Review mound extractions from Dot Allison, Firestations, Robert Dallas Gray, Cate Brooks, Violet Mist, Bis, Even as We Speak and more

With a moderate mid-summer slowdown in release rates, here’s a dig through incoming new and archival releases that catches up with July and looks ahead a little into August.

Having wowed us with her guest vocal spots on Red Sunset Dreams from Mark Peters on Sonic Cathedral last year, through some happy continuity of curation now Dot Allison also brings forth a fresh solo album on the same label, in the sophisticated shape of Consciousology.

Extending upon the orchestrated pastoral intimacies of 2021’s Heart-Shaped Scars, this is a deeper and more experimental outing. With a variety of accomplices – including now-labelmate Andy Bell providing guitar on two tracks, Hannah Peel assisting with arrangements, string sections from both ends of the UK and Lauren MacDonald adding in drums – bolstering Allison’s own considerable multi-instrumental skill-set, the album manages to be ambitious but never bloated.

Therefore, across Steve Reich-meets-Vashti Bunyan expansiveness (“Shyness of Crowns”); spectral Nico-goes-shoegaze-sprawling (“Unchanged”); alluring Robert Kirby evocations (“Moon Flowers”); Philip Glass-does-kosmische rippling (“220Hz”); hushed Meg Baird pyschedelic-ruralism (“Milk and Honey”); and delicate chamber-folk (“Weeping Roses”), Allison delivers an impressively diverse yet seamless song cycle, seeped in elaborate elegance and the solace of nature.

Having kept their creative embers alight through the pandemic period via a series of exploratory EPs, the members of the Walthamstow-wedded Firestations clearly returned to full non-home-studio recording activities with a lot of pent-up energy for more ensemble-playing propulsions, but also a greater mixture of textures to deploy.

Consequently, the band’s newly-landscaped Thick Terrain long-player, released via the Isle of Eigg’s ever-inventive Lost Map Records, packs a powerful melodic punch whilst being infused with intelligent songcraft and rich details.

With Mike Cranny’s airy tones augmented by those of Laura Copsey at the forefront, the album weaves adroitly through Teleman-meets-Tomorrow Syndicate sci-fi art-pop (“God & the Ghosts”); subtle but profound political observations fed through The Leaf Library’s most tuneful art-rock filters (“Hitting a New Low” and “Travel Trouble”); unashamed well-executed nods to Richard Wright’s lushly assembled moments within the Pink Floyd oeuvre (“Also Rans”); balmy blends of Talk Talk and Prefab Sprout (“Undercover”); strong shades of post-reunion Slowdive (“Swim Under the Winter”); and languorous-to-crunchy billowy noise-blowouts (“Stillness”).

Thick Terrrain is a very welcome eclectic return to frontline activities from Firestations all told.

Taking a far more minimalist approach is Robert Dallas Gray (one-half of Whin and formerly of Life Without Buildings), in the form of his self-released debut full-length album, The Rain Room. Built primarily around his solitary electric guitar essaying – fleshed-out by occasional organ, lap steel and electric piano – the nine-track suite certainly has a rainy day indoors introspectiveness that matches up with its title.

As with Whin, there are plenty of understated historical threads from the post-rock wardrobe stitched into the fabric here, along with some inscrutable hermetic tailoring. Thus, proceedings reference Dean McPhee’s solitary meditations (“The Moth Trap”); early-Brokeback twangscaping (“Tiny Cobras” and “Blues to a Boy”); and David Pajo’s primordial Aerial M produce (“Lake Medina” and “July 1989”).

The finest moment comes last however, through the close-to-ten-minutes of “The Needless Road”, which stretches from skeletal six-string sketching into hypnotic organ trancing, as if it were a hymnal wordless lost demo for Low’s Secret Name.

Whilst remaining enigmatic to the core, The Rain Room strikingly captures and sustains a mood for those most in need of resting in its secluded space.

Naturally, the electronic world knows no such thing as a holiday season hiatus, hence there’s plenty more to plug into from some reliable sources.

First up for consideration is Easel Studies from Cate Brooks on Clay Pipe Music. Following on from a gorgeous mid-winter-themed EP from late-2022, this is a somewhat less conceptual collection for an album-sized Clay Pipe release. Essentially being the end result of its creator revisiting and finishing-off a series of pieces sketched out on Buchla Music Easel synthesiser soon after its delivery in 2015, this is an charismatic combination of warming-up still-box-fresh electronics and an enquiring musical mind.

Although the opening “Con Brillo” begins the record in a dystopic aural zone, the ensuing tracks proffer a more vibrant showcase of soundscapes. Thus, we’re guided through squelchy primitive beats (“Curig” and “Pendula”); serene spiritualism (“Litha”); hypnotic percussive repetitions (“Log on Log” and “Kinetic Metals”); melted-down Radiophonic Workshop ethereality (“With Equinimity”); and a majestic multi-movement avant-classical epic (“Hindsight”).

Whilst there is already quite an extensive sub-set of albums featuring synth-explorers testing out new kit on the ears of loyal listeners, Easel Studies undoubtedly stands up strongly under its own creative merits.

The ever-prolific Woodford Halse and Preston Capes sibling label enterprise inevitably serves up plenty for both July and August.

From July’s micro-flotilla we have more of the returning Ogle’s own resourceful playful Buchla synth journeyings in the form of the hyper-elastic Elsewhere (Preston Capes) and Moscow Youth Cult’s murkily-warped filmic synth-pop encased within Liminal (Woodford Halse) pushing against different electronic extremities, whilst Violet Mist’s Fading Light (Woodford Halse) sits somewhere mesmerically in-between, but with added ambient-techno textures borrowed from The Home Current’s sonic paint stores.

Peeking over the horizon into August’s calendar from the same familial outlets, there’s an eponymous album from Photophobik curiously split over a lathe-cut 7” and cassette (bundled as one in the download version) to fulfil the needs of those requiring some dizzying Cabaret Voltaire-laced discombobulations, and Giants of Discovery’s Mundus Imaginalis (Woodford Halse) to conjure up inside-out atmospherics and horror score otherworldliness.

Over in the archivist corner, Precious Recordings of London satisfyingly clears away the virtual cobwebs, by unearthing four sets of John Peel sessions into more well-packaged and insert-laden 10” EPs

1995 and 1996 Peel sessions from Bis arrive first. While the group may remain an acquired taste, it’s now clearer that Steven Clark (AKA Sci-fi Steven), John Clark (AKA John Disco) and Amanda MacKinnon (AKA Manda Rin) were originally more than just a curveball to fox the once powerful weekly British music press and to bemuse mainstream viewers of Top of the Pops who saw them fleetingly. It’s now arguable that the trio were a high-spirits/low-tech Scottish indie-pop prototype for the likes of Le Tigre and CSS.

Hence, the twenty inches of vinyl are pressed with refreshingly raw versions of the band’s nascent anthemic earworms (“Icky-Poo Air Raid”, “Kandy Pop”, “Teen-C Power”, “Keroleen” and “Sweet Shop Avengerz”) and feisty runs through a few lesser-known cuts (“Super James”, “Rebel Souls” and “Antiseptic Poetry”), powered by punkish guitars, crudely-programmed drum machines, wobbly keyboards and spirited call-and-response vocal fusions, all distinctively pumped full of lateral pop culture dissections and riot grrrl-adjacent politicking.

1992 and 1993 session EPs from Australia’s onetime Sarah Records-signed veterans Even as We Speak offer something altogether different.

The earlier set of recordings is certainly the pick of the simultaneously dispensed pair, leaning into Heavenly-goes-Lush dream melodicism (“Stay With Me” and “Falling Down the Stairs”), spikey Boyracer-infused noise-pop (“Straight as an Arrow”) and gauzy folk-rock (“Sailors’ Graves”).

The later session is a somewhat more variable but still charming affair overall, veering through mid-period Go-Betweens melancholic warmth (“Blue Eyes Deceiving Me”); a really quite bizarre premonition of Rednex’s electro-country (“The Revenge of Ella Mae Cooley”); a sax-and-drum machine-adorned sideways homage to 80s-era Everything but the Girl (“(All You Find Is) Air”); and flashbacks to the wistfully warm Jill Birt-fronted moments in The Triffids catalogue (“Coz I Like It”).

Collectively, Even as We Speak fans will find much to reembrace on these two extended-players.

Adrian
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