New releases last eight weeks: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: Tokyo-based post/math-rock noodlers Toe have a habit of cleansing the palette of each subsequent full-length they release with a follow up EP. Just like 2005's debut album The Book About My Idle Plot On A Vague Anxiety was followed up with 2006's New Sentimentality EP, the group would return three years on from their stellar 2009 sophomore effort For Long Tomorrow with 2012's The Future Is Now. From the twinkling emo-inflected shoegazing noodles of 'Run For Word' to the more acoustic-driven psych-jazz of 'Ordinary Days', the four cuts purposefully meander and fuse differing elements from the band's arsenal whilst somehow increasing the dense technicality to absurd, near impenetrable levels.

Review: Thomas Bush debuted with Old and Red and then followed up with 2022's Preludes, marking the arrival of an artist who can genuinely be seen to have a fresh voice. A man capable of crafting patient, slow burning, deep and often beguiling soundscapes, guiding us through a strange world of electronic folk, experimental indie, lo fi alternative pop, and some unknown tones in and amongst. Now back with another, in many ways little has changed - things are just as unhurried as ever - but the pace allows us time to become even more immersed in the realm he's creating. There's melancholy, beauty, reflection, deft use of disharmony, strange sounds that seem to float and glide past ears, or submerge us further in the trippy joy of it all.

Review: Loren Connors and Alan Licht's collaborative journey spanning 30 years culminates in their eighth album, At The Top Of The Stairs, is a great example to their enduring partnership and musical evolution. Recorded live in 2018, the album features two side-long pieces that showcase the duo's ability to create ethereal, abstract soundscapes with intricate arrangements. Throughout their collaboration, Connors' ghostly blue tones and Licht's meticulously crafted feedback and harmonic patterns have formed the core of their unique sound. At The Top Of The Stairs captures the duo's ascent through layers of atmospheric tension, punctuated by Connors' thunderous waves of effects. Connors and Licht have left an indelible mark on the experimental music landscape.

Review: Scottish electronic oddity Murray Collier returns on his own Real Landscape imprint - the sole preserve of this production alias - for a self-titled outing. His fifth release under the moniker certainly confirms what we already knew; this project is the work of a musical auteur, and is every bit as unique to the talent behind it as the label and EP name. Attempting to describe what's here isn't easy, then. 'The Conversation' uses mechanically precise percussion to lay out its otherworldly groove. 'Thin Ayrshire' goes lo fi and psychedelic, a track that sounds almost like a rural ritual being performed by a lost humanoid species. 'I'll Get To Hiding' is delightfully lackadaisical in vibe, strutting, shuffling, and stepping its way through what could be categorised as pop-r&b fed through the weird machine, and even that wouldn't come close.

Review: Leeds-based duo Hawthonn express their inspiration from Coil in their artist name (a tribute to the late Jhonn Balance) and it doesn't take long listening to their music to hear that indelible mark on their sound. Earth Mirror marks Layla and Phil Legard's second album for the Ba Da Bing! label out of NYC after 2018's Red Goddess (Of This Men Shall Know Nothing). Weaving a compelling mixture of low, murmuring industrial tones and pastoral folk with an occult twist, the duo move through enveloping, atmospheric spaces. At times Layla Legard's voice cuts through the mist, and elsewhere we reside in instrumental pastures, but the mood remains haunting and evocative from start to finish, not to mention masterfully rendered.

Review: Julia Holter's sixth album Something in the Room She Moves might just be the Los Angeles songwriter's best work. In the past she has often explored memory and dreamlike futures but on this new outing she is very much more in the moment throughout. She explains herself hat "There's a corporeal focus, inspired by the complexity and transformability of our bodies." Musically the album mixes fretless electric bass pitches with her unique vocal melodies. The recognisable sounds of the Yamaha CS-60 interweave with more organic wind instruments and add up to a fluid, watery sound that flows smooth and carries you along with it amongst the gorgeous harmonies.

Review: Julia Holter has subtly shifted focus on new album (her sixth in total) Something In The Room She Moves, moving away from exploring memory and dream-like states to instead focus on (in her words) "the complexity and transformability of our bodies". To create this rather distinctive (and rather good sound world), she added her own ethereal vocals to self-created backing tracks rich in electric fretless bass, warming wind and reed instruments, and distinctive synth sounds plucked from a Yamaha CS060. The results are predictably immersive and soul-enriching, with highlights including stunning opener 'Sun Girl', the percussively inventive 'Spinning', and the pastoral, dreamy 'Evening Mood'.

Review: Dark Entries takes it back to New York City in around 1982 for this previously unreleased record from Ike Yard. This cult crew was made up of Stuart Argabright, Michael Diekmann, Kenneth Compton, and Fred Szymanski and they worked in their own realm somewhere between proto-body music and No Wave peers in New York. They disbanded just a year after forming having dropped an EP on Les Disques du Crepuscule in 1981 and then a self-titled album for Factory in 1982. Using the Korg MS-20 and the Roland TR-808 they cook up plenty of hybrid electro-acoustic sounds and ramshackle rhythms that are underpinned by moody baselines and perfect to get bodies moving in the club. Whether you're a post-punk fan or lover of weird electronics, this is well worth checking out.

Review: Inner Cop Avoidance is a cult supergroup that is already surrounded by plenty of discussion and conspiracy despite only having played their first gig in 2022. Made up of Krisitan Poulsen on guitar, Mathias Saedrup guitar, Sebastian von der Heide on drums and percussion, Max Stocklosa on synth, xylophone and vocals, this self-titled album from the group lands as the inaugural drop on their own label. It is a brilliantly cacophony of electronics and percussion with twisted rhythms, post-rock guitars and a fiercely experimental approach that results in brilliantly beguiling music that somehow combines the futuristic and avant garde with bird calls and ancient shamanic ritual.

Review: The second solo releases from Edward Ka-Spel to appear on the Lumberton Trading Company label offers eight spectacularly original compositions from the outsider artist. These are tracks that bore their way into the heart and mind through startlingly personal moods and meanings. The atmosphere is often tense, and, when it's not, 'surreal' is the word that springs to mind - albeit more unusual hallucination than comical experiment. 'Platform 5' might be the best example of how unnerving things can get, the low, rumbling synth bassline underpinning spoken word, distant, almost inaudible harmonic refrain and eerie chorus. 'No Show Tomorrow' asks "what if they had a war and nobody showed up' to seemingly disconnected tones, notes and noises. 'They Seek Her Here' ups the tempo with a synth-wave-breaks trip through dystopian spaces.

Review: At 66 years young, Guiding By Voices main man Robert Pollard has a whopping 3,000 songs registered to his name with BMI, while outside of his primary project, he's released 22 solo albums as well as a plethora of lesser known works put out under obscure aliases. His latest alter ego, Rip Van Winkle, features a backing band shrouded in mystery on their debut EP The Grand Rapids, which redirects Pollard's eccentric and unique penmanship down the realms of neon-hued post-punk and frosted cold meets new wave machinations.

Review: Turin's reputation as an enclave of Italian alternative music and culture is well known. Southern Europe's Motor City has the stunning piazzas and palazzos we want from its country, but also the huge industrial areas, many now in decline or waiting to be redeveloped, that catalyse so much in electronic and industrial music. Meanwhile, a few miles beyond town we find spectacular countryside, national parks, mountain ranges, and inspiration for deep ambient. SabaSaba were born from and into this, and the duo have established themselves as one of the region's foremost purveyors of unusual tunes. Unknown City is a like a blueprint for what a contemporary horror score could be, whether that's the slow release of the John Carpenter-esque 'Night Plotters', haunting chants and shimmers of 'Wrists Free', eerie atmospheres of 'False Speech', or anything in between.

Review: Anyone familiar with Tokyo, Japan's predominantly instrumental math-rock prodigies Toe, should already be clued into the fact that the member's prolific nature prevents them from resting on their creative laurels for long, with each full-length they drop bookended by an EP. 2005's debut LP The Book About My Idle Plot On A Vague Anxiety was followed by the 2006 EP New Sentimentality, while after 2009's outstanding For Long Tomorrow came The Future Is Now in 2012. At the time of writing, 2018's aptly titled Our Latest Number currently sits as the group's most recent EP; sandwiched in between 2015's sonically transformative Hear You and 2021's latest output DOKU-EN-KAI. Furthering the experimentation of its preceding full-length, the EP strays from their signature twinkling, mathy noodles and emotive shoegazing, and instead embraces elements of minimalism and trip-hop, whilst expanding their acoustic-driven nu-jazz flourishes, and even sprinkling some ethereal vocals into the mix.

Review: Japanese math/post-rock outfit Toe have become renowned for their virtuosic blend of jazzy, hyper-technical math-rock blended with emo shoegazing and tropical Balearic vibes. Originally released in 2006 as follow up to the band's 2005 debut full-length The Book About My Idle Plot On A Vague Anxiety, and beginning their trend of intersplicing each album cycle with an EP, New Sentimentality offers up four lengthy cuts running the sonic gamut of almost every water they wade within. Trading off noodling twinkles with acoustic pluckings, while abrasive jazz drum-fills clatter over the weaving gentle cacophonies, this is what happens when the emo kids become the new prog nerds.

Review: Skep Wax's first Under The Bridge compilation, released in 2022, reunited the bands, songwriters and producers who populated cult early '90s indie label Sarah Records. This hotly anticipated follow-up repeats the trick, presenting 20 recently recorded cuts from the Bristol-based imprint's original roster of artists. It too, is a hugely successful - and understandably nostalgic - exercise, with hi9ghlights including the bright-and-breezy indie jangliness of Action Painting's 'Just Who Are The Cockleshell Heroes', the shoegaze-influenced dream pop haziness of Soundwire's 'Everything Is Real', the near Balearic soft focus shuffle of 'Double Nine' by GNAC, and the saucer-eyed excellence of The Orchids' 'A Final Love Song'.