A slew of arrivals from Swansea Sound, Sally Anne Morgan, Kristin Hersh, Polypores, Jilk and many more, receive the review treatment

Whilst the summer months saw a very slight slowdown in releases, September’s review pigeonhole is stuffed to overflow. Here follows an attempt to sort through some of the incoming sonic correspondence.

Continuing an impressive run of 2023 releases, that has thus far compromised of another desirable Heavenly reissue and distinctive new albums from Marlody, Panic Pocket and Special Friend, the recently Concrete Islands-profiled Skep Wax label now unveils Twentieth Century, the second full-length from Swansea Sound.

Once again, the supergroup of variegated veterans – namely Hue Williams (The Pooh Sticks), Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey (both Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, The Catenary Wires and Skep Wax co-MDs), Bob Collins (The Dentists, The Treasures of Mexico) and Ian Button (Death in Vegas, Papernut Cambridge, Gare Du Nord Records MD) – channel their collective histories and talents around some deliciously sharp satirical songcraft.

With some meta conceptualism, about how the protagonists and devotees of alternative pop culture of the twentieth century now cope with early twenty-first century living, threading things together, Twentieth Century is a double-layered affair. It marks a return as well as a crucial update to the tradition of witty British bands poking and probing themselves as much as the confusing world around them.

Hence, amongst it all, we’re treated to the XTC-like “Seven in the Car”; charmingly wonky Nancy & Lee-meets-sardonic-indie-pop duets between Williams and Fletcher through “Keep Your Head On”, “Click It and Pay” and “Markin’ It Down”; The Buzzcocks chug of “Far Far Away”; and the winsome C86-tinged jangle of “Pack the Van”.

Though it doesn’t entirely break radically new ground for its co-conspirators, Twentieth Century is enjoyably addictive from start to finish.

Soaked in a far more cosmic ruralist ethos, Sally Anne Morgan reappears with a second songs-based solo long-player – after a one-album return to her Black Twig Pickers mothership and wordless experimentalist detouring with 2021’s limited-edition Cups – in the form of Carrying (Thrill Jockey).

In contrast to 2020’s de facto predecessor LP, Thread, Morgan combines her own multi-instrumentalist abilities with a larger set of guest players – that includes drummer Nathan Bowles, guitarist Andrew Zinn, bassist/engineer Joe Dejarnette, flutist Lou Turner and labelmate Ripley Johnson –  to muster a musically fuller sequence of originals and covers.

Even though this does mean some intimacy is lost, the wider ensemble arrangements do serve Morgan well on the whole. Therefore, along the way, we wander with her through banjo-frailing beauty (“Beekeeper”); woozy flute framed pastoral psychedelia (“The Center”); warm rambling folk-rock with shades of The Albion Country Band (“Dawn Circle” and “Awake”); and comforting Appalachian domesticity (“Song for Arthur”).

While the material does perhaps cleave more towards invoking moods rather than anchoring itself to memorable melodies, Carrying is an endearing aural abode to hang out in.

Comfortably settled now on Fire Records for new and archival outings, for Throwing Muses, 50 Foot Wave and her solo mode, Kristin Hersh returns to the latter route with Clear Pond Road. Redeploying her instrument-swapping-around skills inside electro-acoustic tiers reminiscent of 2009’s Crooked and 2016’s Wyatt at the Coyote Palace, rather more than the band-assisted psych-rock grittiness of 2018’s Possible Dust Clouds, this is a gradualist grade intoxicant of a record, that benefits from time and headphone ingestion.

Remaining lyrically as inscrutable as ever, with hooks that characteristically don’t embed themselves straightforwardly, Hersh renders her songs here through either stormy turbulence or up-close ruminations.

From the former side of the spectrum, we’re served up the rousing churn of “Ms Haha”, the twisty divergent passages of “Constance Street”, the swirly acid-folk of “Thank You, Corner Blight” and the multi-strata longing strains of “Eyeshine” with determined focus. For the latter side, we’re wrapped in the twinkling beauty of “Dandelion”, the aching almost Hips and Makers-tinged “Reflections on The Motive Power of Fire” and “Palmetto”, and the elegiac hauntings of “Tunnels”.

Clear Pond Road isn’t perhaps a recommended entry-point for late-comers to Kristin Hersh’s sprawling song world, yet it’s undoubtedly another substantial and intriguing internal location to gravitate towards, once other key inroads have been followed.

Inevitably, electronically-attuned creative folks have once again delivered more than enough content to warrant an entire separate column, but in the interests of trying to keep up with the flow as well as servicing our broad Concrete Islands tastebuds, here’s a needs-must compressed run through just some of what’s newly out there at time of writing.

If you opt to only buy one synth-sculpted album this month, then Past The Clocktower, The Walled Garden (Temporary Tapes), David Mason’s latest outing as the Listening Center, should be it.

Whilst the accompanying Bandcamp blurb details the modular and polyphonic kit used, as well as the tie-in polaroid-based cover theme, the nine grouped pieces exist sublimely in their own bubble of mesmeric minimalism, alluring ambience and chirruping charms, away from the micro-beats of last year’s Cybernetic Window for the now-dissolved Polytechnic Youth. Followers that previously enjoyed the similarly low-key Listener Center releases that Mason slipped out in 2020 – namely Diaphanous Structures and Non Functions – this will find this an added treat for the senses.

With Stephen Buckley having delivered quality goods as Polypores twice already this year, on Praedormitium (concluding a new-age-adjacent trilogy for Castles in Space) and ECCO (a dense yet diverse near-hour-long affair for Frequency Domain), Multizonal Mindscramble (DiN) arrives accompanied by the challenge of balancing continuity with freshness.

Thankfully however, the collection congeals itself into satisfying but not over-filling portions of ecclesiastical expansiveness (“The Dream Incubator” and “Butterflies”), effervescent ethereality (“Foam” and “Retrocausal”), hypnotic repetitions (“Machine Elves” and “Compute Gnosis”), blistering noise segueing (“Hyperdata”) and evocative inversions (“Strangels”).

Although ultimately less of an epic statement piece – especially when compared to the previous Polypores long-player for DiN – 2022’s Hyperincandescent –  the mosaic effect of Multizonal Mindscramble still produces an identifiably strong set of sophisticated but relatively succinct soundscapes.

In the same vicinity, the latest monthly trio of releases from the Woodford Halse-headed family of labels delivers plenty more diode-directed matter.

For those in need of more harder-edge stuff, then Ben Winter’s Victims of the Ether (Woodford Halse) makes for a striking sequel to his preceding outing for Modern Aviation, with its blends of techno-noir fit for a Berlin nightclub, early-2000s-styled glitchtronica, art installation soundtrack vibes and – intriguingly – the deployment of his own hushed vocals.

Nearby, on sister label Preston Capes, Grey Frequency’s Time and Place takes things into even darker dimensions for those wanting to delve further into the synthetic shadows, through disembodied field-recorded voices, drones with dog-disturbing frequencies and spectral reverberations.

Most ear-catching of all though, is Jilk’s It’s OK to be Quiet (Woodford Halse). Although not letting us bask in the afterglow of the still impressive Castles in Space-dispensed Syrup House from earlier this annum, the Bristol collective’s rapid return is nevertheless worthwhile. Fusing all manner of electronics, guitars, piano, strings, live-sounding percussion and vocals, the nine tracks gather-up a gamut of inventive cross-fertilisations.

Hence, this means swerving through Isotope 217-meets-Oliver Cherer rhythmical dreaminess (“Drop Away” and “Promise Me”); Warp Records-does-chamber-music (“Dayep Loops” and “Too Much”); R2D2-like bleeps vs. drum ‘n’ bass (“Sculpture 2”); and languorous introspection mixed with kitchen sink percussiveness (“We Want Collapse”).

While the hybridisations are less seamless than those mixed into Syrup House, in its own alchemical world It’s OK to be Quiet is a persuasively potent concoction.

Also still beavering away in Bristol, albeit at a somewhat less frenetic pace, are The Twelve Hour Foundation, who reappear with The Hexagonal World of The Twelve Hour Foundation (Disques Boum), which brings forth some refreshed and newly-chiselled angles to the twosome’s idiosyncratic instrumentals, by adding shades of Steve Reich minimalism and other dashes of modern composition, into the extant buoyant blends of Wendy Carlos, the Radiophonic Workshop and domestically-sourced musique concrète. Admirers of Jez Butler and Polly Hulse’s past works should be enthused anew.

Navigating a course away from the core synth scene players, there is even more to be had, albeit via some still familiar label outlets.

Consequently, we find Cécile Schott reappear imposingly as Colleen, in purely wordless fashion, with the defiantly non-digital-synth double-LP odyssey that is Le jour et la nuit du réel (Thrill Jockey). Encompassing a spread of multi-movement compositions, that take in neo-classical minimalism, filmic fantasias, Eno-like elementalism and new agey ambience, it’s boldly uncompromising stuff, ripe for deeper than deep listening submersions.

Contrastingly, forging more songs-centric channels within synthetic sounds, are records from two likeminded double acts. The first comes from The Mistys – the pairing of Andrew Hargreaves and Beth Roberts – who proffer their third full-length (and first for Castles in Space) with Detached Engagement. Showcasing a desolately pensive suite of electro-art-pop – with echoes of Björk’s most hushed moments, a slower less beats-propelled Ela Minus and 90s trip-hop – what the album may somewhat lack in variety, it makes up through a cohesive wraparound embrace.

The second comes in debut 7” single shape, from the pseudonymised duo of Digital Roses, on Feral Child. Discovered via a chance encounter by the A&R radar of Dom Martin, the two inaugural pieces provide both insightfulness and inscrutability. With “Waterfalls” featuring yearning vocal tones drifting through foggy atmospherics and distorted soundwaves, and the even more immersive “Under the Sea” swimming into vintage 4AD waters with the aid of more contemporary digitally-stitched attire, this mystery-laden arrival feels like the start of something quite special.

To lighten the mood, the last electronically-fashioned product pulled from the pile this month, is ERR REC Library Vol.4 – Sport & Physical Activity. The compilation finds the imaginative French label ERR Rec crunching into place a truly dizzying and energised array of exercise-themed instrumental explorations from assorted contributors.

Jogging through funky fictious TV cop show scores (Tiger Tigre’s “À deux doigts de la Victoire”); squelchy percussive A Certain Ratio-aping workouts (Julien Rachedi’s “Team Building”); Art of Noise-does-The Krypton Factor theme tune mashing-up (Alexis Lumière’s “Sport Connexion”); and Kraftwerk-meets-Harold Faltermeyer propulsions (Guillaume Alarm’s “Protein Mountain”), there’s a lot of slightly bewildering and flashbacking fun to be had across the thirteen assembled cuts, regardless of whether you take the cassette version to the gym in a dusted-off Walkman.

Returning to more guitar-led realms to wrap this column up, finds much fulfilment to be had in EP-sized selections.

The functionally-entitled EP2 from Theory of Ghosts finds the trio of Glen Johnson, Franck Alba and Robert Hervais-Adelman follow-up January’s first similarly proportioned studio release on their Faint Horizon imprint.

Appearing even more comfortable in their collective skin, it catches the trio leaning more heavily on their past pedigrees and shared record collections. Hence, “Porcelain” powers along with the grit and nimbleness required to join the dots between Power, Corruption & Lies and The Queen is Dead, whereas “You Can’t Happen Again” and “When Nobody Knows Who You Are” prowl languidly and entrancingly across the space left behind by Johnson and Alba’s still-missed Piano Magic.

Though taking some risk in relying mainly upon on label boss Nick Godfrey’s personal penchants on this occasion, by fast forwarding through more self-evidently fertile indie-pop strewn 80s and 90s indie-pop tape archives, Precious Recordings of London admirably mirrors the BBC’s ‘inform, educate and entertain’ ethos, in bringing a previously-unknown-to-this-writer 2010 session from Standard Fare forward for consideration. The gamble undoubtedly pays off.

The four-track Huw Stephens Session 01.07.10 EP provides a bracing Beeb-commissioned snapshot of the long-gone Sheffield trio’s fleeting existence. Fronted by the unvarnished yet smart vocal/lyrical presence of Emma Kupa, this quartet of tracks sprint along unrelentingly, with the raw time signature shifting ticks of early-Throwing Muses and a fledgling Sleater-Kinney adroitly funnelling the life and romantic preoccupations of three then-young British indie-kidadults at a point thirteen years ago.

An arresting belated introduction to a group worth digging more up on.

And finally… Papernut Cambridge’s Cinderella Crazy Golf EP (Gare du Nord Records) signs things off here as both a fine addendum to the still-fresh Channel Suite LP and as a solid standalone collection. Perhaps a little more straight ahead and less whimsical, at least in musical terms, than said album from earlier this year, these four extra nuggets are laden with warming retro classicism.

Thus, the opening title track blissfully motors along like an Anglicised lo-fi Loaded-era Velvet Underground; the twangling “I’ve Loved You the Longest” unfurls as a balmy early-Byrds homage; the chiming yet fuzzy “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off Your Eyes” feels like a far less combative and more melodic Jesus & Mary Chain; and the closing “Bread” is Reckoning-epoch R.E.M. remade with some of Syd Barrett’s English eccentricity.

Dexterously magpie-like as ever, Ian Button’s pet project serves up another amiable in-between-LP set then, that pleasingly adds to the general contrarian richness of the Papernut Cambridge catalogue.

Adrian
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