ESSIE JAIN
We Made This Ourselves
BAY62CD
The Leaf Label 2008
10 Tracks. 41mins03secs

While Essie Jain was born and raised in London, it is from New York, where she moved in 2001, that she operates. Music has been a part of her life from a very early age, learning classical piano, cello and, later, opera, but rejected it all at the end of her adolescence. It is only some years later, as she was going through a difficult time in her life, that she turned to music once again as a mean to express her emotions. After moving to New York, she spent some time collaborating with various musicians before meeting guitarist Patrick Glynn with whom she began working on her debut album. The result, We Made This Ourselves, was originally released on Brooklyn-based Ba Da Ding over a year ago, and is now given a new lease of life thanks to Leaf, just as her second album is due out in the US.

Although the folk brushes have brought comparisons to anything from Vashti Bunyan to Nick Drake, there is, throughout We Made This Ourselves, a strong reminiscence of This Mortal Coil’s third album, Blood, especially in the way melodies erupt in vocal harmonies. Continue Reading »

In the space of just a few years, Matthew Dear has established himself as one of America’s most consistent electronic musicians around. A true all-rounder, seemingly as much at ease with techno, minimal house and techno pop, Dear follows his instinct instead of trends. His most recent album, Asa Breed, has catapulted him into electronic music’s premier league. Here, he talks to Robert Rowlands about being influenced by European techno, touring with Hot Chip, how his music is a reflection of his life and what matters to him when listening to other people’s music.

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There could hardly have been a greater contrast than that between the high spirited Hungarian folk motifs of A Hawk And A Hacksaw and the dark overtones of Portishead. Playing their second date in London, a couple of weeks after the Hammersmith Apollo, Portishead took over the Brixton Academy in South London, ahead of the release of their long awaited third album at the end of the month. Continue Reading »

AUTECHRE
Quaristice (Versions)
WARPCD333X0
Warp Records 2008
11 Tracks. 67mins49secs

By now, listeners have had some time to digest Quaristice, the latest release from Autechre, and the new (yet also classic) approach they’ve taken this time around. In contrast to the longer, more spaced-out and fleshed-out ideas found on their previous three albums, Quaristice features twenty tracks, most clocking in at less than four minutes, featuring, alternately, spastic explosions of percussion and sampling, or lush ambient synthesizer arrangements. With Quaristice (Versions), a bonus disc released with the limited edition of Quaristice, Autechre offer a glimpse at a version of the album more in line with Untilted or Draft 7.30. There are eleven tracks here, many of which last longer than seven minutes, allowing the sequences and ideas from Quaristice more time to evolve. Continue Reading »

Rarely are abstract electronic acts as well known for their live sets as for their recorded output. Given such a heavy reliance on sequencing and studio edits, one could be forgiven for getting bored watching someone noodle around with pre-recorded tracks on a laptop. Autechre, on the other hand, have taken a very different approach, eschewing laptops for their live performance, and instead working with a mix and match of sequences, almost all of them unreleased, for a live show that is intense and unforgettable. Continue Reading »

Twelve years on from their last full length album, Michael Golding and Steve Rutter, better known as B12, will be releasing an eighteen track double CD, Last Days Of Silence, on their own B12 Records imprint. The duo, who reconvened in 2005 after a hiatus of almost ten years, have been playing handful of live dates since, and released some new material as well as reissuing their back catalogue of EPs.Last Days Of Silence is due to be released on 26 May 2008. There will be a limited edition of the album encased in a metal box with signed artwork and limited stickers which will only be available to buy from the B12 website. Pre-orders for both versions of the album will start from 16 May.

 B12 Records

CHRISTOPHER BISSONNETTE
In Between Words
KRANK118
Kranky 2008
06Tracks. 50mins48secs

In Between Words nurtures the universal within the particular, the history within the humdrum. A growing interest in the scattered and repetitive sounds of daily life has developed on the part of Christopher Bissonnette, and this work reflects it with all the spirituality and ingenuity of a mirror.

First an instrument or found sound establishes a pattern explicitly, and then, in a spectral manner, it reappears in a distant tsunami of dense, multilayered ambience. Afterwards high harmonics and out of reach scratch intone the motif time and again, and the variations multiply one on the other. Continue Reading »

ALISTAIR CROSBIE
Sad Faces Of The Moon / Forest Of Swollen Eyes
PM26 / Sick Head 13
Peasant Magik 2008 / Sick Head 2008
02 Tracks. 29mins01secs / 05 Tracks. 40mins12secs

The bedroom on the face of it is not the most likely place to find yourself staring into the void. Sleep, sex and TV, perhaps, but little else is usually on offer. Yet from the confines of his four-walled bedroom studio Alistair Crosbie has produced two records here that look oblivion straight in the face, and refuse to flinch. His source material, towers of distortion and feedback, is used to construct artificial universes of emptiness, where meaning and direction are overwhelmed by walls of noise. The results might at times seem frightening, but these are both truly startling releases.
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ERIK LEVANDER
Kondens
RUM012
Rumraket 2008
09 Tracks. 43mins46secs

Erik Levander’s first release, Tonad, of which only 500 copies were made, was published at the end of 2004 on Swedish imprint Neon Records. Since, Levander has been spotted guesting on a handful of Efterklang records, yet most of his time has been spent working on this follow up. Unfortunately for Levander, things went terribly wrong while he was at an advanced stage in the recording process, when his computer suffered a major crash and, as he had no backup, he lost two years’ worth of work. A further two years on, Kondens has finally seen the light of day through Efterklang’s Rumraket imprint.

A classically trained musician who plays amongst other things clarinet, guitar, piano, harmonica and percussions, Levander spent most of his formative years listening to bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Red House Painters. Continue Reading »

EXCEPTER
Debt Dept
PAW21
Paw Tracks 2008
08 Tracks. 43 mins 48secs

Normally, urging the listener to “kill people” repeatedly on record would lead to scores of scaremongering splashes in the national press about the latest antichrists of the music scene. That Excepter have so far escaped this fate is probably down partly to their relative obscurity when compared with other musical bete noires. Yet although the shrieking editorial writers may yet have come to notice them, the band have been beguiling and infuriating music fans for years with their off-kilter anti-pop insanity. This, their fourth release, will probably divide listeners as much as the others, but it offers some pretty perverse pleasures to those who can stomach the ride.

To imagine what this band sounds like, picture yourself walking into a music store with sections devoted to different musical genres. Continue Reading »