Issue 98b / 6 March 2026
The essential DIY electronic music lowdown: Track Of The Week: Larrison + Album Of The Week: Andrew Wasylyk + Cynthia Bernard + Scholars Of The Peak + War Child's 'HELP(2)' + more...
I hope you enjoyed the bonus Book Of The Week newsletter yesterday featuring Ian Watson’s ‘The Tunnels’. It’s his debut novel and he’s embarked on a DIY journey to publish it, which is fascinating. We had a great chat about it all, which is bundled up with a review of the book and an exclusive extract. It’s part of my doing things a little differently drive I’m on. Let me know what you think? Missed it? You’ll find it here.
The Moonbuilding writers’ pool expands once again with the addition of Phil Hubbard this week. We wrote about Phil’s excellent ‘Listening To The Landscape’ book in last week’s issue. It seemed to me he’d be good fit for us, especially if he brings a little of his academic rigour to proceedings. Which I’m pleased to say he has.
Finally, 122 Music Management have been in touch about a pop-up record shop called Table Turners that they’re setting up for independent artists/labels in Forest Hill, south-east London, from 31 March-5 April 2026. They’re looking to hear from DIY artists and labels who would like to take part and have their produce in-store and sold on their behalf. Looks like Moonbuilding will be signing up. Why not join us. You can find all the details at 122musicmanagement.com/table-turners
Righto, that’s us then. Happy reading.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 98 Playlist: Listen
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LARRISON ‘Rewind’ / ‘Fancy Free’ (Freedom To Spend)
Videos: AM Galek (Contagious Yawns)
Oh goodness me, when this landed last week it was a total down tools moment. Swoon. Even if it does make me slightly suspicious. It is not uncommon for things like this to be a front for a contemporary musician who wants to give their work some retro allure. I trust the guys at the New York-based RVNG Int offshoot Freedom To Spend, so let’s take this tale as the gospel.
This is a first public airing for the work of midwestern visual artist and musician Larrison Seidle, which is remarkable when you consider much of this music dates back to the 90s. The story goes that when Larrison moved to Texas after completing his art school studies near his hometown in Indiana, he rediscovered the Casio CZ-5000 his dad had bought him when he was 13. It is a classic early 90s synth, Vince Clarke used the entire CZ series extensively, while other users include The Thompson Twins, 808 State, A-Ha, The Orb, Jimi Tenor and Jean-Michel Jarre. So anyway, Larrison began laying down a series of sparkling, melody-laden experiments using just the CS-5000.
The tracks here have never been released, but they did pass across the desk of Daniel Plunkett, who the label explain was the editor and publisher of ND, an influential 80s/90s mag focused on DIY music and tape trading. It seems Larrison had compiled his work onto a cassette called ‘Connecters’ for the magazine’s consideration. He wasn’t alone, it was one of more than 1,200 tapes submitted to the publication between 1982-1999. In 2020 the entire archive was acquired by Freedom To Spend co-founder Jed Bindeman who began to work his way through the haul.
“I was getting major ear fatigue listening to the tapes in this collection,” says Jed. “But then I put on Larrison’s ‘Connecters’ and was immediately like, ‘Whoa! What am I listening to?’.”
I did much the same when listening to this stuff last week. ‘Connecters Vol. 1: Original Recordings, 1992–1999’ features tracks from that lost tape along with cuts from Larrison’s continued audio explorations throughout the 90s. There’s 26 tracks on the album, little over two minutes, all killer. It’s released by Freedom To Spend on 3 April.
ANDREW WASYLYK ‘Irreparable Parables’ (Clay Pipe Music)
Words: PHIL HUBBARD
There are many record companies in the UK routinely described as boutique labels: independent, niche-focused labels releasing carefully-curated, small-run vinyl and tape editions purchased by a devoted cognoscenti who rely on the label’s ability to deliver quality time after time. The electronic scene boasts many of these: modern classical Whitelabrecs, South Yorkshire tape label Woodford Halse, or Brighton’s Home Normal, for example, successfully marry a meticulous design aesthetic to a specific musical genre or sub-genre, creating artifacts that deserve to be collected and cherished in an era of online streaming and disposable virtual content.
But asked which record label best deserves this epithet, there’s one I would reach for every time: Clay Pipe Music. Founded in 2011 by illustrator Frances Castle as an outlet for her own work as The Hardy Tree, over more than 50 limited-edition LPs and EPs it has carved out a reputation for high-quality releases combining visually stunning artwork and atmospheric, largely instrumental, music. Though early releases included Cate Brooks’ hauntronica, and Frances’ own woozy synthesised soundscapes, the label’s musical palette now stretches beyond the electronic to embrace organic, acoustic and diverse instrumentation, veering into folk, neo-psychedelia and modern classical.
Listening to some of the label’s output from 2025 – notably, multi-instrumentalist David Boulter’s ‘Whitby’, Rural Tapes’ ‘Oneric’ (by Norwegian composer Arne Mathisen), or Cate Brooks’ musical summoning of the Lofoten islands, one might be hard pressed to pigeonhole Clay Pipe’s output as belonging to any specific genre. But rather than being defined by a slavish adherence to any musical style, what every Clay Pipe release offers is an excursion into a half-remembered or imagined landscape. Clay Pipe releases gently explore how identities are connected to places, whether the frigid beaches of north-east England or the sun-dappled Norwegian countryside in midsommar.
Given this emphasis on real and imagined landscape, there’s a remarkable synergy between Clay Pipe’s modus operandi and Scottish multi-instrumentalist and composer Andrew Wasylyk’s jazz-infused electronica. Over the last decade, Wasylyk – aka Andrew Mitchell, bass player in Idlewild since 2015 and formerly lead guitarist and vocalist of the Dundonian indie band Hazey Janes – has issued a series of albums threaded with the influences of people and place, with the mini-album ‘Themes For Building And Spaces’ (2017) providing the blueprint for subsequent releases, hushed orchestration and quiet pastoral modernism, simple piano melodies with occasional brass and strings, all underpinned by cool, jazz-infused percussion, with nods to late-period Talk Talk or David Axelrod.
Inspired by his native Dundee and the east coast of Scotland, this modern chamber music has often explored spaces suspended between decay and rebirth, with his Clay Pipe debut, 2021’s ‘Balgay Hill: Morning in Magnolia’, offering a mediative stroll through a Dundee park that twisted familiar pastoral themes into a post-COVID exegesis on the redemptive power of nature. Musically, ‘Irreparable Parables’ mines the same rich vein of multi-textured and delicate chamber pop, but marks a departure in that most of the tracks here feature vocals, with Wasylyk having sent these pieces out to six singers who recorded their vocals remotely and then returned them, like migrating birds, to Wasylyk. The role call here is impressive – Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals, Kathryn Joseph, Peter Brewis of Field Music, Molly Linen, Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch and Saya Ueno from Japan’s avant-pop band, Tenniscoats.
Each is represented by one of six songbirds illustrated on the sleeve by Frances Castle. The cuckoo, for example, is a nod to Belle And Sebastian’s 2004 single ‘I’m A Cuckoo’, with Stuart Murdoch featuring on opening track ‘Private Symphony #2’. Here, lush strings arranged by Wasylyk’s long-term collaborator, composer and cellist Peter Harvey, provide the backing to one of Murdoch’s typically vulnerable lyrics, hinting at a musician who refuses to engage with their wider public, living a closeted existence: Murdoch wistfully implores ‘Don’t be tortured by the path you never took, missing the intimacy and love that never grew’.
Murdoch’s presence here is telling given the album often nods to the whimsical, Scottish outsider pop tradition that stretches back from Belle And Sebastian to The Pastels and Orange Juice, talking in Bill Wells and Camera Obscura en route.
The addition of vocals on this album lightens Wasylyk’s music, and even though it has more sombre moments – ‘Spectators In The Absence Of God’ is an apocalyptic eco-hymn – there’s a sunny Scottish optimism here. ‘Love Is A Life That Lasts Forever’, featuring Molly Linen, is built round a gentle electronic groove and a bright brass riffs, and could have been on Looper’s overlooked homespun 1999 classic ‘Up A Tree’, given its twee-hugging evocation of the halcyon days of youth; the instrumental ‘The First Moonbeams Of Adulthood’ is cool jazz transplanted from the West Coast of America to Tayside, soprano sax dancing in the crepuscular light of a summer’s evening. ‘The Cold Collar’ is a real highlight, recalling Eric Matthews’ 1990s lush ork-pop, but with Gruff Rhys’ humorous lyric about hiding from an unwanted caller behind the settee signing off with a whispered and hilarious ‘fuck you, buddy’.
There is then something of an irony in listening to ‘Irreparable Parables’ during the wettest start of the year for decades, the soggy Black Dog of winter refusing to depart quickly or quietly. For this is a distinctly warm record, that deserves to soundtrack the heat-hazed summer as it gives way to the mellowness of autumn. And though it’s not easy to pin down this album to a particular place, there’s a childlike innocence here that summons forth memories of long summer holidays and first loves, kicking leaves in Kelvingrove, or Clare Grogan and John Gordon Sinclair dancing in a Cumbernauld park, spinning on the edge of the earth as the sun goes down.
The addition of guest vocalists certainly makes ‘Irreparable Parables’ more playful and accessible than Wasylyk’s previous albums, but musically, it remains both impressionistic and subtle – and for those that prefer their Clay Pipe instrumental, there is a remixed and voxless companion piece, the alliterative ‘Inundated Indentations’, available.
Either way, it’s an absorbing piece of work that deserves repeated spins, and another compelling entry in Clay Pipe’s hugely impressive roster.
Phil’s book, ‘Listening To The Landscape’ is out now and available from bloomsbury.com/uk/listening-to-landscape Use the code GLR AT8 for a generous discount. All royalties to Kent Refugee Action Network.
Got something you need to tell us about? email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
VARIOUS ARTISTS ‘Gentle Voices, Vol. 1’ (Echoes Blue Music)
The Los Angeles-based producer, artist and curator, Cynthia Bernard, is a name Moonbuilding readers should be familiar with by now. I’ve written about her many and various projects a fair bit it’s safe to say. Need a catch up? Well, she puts together a monthly playlist called Women Of Ambient, which is excellent. The playlist began on International Women’s Day in 2021 and hasn’t let up since.
She releases her own work as marine eyes, which is excellent, as well as in collaboration with her husband James Bernard as awakened souls, which is excellent too. She also writes a newsletter called Cloud Collecting, where she shares short interviews about creativity with woman and gender expansive artists, it’s also where you’ll find her Women Of Ambient collections and updates on marine eyes. Guess what? Yup. Excellent.
And now it seems the newsletter has spawned a musical offshoot of its own. In collaboration with Anita Tatlow of the Echoes Blue Music label, ‘Gentle Voices, Vol. 1’ is a 10-track collection featuring pairing of female artists responding to the theme “gentle voices”.
Released ahead of International Women’s Day on Sunday (8 March), it marks the fifth anniversary of Cynthia’s Women Of Ambient project in some style. The artists come from around the world, 15 different countries are represented, and the results are utterly lovely. The feeling of calm and serenity that descends across the first three tracks – Applefish + Líom’s ‘traces of tomorrow’, Gollden + IKSRE’s ‘eclipses’ and Anita Tatlow + Jun Futamata’s ‘silent aura’ – is gorgeous.
From this very solid grounding the record only grows in stature. Aphir + Drum & Lace’s ‘resin’, the work of Australia’s Becki Whitton and London-based Italian Sofia Hultquist, is such a rich sounding piece of work. With a feel of This Mortal Coil, it takes an ethereal vocal and slowly builds layers and layers of rich, warm synths underneath it. It is a corker.
Keeping to the theme of shimmering vocal, Cynthia teams up with Poland’s Asia Dojnikowska for ‘that the light is everything’, a gentle piano lament, melody, and that drifty voice built into a dream-like drift. Piano stays to the fore with Alanna Crouch + Freya Arde’s ‘when rain falls’. London-based Alanna talks about the track being “written as a way to express my emotions when I couldn’t say any words to help a situation”, which the strings composed by German multi-instrumentalist give the work a real Max Richter flavour. This is film soundtrack good.
As is Birds Of Passage + Jolanda Moletta’s ‘mountain ascent at dusk’, which finds New Zealand’s Alicia Merz and Italy’s Jolanda being “inspired by drinking morning coffee in our different landscapes alongside a soundtrack by Badalamenti”. You can imagine how good that sounds. Yolanda’s partner in crime, Karen Vogt (France-based Australian), comes on strong here too with ‘standing start’ along with Inquiri (US-based Lacey Harris - it would have been fun to team her with Drum And Lace, no?). Karen’s glorious sea siren vocal really lifts the album closer to epic heights. This is such a dynamic way to finish the release. It’s one of those tracks that demands you take a moment of silence when it’s done just to let it sink in.
As is a lot of the work here is soundtrack good. I always like the story that Eno’s ‘Music For Films’ wasn’t actually a concept piece offering soundtracks to imaginary films, but a calling card for the film industry to use his work in their productions. I think half a dozen of the tracks were already being used in feature film when the album’s original limited release of 500 copies landed on the desks of filmmakers. The cheek. You can see how this release could well have a similar impact put in the right hands. Wonderful stuff.
GOOD STUFF #2
SCHOLARS OF THE PEAK ‘The Seawatch Observatory Tapes’ (Woodford Halse)
Drew Huddart is an artist who has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. It was April 2024 when he first appeared with his debut six-track EP, ‘The Peak’. He sent me an introductory email that I’ve dug out. I hope he doesn’t mind. In it he said “I’ve only half an idea of what I’m doing and this is simply put together by me at home at this stage”. I mean, that applies to us all doesn’t it? That debut EP was impressive as is the increasing catalogue that’s followed ever since.
Based in the Peak District, his work so far has tended to centre around the area. Here he take a right turn and heads for the coast, leaving The Dales and heading for the North Sea. Flamborough Seawatch Observatory, near Bridlington to be precise. It’s just down the road from the Flamborough Head lighthouse. You’ve got to love a lighthouse, right? Flamborough Head was built in 1806, is an active lighthouse, and occupies the same site as the fog signal station. A fog station! The romance of it all. And then you discover there’s two lighthouses on the site. The original “Chalk Tower” was built in 1674, but was never lit and it’s a Grade II* listed building these days.
Mat Handley at the label also talks about their be a “certain romantic thread running through these 11 pieces that will resonate with anyone who enjoys out of season trips to the seaside when the beaches are empty, dog walking is permitted and the chances of spotting puffins, curlews and oystercatchers are high.”
That Mat is a fan of Scholars speak volumes. He debuted on Woodford Halse with ‘Transmissions From Mother Hill’ last autumn. “I was reluctant to consider a ‘follow up’ so soon after the brilliant ‘Mother Hill’,” explains Mat. “But then I listened to it!”
Yup.
“We had our family holiday up on the Yorkshire coast during the summer of 2024,” Drew tells me. “We went on the coastal walk around Flamborough Head and I spent a good few hours, as I did most days, making recordings of our surroundings. It was one of those afternoons I think about when I'm stuck at my desk at work.”
Over to Mat again who notes that Drew should land bonus points “for including the second best use of the BBC Shipping Forecast after Thomas Dolby’s 12-inch version of ‘Windpower’ on the opener ‘Eyes On The Horizon, Ears Tuned To The Deep’.
“I have a love for the Shipping Forecast so I try to give a little nod to that in the opening track,” says Drew.
I really love ‘No Keeper Left To Answer’, which operates in the same ballpark and sounds like a stripped down version of ‘Sailing By’, the Shipping Forecast music. The track has a peel to it, as much of Drew’s work does what with him being a bellringer. Something like ‘Fog Log 1809 GMT’ has the same vibe. The ringing of an actual bell (which isn’t the fog alarm as that’s one long blast on the, well, fog horn) starts things off and we build beautifully from there.
Drew is no stranger to melody, he really brings his A-game to play here. There’s the haunted piano of ‘Last Glow Over The Water’, while ‘Northbound Frequencies’ sounds like an alt version of ‘Electric Dreams’ or perhaps Giorgio remixing something by The Go-Gos, it just needs Belinda Carlisle, or you know, Phil Oakey, dropping in. It is belting. ‘Moments In Motion’ is just as strong with some seriously lovely arpeggiation.
The more you listen, and I’ve had it on repeat over several session this week, the better it gets. I love Drew’s sound. Said this before I’m sure, but the bellringer in him gives his work a different slant, a fresh way of coming at things. Really love this. It’s the best yet from Scholars Of The Peak.
GOOD STUFF #3
ANON ‘MMXXV’ (Mortality Tables)
And we keep mixing it up. This is such an interesting release I thought I’d hand over to Mat Smith from Mortality Tables to explain. Which he does beautifully.
‘MMXXV’ is an album by an anonymous electronic artist. It is being released by Mortality Tables.
It is part of an ongoing ‘finite project’ – to use Neil’s own expression – which has featured pieces by Jess Brett, Rupert Lally, Christopher Nosnibor, Cumsleg Borenail, alka, Gareth Jones, Asher Levitas, The Music Liberation Front Sweden, Sketching Venus, Jon Wozencroft, Dave Clarkson and Xqui. There are many more still to follow.
This artist has been featured in Moonbuilding more than once. Their style of music is distinctive, original and recognisable. But we’re not saying who this is by. If you know, you know. If you don’t, you won’t.
But maybe you’ll find out. The only way to identify this artist is by listening to the final track on ‘MMXXV’, a CDr made by the artist themselves.
There are 20 CDrs.
Each one contains eight tracks.
The mixes of those eight tracks are different on each CDr.
Each CDr contains a different pressed flower that was picked in 2025.
The only thing that’s consistent across each of the CDrs is the reveal of the artist at the very end.
There is no digital edition, and there will be no digital edition. Only one track, ‘Oak’, is being made available digitally. When the CDrs have sold out, ‘Oak’ will be felled, and all of its digital sawdust will be removed.
‘MMXXV’ forms part of The Impermanence Project, where artists from different disciplines – writers, poets, photographers, designers, painters, musicians, sound artists were invited to contribute a piece inspired by the topic of ‘impermanence’. It is a word that haunted me my entire life until my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2018, at which point I had no choice but to confront mortality head-on.
Most, if not all, Mortality Tables Products deal with this topic.
Most Mortality Tables Products involve a conceptual idea that artists are invited to respond to. With The Impermanence Project, that creative stimulus was reduced to one word: impermanence.
A small word. A big topic.
This anonymous artist decided to use the stimulus in multiple ways. There is the uniqueness of each CDr and its unique mixes. There is the flower, plucked from life and preserved until it one day turns to dust. There is reference to the cherished oak tee under which Goethe wrote his poetry, which, in time, was surrounded by the Buchenwald concentration camp, and then destroyed by an Allied air raid. There is reference to W G Sebald’s ruminations on life, existence, memory and an effort to become immortal through artistic legacy. There are haikus concerning the turning year, the frailty of snowflakes, the flowing waters of streams and the ramifications of climate change. It includes a letter of complaint about the passage of time.
It is a series of discrete experiences, each one viscerally contemplating the notion of fleeting temporality, framed by this artist’s use of strings, intricate electronics and masterful, enveloping sound design. Just don’t ask me who it is.
Mat Smith
Head of Collaboration, Mortality Tables
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THE ROUND UP’S ROUND UP
I do need to start with War Child’s latest fundraising collection, ‘HELP(2)’ (War Child Records), which is out today. As you may know, I worked at War Child in the 00s running a music download site called warchildmusic.com so all this is close to my heart. In 2005 we put released an album called ‘Help: The Day In A Life’, which marked the 10th anniversary of the release of the original ‘Help’ album. I know how hard doing something like this is. With our release, featuring the likes of Coldplay, Radiohead, Gorillaz, Elbow and so on, we raised over £500k and spent it getting children off the streets in war-torn Iraq. We might say that was the follow up to ‘Help’, which actually makes this HELP(3)’, but who’s counting? Not me, nope.
It’s hard to not think about the the power of War Child’s work, especially this week when children across the middle east are being put in danger as a direct result of decisions made by our supposed allies. And for what? Children should never be affected by war and yet around the world they continue to do so.
The line-up for ‘Help(2)’ is impressive. It’s produced by James Ford and features 23 tracks from the likes of Pulp, Wet Leg, Bats For Lashes, Fontaines DC, Depeche Mode, Arctic Monkeys, Damon Albarn and many more. I hope it goes on to have the sort of impact the original ‘Help’ album did all those years ago. That record brought huge awareness to the plight too many children were facing in the war in Bosnia. Roll forwards to 2026 and War Child are working in partnership with local organisations in 14 countries as well as providing emergency support when conflict breaks out. They launched an emergency appeal this week. Their statement about the situation in the middle east, which is worth reading. It’s here.
Please support their fine work if you can.
You can buy ‘HELP (2)’ here. You can make a donation here.
Here’s something I’m liking a lot. Tree Trunks ‘Hot Fruit’ (Slop) is being described as 80s bedroom pop, which I am always a sucker for. It’s the work of duo Sam Lewis and Robert Hunter who met playing in live bands, including Francois & The Atlas Mountains, which is a big tick for me. There’s a lot of comparisons flying round. The notes say Kindness, Panda Bear and Hot Chip… hm, Hot Chip are total blindspot for me. Don’t get it. They’re just so vanilla. Deb Grant and Nathan Shepherd on 6Music say “a little bit Prefab Sprout and a little bit Prince”, which is funny. It reminds me of Stephen Black’s Sweet Baboo or The Pictish Trail, it has that charm, that sort of quirk, that good songwriting nouse.
They are quite the magpies when it comes to song titles. They pinch the titles of songs they like and work up their own tracks from those starting points. So ‘Hold Me’ is a Fleetwood Mac song and their track of the same name does have a little Mac-like shimmer. There’s ‘Over And Over’, which is nicked from Hot Chip (urgh) and ‘Skylarking’, which is XTC (hurrah). Tree Trunks came to via a PR I really trust, Hannah Gould, who likes the single ’Tiempo’. “It has Latin-pop inspired slowed down reggaeton beat,” she says, “and the lyrics are a dreamlike stream of consciousness about fatherhood, the pandemic and freeing Palestine.” Sound marvellous doesn’t it? ‘Overtime’ is very cool too, one of those laidback type songs that has a low-slung funk to it. I’ll be digging this one out again when summer arrives I think.
Fields We Found’s ‘Landscape’ series is shaping up nicely. The fourth release arrived yesterday, it’s one long track, around 20 minutes, of “analogue drones and tape layers”. FWF is the recording alias of Alex Gold, of the wonderful quiet details label, and the Bandcamp page is stuffed with little gems like this. Alex said at the beginning of the year he started mediating again and was making his own soundtracks, which is what these are and he is kindly sharing then with us all - for free or pay what you want. Like I said, there’s now four ‘Landscape’ releases, listened back to back that’s an hour and 40 minutes very well spent.
Joachim Spieth’s ‘Vestige’ deepens the Stuttgart-based Affin label boss’ “exploration of spatial sound, expanding the ambient–dub vocabulary developed on recent works like ‘Retrace’.” It’s funny, you do this kind of thing for long enough… I’ve done it a while… and you get to see the patterns. There’s a little cabal of producers making work like this, they all know each other, release work on each other’s labels, collaborate in various combinations. You know, it’s people like Markus Guentner, Rafael Anton Irisarri and his Black Knoll Editions label, Steve Hauschildt, zake and PITP. Only the other week we were talking about Rafael’s new album, there was a Markus album at the end of Jan, ‘On Brutal Soil, We Grow’, it’s the one with the ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ cover vibes. Anyway, these dudes are making some very serious deep ambient music. It’s good to know they are swirling around each like this. But back to ‘Vestage’. “The album,” says Joachim, “moves between vast atmospheres and finely detailed textures, examining how minimal sound particles can carry presence and motion.” Blimey. It does what all these guys do and builds these huge slabs of sound, but quietly so. This really is vast. The bass here is low, deep and rumbling. Try ‘Sonomorph’ for size. It is gigantic. You know those images you see of NASA wheeling rockets into position inch by inch. It’s like that, but in sound. What’s more, it’s not something that’s going to take up half your day either. Sometimes these outings can be a little lengthy. This a seven tracks, clocking in at the 40 minute mark, which as I’ve said countless times is the perfect length. Fits on one side of C90. Two albums on one tape. Happy days.
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 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.
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thanks Neil for all your kind words about gentle voices, vol. 1 album and the collab track I did with Inquiri/Lacey <3 Great to have your support for this release!!
great edition as always! thanks for your support and kind words on gentle voices!