Another electronic feast, featuring Polypores, Hawksmoor, Rupert Lally, Xylitol, Quiet Clapping, A Certain Ratio and Western Edges

With a review pile of electronic wares like the Leaning Tower of Pisa made out of Jenga blocks, it’s a race against time to get near the bottom without being buried by it. So, here we go yet again with plenty of the usual – but reliable – suspects and some more unfamiliar ones.

Whilst those signed-up to the Castles in Space subscription library are still digesting the double vinyl helping of the 22-track Myriad, here also along comes the similarly proportioned but cassette-encased Gargantuan via Frequency Domain from Polypores. Stephen James Buckley might have been minded to have saved its title for an eventual 79-disc career-spanning boxset, yet this very latest release does emphatically embrace its new modular synth age sprawl.

Split into two near-half-hour-long pieces on each side of the tape (with an accompanying de rigueur digital version), Buckley squashes together multiple fragments of live-at-home performances, with a heavily-abused Eventide Harmonizer helping to push things right up to and over the edge.

Its dizzyingly dense and occasionally plaintively pellucid discombobulations adroitly mirror and reflect upon the information overload of our modern-day digitally fried and scrambled living, which in turn match up brilliantly with another terrific collage sleeve from Stu Richards (whose art also adorned the similarly chaotic Chaos Blooms LP earlier in 2021).

By this point, most Polypores devotees don’t need much convincing to add another album to their collections, mainly just alerting to the arrival of a further artistic quest in Buckley’s long-running sonic saga. Yet happily, they won’t find their completionist compulsions abused by this weighty two-part total-immersion suite.

Equally still fresh from an appearance via Castles in Space’s subscription service – with the wonderful JG Ballard-inspired Crystal World 7”/download/book bundle – is James McKeown’s Hawksmoor enterprise. Returning to Spun Out of Control, to follow on from the recent and also Ballardian-themed Concrete Island collaboration with The Heartwood Institute, comes the pharmaceutically-fixated On Prescription.

Rather than focusing on illicit substances, McKeown instead takes less clichéd inspiration from the mind-boggling array of life-saving medications encountered indirectly through a friend’s cancer treatment. With track titles as ‘anagrams, approximations or amalgamations’ of real-life medications, according to the press release, McKeown mixes up Moogs and other synths, guitars and bass for another distinctive mood-conjuring exploration.

Along the way this expertly leads us through the processional pulsing of “Xelodal”; the twanging fizz of “Zolador”; the disembodied beatscaping of “Sertazapine”; the amniotic ambience of “Dizamab”; the industrial grit of “Koledronic”; The Durutti Column-meets-Cluster strains of “Abraxzine”; the rippling ethereality of “Kisqualin”; and the masterful multi-faceted epic near-eight minute closer of “Hertzumol”.

Whilst not yet quite so prolific as Polypores, each Hawksmoor release is starting to feel like a must-acquire piece of a larger artistic mosaic.

Certainly no stranger either to a staggering work rate, conceptualism, synths in home recording set-ups, micro-labels, cassette/digital produce, compelling sleeve art and – indeed – this online publication, is Rupert Lally. Making an inaugural appearance on the just-established Waxing Crescent Records label, with Timelapses he brings together many of these elements once more.

Layering synth improvisations with string sounds and other instrumentation, Lally reminds us of his compelling craftsmanship as proceedings shift through the widescreen cinematics of the opening “This City Wakes at Dusk”, the chamber-electro of “A Sliver of Light Hits the Burning Sands”, the Snow Palms-like percussiveness of “Wakkanai Tilt-Shift”, the Tangerine Dream-meets-Vangelis strains of “Tidal Ebb” and “Wheatfields”; and the prowling orchestrations of “Day Turns into Night”.

Again, as with the aforementioned Gargantuan from Polypores, existing hoarders of all things Rupert Lally will be rewarded for their loyalty.

Having set such a high bar with June’s triumvirate of releases from Ffion, Giants of Discovery and Salvatore Mercatante, this month’s releases from Woodford Halse are somewhat tougher propositions in comparison. Yet those seeking a little more uncompromising extremity in their electronic sounds should be well-catered for via the label’s new artefacts from Xylitol and Quiet Clapping, on cassette/download and CD/download respectively.

The former’s intense collisions of synth minimalism, tape hiss, fleeting Speak and Spell-like vocals and brittle drum machine layers – across the improbably-named Inside a Stone of Cream there is a Language – takes few prisoners but should appeal to those looking for intriguing missing links between Colin Potter, Fad Gadget, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Solex.

Contrastingly, the latter’s less instantly abrasive The Abbey of the Black Hag takes lengthier routes, through a trio of twenty or so minute pieces replete with musique concrète manipulations from turntables, dubplates, guitars, organs and cello. Full of disorientating yet purposeful drones, glitches and backwards loops, those who missed out on or just can’t get enough of the The Superceded Sounds of The New Obsolescents from Castles in Space from a few months back, could do well to explore this Quiet Clapping excursion.

Although a little uneven in places, last year’s full new album from A Certain Ratio, in the shape of ACR Loco, proved that the Manchester veterans could still cut it as much in the studio as they do in their hotly-revered latter-day live presentations.

Whilst building up to an anticipated return to full touring later this year, we are being drip-fed more fresh pieces across a trilogy of 12” EPs on Mute. As the second in this series – carrying on from the enjoyable ACR: EPA EP featuring the band’s last recorded work with the sadly departed Denise Johnson – ACR: EPC focuses on collaborations with pronounced electronic dimensions.

Hence, the opening “Emperor Machine” (as forged with Andrew Meecham of The Emperor Machine) drops the band’s lowest-slung grooves into a deep technoscape; “The Guv’nor” pays a fine tribute to the much-missed Andrew Weatherall by sliding into a shamanic voodoo dub odyssey; “YoYoGrip” merges two key tracks from ACR Loco into a hook-filled cyber-funk-soul stomper with help from Jacknife Lee; and “Musik Kontrol” reconstructs Chris Massey’s “Music Control” (who previously remixed the band’s “Dirty Boy” single) as a mid-80s Kraftwerk-meets-New Order mash-up.

As 2019’s essential ACR:BOX archive set – which gathered-up sundry non-LP tracks, EPs, B-sides and more – proved, short-form releases have served A Certain Ratio very well creatively over the years. So far, this current run of EPs seems to be no exception to that rule.

Arriving somewhat out of the blue is Dependency, the second album on Sound in Silence from Western Edges, the solo side project of Yorkshire nomad Richard Adams (Hood, The Declining Winter et al). This long-awaited – around these parts at least – sequel set picks up where 2019’s sublime Prowess left off, with virtually the same modus operandi.

Burrowing even more intensely into aural memories of 80s-to-90s garage, ambient and subliminal techno – still forged with just home computer software and live-played basslines – to blend with psychogeographical thoughts of roaming the landscapes of the Pennines, Dependency is a less instantaneously arresting affair but one that gradually grips the senses.

Therefore, Adams skilfully segues through ghostly early-Aphex Twinisms (“Page Reveals”); juddering mechanised beats (“Glass Dawn” and “Lucy Hall Drive”); throbbing trancescapes (“Winter Hill”); evocative Eno-infused eeriness (“Love is Contagious”); totally enrapt astral-dub (the standout 14 or so minutes of “Temperance” and the limited edition bonus track “Wavelengths”); and post-apocalyptic desolation (“Scaldings”, also only on the deluxe version).

Whilst it does require more effort from the listener than its predecessor to connect with fully, Dependency ultimately reveals itself as another satisfying selection of absorbing abstractions from Western Edges.

Adrian
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