The Modern Aviation label opens up its 2020 release schedule with a carefully curated mixtape of the familiar and unfamiliar

For those of a certain age, thoughtfully-assembled compilation tapes were once an essential pre-internet musical discovery tool. Although this new multi-artist cassette (plus download) release from the increasingly-dependable Modern Aviation label comes wrapped in a professionally-printed instead of hand-scrawled sleeve and has been convened with far greater finesse than any home stereo set-up could ever have achieved, the classical traits of a vintage DIY selection put together by a well-connected friend with good ears is still embedded within its extruded plastic.

Combining previously-unheard recordings from artists well known to Concrete Islands writers and readers, alongside some introductions to lesser-known entities and one revisited nugget from elsewhere in the Modern Aviation catalogue, the twelve-track Par Avion is a satisfying aural buffet.

Naturally, the initial draw is towards cuts from those we’ve been hitherto acquainted with. Such reappearing characters certainly don’t disappoint. Hence, on the hauntological side of things, Rupert Lally unpeels “Every Home Should Have One” with warm nods to Another Green World-era Brian Eno and a twist of Tangerine Dream, whilst The Leaf Library’s “Wave of Translation” and Drew Mulholland’s “Gaudy Night” both skulk through wordless nocturnal subterranean dronescapes tinged with filmic sci-fi tropes. Elsewhere, The Home Current delivers the glitchy but pulsing “The 8th Samurai” to envisage Rounds-era Four Tet given an Autechre overhaul; the found-sounds and synths of Polypores’s “Absent Farther” converge into the same blissful immersive tributaries as on last year’s Flora LP for Castles in Space; and Agathe Max’s reprised “Premonition Unveiled” (from her early-2019 Modern Aviation album Rêves Perdus) reminds us of her gift for starkly compelling John Cale-infused avant-garde orchestrations.

In-between times, bridging the gap between recurring and new-to-us contributors, Oliver Cherer’s collaboration with filmmaker Andrew Kötting, in the shape of the imposing “Far Away Land”, proffers a very intriguing taster of the twosome’s conjoining within the upcoming The Whalebone Box soundtrack due to come out in the mid-future on Invada Records. With a combination of eerie disembodied voices, whirring electronics, low-slung bass and prowling drums making strong nods towards The For Carnation, Cherer finds yet another promising sonic route in his chameleonic career.

It’s not just the returning protagonists to our pages that serve up some strong twists in this collection’s tale. Thus, Teresa Winter’s “Money Talks” and Floodlights’s “Divorcing Swans” stir-up disorientating but dreamlike blends of ethereal vocals and imposing electro-organic layering; The All Golden’s “La Defense” plays with broken-sounding pianos and murky haunted house reverberations; Ghost Box alumnus ToiToiToi (aka Sebastian Counts) brings in a delightfully wobbly bit of pirouetting-space-dub; and Ben Winter’s mesmeric “Still Animals” imagines latter-day solo Thom Yorke reworking a lost early-Tindersticks interlude.

With barely a weak moment to be found across its dozen gathered tracks, Par Avion is a shrewdly-spliced round-up that can be absorbed as a whole as well as be used for signposting to its contributors’ external works. With standalone albums from the aforementioned Rupert Lally, Floodlights and Ben Winter being brewed-up for release over the duration of 2020, this could be the year that Modern Aviation’s niche operations garner deeper deserved dissection. Until then, this is a great way to be (re)acquainted with a discerning enterprise.

musiqueparavion.bandcamp.com

Adrian
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