Twelve months compiled into just twenty albums. From the thousands of records released each year, it is difficult to get even a handful on the site, and even more difficult to decide which ones were the best of the lot. This is however the twenty albums that have marked 2009 for themilkfactory.

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STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS & ANGEL
Strings Of Consciousness & Angel
IMPREC227
Important Records 2009
02 Tracks. 40mins43secs

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Strings Of Consciousness, the collective of musicians led by French music activist Philippe Petit, who also heads the excellent Bip-Hop imprint, and Angel, originally a project consisting of Pan Sonic’s Ilpo Väisänen and Dirk Dresselhaus, better known as SchneiderTM, now also comprising Hildur Guðnadóttir of Múm, have teamed up for a project combining the various acoustic, electric and electronic inputs of these formations.

The two tracks making up this album, one clocking at twenty two minutes, the other at just under nineteen, and simply labelled #1 and #2, are the result of improvisation sessions between the two ensembles. Continue Reading »

STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Our Moon Is Full
CCI 005
Central Control 2007
08 Tracks. 49mins25secs

Rock flirtations with experimental music can be some very risky territory. On the plus side, you can end up with sublime fusions of the traditional and the avant garde; on the other hand, there’s the wankery that eventually drowned seventies prog. Several groups in this decade have given the concept another go, and Our Moon Is Full, the new album from psychedelic collective Strings Of Consciousness, is a thoroughly engaging look at the potential of this merger.

First, a word of caution: this is a record steeped in post rock, featuring, on the majority of the tracks, spoken word rather than singing. It’s a pretentious proposition, but one that works out the majority of the time. Continue Reading »