KIM HIORTHØY
My Last Day
STS087
Smalltown Supersound 2007
11 Tracks. 44mins56secs

Kim Hiorthøy first came to the world’s notice in the mid nineties as the artist illustrator of Rune Grammofon’s rather lovely CD digipak covers. He also designs for Smalltown Supersound, has monographs devoted to his graphic work and has directed the filming of Supersilent 7. His first music release (Hei) came in 2000.

I Thought We Could Eat Friends starts out with a determined, bustling rhythm that conjures the mental image of a stick figure repeatedly climbing little, rounded hills, like a cartoon Sisyphus. It’s soon crowned by a brief, tootling melody that could have you humming along should you be so inclined. That melody builds in intensity before the song comes to a stop, a shiver shy of four minutes after it started. Beats Mistake is more tentative, sounding like it was made from biscuit tins and old cutlery. The little snatches of speech that cluster round certain parts of the track like barnacles make for a gently humorous impression.

The piano-led Skuggan is straight-backed, ever so slightly imperious in a freshly whitewashed sort of way. It leads a daintily formal dance, gathering its percussive partners as it proceeds. Stopping and starting over the course of its nine minutes, that piano seems to move to different rooms in a house, sounding at times closer, at times echoingly distant. Den Långa Berättelsen Om Stöv Och Vatten is a homemade hip-hop beat girded by woolly sheep and the sad, almost weary piano that is the signature sound of this album. Wry smiles all round.

Alt GÃ¥r SÃ¥ Langsomt picks its feet up and dances resolutely with a wavering analogue synth line for its companion. Hon Var SÃ¥ Otydlig, Som En Gas is all too brief, its bass line sounds as if it is played on a rubber band a la Penguin Café Orchestra’s Telephone And Rubber Band.

In fact, once brought to mind, the comparison rings convincingly true for this listener. Kim Hiorthøy and PCO: cousins raised in different countries but sharing a skewed playfulness and make-do ethic. Cute without being irritating and tinged with an undeniable pathos, Kim Hiorthøy’s My Last Day is electronic music drawn at an endearingly human scale. I’m unexpectedly charmed.

3.5/5

Smalltown Supersound
CD | iTunes

Have you ever visited the seaside on a blustery, rain-swept day? Did you see seagulls hunkered down on the beach, their heads tucked into their bodies as they stoically weather the storm? As I looked at my fellow audience members that’s what I thought of as Haswell/Hecker brought their noise-storm down upon us. A few people made for the exit, many put their fingers in their ears and the rest, myself included, stood and endured.

We were surrounded, you see: speaker stacks on each side of the Conway Hall. A strobe light and a green laser strafed the black-clad, elaborately pierced crowd and reflected off two strategically placed mirror balls (whose presence seemed just a touch ironic). Continue Reading »

ERSTLAUB
On Becoming An Island
HPLL025
Highpoint Lowlife 2007
01 Track. 43mins49secs

Second in the Highpoint Lowlife series of exclusive digital releases and very limited CDRs is the latest offering by Scottish artist Dave Fyans, here operating under his Erstlaub guise. Hailing from Perth, on the East coast of Scotland, Fyans has previously been spotted on the excellent Some Paths Lead Back Again compilation put together by the Marcia Blaine School For Girls crew just under three years ago, where he contributed three tracks as Daigoro. More recently, he contributed a remix on the digital-only companion EP to the Marcia Blaine album, and he has self-released a handful of CDR albums. Continue Reading »

CLOUDLAND CANYON
Silver Tongued Sisyphus
KRANK111
Kranky 2007
02 Tracks. 23mins35secs

At twenty-three minutes, this EP from Cloudland Canyon is a tight, concentrated workout for freeform percussion, guitar and woozy ambient washes that pull at the listener’s nerve endings. All of the segments of which these works consist are ingeniously sequenced together, taking full advantage of each moment of contrast or continuity. The opening piece is defined by layers of telegraphic bleeps slipping and sliding over each other, to the accompaniment of distant, contorted percussive crashes, and heavy, reverberating guitar figures. Continue Reading »

VASHTI BUNYAN
Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind: Singles And Demos 1964 To 1967
FATCD59
Fat-Cat Records / Spinney Records 2007
25 Tracks. 52mins32secs

Before taking a turn toward earthy folk songs, then giving it all up to go travelling on a horse and cart with her husband, Vashti Bunyan was briefly heading for a career as a pop singer. Discovered by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Oldham, Bunyan found herself propelled in a world where she rubbed shoulders with greats and soon to become legends, culminating in her debut single being penned by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards no less. Soon though, the production became sparser, leaving her fragile voice exposed, with only an acoustic guitar to rely on.

The story of how she eventually returned to music, and released her sophomore effort, Lookaftering, a couple of years ago, has been told many a time. Here, Bunyan was given the chance to recollect and gather some long forgotten demos, some of which found only recently in her brother’s attic, and early and never released singles, including her debut release, Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind. Continue Reading »

GULTSKRA ARTIKLER
Kasha Iz Topora
MIACD006
Miasmah Recordings 2007
18 Tracks. 66mins48secs

Isn’t technology beautiful? Now that even the cheapest PCs are capable - in the right hands - of sophisticated sound manipulation, the way is open for ever more peculiar people to realize the sounds in their heads no matter how far outside normal musical frames of reference they might be. No longer does a Captain Beefheart need to capture, imprison and brainwash talented young musicians in order to create a Trout Mask Replica. Instead, people with a unique vision need only lock themselves away with a computer and tweak and twist and warp whatever sounds are around them until they have an album’s worth of the sounds that will allow others access to their soundworld. Burial - if the myth is to be believed - is one such visionary, sat in his room with the TV on and an old PC with a fan so knackered it smokes, editing sound without even recourse to a sequencer in pursuit of the perfect aural painting of the fears and joys of the South London night time; and Siberian-born, Moscow-dwelling Alexey Devyanin is without doubt another. Continue Reading »

310
Sixes And Sevens
CR1307
Conduit Records 2007
10 Tracks. 46mins50secs

310, the band formed by New Yorker Tim Donovan and Seattle-based Joseph Dierker, are quietly celebrating ten years at the helm of their good ship with their latest album, Sixes And Sevens, released on Conduit Records, the title perhaps a semi-hidden reference to the fact that, their 2001 effort Nothing To See Here being a strictly limited affair, this album, their seventh, is only the sixth to received a high profile release. The pair’s debut album, Aug 56, was released a whole ten years ago on their own imprint, and their sophomore effort, Snorklehouse, followed a year later, firmly establishing their blend of ambient, found sounds, hip-hop-infused beats and melodic electronic music. Continue Reading »

JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON
Englabörn
CAD2733CD
4AD 2002/2007
16 Tracks. 48mins27secs

Last year, Icelandic contemporary classical composer Jóhann Jóhannsson released the superb IBM: A User’s Manual album, which drew from memories of his childhood and recordings made over forty years ago by Jóhannsson’s father, who was chief maintenance officer for the first IBM mainframe computer in Iceland, who had developed a way to produce music out of it, a purpose beyond the original scope of the machine. Four years before this, Jóhannsson released his debut album, Englabörn, on Touch, an album that his new label, 4AD, are now making available again. Continue Reading »

The brainchild of Tim Donovan, who lives in New York, and Seattle-based Joseph Dierker, 310 have been producing beautifully detailed records for ten years, bringing together elements of jazz, hip-hop, folk, pop and ambient to create a truly unique sound. As they are gearing up for the release of their sixth album, Sixes And Sevens, on Conduit Records, we caught up with Tim Donovan to talk about the new record, how they find it increasingly easy to work 3,000 miles apart, and why the new album is primarily being released digitally.

Continue Reading »

TO ROCOCO ROT
ABC123
RUG265
Domino Recording Co. 2007
08 Tracks. 19mins49secs

Helvetica. Unless you have lived under a stone of in a cave for the last fifty years, you have, knowingly or not, been exposed to the ubiquitous typeface created by Swiss font foundry Haas. Revered by most typographists and graphic designers, and used in the most common urban signage, from airport and road signs to public toilets, and from record covers to eye-catching ad campaigns, Helevetica has become the most ubiquitous modern font around, thanks to its clear lines and high readability at pretty much any size. 2007 is exactly fifty years since its creation, and the event was marked by a series of exhibitions around the world, and by a documentary investigating its impact. Continue Reading »