MIKA VAINIO
Fe304 – Magnetite
TO86
Touch 2012
07 Tracks. 55mins50secs

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Mika Vainio was once one half of Finnish exploratory duo Pan Sonic until he and Ilpo Väisänen decided to part for good after fifteen years two years ago, but this ever only represented one facet of his work. As well as contributing to a good few other formations, he has released a number of records under a variety of monikers, perhaps the best known of which, beside the music published under his own name of course, is Ø, a project he pursues to these days. Fe304 – Magnetite is his tenth solo record as himself, his fifth for Touch.

Over the years, Vainio has extensively experimented with noise and silence in various forms and to various degrees. Continue Reading »

SIDSEL ENDRESEN & STIAN WESTERHUS
Didymoi Dreams
RCD2131
Rune Grammofon 2012
11 Tracks. 59mins12secs

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There are few vocalists more fearless and thrilling than Norwegian singer Sidsel Endresen. From traditional vocal forms, she has developed a style all of her own, sung mostly in a made-up language which range from hums and repetitive fragments of semi-recognisable words to harshly syncopated noises, resembling a form of scat for the electronic age. What makes her performances real tours de force is that all vocals are always recorded live, never processed or sampled. From her time as a member of Jon Eberson Group, with whom she recorded five albums between 1981 and 1987, she went on release a number of solo albums for ECM, Jazzland and Sofa. Over the years, she has also built a particularly solid and fertile musical relationship with Bugge Wesseltoft; the duo have recorded three albums, and Wesseltoft is a regular contributor to some of her other projects. Continue Reading »

MARK SOLBORG
Solborg 4+4+1
ILK191CD
Ilk Music 2012
05 Tracks. 55mins06secs

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For his latest album for Ilk Music, Danish jazz guitarist Mark Solborg has gathered a carefully selected horn quartet, formed of Norwegian musicians Gunnar Halle (trumpet) and Torben Snekkestad (tenor and soprano sax, clarinet) and fellow Danish artists Laura Toxværd (alto saxophone) and Jacob Munck (tuba, trombone), to which he has added a soloist, Chris Speed (US) on tenor saxophone and clarinet, all joining forces around  his regular quartet, which counts, beside himself, Anders Banke (tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet), Jeppe Skovbakke (bass) and Bjørn Heebøll (drums). The ensemble performed together only once, at the 2010 edition of Copenhagen’s Jazzfestival, during which this album was recorded.

With such an extensive set of performers under his headship, each with their own individual approach and characteristics, Solborg had set himself quite a challenge, but the five improvisations here are a testament of the viability of his vision and of the musicianship involved. Continue Reading »

After recording one album and a handful of EPs for Manchester-based imprint Melodic ten years ago, David Edwards got the chance to move his Minotaur Shock project to 4AD, a label that had partly inspired him over the years. Reality however rarely matches expectations, and things didn’t quite work out as idealistically as he had hoped. Four years on from his last release for the label, he has picked himself up, recorded his fourth studio album, Orchard, and Melodic have welcomed him back with open arms. Here, he talks about his 4AD experience, working with Melodic again, the freedom he had recording the new album, and how British music has inspired him a great deal this time round.
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BEAK>
>>
INV107
Invada Records 2012
10 Tracks. 48mins19secs

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Assembled by Geoff Barrow, he of Portishead, Billy Fuller and Matt Wiliams, Beak> got together sometime in 2009 and spent some time improvising in the studio. Within a few days, they had enough material for an album, and their self-titled debut was released a few weeks later on Barrow’s Invada Records. The trio consequently toured quite substantially, but things proved more difficult when it came to record a follow-up, leaving the band in limbo for a while. Eventually though, Beak> found their feet again, and were once again able to let their creative juice flow freely.

Very much like its predecessor, >> was recorded live, with very little overdubs, and once again, it is infused with classic strands of Krautrock, evoking in turn Can, Cluster, Silver Apples or to a lesser extend Neu!, as they line up motorik grooves, bleak synths, feverish guitars and fogged vocal. Continue Reading »

NORKEN & DEER
Micro Don Juan
DUKE156
Hydrogen Dukebox 2012
10 Tracks. 52mins29secs

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Lee Norris and Martin Hirsch know each other pretty well, the former being the founder of Neo Ouija, a label run by the latter, but they have until now kept their respective musical projects separate. If Norris has been releasing music until a variety of monikers (Metamatics, Natch Plank, Tone Language, Norken), from ambient to techno, since the mid nineties, Hirsch’s output is more restricted, with only a handful of EPs published. The pair collaborated on a first EP, Shoot The Sun, released earlier this year before landing their first collaborative full length on Hydrogen Dukebox.

Micro Don Juan started as a solo effort from Norris toward the end of 2010, but he was later joined by Hirsch. With Norris located in south England and Hirsch based in Germany, the pair exchanged music over the internet, slowly assembling the album. Continue Reading »

FENNESZ
Aun
ASH95
Ash International 2012
15 Tracks. 52mins29secs

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Christian Fennesz is well known for creating dense textured pieces from processed electric guitars, and his live sets are often extremely intense experiences, the music so loud that it is primarily felt racing deep down through the body. But the Austrian-born experimental guitarist has for some time been exploring a much more ethereal and gentle side to his work, most notably recently with Ryuichi Sakamoto. It is exactly this side that Fennesz chose for his soundtrack to Austrian director Edgar Honetschläger’s feature film Aun: The Beginning And The End Of All Things, a tale of how mankind is at once fascinated by, and fearful of, the future.

Fennesz provides a particularly striking atmospheric soundtrack here, composed in majority of short sonic vignettes, some merely developing into drone sequences, others left to grow and incorporate fragments of melodies or, at least, tonal variations. Continue Reading »

PIANO MAGIC
Life Has Not Finished With Me Yet
SL017
Second Language Music 2012
13 Tracks. 51mins02secs

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Keeping up with Piano Magic is akin to finding one’s way in a giant maze. Inspired in part by the fluidity of form of This Mortal Coil, Piano Magic was formed in 1996 by Glen Johnson, Dominic Chennell and Dick Rance, the collective has since developed around an ever changing line-up, which has seen an impressive number of musicians and vocalists, including Vashti Bunyan on a couple of occasions. The collective released a couple of albums on Rocket Girl before joining for a time the ranks of 4AD with their soundtrack to Bigas Lunas’s Son De Mar (2001) and their follow up album, Writers Without Homes a year later. Since, the ensemble’s output has been extremely diverse and scattered on a wide range of labels, from Green UFOs, En/Of, Monospone to Important Records, Make Mine Music and more recently Second Language.

Following a string of increasingly guitar-heavy records, Life Has Not Finished With Me Yet, Piano Magic’s eleventh studio album, returns to the sombre introspection of Writers Without Homes Continue Reading »

2KILOS &MORE
Kurz Vor5
AUPHCD018
Audiophobe 2012
09 Tracks. 59mins11secs

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French duo 2Kilos &More was formed in 2003 by Séverine Krouch and Hughes Villette, but their first release, a mini album entitled 9,21, wasn’t published until three years later on artisanal Paris-based imprint Taâlem. This was followed a year later by a full length album, 8Floors Lower, on Jeans Records, with a second album, Entre3villes, on Optical Sound issued two years later. Krouch and Villette also joined the ranks of French performance art collective Von Magnet, famed for mixing electronic music with flamenco and oriental music, in 2008, and with whom they have performed regularly ever since. Returning to their project, the pair have teamed up with German imprint Audiophobe for their third opus.

Brash, caustic and unsettling, Kurz Vor5 is a particularly intense, complex and somewhat psychotic dystopian affair which encompasses in its course ill ambient moments, dark post industrial sections, noise, hypnotic grooves and twisted poetry. Continue Reading »

MORITZ VON OSWALD TRIO
Fetch
HJR67
Honest Jon’s Records 2012
04 Tracks. 50mins43secs

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Moritz Von Oswald, Max Loderbauer and Sasu Ripatti reconvene for a third time, and once again, the mood is subdued and quietly hypnotic, carried by elegant stripped down grooves and vast and airy sonic landscapes. Like its predecessors, Fetch is split into four tracks clocking at anything from seven to seventeen and a half minutes. The basis for this album was recorded at the end of the summer last year during a four hour improv session which saw the core trio joined by Mark Muellbauer (bass) and Tobias Freund ((live electronics and effects). The recordings were later processed by Von Oswald who added contributions from Jonas Shoen (flute, clarinet and saxophone) and Sebastian Studnitzky (trumpet).

More so than its predecessors, Fetch is an intriguing record, which appear to draw on darker tones as it progresses. Continue Reading »

ESPEN ERIKSEN TRIO
What Took You So Long
RCD2129
Rune Grammofon 2012
10 Tracks. 42mins21secs

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Espen Eriksen Trio’s debut, You Had Me At Goodbye, published two years ago on Rune Grammofon, was a thing of great beauty, its lush piano-led jazz, fluid and melodic, developed over the course of the whole record in a variety of delicate hues. On their second opus, What Took You So Long, the Scandinavian trio pick up where they left off two years ago with eight new compositions and two somewhat unexpected cover versions. Continue Reading »