveiling in the autumn.
In the notes, Loula talks about how this final offering “gathers a year’s worth of small signals – purring cats, cassette clicks, modular flickers, into a limited edition C60 mixtape that hums with quiet magic”. It really does.
The more I listen to this the more I hear The Orb in Side A, some 10 minutes in there’s a thudding beat, evaporating into the hoovering, which gives way to modular pings and squidges, and the ‘Star Wars’ theme being gargled, which dissolve into some chirpy telephone hold music from the DVLA in Swansea. It feels almost like a domesticated version of ‘Blue Room’. If you’ve ever heard one of Alex Paterson’s DJ sets, you’ll know all manner of noises off climb onboard. They too are like quiet magic.
About seven minutes into Side B, there’s a section that has a bass twang and tight snare snap that’s like Massive Attack’s ‘Protection’… the whole thing comes with an A6 zine of liner notes, which is essential for the full listen-along experience. I listened first and read along later, and indeed Loula says how she spends occasional days cataloging vinyl. “I get to listen to anything I like the look of… the needle drops onto ‘Protection’ by Massive Attack. Oh, I’m good!
Massive Attack soon fades to birdsong and a swirl of sound emerges and then fades to what sounds like a rainy Saturday afternoon in front of a black and white film with a cup of tea… A quick flick through the notes reveals the sequence is indeed “a walk round the field. It starts to rain…” and then “I’m watching a 1986 documentary about Cornelius Cardew… the last time the fire is lit this spring”. I was close. And that’s what makes this whole thing so lovely, it’s dipping in and out of Loula’s life, self-service tills, crunching fallen leaves, “water gurgles, cutlery clatters and ceramic bowls ring out”.
It’s wonderful stuff and a must-have for anyone who has followed the evolving series over the last year. A must-have just for anyone really. Roll on August for the final part of this set, the unadorned music.
GOOD STUFF #2
BEA BRENNAN ‘Trances People’ (Old Technology)
There is a music world truism that people who make good music tend to know people who make good music. It was true of bands in my Melody Maker days, you’d often pick up recommendations when you were interviewing artists you liked, but it was really brought to life when MySpace ruled the world. That curatable “friends” section, hidden at the bottom of the homepage was full of wonders. I’d spend a lot of time disappearing into music wormholes, friends of bands I liked, friends of those bands, friends of those bands. I had a blog called mynewfavouriteband.com in the mid 00s and much of it was drawn from music I found during those MySpace adventures.
London-based artist (that album artwork is one of her charcoal pieces), composer and sound designer Bea Brennan is a good friend of Jo Johnson, who regular readers will know I like to shout about, a lot. Bea releases on the excellent Old Technology label, which is run by Anthony “Surgeon” Child and Daniel Bean… who organises Bleep43 alongside Jo and her partner Emile Facey… who records as Plant43 (new album ‘Feeding the Machines’ incoming on 28 July). Bea is an active member of the Bleep43 family and Jo tells me her and Bea have been threatening to collaborate ever since, “maybe one day,” she says. It’s safe to say Bea comes highly recommended.
I was going to say that Bea’s work is cast from a similar mold to Jo’s, but talking to Jo it seems it’s the other way round. “I wouldn’t be making the kind of music I am today without her influence,” she says. “More than any other artist, her original, experimental approach constantly provides me with new inspiration and pushes me to do better all the time.” Which is quite the ringing endorsement. There’s just the two albums to catch up with so far, both quality gear, both released by Old Technology. Let’s get to the new album shall we…
“I stole the title for this collection of tracks from a book I’ve had on my shelf for a really long time,” reveals Bea in her notes about ‘Trances People’. “It suggests you will experience a smooth and total reawakening if you read this book. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, but I do appreciate the main idea… that human beings are perpetually and unavoidably living in various states of trance, whether pleasurable, destructive, simple or complex.”
And this is trance-y kind of a record. Bea’s work doesn’t feel as organic as Jo’s, there’s a mechanical, often otherworldly feel at work here. She handles pure ambient with a deft hand. A track like ‘The Unconscious’ shimmers brightly, offering up glistening twinkles of sound like cool drips of melting ice.
Some of her work feels like it’s skirting the very outer edges of the dancefloor, I mean you’re not going to be disco dancing, but there’s a groove to something like ‘Chance’, which sounds like a clock ticking, phasing, juddering, shivering, but ticking, keeping time, all the same. Likewise, the closer ‘Lost Track’ has that feeling of progression, of chimes of time, of moments of sound. Bea talks about time in her notes. “Time is always distorted somehow,” she says. “A narrowing of attention becomes a necessary means of survival. A looping and overlapping series of identifications and attachments”. Which is precisely what we have here. Time being kind of messed with. “I think we’ll hear a lot more from Bea over the coming months,” Jo says. On the strength of this, Iet’s hope so.
old-technology.bandcamp.com / beabrennan.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #3
POLYPORES ‘Cosmically A Shambles’ (Cracked Ankles)
Stephen James Buckley’s year gets better and better. We hinted at it last year when he released ‘Unlimited Lives’ on the US ambient cassette label Aural Canyon, but he’s very much doing things differently in 2025. Chief in the different stakes is he’s eschewing the usual labels you’d expect to see his work on in favour of pastures new.
Here we find him close to home on Preston label Cracked Ankles, which is run by Michael “Stoko” Stokes of psych metal outfit Evil Blizzard, who you will probably know for their furiously filthy sound and proliferation of bass players. It’s not exactly a label synonymous with Polypores-like tuneage. But then that’s the all-new Stephen Buckley for you. He seems to be looking for new audiences, new experiences and he’s doing that by pushing at the boundaries.
For example, the label released his first ever single a precursor to the new LP, and it was a seven-inch at that. A Polypores seven-inch! Imagine Stephen making music that can fit on one side of a seven. The track, ‘Whorl’ is a cracker, a former Moonbuilding Track Of The Week no less. It pings with life, some hectic modulation dancing over the top of a quick-quick rhythm. This is the direction Polypores has also been moving in. A drummer by trade, Stephen has been bringing the beats in his recent live sets and here they come on a record.
‘Spoonbender’ is the funkiest thing I’ve heard in a while, not just from Polypores, but full stop. There’s handclaps in there for crying out loud, not to mention Aphex-like melodic swirls. It’s so very good, I’m starting to half imagine a live Polypores disco set. I love closer, ‘Hazy Days’ too, a simple slo-mo dum-tick beat keeps time while the Poylpores magic goes to work over the top with all manner of sound squibs.
“His new material is a shift in direction,” say Cracked Ankles, “incorporating more rhythm, textures and beats, and he felt our label might be more suited as an output for his more animated and dynamic sound.” And why not? If together they’re coming up with ideas like releasing seven-inch singles, it’s a team-up that’s clearly got everyone firing on all cylinders. Polypores has also played a Cracked Ankles live night, again in Preston, again in front of an audience who had no idea who he was. He had an absolute hoot by all accounts.
I don’t know if all this is related, I suspect it is, but last year Stephen was diagnosed with autism. “It’s weird having to reassess 42 years of life in a whole new context,” he wrote at the time. I’d imagine there was a metaphorical clearing of decks in light of this news at Polypores HQ and what we’re seeing now is the fruit of that. An all-new Stephen Buckley, not afraid to take chances, no afraid to mix things up, not afraid to do things differently. I like it, I like it very much. All power to him. I wonder what he’s got up his sleeve next?
polypores.bandcamp.com / crackedankles.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #4
IAN BODDY ‘Modulations IV’ (DiN)
A fourth volume of DiN head honcho’s ‘Modulations’ series on digital sub label DiNDDL sees Ian offering up live recordings from various shows that took place between August 2023 and April 2024. There’s five tracks here taken from appearances in Rugeley, Sunderland, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Philadelphia. I had to look up where one of those was, had no idea where Sunderland was. Nah, only kidding. Regeley? Staffordshire in the West Midlands. We were talking earlier about Loula’s listening notes for her mixtape, the download of this comes with notes too, which are extremely helpful. They didn’t tell me where Rugeley was, but I do know that Ian played there on 25 November 2023 and was joined by Dave Bessell. They both played solo sets followed by a joint performance, which has subsequently been released as ‘Polarity’. ‘Awakenings’ is Ian’s solo outing that stretched its legs at an impressive 43 minutes long. “It all eventually builds up quite a head of steam before it finally comes crashing down for a calm, blissful coda section,” writes Ian.
The entire release has a running time of 178 minutes and 13 seconds, which is pretty astonishing. Just shy of three hours of music, which is great if you’ve got the time to sit back and shower in this stuff. Me, I’ve a newsletter needs writing! It’s a common problem at Moonbuilding HQ, not enough hours in the day to listen to everything I’d like to listen to… or come to that write about. I often need to get creative with my listening. I’ve been picking away at this since last Friday.
‘Star’s End’, the album closer, was recorded in October 2023 in Philadelphia at the Gatherings Concert Series. Ian says he’s appeared at this event several times and uses it as an opportunity to “play a more experimental, out-there set”. Here we have an hour-long opus, “a sonic travelogue from darkness into light… six sections ranging from brooding, dark ambient, across delicate sequencer passages draped with phased chords and featuring a big uptempo sequencer workout with cascading Moog lead lines”. It’s a great as that sounds.
This is DiN, you know what you’re getting by now. I love the longer pieces here, it’s Ian properly wigging out, which I’d argue is when he’s at his absolute best. What’s more, you have to love the dedication to the cause. DiN always has an eye on what they can release, how they can get more music out there, how they can spread the word. This series offers up an absolute mountain of live music that you would have had to been in the room to hear otherwise. It is such a treat.
GOOD STUFF #5
STEVE QUERALT ‘Swallow’ (Sonic Cathedral)
Ride bass player Steve Queralt releases his debut solo album ‘Swallow’ and like fellow bandmate Andy Bell, his solo work sounds distinct yet remains connected to the work of the mothership. Ride are just such a bunch of well-round humans aren’t they? The majority of the record is vocal-less, instrumental, but where there are vocals he’s not messing around and has enlisted the help of Sonic Cathedral labelmate, Lush’s Emma Anderson and Verity Susman from Electralane and Memorials.
Steve says his music is inspired by the new classical and post rock worlds and indeed I love the rise and rise of epics like ‘High Teens’ and ‘1988’, which fall somewhere between Mogwai and Sigur Ros. ‘Lonely Town’, featuring Emma, is the cornerstone of the album, but it almost didn’t happen. The whole record was a while in the making, coming together between Ride albums and tours. It was entirely instrumental initially as Steve was under no illusions about his own ability in the vocal department, but he knew a few of the tracks needed a little extra. One of them, he thought, sounded like Lush so he contacted Emma who was surprised at the request as she’d never sung lead vocals, not even at this point on her own ‘Pearlies’ album. She said no and the project appeared to stall. Then, a couple of years later, after she’d been singing on her own record, she got back in touch thinking he must’ve have found someone else by now. He hadn’t so it was full steam ahead.
As I’ve said before, many times, I’m not the biggest fan of vocals. I much prefer a moody instrumental sprawling out over 20 minutes. The way Steve has used vocals, with two tracks featuring Emma and one from Verity, works an absolute treat I have to say. It gives the record a soundtracky feel, with focus being applied when the vocal tracks kick in. Emma’s second outing, ‘Swiss Air’, is a sleek, hypnotic thumper, while Verity Susman’s ‘Messengers’ is a broody little number, very melodic, heavily distorted, feels a little Motown-y somehow, quite MBV too. There’s something really nice when bass players pick up guitars, there’s a groove almost, they can’t help but be driven by their four-strings can they? And that artwork looks like it’s been designed by Moonbuilding! Very nice, lots of dots and a dymo printer. Liking this a lot.
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THE ROUND UP’S HANDY ROUND UP
Neil “Lo Five” Grant’s Emotion Wave label releases a new compilation called ‘Braek Masters’ that celebrates… wait for it… the breakbeat. The product of the community of artists who kick around on the Emotion Wave Dischord, the instruction was “take a drum break sample and make whatever what you like with it”. Running the gamut, from jungle to lo-fi dreamscapes, contributors include the likes of Gordon Chapman-Fox, Sulk Rooms, Simon Heartfield, Armatures, BUNKR, Panamint Manse, Megaheadphoneboy, Scholars Of The Peak, Bit Cloudy and many more. This is not the usual fare you get from these folks let me tell you. Warrington-Runcorn go BPM-shifting trip-hop crazy on ‘Itchy Bicep’, while Mooklaki Club’s Jez Thelwell does a great job with the glitch-hop of ‘Crest And Trough’. Cracking stuff. All proceeds to Médecins Sans Frontières.
Who doesn’t like a bit of James Holden? I’m looking for any hands up, if I see any security will be round in a moment to throw you out. Here he teams up with Polish clarinet/Shackleton collaborator Waclaw Zimpel for an improvisatory trip. Holden & Zimpel’s ‘The Universe Will Take Care Of You’ (Border Community) is such a mad treat. The pair can barely contain themselves to their own instruments. As well as electronics, James takes up his “long-neglected childhood violin, and a new collection of hand percussion”. A new collection! While in places, Waclaw “forgoes his alto clarinet altogether in favour of electric piano, organ, lap steel guitar, airless harmonium and the Indian twin pipe algoza flute”. You will need to be googling some of that last sentence I figure. In the notes for the title track, which is the 10-minute grand finale, the talk is of “a monumental coda of stirring percussive rustle and gently cascading clarinet tones, before soaring into a sublime, resonant denouement of towering synth and organ themes”. I mean, they’re not wrong. “Otherworldy high drama” they call it. James does like to mix up the electronic and the acoustic and always to great effect. Very few sound like him though. His vision is always pretty wild and the music he makes all the better for it. This is no different really. It’s wonderful stuff, but of course it is.
Catching up with our regulars, which seems to have become a weekly slot now, we have this month’s quiet details release. Jolanda Moletta And Karen Vogt’s ‘Sea-swallowed Wands’ is a vocal work. I don’t mean it shouts loudly at you, quite the opposite in fact. Jolanda and Karen use their incredible vocal talents to great effect. This isn’t the first time the pair have worked together, earlier this year we mentioned their debut collaborative offering, ‘Suspended Between Two Worlds’, a 21-minute deep listening piece made in a French coastal town with voices, field recordings and no much else. This is the follow-up, which I’d guess is drawn from the same sessions. Their work is just so very nautical, I want to call them sirens, you can hear this kind of thing rippling out dramatically from remote cliff tops with huge waves breaking on the jagged reefs below. I want to say that only to give you an idea of the beauty on show here and in no way am I casting dispersions. That said, there’s always a few people you’d like to see in a boat heading for the rocks. Am I right? This is really lovely work.
There’s a new Cosey Fanni Tutti album, ‘2t2’ (Conspiracy International), which follows on from 2019’s ‘Tutti’, which should now be known as ‘2t1’. Her solo discography is surprisingly sparse. There was a debut solo album, ‘Time To Tell’, in 1983 and then there was a 36-year wait for the second solo offering, the aforementioned ‘Tutti’. I mean, it’s not like she’s was dragging her heels, there’s always been plenty to do, first with TG, then Chris & Cosey, who were rather prolific. There’s the Carter Tutti and Carter Tutti Void, hardly tardy. Here we get album of two halves, which is how albums should be. There’s the “propulsive beat constructions” of the A-side and the “expansive electronic explorations” of the B-side. The two sides of the Cosey coin. This is excellent, as it always is with Cosey.
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
thanks so much Neil for your lovely words on our album! Appreciate it very much : )
great edition - thanks for including qd35 jolanda moletta and karen vogt!