Issue 87 / 7 November 2025
Your essential DIY electronic music lowdown: Track Of The Week: Jo Johnson + Album Of The Week: Jilk + The Form Group + Curtain Twitcher + The Night Monitor + Franz Kirmann + R Seiliog + more...
I seem to have had a lot to say here in recent weeks, but it’s all gone rather quiet at Moonbuilding HQ. Apart from the builders we’ve got in at the moment, who are anything but quiet.
You may be interested to know I’ve started to pull our Album Of The Year special issue together. It’s always quite a task and this year has seen an exceptional crop of releases. So much brilliant work. I will be interested to see what I make of it all.
That said, this week happens to be one of those total bumper weeks for incredible releases. So much good music awaits below. Hang on to your wallets. This could get expensive.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 87 Playlist: Listen
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JO JOHNSON ‘Backstitch’ (Silver Threads)
It feels like a while since I’ve mentioned Jo Johnson. She has very much been a Moonbuilding Weekly regular this year and I want it to stay that way. It must’ve been early September when the ‘Alterations Volume One’ album was released on her freshly minted Silver Threads label. So the last mention wasn’t that long ago, although two months does seem a while in this corner of the musical world. Not that she’s been sitting around with her feet up.
Earlier last month, there was an installment of the Bleep43 night she co-runs with Frequency Domain’s Ali Wade and Plant43’s Emile Facey and she played a packed-out London show as support to Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan at Rich Mix the other weekend. A show that I suspect will have exposed her fine work to a whole new crowd. At some point she also found time to catch one the colds that’s been doing the rounds (me too, twice). So busy busy for Jo.
And yet in among all that she’s kickstarted her ‘Alterations’ project and delivered the first track of Vol 2, ‘Backstictch’, a real fizzer that froths and bubbles all over the place. “This is a long piece and its mood teeters somewhere between rabble rousing and unnerving,” writes Jo in her notes. “The soundtrack to a growing movement. But which one?”
While anyone can hear this track, it comes with subscriber-only goodies, or ‘Remnants’ as she calls them. “This could include a rework of ‘Backstitch’ or a new track using discarded audio from the original recording session, field recordings from recent walks, and The Pattern, a booklet with rambling thoughts from my journal, studio notes and photos taken during the time period this track was recorded.”
Rambling thoughts. These things are a joy. A peak at the inner workings of an artist like this is not to be sniffed at (no cold pun intended). The field recordings she uses could be interesting as she tells me that she thinks she’s capture a rutting stag that may or may not make the mix. I mean, if you have it, why wouldn’t you flaunt it. Not the stag, the recording. Minds like sewers the lot of you.
jojohnson.bandcamp.com / silverthreads.bandcamp.com
JILK ‘Fix Your Hearts’
In April of this year, two of the Bristol-based Jilk collective – Kayla Painter and Jon Worsley – rang loudly on our Album Of The Year bell when they released an eponymous collaborative album as Sarno Ultra on Bricolage. According to former Moonbuilding cover star Kayla it was a record “where the sum sounds nothing like the individual parts”. Here the pair are back in the fold and making music that, although very different from the dancefloor-y-ish Sarno Ultra, also feels like it transcends the individual parts.
The collective for ‘Fix Your Hearts’, Jilk’s eighth full-length proper, is Jon (on almost everything, you know, guitar, piano, synths, percussion, Melodica, “electronics” and lyrics), Kayla on bass and sax (although not at the same time), Jim Hopkins on drums and bass (again, not at the same time), Claire Downing on vocals and Cags Diep on violins, plural. You can already hear what a record with those elements might sound like can’t you?
And indeed, ‘Fix Your Heart’ started out with “a tight focus” on French pop albums of the 60s and 70s. It began with what they call real songs, “three or four chords on an acoustic guitar, verses and choruses”… and then things got interesting. The songs were fed into the Jilk machine and out they popped as this album of melody-rich, textured, electronic drive-bys.
You’d be interested to hear the originals as the tracks here seem to morph and warp more and more out of shape as the album progresses. By closer ‘End Harm For End Home’ the pretty French vocal and delicate melody slowly collapses into a rasping, electronic black hole that sucks up a tune being picked out on an acoustic guitar and spits out distant vocals, cacophonic strings, and maybe even a cat meowing (or that might have been my cat, hard to tell).
Jilk talk about the record beckoning the listener into “a dreamy collage of an album”. As though they’ve “picked up a mixtape from a strange liminal zone”. Someone else was talking in those terms recently. Music from the other side, sounds that are twisted somehow, off-kilter, otherworldly. Found discarded somewhere by chance. It’s an idea I like a lot.
The opener, ‘A Layer Where You Are Nothing’, is really something. It totally lulls you into a false sense of security. It starts with such a warm, resonant jazzy keyboard line, it’s quite house-y, very tuneful, strings swell and suddenly it glitches. A snippet of choral sound interferes, and then it’s gone, the silence ushering in a beat, an arpegiating synth and a string swell of Nightmares On Wax proportions and the whole tune takes off, glitchy vocals, swooping melodies, rattling drum rolls, the lot.
But this isn’t a blip or a quirk. This is how the whole thing is. ‘Bomb Scare Birth…’ has a music box tune and seems to have trouble getting going, like it’s clockwork and hasn’t been wound up properly. It then melts into ‘… At Curved Highway’, carrying the tune and clattering drums with it and blossoming into another glorious string-filled swell of song. Think late period Mercury Rev or along those lines. It is great big ambitious stuff.
And on it goes. Again, and this seems like a thing, a good thing, we’re not looking at anything long. The whole album clocks in around the 37 minute mark, very listenable in one go. Although I’m not sure I took it all in on first listen. It’s one of those releases that’ll have you reaching for headphones to get in closer, let your ears excavate deeper. There’s a Tunng feel here too, it has that sort of Phil Winter’s electronical messing, the same way he roughs the folk up round the edges. And then you get moments, like on ‘Precious Metal’ where Claire Downing’s lovely vocal is allowed to fly solo, briefly, to just live on its own. No fuckery. Just a pure melody. And they play penultimate track, ‘Felt Doppelganger’, with a straight bat too. A gorgeous deep rolling bassline, like it’s from a back to mine session, Nightmares On Wax-y again. It has the total funk, those bright keys…
And the striking cover image is as curious as the sounds within. I asked Jon to talk me through it. “I knew,” he said, “because of the conceit of French pop that inspired the album that I wanted a 60s/70s picture of a women to be the front cover, but shooting that ourselves felt a bit contrived.” He was scrolling on Bluesky one day as saw the perfect image posted by Toby Miller, the son of renowned photojournalist Robert Miller. Turns out it was a photo of Toby’s mother, taken by his dad in 1973. “I ended up having a really nice set of conversations with Toby and Robert,” says Jon. “Robert sent us the original slide so we could create the best possible digital image and I’ve had a few messages from Robert and Shirley about enjoying the album and the process of putting it together.”
There’s a video where Jon talks about the artwork here…
‘Fix Your Hearts’ is one of those records where you do have to wonder where it came from. The idea you picked it up on a mixtape from some strange liminal zone isn’t so wild. That mere mortals who live among us can tune in and make work like this is heartening indeed. Are Jilk ringing loudly on our Album Of The Year bell? They do seem to be.
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GOOD STUFF #1
THE FORM GROUP ‘Provincial Echo’ (Wayside & Woodland)
The Leaf Library’s Matt Ashton is fast becoming a formidable artist. The other week we were singing the praises of his electronic side division Basic Design, this week it’s his avant-ambient outfit The Form Group. In the notes for ‘Provincial Echo’ Matt talks about the influence of Vienna-based producer/guitarist/laptop composer Fennesz and in particular his 2004 album ‘Venice’, which I had totally forgotten about. It’s a great record, especially the glitchy ‘Transit’, which features pops, crackles, guitar noise, melody and the lyrics and vocals of David Sylvian. Sylvian is fascinating. He does almost no press, which has given him somewhat enigmatic status. ‘Transit’ was in return for a collaboration on Sylvian’s 2003 ‘Blemish’ album. You’d love to talk to him about how these things come about. One day, maybe. I have interviewed him twice (I ask nicely) so you never know.
Anyway, the influence comes in because Matt was living in Helsinki and had a lack of instrumentation to hand, which led him to focus on composing with a laptop, like Fennesz. Matt talks about how he loves “the textures that he can get out of just a laptop and some software. I’ve always wanted to try and produce something with a similar feel”. And so here it is.
It says in the notes, ‘Provincial Echo’ is “a departure from the indie pop of his main band”, which made me laugh. Boy, is it. It’s described as “an album of grainy, metallic drones, stretched and vaporised, YouTube rips of bird sounds and missile launches, plus minimal bleeps, tones and the occasional thudding bass hit”. Sound great eh? Well, it is. There’s other interesting inspiration at work. The opener ‘A Dream Of A Beach During A Storm In Winter’ is named after a comic by Gareth Hopkins. “As soon as I saw the title of Gareth’s story written down,” says Matt, “I wanted to try and reproduce the sound I could hear it making in my mind”. That sound is a gentle repetitive thrum that builds with electrical sweeps and swoops, it is very calm, peaceful even, until wonderful squalls erupt from nowhere from time to time. ‘Provincial Echo’ is full of moments like this.
‘The Waltzing Universe’ borrows its title from Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning ‘Orbital’ and sounds suitably deep spacey. I love a low bass rumble, always makes me think of spacecraft moving majestically through the void and the bright tinkles might well summon the glitter of control panel lights. ‘The Seeing Hands Of Others’ and ‘There Is No Longer No Ocean’ both draw on lines from Frank O’Hara’s punchy pocket-sized ‘Lunch Poems’ collection. The former a terse storm of sound, the later, an electronic shiver that seems to shimmer like water.
This is evocative stuff. A hard recommend.
waysideandwoodlandrecordings.bandcamp.com
GOOD STUFF #2
CURTAIN TWITCHER ‘Leap The Dips’
You know how I was in Sheffield the other week? Did I mention it? I spent a little time doing the rounds while I was there, catching up with friends old and new, which included a pre-show drink with the Curtain Twitcher duo of Sophie Toes and Grace Griffin. Toes! We featured them as Track Of The Week recently, and here they come with a debut long-playing outing. I’m happy to report they were fine company. “We’ll talk about pretty much owt if you provide the tea and cakes” they say, I provided neither and we had no trouble filling time. We had a good gossip about mutual acquaintances, most of which can’t be repeated here. We chatted about the duo’s respective musical pasts and how they’ve ended up at this point. Grace is a live sound engineer, while Sophie cut her chops as a DJ and ‘Leap The Dips’ is where all that meets.
Asking about influences drew the inevitable eye roll, but it’s never a wasted question. In their case I heard everything from Weatherall to Tangerine Dream. Not a bad gamut to be running really. Which brings us to ‘Leap The Dips’, a seven tracker that shows of some considerable talents. They tell me that the album came out jamming sessions, and indeed one of the tracks comes as-is in its jam state. I suspect it’s… nah, I’ll leave you to decide for yourself.
Musically, they describe their world rather nicely as a “corrupted, downtempo post-Balearic chug, pulses and wobbles, throbs and twitches, full of fat noises and bolshy Moogery”, which sounds just the ticket, right? The opener ‘Migration’ with its bright melody and squidgey attack has a Bentley Rhythm Ace knockabout sense of fun. ‘Sonate’ is glorious, a rich sweep of cut-glass tinkles and a melody that is almost Kraftwerkian in its splendor. We featured ‘Analogue Epilogue’ as our Track Of The Week recently and I think it’s my favourite thing here, feeling rather Philip Glass in its execution. There’s a lovely string-led intro that opens up into a burst of arpeggiating melody that feels somehow like flowers blooming, breath it in, while the moody clouds of sound wafting from ‘The Perfect Light’ feels like something Warrington-Runcorn would nod approvingly at.
While the whole thing clearly sits as a collection of tracks born from jams rather than something conceived as a start-to-finish album, you can still hear the skill and ambition on show. It’s the what next that I’m really looking forward to. And the joy of all this is these two are Sheffield through and through. The breadth of electronic music that city turns out, and has always turned out, never ceases to amazing and impress. I think it’s safe to add Curtain Twitcher to that list.
GOOD STUFF #3
THE NIGHT MONITOR ‘On The Track Of Discovery’ (Fonolith)
It’s funny how some people have their own sound. It’s such a curious one, why wouldn’t two people using the same machines make a similar sound? Which is the joy of electronic music, the options are endless. Maybe it’s to do with some people being drawn to certain sounds or maybe it’s just bloody well magic. Anyway, The Night Monitor’s Neil Scrivin might be able to help us out with an answer because he is one of those artists whose sound is rather distinctive.
There is such a delicious dark menace across his work and just to prove my point, ‘On The Track Of Discovery’ is an anthology of odds and sods Neil has contributed to to compilations between 2019 and 2023 and collected here as one set along with a brace of previously unreleased offerings.
If you cut them in half would it say The Night Monitor right through the middle? It would indeed. The opener is perhaps the least Night Monitor-sounding of all. It’s the title track and it comes from Castles In Space’s 2023 ‘Music Is Vast: A Tribute to the Music and Legacy of Vangelis’ album. You can imagine the swooping and sweeping going on I’m sure. It’s lovely, rather ‘Chariots Of Fire’ and yet it has that dark menace TNM does so well. Exhibit two, ‘Cold Witness To A Sky Crash’ comes from 2020’s ‘Undulating Waters 4’, Woodford Halse’s excellent compilation series and it’s a pure bone chiller. It will chill your bones.
You perhaps won’t be surprised that Neil pops up on the Library Of The Occult label and there’s two slabs here, tombstones if you like, both from 2023’s ‘Dracula 1897: Part Two’ collection. I mean, both these tracks are unsettling. ‘The Hampstead Horror’ sounds like there’s something lurking in the misty night, while ‘Log Of The Demeter’ tolls like it’s actually going to come to get you.
There’s a few rarities here too, aside from the two previously unreleased tracks, ‘The Energy You Call Money’ taken from the vote Labour compilation, ‘Red Flag 2019’ on Preston’s much-missed Concrete Tapes outlet is proper curio. Like an audio interlude, it is very Workshop. It’s a really good compilation actually, some fine names on there. From Polypores to Portland Vows, Phexioenesystems to Pulselovers. And even some artists whose name doesn’t begin with P. The last track, the previously unreleased ‘Irradiation Of Omniscience’ (originally broadcast as part of The Da-Dark Outside at Aerial Festival in 2020) is a real belter. It’s like a ball of sound rolling downhill picking up more and more sound as it goes, it starts off all noisy and abrasive and settles into a delicate shimmer of a track.
So not only is this a great intro to Neil’s work at The Night Monitor, It’s the sort of spooker I should’ve had in last week. ‘On The Track Of Discovery’ is what these dark nights were made for no matter what the date.
GOOD STUFF #4
FRANZ KIRMANN ‘Almadies’ (Bytes)
‘Almadies’ is solo album number eight from London-based French producer Franz Kirmann and it finds him returning to Joe Clay’s Bytes label for the first time since 2022’s ‘Forget Me Not’. Almadies are long wooden boats used by Senegalese fishermen and also the name of the Atlantic Ocean neighborhood in Dakar where Franz grew up. The album itself revolves around the idea of “Mind-constructed geographies”. As Franz explains: “The way memories and souvenirs shape an image of a place or country that is part reality, part fantasy, part cliché, yet also deeply personal”. The 10 tracks here are made from a blend of electronic composition and field recordings gleaned from Franz’s travels around the world – London, Paris, Dakar, the Caribbean (everybody talk about pop music).
It’s such a gentle record, with a fourth world sound, which perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise as the Hassell/Eno 1980 opus ‘Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Music’ is cited as an influence here. Jon Hassell explained that fourth world music was “world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques”.
You can hear the sounds of this record drifting out over the scene of the boats pulled up on shore depicted in the cover artwork, and yet in the image there’s also rip in time, a galaxy full of stars, which sums up the sound of the record precisely. Eschewing the use of drum machines, percussion or acoustic instruments, Franz’s aim was to create music by blurring the line between electronically generated sounds and real soundscapes. Quite how he has achieved this I have no idea. ‘Almadies’ sounds like a clever meld of sounds and rhythms that seem drawn from cultures far and wide and all manner of electronic fizzes, whizzes and the like. But he clearly states there’s no percussion or acoustic instruments in sight.
‘Teranga’ is great, very electronically driven, all blips, beeps, scuzzed up loops and slurs, but it feels soft and gentle, while opener ‘La Pointe Des Almadies’ straddles the old and the new, it sounds like running water, drops pattering on canvas, a storm brewing in the distance, a tune drifting like steam as the fishermen await a turn in the weather. ‘Retba’ really has the funk, it feels like you’re dialing in to long-lost tune coming at you from another world. There’s noises in there that sound like they’re being fired in from outer space. Which is where the whole album sits, wrapped up in both camps, you can hear the old and the new, sounds that are real and those that conjoured from thin air. Which is which is a whole different matter. This is delightful stuff.
GOOD STUFF #5
R SEILIOG ‘Dispatch All Gods’ (Lunar Module)
Goodness me, this is a piece of work. Lunar Module, as you should know by now, is Castles In Space’s CD sub-label and Castles In Space publish our sister mag. Just saying, declaring my interest. Not that I have a hand in any of it. My deal works like it works for any of the artists on the label. In fact, that’s how we see it, I’m an artist on the label who releases a magazine rather than a record. Which makes R Seiliog my labelmate, right?
Very happy about that because ‘Dispatch All Gods’ is great, really great. It’s offering number six on Lunar Module and I think it’s their finest hour yet. R Seiliog, Wales-based producer Robin Edwards, is a name you will no doubt seen about the place. Robin has talked before about the Kosmiche influence on his work, of people like Cluster and Harmonia, which you can hear in his hypnotic cuts. But more interesting is his nod to fellow Welshers Gorkys.
There has always been something in the water in Wales. In the 90s it was guitar bands, with the likes of Gorkys and SFA standing out with their curveball approaches. These days I’m looking at Wales thanks to Super Furries morphing into the equally brilliant Das Koolies. There’s always been a bit of the Taffia magic dust, and R Seiliog is dusted liberally with the stuff.
‘Dispatch All Gods’ is a fifth full-length and it follows in the footsteps of the 2021 ambient-leaning ‘Ash Dome’ on Cue Dot. But then kind of not. It’s mellow-ish. Mellow-y. But it comes packed with beats. There must be something in the air, because like Franz Kirmann, this release also “crystallises field recordings and granular synthesis into explorative fractal sounds and post-genre evocations”.
‘Mammoths’ is great, a repeating motif spins round and round dragging sounds in on its wake. The sort of thing The Orb would be drawn to, it has that Aphex kind of warmth to it and the sort of melody Mr James dreams up before breakfast. The warmth of this record really stands out.
The way ‘Square The Wheel’ builds to a squall of sound is delightful. I’m hearing a lot of Philip Glass’ influnece at the moment, and it’s here. There’s a sharp pulse that runs throughout that feels quite Glass-y. But it’s that squall. It’s like an explosion of sound, like a firework (yeah, very topical) going off, and then it builds, like it’s caught fire, which I suppose it has. The recrod really step up with ‘Daisies On The Coast Road’. It’s a belter, a proper 10-minute romp that sits at the very edges of the dancefloor. And then, the closing duo of tracks are the calm after the storms. With its distant bird cries, ‘Myco Migration’ sounds like a ghost in the machine version ‘Pacific State’ and the title track, a drifting beauty that flickers overload, eases you back down to earth.
I really love this. It’s properly wonderful.
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THE ROUND UP’S ROUND UP
One of the joys of Moonbuilding Weekly is I have a direct line to most of the artists and labels I deal with. Saves a lot time I have to say. In the old days they would all have been looked after by a PR, a gatekeeper. There are a few of these people I like to keep close because they bring me some incredible stuff. Andrew Plummer at Limited Noise is one such person. He looks after some seriously wild music. The sort of thing that sounds like a washing machine shop in meltdown, the proper avant-garde end of avant-garde, that’s Andrew. I do love hearing from him. Here he has served up something rather special. It’s not at all weird, in fact it’s very beautiful. Recur is the work of award-winning composer and sound designer Tim Harrison and ‘A Strange Loop’ (Aumeta) is a return to personal music making for him after a break of some two decades. He’s clearly had time to think about this, because Tim, in Andrew’s words, has “deliberately done things the hard way and the results are uniquely extraordinary indeed.” I mean they really are. Is it a 20-year break if your return was nine years in the making? Why so long. Well. Let’s call what he’s done deep ambient shall we? Except no looping was allowed with everything played in real time by an ensemble of over 50 musicians among them Jack Wyllie on sax, the Ligeti Quartet lending strings and an array of unique sound-making contraptions made by instrument builder Chase Coley… who is an interesting chap in himself. He needs further investigation, but appears to be related to Armitage Shanks.There is so much to like here, current favourite is the living, breathing strings of ‘Iridescent’ that feels like a total exhalation at the end of a hard day.
There’s a quote on Torpa’s Bandcamp page that tells you much about the work of the Chester-based brothers Steven and Peter Dandy. The quote is from Stanley Kubrick, who says “a film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later”. The prolific duo - check out their Bandcamp page and prepare to scroll - are very film centric, their artwork looks like film posters, the titles that sound like films. My friends at Electronic Sound reviewedtheir latest outing ‘New Low’ and talked about “dustbowl saloons”, Morricone and even Bowie. You can hear Morricone’s westerns in a track like the delicious ‘Roll Camera… And Begin’. I especially like how they let their tracks really stretch their legs over seven, eight or, in the case of closer ‘Sun Damage’ nine minutes, letting pieces like the niftily titled ‘Impatient Zero’ build and build around a repeating motif. Oh and Bowie? The title and indeed the contents, are a knowing nod to the B-side of the Thin White Duke’s Berlin classic.
Merserside-born, London-based electronic artist Emma Hall created ‘Cycles’, her debut album as Blue Loop, during her treatement for stage 3 breast cancer. “I originally planned to take April 2023 off to complete my second EP,” she explains. “As it happened, the first day of that planned time was the day I was diagnosed with cancer.” Instead she found the EP evolved in line with her treatment. She had eight rounds of chemo over a five-month period and completed a track per cycle and so her debut album was born. Knowing this information does give it an extra sheen, but at its heart is a compelling record. You don’t imagine something inspired by subject matter like this to be so song driven. You imagine it would more sum up moods, feelings, but the opening title track feels almost trip hoppy. It can’t be be though you think. There are soundscapey interludes, using recordings taken from around the hosptial, like ‘(arrowe park)’, which acts like an extended outros to the previous song. I did hesitate to say the opening track felt trip hoppy, but when ‘The Knife’ kicks in, a stop-you-in-your-tracks moment that deals with Emma’s mastectomy, I felt vindicated as it comes on as dark as early Massive Attack. With so much more swearing. This record is the first time Emma has brought her vocal and lyrics for the fore and the results are impressive. I expected something very different, but the weight of the subject matter and how she has dealt with it here is great, a real suprise. A nice one too. Shimmery is the word I think. Apart from when it’s sweary. The swearing is great, mind.
One I missed last week is Drew Mulholland’s ‘A Portmanteau Of Horrors’ (Subexotic). I mean, I don’t know how I missed it. Drew + Halloween is a open goal really. It say that here he works his “soundcraftian magic on the realm of classic cinematic horror”. Soundcraftian sounds like a word I’d make up. Like it. The record itself is mostly a series of cues, short snips that would’ve sounded great coming out of your letterbox a week ago. ‘You Shouldn’t Have Done It Mr Shenley’ is expecially spooky, all clanks and things that go bump in the night, while the soundscapey ‘The Trials Of Foster Twelvetrees’ (those titles are worth the entry price alone) is the sort of thing that’ll give you sleepless nights. ‘Serpents’ is unsettling, it’s something about penises and snakes. I’ll leave you to investigate.
Benge was due to be playing with Cabaret Voltaire the other week, but illness forced him to stay at home. I do hope he’s fully recovered for the upcoming dates. I’d imagine being in The Cabs must be one of those my work is done here moments. Benge though is a man whose work is never done. For those who aren’t aware, Benge has quite the collection of analogue synths at his Memetunes Studios. It used to be in a cellar in east London where the machines were piled up against walls, but now it all lives in a rather impressive Bond villain hideaway in the west country. It was where The Cabs retreated to to put together their show-stoppng live set and it’s from where these recordings emanate. ‘The Evolving Riddle’ (Memetune) kind of follows in the footsteps of his classic ‘Twenty Systems’ album, where he used 20 synths spanning a period of 20 years to make 20 tracks. Here we get a record made on a combination of 90s digital synths, none of which I’ve heard of, but that means nothing. If you know the Ensoniq SD1, Lexicon Model 200 or the Eventide H3000S, this is the record for you. “Each excel at creating evolving, drawn-out ‘pad’ sounds,” says Benge, “which lend themselves to gradually shifting, somewhat ‘ambient’ compositions, a direction I was very much looking to explore on this album”. You should very much look forward to listening, the drifty tones of these things are rather lovely in Benge’s very safe hands.
MOONBUILDING ISSUE 6 … SOLD OUT
Holy cow. MOONBUILDING Issue 6 is totally sold out, so it isn’t available from moonbuilding.bandcamp.com Sure someone will try cash in via Discogs soon.
Let’s look at what you missed, although it is still available digitally of course. Our cover star, illustrated by the peerless Nick Taylor, is the unstoppable force that is LOULA YORKE. In our bumper interview we talk about how she got here and where she’s going. As usual, it is an in-depth piece that lifts the lid on the brilliant mind behind the excellent music.
We met Loula at her home in Suffolk where we have a proper rummage around in her world, musically, humanly, psychologically, probably even a bit metaphysically. It is a cracking read and really opens the doors on what makes this most remarkable artist tick.
As always the issue comes with an accompanying CD. This one is a Loula Yorke collection called ‘How Did We Get Here’, which is compiled by artist herself and charts her rise and rise. The resulting 11-tracker will take you on a journey through her career to this point and it is utterly, totally, absolutely, exclusive to Moonbuilding.
Elsewhere, there’s a great chat with Clay Pipe Music supremo Frances Castle as we profile her wonderful label, A’Bear 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, which feature Loula Yorke, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan’s Gordon Chapman-Fox, Cate Brooks, 30 Door Key and Sarno Ultra.
We talk to ‘This Is Memorial Device’ author David Keenan about ‘Volcanic Tongue’, his debut collection of music writing. He is one of the last generation of music writers who could actually call themselves as journalists. He talks a lot of sense and his work is a shining example of what music writing should be. It’s an unmissable interview.
Elsewhere, we round up an absolute mountain of recent releases and point you in the right direction of some mighty fine independent magazines and books. The Orb’s Alex Paterson tells us about his ‘Top Of The Pops’ experience when he appeared on the legendary show performing ‘Blue Room’ in 1993. I say performing… There’s a new Captain Star cartoon strip from the brilliant Steven Appleby. I constantly have to pinch myself that this strip, that I first read in the NME in the early 1980s, is now in my little magazine.
Find us at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com. This issue had a short print run and is now sold out. If you hung about, you missed out. We are sorry.
Moonbuilding Weekly is a Castles In Space publication.
Copyright © 2025 Moonbuilding
You were spot on about the damage to wallet . Ooooooooooooof.
Thanks so much for the kind words, we really appreciate it and we enjoyed reading this issue :)