Not Turning Off: Volume 37

A summoning of new things from Polypores, Rupert Lally, Mark Peters, Concretism, Ogle and other creative souls

As we enter the ‘no-breather-until-Christmas’ phase of the year, along comes some familiar and not so familiar characters to help ease the transition… with some very outside-inside infused sounds included.

Sustaining the quality control displayed on the career-high Hyperincandescent for DiN, released just a few months ago, Stephen Buckley brings forth another astounding Polypores collection already, via Woodford Halse, in the shape of the somewhat aptly-anointed Infinite Interiors.

At a point where the music is pretty much pouring out of him beyond his control, Buckley is continuing to be the synth-toting psychic cousin of Kristin Hersh, channelling compositions rather than consciously conceiving them. The somewhat ‘bigger-on-the-inside’ Infinite Interiors is a profound and diverse dive into this mindset.

Recorded between December 2021 and January 2022, the cassette (with download) album is as fast off the production line as we can expect in current stop/wait/wait/go physical release cycles. Stretching between the up-close and the cavernous, the Buckley plot thickens even further across the collection.

Thus, the sparse-to-swirling opener “Green Mountains” practically floats from the speakers. It is followed by the cosmic drones of “Great and Secret Knowledge”; the gut-churning imagined sound of overdriven guitars being fed into a dying star that is “We Broke the Sun”; the fizzing radiance of “There are Other Worlds”; the epic near-twenty-minute ecclesiastical prog-like sprawl of “The Flux”; the tranquil glitches of “Secretions of Memory”; and the serene dénouement of “Restoration and Recovery”.

Paradoxically, for all its gravity and girth, Infinite Interiors additionally seems to find a crisper musicality and accessibility for Stephen Buckley’s muse, that makes it another granite strong milestone in his ongoing artistic trek.

Also still at the top of his game, from the more pre-planned conceptual side of the tracks, is the equally-prolific Rupert Lally, who returns again to Modern Aviation for the first time since 2020’s autobiographically nostalgic Lost to the Past, after several label stop-offs elsewhere. Taking direct inspiration from walks along the scenic public footpath routes in the Germanic corner of Switzerland, where he currently resides, Wanderweg is one of Lally’s warmest and most exquisite explorations to date.

Whilst a mainstay mixture of synths, sampled strings, mellotron, field recordings and percolating programmed percussion is primarily used in light-touch textural fashion, this time around gorgeous layers of electric and lap-steel guitars take on a prominent defining role. Consequently, there’s a balmy gracefulness and a soothing intimacy that flows throughout proceedings.

Thus, there are satisfying nods to Maurice Deebank’s elegiac work on early-Felt records (“Through the Cobbled Streets”), lovely languid allusions to Land Observations circa The Grand Tour (“Over Tracks and Roads”), diversions into the more serene strings-adorned corners of The Durutti Column catalogue (“We Head for Home”), salutes to Mogwai’s still sublime Les Revenants score (“The Stream Flows Behind the House”) and echoes of the equally psychogeographical movements of Innerland by Mark Peters (“The Level Crossing”), all fed through varying degrees of Brian Eno and Boards of Canada-grade filtration systems.

Although still full of affection for Modern Aviation’s always well-presented cassette/digital bundles, if there was one album that warranted an eventual vinyl (or even CD) ‘upgrade’, then it is Wanderweg. While waiting for that – quite unlikely – occurrence this is an immediate must-buy addition for a judicious Rupert Lally follower’s library.

Speaking of on/off/on Engineers member and Ulrich Schnauss collaborator Mark Peters, he now resumes his solo career on Sonic Cathedral with the ruminative Red Sunset Dreams. Extending his fascination with the landscapes of North West England into broader American vistas and simultaneously surveying weighty themes surrounding isolation, freedom and dementia, this is a wider screen sequel to 2018’s aforementioned Innerland. The net result is an album with a larger sonic scope but an even deeper emotional core.

Besides deploying his own considerable multi-instrumentalist skills, Peters is aided by guest drummers Alex Allen and Matthew Linley as well as pedal steel session man pro BJ Cole and singer-songwriter Dot Allison. The latter’s vocal and co-writing contributions on the LP’s two bookends – “Switch on the Sky” and “Sundowning” – are particularly sublime, envisaging how One Dove might once have cohesively collaborated with Slowdive and making thoughts of a full-on duo album extremely appealing.

The remaining six in-between instrumental cuts are far from being filler pieces however; shifting from dreamy twangy ambient-Americana (“Golden Cloud” and “Silver River”) to rurality-tinged takes on post-reunion Ride (“Dust Road Ramble” and “The Musical Box”) to welcome shades of the oft-referenced Brian Eno, Roger Eno and Daniel Lanois sculpted atmospheres of Apollo (“Tamaroa” and the title track).

All in all, Red Sunset Dreams is a collection that is near-perfect as a soundtrack for gazing at melancholic late summer dusk-lit views.

Not only but also…

Although energy rationing this winter might be the thing that finally slows down electronic creators there’s still plenty that’s been backed-up in the system appearing before we switch back to GMT in the UK.

Hence, the fledgling Preston Capes imprint brings Rome’s mysterious one man Ogle enterprise into the cassette realms with the empyreal Cascade. Forged solely from sounds eked out of a Buchla synthesiser, the album may not stick out on paper or in a Bandcamp blurb but projected into the aural ether it undoubtedly manages to captivate. Drifting through celestial arpeggios, disembodied pings, cascading rhythms and even a bit of classical-meets-prog frilliness, fans of Wendy Carlos, Cluster and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe will happily feed this into their ears.

Reunited as Personal Bandana – albeit via Covid-enforced remote file exchanges this time around – we find Heron & Crane’s Dave Gibson and Voice of Saturn’s Travis Thatcher reappear on Woodford Halse with the generous Geleezeit. Though not in the same studio together as before, the twosome still lock into ensemble-forged reciprocal grooves and hive-minded atmosphere-conjuring with apparent seamless ease.

Consequently, the collection flips fluidly between retro-yet-refreshing synth-pop confections (“Enigmas of the Spectrum” and “Synchro-Energizer”), grand cinematic strokes (“Star Speech”), blissful kosmische burbles (“Rhombus” and “Celestial Ride to Rejection”) and ambient expanses (“We All Float Above Our Bodies”), with barely a bum beat or bogus bleep to be heard.

Having just paired-up with the much-respected state51 Conspiracy, Colin Morrison’s operationally-rebooted Castles in Space unveils two back-to-back 10-inch EPs that show no downgrading of standards in both the design and A&R departments.

The first from the Gothenburg-based Daniel Högberg trading as Pocket Pavilions, in the form of the five-track Gondolas Traversing Lofty Peaks, is a balmy treat. Taking Radiophonic Workshop wobbliness from labelmates The Twelve-Hour Foundation into more polished yet still humanised directions, as well as adding splashes of Stereolab circa Dots and Loops, this shortform set makes for a blissful blend of space-age lounge-pop and vintage library music. With two more EPs already in the pipeline, this is yet another lone synth sorcerer to keep an eye on.

The second fresh CIS extended-player comes from the venerable Concretism. Moving even further away from the cold war and public information film fixations of the enterprise’s beginnings, The Thetford Beast finds Chris Sharp immersed in the myths and legends of the titular creature from the rural Norfolk environs he now calls home.

Essentially a wordless audio micro-novel then – as emphasised by the artwork of labelmate Phil Heeks of The British Stereo Collective – the five pieces bring Concretism’s urban synthetic sounds into more filmic folk-horror framings, that lean strongly into the territory of The Heartwood Institute and others from the extended Library of Occult label family.

Veering through Vangelis-by-moonlight manoeuvres (“The Thetford Beast Investigation Society”), Throbbing Gristle-does-Tom Baker-era-Doctor Who (“Incident on the A1075”), shadowy spiritualistic scene-shaping (“Contact Ritual”), woodlands-traversing motorik (“The Figure”) and funereal eeriness (“The Disappearances”), the Concretism canon is subtly expanded by a mid-sized sonic dish that is satisfying but healthily leaves you wanting more.