Juno Recommends Leftfield: 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: Working Men's Club have already gone on a wild ride despite only forming in mid-2018. They were already on Melodic with their debut single one year later, soon snapped up by Heavenly who released their self-titled debut in 2020. As they've grown fast, their sound has raced towards a compelling kind of synth pop clearly indebted to the likes of Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League, but certainly not constrained by those monolithic influences. On their second album, lead single 'Widow' points to a powerful, subtly noirish sound. It's a little more bombastic compared to the angular funk of earlier single 'John Cooper Clarke', but not less refined and clear in its intentions.

Review: Revered dub techno don Rod Modell has joined forces with Astral Industries label founder Ario Farahani for this brand new collaboration and stunning debut album. It was devised as an immersive fictional soundtrack and is beautifully rich with layers of FX, mystic motifs and stoner overtones that skink you in deep. Old Iranian records have been used as sample court material which lends it a real world cinematise and ancient charm with Persian sounds filtering through the hazy soundscapes. A fantastic album for mind, body and soul.

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: You might be more familiar with Bobby Krlic's long-established moniker, The Haxan Cloak, with two critically acclaimed studio albums already out under that name. Here, he steps out from behind the veil (ahem) for the latest example of just how far video game soundtracks are going these days. Returnal is a third-person shooter set in space, wherein players land on a distant planet in search of the White Shadow, a mysterious signal that has been emanating from the region.

Sadly, things don't go too well, as we wind up trapped in a time loop, really just wanting to go home and make some sense of what's happening. Krlic's score does that surreal and unnerving plot proud, moving between these huge, epic, Blade Runner-esque moments of stretched synth refrains to collages of eerie chimes and whispered abstract noises.

Review: For a four track electronic music EP, there's a lot here. Opening with 'Burning Fields' by Aphonia, the uninitiated might expect the whole package to nod to that classic electro sound, highly detailed but lo-fi, packed with dark atmosphere but all about dance floor energy. Skip to track two, though, and Angles of Pompeii present mutant indie-punk-dance in the vein of Detroit Grand Pubahs at their most guitar-y, and minimalistic.

Elsewhere, 'Retreat' is a slow mo maximalist triumph, acid lines flailing over the top of a muffled cacophony of noise that places the emphasis on a lunging, head-nodding bassline. Add 'Athma', Odopt's sinister low end and drum machine tune up that could almost be an accidental piece from the movie They Live and you've got not only a complex release, but one boasting replay value set to last for years after the investment.

Review: Picture Music's works are pining dedications to idealized, fragile beauty. At the same time, the 80s Brisbane duo's name functioned as a nice pun, with every one of their works intended as workable in film, hence "picture music". Here their groundbreaking yet lesser-spotted ambient debut album, first released in 1987 on tape, gets a wax reissue via Left Ear. We're thrown back to a candlelit array of twilit tunes, from the curious, marimba-ey narrative developer 'Ivory Coast' to the light yet evocative, heart chakra-affirming piece 'Landscape'.

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: Verdant's tenth release is another meandering and mystic trip through ambient electronic sounds that leaves you a million miles away from wherever you started. All four artists here excel with electro producer Reedale Ris kicking off in languid, far-sighted fashion with their mournful synths and distant cosmic designs. Out.Lier's 'Track 2' is another one cast adrift on deepest space with smeared pads and floating aural details suspending you in mid air. Jo Johnson's cascading synth motifs are pure and innocent and cathartic and Romanticise The World's 'Track 4' is mellifluous and hopeful.

Review: Justin K. Broadrick originally formed the Final project in 1984 in response to the upsurge in industrial and noise acts of the era. He made his live debut with the project at Birmingham's Mermaid Pub when he was just 14 years old and released a swathe of tapes before becoming sidetracked by Napalm Death, Godflesh et al. However the project has kept on, popping up on Downwards in 2015 and now landing on Luke Younger's Alter label in a burst of blue-hued, noise caked majesty. It's intense and somewhat oppressive, but also beautiful - a truly dualistic experience for divisive times.

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: Jessica Ackerley (Honolulu, Hawaii) and Patrick Shiroishi (Los Angeles, California) are both members of the newly announced super-family-group SSWAN (along with trumpeter Chris Williams, drummer Jason Nazary, and bassist Luke Stewart). Both have prolific outputs and work diligently to push the boundaries of their respective instruments and previous musical ideas.

'Across Water' sees Ackerley and Shiroishi contributing their own unique takes on the ambient sound. Jessica contributes 'I Am Here' and 'The Crevices Between My Heart', each following the collection's theme of water while the guitar and synth work on the second composition gives way to visuals of deep-sea life that can only sustain itself away from the hustle and bustle of crowdedness. Similarly, Patrick is no stranger to straddling the fine lines between subtle and overt emotionality. 'Because You Went There' and 'Leaving It All Behind' are his offerings, seemingly looking up to the sky rather than down ay the ocean, infused by the sweet and smoggy California air.