Indie, alternative, and experimental music
Vinyl records a specialty!
Plinth
Collected Machine Music
Album of the week
Ooh, a new Plinth CD. Only heard a bit by this chap but whenever I do hear something by him it pricks my ears up (yeah I do look a little like a dog when it happens though I don’t pant...much). This is one of those sexy CDs on the Time Released Sound label. Now we haven't been able to score any of the mega deluxe edition as they were all sold by the label as they were insanely expensive and lavish, so you’ll have to make do with thi...read full review.
Goat
Goatman
Single of the week
The preorders have gone nuts with this one so I’ve been pretty intrigued to see what the fuss is all about over this debut single from Sweden’s Goat. On the A side we’ve got ‘Goatman’, with bouncy tribal drums and repetitive chant-like vocals over quite basic, minimal, filthy bass and guitar with a liberal splash of wah. It’s more upbeat than I expected from a record with purports to be influenced by the Voodo...read full review.
Sad City
Gestures
The excellent and not particularly prolific Underwater Peoples have sent us two twelves this week. One from Family Portrait and this odd boy from Sad City. Funny little one, this. I’m reviewing it at 45 after fruitless minutes spent trying to figure out for certain what speed it’s meant to go on. What I’m getting is some quite organic-sounding minimal explorations, with the opener ‘Shell (Or Wash)’ giving us a subme...read full review.
Fluorescent Heights
Tourism
A gentle swaying arpeggio is never gonna disappoint my ears...ever. If it’s a light bouncy affair with a little tape echo or delay added to suggest melodic infinity I’m instantly sold. Henrik Stelzer a.k.a Fluorescent Heights begins ‘Tourism’ with a perfect example of the kind of thing I mean. Juno 6 with the arpeggio on hold - a 6 step cascading melody - tons of ‘verb - and you’re home...read full review.
Model 500
Control
OH! It’s Juan Atkins!!! S-weet. Do I even need to review this? ‘Control’ is a classic slice of Juan Atkins goodness with his trademark dirty Detroit electro house sounding as fresh as the day he and his buddies conceived the sound way back in the day. ‘Control’ is bumping! It possesses a super crisp beat, minimalist use of pads, some straight funky house bass-line action and a near-perfect vocoder robot vocal. It&r...read full review.
Field Music
Plumb
Field Music are keeping the Rock N’ Roll dream alive. They play those songs like they damn well mean it and somehow still manage to sound fresh to my ears even though their sound is basically a Supertramp/10CC/Beatles/Led Zeppelin hybrid. How they manage to keep squeezing awesome tracks out of this tried and tested AOR rock formula is beyond me but their grasp on the fundamentals is second to none. They are the modern age’s finest e...read full review.
Buddha On The Moon
Passage
Ooh, this one’s right up my street. On here the mysterious Buddha On The Moon bust out two side-long jams with elements of drone and psychedelic rock, which seem to be based around simple echo-laden bass guitar melodies alongside processing and programming and ethereal washed out background vocals which are blended with synth drones to fascinating effect. The simple, repetitive, slooooooow bassline that anchors everything on the first sid...read full review.
Celer & Machinefabriek
Maastunnel / Mt. Mitake
Well, how’s this for a match made in ambient minimal heaven. Messrs Long and Fabriek are collaborating on both sides of this deliciously packaged little 7” with a full colour sleeve and a postcard inside with a download (which includes two videos by Marco Douma) in a hand-numbered edition of 250. You don’t need me to tell you these aren’t gonna be around very long! On the first side there’s a slowly pulsing and ther...read full review.
Tenniscoats
Papas Ear
I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for Tenniscoats, although my dominant memory of them is that their last album (that one in the sexy fold-out card sleeve) had loads of tracks and seemed to go on forever and ever with its incessant fragile beauty. This time round they’re dropping a much more digestible 10-song CD on the excellent Hapna imprint, who also put out their awesome split 7” with Tape last year which (at the time of writi...read full review.
Decimus
Decimus 9
Time to rejoice! We’ve got a new parcel from Holidays Records! They’re the connoisseur’s choice for boutique experimental music nowadays, don’t you know? This time round we’ve got Pat Murano (No Neck Blues Band, K Salvatore, Malkuth and Key of Shame) dropping 40 minutes of creepy dark electronic ambience on us. Apparently this is part 9 of a mammoth zodiac series he’s doing and it’s making me feel a bit...read full review.
Ital
Hive Mind
Daniel Martin-McCormick's Ital project finds a new home and its first full length release on Planet Mu. It's clear to see why Mike Paradinas has signed this material as there is something quite charming about the sound and the simplistic approach to its creation. 'Doesn't Matter (If You Love Him)' samples fragments of Lady Gaga and Whitney Houston vocals via recordings from Youtube, looping them over dislocated house rhythms, an infectious bass...read full review.
Demdike Stare / Hype Williams
Shangaan Shake: Demdike Stare & Hype Williams Meets Shangaan Electro
Another week and another Shangaan release arrives at our door - we’re lucky lads here at Normans. Now, I bought and thoroughly enjoyed the Shangaan Electro compilation but when it comes to identifying the source material on these remix EPs I’m at a complete loss. I guess they’ve all been fairly heavy on deconstruction so I probably shouldn't worry about it - they work just fine as stand-alone pieces. This time round it’s...read full review.
Various
Reverend Beat-Man's Dusty Record Cabinet Volume 2
Here’s a weird one. It opens with a brief spoken intro from Rev Beatman himself followed by an annoying laugh like the ones our Brian does because he thinks it’s funny. Thankfully, though, he shuts up after that and treats us to a selection of God-themed cuts from yesteryear, from famous names like Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt and Eartha Kitt alongside not-so-famous faces like The Believers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sanni Purmone...read full review.
Male Bonding / EMA
Nirvana Covers - Aneurysm / Endless Nameless
Gotta love the vintage Sub Pop-style artwork on this one. Great touch. On Male Bonding’s version of ‘Aneurism’ (recorded by “Rory Bratwell”, lolz) they’ve simplified the guitar lines and fuzzed everything up, with drifty low-in-the-mix vocals lending it a bit of a shoegaze feel, especially in the verses. There’s some extra vocal stuff going on towards the end, too. It might not be as good as the original...read full review.
Pete Swanson
High Time/ Trees
Emerald Cocoon’s excellent Alone/Together 7” series continues with this surprisingly coherent offering from psych/improv titan Pete “Yellow” Swanson, who this time round gives us a couple of covers of some of his favourite obscure New Zealand weirdness - ‘High Time’ by Dadamah, and then ‘Trees’ by Gate on the flip. Not being familiar with the originals, though, all I can tell you is that it’s...read full review.
Suzanne Ciani
Lixiviation
With the whole glut of analogue synth wannabes doing the rounds nowadays, Finders Keepers have done us the favour of compiling, with the cooperation of the Suzanne Ciani herself, this sweeping anthology of her electronic creations spanning from 1969 to ’85. We’ve got a mixture of extended private recordings that have never been heard before and more commercial ventures, including a few little TV spots for the likes of Coca-Cola and...read full review.
Union ft Elzhi & MF Doom
Damu The Fudgemunk Remixes
This is mint! Damu the Fudgemunk reworks two cuts from Union’s ‘Analogtronics’ - a guest MC packed LP ft. DOOM, Guilty Simpson and many more. These two reworkings are straight party cuts - big beats, simple loops and straight-up party rhymes. The A-side features Elzhi who augments his rhymes Edan style with tons of short tap delay. Flip it and a looser Dilla-esque jam is fronted by the super villian himself - DOOM. As usual th...read full review.
Steinvord
Steinvord
Steinvord is a mystery, even to Rephlex who release his records. No-one knows his name, where he comes from or how exactly he makes his tracks. Reckon it’s safe to say from this debut 12” that he’s rocking the old laptop as the tracks are immensely complex as with the majority of Rephlex artists. The mix-up is kinda interesting as this self-titled EP begins with an almost musique concrete-style sound sculpture piece before goin...read full review.
Liechtenstein
Fast Forward
Liechtenstein are a girl group from Gothenburg who painstakingly recreate the female side of the C86 jangle pop scene with extremely jaunty tunes featuring lashings of jangly guitar and hummable zippy tunes. The main reference points would be Shop Assistants, Tallulah Gosh, Marine Girls, Waitresses but also with hints of the tougher edge of earlier travellers such as The Raincoats and The Slits. It has a post-punk energy and angularity that pre...read full review.
Theapplesofenergy
Mirror / Echo
This is the debut offering from Steve Gribbin, under his pseudonym theapplesofenergy. The title apparently refers to the fact that the album was recorded half in Gribbin’s tiny flat and half in the open wilds of the Campsie Hills in Scotland. I’m totally enjoying how this has been constructed. There are concretey elements, but it’s always glacially paced so there’s no frantic fluttering cuts to deal with or anything like...read full review.