Issue 91 / 5 December 2025
Your essential DIY electronic music lowdown: Track Of The Week: James Welsh + Album Of The Week: Agnes Haus + Swansither + Polypores + Kayla Painter + Sulk Rooms + more + some more + even more...
And now the end is near and so I face my final curtain. Well, the last review-led newsletter of the year anyway. And it falls on Bandcamp Friday, a particularly frantic one at that. Everyone seems to be releasing today. Everyone. Maybe the waived royalty extra spends will come in handy for the rapidly approaching Xmas hols. Or maybe everyone is just clearing the decks for a fresh start in 2026. Who knows. It is a busy day that is for sure.
Next week’s issue is our final communication of 2025 and it’ll be the Albums Of The Year special. After that I’ll be taking a loooong lie-down and returning in late January. I’d like to say a huge thank you to all our readers and especially to our generous advertisers without who none of this could happen.
Righto. Happy reading. There’s a lot of it this week. Bumper some would say.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
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JAMES WELSH ‘Stove Goblin’ (Phantasy)
The last Track Of The Week for 2025 and the prize goes to James Welsh. This is the first fruit from album, ‘Filaments’, which is due to land on 23 January. James is a mainstay of Erol Atkins’ Phantasy label, previously releasing as Kamera, but reverting to his own name for a raft of fine offerings that occupy the more esoteric end of house and techno that takes into account his hardcore/rave background and folds in a good dollop of experimental influences. This is 150th single to be released by the label and it is a belter. That’s quite a milestone for any label.
Being based in Yorkshire, the single “unfolds in the lineage of the forward-thinking electronic music that has long emerged from the region, forged in Leeds or Sheffield, echoing across the peaks and through the valleys that border Welsh’s studio”. Which is some big talk that fortunately James is a match for.
The Warp-esque release is described by his people as “crushed channels of digital rhythm spaciously unfold with cinematic intent”. It does indeed have a widescreen sound, with a flittering synth and skittish beats competing to fill the space.
The forthcoming album is rather brilliant too. We’ve been dealing in some incredibly personal work lately, I’m thinking of Raica’s brace of releases that deal with the loss of her mother and son. ‘Filaments’ too is a very personal record about the death of James’ infant son 10 years ago. The ‘Stove Goblin’ video, above, is by BAFTA award-winning Welsh director Kieran Evans, who has worked with, among others, the likes of Kylie, St Etienne, The Manics and Dexys and he’s made a rather affecting short film to go with the album. That will be available for your viewing in the new year too.
Roll on 2026, eh?
AGNES HAUS ‘Inexorable Ascent’ (Nite Hive)
There’s a truism in music world that says good people know good people. Pre-internet, this tended to bear itself out when you were talking to a band or artist you liked and they’d tell you about this other band/artist they knew/played with/heard about. You’d check them out and more often than not they’d be good too.
When the internet came along, MySpace magnified the truism. There was a “friends” box at the bottom of your profile page and you could handpick who appeared in that box, which meant that when MySpace became the go-to hub for all things music you could disappear down rabbit hole after rabbit hole checking out the musical works of friends of friends of friends. I had a blog in those days called My New Favourite Band, which was pretty much entirely sourced via that friends box and many lost hours delving.
These days, swamped as we are with the good stuff, you do have to be a little more on your toes, ready to dig a little deeper, but the truism is still happily at work. For example, Penelope Trappes’ ‘A Requiem’ album, there in the small print on the back it says “Tracks 2 & 6 additional production by Agnes Haus” and “mixed by Agnes Haus”. Indeed, only last Saturday at Penelope’s final live show of the year at St Matthias Church in Stoke Newington there was Agnes, a very accomplished multi-disciplinary creative director working with “video, motion, graphics, design, sound, and live A/V”, on percussion and visuals. Check out any of Penelope’s recent video or photographic work and you’ll find Agnes at the controls. It’s quite the body of work the Brighton-based duo have amassed, just take a rummage around at agnes.haus …
Which finds us arrive at ‘Inexorable Ascent’, Agnes’ third long-player, which is released on… wait for it… Penelope’s excellent Nite Hive label. Good people know good people.
There’s a lovely quote that comes with Agnes’ May 2024-released second album, ‘Everything Is Resurrection’, a record that deals with their coming out as non-binary. “I’m just here,” they write, “skimming through Voltaire, creating odd visuals and doing gothy aural shit with a modular synth at night – kind of amazing. Shrug.”
Love the “shrug” at the end. So what of the “gothy aural shit” then? Well, there’s no surprise Penelope and Agnes see eye to eye that’s for sure. Reading around, there’s a lot of use of the word “bleak” when Agnes’ work is mentioned. Sure, there are moments when it feels sombre, but I’d say it was atmospheric rather than bleak, it’s dark for sure, but there are moments, and this applies right across their catalogue, that are pure joy. A tune pops up here, a rhythm there, a melody breaks the surface, a thrum here, a twinkle there.
I’d thoroughly recommend time spent listening to the first two Opal Tapes-released albums, 2023’s ‘Sequel’ especially, closely followed by the longer form of ‘Everything Is Resurrection’. I’ll wait… let me know when you’re back, eh? Done? Good, good.
‘Inexorable Ascent’ was composed entirely between the hours of midnight and 4am. It is, say the notes, “a hallucinatory polyphonic study of external perceptions of what it means to live in a perpetual liminal state”, which is a sentence that takes some deconstruction I have to say. A little easier to grasp is the intention to make an album that felt “timeless and cinematic”.
‘Polyphyletic’ sounds rather magical, it’s the longest outing here at a little shy of nine minutes and feels like a work in three parts. It’s light on its toes to being with, it fades up slowly like it’s breathing in, filling its lungs as it arpeggiates rich, warm tones that build and build before fading away into the most gentle tip toe, like you’re picking your way through woodland lit only by the moon. And then it begins to sparkle, to dance, like coming across fairies dancing in a glade, or something. It builds again, getting louder, more shimmery, as it builds another sequence, this time nosier, more menacing, almost woodwind-y before evaporating once again. Lovely stuff.
‘Torment’ is great, it takes a gentle rhythm and repeats it over and over until it disappears like it’s been exhaled. It kind of dancefloor, but very much not, there’s some great whooshes and fizzes in there. ‘Temporal’ is ground-shakingly churchy, while a track like ‘Sacrifice’ sounds like the ghosts in the machine having a jam. There’s a pulse that phases in and out of focus among the background white noise like it’s being picked up in communications from the other side.
Like so much of this kind of work, ‘Inexorable Ascent’ is the sort of thing that can be poured over, focussed on and listened to deeply, or, like I often do in the Moonbuilding office, just leave it playing and let it catch your attention. Which this release does a lot. The deep, resonant single note ringing out on ‘Persona’ is always there, halfway through, to snap you back in should you drift too far out.
‘Inexorable Ascent’ is Anges’ best offering of “gothy aural shit” so far and it’s yet another triumph for Penelope Trappe’s Nite Hive label, which has been quiet this year as the boss has been busy with the mothership. Here’s hoping she can carve out a little more time in 2026 for the label and that we get more quality gear like this.
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GOOD STUFF #1
POLYPORES ‘Hungry Vortex’ (Feral Child)
Here’s a reunion we’ve waited a while for. Stephen James Buckley is back with Dom Martin, just about where it all started, but instead of this being a Poly Youth release it’s on the Feral Child sister imprint. It’s always a treat to have Polypores on vinyl and here we get four long tracks, all hovering around the 10/11-minute mark, across two sides of plastic. And will you look at that Jake Blanchard artwork, spot varnished it is too.
Stephen and Dom talk about this being Polypores’ most adventurous outing to date. Big talk eh? “I hope that’s true about each release I do,” Stephen laughed. “I’m always trying to push myself slightly further each time, otherwise... what’s the point?” And he does have a point.
‘Hungry Vortex’ is such a wild ride. I don’t know, I’ve listened to a lot of Polypores over the years, a lot, and this does seem like he’s pulled out all the stops for Dom. The opener, ‘The Body Is A Spaceship’ is intense. Full throttle and rhythmically driven, as is Stephen’s want at the moment, it builds until it swamps itself in a wall of sound. It fair sets the pulse racing when everything descends into a squall, it’s manic almost… and then, as quickly as it got frantic, it settles into a mesmeric swirl and glides to a safe exit.
The second track, ‘Wizards’ is bamboozling as the time signature shifts backwards and forwards in front of your very ears making you feel slightly giddy until it settles down, briefly, before upending itself and the time signature shifts again. It is masterful stuff. Over on the flip the title track lives in melodic Polypores territory. The BPMs are swift, easy nudging 200+ I’d say, but it doesn’t feel insane as the cosmic synth swirls over the top seem to smooth everything out. You almost stand up and applaud when it all gives way to some sort of prog flute solo (is it a flute? A recorder? Some sort of pipes?) and follow it with a pounding beat that seems to arrive from some distance away, like soldier marching towards you. Closer ‘Void High’ is utterly beautiful, fizzing and popping, swooping and swirling, fluttering and twittering. It’s Polypores at his epic, breathtaking ’Flora’ best.
I’m increasingly enjoying the “supported by” comments on Bandcamp. We were only talking about good people knowing other good people in the Agnes Haus review and here, on the Polypores page, we find Mark Burford (Field Lines Cartographer), Guerrilla Biscuits/Hymns For Robots’ Dave Shooter, Emotion Wave’s Neil Grant and Warrington-Runcorn’s Gordon Chapman-Fox waxing lyrical about this record. That’s a gang you want behind you. “Exhilarating” says Neil, which it really is. I think because there’s so much epically good music about we do tend to get complacent. Polypores, yeah, yeah, but you should never underestimate Stephen James Buckley. I’m not sure I can think of much else this year that has grabbed the attention and raised the pulse quite as much as this. And it’s so pleasing to see Stephen and Dom reunited. Nice one gents.
GOOD STUFF #2
SWANSITHER ‘Holding The Conch’ (self released)
Talk about an easy touch. As you know, anything with “moon” in it, artist names, album title, etc, tends to get a mention here, but you can go one step further to ensure coverage. Swansither’s Tom Kennedy understands this. The second track on his fifth long-player is called ‘Moonbuilding Day’. More of which shortly. First things first though, that artwork. Like 2024’s ‘The Waken’, this comes with a relief moulded sleeve. Is that what it’s called? Hang on, says here it’s a “low relief sculpture hand-made in a ‘burnished copper’ finish”. Talented chap is Tom. Lovely as these sleeves are neither of them fit on my CD shelves neat and tidy, so they live with my Black Grape ‘Stupid Stupid Stupid’ album, the one with the real googly eyes, lying on top of other CDs.
Anyway, this is the first Swansither output since the excellent ‘Ronsack’ earlier this year. There was a contribution to DiN’s final ‘Tone Science’ release, but this is Tom’s first full-length since and yet it's been in the bag for a while.
Tom says he’s had mastered mixes of ‘Holding The Conch’ since May 2023 and has released two other albums in that time. Over that period what he understood this release to be has changed, which is fascinating. The title is a reference to ‘Lord Of The Flies’ and the conch that allows the holder to speak in meetings. It represented democracy and order and when it is eventually destroyed so what it came to represent also vanishes as chaos ensues on the island.
Tom says the meaning at the time of writing was simple, it was about him finding his voice musically and, after four years, how he was beginning to feel more in control of his modular synthesis practice. Now, with a close family member suffering mental health problems, he says the title has taken on new meaning and is about how we are all on our own islands, in our own version of reality, and how having your say isn’t always a good thing. He talks about the importance of love in these situations, which I know only too well from my own family’s struggles with mental health. He believes that music is about “connecting with people, and therefore it’s about love. We may be on our own islands, but the ocean that connects us is love.”
‘Holding The Conch’ is very much a release you can draw on. It’s beautifully calm, for the most part. ‘Kindling’ really has the funk about it, the deep rolling bassline and the delicate repeated pattern lock into such a serious groove you almost hope a big drum kit kicks and lets the whole track kick off. It doesn’t of course it doesn’t.
There’s a pulse, a beat almost, to ‘Deep Sounding’ that sounds like a lo-fi, glitching Kraftwerkian twang, like ‘Autobahn’-y almost. I love the electrical pulse that scatters itself around the beat, ramping itself up and down as it goes, sounding almost like a purring cat in places. I’ve been writing about my formative experiences of listening to the radio recently, how you’d tune up and down the dial looking for European new wave stations drifting in on the nighttime ether. ‘Lurk Reflex’ sounds a little like that, a gentle buzz forms the bed and allows a warm melody, that sounds picked out on a guitar, to glide over the top as the whole thing gets noisier and nosier. With its rich arpeggiating sequence and resonant bassy throb, ‘Crester’ is so lovely. Oh, ‘Moonbuilding Day’, a choral swell of great beauty, of course.
This is a glorious release. And with the special cover it’s one for the Xmas list. Not for your mum probably, but you know.
GOOD STUFF #3
KAYLA PAINTER ‘Ambient Owl Core Vol 4’ (self released)
The arrival of a new ‘Ambient Owl Core’ offering from Kayla is always a good day. The series, which started out, you suspect, as a cheeky one-liner in Kayla’s busy schedule, has really taken on a life of its own and now, four volumes in, it has built a really solid fanbase all of its own with plays from Elizabeth Alker on Radio 3, 6Music’s New Music Fix and The Freakzone and fans including Hannah Peel and Richard Norris. There’s even merch.
And no wonder. Quick recap, ‘Owl Core’ is tracks inspired by the night, “under the moon” says Kayla. Moons again! See! It’s for “imaginative listening, featuring moments from our feathered friends and woodland creatures”. Don’t I know it. The opening track here, ‘Dreamlight At Midnight’ had my cat very confused. His ears were twitching all over the place, he could hear the little birds, but he couldn’t see them. He’s never caught one in his life, thankfully. London back gardens are small, cats need a runway to catch their little feathery friends who head upwards almost vertically when they sense danger. The track itself draws you in, crunching footsteps, bright birdsong, sounds off in the distance and a repeating tune, over and over. You can’t listen to this stuff loudly, I’ve had my speaker up loud for Thomas Ragsdale (see below) and forgot. This stuff, especially when the choral like vocal kicks in is not meant for loud.
“Who is ‘Ambient Owl Core’ for asks Kayla. “Anyone needing space or time to reflect,” she suggests. “Anyone who wants to connect to beauty in our natural world through sound. It’s for everyone. Spaces between the notes, or the moments between the time.” ‘Through The Veil’ swoops and sweeps, making soothing nighttime noises full of warm washes of bright synth chords lapping at the edge of sleep. Which this is perfect for. At around 25 minutes you can pop it on and let yourself drift off. There’s an organ sound that appears in ‘Moonlit Flight’ that I really like. It’s kind of choppy, swirly, very tuneful, like it’s arrived in a distant dream, the soundtrack to something else entirely. There’s the bright plink of a xylophone in there too, entwining with the recording of birds. Lots happening and at the same time all very, very peaceful. I think I like ‘Where The Hollow Tree Grows’ best. It has this squally squiggly synth attack part in it that really isn’t very peaceful, but the more the track goes on, the more restful you feel about it.
And again, continuing the theme of good people knowing good people there’s a couple of credits here – the mastering is by Jon Worsley, who is Kayla’s Jilk bandmate and earlier this year the pair of them hooked up for the Bricolage-released Sarno Ultra album, while the artwork by Dominique Finnegan, who you may know better as Yellow Belly.
Kayla is one of our most relentless artists, there’s always something coming your way from her, new work, live shows, new merch, and, as always, that something in this case is rather special.
GOOD STUFF #4
SULK ROOMS ‘Rewilding’ (Floodlit Recordings)
It seems that there has been something of bunfight to get releases out today, the last Bandcamp Friday of the year. I’ve been swamped this week so a thousand apologies if I’ve not got to yours. There just aren’t the hours in the day and I do need a little sleep now and again. Thomas Ragsdale’s Sulk Rooms landed with a new album in my inbox late on Wednesday. Apologising profusely for the late in the dayness, he is easily forgiven because his releases are getting increasingly unignoreable. If that’s a word. If it isn’t it is now.
Here his sound seems to be morphing too. Thomas describes it as a blend of electronica, shoegaze, techno and post rock, which isn’t narrowing things down much, but it’s as good a place to start as any. He says he’s broadened his palette, sonically, for this as well as his scope. Whereas previous outings have tended to sit in ambient electronic territory, here he’s working in much broader strokes “vast soundscapes” the notes say, “reminiscent of post-rock and metal”. Which is very interesting. The notes also talk about the constant in Thomas’ work being the organic elements and the natural world that surrounds him at home in Yorkshire. “Whereas previous Sulk Rooms albums have explored the tension and airless depths of distant machines creaking and aching, ‘Rewilding’ takes new flight into an open landscape of invigorating bliss”. Flipping heck eh?
And you know what? It does. ‘Innellea’ properly soars. Sky high. It has a peeling synth motif throughout that is ‘Tubular Bells’-ish, there’s a spoken word sample from Philip Larkin’s ‘The Trees’. “The trees are coming into leaf / Like something almost being said / The recent buds relax and spread / Their greenness is a kind of grief”. And there’s some lovely deep ravey chords that let the track curl up and then burst open like a ball of energy. This is glorious stuff and we’re only three tracks in.
There’s reference points to hang a hat on if you need – Belgian post-metal, South Yorkshire’s early industrialists, pioneers Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultz. Ambitious stuff for sure, but it is in the hands of someone very much up to the job. Each track, say the notes, is an invitation to “rediscover the natural world through a new, awe-filled lens”.
The tracks here aren’t lengthy, pop song sort of ball park, nine tracks with a run time of 40 minutes, the approved optimum runtime for an album in our view. ‘Hyper Action’ has those deep rave chords again, that sound reminds me of Nathan Micay’s ‘Blue Spring’, the theme to ‘Industry’, properly uplifting, full-throated, which this record is too. Maybe it’s me, I always pleased when I hear flecks of rave in electronic music, but this really has a undertow of the dancefloor about it. It’s not dance music, far from it, but it’s there in the sounds, in the vibe. There’s real power here too, proper umph. Tracks like ‘Needle Through A Butterfly’ (Thomas does have a way the visceral track title - remember ‘They Found Your Rotting Head (In A Peat Bog)’ from his last Two Way Mirrors album?) or ‘Tether’ are epic, huge, the bass clang on the later is like a bell tolling so loudly it takes out any other sound while it waits for the track to catch up. Which it does in some style.
This does feel like something of a step up for an artist who was already working at lofty heights.
floodlitrecordings.bandcamp.com
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THE ROUND UP’S ROUND UP
OK, on the home straight now. Let’s see what we can get through before it’s time to press send… Anthony Child’s ‘of the Beginning’ (Old Technology) is a magnificent piece of work. These tracks from the artist also known as Surgeon come in his Sunday name guise and as such are of the more downtempo flavour. They are no less hard hitting that his techno offerings though. There’s some lengthy tracks here and again, like Raica and Swansither, we are dealing with some difficult topics – the emotions used to make this release are listed as “grief, despair, gratitude, hope and love”, which feels hopeful to me. This stuff sounds like it’s full of songs trying escape, there’s melody here by the barrowload. I like how it’s held just on the brink, never allowed to full explode, but always there, on the edge of doing so. I love ‘Are We Being Served’, which has an ominous feel to start with, tentative almost. It them exposes an underbelly of a lovely dark melody. I’ve listened to this a fair bit and it feels like it gets more hopeful as it progresses even if titles like ‘Shipwrecked’ and ‘Gloaming’ feel heavy, weighty. ‘Lodestar’ especially seems to glitter in the sunlight with its bright arpeggiations and closer ‘My Head Feels Like An Open Window’ does have a spring like feel in its step.
You just can’t seem to keep Sheffield in its box at the moment. Clock DVA’s debut album, ‘White Souls In Black Suits’ (The Grey Area Of Mute) was originally released as a limited edition cassette on Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial Records in December 1980. Which I don’t need to remind anyone who was living and breathing at the time is a mere 45 years ago. Freshly remastered, and by all accounts an truly excellent job, and available on grey vinyl and CD, it’s being made available here for the first time in 35 years. At the helm these days it’s just Adi Newton, but back when this was recorded at Cabaret Voltaire’s Western Works studio there was a line-up that featured the late Steven “Judd” Turner on bass, David J Hammond on guitar, Charlie Collins on sax, flute and percussion, Roger Quail on percussion and Simon M Elliott-Kemp on synth. In the room also were all three members of The Cabs and Adi’s flatmate, Martin Fry. I mean, to be at those sessions must’ve been something. ‘White Souls In Black Suits’ shivers with the sort of ideas that would go on to obsess Richard Kirk – “It evokes a world of surveillance, obsession, and psychological decay,” offers the accompanying notes. This is an incredible record, recorded in a single day it’s such a loose canon full of funk, rock, pop melodies, musique concrete, jazz, squally sax, discordant guitar noise, “a unique sonic alchemy” indeed. Expect a reissue/remaster of the second album, ‘Thirst’ to be with us next year. These first two albums were released within a month of each other either side of Xmas 1980 after which they promptly split up. Delighted to see them back in action too. I was at their show last week in deepest Walthamstow. It was brilliant, even if the venue, a trendy brewery on some godforsaken industrial estate seemed incongruous, but that’s the wonderful Adi Newton for you.
Justin Robertson returns with the second part of his Five Green Moons series, ‘Moon 2’ (Solitary Cyclist). Yes, OK, it is all about the moons over here. Just stick the word “moon” in your name and I’ll write about it. Except this is Justin Robertson, he hardly needs try to get me writing about him. If you missed ‘Moon 1’, it’s “a haunted ballroom full of memories”, that finds him “delving into his roots and digging around”. The project sees him channelling his formative influences, namely dub-fuelled post-punk, the likes of PiL, The Pop Group and On-U, and the hallucinatory side of psyche so Coil and Current 93 et al. He’s been working with Brix Smith too, which adds proper post punk appeal. She’s here twice, on ‘Lost In The Static’ and the brilliant ‘Boudicea’. There’s something about Brix still that sets of a ripple of excitement. He did a great EP with her a couple of years back, ‘Brix Goes Tubular’, which is well worth tracking down. Anyway. This is brilliant stuff. But of course it is. Find Justin’s Linktree here
Another week, another mention of Neil Stringfellow’s fine Audio Obscura project. After last week’s Mortality Tables release, Neil dropped me a line to say that he’s releasing a DVD featuring a rare hour-long short edit of Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ with a new soundtrack by him. He performed it live last week in Lewisham to a sold out audience where it went down so well he sold a whole heap of DVDs. Which means there aren’t that many to go round on Bandcamp so don’t sit around if you want to snag a copy. audioobscura.bandcamp.com
Like Neil, Eric over at Plenty Wenlock got in touch to tell me about the reissue of his debut release for Wayside & Woodland as EL Heath. ‘Snailbeach Mines Trust’ sold out pretty quick and hasn’t been available for the last 15 years. This anniversary edition is an “extended reissue of the album, remixing it from the ground up, into a longer, more immersive and textural release,” says Eric. The original tracks have been remastered by Ben Holton of Epic45/Wayside & Woodland along with previously unheard tracks that were set to be a follow-up EP and a collection of field recordings from the time. “We’ve tried to focus on leaving the noises in, letting the tracks breathe,” says Eric. The album itself is aural exploration of site of the Snailbeach Lead Mine, once the largest mine of its kind in England and close to where Eric grew up in Shropshire. “It’s a new and more expansive take on the original album. We’re putting it out in a brand-new gatefold digisleeve with new artwork as well as some very thoughtful liner notes from Ben, a really fitting package all round I think.” I think so too. Again, don’t hang about, stuff like this won’t be around for long.
I said last week I’d mention ‘Melodies’, the latest release from Konstantinos Giazlas’ Onepointtwo. The label, SubExotic, say it’s “a reflective journey through shifting states of memory, emotion, and perception”. I really love the minimalism of Onepointtwo and here we get that both barrels, albeit quite barrels. As always, it’s lovely stuff.
The soundtrack to ‘The Shout’ (Buried Treasure) by the late, great Rupert Hine is quite a piece of work. The 1978 film is a British horror flick based on a short story by Robert Graves. It features a blockbusting cast including Alan Bates, Susannah York and John Hurt and tells the tale of a mysterious character called Crossley (Bates) who comes into the lives of a young couple Rachel and Anthony Fielding (York and Hurt). Anthony is a composer who experiments with sound effects in his secluded Devon studio (a bit like Benge, really). Crossley is slowly revealed to be increasingly sinister and claims to have learned from a shaman how to reproduce a murderous “terror shout”. The entire soundscape for the film, so the score and audio effects were all created by Rupert Hine, an uber producer who worked with the likes of Rush, Susanne Vega, Howard Jones, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and the Thompson Twins. He even created Crosslet’s terrifying death shout and other foley effects including the musique concrete John Hurt’s character was composing in the flick. Another triumph from Buried Treasure, it’s been quite a year for them with some belting releases.
A couple more. There’s a second Names On Tapes album following up ‘We Weren’t Programmed For This’, which only landed with us in early October, comes ‘After the Fact’ (No Input). This new one from London-based duo of Four Tet collaborator Neil Kleiner and experimental guitarist Stacey Hine from the long-lost The Sailplanes is, say the notes, “six pieces of anger, breath and beauty”. They say that “if the debut traced the degradation of memory, this one confronts the chaos of a post-truth world”. It is “angrier, more abstract and noticeably more physical”. The guitars come up front and cut through the “tape-scarred electronics, vintage drum machines and synths”. The whole thing is carried by live instruments - drums, woodwind, brass and strings. The 13-minute ‘The Overlap’ is quite unruly. Blips and bleeps usher in discordant guitar out of which comes almost dancefloor beats and even more racketous guitar. It’s all rather good. They’re interesting are these two.
One eye on the clock now, really am running out of time. I really like Shine Grooves ‘Free Waltz’ (Artificial Owl). It’s the work of “Yekaterinburg’s multifaceted electronic music visionary Andrey Kurokhtin” say the label. Had to look up Yekaterinburg didn’t I. It’s the fourth most populous city in Russia, and one of country’s main cultural and industrial centres. So there. ‘Free Waltz’ is a collection of tracks recorded between 2016 and 2024. The opener ‘Kazumi’ is very cool, kind of tech housey, a bit squelchy, very sleek, while the title track sounds very New York/Taxi Driver sleaze, which is fitting because the label, Artificial Owl, is New York-based. It’s a label worth an explore, they did a great Takeo Watanabe album last spring. Do check them out.
Righto, that’s us done review-wise for 2025. We hope you have enjoyed what we’ve up to this year. Have a happy winter break, or a happy Xmas if you celebrate that kind of thing. See you next week for our Album Of The Year lowdown/hoedown.
MOONBUILDING ISSUE 6 … SOLD OUT
Holy cow. MOONBUILDING Issue 6 is completely 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 meet 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.
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Slightly late to the party..but a big thank you for introducing me to the twilight tunes of Ambient Owl Core and Kayla Painter..divine
Hello! You've done it again. Too much to search for today - good job there's not another one till the new year, I say! I've been down a completely different rabbit hole with Dub/Americana back to the woods (literally, he lives somewhere off grid in Wales) singer songwriter, Jeb Loy Nichols. What can you do?