Not Turning Off: Volume 31

An all-you-can-eat round-up of sonic dishes from Whin, E, 50 Foot Wave, bdrmm, Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra, Jilk, Bernard Grancher and more

Whilst Record Store Day may well hog many record buyer’s budgets again this April, there is still plenty more wallet-draining competition across the month, as the below broad bundle of releases from a variety of directions confirms.

As championed by Piano Magic’s Glen Johnson, the Glasgow-based Whin combine the talents of Martin John Henry (De Rosa, Henry and Fleetwood, and solo ventures) and Robert Dallas Gray (Life Without Buildings). Having quietly inaugurated themselves in the Bandcamp margins across two digital-only EPs in 2020, the duo’s debut album is now delivered in the form of Dawn Firth (self-released on CD and download).

Part-inspired by the distancing and isolationism of covidian lockdown living, the two forge an intricate suite of semi-improvised and largely wordless musical conversations. Replete but not cluttered by multi-instrumental layers and field recordings, the twosome – aided by a few guests here and there – paddle into some intimate experimental waters of an 80s-to-early-00s lineage.

Along the way this means imagining Brian Eno collaborating with David Grubbs (“June”); a fusion of Tortoise’s twangy dub shapes and Yo La Tengo’s most arty percussiveness (“56-21”); gorgeous electro-acoustic meandering in the same realms as both The Durutti Column and Pullman (“Shoals”); languid yet skittery post-jazz imbued with late-period Talk Talkisms (“Dams”); and inscrutable melancholic meditations with more than a hint of Papa M’s Live from a Shark Cage (“Morning” and “Dunbeth Park”).

Although requiring some immersive listening to let all the thoughtful details soak in properly, Dawn Firth is a captivating aural space to get lost inside.

In stark contrast, two new mini-albums led by US indie veterans carve out far gnarlier and less comforting sonic landscapes.

Following on from 2020’s feverishly prophetical Complications LP, art-rock super-group E (AKA Thalia Zedek, Jason Sidney Sanford and Gavin McCarthy) return with the shorter but more congealed Any Information (Silver Rocket). Whilst its predecessor showcased the trio’s vocal and compositional characteristics in more separated-out fashion, things feel more hive-minded this time around, which is impressive given the multi-location writing, recording and mixing/mastering story behind the record.

Consequently, proceedings shift potently through the opening Mission of Burmarized title song; the lurching angular queasiness of “Desire Path”; the Junkyard-meets-Spiderland skulk of “No Signal”; the hushed edginess of “Jungle Cats”; the early-Fugazi-like nerviness of “Breathe Again”; and the stamping lurch of “Hey Strongman”.

Whilst somewhat less lyrically on the nose this time around, the circuitously-routed Any Information still sagely taps into the troubled mood of a world that keeps churning.

Having often preferred and been better suited to shorter-form collections, the return of 50 Foot Wave with the seven-track Black Pearl (Fire Records) is less of a curveball than it might seem to those less familiar with the power-trio who last surfaced with 2016’s six-song Bath White.

By this point, vocalist/guitarist Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses leader and solo trader), bassist Bernard Georges (also of Throwing Muses) and drummer Rob Ahlers have somewhat staggeringly chalked-up around two decades as a unit and clearly have no intentions of doing what comes unnaturally. Yet, Black Pearl is perhaps a covert progression by adding more atmospheric textures into the noise-rock palette.

Thus, starter piece “Staring into The Sun” sets the stall up sturdily with Sabbath-sized riffing funnelled into Bardo Pond-like sludge-sculpting. In its wake, “Hog Child” hypnotically swirls around its low-slung bassline before building up to a fuzzy psychedelic ending; “Fly Down South” judders along with a knotted momentum; the vocal-free title track prowls along as another bass-led psych-tinged moment; “Broken Sugar” and “Blush” both stomp along with some added haziness; and “Double Barrel” sprawls out to bring everything to a raw raspy conclusion.

Although it probably won’t win over many new followers, Black Pearl is nevertheless a solid and questing addition to the 50 Foot Wave canon.

Also investigating the possibilities of a mid-length format outing – albeit from a different dimension in terms of actual content – are still-sub-editor-troubling post-shoegaze voyagers bdrmm, with the Port EP (Sonic Cathedral).

Featuring no less than seven different versions of the titular track – previously released last October on a blink-and-miss-it lathe-cut 7” – this compact but internally expansive extended player revisits the concept of an ‘open-ended’ piece of work that is never really finished, as explored by key players in the electronica and post-rock scenes in the 80s and 90s.

With the original recording reprised up-front, fusing murky minimalism and a new electro-pulse that moves on from the guitar-led skyscraper-building of the band’s still-impressive debut 2020 full-length Bedroom, this stretched-out suite mines and spreads out the hidden depths of bdrmm’s core composition.

Thus, amongst the six subsequent versions we find Working Men’s Club attaching some enveloping vintage Haçienda vibes, Daniel Avery rebuilding things almost unrecognisably with heavy percussion and drones; and Mouth Company (AKA the band’s own Jordon Smith) creating a ghostly glitchscape.

Nothing ultimately surpasses the foggy allure of the initial incarnation of “Port” and this is largely a fans-serving interlude before the second bdrmm LP appears in the mid-future. Yet, it does indicate a group with eyes and ears on a longer creative arc that should avoid lazy pigeon-holing.

Over in the more psych-meets-kosmische corners of our world, come two wonderfully elevating affairs.

The first arrives as a highly-desirable lathe-cut seven-inch and digital set on Woodford Halse from Korb (a side-project of The Hologram People’s Jon Parkes and accomplices).

With adept A-side “Ultraterrestrial” funkily fusing Jaki Lieberzeit drums to squiggly prog keyboards and flipside “The Softest Machine” blissfully bobbing along in an unhurried Harmonia-meets-Michael Bundt bubble, it feels like some serious future battles on Discogs will be hard-fought over the sixty already sold out physical copies in circulation.

Meanwhile, Blissful Repetitions, the latest long-player on Polytechnic Youth from Sweden’s Free/Slope more than lives up to its name. With more guest accomplices than usual bolstering Daniel Fridland Brandt in fulfilling his aims, the five gathered elongated instrumental pieces are beautifully rendered.

Gliding through the likes of the ecclesiastically-tinged “Theme from Hälsö”; the early-Pink Floyd-meets-Neu! balminess of “Bon Voyage!” and the outer realms of Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember’s post-Spacemen 3 work on “Total Bliss”, the record is gratifyingly lazed-guided in its implementation, even if its source code is barely encrypted.

Straddling a few genre frontiers is the subtly impressive Haunted Bedrooms on Castles in Space from Bristol-centred collective Jilk. Although electronically-assembled for the most part, there are found sounds, trumpet, saxophone, strings and hushed voices stirred into the intoxicating melange across eight elegiac and edgy cuts.

Therefore, along the way – with moonlighting help from Haiku Salut, Kayla Painter and Nuala Honan – there are aural visions of Kate Bush’s The Dreaming being given a workover by some of the classic Warp roster (“March for Salt Over Gold”); echoes of the more brittle side of recent Polypores outings (“Your National Pride is Hidden Lonely Grief”); ethereal digital dubscaping-meets-violently-frazzled orchestration (“Come Back Soft”); nods to Amiina’s otherworldly chamber music (“Hope Springs in Haunted Bedrooms”); discombobulating glitchtronica (“The Fruit Was Rotten No One Ate”); and tranquil pellucid ambience (“Despite Everything We Were Kissing”).

Though perhaps deliberately not an easy listen, Haunted Bedrooms keeps inviting you back into its inscrutable headspace to celebrate an enigmatic enterprise effervescing with diverse ideas.

Similarly imposing in blurring synthetic and organic boundaries but on a grander neo-classical-leaning ensemble scale is The Unfolding (Real World Records), featuring polymath Hannah Peel collaborating with Bristol’s Paraorchestra. Recorded piecemeal in/around the pandemic in Wiltshire’s Real World studios, the album is a demanding and evocative adventure.

Channelling cosmic and time-centric themes and feeding off the interactions between Peel’s electronics and the Paraorchestra’s unique orchestral set-up, The Unfolding goes deep and wide whilst sustaining a spectral sparsity.

Proceedings therefore drift through operatic existentialism (“The Universe Before Matter”), rhythmic storytelling (“Wild Animal”), Steve Reich-goes-space-funk (“If After Weeks of Early Sun”) and glistening atmospherics (“Part Cloud”), whilst adhering to a focused overall mood.

A challenging creation all told but one that admirably extends upon Hannah Peel’s ambitious reach with rich determination.

And finally, over in the more self-contained electronic creator parts of the review pile there is still predictably plenty going on this month too…

Uber-productive Bernard Grancher brings forth the engrossing Noires Sont Les Galaxies (Woodford Halse) as a new imagined soundtrack to the 1981 French sci-fi body horror TV serial of the same name, that veers between the serene and more brutalist industrial sides of his trademark synth-led craftmanship.

Metamono’s Jono Podmore returns under his Kumo alias with the self-disseminated and Tai Chi-suffused tripart Three Tigers EP, exploring Eno-like atmospherics (“Tiger Lies Down”), busy voodoo-meets-motorik (“(Retreat to) Ride Tiger”) and avant-garde cut-ups (“Carry Tiger to The Mountain”) with arresting results.

And making his first full outing on Werra Foxma – after the recent and already horribly rare Upper EP – is New York’s Salvatore Mercatante with SM Synthesis, which shifts away from more his more familiar 80s filmic tropes into lurking and throbbing techno-noir excursions, with some often mesmeric under-the-radar results.