Border hopping European exports from Augenwasser, Cyril Cyril and Rats on Rafts arrive with some bracing sonic cross-blending

Even if operational logistics have become that much harder of late for artists across Europe – due to a variety of obvious public health, political and economic reasons – it still hasn’t fully stifled the continent’s capacity for barrier-transcending cultural illuminations, as these three albums attest.

Officially released late last year but only now receiving deserved wider distribution, come two distinctive long players from Geneva’s eclectic Les Disques Bongo Joe label, beloved of both Lauren Laverne and Gilles Peterson. The first of the still-fresh pair to spotlight is Sleepdancer, the subtly imposing second LP from Augenwasser, the solo project of the Biel/Bienne-based Elias Raschle. Cut seemingly home alone and self-deploying multi-instrumentalist deftness around his murmurous English language vocals, this nine-song suite finds Raschle casting a darkly alluring yet droll spell throughout. Joining the dots between downbeat New York bar ambience, romantically doomed cinematic European noir and dexterous DIY art-pop, the record lives up to its somewhat oxymoronic title.

Across proceedings this manifests specifically and impressively in hypnotic Suicide-meets-Low-era-Bowie melding (“Paid the Rent / Going Out”); foggy languid space-dub (“Work Wait Work”); neon-lit electro-framed grooves (“Four in the Morning”); woozy dilapidated drum machine-backed crooner confessionalism akin to early lo-fi years Baby Bird (“Back to Daylight” and “Born on a Saturday”); and bleary-voiced barroom balladry (“Dead of Night / Running Away”). Both adventurous and stealthily intoxicating in its songcraft, Sleepdancer is an inscrutable warming pleasure.

Equally free-range – but roaming in different realms – is Yallah Mickey Mouse from labelmates Cyril Cyril. This second full-length outing from the Swiss partnership of Cyril Yeterian (banjo/guitar/organ/vocals) and Cyril Bondi (drums/percussion/vocals) – the former previously of Cajun blues ensemble Mama Rosin as well as being a co-owner of Bongo Joe and the latter a veteran of numerous experimental outfits – makes for an effervescently fecund melting pot. With the twosome singing in French and drawing upon their past exposure to a kaleidoscopic time-straddling spectrum of globalist sounds, Yallah Mickey Mouse is colourfully untethered whilst also being adroitly finessed.

Hence, across the ten assembled pieces you will find exuberant Gallic variations upon the most lysergic freewheeling corners of the early-Pink Floyd canon and the most rocket-fuelled moments of John Dwyer’s Thee Oh Sees/Oh Sees/OSees repertoire (“Les Gens”, “Le Grisou” and “Effondrement”); unhinged garage-motorik stomping (the title track); and beguiling Moroccan-meets-Middle-Eastern psych-rock (“Le Grisou”, “President” and “X-Crise”).

With reportedly politically-charged lyricism on top of it all, still to be translated by this former French A-level student, there’s a lot of compelling hidden depths to be discovered inside Yallah Mickey Mouse, despite its scent-masking name and artwork.

Beamed out to the world from Rotterdam via their latter-day label hub at London’s Fire Records, Rats on Rafts return with the unsnappily-anointed Excerpts From Chapter 3: The Mind Runs a Net of Rabbit Paths. The official long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s terrific Tape Hiss – after a LP-sized collaborative detour with older Dutch legends De Kift and a clutch of non-album releases – this is an unambiguously ambitious leap forward. Expanding on said predecessor’s spirited psych-noise explorations – with more upfront intelligible vocals, proper yet far from formulaic songwriting, extra instrumental infusions and a broader stylistic scope – the foursome have forged a sprawling quasi-concept album scripted to fit our fever-dreamed times.

Dipped in dystopian dramatics and expansive viewpoints, Excerpts… therefore covers a lot of ground whilst remaining in its own claustrophobic bubble. This means giving space over to atmospheric slow motion sequences that curiously take in Japanese guitar phrasings (“Prologue Rain”), spoken-word eeriness (“Another Year”), gothic From Her to Eternity-epoch Nick Cave-like proclamations (“Second Born Child”) and desolate post-pandemical prowling (“Epilogue: Big Poisonous Shadows”), to sit around more furious panoramic epics.

In respect to the latter, the record blows open wide with the Neu!-meets-Hawkwind propulsions of “A Trail of Wind and Fire”; vibrant flashbacks to The Fall of the mid-to-late-80s (“Tokyo Music Experience” and “The Rise and Fall of the Plague”); churning gritty shoegaze (“Fragments”); gnarled-up post-punk (“The Disappearance of Dr. Duplicate”); and more of the intense shapeshifting of Tape Hiss (“Where Is My Dream?”). In places, the density of the ideas and their implementation can become a tad overwhelming, yet given time and some spacious airings Excerpts From Chapter 3 reveals itself as a robust recalibration of Rats on Rafts’ already steely vision.

Adrian
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