A summer sampling of new and old from Tomorrow Syndicate, Hawksmoor, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Special Friend, Black Duck, Come and more

Summer is definitely here and with it comes another sweat-inducing review pile to sift through…

Whilst many in the reading orbit of Concrete Islands may still mourn the passing of the Polytechnic Youth label, Dom Martin carries on at full-speed with the wider ‘What Dom Likes’ remit of Feral Child Recordings. This thankfully doesn’t preclude bringing across a few familiar faces. Thus, any fears that de facto PY ‘house band’ Tomorrow Syndicate had been lost in the transition, have been assuaged as they return with Higher Resolution on Feral Child.

Although billed as an EP, we’re actually more in mini-album territory, with five tracks stretched across 29 minutes. This seems like the near-perfect size for a Tomorrow Syndicate outing, as 2019’s similarly mid-sized and cherishable Citizen Input attested. Moreover, without forgetting the knack for inviting and intimate melodic warmth, Gerard Espie and co. have now also found a way to unfurl wider and more sophisticated sci-fi-songcraft tapestries.

Flowing cohesively across the quintet of pieces, we’re taken through amalgamations of moody motorik and pensive lyrical reflections (“Hyper-Receptive”); disembodied voices and retro-cybernetic undulations (“Terminal Flux”); serene shoegaze-meets-electro-pop (“Interphase” and “Twin Galaxies”); and transcendental echoes of the most atmospheric alleys of early-OMD, with added guitar and live drums heft (“Soldered Dreams”).

Although working with equivalent tools and themes as others in their shared field, there remains something distinctively soulful about Tomorrow Syndicate, that sets them apart and which helps to deliver arguably their finest non-single release to date here.

In the less song-based localities in the globally-networked synth scene, there are others stretching out their sonic stencils too.

Stepping up the profile ladder to join Soul Jazz, as one of the label’s exclusive cluster of non-archival signings – alongside Trees Speak and Brown Spirits – is Bristol-based James McKeown’s Hawksmoor project.

Furthering the reach of last year’s Saturnalia and Head Coach long-players, Telepathic Heights takes things deeper into his previously self-described ‘pagantronic’ explorations, by marking out more new-age, psych and prog-shaped routes within the modern kosmische landscape. Built around modular synths, electronic drums and treated guitars, there are shrewd nods to Ash Ra Temple, Popol Vuh and Michael Rother’s solo works as well as more sideways tips of the hat to Plankton Wat and Eternal Tapestry.

Therefore, in moving through the elemental fizzing and phasing of “Cycloid”, the smeary ethereality of “Praxis”, the languid melancholic majesty of “Athanasia” and the 70s dystopic cinematics of the closing “Abstract Machines”, Telepathic Heights dexterously pulls off being a strong self-consolidating calling card for a wider audience, in addition to supplying an extended immersive experience for existing Hawksmoor connoisseurs.

Plotting comparable but still divergent courses are two new Woodford Halse albums, from Baltimore’s Tarotplane and Shropshire’s Thought Bubble.

For the former’s geographically-titled 39.28°N 76.62°W, we’re treated to two cassette-side-long couplings apiece with Polypores (“53.77°N 2.70° W”) and Field Lines Cartographer (“54.05°N 2.79° W”). Both collaborative compositions seamlessly stitch ambient guitar essays into synth bedding, with foreboding yet entrancing aural patterns akin to Dean McPhee, Robert Fripp, Brian Eno and Manuel Göttsching.

Contrastingly, the wonderfully diverse Weaving from Thought Bubble, brings together all manner of journeyings from the duo of Chris Cordwell and Nick Raybould. Musically painting with strong hints of post-Future Days Can (“Sounds Affect”) and Amon Düül II (“200 Teeth”) as well as labelmates The Hologram People (“Pondlife”) and post-jazz jammers Omega Institute (“Adjust Your Soul”), the selection gratifyingly spans a lot of ground covered across the Woodford Halse label family whilst impressively showcasing a standalone enterprise.

Also swimming around in the same waters as Thought Bubble are Zyggurat, who bring forth the three-track Broken Circle on Clay Pipe Music. Featuring the line-up of Pete Grimshaw (modular synth), Piera Onacko (accordion) and Nathan England-Jones (drums), this is a mysterious and mesmeric electro-jazz-psych suite.

Shifting through the glistening slinkiness of the title track with its hints of Pink Floyd’s interregnum years soundtrack work; the pulsing, percussive and dubby lateral grooves of “Forwards”; and the twirling astral ambience of “The Dream”, this is a micro-collection that enthrals and leaves you wanting more.

Taking a lengthier way around to reach its various destinations, is the much-awaited return to Castles in Space from Pulselovers, in the shape of Northern Minimalism 3. Broadening on the self-set scope of other numerically-anointed releases put out previously elsewhere from Mat Handley and friends, this is an extended love letter to the urban industrial sights and post-punk-to-electronic sounds of Doncaster and Sheffield’s past. With an emphasis on the variety that has always served the Pulselovers palette well in the past, this is a darkly appealing assemblage.

Along the way, we’re spun through the utterly gorgeous kosmische wooziness of “Night Drive”, the Blade Runner bleakness of “Kitchen”, the murky post-industrial sprawling of “Orphans”, the minimal wave motorik of “Seeing Double” and the early-Human League grit of “Suburban Shrinkage”, with a nimbleness we’ve come to rely upon from Handley.

Whilst some of the warmer pastoral properties have been missed out this time around, in order to service the conceptual whole, Northern Minimalism 3 still stands up with the strongest Pulselovers outings.

Over in the art-rocking duo realms, we find two juxtaposing LPs from the Guadalajara-dwelling Lorelle Meets the Obsolete and the Paris-based Special Friend.

The former’s Datura (Sonic Cathedral) finds multi-instrumentalist Alberto González and Lorena Quintanilla – plus guests – eschewing the lusher textures of their two preceding studio sets, in favour of gnarlier settings that owe more to Throbbing Gristle, Live Skull and Confusion is Sex-era Sonic Youth, than to say Broadcast or Stereolab.

This doesn’t make it an easy entry-point for latecomers, as serrated guitars and synths judder repeatedly into staccato drums for the bulk of proceedings. Yet the group’s lysergic sultriness still bleeds potently through the dissonance, particularly on the alluring “Invisible”, via the throbbing twisting “Arco” and through the expansive finale of “Dos Noches”.

Special Friend’s Wait Until the Flames Come Rushing In (co-released by Skep Wax, Hidden Bay and Howlin Banana) uses much of the same ingredients, but bakes things with a differing raft of recipes. It finds the US-French pairing of Erica Ashleson and Guillaume Siracusa divinely dishing out a ten-track buffet of balmy left-of-the-dial melodicism. Bonded around the twosome’s intimate harmonies and choice sources of inspiration, this is an often-irresistible conception.

Channelling sounds that merge Galaxie 500 with Madder Rose (“Selkie” and “Silver Lime”), salute Painful-to-Electr-O-Pura-era Yo La Tengo (“Bête” and the titular track), lean into the most tuneful paths of Dinosaur Jr. (“Fault Lines”), echo Sonic Youth’s prettier moments (“Inertie”) and imagine a lost Stereolab collaboration with The Pastels (“Ami Spécial”), Special Friend’s magpie musicality is beautifully executed.

Although seemingly being a little meagre in allocating a sleeve design budget, the peculiarly packaged eponymous debut from Black Duck reassuringly reminds us that Thrill Jockey can still seriously deliver the goods when it comes to enabling the works of ego-less supergroups.

As the first studio document of a three-piece comprising of guitarist/bassist Doug McCombs (Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day, Brokeback et al.), guitarist Bill MacKay (solo artist and Ryley Walker collaborator) and drummer Charles Rumback (ditto) – who are already well-established as a touring entity – this is a record that pretty much does what it says from the recording credits inwards.

Those looking out for scholarly combinations of each player’s past CV entries, will be heartily rewarded. Hence, the eight tracks traverse satisfyingly through the languid bluesy Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac corners of latter-day Brokeback (“Of the Lit Backyards”); eerie Suss-like ambient Americana (“Foothill Daze”); tremendously towering Morricone-marinated twangscapes (“Delivery” and “The Trees Are Dancing”); Calexico’s jazzier detours (“Second Guess”); churning psych-meets-raga rock (“Thunder Fade That Earth Smells” and “Lemon Treasure”); and tranquillity-rooted meditations (“Light’s New Measure”).

Striking a strong fecund balance between improvisational and structured craftmanship throughout – infused with some top-notch internal and external reference points – this is hopefully only the first of many to come from messieurs McCombs, MacKay and Rumback flying in formation.

Over in the archivist avenues arrives plenty more, to blow holes in record-buying wallets.

Fire Records continues its re-curation of Come’s canon with a neatly-expanded vinyl/digital reissue of 1996’s overlooked Near Life Experience. Somewhat of an anomaly in the band’s four-studio LP run, it features assorted yet high grade guests occupying and expanding the space left by drummer Arthur Johnson and bassist Sean O’Brien, who exited the group following 1994’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

With the able passing-through assistance of Tara Jane O’Neil (Rodan, The Sonora Pine, Retsin), Kevin Coultas (Rodan, The Sonora Pine), Mac McNeilly (The Jesus Lizard), John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, ad infinitum), Jeff Goddard (Karate), Beth Heinberg and Ed Yazijian, Near Life Experience represents Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw at their most eclectic, as the co-leaders of Come.

Across the original album tracks of this refreshed edition were reminded of the tremendous Tom Waits-in-a-noise-rock blizzard opener (“Hurricane”); terrific Television-meets-Patti Smith entangling (“Weak as the Moon”); thuggishly brilliant salutes to The Birthday Party (“Bitten” and “Half Life”); Brokaw’s hypnotic reimagining of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Stranger Than Kindness” (“Shoot Me First”); and yearning foretastes of Zedek’s subsequent first solo album (“Sloe-Eyed”).

From the three appended contemporaneous non-album tracks, we’re provided for completeness with the prowling “Prize”, the weathered churn of “Strike” and the sublime “Hurricane II”. The latter wonderfully transforms the original album incarnation by essentially ‘de-mixing’ away the raucous rock quartet layers to expose a powerful alternate piano, violin, slide guitar and voice version buried beneath.

As with other reissues in this series to date, Come’s creative stock has never felt higher in value.

Continuing to carefully burrow into the BBC session vaults, Precious Recordings of London hits another intriguing seam, with two 10” EPs of John Peel sessions from the oft-misplaced Sheffield-birthed One Thousand Violins.

Built around the songwriting partnership of Colin Gregory (guitar) and David Walmsley (keyboards/guitar) but fronted by the crooning tones of John Woods, the gathered cuts from respective 1985 and 1986 studio visits to Maida Vale capture a persuasive mix of Lee Hazlewood wit and Scott Walker-like grandeur (underlined by an unpolished but charmingly swirly cover of The Walker Brothers standard “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”) with C86 jangle and then de rigueur flavourings of The Smiths.

The net results feel close to a more indie-pop-shaped prototype for The Divine Comedy. Whilst best absorbed whole, self-penned highlights to flag up include the black-humoured “Why is it Always December?”, the chiming glide of “The Candle Man”, the windswept “Though it Poured the Next Day, I Never Noticed the Rain”, and the swooning heartful “If I Were a Bullet (Then for Sure I’d Find a Way to Your Heart)”.

Collectors of previous Precious Recordings output should be more than content with this latest link in the label’s history-excavating chains.

Adrian
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