Not Turning Off: Volume 35

Another mound of new and excavated artefacts from The Hardy Tree, Sam Prekop & John McEntire, Michael Tanner, Marine Research and others

Although the heat is certainly rising at time of typing, delving into the review stack again doesn’t lead into any particularly summery July avenues. Yet it does take us into places filled with deep reflections, sonic dissections and melodic confections…

Whilst it’s been over two years now since the stillness and oddness of the first – and most strikingly memorable – Covid lockdown infused many artistic arteries, such is the length of production cycles there are still records arriving that bear the imprint. The latest of which comes in the shape of Common Grounds, from Clay Pipe Music curator France Castle trading once more as The Hardy Tree.

Inspired by solo walks of discovery through deserted London streets, which in turn led to local history research, Castle conceives a meditative multi-epoch map of long since departed people and places in her neighbourhood. Musically, this manifests – via layers of analogue synths, sampled strings, piano and some guest live drums from Ed Deegan – as twinkling intimacy (“A Garden Square in the Snow”), ambient-jazz wanderings (“St Saviour’s Through the Railings”), slow-motion glistening (“The New River Path, August”), Gilroy Mere-like motorik grooves (“Railway Tracks”), plaintive pirouetting (“Face at the Window, Seaforth Crescent”) and inscrutably synthetic but bucolic orchestrations (“Up the Hill”).

A reliably subtle yet sophisticated selection all told, that any discerning Clay Pipe Music connoisseur would be totally lost without in their collection.

Returning after a period of self-imposed retirement from creating new work, to supply a supposedly final postscript release, is Clay Pipe / Second Language alumnus Michael Tanner (Plinth, The Cloisters, Thalassing et al.) with the cassette and digital double-set of Vespers / The Blackening via The Leaf Library-run Objects Forever.

The former tape-side-long album also taps into the otherworldly creative mood of spring 2020. Recorded almost entirely outdoors “on a slab atop a family vault” in a graveyard at the end of his street, with tweeting birds and gnawing ants as his company, the four tracks of Vespers tap into eerie ecclesiastically-tinged and minimalist abstract-folk soundscapes through autoharp, harmonium, hurdy-gurdy, church organ, zither and gongs, with stark yet strangely soothing results.

The archive-raiding flipside of The Blackening – which consists of the eponymous single 38-minute piece that was recorded between 2014 and 2016 in the UK and Italy – is a more collaborative product, with Tanner’s accordion, strohviol and bowed zither accompanied by Alison Cotton’s viola and Lino Capra Vaccina’s vibraphone. An even more immersive and profound affair than the A-side suite, the recording shifts between barely-there stillness and neo-classical elusiveness in a way that might test short attention-spans but commands an imposing preternatural presence.

Taken together as one close-to-90-minute listening experience, this is an uncompromising yet compelling statement for Michael Tanner to officially bow out on.

Having already given us the impressive diversity of A Beautiful Stage on Modern Aviation in 2020, the multi-instrumentalist Doncaster trio of John Alexander, Harriet Lisa and Mat Handley return to the same outlet as Floodlights, with the even more captivating Let All the Light In. Featuring guest spots from Lucy Marrow and Betty Alexander as well as labelmates Rupert Lally and Stellarays, this is an alluring assemblage of soundscapes and occasional voices.

Proceedings begin beautifully with the serene Marrow-voiced title track imagining Madder Rose’s Mary Lorson appearing on a This Mortal Coil record and the balmy synth symphonics of the Lally-lifted “The Last Voice You’ll Hear”. Thereafter, we’re taken through spooked Fields Lines Cartographer-like stargazing (“The Domestic Constellation”), spacey ambient-technoscaping (“Far from Here”), unearthly pastoralism (“Archive Film Reel”), Stellarays-aided music box psychedelia (“Tomorrow and Its Tomorrow”) and fizzing electro-inverted shoegaze (“Cathedral Bells”).

Once again wrapped-up in Sarah Batchelor’s absorbing artwork that mirrors the transcendent touches inside, Let All the Light In is another commanding combination from both Floodlights and Modern Aviation.

No strangers to collaboration within The Sea and Cake and the Thrill Jockey family as a whole, in some ways it’s perhaps surprising that Sam Prekop and John McEntire have taken this long in their overlapping careers to record a duo album, which they finally dispense now as Sons Of (Thrill Jockey).

With McEntire’s percussive gifts inorganically smudged into modular-synth painted canvasses carried over from the approaches of Prekop’s last few solo albums, this might not be quite the revelation that the dual-billing suggests, yet for the most part it’s an enjoyable conjoining.

Featuring four tracks spread over nearly an hour’s running time, the net results almost envisage a dream creative hook-up between Polypores and The Home Current, with some amorphous Chicago experimental scene sprinkles over the top. This translates into the burbles-to-fattened-beats bliss of “A Ghost at Noon”, the pulsing polyrhythmic momentum of “Crossing a Shadow”, the playful Kraftwerk-meets-Ryuichi Sakamoto sprawling of “A Yellow Robe” and the subterranean-to-sunshine electro journeying of “Ascending by Night”.

Whilst it does take some time to properly fall for its covert charms, even the slightly indignant looking cats photographed for its front cover should find the rewards tucked inside this side-hustle collection.

After taking an unexpected but deserved breather from releasing new wares in June, the abovementioned Mat Handley ushers out three releases across his gradually mushrooming micro-label empire, all leaning into the electronic extremities of his signing spectrum.

Thus firstly, Nunton Elektrikz’s Did You Know About the Room? – on the now well-established Woodford Halse imprint – packs in all manner of discombobulating Radiophonic Workshop-meets-Fad Gadget sound effects and aural collages, ripe for those recently exploring vintage 70s/80s vintage British sci-fi TV on BritBox. Over in his newly-launched Preston Capes outlet, designed primarily it seems for even more outré explorations, Handley brings forth The Incidental Crack’s Does Nothing (for a mix of musique concrète, field recordings and oblique spoken word interludes) and the self-titled debut from Botex Spykidelic (full of often deliberately distressed art-noise chiselling and mangling with some filmic twists).

None of the three releases are for listeners of an easily-disturbed disposition but they should keep those who want to hear the electronica envelope being pushed over the edge appropriately happy.

Waxing Crescent also continues to be an endearing boutique cassette-and-digital-led enterprise curating certain corners of the synth scene. The latest outing of particular note comes from David Salisbury’s Camp of Wolves project, in the form of Dragoon.

Informed by his great-grandfather’s eventful and tough life before, during and after the First World War, the collection charts a course over sonic landscapes that veer through orchestral plucking (“The Hundred”), wistful warmth (“Lemonsong”), drone-driven dramatics (“Remittance Man”), gentle disquiet (“People of the Hill”), foreboding bleakness (“Things on Fire”) and tranquillity (“Farmer’s Fields”).

Fans of Vangelis, Wendy Carlos and prime-cut Tangerine Dream as well as early-twentieth history should be quite enthralled by it all.

Consistently finding a sweet archivist spot between Optic Nerve Recordings and latter-day Cherry Red, Precious Recordings of London carries on carefully delivering its double-7” EPs of lesser-known BBC Sessions – ahead of a shift to 10” sets in the mid-future – with several arriving in quick succession in July. The latest trio includes the somewhat lost (Hurrah! rediscovered with a 1982 David Jensen session), the short-lived (Marine Research taped for John Peel during 1999) and the briefly-on-the-cusp-of-crossover (Hefner cut for Steve Lamacq in 1999).

The four-song Hurrah! set proffers plenty of angular yet jangle-heavy period appeal from the interregnum years between the post-punk and C86 booms, making strong if occasionally vocally-strained connections with the stylings of Josef K, Orange Juice and The Smiths along the way.

Hefner’s quartet of cuts from Radio 1’s long-gone but pivotal Evening Session show (bolstered by a contemporaneous BBC Live Lounge download-only track), offer a decent distillation of the band’s bookish yet observational folk-rock that some remain massively devoted to until this day, through sustained interest in album reissues and support for leader Darren Hayman’s ongoing heterogenous solo ventures.

Whilst still remaining an acquired taste to agonistics, a fittingly gangly cover of Jonathan Richman’s “To Hide a Little Thought” and the digital-only spirited version of the band’s own “The Hymn for Cigarettes” should, however, cut through to those with a more ambivalent interest.

The pick of the triumvirate is though Marine Research’s foursome of Maida Vale recordings – complemented by a full Peel-introduced BBC Sound City concert recording as Bandcamp-download bonus material. The ensemble, which evolved from Heavenly’s sad dissolution, only lasted for one long-player and a few singles, are remembered here as another durable exemplar from Amelia Fletcher’s forever self-renewing indie-pop-queen reign.

Together with guitarist Peter Momtchiloff, bassist Rob Pursey, vocalist/keyboard-player Kathy Rogers and drummer John Stanley, this is almost as essential as the two Heavenly sets that Precious Recordings put out earlier this year.

Self-assuredly shifting through the rousing harmony-topped chug of “I Confess”, the Spector-girl-group-in-a-garage wooziness of “Angel in the Snow”, the wry and sprightly David Gedge-featuring duet of “Bad Dreams” and the yearning “Capital L”, Amelia Fletcher completionists will definitely welcome this double public service bundle into their shelves.