An assembly of alternative summertime soundtracks from bdrmm, Gilroy Mere, Bernard Grancher and more undergo some sun-lit scrutiny

Several months of lockdown living have instituted peculiar feelings of a time-lapsed fast-forward in seasons. Now that some of us are tentatively returning to the places and activities which we last experienced in late-winter – with spring having passed by in somewhat of a blur – this summer has arrived feeling oddly premature. As the music world still reacts to this period of pandemical history with somewhat unpredictable supply fluctuations, another aggregated seasonal assessment of new releases is required to keep a handle on another influx….

First up via Sonic Cathedral is Bedroom, the debut LP from vowel and capital letter adverse Leeds/Hull-based quintet bdrmm. Embracing being an ambitious twenty-first century shoegaze statement, this ten-track set – which appears after last year’s singles club 7” and 10” EP for the same label – is FX-pedal-powered to the nth degree and proud of it. However, whilst there have certainly been other young pretenders in recent times who have taken similar foraging expeditions through the vintage but still remarkably fertile sonic pastures of luxuriance and dissonance originally ploughed-up between the late-80s and early-90s, bdrmm’s sincerity and dexterity take things beyond mere flattering imitation.

Consequently, along the way we’re treated to rousing reverb-soaked melodicism that joins the dots between Pale Saints and Deerhunter (“Push/Pull” and “Gush”); shrewdly-executed Slowdive-meets-Ride swirling and churning (“If…”); marvellous motorik takes on The Cure’s post-punk-noir phase (“Momo” and “Happy”); Isn’t Anything-like amp-shredding with lateral turns (“A Reason to Celebrate”); and languid yet heavier detours from the epic paths followed within Lush’s Spooky and Split (“Is That What You Wanted To Hear?” and “Forget the Credits”).

Frontman Ryan Smith’s yearning half-buried tones may slightly frustrate those that once tired of singers who deliberately pushed themselves to the back of the mix, but on balance Bedroom should more than satisfy listeners that like their towering and saturated soundscapes rendered by tender hearts and thoughtful heads.

Pursuing an entirely different strand of antiquity but with a resonance that also taps strangely into the dichotomies of the train-infrastructure-reviving and Covidian-public-transport emptying zeitgeist is Gilroy Mere’s Adlestrop LP for the still-reliable Clay Pipe Music. Following on from 2017’s The Green Line – Oliver Cherer’s previous full-length outing under the same alter-ego which paid tribute to defunct rural-to-urban bus routes that ran from the 1930s to 1980s – this ostensible sequel pays homage to the British train lines and stations axed by the infamous 1963 Beeching Report. Although this is a pretty niche springboard for an album, in Cherer’s hands the results are as charmingly inventive as ever. Having made pilgrimages to many of the locations cited in the much-rued said railway culling document, to gather nature-dominated field recordings and to examine the still sore physical remnants at first hand, Cherer serves up Adlestrop as another multi-textured synthetic and organic stew, with a more generous sprinkling of his plaintive tones than on The Green Line.

Over its instrumental passages, things shift through gorgeously-pulsing kosmische movements (“The Age of the Train”); bucolic neo-classical evocations (“Bethesda in the Rain” and “The Cranleigh Line”); hauntological reflections replete with environmental found sounds (“End of the Line (Alderburgh)”, “Ravenscar” and “Star Crossing”); mournful end of the pier slow-jazz (“Christ’s Hospital”); and spooky abstract folk (“Black Dog Halt”). For the interspersed vocal-led tracks, we find Cherer lamentingly reciting from the list of lost stations from the Beeching Report itself over skeletal keyboards and ornithological chirruping (“Appendix 2”); reading Edward Thomas’s title-track poem over some Fripp and Eno-like layering; slipping into some easy strumming Bert Jansch wistfulness (“Just a River”); and exploring wordless hymnal incantations (“Torver and Coppermines”).

In lesser hands, such unwieldy quixotic conceptualism wouldn’t have worked with as much charm and subtlety as this evidently does. Though of course, such contrarian creativity is what Oliver Cherer consistently channels so effectively, whatever name he’s trading under.

Taking far darker routes is the latest long-player from Bernard Grancher on Castles in Space. Carrying on from the admirable Aveugle Etincelle cassette/download release from earlier this year, Soliel Gris Éclatant rounds-up similar material from the same sessions but as longer pieces that dig far deeper into post-punk-industrial murkiness.

Thus, “Tout Retour En Arrière Sera Considéré Comme Accidentel” and “Du Grabuge Et De La Haute Tension” weld Cabaret Voltaire-like fizzing and buzzing to beats borrowed from The Home Current; “Soleil Plat Et Vibrations Intrinseques” sulks around in irradiated atmospheres with hints of Suicide-styled synth squall; “(Je Rêve Encore De Toi)” and “Aimer Même Tes Manies” wander through gloomy post-apocalyptical landscapes with heavily-treated ululations and disorientating drones; and “Des Batailles Comme Tu En Gagnes Tout Les Jours” boils things to down to a throbbing and burbling ambient-technoscape.

Overall, Soliel Gris Éclatant is certainly not easy listening and it misses the relatively more compact focus of Aveugle Etincelle. Nevertheless, its bleakly-imaginative nocturnal scene-settings are convincingly absorbing for the most part.

Having delivered strong and intriguing standalone releases from The Home Current, The Central Office of Information and Bizarre Statue already this year, Mat ‘Pulselovers’ Handley’s Woodford Halse label continues activities with a fourth volume of its cassette/download compilation series. Featuring many artists previously unfamiliar to Concrete Islands, alongside a handful of regular visitors to our pages, Undulating Waters 4 is a densely-packed compendium of one-offs.

Steering away from straightforward to pigeon-hole genre wares leads us to some notable ear-opening cuts. Hence, you’ll find Isis Moray fusing elegiac This Mortal Coil-isms to electro propulsions (“The Mirror”); Burd Ellen bringing forth some alluringly stark Gaelic folk balladry (“Bi Falbh”); Deathbird Stories churning up some enthrallingly dense noise-sculpting (“Aornos II”); Harriet Lisa mirroring the avant-rustic string explorations of Agathe Max and Brave Timbers (“Dance With Destiny”); Stellarays’s pensive electro-acoustic reflexions (“Starwater”); and The Home Current gliding through some reliably engaging Euro-techno (“Take You For a Ride”). Though not everything gathered within piques the senses, there is enough quality stuff here to suggest that the fifth instalment of Undulating Waters – due out in August – will be worth investigating too.

Adrian
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