Juno Recommends Experimental: August 2022

Review: Martin Jenkins aka Pye Corner Audio has been a busy man. He ended a fine trio of albums last year with Entangled Routes, then dropped a live album on this label early in the year, and now quickly follows it up with yet another fine long player. Ride guitarist Andy Bell plays on five of the tunes and is a collection that comes heated by plenty of sun and coloured with bright acid psychedelics. Says the man himself, "I try to tailor my work slightly differently for the various labels that I work with, and this seems to fit nicely with Sonic Cathedral's ethos." He has sure done that.

Review: Italian composer and modular synth wizard Caterina Barbieri makes a debut on the Light-Years label here with a profound work of ambient beauty. Known for her musical vortexes, she warps space and time with her compositions and has done ever since breaking through with 2017's double-album Patterns Of Consciousness. Spirit Exit again finds her start up her modal rug and get to work in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It's a personal work that "takes inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time." The transportational sounds are as complex as they are emotive from front to back.

Review: An artist so effortlessly apt to reinvent herself such as Laurie Anderson should be more than any other worthy of the reissue treatment. Music On Vinyl here present the legendary New York musician and performance artist's 1989 avant-garde album 'Bright Red', which followed a brief stint in the chart-worthy realm of pop. Co-produced with Brian Eno and informed by her then relationship with Lou Reed, Anderson's musings on love, landscape and death are more than submerged in Eno's proto-ambient pop and reverb techniques. It's also yet another stalwart album in vocal synthesis, with cuts such as 'Puppet Motel' showing off Anderson's longstanding penchant for gender-bending throat mods.

Review: 'Nhemamusasa' is a traditional folk song endemic to the Shona people of Zimbabwe, and is intended for solo mbira. In 1973, the song was documented by Paul F. Berliner on the album 'The Soul Of Mbira', but it wasn't until this year that the song/folk style saw a full-on creative reinterpretation by acclaimed percussionist and ambient pioneer Midori Takada. 'Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter' draws on the flow states induced by the song, while expounding the mbira into new ambient tweaks and obscurant headspaces, though twin 'Day' and 'Night' movements.

Review: Earlier in the year, Midori Takada released his first new solo album in 23 years - a breathlessly brilliant Afro-ambient extravaganza recorded "in a live setting" and utilising instruments held in the MEG Museum in Geneva. Recorded in 2918 and similarly produced with assistance from the museum, You Who Are Leaving sees the long-serving Japanese percussionist combine his own spiritual compositions with vintage recordings of chants by a Buddhist choir, led by Reverend Syuukoh Ikaw. For the most part, it's a sparse, haunting and intoxicating affair, with sustained chants being combined with all manner of percussion instruments (bells, cymbals, chimes, glass bowls) and plenty of studio effects to create mesmerising soundscapes. It's very good all told - so much so that it will likely one day be considered a new age ambient masterpiece.

Review: Pulled from the labyrinthine archives of the eternally mystical Muslimgauze, Muhammadunize was originally released as the first disc of Fatah Guerilla in 1996. It was recorded and mixed at the Abraham Mosque in Manchester, and it captures the essence of Bryn Jones' imperious project in perfect form. Drawing heavily on Arabic musical motifs and fusing them with a haunting post-industrial sound palette, there's nothing else in the musical world quite like Muslimgauze. This particular reissue also features 'Intifadah (Extended Remix)', which originally came out in 1988 on the Iran release. This vinyl pressing is a must for fans and new arrivals to Jones' work alike.

Review: Mike Paradinas amassed a fine body of work under the stage name u-Ziq through the 1990s. The Planet Mu label head is currently reissuing some of it with Lunatic Harness, his fourth album form 1997, the latest to get the treatment. It came out of the so-called drill&bass movement but was more pretty than most from that niche sub-genre. While Aphex Twin and Squarepusher always went for abrasive textures, he delves into more celestial and suspensory sounds rich in shimmering melody. It remains one of the best IDM albums of any era.

Review: Japanese sound artist Yosuke Fujita is FUJI | | | | |TA, and in 2021 he put out a couple of self realised works that were based around a pipe-organ he built himself. For this next high concept release he explores the possibilities of amplified water. It comes as a two-sided album that has no real analogs - the music is spiritual and deep, like an ancient meditative ritual with skewed voices and sustained chords in constant flux. He made it after building water tanks and a series of pumps and amplifiers that basically turned water itself into an instrument.

Review: Burnt Friedman and Joao Pais Filipe's collaborative efforts began back in 2018. The former using synthesis and electronics to paint subtly but incredibly specific aural pictures, the latter focusing on the drum and rhythmic end of things. At times their music feels entirely designed for the dancefloors of underground electronic clubs, in other moments it's something very different indeed.


This latest EP lives up to those broad brushstrokes. '21-30' is a lush, almost tropical sounding workout that offers a complex percussive pattern, and combines these with gentle shades of melody, harmony, hook and distorted note. '22-105' brings elements of glitchiness and robotics into the mix. Meanwhile, '18-140' would work well as a brooding building tool (or section) of a 'proper techno' mix, with '23-130' bridging gaps between the lot.

Review: Italian composer and modular synth wizard Caterina Barbieri makes a debut on the Light-Years label here with a profound work of ambient beauty. Known for her musical vortexes, she warps space and time with her compositions and has done ever since breaking through with 2017's double-album Patterns Of Consciousness. Spirit Exit again finds her start up her modal rug and get to work in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It's a personal work that "takes inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time." The transportational sounds are as complex as they are emotive from front to back.

Review: The visionary work of avant-garde violin player Valentina Goncharova has recently come into focus thanks to two volumes of recordings presented on Ukrainian label Muscut. Those snapshots felt like a window into what must be a vast pool of work she carried out during her most prolific years, and this release on Hidden Harmony speaks to that. Recorded in 1988 by Goncharova with her sometime collaborator I. Zubkov, this suite of 10 parts embarked upon extensive experiments into recording processes and studio techniques, and the results speak for themselves. From Goncharova's angular playing style to the tapestry of electronic interference woven around, this is remarkable, experimental but also wholly engaging work finally unearthed for a broader audience.

Review: Muslimgauze was an experimental visionary up until their passing, with a 96 title discography that has since more than doubled in posthumous rereleases and unreleased material. The British electronic producer's work all revolved around ideas and discourse in the Muslim sphere, with stories that obviously bear repeating. This release is a standalone reissue of CD3 from the 1996 triple album 'Fatah Guerrilla', a melodic and oftentimes industrial pounding - with 10-second loops repeated with liquid bass and interspersed vocal samples such as on 'Guilded Gulag Mind-er'. It's easiest to describe the album as a sonical collage, with sections clipping into each other and distorting like a scratched record like on 'Gifts from an Afghan''. 'Chechnya Over Dub' is a fantastic opportunity to dive headfirst into the expanded Muslimgauze universe.

Review: If you're unfamiliar with the Brussells-based composer Dominique Lawalree, then this is a great way to get acquainted. The synth-multi-instrumentalist innovator gets his first archival album release, which hypnotically makes its way through four albums released on his private label, Editions Walrus, between 1978 and 1982. It's all wonderful stuff, although the biggest thing to take from this is just how natural and unplugged the whole thing feels. And sounds.

Using a combination of piano, percussion, organs, vocals and kit we more commonly associate with electronica, the artist manages to offer tunes that feel strangely traditional, like artefacts from an alternate civilisation that mirrors our own until you hone in on the details. Works of real innovation and musical prowess, best be thankful someone got it together to formally release them.

Review: In many ways it's hard to describe this record as an album, or its content as music in the traditional sense. Instead, one of Britain's most daring experimental composers presents an adventurous exercise in playful ambient noise. Moving from strange sounds of things being broken, stacked and knocked over - maybe even bottle tops hitting the inside of empty cans - weird vocal stabs that sounds like they could be plucked from a Sesame Street educational animated music video, and subtle yet distinct background timbres all feature.

Indeed, it's not necessarily going to be the easiest listening experience for everyone, but the way in which these sounds are not so much manipulated but arranged and used to create this incredible sense of being in the place where they were captured is mesmerising, and a real accomplishment. As is making music in an incredibly abstract but tangible format from everyday noises.