Unengaged in 2018 Semi-Rant....

It's always hard to listen to any new music in the first few months of the new year because all I can listen to is the usual Christmas offering from Moon Wiring Club. Tantalising Mews/Cateared Chocolatiers was a double cd and an LP, almost 3 hours of music. Then I end up going back through their entire back catalogue as well as as their sterling batch of DJ mixes. That's a hell of a lot of music, all of it terrific.

It's not like there are a bunch of new records lining up to be heard though. All I know is Migos and Judas Priest have new LPs. Readers please feel free to recommend an album to me that you think I may have overlooked. I'm not really holding my breath for any upcoming releases as far as I can recall.

The only thing I can think of that would excite me is if eMMplekz ever get around to recording something new. I actually can't believe eMMplekz aren't part of the semi-popular consciousness like The Fall were in the 80s. They should be highly anticipated heroes on the festival circuit. If the fucking Sleaford Mods can crack the top 20 with their bollocks, fuck, eMMplekz should be hitting the top 10 with Baron Mordant's lyrics that capture the crap going on in all our heads in this over stimulated digital age. He's an astute observer of the current absurdity in which we all live our lives. Are they most underrated music project ever? I guess people are so fucking people. I once wrote a piece on eMMplekz and how they are a conduit of our internal thoughts and external expressions in this current maddening age not to mention the exposed malignant electronics Mordant's vocals are paired with but I lost my notepad (I should come back to this topic at a later date).

The only other thing I'm keeping an eye on is the electronic avant pop ladies ie. Holly Herndon, Katie Gately, Laurel Halo etc.

Strangely enough I just did a google search after writing the previous sentence to see if anything was happening out there in the world of music that might interest me and well, yes, Ekoplekz have a new release Impressionz. This is an archival collection containing 10 unreleased tracks recorded in 2014 during the sessions for the classic Reflekzionz LP. I can't find any indication of a forthcoming eMMplekz album though. In fact something on bandcamp hinted that their 2016 LP Rook To TN34 may indeed be their 'swansong'.

DROKK

Now this a bewdy. One dude from Portishead and one other dude. It's a soundtrack for a movie that didn't want it in the end I think. Anyway it's good gear, probably the movie's loss there, even the Mrs was diggin it. She said it would be a good soundtrack to Neuromancer, did they ever attempt to make a movie of that? So you're probably gettin a picture of dystopian future cities, cyberpunks, 2000AD, old fashioned ideas of futures that never arrived etc. This is a topshelf homage (and there are a few) to the music of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth (and inadertantly or not to thier influences like Goblin, Tangerine Dream et al.). One track had me wanting to dig out my old Add N to X cds. Weird 3/4 of a cd cover, which I kinda like. Harsh minimal synth tones for the escape from Mega City One.



Diggin these grooves.
More Nigerian 70s gold.
Soundway Records have
done it again! 





On the fence at the moment
with Laurel Halo's 2012 LP
Quarantine.







I take that back

The previously mentioned new Dolphins Into The Future record is not a disappointment at all. In fact it is up there with the Dolphins best tapes Mountains Saturnus, ...On Sea Faring Isolation, Wildlife Tapes etc.

Canto Arquipelago

Dolphins Into The Future

2012

Speaking of a lack of good new releases, there were a couple of top records I missed last year to keep me going in this drought. Tim Hecker's Ravedeath,1972 is a cracker. This is berserk drone heaven.

Keeping in drone territory are the digital drones with more of a club music influence on Laurel Halo's Hour Logic LP.

Last but not least is is Julia Holter's Tragedy which is apparently a concept LP but don't hold that against it, it's got songs and weird atmospheric interludes or is that weird atmospheres with song interludes. Anything which has a track that sounds like its a sacrificial cult chanting is fine by me ( ie. track 2). Tragedy is fairly unclassifiable, having said that Ivo Watts Russel  would probably dig it. Pop, Classical, Goth, Minimalism, Ambient, Psych Folk, Field Recording, Electro are genres it might be tinged with but really this is a work of its own and an incredibly accomplished/cohesive one at that. Outstanding.