Further electronically-seasoned audio dishes from Mücha, GLOK, Luke Requena, Polypores, A Certain Ratio and more face the taste test

As the darker and colder days encroach upon us once more, along comes a heap of audible goods – predominately but not exclusively – from the electronic world, to provide both misty atmospheric mood reflections as well as colour, comfort and warmth.

Amanda Butterworth has been trading solo since 2013, primarily under the mysterious Mücha alias yet it’s only been within the last year or two that her work has reached these ears, thanks in part to the championing of Glen Johnson, through his Arcane Delights blog/radio show as well as his essential Second Language compilations. Consequently, this latest Mücha outing (via Frequency Domain), succinctly entitled Fall, arrives with some significant anticipation attached. Reassuringly, it does not disappoint.

Forged over a four-year period, the seven extended tracks find Butterworth’s layered vocals woven and stretched in amongst arrangements stitched together with synths, samples, electric piano, loops, guitar sounds, analogue tape and digital software. Bridging the gap between British urban pulse-taking and European electronica, with subtle stopping-off places in between, the album summons up an entrancing nocturnal spell.

Opener “Begin” ushers in proceedings strongly with an elusive yet commanding presence, wherein slowed-down Art of Noise-like blockiness meet Julianna Barwick airiness. Thereafter, a similar consistent mood is sustained and remoulded to varying degrees. Hence, “Talk” and “Hold” pare things down to percolating percussiveness that tilts into the trip-hop territory of the Martina Topley-Bird-led moments inside Tricky’s Maxinquaye; the title track shimmies into fatter almost drum ‘n’ bass trajectories; “Feel” floats into a Grouper-meets-early-Aphex Twin ethereality; “Fold” blends low-slung techno with gauzy eeriness; and the closing “Undo” bends into fidgety yet still otherworldly contours.

The charms of Fall don’t all display themselves at once but instead unspool over time, rewarding self-isolating headphone absorption.

Extending upon the purple patch that he discussed with us a few months ago on Concrete Islands, Andy Bell returns under his GLOK alias, with the ten-track double-length Pattern Recognition (Bytes). Though not featuring his own vocals or more straightforward core songcraft, the collection is not an entirely electronic purist affair either. Bringing in guitars throughout and guest vocalists in a few key places, Pattern Recognition satisfyingly smears multiple parts of Bell’s sonic palette, wrapped loosely inside its ‘a week in the life’ concept.

The inaugurating wordless twenty-minute “Dirty Hugs” is certainly worth the admission price alone, swelling out through a mesmeric mix of motorik-meets-acid-house throbbing and psych-rock-meets-shoegaze swirling. Whilst nothing else quite tops such a front-loaded colossus, the remaining nine cuts still share its sense of imagination and intuitiveness.

Thus, the ensuing “Closer” bobs along buoyantly as an interluding slice of space-age electronica before bleeding into the after-dark bliss-out of “The Time of Night” (featuring the soothing spoken-word appearance of Bell’s wife Shiara). Thereafter, the record glides and grooves along in a variety of paces. This leads us through the backwards synth-recoatings of Lazer Guided Melodies-to-Pure Phase era Spiritualized idioms (“Memorial Device”); quasi-religious dronescaping (“Day Three”); aural imaginings of Public Image Limited’s The Flowers of Romance being reconstructed with Andy Weatherall’s magic touch (“Invocation”); balmy engrossing nods to The Durutti Column’s underrated Balearic beats-framed Fidelity LP (with the sublime Sinéad O’Brien-fronted “Maintaining the Machine” and the cryptic Chloé ‘C.A.R.’ Raunet-voiced “Entanglement”); and the mournful slowed-down Ride-meets-Slowdive strains of “Kintsugi”.

There’s a lot to digest over its ninety epic minutes yet Pattern Recognition never feels bloated or indulgent. Instead, it feels like an adroit craftsman further cementing in place a personal artistic renaissance.

Similarly stirring-up synths with six-strings but taking things into markedly more inward-looking directions is Luke Requena. Channelling a gloomier filmic and more minimalist mentality, Mirror Stage (Castles in Space) stretches into the outer realms of classical kosmische, new age, ambient and vintage psychedelia. Inspired largely by Tarkovsky’s film Solaris, this is very much a strung-out landscaping situation, albeit one that still sits snugly in a self-contained bubble.

Therefore, the opening “Metallic Plastic” sets the scene very much in the same studious Berlin school vein as Dirk Jan Müller’s ever-resourceful Cosmic Ground, although taken down a few notches in tempo. Subsequently comes the glistening modular mysticism of “Venus Material” (which indirectly salutes Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s TV theme to ITV’s Humans); languid lunar-gazing moods across “Comet Mist”; the serenely sombre eleven-minute early-Pink Floyd-tinged centrepiece “Death Sunrise”; the subterranean burrowing of “Subjugated Moons”; and the Dean McPhee-meets-Vangelis desolation of the closing “Sleepwalking Seagull”.

Whilst not an easy or an immediately arresting proposition, Mirror Stage should nevertheless leave its mark with those that like their meticulous moodscapes left with plenty of space to insert their own thoughts.

Although Stephen J. Buckley might be risking the wrath of Brenda from Bristol with the launch of his fifth (or thereabouts) Polypores album of 2021, Crystal Shop (Waxing Crescent) might actually be the best of the fecund bunch. A tad less abrasive and abstract than Chaos Blooms and Shpongos and not as sprawling as Myriad and Gargantuan, this very recently recorded selection – cut in August/September – brings some brighter shades, playfulness, open-heartedness and directness to the table, despite being constructed with more digital tech than usual.

Hence, there is bubbling plucking (“Simulated Nature Trails”), reedy and fizzing prowling (“Information at Your Fingertips”); tranquil spaciness (“Rainbow Lanes”); amniotic ambient bathing (“Dolphin Emoji”); gently frothing calmness (“Neberdine”); gamelan glitchtronica (“Greenhouse”); glimmering new age rippling (“Orb Regan”); and full-on Tangerine Dream extravagance (“It’s our Void Now”).

Even if there is still room left for the free-form abstraction that found a way on to its immediate predecessors – as illustrated by the giddy galloping “Sprites” and the trippy skittering “Soft Energies” – Crystal Shop is a more finessed concoction overall but one that reaches into some more diverse and fresher corners of the Polypores planet.

Despite the fact that Woodford Halse has a further three albums scheduled before the end of 2021, two new instalments in the label’s occasional compilation series feel very much like an end of year celebration. Handsomely upgraded from cassette to CD presentations this time around, Undulating Waters 6 and 7 wholeheartedly validate Mat Handley’s broad-church philosophy and savvy A&R skills.

While both collections lean heavily into electronic environs and feature past signings, they also stretch into other stylistic spaces and incorporate plenty of contributors from outside the immediate Woodford Halse family.

Thus, spread across the simultaneously dispensed sets are some top-drawer moments from familiar and less familiar purveyors of all things synth-shaped. This includes Salvatore Mercatante’s stalking percussive “Pulpo”; Listening Center’s soaring quasi-symphonic six-minute “The Slip at Low Tide”; Letters from Mouse’s radiant “Kauila”; Personal Bandana’s Human League-meets-OMD avant-pop propulsions; Bernard Grancher’s Jean-Michel Jarre-goes-motorik “Je Ne Saurais Pas Quoi Faire D’un Tel Regard”, Apta’s soothingly magnetic “Meniscus”, Polyhymns’ wonderfully whirring “What You Believe”, Ffion’s interstellar atmospherics with “Various Skies”; and the ghostly “Domestic Constellation” from Floodlights.

There are also plenty of impressive less diode-driven cuts to cherry pick from. This means choice moments from foreboding psych lords Korb (“Lifeforce”); plaintive folk balladeers Angeline Morrison (“Abode of Spirits”) and Sairie (“Sylvie”); slow-twanging Americana explorers Luzon Valley Fearless (“Columbia”); eerie lysergic-pastoralists Prana Crafter & Windkraft (“Twitch and Drone”); and alluring electro-acoustic astral-jazzers Arboria (“Memory Bells”).

Even though volume 6 possibly has a slight edge in terms of content, it’s hard to see why any Woodford Halse followers old or new will not wholeheartedly embrace these latest – and greatest to date – Undulating Waters compendiums as a richly fulfilling pair.

Not only but also…

If all of the above just wasn’t quite enough to the sate appetite for semiconductor sourced sounds then there is still even more to check out around the release period in which you read this…

Devotees of Martin Jensen’s unrestrainable output have even more to stock up on; with the double-CD Volumes 1 & 2 (Polytechnic Youth) finding him conjoining with Listening Center’s David Mason as The Prison of Winners to seamlessly meld together sleek techno-noir and neon-lit Radiophonic Workshop flashbacks and The Home Current’s single CD Vodka Parade gathering up some cybernetic voodoo beatscapes for Wormhole World.

A Certain Ratio sew-up another stage in their ongoing latter-day self-rejuvenation – following a still-fresh trilogy of enjoyable EPs from earlier this year – with Loco Remezclada (Mute), wherein last year’s ACR Loco long player is given (along with a track from the ACR:EPA EP) the full remix/rebuild treatment by assorted friends and associates. Acting as a expansive companion piece to the original set of recordings without overcooking things, amongst the home partying-friendly highlights are some impressive reworkings from Dan Carey (on a dirtier even more funked-up “Down & Dirty”), Maps (with a cosmic hoodoo revision of “Get a Grip”), Colleen Murphy (in a more floor-filling “Berlin”), Name (through a carnivalesque jazz skronk-over of “Taxi Guy”), Muddy Feet (inside a snappier more clubbing-centric take on “Always in Love”) and The Lounge Society (over a sped-up bass-slapping twist upon “Friends Around Us”).

Kyron (AKA João Branco Kyron of Portugal’s Beautify Junkyards) follows 2020’s Starlit Remembrance cassette on Miracle Pond with the gourmet vinyl-encased Ascending Plume of Faces, via the increasingly go-to Library of the Occult enterprise. A baker’s dozen instrumental pieces find him taking a murky gothic-kosmische route – conceptually inspired by writer, painter and occultist Austin Osman Square – that is both bleakly intimidating yet intoxicatingly immersive. For those lured to Library of the Occult realms with Ascending Plume of Faces, checking out the ornate and ecclesiastically-infused conjuring of The Ash Tree from The Missionary Work is also highly recommended.

Adrian
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