This concluding part of a late-winter wander through our corner of the music world explores further enlightening and esoteric paths

As winter winds its way slowly towards a denouement, here is another substantial selection of nonconformist produce to serve-up, sample and sate the audio appetite before we reach the spring.

Having had such a prolific run in 2019 – led by a sterling singles club series – Sonic Cathedral is taking a more gradualist path for operations at the start of 2020. Yet this doesn’t mean a significantly less worthwhile body of work is in the offing, as new 12-inchers from two of the label’s current luminaries confirm. Thus, the Re-Facto EP from Mexico’s Lorelle Meets the Obsolete revisits and expands upon the might of the psych-rock shapeshifters’ still-fresh De Facto LP, by combining two contrasting sturdy outtakes (the stomping “Fosas Limitadas” and the dreamy “El Olivio”) and two imaginative remixes (from CC Crain and Pye Corner Audio) into a fulfilling postscript. Comprised entirely of reworkings, Austria’s Molly offer up the All That Was EP with three decent remixes from last year’s All That Ever Could Have Been album (courtesy of Maps, William Doyle and labelmate Mark Peters) and a robust re-recording of the title-track from 2017’s Glimpse EP. Cumulatively conjuring the atmosphere of a sonically progressive shoegaze nightclub experience as well as casting their views even wider across the vistas visible from their alpine home environs, the twosome seem to admirably have no intention of dialling down their effective epic-reaching any time soon.

Overlapping Sonic Cathedral’s 80s-to-00s-influenced sound world but not stopping-off in quite the same places, is the latest album from the sub-editor-tormenting worriedaboutsatan on Sound in Silence. Recently slimmed-down from a duo to become the primary solo project alias of Gavin Miller, Crystalline finds the enterprise exploring some eerily somnambulant soundscapes. With guest Sophie Green (of Her Name Is Calla) contributing heavily-treated wordless vocals in places and Miller deploying an array of electric guitars, bass and electronics, this eight-track suite skilfully straddles several eras of spectral sculpting. Building bridges between the ethereal expanses of the 80s 4AD canon, the languorous abstractions of Windy & Carl and Mogwai’s most meditative late-night wanderings, Crystalline may not necessarily break a lot of new ground but it certainly occupies its territory with a commanding approach.

Having impressed us already with multiple retro-futuristic electronic flavours on last year’s eponymous debut as The Central Office of Information on Castles in Space, Alex Cargill shifts over to the slowly blooming Woodford Halse cassette/download label for the more organically textured and themed Treedom. Inspired by the socio-biological complexities of the Wood Wide Web, Cargill weaves in more earthy instrumental elements this time around whilst also deepening his conductive sonic roots. Therefore, madrigal-like folk guitars, flute sounds and ruralist field recordings form airy overground layers across some of the album’s opening passages, before proceedings burrow deeper and deeper into engrossing synthetic subterranean tunnelling thereafter. Along the way, Cargill makes compelling and ingenious connections between Pentangle, Popol Vuh, Jon Brooks, The Radiophonic Workshop, Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle and Augustus Pablo with some impressively meticulous grafting. Yet another agile lone craftsman to keep a close ear on then, alongside the likes of Polypores and The Home Current.

Pursuing an even more organic and immersive nature-framed trail but with a generally far gentler vibe is Luis Miehlich’s Currents via Berlin’s micro-boutique tape/digital Inner Space Travels label (which brought us last year’s mesmeric About Minerals from The Leaf Library). Reclining in beds of watery and ornithological field recordings as well as heavily dosed-up on Brian Eno’s seminal Ambient series and flirting with borderline new-age tropes, Miehlich may on paper risk this seven-track suite being considered as barely-there background music for an alternative therapy studio. However, there is something about this often quite beautiful collection that makes for an unexpectedly substantial and hypnotic experience. Drawing together languid electric guitars and rippling waters (“Flow”), edgy drones and rain clouds (“Gentle Storms (Interlude)”), gamelan percussion and slide-guitars (“Klock”), chirruping chimes and shoreline sounds (“3105″) and pellucid synths and piano lines (“Yukkuri”), there is something oddly transfixing about Currents that invites repeated aural bathing.

Although Lake Ruth are taking their time to deliver a full-length follow-up to 2018’s Birds of America LP, a steady trickle of briefer non-album wares has suited the NYC art-pop trio of Allison Brice, Hewson Chen and Matt Schulz remarkably well. The newly-cut four-track Crying Everyone Else’s Tears 10”/download EP on Germany’s Kleine Untergrund Schallplatten label – which sets the unpublished lyrics of fellow songwriter Renee Tamraz inside their own self-penned musical arrangements – takes us along another very likeable and resourceful detour. Freed of wordplay duties, the trio encircle and project Tamraz’s prose with slinky low-slung Sound-Dust-era Stereolabisms (“Sad Song”), spectral art-funk (“Lonely Street”), swirly yet nimble Roger McGuinn-meets-Richard Wright psych-rock shapes (“Easy To Leave Me”) and fragrant acid-pop (“Aging Now”) with endearing assurance.

Equally adept at shorter-form affairs, are Glasgow’s increasingly reliable Tomorrow Syndicate (who recently shared space on an EP with Lake Ruth as it happens). Bringing together a remix CD, a defiantly obsolescent VHS cassette of animation-led film clips and bespoke art inserts, the Citizen Output bundle under the Polytechnic Youth umbrella is a generously eccentric companion set to last year’s charming Citizen Input mini-album. Focusing here on the remix disc, whilst the VCR is being excavated from the loft, leads to five reshapings that broaden out the space-pop constellations of their original incarnations. Hence, “Precog” is thickened-up with some John Carpenter heft by Krokakai; “Captain, I Am Fading” is spun into an even spookier spectral dimension with appended Martin Hannett-like textures from The Home Current; “Contact” gains Computer World-referencing radiance from The Central Office of Information; “Auto-Pilot” is turned inside-out with some glitchy yet abrasion-free angularity by Midwich Youth Club; and “Stranger in Space” is given some extra vintage sci-fi framing by The Heartwood Institute. All told, fans of Tomorrow Syndicate’s contrarian but inclusive methodologies certainly won’t be disappointed with this lovingly-assembled package.

Adrian
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