Plaid have just released a digital-only single entitled Faster, which was recorded to showcase Apple’s new Logic Studio music software suite. The six-minute piece is the first new recording from Plaid since the release of their 2006 audio-visual feast Greedy Baby and the soundtrack to anime film Tekkon Kinkreet, currently still only available on import only. The DVD of the Japanese animated movie was released at the end of September, and the film will be premiered in the UK on Thursday 29 November at the Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea, Wales, as part of Swansea Animation Days (SAND).

The band have also announced two UK dates, the first one on Saturday 20 October 2007, at Ginglik, London (DJ set), and the second on 2 November at Spectrum, Nottingham (live).

Plaid | Warp Records | Taliesin Arts Centre

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SAM AMIDON
All Is Well
HVALUR4CD/LP
Bedroom Community 2007
10 Tracks. 47mins49secs

In just over a year, Icelandic imprint Bedroom Community, headed by Björk and Bonnie Prince Billy (amongst others) collaborator Valgeir Sigurðsson, have distilled some of the most interesting records around, first with Nico Muhly’s delicate Speaks Volumes, then with Ben Frost’s textural Theory Of Machines, and, more recently with Sigurðsson’s own stellar pop opus Ekvilibrium.

Joining them is folk singer Sam Amidon, a twenty-six year old musician from Brattleboro, Vermont, who currently lives in New York. He shares his time between his solo project and various bands, including Doveman, Stars Like Fleas and The Amidons, a band formed by his parents and dedicated to traditional dance and music forms. Continue Reading »

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THE BLACK DOG
Temple Of Transparent Balls
SOMACD063
GPR 1993 / Soma Quality Recordings 2007
11 Tracks. 62mins09secs

Temple Of Transparent Balls was originally released on General Production Recordings (GPR) a few months after the seminal Bytes (1993, Warp), and was followed a couple of years later by Parallel, which collected three of the band’s early EPs. Following the demise of the label in 1996, original copies of both albums became very difficult to track down. They were both reissued in 2002, but the poor quality of the artwork likened them to cheap bootlegs, making this a long awaited re-release.

Earlier this year, Scottish imprint Soma Quality Recordings released Book Of Dogma, a double album collecting Parallel and a handful of other early EPs, all in full remastered glory. Now, Temple Of Transparent Balls gets the same treatment. Continue Reading »

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SWOD
Sekunden
TOWERBLOCK041
City Centre Offices 2007
09 Tracks. 41mins04secs

While Swod deviate little from the blueprint laid down on their first full-length effort, their ability to trim their music back to the essentials so as to arrive at a simple, eloquent statement remains firmly entrenched and effective. Similar to an artist who purposefully rejects any vibrant colors so to focus on shades of grey, Oliver Doerell and Stephan Wohrmann achieve an appropriate evening austerity on Sekunden. The piano, as the primary focus, is quietly ominous and melancholic, shaded lightly by electronics which add melodic elaboration on themes, scratchy stridulations, dry rattling, and, on ocassion, abstracted twittering.

Individual works are finely compact and move swiftly in unison. Ja and Exit in particular, manage to achieve a close proximity through shared textures, complementary phrasing, and consensual dynamics. Continue Reading »

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RADIOHEAD
In Rainbows
Radiohead.com 2007
10 Tracks. 42mins34secs

In Rip It Up and Start Again, his chronicle of post-punk, journalist Simon Reynolds places Radiohead on a continuum of bands embodying the “middlebrow notions of deep and meaningful typically cherished by college students.” Describing the group as an ubermensch descended from Pink Floyd is not only a dubious honor, it’s also not entirely apt. True, Radiohead do appeal to popular music fans looking for something “experimental” to listen to, and OK Computer, the band’s 1997 breakthrough album, occupies a similar paranoid space to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, but Radiohead, as a group, occupy a much more postmodern space than any of their forbearers. Continue Reading »

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FLYING LOTUS
Reset
WAP228 / WAP228CD
Warp Records 2007
06 Tracks. 17mins32secs
Format: 12″ / CDS

Flying Lotus is the project of Los Angeles resident Steven Ellison, a young musician with an impressive pedigree, counting Alice Coltrane as his great aunt no less, yet he owes his burgeoning music career to Snoop Doggy Dog, whose Doggystyle album made a strong impression on a thirteen years old Ellison.

Ellison’s debut album, 1983, was released last year on Plug Research and received critical acclaim for its impressive scope. A tight exercise which freely borrowed from hip-hop, jazz, tropicalia and electronica, the album called on comparison with the likes of Daedelus and Dntel, but Ellison’s sonic dexterity made it a remarkable personal effort. Now signed to Warp, Flying Lotus has just delivered a dense six track EP, ahead of his second album, scheduled for next year. Continue Reading »

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PRAM
The Moving Frontier
WIG203
Domino Recording Co 2007
14 Tracks. 44mins25secs

Birmingham’s Pram have always been on the periphery of pop music, shielded from the banality of everyday life by a heroic inventory of instruments and sonic references more adapted to time and space travel than to mass transportation. In a parallel dimension, Pram would be setting the pace and the NME, who famously gave their Sargasso Sea album a glorious zero out of ten, to the delight of the band, in 1995, would be a relevant music reference.

For The Moving Frontier, the band’s eleventh album in fifteen years, their first since 2003’s Dark Island, Rosie Cuckston and her troop have developed a much more complex musical lexicon, turning the spectral pop of previous releases into darker, more angular songs and murky instrumentals. Continue Reading »

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PREFUSE 73
Preparations
WARPCD158
Warp Records 2007
14 Tracks. 46mins12secs

Of his many incarnations, Prefuse 73 is perhaps the one Guillermo Scott Herren remains best known for. It is most definitely the one project that has allowed him to push the boundaries of his work the most, with seminal albums Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives and One Word Extinguisher and even more so, their companion mini albums, serving as benchmark for the more experimental side of contemporary hip-hop. In 2005, Herren followed his logical development path by teaming up with a wide range of hip-hop and rap artists for the utterly brilliant Surrounded By Silence. Since, his deliveries have lacked some of the luster of earlier releases. Continue Reading »

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Grizzly Bear will follow last year’s excellent Yellow House album with the Friend EP on 5 November on Warp Records. The 10 track EP, clocking at just under 50 minutes, features two new songs, He Hit Me, a cover of a 1962 song by The Crystals, and Granny Diner, alternate versions of Alligator, Little Brother, Shift and Plans, and covers of Knife by CSS, Band Of Horses and Atlas Sound, better known as Deerhunter.

Grizzly Bear | Warp Records

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MÚM
Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy
FATCD46 / FATCD46LTD / FATLP46
Fat-Cat Records 2007
14 Tracks. 44mins05secs

The topography of Icelandic outfit Múm is as chaotic and unpredictable as that of their native island. From the band’s early days as a quartet dealing primarily with crystalline electronica to vastly acoustic landscapes explored as a trio, to their most recent incarnation, as an enchanted seven-piece ensemble. Following the departure of singer Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir in early 2005, founding members Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason focused on a commission by the Holland Festival, working on a performance piece based on the work of avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis with the National Dutch Chamber Orchestra. Both Tynes and Smárason also spent time working on various side projects, including a solo album for the former, under the name of Illi Vill, and writing for the latter. Continue Reading »

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