The best new albums this week
The albums that matter most
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Ultramarine – Send And Return (Blackford Hill)
Ultramarine’s musical career is one of two halves. Not, you understand, like football where the halves can be chalk and cheese, nope. During the first half they released five first-rate albums, from 1990’s debut Folk, through the 1991 classic Every Man And Woman Is A Star, 1993’s Robert Wyatt-starring United Kingdoms, 1995’s Bel Air and 1998’s A User’s Guide.
And then, following a lengthy hiatus, they returned in 2013 with the excellent This Time Last Year on their own Real Soon label. It was unmistakably an Ultramarine record, but there was a difference, a musical shift you can hear if you listen to A User’s Guide followed by This Time Last Year now. But it wasn’t the missing years making the difference. It was a river.
The duo of Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond went to school together in Maldon, Essex, a town that sits at the head of the Blackwater Estuary. It’s a place that’s been fished for oysters since before the Roman occupation, salt making there is mentioned in the Doomsday Book and is still panned from its waters today, while the Battle Of Maldon saw Vikings kick Saxon ass on the river in 991 AD. Little did the duo know as they sat through double history twice a week how much of a role that body of water would play in their own lives.
The change, that musical shift, came during their hiatus when Ian moved his studio to Goldhanger in Essex where it overlooks the estuary. Take a look at his photographic work (iancooperphotography.co.uk), it’s hard not to feel inspired when that sort of view is a stone’s throw away. It seems with that move their work has really soaked up the estuary. Since their return they’ve made music inspired by it, referenced it in songs titles, made field recordings, created films, published books and performed on an island there.
Blackwater Estuary has slowly but surely permeated everything they do and they’ve embraced it with an ongoing side project they call ‘Blackwaterside’ of which ‘Send And Return’ is the latest installment.
Recorded in a day, the pair hired a Thames sailing barge moored on the estuary in order that they could make the album in the ship’s wooden saloon which was originally used to store grain. The duo were joined below decks by jazz musician Greg Heath (soprano sax & alto flute) and percussionist Rick Elsworth (vibraphone & percussion).
It’s called ‘Send And Return’ because, well, that’s what these fabulous old barges were made to do – ship goods up and down the estuary between London and Essex. The track titles are all names of barges. You can, say the pair, hear the wooden acoustic from the room if you listen carefully. This whole thing is just so evocative you can almost taste the salt water.
In his ‘Energy Flash’ book, Simon Reynolds described Ultramarine, the first half version, as making “pastoral techno” which is kind of what this is. Opener ‘Mirosa’ feels wonderfully rich, a movement rather than a song. Throughout the record you’ll hear the sound of geese calling, emulated on various instruments. Their simulated parps are clearest on the jazzy ‘Xylonite’.
The penultimate track ‘Reminder’ is such a gentle jazz-fuelled drift you can feel the end of the record approaching as it dissolves into closer ‘Dawn’, but here is a track that has other ideas. For five of its eight minutes it plays along, a flute picks out the melody, warm keys vibrate and then a synth starts to pick its way out until the track opens up into an electronic belter and we’re charging towards the end. Pastoral techno indeed.
There is something so very satisfying about the work of Ultramarine. There always has been. Their ‘Blackwaterside’ project contains music that has a place, music that is of a place. And fortunately for them that place has seeped into their bones over a lifetime.
NM
Move D – Solitaire (Mule Musiq)
David Moufang has a back catalogue which would take a lifetime to conquer. This is in no small part down to his approach as an electronic musician, taking a jammed-out, improvisatory approach to drum machines and synthesisers which yields reams of heavy-lidded material. He’s stayed true to this approach throughout his 30+ years of music-making as Move D and under other names, and in Pete Namlook he found a natural sparring partner. The late Namlook’s own legacy, of his own music and that which he released on Fax +49, is equally vast, and Moufang collaborated extensively with Namlook as well as releasing some solo work on the label.
Given all this, it would have been easy for the casual listener to have missed Solitaire, which originally came out in 1995 as a CD album credited to an artist with the same name. Moufang never used the name for any other project, but it’s very much aligned with the music he was making at the time – the rEAGENZ project with Jonah Sharp springs to mind, and of course his debut Move D LP Kunststoff. The opening track on Solitaire is an extended, 15-minute version of the latter album’s ‘In/Out’ which takes the analogue bubblebath even further out in a gorgeous echo chamber of suspended dub chords and fluttering drum machine figures.
This is mid 90s ambient techno through and through, richly melodic and subtly trancey, without any of the cheesiness and instead reaching with intent towards a genuine kind of harmonious escapism. Solitaire also makes space for outright ambience, with ‘Mad Mood’ gliding through beatless dunes guided by discordant moans too eerie and metallic to be textbook whale song. If ‘Damaskus-Dakar’ teeters a little close to the era’s penchant for orientalism, ‘Indian Mantra’ avoids the loaded meaning of its title and instead offers another blissful drop into downtempo serenity.
If you’re already a fan of this strain of early ambient techno, you won’t find anything shocking on here. It’s quite simply a perfect document of the sound from one of the best to ever do it, and Mule Musiq have done the music a fine service by giving it a proper pressing for those languorous evenings spent entranced by the record player.
OW
Matthew Herbert x London Contemporary Orchestra – The Horse (Modern Recordings/BMG)
Enigmatic doesn’t even come close when describing Matthew Herbert. In an electronic music scene that’s not just defined by, but in many cases purposefully interferential and familiar, he has always occupied a place so far removed from the rest it might as well be in another galaxy, let alone genre.
Over the years we’ve had entire shows based on the life of a pig – complete with tracks made from the sounds of a sty and inhabitants – and records constructed from objects and situations within the food chain. Tracks have been forged out of human hair and skin. And, of course, one LP was laid down amid sessions inside the Houses of Parliament, at a landfill site, and the lobby of the British Museum.
All this is before we mention the early micro house, that landmark Roisin Murphy stuff and 2015’s The Shakes, which saw his long-awaited return to writing dance music ‘proper’. Which is exactly the point at which analysis of his efforts becomes particularly fascinating, because even with all the curious concepts and bold background ideas, his work has often still contained plenty of danceable bits.
The Horse is a case in point. Based around a full-size horse skeleton, chosen following a search for the largest animal corpse to explore musically, so much of what’s here invokes images of wilderness, emptiness, midnight rituals around camp fire, and a resolute determination to capture the kind of naturalism we have grown so distant from. Parts sound like the chants and shouts of tribalistic bacchanal, passionate expressions of freedom and autonomy. Nevertheless, ‘The Horse Is Put To Work’ and ‘The Rider’ break from this by bringing in more traditional electronic music totems and structures, while never veering away from the experimental vision that always sits at the heart of Herbert’s output.
MH
The sound of monsoon-like rain which opens Hongkong is a vivid sonic indent for the origins of Monolake’s first album. As a compilation of Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles’ early work for the seminal Chain Reaction label, the monolithic aquatic cascade captures the sonic quality of the label’s groundbreaking work. Alongside the sound of Vladislav Delay and Porter Ricks, these experimental forays to the edges of techno were directly informed by fluid motion, from the tidal swells of atmospheric pads to the pitter patter of delicate synth lines. Even the punchier low end had a submerged quality which suggested the ominous, invisible power of undertow.
But as well as the aesthetic qualities, the rain and other field recordings threaded into Hongkong were markers of a time and place for Monolake, weaving the already recorded tracks together in the wake of an inspiring trip to Hong Kong for a computer music conference. It was a landmark time when new possibilities were opening up in music technology, and with the benefit of hindsight the potential seems huge, given Henke and Behles’ imminent forays into designing production software which would result in the development of Ableton Live – software so ubiquitous and game-changing it’s hard to imagine the shape of modern music without it.
But Hongkong was still a techno album first and foremost. The field recordings aided the immersive listening experience, melting together voluminous tracks that still sported the mixable structures of a 12” geared towards DJ sets. At this point, the kind of meditation positively demanded by a track like ‘Index’ feels like a standard modus operandi for a deep techno track, but it was genuinely ground breaking in 1997. What’s special about the music, which is sometimes lost in the modern era, is the sensuality which comes with these insistent rhythms and undulating pulses. For all its thrust, Hongkong has a soft attack which massages rather than annihilates, even when delay-soaked percussion reaches a subtle peak.
There are more overtly backroom-minded forays which feel more aligned with ambient electronica – an area Monolake would continue to probe as Behles departed to focus on Ableton while Henke continued solo. ‘Lantau’ is certainly not a propulsive dancefloor track, and the presence of such pieces confirms Hongkong’s role as a listening experience rather than a simple gathering of DJ tools. Just lose yourself in the artful movement of ‘Arte’, which teems with sonic detail untethered to the 4/4 grid and sounds better than ever with the benefit of a fresh mastering. It can be easy to take pioneering work for granted when it’s influenced so much music that has come along since, but Hongkong proves that sometimes, the original is indeed the best.
OW
Incendiary – Change The Way You Think About Pain (Closed Casket Activities)
New York is home to a long line of seminal hardcore acts such as Gorilla Biscuits, Youth Of Today and CIV, to name but a few. That isn’t to say there aren’t myriad modern outfits still flying the flag in the scene, from Regulate to today’s topic of discussion; Incendiary.
Hailing from Long Island, the five piece have become darlings of the culture since the release of their ferocious debut LP Crusade in 2009. What many listeners would soon realise is that the group don’t necessarily operate like your typical touring act. Be it prior commitments or perceiving their own project as more of labour of love and passion, Incendiary take their sweet time when writing and recording, and perform when and where suits them, making for a more exclusive rarity to their mystique as opposed to the relentless touring undertaken by the majority of hardcore adjacent artists.
As hardcore has seen a mass boom in popularity in the six long years since the release of their third full-length, the modern genre staple that was Thousand Mile Stare, the hype has been rife for when Incendiary would make their much anticipated return to capitalise on the momentum and show the newcomers how it’s done.
Well, take heed that Change The Way You Think About Pain is an exercise in metallic hardcore purpose, with its endless barrage of frenetic riffage, impassioned vocals and crushing breakdowns. Combining the socio-political anxiety of their 2013 sophomore effort Cost Of Living with the more personal woes of their later material, the cuts here feature vocalist Brendan Garrone at his most world weary and loathsome, earnestly pining for what internally feels like naive optimism.
From the jolting chaos of lead single and opening stomper ‘Bite The Hook’ to the post-hardcore machinations of the anthemic yet brutal ‘Rats In The Cellar’, sonically informed by their previous touring companions Glassjaw; this is both the leanest yet most poignant project from New York’s finest to date, and proves why Incendiary still garner such credence and praise from a scene that hadn’t heard from them in over half a decade.
ZB
The Ocean – Holocene (Pelagic)
The Ocean are easily one of the most vital, expansive and unique acts in modern progressive, post and extreme metal today. Based in Berlin, the collective has gone from strength to strength in the two decades they’ve been active, switching out members depending on the specific project to conjure the most suitable sonics for each.
The brainchild of guitarist/keyboardist/programmer/producer Robin Staps, their subject matter has always been deeply rooted in the sciences of history and how research and discovery often mirrors the historical trajectory humanity has taken as a species.
From the dawn of man and mutations of 2007’s breakout Precambrian to the arrival of religion (and current vocalist Loïc Rossetti) on the seminal sister albums Heliocentric and Anthropocentric in 2010, their expansive, melodic, forward thinking and grandiose compositions have elevated them to a height where they often feel in league with only themselves.
This couldn’t be more apparent in their return since the recent companion projects of Phanerozoic I and II, released in 2018 and 2020 respectively. The closing track on the second volume, titled ‘Holocene’, also the name of their 10th full-length, foreshadowed the more muted electronic direction the band would eventually take.
As their paleontologist lyrical studies have now entered the holocene, described as “the latest and thus-far shortest epoch on our Earth’s geological time scale in which humanity appeared on the planet”, the material densely unpacks the increased level which humanity has shaped the earth since our increased awareness and arrival into modern abstract thought and reliance on advanced technology. It makes total sense then that to sonically balance such a final conceptual chapter is to lean ever further than before into synth-laden electronic territory.
While some might miss the seething, complex rage of old, the tracks here are equal levels of hypnotic, hopeful, transcendent and oppressive. From the mercurial ‘Sea of Reeds’ that gives way to the seismic bombast of ‘Atlantic’, to the crushing heft of ‘Subboreal’, this is still the same ocean, yet the waters run warmer then colder, with unpredictable currents ready to drift you into lullaby before pulling you deep into the abyss. In other words, it’s another stellar work from a collective who continue to only compete with and outshine themselves. Where their concepts go from here is anyone’s guess, but the sense of finality engulfing Holocene only serves to add to its epic scale and vision.
ZB
Ya Tosiba – ASAP Inşallah (Huge Bass)
A collaboration between Finnish producer Batu Metsätähti and Azerbaijani musician and vocalist Zuzu Zakaria, if Ya Tosiba is a unique hands-across-the-landmass project then the tracks themselves are equally individual and beguiling. A follow up to the duo’s 2017 debut LP, Love Party, while sonically planting roots somewhere entirely of the pair’s own devising, the elements (and collaborators) involved manage to cover the 2,000 miles or so that lie between the two capitals of the artists’ respective homelands, Helsinki and Baku.
With input from France (Poborsk), Ukraine (Zavoloka), and Sweden (Pavan), the result is diverse and also completely coherent. Yes, there seems to be entire worlds standing between the pseudo-trad Caucasian pop of ‘Xudayar təsnifi’ and the haunting, industrial-edged electronica of ‘Yarə məni’, but listening through all tracks — from opener ‘Pul’ and its warm, infectious uptempo percussion and ‘Fani-fani’’s breakbeat-acid folk hybrid — feels like a logical journey, one that starts off somewhere completely foreign, and although ending up in another place that’s sounds far removed from the usual stomping grounds of western listeners, the record draws us deeper and deeper into this amalgamation of noises and cultures, and as such succeeds in making this a grand and hugely enjoyable odyssey.
MH
Seb Uncles continues his prolific run exploring the deeper end of jungle with this outstanding album for Samurai Music. Eusebeia is the kind of project which has embraced the album format – most notably the outstanding album he dropped on Western Lore in 2021. Given the shimmering, dubby veneer of his atmospheric sound design and the fractured, snaking configurations of drum programming he favours, his music feels more aligned with home-listening, and there remains a sharp focus on a consistent sound which makes a whole album a smooth, engaging ride.
On X, there are still plenty of moments when things get rowdier. The title track flicks between brash Amens and deft Apaches with precision, inciting the feverish energy on which jungle is built, while ‘Internal Combustion Of Fear’ attacks the drums with aggressive intent, but even in its toughest moments a pervasive, melancholic chill hangs over everything.
Binding everything together is Uncles’ expert engineering – jungle has always been a technical pursuit which rests on invention around its core ingredients of breaks and subs, and X features plenty of maverick swerves to marvel at. He exercises patience in developing his sound, and there are plenty of subtle touches which edge a little difference into proceedings, whether it’s the little tabla fills on ‘Seeing The Unseen’ or the cautiously optimistic tonality of the pad opening ‘Wisdom Of Tomorrow’.
Fundamentally, though, X is an album which continues Eusebeia’s practice of deep, intricate jungle, crafted by a devoted breaksmith with seemingly unlimited inspiration.
OW
Heart Attack Man – Freak Of Nature (Many Hats)
Heart Attack Man are somewhat of a bewildering gem within the realms of modern pop-punk. The brainchild of Eric Egan, the project has constantly swayed from sugary power chord Weezer worship to vindictive hardcore aggression, all delivered with a tongue firmly in cheek envelope pushing mentality, often using unsettling and controversial first person narratives to send home valid and uncomfortable truths.
2019’s sophomore breakout Fake Blood garnered acclaim for its sonic uncertainty and ballsy bravado, while the follow up 2021 EP Thoughtz & Prayerz marked both a refinement of their emotive angst-riddled pop-punk formula and a foray into much more jagged, direct hardcore heaviness.
Their much anticipated third full-length Freak Of Nature veers closer to the former in terms of overall attitude, yet Egan’s shit-headed ability to poke and prod at the questionable subject matter makes for a refreshing, darkly sardonic twist on the traditional self-loathing that comes with the musical territory.
The lead single and title-track sounds like an early noughties radio-punk banger but with Egan’s blurring of the self-deprecating and purposeful provocateur, with the anxiety-riddled refrain of “I feel like I’m about to get yelled at for something all the time” offset by the ownership of individuality – “I kind of like the way they’re staring at me, like I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be”. It’s a testament to being proud of one’s own freakish nature and embracing the aspects of one’s self that make them stand out.
Elsewhere, the saccharine bop of ‘Stick Up’ reliably exudes Egan’s ability to take a metaphor and imagery as unsettling as someone holding up a store with a gun to tell an underdog story of seizing what you feel is rightfully yours, despite the apparent obstacles. It isn’t as dark as older material such as the family massacre of ‘Old Enough 2 Die’ or the defending of a friend accused of rape on the confrontational ‘Cool 2 Me’, but it isn’t far off.
Even what appears to be the most old-school emo-punk cut, ‘Like A Kennedy’, encourages enemies to take him out like the many members of a certain political family prone to assassination. It’s a very bleak simile for what otherwise is an absurdly anthemic single, and proves testament to the specific brand of bleak, severely sarcastic yet endearingly clever vision of punk Heart Attack Man has been channelling for close to a decade now. For those squeamish or with delicate tendencies, Freak Of Nature might stray too far beyond the realms of good taste or political correctness, but then maybe punk isn’t for you to begin with? If you enjoy your bangers catchy, riffs chunky, sleeves adorned with heart and humour as black as night, then this is an essential ten tracks of earnest emotion delivered by the guy at the back of the class making tasteless jokes during history lessons.
ZB
There is an ever-increasingly ecstatic uptick in today’s electronic music, especially in the online sphere, that sometimes gets a bit too much. Dance music of late has in many areas taken a liking for oppressive autotune, wally compression, gritty distortion and screechy hyper-everythings. But there’s no reaction without an equal and opposite reaction, and it’s for this reason that an equal tendency towards distance, grit and darkness has just as equally struck out. The problem is, this music is comparatively quieter, so you have to seek it out.
Luckily, you’ve got us to help you. Introducing Brussels-based producer Sagat and their new album Silver Lining. Comparisons might be made between this album and the recent output of Torn Hawk, Maral or Leslie, but Sagat’s music truly carves out a space unto its own, carefully planning out an alternate soundworld of dynamic and pleasing sonic droughts. Like trudging through the decaying once-backstreets of an ancient ruin, one with no recoverable history or lore or to back it up, we’re essentially left to our own devices when it comes to piecing a story together. Yet structures nonetheless tower above us, cobblestones crumble, and rats dart into unoccupied former dwellings.
Track-wise, perhaps the above description is best nailed by the track ‘Club Gone’. It knocks away through dub ricochets and wonkily-timed trinket clacks, as if an old club promoter is trying – and even succeeding, in fact – to squat and occupy the former site of his glory days, throwing just one more ‘party’ for his fellow ghosts and spectres. Of equal note is the track ‘Chroma’, which stands out for its sounding like complex clockwork, a grandfather-cuckoo ripped up in spacetime, somehow still finding the rhythm to remain danceable-on, structurally integral. On still chug the equally mournful post-techno intrigues ‘Corner’ and ‘The Other Left’. More case studies could be picked out, but the truth is that Sagat has nailed their stated intention to reframe the contemporary club landscape from a place of “distance” (not time). We’d say they’re light-years ahead.
JIJ
Melati ESP – Hipernatural (Carpark)
Melati ESP arrives with a beguiling LP on US label, Carpark, ushering in a fresh moniker on the stylistically fluid and beautifully conceived Hipernatural. While the album represents more than one debut for the multi-disciplinary artist — as well as the new nom-de-plume, this is the first time she’s recorded lyrics sung in Bahasa — this is more of a new beginning than a first step on the musical road for NYC/Jakarta-based musician.
The project comes from Asa Tone’s Melati Melay, inspired by her teenage years in Jakarta, informed by Javanese Radio Dangdut, gamelan cassettes, Moving Shadow-era liquid jungle, and Japanese chill-out among many other influences. Magnificently co-produced by long-time collaborator and fellow Asa Tone member, Kaazi, the spellbinding music gracefully surfs boundaries, taking in sublime turns in varying shades of downtempo electronica, bass, cascading breaks, sunrise rave and more.
Though ambitious in scope, the coherent collection gravitates around Melati’s powerfully affecting vocals, at times delicate and ethereal, at times hypnotic and seductive. The instrumentation is no less engaging, overflowing with emotion-rich harmonics and futurist synth textures — from the four/four immersion of ‘Kupu Kupu Elektronik’ to the weightless rhythms of ‘Di Atas’. The LinnDrum-driven mysticism of ‘Intuisi’ or the haunting vocal melody of closing track ‘Energi’ are among the album’s most immediate moments, but as hidden gems reveal themselves with each listen, the indelible nature of the music drifts ever more vividly into focus.
PC
Joni Void – Everyday Is The Song (Constellation)
Few modern electronic music artists can be said to have embraced the full pull of lo-fi. Straming services and mastering engineers have taken to calling for a singularly “correct” frequency curve, one which they say can be generalized as most healthy, or best-sounding, to every human ear.
Joni Void is one such artist, unafraid of challenging such static ideas by plunging head-first into a stylistic pool he calls the ‘audio-montage’. This music douses its components into just enough fuzz and grit to make things audible, while also to confound in equal measure, all while reflecting an entirely creative process – whether making music in transit, while skateboarding, or simply basking in the psychic geography of Montreal. Everyday Is The Song is backed up by the origin myth of Void picking up a used Walkman voice recorder from a record shop, so one could easily mistake this for a Fred Again-esque exercise in “actual life”-ing, but the reality is that Void’s LP gives much less of a shit about people-pleasing.
What’s more, without this info, we wouldn’t know its sounds come from real-world sources. The surroundy bell tolls and knacks of ‘Non-Locality’ sound like they come from some gravityless alternate aether, a gaseous planet rather than a terrestrial one. Meanwhile, the elusive vocal contribs of N NAO on ‘Parallax Error’ murmur in an equally glossolalic fashion (translation: it could be an alien singing). The arc of the album is increasingly manic, while the track titles grow longer, seeming to suggest an ever-dividing attention while referencing the fast pace of certain modern rituals, like that of online speedrunning communities and DJs. There is, however, a tranquil return to the present on the penultimate number, making this an overall well-rounded and affecting sonic sequence in time.
JIJ
This week’s reviewers: Zach Buggy, Jude Iago James, Martin Hewitt, Neil Mason, Oli Warwick, Patrizio Cavaliere.