The Unbroken Circle - Mandrake Scream Thy First Scream

Keijo comes from a northern town in Finland and has released a series of CDrs and is now here on a CD 'Palla, Blown From Here'. A number of his previous releases have been mixtures of environmental recordings, throat singing and drifting instrumentals. Keijo never seems in a hurry, his music gradually being revealed. On this release he focuses on soft acoustic folk, sometimes sung in Finnish with his unique vocal style combining languid normal vocals with throat singing that sounds like a Tibetan monk. The sense of mystery slowly being unwound through acoustic folk on songs like 'On A Bright Morning' reminded of In Gowan Ring, a favourite of our site. By concentrating on the song structure, Keijo seems to give form to his music, it feels more accessible than previous releases. The use of tiny bells, cymbals and drifting electronics on 'Reaching From Here' captures the sense of some magical invocation. 'Along The Bridge' like other of his pieces, seems more a product of the 1930s than today. The soft finger picking, fast like Appalachian music is like capturing someone on wax cylinder. He also goes further out into drone on this release, with 'On The Sea of the Eye of the Sky' being particularly intense and otherworldly, as though beamed to us across the galaxy.

Yet on 'In The Fields' he produces a piece of rippling guitar and bird song that is simply beautiful, poised and rapturous. There is a clear melody here, mournful and moving with jew's harp adding an air of psychedelic whimsicality. Final piece 'Blown From Here' is so minimised, it seems as though it dare not settle, wafting in the background, reverberating percussion hiding melodies coaxed gently and tentative on acoustic guitar. This release brings together the various aspects of Keijo's music on one release and is perhaps his strongest to date. However once experienced he becomes one of those mysterious artists that you feel compelled to find everything they have done.
Go to http://www.digitalisindustries.com

Keith Woods is better known as Hush Arbors, once of the very best artists combining a forward looking ruralism with folk derived song. Over his last couple of releases reviewed here, he has been evolving from the songs into longer atmospheres and this is further developed here. With a more mournful, introspective feeling about it as indicated by the title 'Death Caligraphy' almost entirely dispenses with acoustic guitar which is replaced with funereal accordion and organ drones backed by skeletal rhythms. Like the soundtrack to a burial procession it has a macabre charm. The second piece 'Reconcilliation... Liberation' starts with what sounds like the noise of a distant factory. Metallic clanks sit beneath a slowly emerging drone which has organ and glass electronic layers. As it progresses the piece becomes more positive, it turns a corner from the deaths tate of the first track towards hope. Hush Arbors are mining a singular seam, nobody is doing music as intensely personal as this and it deserves wider attention.
Go to http://mymwly.blogspot.com

Brad E Rose, the partner of Keith Woods in The Golden Oaks returns on 'Twilight Blue Skies' as Corsican Paintbrush. As this artist Brad makes tiny but beautiful miniatures, the equivalent of the small but perfectly formed painting. Here thumb pianos, banjo, keyboards and more combine into soft melodic piece. There are some intriguing pieces, 'I took the head of your fallen leader' has the combination of USA banjo and Chinese music. 'The Mariana's Sea Trench' perhaps has a chamber group playing their strings at the ocean's bottom. 'Bamboo' meanwhile has an understated guitar exploration, minimal and hesitant. The echoing flute introduction of 'A Storm rolls in' is wonderful, the heat haze and quiet before the storm evoked perfectly. 'Birth of a Maple Vine' with just two guitars and melodeon has a bright, embracing melody expressing an unspoilt rustic delight. 'Only on earth does fire burn' is a kind of intergalatic blues....a stunning electronic setting like those of Michael Stearns or Jon Serrie transmits a plaintive simple spiritual blues from planets unknown. It's a quite amazing piece of music.

'Lemonade Afternoon' suggests yet another style, a lazy folk song shrouded in reverb, lost in the fog yet all the more affecting for this. If it were no so lovely, 'Rapture of the Seed' would be thought of as ambient. The interplay of two hushed melodies, occasionally embracing, the stillness and quiet absorbing the listener. It is almost too fragile, as though to listen will break the absolute silence. It's unbearably sad when it ends, like losing a friend.
Go to http://mymwly.blogspot.com

Honeymoon Music is emerging as an excellent label and we will be covering further releases by them at the site with a new compilation out. One of their artist releases is by Niagra Falls called 'Barrel Vault' which transports the listener back to the late 60s on the first track with echoing psychedelic guitar and plaintive melodies over strummed electric guitar backing. There is a touch of folk and a crescendoing structure. It's excellently performed and arranged, similar to the recent 'Kiss The Anus of a Black Cat' in sound. By not using drums they have a weightless quality, seeming to hover in the air with their layers of guitar shimmering. 'Below The Handrail' is brilliant, psychedelia reduced to the bare essentials, washes of guitar, echoes, distant signals. 'Anon' is heavier, a pulsating psychedelia over a clock sound reminiscent of 'Lamp of the Universe'. The fourteen minute final (and title) track has glissandos of guitar shifting and phasing over the textured electric guitar backing. No vocals interrupt, your mind let go this is perfect hazy exploration that might appeal to fans of psychedelia old and new.
Go to http://www.honeymoonmusic.com

On their second release 'Ambient Time Arm', the primitive Australian soundscapes of NaDa BaBa take us back not decades but hundreds of years. This is not the comfortable ambience of living room hi-fi, this is the trance inducing, smoke haze of the desert. Chanting, pounding slow ritual percussion and the resonant pulsation of digeridoo take the listener into dreamtime on the first track. Fragmented spoken word and shards of guitar re-enforce that this is not our reality, but that we are trapped inside our dreams, as backward speech and screaming insects tear at our reason. 'Stone Fish Bone' intones a ceremony with jew's harp, metallic scrapes and overlapping, magical speech.

We hear disturbed and enthralled, escape forgotten for the moment. As the album progresses with lots of speech and field recordings, this moves from music into a kind of film for the ears. A surreal and strange film, but one with it's own odd structure. All the time, remorseless digeridoo constant and unyielding. It appears to make sense but without the listener grasping what it is communicating, the sound of language more important than meaning. Like a collaboration between 'Tape Beatles' or Negativland and Steve Roach this is a particularly unique and weird release. You have to admire how far out they have got, even if you can be grateful for not sharing the experience. Time in the desert never seemed so essential.
go to http://mymwly.blogspot.com

Cursilllistas is a band who I know nothing of other than that it was recommended by distributor I trust. So I order their 'Rotary and Gems', upon arrival there is a special paper sleeve and it is on its own label. However inside are tiny strange jewels of improvised low-fi female folk. Not as overtly magic oriented as Spires That In The Sunset Rise, this feels more like the W-S Burn or Wooden Spoon. Excellent acoustic guitar and harmony singing is surrounded by tiny chimes and indiscernable noises and vocals. 'The Remarkable Tangier Smith' has understatedly excellent guitar playing and intimate vocals which seem almost scared to let us inside such personal music. Although instrumental 'Legion vs Lions's is wonderful, the marvellous guitar heard almost unadorned against subtle keyboard. 'Cloak and Dagger' is a low-fi lullaby with sublime bent string melodies.

There is clearly very strong talent here both in the playing and the song itself even if they attempt to hide it a little inside a muffled, dulled recording. 'This notebook is a gift' sets the guitar and drawled vocal with a living room piano picking out the simple melody. 'Bumble Bumble' is an unsettling, almost creepy communally sung ode to the bee. Catch this excellent curiosity while you can as not many were made though we can hope to hear of them again.
Go to http://www.lastivisbledog.com

Davenport it seems are here on 'Hands of Worm Heaven' with their final CDr as they have moved onto music labels and fully released CDs spreading their rural chaos ever further. Musically where some of their releases focus on sound exploration others such as this have a fuller sound. This starts with a mournful vocal chant, bells and cello in a weirdly psychedelic mood. 'The Spells We Know' comes next with a lengthy fourteen minute track where cello drones underpin an astounding folk ritual of rumbling clattering percussion, vocal exhortations and one of those wind whirlers. It's a heady atmosphere sounding as much north African as it does from Wisconsin. This piece takes us back to their origins and shows what masters they can be of creating and sustained a deeply mysterious mood. Fans of the new musical primitives like The Skaters, Buried Civilisations, The Wooden Cupboard or Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood should get this immediately.

'Frozen Country Dub' places their arcane string band into frost filled suspense with dervish violin and shimmering metallic percussion. 'Cough It Up' starts deceptively with gentle, bucolic ambience before becoming intensely noise filled, feedback, insane harmonics, electronic signals and distortion combine to rupture the senses, eyes bleeding, gagging on the sheer sustained frequencies. The next two tracks take us back to the fields, but these are fields equally disturbing as comforting. The malevolent throat singing and children of bedlam on 'Sheep Meadow Invocation #5' should give shepherds everywhere sleepless nights. 'Serpents Come Here' is a particularly effective piece, as much magical spell as it is music. The overlapping, continuous calling notes build a dramatic power, calling to the spectral creatures just out of sight. It's especially powerful and recalls the pieces on the recent split with James Blackshaw.

'Sons of the Pasture' takes the music back to their most haunted and hushed, an ode to their Wisconsin fields, psychedelic electric guitar taking his heavenwards, ascending to their new worm masters.
Go to http://www.time-lagrecords.com

From Belgium are the 'Funeral Folk' collective and musician Silvester Anfang on 'Raping The Goat' from Foxglove. The imagery for this release is deliberately horrid, evidenced by its '100% evil' text. What we hear though is an improvised soundscape buzzing around us, strung instruments playing corrosive but melodic notes. This has the air of brooding expectation found in old horror films like 'The Devil Rides Out' just before the purple robbed, black candled satanic action gets underway. Although improvised, there is some light and shade and it's not as black as it is painted to be. Second track 'Ripping the Rectum' has a slug like nastiness, thick with corruption. This piece is like early 70s psychedelic free jazz found on films trying to depict teenage hedonism. For fans of this type of thing, it's very well done but not easy to listen to if it is your first venture into improvised music. Now sit back and let the fetid breath of the red eyed goat waft over you as you sit back, eyeballs rolled back listening to this release.
Go to http://www.digitalisindustries.com

With its plague depiction cover 'A Discreet History of Bone' arrives by Anvil Salute. This release is a group improvisation performed live in April this year. It starts very hushed, almost imperceptible with cymbal washes, tense but quiet guitar and a feeling of huge space. On the second piece 'Blinking Red Face, Little Waxed Moustache' there is an emphasis on individual sounds rather than instruments making it seem like a field recording rather than music. 'Variations on a Modal Theme' is excellent, a soft unresolved melody explored on glockenspiel and Balaphon. 'Jive Talking' has faux voodoo rhythms, pounding with marimba. On the final extended piece 'Brad Is All; We All Play Free' we have an experimental jazz style close to A.M.M.. Screeching wind instruments play around a tense drone and chaotic percussion and then once this section is done, we end on a lovely quiet section.
Go to http://www.digitalisindustries.com

We have been waiting for a while until the release of the first Alligator Crystal Moth release 'Magic Swamp Kingdom'. This artist brings together Brad E Rose (Juniper Meadows, Golden Oaks, Corsican Paintbrush) and Michael Donnelly (MusicYourMindWillLoveYou). The first song 'Mother Stars' has a kind of cosmic psychedelic-jazz rock. With woozy organ and multiple layers of percussion, noodling electric guitar and electronic tones it drifts with occasional vocals. 'Flying the Midnight Dragon' has electronics soaring skywards with folksy acoustic strumming and curious melodies. 'And the Ocean becomes the Altar' has a fragmentary shifting drone with what sound like bowed strings and increasing layers of distorted electric guitar gradually swamping all around it.

'Sunspots amongst the ruins' is like a some profane middle eastern ceremony. Clearly this releases forces they cannot channel as noises and screaming melodies appear in front of us, taking physical form. 'Kerosene Hat' could have been made in the late 60s sounding like the music Comus dare not release, an apocalyptic folk epic that becomes a symphony of wailing wah-wah guitar. 'May Altonia Minor' pulls back from the brink with soft country-folk guitar and the sounds of the wood. This piece is lovely, their experimental noises crafted into the melodic structures. Final piece 'Of Lions and Kings' is the regal Egyptian tribute to the transcendent power of pure noise. Leaving behind their earth bound shackles, they rise into the realms of white light and the squalling, shrieking calls of their crystal moth god.
Go to http://www.digitalisindustries.com

Releases do not come much stranger than 'Sad Hotel' by Axolotl, an obscure 3" CDr of no discernable origin. Wild processed violin scorches the air as though in space (at least it sounds like violin, it could be electric guitar or saxophone). The second piece has little more than bird song, a radio moving between the frequencies and some distorted sounds of movement. The third track is a dense electronic drone with voices or horns adding a mysterious middle eastern tone. A jumble of gypsy folk melodies are playing erratically on the fourth track before the soul wailing drone-noise of the fifth. Track six is a drone but instead of noise sounds like a king's celebration, vibrant and triumphant. The cosmic drone of track seven is so processed it barely exists, sounding like the surface of the CD has peeled away revealing just the glitches at the substrata of the music. A curious, strange release apparently by Karl Bauer of the USA. Who knows what to make of it?
Go to http://www.23productions.net

Clay Ruby is known primarily as the most prominent member of Davenport but is here with Theresa Behnen as The Lamb Called Light. On this artist they make an unexpectedly sublime spiritual folk. On intimate pieces of acoustic guitar, banjo, soft vocals and whistle they sound sincere and heartfelt on these miniature songs of devotion. It's the most easily approachable of all the Davenport Family releases and often one of their most charming, even touching. Yet on pieces like 'Aleluia' they build huge drama temporarily before the delicate harp of 'Aelulia 2'. By the time of 'Amen Amen Amen' a new side to the Davenport Family has been allow to be heard, a memory of childhood in church, of Sunday routine and innocent devotion. On this they are close to Stone Breath or Green Mistletoe on a very welcome but sadly obscure release.
Go to http://www.23productions.net

we are now seeing a generation of artists emerge who are making music that sits outside the mainstream of labels using their own distribution methods. We celebrate these artists and seek to review them here. The music is across an increasingly broad range with the concept of 'wyrd folk' being an idea from which many undefinable types of music evolve. At our sites we are less concerned with strict definitions and instead focus on helping a community of mutually supportive musicians, artists and listeners come together organically.

Using their own micro-labels, internet promotion, local distribution and CDr reproduction, the tools of production are in the hands of artists themselves or small dedicated labels. This hopefully offers a positive new model for the music industry, which we can jointly help become viable without depending on the commercial needs of multi-national companies. We therefore seek to raise the profile of artists working in this area and help bring them closer to their natural audience. So let's get on to the albums themselves.

Matthew De Gennaro was a new name to me on his release 'Humbled Down' which from the first notes shows a great acoustic player and arranger. He is a student from the USA and has had one release prior to this called 'Under The Sun' and does again one of the tracks from that album. This album brings together a sublime acoustic guitar player who does not seem overly in thrall to anyone guitarist from the past. He sets his structured pieces over sympathetic drone beds which give a useful nagging undertow which help give some harmonic tension. Second track 'coal' has his guitar processed backwards over cello sounding quite psychedelic and with attention to subtle melodic interplay. A reed instrument, perhaps melodica adds a plaintive drift to the piece. 'Naturna' is an almost ambient piece, minimalist in instrumentation over sounds of animals. It's affecting and beautiful. 'Ross Creak Wonder' evokes rambling through the country, its acoustic picking working with a gentle electronic melody. Sitting outside of folk, country or any one specific guitar this instead invokes the rural in a more natural way with the guitar complemented by warm banjo playing.

One of the excellent aspects to Matt's music is its unhurried, relaxed air. He doesn't feel the need for flashy playing or to pack every track with complexity, each developing in a way that feels organic and as it should be. This is evidenced on 'Orange Symphony' where his stately, sparse playing appears at first to be rambling along until a structure and other instruments join, all working to flesh out the central melody which has emerged. This is a truly wonderful piece which brings together all the elements into one perfect track.

'Cathedral Square' has a hurried feeling, watching the people move quickly around the city perhaps, but observant not participating. Towards the middle this piece becomes raga like with sitar like harmonic notes coming from one of the two guitars. 'Albion' has a bed of crickets and a slow circular guitar figure. 'Leith Valley Blues' has exquisite blues note bending on the guitar in a piece which evokes a more bucolic form of blues. Final track 'Humbled Down' is gentle and spacious, the guitar set over a soft breeze. It could be lonely but it's too gentle for that and as the sound of electronics and soft burning enter, if it is an ode to distant memories, at least they are fond ones.

If like me you find solo guitar albums difficult to take due to their stark intensity, this balances the guitar with sublime settings that retain the interest and are melodically always engaging. This is one of the most perfect modern acoustic albums I have heard, one that I will return to constantly. It is wonderful that such music is made and I encourage everyone to get this themselves.
Go to http://www.lastvisibledog.com/

Continuing the acoustic sound we have The Juniper Meadows with their guitar and banjo sound on 'The Grand Sonora' from Imvated. Listening to the band with each release the players become more atuned, weaving music together which has an improvised spontaneity at its heart. Theirs is a more low-fi, live to tape sound than Matthew De Gennaro above but it is equally appealing. I love how you can hear the tape noise, the sound of the air in the room they are playing in. This is music direct from the fields, with no compromise or thought of fashion. Music journalists can try to conceptualise the interest in this music and make it fashionable but artists such as these were playing before this time and will continue long after the journalists have moved on again. You can hear them explore the connection between their playing. They aren't concerned with acclaim but with the moment of creation, of the moments when their music becomes temporarily more than the sum of two players. The accordion playing hymn like accompaniment on 'Oakwoods' reminds us of the music roots on one of their best pieces to date.
Go to http://www.imvated.tk/

Also coming with this release from Imvated was the skronk-noise-insanity of Jarvis on 'Species and Severity' which is one of the most outre, skull probing, bowel loosening releases of the year. You don't so much listen to this music as suffer it and I mean that as a kind of complement. In its own field this is very effective and yet on pieces like 'Global Social Security Satellite' it is almost beautiful for a moment....almost. 'Mentality..petting the melancholy cock' shows there is an adventurous, experimental rock animal waiting to get out of them. This is an fascinating rather than enjoyable release. The noise has to be heard to be believed though....
Go to http://www.imvated.tk/

Jason Ajemian brings us 'Love Songs / Invade Your Mind Too' on Foxglove. Jason is more known as one half of Born Heller with Josephine Foster but has also played in jazz ensembles for many years. Born Heller are known are their stark acoustic traditional sounding folk music, here though Jason makes personal songs in a more personal style. The songs have backings that are centred on bass and simple percussion. This places emphasis on Jason's voice which is yearning and wrought, seeking connection and comfort. The pieces unremitting starkness means they inevitably won't appeal to everyone but their intensity is undeniable. The extended title track at first has a droning cello and harmonics which will appeal more to fans of Jewelled Antler releases. Over time this becomes a frenzied exploration of the cello with Jason coming in to sing towards the end.
Go to http://www.digitalisindustries.com/fg076.html

The mighty 'MusicYourMindWillLoveYou' collective return on double compilation 'Sound Surrounds Us - Volume 2'. These compilations have proven to be an excellent way in to their mind altering music. On this one they allow themselves room for each artist to have a longer piece and to introduce some new artists to us. We start with Castings whose 'SisterSchool' is an amazing exploration of noise, electronic harmonics and guitar. We hear sounds that invoke power tools, radios, bomb sounds. Sounding like the spiritual successors to 70s German band Faust, they bring a sense of vast space to the music. Whilst noise like this can sound chaotic and confrontational, they structure it like the most micro-composed musique concrete. Echoes and reverbation take what could be ordinary sound manipulation into cavernous places. Then later waves of slow scraping electric guitar give this the primal power of tectonic movement.

'6Maik9' give us a shimmering raga of guitar, sitar played in what sounds like a cave. Over this is odd child speech and the resonance of steel strings fading into the distance. 'The Golden Oaks' is as we know Brad Rose of The North Sea and Keith Woods of Hush Arbors, representing the USA component to the collective on 'Cricle of Ravens'. Continuing the raga like like feeling, melodica, droning violins and guitar weave a beautiful and refreshing piece, getting simpler and just guitar towards it's calm end. This piece in particular sounds like it seeps directly from nature rather than being composed.

Our friends Davenport continue the USA side of things with 'Towards the gateless gate'. This piece is very hushed, almost imperceptible. Tiny notes and movements all the more meaningful set over an eiree glass like drone. Then, the piece seems to take off with chimes, bells, noises and a heightening tension. This in turn gives way to a quite stunning section which gives us the sound of music boxes playing in the ocean as whales drift by. These two aspects slowly reconcile by turns, chaotic yet underpinned by beauty. The whole of Davenport's two sides shown in one piece. Brad Rose returns as The North Sea on 'Maximillion Culprit', a lengthy twenty minute track. This is one of the most rhythmic and heavy pieces Brad has done. Scything guitar and structured percussion give us five minutes which invent a kind of 'heavy sufi' type music, mystical dervishes for post-industrial landscapes. In turn this gives way to an echoing, shifting bed of quiet guitar notes which becomes a wistful cosmic psychedelia carrying on calmingly to the end.

Disc two of the set commences with 'Ffehro' on 'For I Am Your Greatest' which has someone repeating the title line over field recordings, voices, percussion and distant guitars. It's a quite unsettled piece, although restrained feeling full of violent potential. If a lot of current music is copying aspects of post-punk 'raincoat rock' then here we have the inheritors of This Heat and early Carbaret Voltaire transported to the trash filled edge of a desert. 'Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood', perhaps the flagship artist of the collective start with an anarchic chaos of trumpet, synth, cello, noises, modem signals and almost random percussion. It's to their credit that whilst always sounding deliberate they keep up this mind scrambling insanity for twelve minutes on the sense-defying 'Eat Your Thirst'. Head for the hills!

'James and Ove' are a new artist to me and bring us 'Invocation 1', a tribal drum based ritual drone with chimes, chanting and the deepest resonant digeridoo heard since the Majik releases. Here we're truly back to the land, to the shape shifting forms at the edge of perception, to the heat haze of the desert and the winged figures carved on ancient Australian rocks. 'Terracid' return on 'Lupine Moon' which is as terrifying as the title implies it might be. Somehow Terracid make noises of your nightmares, untraceable from instruments of human making. The depth of their strangeness knows no bounds, drone is hardly a work to describe the scrying, searing soundscape, like EVP from primitive forgotten gods. Your hearing is at risk, you have been warned. In it's own way this is perhaps some of the most sustained heavy music made. The final piece by another new artist 'Din Muck # f' is mercifully less intense but what it removes in violence it adds in its sonic invention. Here we have a throbbing organic drone which merges electronics with instruments and processes it in such a way as it seems to exist beyond the speakers and to resonate the air itself. It's a quite fantastic piece that takes electronic music into visions the future as imagined by 1960s Dr Who. Be afraid, the collective seem to have another wave of artists ready to unlease upon us and the current ones are evolving at a frightening pace if this essential compilation is anything to go by....
Go to http://mymwly.blogspot.com/

Another new artist from the MusicYourMindWillLoveYou collective is Soarwhole who is here on 'Soarwhole knows krystal of doom'. This takes apart the guitar structures of other collective artists and reconstructs it as a slow drone then beams it as a radio signal from other planets. We hear radio like electronics, slow guitars, cello and echoes form in a deeply psychedelic, space like piece. It has a delightfully uncontrolled feeling, never anarchic but feeling free until about eight minutes in it becomes a strummed cosmic jam with singing cutting through. Middle eastern woodwind, more of the signals and processing remind me of 70s avant German rock, but in truth this exists in a musical dimension of its own imagining.

Second piece 'My Studio Apartment' is more intimate, with directly recorded acoustic guitar, flute and drums. This has a woozy, late night drift and is adorned with some fantastic probing psychedelic lead guitar As it picks up impetus and the percussion drives the piece to a more structured space-rock you suddenly realise how this in its own way is rock music. Then about eight minutes in it lifts off in a kind of staggeringly heavy ceremonial chanted, stoner rock. That moment which comes from all great releases by this collective, when your mind floats out of your head, comes here. Once this passes, there is a realisaion that the moment cannot be caught here again and the music reaches deep space with electronic pulses shifting around intense ritual percussion and wordless singing. When it finally ends, nothing can be quite the same ever again.
Go to http://mymwly.blogspot.com/

Keith Woods has a new release on the MusicYourMindWillLoveYou label too as his Hush Arbors creative name. Over a series of releases this band has evolved from hushed acoustic songs in nature settings through instrumental soundscapes. This CD 'Death Caligrapy' sees the two sides combined. So on the first title track, we hear a rolling soundscape of reed drones, vocal loop and minimalised percussion but over this, Keith sings. It's an excellent sound which takes the band forward considerably and places him alongside Sieben (http://www.matthowden.com). The simple sound allows an ancient quality to shine through, it's almost like listening in to a folk ritual with it's bone percussion and wordless humming.

Our second track 'Reconcilliation...Liberation' commences with a sounds like movement in a cave and almost static reed drone wafting in the background. This piece then evolves like an ambient atmosphere, movement and rattling in the space of the cavern with the minimal music drifting. Over a period of time the music becomes more strident, moving from the background to the fore, violin melodies moving around the central root note until the piece closers. I would have welcomed much more than these undeniably excellent tracks but such is the charm of Hush Arbors. I look forward to a longer release in the future which builds upon the sounds further evolved here.
go to http://mymwly.blogspot.com

Hush The Many are another new band who on 'Mind The Sprawl' making quietly moving songs that find their own space amidst the complexity of modern society. Soft acoustic songs are set amongst the clatter and distraction of electronics and sampled detris which only strengthens their hushed resolve. It's a clever approach, both undercutting and emphasising the lullaby songs which are often just voices and acoustic. Songs like 'Paper Doll' are wonderfully delivered showing a strong talent worthy of much more attention. There is something both resigned and welcoming about their songs, they sometimes sound absolutely despairing but always with a touch of hope. Last track 'Desire part III' starts with a mournful restatement of the title track and then becomes a quite excellent circular moody instrumental, half way between Barry Adamson and Fourtet. This short EP bodes well for a longer piece and we will watch them develop with much interest.
Go to http://www.hushthemany.tk/

Drunjus as Clay Ruby's drone outlet are rapidly evolving to be one of the most enjoyable off-shoots from the Davenport Family. Here we have the new 'Green/Yellow' double CD set from Foxglove. Perhaps it is me rather than the music but the pieces do seem more considered, focussed in their arrangement and instrumentation. These pieces are slow to evolve, merging environmental sound with stringed instruments of all types. As they evolve the pieces become vibrant and full of passion, perhaps reflecting Clay's excitement at working in this area. That is not to say they are soft, although the first piece drifts across the fields, the second 'Soil and Star part 1' is more ominous, a low rumbling drone emerging to be a roar of shifting landscapes. We also have here the original version of 'Thick winds off the Sargasso' which has seen another release (reviewed in the previous entry) in a variant form. Although starting with natural sounds this piece grows to be the forewarning of storms to come, the air becoming tense in that pent-up atmosphere only released by a torrential, sky splitting downpour.'Dream piece 0.5' is a dense fog of ever so slightly shifting drone, impenetrable it perfectly evokes the feeling is being stuck inside a dream that will not end.

The Yellow disc starts with 'In The Air Moans and hums' which has one unwavering, resonant note that ever so slowly emerges from silence to become almost like a siren, unceasing and dominant. 'Fantastic Glacial Heat' sounds huge, layers of clangerous stringed notes like never ending bell chimes. Warped, haunted melodies appear just out of reach, calling ships across the air onto rocks. 'Dream piece 1' takes the dense fog of the embryonic piece and doubles it, into multiple drones all playing at once, loud and unremitting. Overtones of electric guitar add harmonics that further strengthen the piece, a counterpart to composer Gavin Bryars slow elegance, here the slow emergence allows focus on the sound itself which penetrates to the very recesses of the cranium. The final piece 'Soil and Star part 2' confirms this, huge swathes of fuzzed guitar tower over us. Electrical leakage everywhere, feedback, distortion and ever more guitars enter, barely concealing the power at the heart of the music. If Drunjus has on occasion appeared the blissful companion to Davenport then here it takes on malevolent form which thankfully dematerialises after eight skull fucking minutes. You'll believe a brain can fry.
Go to http://www.digitalisindustries.com/

Continuing this acoustic experimentation are GHQ on 'Hea' from 'Arbitary Signs'. Here we have four tracks of treated acoustic instruments playing together in Indian raga like drone settings. It is very effective seeming to be created in the moment as you listen. Melodies glisten amongst the layers of surging instruments. Occasionally there are touches of rural folk and the layering of the instruments shows a clear interest at the peaks in noise and musical intesnity. It feels restless and full of energy which needs to be released, not as pensive as Jewelled Antler can be, this tumbles out in a rush. The third track has more of a lost-north America feeling than the raga aspects of the previous two bringing it close to the clattering low-fi folk-noise of Maths Balance Volumes and Virgin Eye Blood Brothers (whose Pete Nolan is involved and its on his label). Track four has a more blues based quality, the bending acoustic notes and shimmering picking combining into a wistful rural idyll.
Go to http://www.volcanictongue.com/arbitrarysigns.html

Larkfall Recordings return with their new release, a 'split' of The Penumatic Consort and Johann Wlight. Here Larkfall enter the realms of spiritual invocation via music. The Pneumatic Consort start with a seven piece suite played only on wind instruments, flute, recorder and flageolets. This are layered into melodies which curl around one another as incantations to the fairy Sybila reproduced in Reginald Scott's 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft'. Often we hear nature in the background, taking these pieces out of the studio and into the fields and forests of those who came before us. These pieces are sometimes subtly processed with reverb giving them a choral quality, the wind instruments producing the magic proscribed in the music's creation. If Larkfall's 'Xenis Emputae Travelling Band' make the music of the earth, here we have the sound which sits invisible within the air. But this music is never merely pretty, there is a foreboding ever present, a sense of dabbling in areas we barely comprehend.

On his extended piece 'Johann Wlight' creates 'Thee Gold of a Thousand Mournings' a seventeen minute electronic piece which is truly music of our landscape. We start with the sound of fields, birds, air, insects in the crescendo of early morning. After two minutes this recedes as tiny electronic chimes and backwards notes enter. The psychedelic backwards notes combine with the childlike chimes potently as a distant chords joins them. Eventually the chimes and backwards notes disppear to leave ethereal wafts of drifting in the breeze. It's very calming and towards its end introduces quite lovely melodies. This release shows Larkfall in area that is unique to them, making inventive music that combines the ancient with the modern in a particularly thrilling way. They intend to pursue this further and we can only wonder at the arcane realms this will take them to.
Go to http://www.larkfall.co.uk/

'Barl Fire' is a new label established by our good friend Simon Allen who not only reissues some our of print, short run releases but also is now issuing marvellous new music too. One of his first is Robert Horton on 'Just Before Setting The Sky on Fire'. We have reviewed Robert before at these pages and he is a musician who works across genres, all of which fit with our interests at the site. This is a full seventy minute release by Robert with fourteen pieces and brings together many genres under his personal style. We start with the title piece which takes acoustic music and subjects it to extensive processing and manipulation until it sounds like a piece of classic musique concrete. The racing acoustic instrumental circles act as source material for the phasing and resonating electronics woven over the top. Next track 'Pibrough Morn' takes a slow folk-blues acoustic guitar and sets it against a more subtle electronic drone (taking us right back to the Matthew De Gennaro review at the start of this entry).

'Spring Suite, Moss Pillows' has a short mandolin sounding, middle ages folk refrain echoing against itself to infinity, until the echoes becomes the focus and the source is almost lost. These endless refractions create a continually changing pieces that eventually becomes the resonance of the strings itself over which a brutal electric guitar then enters. It is then onto 'Spring Suite, Eggshell' which has two acoustic phrases playing together giving an air of suspension. Into this Robert brings in after a few minutes churning, glitching electronics that distort and take the piece into another direction. Gradually the acoustic sounds are absorbed into the electronic processing until only a residue carries the melody onward, until even this is lost and only a drone remains.'There he wisely' uses electronic loops which shift and phase against each other in a mechanical lament. 'Internal, Eternal' uses clanging sounds overlaid to hark back to 1950s tape based sound exploration.

'Emulsion' moves it forward to the glass and bell tones generated by primitive computers and sets this into a surging electronic dreamlike soundscape.'Basho Haiko' takes the Japanese verse form and uses it to construct something either dedicated to or made from the notes of Robbie Basho's acoustic guitar music. 'Figures Against the Sky' starts with plucked acoustic guitar and an evolving drone. The sound of these two is then phased in a chamber like setting with a 'hold and release' effect on the guitar which produces an entirely new sound to the piece. This is a piece with a feeling of unreleased expectation, of tension and would work well as part of a soundtrack.'Kindness of Strangers' mixes a kind of sci-fi dread with all kinds of interesting sourceless sounds. Like something from the BBC Radiophonic laboratory this has a nostalgic sense of cosmic exploration married to a wide eyed wonder at the possibility of sound. When a piano enters and picks out a melody, it seems quite amazing amongst the sonic deluge.

'Folk song from planet x' is exactly that, a plaintive melodic refrain played on guitar, with Wicker Man violin both processed into folk song of an alien language. You get the feeling it will burst into 'The Maypole Song' at any second.'Many sounds have passed' is an electronic raga to circuitry deities whilst final track 'Klick and Klack' acknowledges the influence of Kraftwerk with their 'Kling Klang' studio / sound. This uses sound processing and rhythmic pauses to create its own sonic language. Imagine Kraftwerk's 'The Robots' reduced to individual tones which are then sequenced and various whirrs, clicks and sax noises are added at key points. It's beguiling and confusing all at once and in that regard acts as a mircocosm for much of the release. Perhaps only Robert could make all this work together, the idea of fusing primitive electronics, folk music, digital editing, raga and sound processing is a somewhat singular vision but somehow Robert pulls it off. Conventional it isn't, inventive and something never imagined before, it is.
Go to http://homepages.tesco.net/~beautiful.day/Barl_Fire_Recordings.htm

In the past few weeks we have established a wide variety of releases for review and will try to catch up with some extensive Blog entries for recent releases. This time we have done more than twenty and we will probably do the same next week.

As this Blog is designed to cover all kinds of interesting strange music, not restricted to folk related releases like our main web site TheUnbrokenCircle, I have no hesitation in exploring the amazing Psicklops release, a free CD from the FreeMatterForTheBlind label. This album takes the form of an aural move, a film without visuals. This combines structured dialogue, recordings, some music all structured into a narrative development. It must have taken an incredible amount of time. Where bands like Negativland and Tape Beatles who pioneered this form had a more absurdist, chaotic quality this release although often humorous is more serious. Indeed it talks about the ruling of the USA by a totalitarian regime that dictates by fear instilled in the population, facilitating the aims of corporate interests. This ‘dark cinema’ explores the acquiescence of the public in accepting this control and oppression as it is for ‘their own good’. It’s a starkly disturbing exposition of a sinister evolution in society. With many of the potential causal factors for such a development appearing in our new perpetual war on terror, bombings and fear of ‘the other’ it feels disturbing and prescient. Although the label talks of this as the follow up to Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ it feels as much like 1984 justified on the basis of preserving our shopping culture or a sequel to the film Brazil.

The piece brings together many musicians who provide ‘soundtrack’ to the movie which requires and rewards your concentration. It’s new regime is one of petty controls, of living within the tiny rules and restrictions which are hidden behind a veil of service oriented language. Listening to the piece will take you through a movie, on a journey and will confront your concept of liberty and how easily this can slip away. It is a powerful and in many ways quite moving piece which every thinking person should hear.

On Mike Wexler’s EP we start with a lovely chamber acoustic folk and an absolutely incredible voice. It’s hard to describe but it stopped me in my tracks. The phrasing of Donovan, the accent of Dylan, a weariness and absolute purity of expression. With only piano and acoustic guitar his ‘I’d Like To Solve the Puzzle’ is a gem of a song we should all hear which later includes psychedelic electric guitar. Oh what a song, it‘s warming and demonstrative of stunning talent. The other songs on the EP are wonderful too moving beyond distant feelings of Leonard Cohen on ’Tropic of Gemini’. to the hazy recollection of ’March Violets’. Last song ‘Sound The Mirror’ is like The Monkees doing a mid-period Velvet Underground acoustic song, charming, shambolic and touching. This exists beyond music industry hype and is worth your finding it and making it your own.

Normanoak are a new name to me and is in effect musician Chris Barth. His album of last year ‘Born A Black Diamond’ is beguiling and different to most. It moves between introspective folk to slightly demented sixties styled psychedelic pop on the first couple of tracks. For me it works better on the acoustic driven tracks like the urgent ‘Watching Your House Burn’ even though other layers are added in. The songs never follow the expected chord changes, making it hard to settle to the album. This is a good thing in the main though as it is an album that sounds better a couple of listens. Although often not folk music as such it does seem full of a free whimsical, folk feeling throughout notable on songs like ‘Our place in the sky’. ‘Sun Enters Capricorn’ is especially effective with layered psychedelic electric guitars taking us back to Grateful Dead on ‘Dark Star’. There does seem to be a slight continuum of exploring sanity on songs like the unsettled acoustic ‘How Do You Stay Sane?’ which evokes Skip Spence or Syd Barrett. After the disturbing ‘Born Again’ the album does resolve with the excellent psychedelic folk of ‘Ballad of Norman Oak’. With a fresh straight-to-tape spontaneity about the album it doesn’t follow the norm and has a distinctive sound with some excellent songs.

Magpie Mind are a British band who play a live sounding Indie folk-pop on CD ‘Let‘s Worry‘. The singer has a voice that has the simplicity of speech, it sounds authentic and is quite charming. Behind this layers of guitar and a shuffling drum beat support on ‘Seven Days’. When we get to the next song it jumps out at us with guitar and violin and a quite beautiful melody. This is a quite sublime song that reminded me of the 70s folk band ‘The Water Into Wind Band’. However they should be praised in their own right for this brilliant song. Next song ‘Sound American’ is almost as good with soft 60s jazz styled fugal horn or cornet accompanying a swaying acoustic song. By the time of ‘Take Louis Jordan Away’ it’s clear there is a strong song writing talent here. Their version of ‘As I Rowed Out’ is excellent too on a song done many times they sound fresh. As the band matures some focus on instrumental arrangement will benefit them but for now this welcome new artist should be strongly praised for a great start.

Bilkis are another emerging UK artist here with a wonderful E.P. which has the confidence and talent of an established artist. Their four song demo starts with ‘Water Garden’ which is has multi-tracked vocals over a somewhat creepy bass line. It’s an excellent song which brings them close to artists like Fursaxa and Sharron Kraus, but it is clear this comes from them not via influences. The band indicated to me they are evolving quickly and this is only their formative stage, but even now they are diverse. On the second song ‘Ever’ we have simple acoustic guitar and twin lead vocals, it’s a sultry, charming performance. ‘Such Amazing Skies’ uses banjo and guitar with a more pronounced rhythmic emphasis. Final song ‘Blue Bird’ is a kind of surreal folk-waltz instrumental , as though a Victorian fairground ride has become possessed, the wooden horses leering as their spin ever faster. This is only four songs into their emerging musical career….who knows where they will reach on the next ones…?

We have had a CD from Chris Jones for a while now but it never seemed to get a release from us. This is lonesome acoustic songs played in a ‘first take’ style with all the mistakes left in. Chris is a good and impassioned folk-blues guitarist who you can hear putting his all into every note. With songs called ‘F-ckers’ and ‘up the fuzz, up the buzz’ you know it’s not going to be happy music but Chris expels every note as though it is his bile-filled last. He’s clearly got ‘issues’ to work out here and these pour out of his songs which are kind of enthralling and like listening in to a frustrated confessional all at once. It’s not exactly party music but on those days when you really should have punched the boss but had to hold back then it will hit the spot like almost nothing else. When he strips it down to just minimalist guitar and reverb it is more lasting and appealing such as on ‘Let’s Get Busy’. By the time of last song ‘Axe’ you have to wonder whether in this mood he is best near sharp implements such is the mournful intensity of the release. A great release to listen to while depressed as I think it might help you but listened to cold with a beer in hand, it’s somewhat intimidating but then I think that might be the point.

Jason Honea is known for The Knit Separates, his membership of The Child Readers and has a new project called ‘The Chord Fort’ here on a forthcoming release recorded live at Wallywoods Gallery in Berlin. The first piece is ‘Smile Louder’, a bright organic drone with lots of loops moving over each others. We hear vocals, environmental sounds, instruments, keyboards playing repetitious notes. It’s as though Thuja were collaborating with Phillip Glass, highly structured yet natural. The loops are hypnotics, every moment sounding like a memory played over and over, changing only slightly until it takes on new meanings. This music whirls and dances, although a drone it feels melodic and positive closest perhaps to the Finnish artist Es. New elements are added into the music, playing in patterns against the pulsing organ giving this an almost liturgical form. The name of the piece ‘Smile Louder’ captures the vibrant happiness at the heart of this live music. I would have welcomed much more music but there is only one more piece called ‘Regions of Memory’ which is a divine ceremonial piece with bells being struck over a drone which sounds like insects thronging in a purple sky. A great start which really indicates something exciting developing, I’m very intrigued and hope for a longer release soon.

Over the last year the MusicYourMindWillLoveYou label from Australia has issued some of the most astounding music I’ve ever heard, here with Terracid. They have a way of combining experimental folk and rock with a king of primitive ritualism that goes beyond the notion of contemporary music and into non-physical realms that are difficult to fully express. In the past it would have been easy to dismiss this as merely psychedelic or drug related but there does appear to be something more produced in their releases even if this is accidental. So here we have another release from them called ‘Alltounia’. Terracid act as a kind of alter-ego to their more known (but still very obscure) Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood or 6Majik9. Where Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood sound like listening in to a ceremony at the dead of night, Terracid sound like the sound of the elements with nobody there to see them. One of the most welcome aspects of their music is how different it sounds to just about everyone. It’s very improvised in feeling but never uncontrolled with some whispering shadowed vocals contained on this release.

Perhaps it sounds like Can backing Jim Morrison but Can were far more disciplined in the structure of their pieces. Instead Terracid sound like they are gradually leaking out of rocks. ‘Khepera’ moves into the pure drone area with jews harp, fiddle, rumbling drums and blown instruments which sounds unique, like Incredible String Band, John Cale and Uton jamming together (imagine that!). ‘Talking Shadow Asking For Light’ reaches a place of primitive humans communing with nature, it’s perfectly realised but deeply unsettling. It’s increasingly apparent how deep the aboriginal shamanic concepts are to the collective, their journeys in time and space reproduced in the form of music. Unlock the hidden doors marked green in your brain and…..

When you hear about a band with a name like ‘Kiss The Anus of a Black Cat’ who are immediately compared to Comus you simply have to check them out. Before I heard Comus, I had heard the rumours of the dark contents within and it was with the same in trepidation that I ordered this and put in on the rather excellently named ‘If The Sky Falls, We Shall Catch Larks’. The album starts with ‘Sevenfold’ which has a drone and strummed acoustic guitar over it. Portentous lead vocals are supported by wordless communal backing with a building sinister air woven from the hypnotic repetition of the song and melody. Resisting lots of sound processing, electronics or effects this seems somehow all the more effective in its intent than the many ‘black folk’ artists which come from central Europe. Indeed, this band is in fact a Belgian musician called Steff Heeran using lots of acoustic instruments layered to achieve the ascending (or should that be descending…) power of songs formed from drones. So the Comus comparisons are warranted and this does achieve a dark pagan quality such as bands like Long Live Death and Spires That In The Sunset Rise who we have also reviewed here. The artist says this song was originally a longer incantation and still in this more song based form it retains that intense quality.

Although the name of the artist might imply a purely dark style this is in truth a cover for more positive and excellent music which moves beyond clichés and simply asks to be accepted on its own terms. ‘Nihl, As In Nihilism’ reminds of In Gowan Ring circa ‘The Glinting Spade’ but with a more direct vocal focus. Instead of some depressive magic, the song is instead about the commercial frenzy generated by the Tsunami of 2005 and is a more considered song than it might appear. It is this more subtle aspect which ensures that the artist does not become a horror parody. The third piece ‘Sighing, Seething, Soothing’ is longer at nearly twenty minutes and starts with a primitive drone of metal scrapes and reverberating air over which a suspense filled guitar melody plays. Romantic piano comes in and already we have music of some considerable power with resonant pulsing notes entering and taking the music ever onwards until it feels as though it might explode.

Then it suddenly ascends to another level with communal singing, chants, bells, whirls of organ and huge swathes of distorted electric guitar. It’s an immense, towering part that sounds all the more stunning coming after the previous eight minutes of building drone. The guitars are so dense and heavy they approach both Glenn Branca and ‘Evol‘ era Sonic Youth, that same feeling of wantonness and howling liberty. With the intense vocals of ‘watch that spider weaving now’ discernable, for me it reaches beyond being merely any kind of ‘dark folk’ and captures a moment of quite brilliant musical intensity. Slowly it descends again, away from the towering corrosion into a more electronic drone with tiny chimes, bells, backwards guitar and structured editing. It’s rather lovely and very welcome after the unexpected power of the previous section. It floats slowly down, gradually allowing our spent selves to rest again, the temporary harnessing of carnal lost becoming only memory and the forces invoked returning thankfully back to their domains.

There is one more track to go, a comparatively delicate, forlorn folk ballad to an unrequited love expressed as disease. It’s quite excellent, the darkness held back and a glimmer of light allowed in to infect the listener. You won’t hear many, if any, albums like this anytime soon. The artist has a vision which although seemingly dark on the surface is in effect a more personal exploration of feelings and desire in settings of strong power which try to cover the fragility held within.

Volcano The Bear are another band who sit outside genres, taking in aspects of many such as free folk, jazz, noise, drone and experimentalism and sculpting it into new forms. On their new release ‘Catonapotato’ they take this further out than most into mind scrambling territories. Fundamentally this is music beyond boundaries for films that exist only in the imagination. At present it is horn calls and hand percussion however a minute ago it was coruscating noise and the minute before that frenzied jazz. This release is live at their first gig in Sweden with two of the band members improvising. It’s a testament to their talents that it doesn’t sound disjointed or coming in fragments. Rather than that it has a living, breathing feeling like listening to a new life form emerge before your ears. ‘Cantonapotato’ has fleetingly lovely moments of surprise, it also has times you just want to turn it off, it seduces, roars and has a musical language all of its own. At present it sounds it is two Egyptian melodies weaving around each other. For the musically adventurous this is something to savour and get to know over the years. The music will reveal itself slowly with truly something new each listen. Readers of this Blog will be challenged and enthralled by this. It’s important to keep challenging the boundaries of our perception, to find new ways of expression and in that regard, this essential release is a virtual self help manual.

The Davenport family of bands is always guaranteed to take into the extremities of music. However Drunjus the drone music offshoot of Clay Ruby and Dan Woodman is far more entrancing and almost ambient than I expected. There is a double CD on Foxglove recently issued which contains a shorter studio version of the music on this disc. The Cdr here was released in June 2005 and is called ‘Thick Winds Off the Sargasso’ which is a live, twenty minute or so piece that has wind, waves and insects echoing in the distance and gently buzzing notes whirring above which build over time in intensity. It’s rather lovely really in its own way and as close to early Michael Stearns or Jonathan Cole Lough’s ‘Cake’ as it is to Davenport themselves. It’s got a very still feeling as though heat haze is shimmering in front of the speakers. The piece is a kind of self-enclosed musical landscape, you feel as though you are at this place with the insects all around. After a while I almost didn’t notice it was on which is a good thing, the air merged with the music and the room changed for the duration of the mini-CD. That’s not to say it’s dull, it just flows consistently until it becomes part of the sound all around you. This is a very interesting direction for the Davenport family and amongst the very best of its type.

Another Davenport linked artist is Maths Balance Volumes which is Clay Kolbinger on ‘Cattle Skulls and Rail Road Tracks‘ their third release. Well this is frankly terrifying, a journey into the butchering Hicksville world of the lost deep south. This is inbred uneducated lunatics given power tools and Pro-Tools. Grinding endless noise, shards of banjo, demented hollering, frenzied drumming and more for your delectation. You might not mind listening but you wouldn’t want them to visit. If folk music is the expression of the people, then this foul noise if the expression of inarticulate, one toothed, no fingered sub-people reduced to banging bones together and scraping off the remaining marrow like dogs. Yet sometimes the music does come through, the harrowing foot stomping dances of ‘Dried Up In The Sun’ do have some kind of feeling, these people do live…somehow. You should hear this but you will wish you hadn’t. The soundtrack to the snuff movie version of a potential Wicker Man remake.

Over the last few months we have discovered Zelienople whose last album ‘Sleeper Coach Lot’ was fantastic textured psychedelic guitar soundscapes that updated the mellow sound of Pink Floyd for the post-rock era. They return on ‘Ink’ a Cdr from the always wonderful 267 lattaaja label. This takes the sound down into a sort of slow mournful droning post-folk. The songs were recorded live over two days with the instruments strung with thick wire. You can hear it too, the sound is both warm in the live setting and intoxicating in the deep resonant sound of the strings. As the pieces are slow and overlaid with drones this gives them a depth and intensity above many similar works. ‘The Nod Squad’ is like a cold ambient track from Lull or Main at first before acoustic notes and sustained organ reminded me of Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit of Eden’. ‘Pace Car’ takes the instruments almost entirely away just leaving their droning aural leakage, feedback and hum drifting in the air with just cloud drift electric guitar hanging in suspended chords. ‘Rababilitation’ takes it even further into just minimalist droning tones and harmonic overtones.

It is as they are reducing themselves to the pure core of their sound. A slow song, seeming depressed and internal called ‘Life is Simple’ implies it is anything but, before the primal feedback-guitar roar of ‘Seroquel’. This track is how you imagined Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’ was, a symphony of never crescendoing guitar noise, polluted and confronting. It’s close to Glenn Branca’s ‘Gates of Hell’ guitar symphony and all the more eye melting coming after the glacial pieces before. We end with ‘Boxes on Shores’ a shimmering far-eastern melody over glass like drones. Vocals sit almost unheard and out of reach. The longing here still isn’t resolved, shown as the almost brutal guitar chords pound in waves over the top. With this release they may lose some fans and gain new ones, it’s a brave and seemingly personal development of their sound. If they can marry the sonic evolution here with the structure of their earlier album they may create a modern masterpiece.

The Finnish artists Keijo Virtanen and Titus Petäjäniemi are together on release ’Katuval Sammeau Kohdallari’ from Foxglove. On this they produce spectral soundscapes which sit between improvised jazz, folk and ambient music. Theirs is a unique haunted sound though with low ominous piano notes, shimmering vibraphone and splashes of percussion. The music has a soundtrack quality, that of a gothic shadow filled ghost film. As we listen the music changes to melodica and bells drifting across sheep meadows. Instead of haunting this has a calming tone but always with an undertow of unease. This sense of unease is more prominently heard on the Vapaa releases that Titus is involved in and is hear balanced by the bucolic atmospheres of Keijo. It is a sonically interesting release too which adds to its interest. Throat singing, low environmental rumbles and natural sounds all ensure this is both aurally vivid and different from most. By the third track keijo’s guitar is gently weaving melodies into the soft but never settled music. Although entirely instrumental and producing atmospheres not songs, this feels accessible and would make a good entry point to such music.

There is an increasing amount of such releases, here we review Volcano The Bear, Drunjus and Terracid. It has been emerging across genres for years, notably with artists like Robert Rich, Alio Die and Jonathan Coleclough. It then emerged from acoustic improvised music such as here. However the Finnish releases such as this one, for some reason always sound more alien, their aural soundtracks remote, distant and unknowable. It is therefore one of the very best in this field and quiet example which many other artists will aspire to.

Whilst we are with the mercurial talents of Keijo I have also been listening to two of his own solo works. The first is ‘Keijo and the Free Players’ which for me is one of his best. Here the organic drones made with various plucked, blown, stroked and bowed instruments are merged with sinister electronic aspects. These bend and twist the music into contorted forms which contain both the ancient and the disturbed, like the explorations of Quatermass from the 1950s remained. This intensity and mystery within the drones makes them compelling, almost like a narrative with no ending. Often he captures fleeting moments of touching melody, a fragment of realisation swept back into the ever evolving music. On the ‘By The Mountains and the Sea’ we have a completely different approach. This felt more like a curiosity to me but I can imagine others may adore it. Here Keijo sings minimalist USA blues and porch songs from the early part of the twentieth century. These are authentically done but it seems a little pointless as a release. The songs aren’t changed or embellished though the guitar work is often excellent and some songs do have the addition of throat singing… Without the raging impulse of a Leadbelly or Robert Johnson to raise these songs into primal invocations to their own insecurity and frustrations they don’t rise above competent renditions. An interesting curio but one I don’t envisage returning to often.

After this listening to deeply experimental music for a number of releases, it is good to return to direct acoustic music inspired by traditional song. The Baird Sisters are quietly one of the undiscovered treasures of music. On their Cdr ‘Home’ released a while back they lull us with gorgeous duo versions of songs old and new, all woven into a flowing, cohesive whole. They play guitar and banjo behind their twin vocals, simple but so difficult to get right. Yet here you would swear you were listening to a classic release of USA music from sixty years ago. That’s not to say they don’t sound fresh, it’s just that they have so effortlessly tapped into the folk music of the country. Of course Meg Baird is now part of Espers and touring their first album extensively where they are gaining much deserved attention. This is a wonderful evolution but The Baird Sisters’ music is excellent in its own right. If you like traditional music you should buy this but more than that, anyone with an interest in song and truthful performance should buy this heart warming

From Russia we have a very distinctive release by Julia Voronydosa by Brad Rose on Foxglove. Julia is part of the Russian ‘bard’ music form, a ballad based acoustic music close to our folk style. However in Russia during the Communist era this was seen as a political and subversive music that endangered the liberty and life of the makers. Whilst we hope now that Julia’s life is more settled, her music still retains its individuality and uncompromising approach. In a package that has extensive text, a DVD and the CD packaged in sympathetic luxury which is merited by the simply beautiful music within. Brad is to be thanked and congratulated for taking the time and commercial risk for such an untypical release. Here he and Julia clearly make a case to draw close parallels between ‘Western’ folk music and the Russian bard form, highlighting the melodic and arrangement similarities. It’s just a shame I don’t understand Russian as the songs are a form of poetry which appears to be wonderful.

In terms of the music it sounds almost exactly like Anne Briggs’ album ‘The Time Has Come’, Bridget St. John, Joni Mitchell or Karen Beth at times. It is the most simple of guitar and vocal songs which impart far more than seems to be physically contained in the songs themselves. It is rare to hear music which connects genuinely at an emotional level. Comparisons could be made for modern ears to Marissa Nadler or Josephine Foster. However we should not take these literally as it is also clear that Julia is talented and individual in her own right, derivative of nobody and exploring a personal desire for expression. Each song is as similar and different to the last and work as an overwhelming whole which explores a wistful romantic introspection in which whole afternoons can pass.

The Durtro label is rapidly becoming a home for excellent artist expression Here we have one of the most sublime releases I have heard this year from John Contreras / Rose McDowell / Nurse With Wound. John and Rose do a heart-rendingly beautiful version of the Nico song called ‘Alone’ performed in two versions. It’s a simple, direct song with just restrained cello and strings behind Rose’s innocent, fragile voice. The melody is literally incredible, seeming to be both familiar and new all at once. In between the two renditions is a piece by Nurse With Wound called ‘Geometric Horsehair’ which moves us into the distance of ether before returning to the second version of the piece which seems to come to us from a far off place. This song ‘Alone’ seems to be a new and welcome refresh of the ‘English Song’ form of the early twentieth century. This form was represented by artists like Ivor Gurney, Roger Quilter and Peter Warlock and combined traditional song with classical romanticism. Richard Moult, an artist I am proud to be friends with is also working in this area and doing an update of Current93’s ‘Soft Black Stars’ in the style with David Late Tibet. At the heart of this song ‘Alone’ is a lyric which connects across the emptiness of space with the listener and will remain with you for always.

One of our favourite bands is the still to be properly revealed The Story which is Martin Welham of the sixties band Forest working empathetically with his son. They have now completed their ‘The Dawn Is Crowned’ set for release slightly later this year. It’s a perfection fusion of the psychedelic folk sound Martin was known for with a modern feeling that fans of bands such as Espers will connect with straight away. The song writing and chord changes are stunning, doing that thing where you think ‘how did they do that?’. They are already evolving to have a communal sound, a massive layered approach that has multiple voices woven over insistent acoustic guitars. There are some new tracks here to those I’ve heard before, the band introduction song ‘Beginning’ and a wonderful pagan styled, stomping communal version of Pink Floyd’s underrated ‘Julia Dream’ (found only on the ‘Relics’ compilation) which is phenomenal with wild whistles and flutes. It‘s like Uton and Incredible String Band collaborating, imagine that. It’s clear like Gary Higgins, Simon Finn and Vashti Bunyan that now is a time where artists from the original era can fit in and receive an understanding audience. The Story are the real deal, originally as important as any of those artists and now bringing a positive and welcome talent back to us.

There are a few mystical Christian psychedelic-folk artists and a key one is Green Mistletoe from the USA who have been making wonderful music for years. Effectively the band is Brian Waters, a fantastic and kind person in addition to being a talented musician. Here we have the ‘Pentangle Braid’ free Cdr being given out by Brian to promote and share their music. It captures a simple acoustic sound with recorders, birdsong, water, rain and an air of uncorrupted innocence, of dedication and empathy with the world. Although this could make it sound fey or twee, it is instead an intoxicating, often intense experience as though listening to a prayer which in a way it may be. The music has a feeling of stillness and contemplation which is literally refreshing in a time of complexity and risk. Some artists may be attracted to such music because it is deemed by music journalists to have contemporary acceptance. However Bryan clearly belongs to a type of musician with deeper roots who are called, even compelled to make such music. It is this which sits at the heart of the music and which reaches out from it so touchingly. I hope that like me it will prove the start of a journey into his music and to the solace woven into the ‘Pentangle Braid’.

Current93 is of course centred around David Late Tibet and are long established as both a pivotal influence and a prime example of continuing artistic development. At concerts in 2005 there has been a mysterious CD containing no details except for Coptic script which was the new single by the band ahead of a forthcoming album ‘Black Ships Ate the Sky’. At the heart of David’s music is a literal belief in the coming apocalypse which heralds the return of Christ. This belief therefore combines the deepest of sorrow with the most exalted joy. It is this struggle which sits at the heart of David’s music and is expressed profoundly in simple musical language on the single. It is split into two parts itself, first a gentle acoustic ballad with cello which expresses an apocalyptic vision in soft compassionate terms it then moves into harsh electric guitar chords and more primal expressive vocal exploring how to be unborn, not to see, to not be the witness to the tragedy of the black ships in the sky.

I have been privileged to find David and become friends this year and the more you know of him, the more affecting this music is. This is because it is clear that David is not really a musician as such, he feels what he expresses physically and needs to express it, with music being his channel. I felt for a moment the weight of his vision, especially when he shrieks ‘who will deliver me from myself?’ over and over. This tore at me, it was almost unbearable, this was the friend I know, the complex person trying to resolve conflicting drives and thoughts both internal and external to himself. I felt a flicker of his pain, his unspoken need for comfort, for temporary relief from the visions he cannot control and from the intense belief which shapes his perception of future. His is not an easy vision, nor is it superficial, in an age where belief has to be ironic, where pain is to be conveyed only as entertainment, David bears witness to truth. His truth may not be yours, but the clarity and absolute conviction of his vision cannot be denied. This is music as language for the expression of experience which sits as the purest essence of art.

Emergence of the new primitives (Mid October 2005)