Juno Recommends Experimental February 2021

Review: Full marks to Light in the Attic for the title of their latest well curated compilation. Somewhere Between: Mutant Pop Electronic Minimalism & Shadow Sounds Of Japan 1980-1988 is both broad and undefined yet highly specific. It captures the various moods of the music within perfectly - gentle lullabies of retro future synth music, curious Far Eastern pop ditties and all out ambient experimentalism that is never less than intriguing. The double LP comes with special liner notes and treads a thin line between metro boogie and sparkling atmospherics that will keep you coming back to discover more with each listen.

Review: It's been almost a full decade since the last Wagon Christ album from Luke Vibert. He is a producer who can do just about anything and has been right at the sharp end of any number of sounds for the last 25 years. The newly revived Wagon Christ project is sounding as good as ever here across 14 tracks of glistening electronics, dancing grooves and exquisitely colourful melodies that draw on dub, pop, boogie, synth, house, electro and techno but always come out with a very distinctive Vibert twang. The melancholic slow motion pomp of 'Special Designer Song' and chunky funk of 'Likewutchyadoo' are particular standouts.

Review: Solo releases from Depeche Mode mainstay Martin Gore are a genuine rarity. To date, he's released just one solo set under his given name - 2003's Counterfeit2 - and another as MG, some six years ago. The Third Chimpanzee, his first lone release of any sort since, is effectively a scaled-down sequel: a five-track EP/mini-album of electronic instrumentals created using a battery of modular synthesizers. It's as quietly impressive as you'd expect from gore, with clanking, industrial-influenced rhythms, IDM-informed synth sounds and growling, post-ambient noise being joined by early Depeche Mode style stabs and dark, growling motifs. Gore's sonic standards remain predictably high throughout, though we'd suggest starting with the Bladerunner-esque future dystopia of 'Howler' and the metallic, mind-altering intensity of 'Mandrill'.

Review: Bamboo Shows has been run by DJ Erevan since 2018 and promotes audio sophrology, 90's reminiscences, psychedelic atmospheres and exotic breaks. For its latest release, they've tapped local Lyonnaise talent Guillaume Lespinasse aka Jonquera (The Pilotwings/Tera Octe) who offers up an incredible 14 track album with a spiritual atmosphere that was said to be produced in only a mere seven days. The Darkos LP takes inspiration from medieval dark-ambient ('Pont de Djabe'), HD sound-design ('Saint Cotson') and esoteric illbient ('Couvent dos Cordelieus'/'Feune de D'main') through to noise music and doom metal.

Review: The latest short-run missive from Antwerp imprint Edicoes CN is an intriguing proposition. It was inspired by the painter Isson Tanaka, who spent his final years living and making art on the island of Amami Oshima. The album's two lengthy pieces were directly inspired by both the island's landscape and Tanaka's isolated life during the 1970s. Japanese sound artist Hideki Umezawa, who visited Amami Oshima three years ago, handles side A, expertly fusing field recordings he made on the island with electronic pulses, ambient chords and becalmed aural textures. American producer Andrew Pekler takes over on the flip, offering a swelling, humid and soft-focus piece where exotic bird noises and rainforest sounds wrap around gaseous and weightless new age movements.

Review: It's nice to get a new edition of Muslimgauze's 'Emia Bakia', a long out-of-print and hard to find album from 1994, because the album remains one of the most unique in the late, great producer's vast catalogue. The set's uniqueness lies in the surprising shape and focus of the rhythms that Muslimgauze utilised on the album; while as percussion-rich as ever, and often cloaked in his usual dark ambient sounds, dub-influenced basslines and Eastern exoticism, the beats are regularly far more dancefloor-focused than you'd expect. This isn't otherworldly ambient dub, but rather some mind-altering mutation of psychedelic house music that still sounds like nothing else around.

Review: Coil fans rejoice - here comes an album presented of two tracks feature a wealth of piously unheard material from the London outliers. The tracks are strewn with parts that would eventually come together into Backwards and the late great John Balance's vocals also featue. Much of the music resulted from experimental recording sessions where Danny Hyde was employed to take tracks home and manipulate the streams to create new content in a process he calls "Rate/Stretch". He left the music business before anything as made of his work, until now.

Review: WRWTFWW Switzerland never fails to back up its fans' claims about the imprint being among coldwave and dark synth's finest. But even then, this two tracker stands out as something particularly special from the label, which here once again teams up with Japanese composer Somei Satoh, who does away with the European romanticist and Japanese court music trappings many traditionally associate him with in favour of over 50 minutes of finely detailed evolving harmonies, melodies, refrains, discordance and more.

Divided into an opening arrangement - or rather a series of seamless arrangements that flow together - and its sequel, where the former provides a more upbeat feel, the latter can't help but create a sense of tension and foreboding. Almost as though you just stumbled into the previously unknown eighth Wonder of the Ancient World.

Review: Drew Daniel is The Soft Pink, and he is also one half of Mateos, the quirky electronic pair who have put out tens of albums. This solo project started as a means to explore sounds that don't fall in the Mateos world - which is not many, to be honest. There is rave, dark metal, crust punk and plenty of genre curiosities all drawn up on here with the results managing to be both ethereal and hypnotic. Guests such as Colin Self, Angel Deradoorian (previously Dirty Projectors) and Jana Hunter are amongst many who add extra weight to the album.

Review: American musician Heather Leigh's latest modern folk masterpiece is entitled Glory Days and contains 30 minutes of music across 13 tracks. Played on pedal steel guitar, synthesiser and cuatro and voice, the songs were recorded quickly and instinctively at her home in Glasgow. Leigh is also known for her collaborations with German saxophonist Peter Broetzmann, Shackleton and Steven O'Malley. Originally released on cassette in May of 2020, this vinyl pressing has been remastered by Rashad Becker in Berlin.