Not Turning Off: Volume 38

An end of summer smorgasbord featuring The Real Tuesday Weld, Future Conditional, Marisa Anderson, Apta, Whin and more

After a long hot summer here comes a sonic downpour that thankfully won’t leave us uncomfortably soaked…

The Real Tuesday Weld’s ‘swansong trilogy’ began strongly last year for mastermind Stephen Coates, with Blood and bonus sibling album Tape Dust Memories leaning heavily and kaleidoscopically into his more live-centric cabaret, cinematically-skewed and collaborator-fronted corners. The middle of this ‘long goodbye’ series now arrives with a more intimate and interconnected approach.

This means Coates delivering Dreams – and the supplementary Late Flowering Reveries – via his Antique Beat label with a tighter and less freewheeling focus. It manifests in putting his self-underrated tones back into the centre whilst deploying guest singers more subtly and sparingly; concentrating on organic yet still studio-textured arrangements; and a greater emphasis on songs that slot together more seamlessly.

The net results within Dreams, as the main event on vinyl, are some of the most transcendent recordings released to date by The Real Tuesday Weld. Starting spellbindingly with “The Young Ones”, Coates taps vocally into his inner-Wayne Coyne and sonically into Richard Wright’s most prominent parts within Dark Side of the Moon, with some wistful wide-eyedness. The rest of proceedings keep up the quality control after such a sturdy opener, as Coates dispenses material openly inspired in varying degrees by his own remembered nocturnal subconscious imaginings.

Thus, across the rest of the first half we’re treated to a lush Stax-scented take on “Kinky Love” (a seductive hand-me-down cover previously passed from Nancy Sinatra to Pale Saints, voiced here by Josephine Lloyd-Wilson); the twinkling life and death bucolic ruminations of “Bones Dreams Blood” (possibly one of Coates’s best ever compositions); the snaky Django Reinhardt-meets-locomotive rhythms of the instrumental “I Awoke to Find I Was Dreaming”); and the gooey electro-intimacy of “Ever After” (a duet with Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg).

On the flipside, the gems keep coming. This means us being led through the self-referential 69 Love Songs-tinged synth-pop of “Curtain Call”; the gorgeous Jane Birkin-goes-bossa nova wispiness of “Comme Dans Un Rêve” (with Oriana Curls as the chanteuse); the epic Steve McQueen-meets-existentialism of “Everything”; and the soothing words-free coda of “Last Light”.

Cassette/download companion Late Flowering Reveries is no slouch set either. Although a little looser in its production and sequencing, there are charms aplenty to be found within a similar stylistic and philosophical headspace, with Coates still very much at the fulcrum.

Highlights include the wonderfully elegiac “Don’t Go Back”; the gently swinging “Blackbird Day” (reprised from a 2012 Christmas EP); the beatific folk-framed lament “When I Find Myself Remembering”; a lilting English-language version of “Comme Dans Un Rêve” (renamed as “When You Showed Up”) carried over from Dreams; the yearning celestial-pop of “Lights”; the melancholic chamber balladry of “Into the Morning”; and the romantic Leonard Cohen gravitas of “Hold Onto Love”.

Taken as a pair, Dreams and Late Flowering Reveries capture The Real Tuesday Weld in peak condition, setting the bar exceedingly high for the third double-helping in this valedictory triptych, due to follow in the mid-future. While we wait, these two cherishable collections will more than reward long-term followers.

Returning with their first album since 2007’s – now somewhat meta-named – We Don’t Just Disappear, we find ex-Piano Magic brethren Glen Johnson and Cédric Pin reunited as Future Conditional on Isotech (Second Language). Though it’s fair to say that the duo’s penchant for the electronic sounds of early-Factory and primordial Mute has been heavily co-opted by artists picked-up in the intervening years by Polytechnic Youth and other synth-centric labels, the twosome’s curation of songs and guest singers still feels distinctive.

Whilst “Cold Love” – headed-up by guest singer Josh Cowey (of Wailing Wall) – jars a little as an opener by straying a tad too far into Joy Division’s most gothic extremities, the rest of the album is a sleeker dark-grooved affair, featuring Johnson and Pin adroitly directing things with a steely concentration, in which the former forges most of the lyrical core.

Consequently, for the other guest-fronted cuts we find Amanda Butterworth (Mücha) deployed as a fine vocal and wordsmith foil on the throbbing industrial-pop of “Indexed to Impulse” and as an entrancing presence inside the ethereal atmospherics of the Johnson-worded title track; Bobby Wratten (The Field Mice, Trembling Blues Stars et al.) and Beth Arzy (Trembling Blue Stars, The Luxembourg Signal et al.) making for a compelling voice combination on the hook-embedding “Demolitions” and on a cover of New Order’s “Doubts Even Here”; and the mysterious Lidija providing daintily murmured French spoken-word passages within the propulsive techno-noir of “Two Sugars”.

Elsewhere, this leaves Johnson himself to lead the terrific near-seven-minute Computer World-dappled “Dumbstruck” and the Power, Corruption & Lies-laced “Stephen”, whereas the vocal-free finale of “Softech” compellingly imagines The Yellow Magic Orchestra remixed by Martin Hannett, over nine mesmeric minutes.

Although it’s probably an acquired taste for those who don’t share both former Piano Magicians’ deepest retro fixations, Isotech is a compelling convergence of synthetic sounds and spectral songcraft.

In complete contrast to The Real Tuesday Weld and Future Conditional’s offerings, is Marisa Anderson’s stark yet sublime Still, Here (Thrill Jockey). After two busier sounding albums in separate duo conjoinings with Jim White (2020’s The Quickening) and William Tyler (2021’s Lost Futures), the Portland, Oregon-based multi-instrumentalist picks up the solitary trail left on 2018’s solo Cloud Corner.

Even though the self-played configurations of various unplugged/plugged guitars and piano might seem a tad ascetic on paper, the eight gathered instrumental pieces are loaded with tenderness and imagination.

Hence, the sliding and string bending of “In Dark Winter” nods serenely to the desert folk-blues of the much-missed Rainer Ptacek; the woozy aching of “The Fire this Time” imagines Yo La Tengo’s “Green Arrow” remade by Ry Cooder; the Cuban-flavoured “Night Air” brings together plaintive piano and pensive picking that handsomely extends upon strands from The Motorcycle Diaries soundtrack; the wistful “Waking” goes for the heart without breaking it; the nimbly-layered electro-acoustic “The Crack Where the Light Gets In” salutes Jim O’Rourke circa Bad Timing; and a tiered take on the traditional “Beat the Drum Slowly” ends proceedings as an exquisite slow motion reverie.

At just 34 minutes in all, perhaps the only thing that Still, Here lacks is length, as many of its finest moments could easily have been stretched out to even more evocative extents. Yet, as an exercise in giving a lot without overloading the listener, this is a sagely rendered triumph.

No stranger to well-measured invention either is Barry Smethurst’s Apta enterprise, which joins Clay Pipe Music for the five-track mini-CD Starlight. Described as “a journey that takes you from the setting sun to the breaking dawn”, this conceptual exploration brings an extra dimension to Apta’s domesticated melding of electronics and guitars, which we’ve come to know and appreciate previously via other outposts.

Gliding through the glistening and throbbing of “Twilight (Civil)”, the shimmering languor of “Twilight (Nautical)”, the unearthly drones of “18 Degrees”, the supernatural-to-soothing movements of “North Star (La Vache Fantôme)” and the gentle radiance of “Dawn”, Smethurst carves out a miniature time-bound travelogue with customary grace and charm.

Also employing a blend of electronics and guitars but from a more abstract ambient-meets-post-rock direction, is the Glasgow-based pairing of Robert Dallas Gray and Martin John Henry. Reappearing as Whin with the self-released digital-only August/A Dream, that follows on from the largely remotely-constructed Dawn Firth from earlier this year, the duo distil four hours of improvisational recordings into just under one.

Bouncing ideas off each other via an in-person set-up – and with some unfiltered background noises – makes for an interesting sonic stew, that extends upon and loosens up the influences explored on its predecessor.

This leads to more echoes of David Pajo’s Aerial M / early-Papa M works (“Eno/Entrance”), primitive twists on Tortoise twang and dub (“Tesseract/Pinhole”), wordless nods to The For Carnation’s Promised Works compendium (“Octopre/Ribbon”), free-form angularity (“Trial/Trails”), melted space-funk (“Deckard/John”), warped-jazz (“Pentangle/Inside”) and a slab of musique concrète (“Pang/Here”).

Though certainly a lot harder to decode than Dawn Firth, the de/pre-constructed August/A Dream gives an intriguing insight into a twosome comfortable with revealing their inner-workings.

And finally, for those looking to pick up a nicely designed mixtape packed with some of the most prolific players from the electronic scene in aid of a charitable cause, then the multi-artist Music for Suicide Prevention on Waxing Crescent should fit the bill.

Rounding-up filmic essays (from Rupert Lally, Camp of Wolves), modular swirls (Polypores), esoteric experiments (dogs versus shadows, Kuma), drones-upon-drones (Sulk Rooms, Dark Sines), blissful beats ‘n’ burbles (Onepointwo, Salvatore Mercatante), bouyant art-pop (Giants of Discovery) and more, this will satisfyingly serve cassette-hording diode devotees and is a worthwhile venture simultaneously.