In July 2011, nine years after they formed, Manchester’s Marconi Union released their fifth album, Beautifully Falling Apart (Ambient Transmissions Volume 1) and the first for the Just Music recording label.

Marconi Union is Richard Talbot, Jamie Crossley and Duncan Meadows.  They formed in 2002 when Talbot and Crossley met while working in a record shop and the following year released their debut album Under Wires and Searchlights, on the Ochre Records label.  But it wasn’t until 2005 that they released a second album, Distance, this time on the All Saints Records label. The following year they played the Big Chill Festival and Eden Sessions, as well as giving their first interview.

Further albums were released through their official website – A Lost Connection (released as a digital download in 2008 & CD in 2010) and Tokyo (2009).

Duncan Meadows joined Marconi Union on a permanent basis in 2010 and together they released Beautifully Falling Apart (Ambient Transmissions Volume 1). The album drifts even further in to ambient layers landscapes of serene beauty while managing to effortlessly entwine elements and whiffs of dub, electronica, glitch and even Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Westerns.  As with much ambient music the album plays out like an imaginary film soundtrack.

My favourite album is Distance which shows a moody, darker side to Marconi Union while they were still toying with lighter beats stimulating the soundscapes rather than the atmospheric purity of Beautifully Falling Apart (Ambient Transmissions Volume 1) that errs away from electronica and towards a contemporary classical music.

Marconi Union are making wonderfully deep, thought-provoking music that should simply be heard and appreciated by more people; which is possibly the reason why Just Music will be re-releasing their first two albums in 2012, along with plans to release a new album next summer.

Beautifully Falling Apart (Ambient Transmissions Volume 1) has six beautifully relaxing tracks that blend into one another leaving the listener in a sublime state of relaxation.

Over the past nine years Marconi Union has quietly whispered their way into the consciousness of those looking to ambient music rather than X Factor 15 minutes of fame.  No fanfares. Their fan base is growing organically through word-of-mouth, without hype.  Their music is continuing to develop a style all of its own with each release.  If you haven’t already indulged your ears in the beauty of Marconi Union, make it one of your New Year’s resolutions.

Album Re-issues
On 30th January 2012, Just Music will be re-issuing two albums by Marconi Union:
Under Wires and Searchlights & Distance.

Plant Plants

Plant Plants self-titled debut EP includes 4 tracks, each exploring different soundscapes.

Plant Plants are friends, Stuart Francis and Howard Whatley. They formed the group through their mutual love of film scores, weird guitar tunings & heavy beats, theirs is a sound which effortlessly combines the rare blend of electronica and eclectic imagery that sets them apart from contemporary comparisons.

Citing influences as varied as the Wickerman soundtrack, Wu Tang – the 36 chambers era – and L.A. based ‘beat-scene’ producer Baths, it’s no surprise their oddball electronica meets melodic music, is causing waves amongst the blogosphere.

Produced by Jas Shaw, one half of DJ and production unit Simian Mobile Disco, it’s a modern imagining on a sound reminiscent of early nineties bands first discovering electronic music, mining the fertile seam of the first wave of post-rock.

Lead track Hands That Sleep and I’m So Black fuse math rock guitars with aquacrunk synth programming and hip-hop wizardry, whilst the vocal-lead She’s No One comes over like Suede gone electronic, and final track Dandelion nods towards Sparklehorse. Trying to hang easy reference points of music this unique is essentially a fool’s errand though – although the tracks show off a wide variety of influences and styles, a coherent, individual thread runs through them all.

As proficient in the digital world as they are with traditional analogue instrumentation, Plant Plants live show is an intimate combination of hands-on hardware samplers, framed by parallel vocals, guitars, bass & a digital piano. Integral to the tight knit, 2-man setup is an array of 15+ effects pedals ranging from Voice Boxes & Woolly Mammoth fuzzboxes, to 90s Kaoss Pads -all at an arm’s length. All samples & effects are fingered & manipulated live as instruments, with not a laptop to be seen! Plant Plants prefer to build their songs from the ground up, aiming to provide something more, than the usual gig experience.

My favourite is ‘Hands That Sleep‘ which I can best describe as The Cure’s ‘Close To Me‘ sipping coffee in an empty diner with Gold Panda while Neil Tennant discusses the possibility of making The Pet Shop boys sound less synth pop and really weird.

Plant Plants Ep by This Is Music

Sweetness, Yes Please! by Moira Stewart is released on Distraction Records.

Following the release of the original studio album in April 2008, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne’s finest Distraction Records release a remix album of Sweetness, Yes! by the oddly named trio, Moira Stewart.

The original Sweetness, Yes! album proved Moira Stewart’s affection for 1980’s synth pop with a nod to the sound of C86, New Order and contemporary artists like The Postal Service.  As with previous remix album releases on the label, each Distraction Records artist have remixed a track from the originally album in a style of their own, and the result is an excellent compilation of remixes from the likes of Tempelhof, d_rradio, Cathode and Dressed In Wires, among others.

Considering each artist brings their own style to Sweetness, Yes Please! the album has a remarkable and surprising continuity throughout.  The swirling synth pop electronic remixes from Keith Canisus and Tranisent, the drum machine-driven synth pop of Wroooaaar!, glitch ambience of remixes by Tempelhof, OK Ikumi, Phasmid, Orange Crush and Dot Tape Dot, the spaced-out housed of Mood4, Cathode and Spintronic, electronic dub of Dave Curle, IDM of The Matinee Orchestra and Dressed In Wires, and the feedback-dripping pop of d_rradio, Sweetness, Yes Please! is an exceptional album and will be a late entry on many ‘best albums of 2010′ lists, come the end of the year.

Favourite tracks include the glitch and dub ingredients of Phasmid’s remix of the wonderfully titled, We Still With Our Parents, the dreamy My Bloody Valentine-esque glitch of Tempelhof’s Love Drops, the squelchy space of Mood4’s In The Kitchen and the Jesus & Marychain inspired feedback and distortion-soaked candy pop remix of Give A Little Love by d_rradio.

As with the original studio album, Moira Stewart’s Sweetness, Yes Please! remix album will put a smile on your face and have you nodding your head and tapping your feet.  A perfect way to keep warm inside this winter.

Sweetness, Yes Please! by Moira Stewart tracklisting:

1)    You Are The Kids (Keith Canisius Remix)
2)    Top Ten Drinks (Wroooaar! Remix)
3)    Love Drops (Tempelhof Remix)
4)    Sprinkle Glitter On My Heart (Ok Ikumi Remix)
5)    We Still Live With Our Parents (Phasmid Remix)
6)    In The Kitchen (Mood4 Remix)
7)    Give A Little Love (Orange Crush Remix)
8)    The Mr. Men Groove (Dot Tape Dot Remix)
9)    Intermission
10)    Sprinkle Glitter On Heart (Cathode Remix)
11)    You Are The Kids (Transient Remix)
12)    Stars Are Shiny (Spintronic Remix)
13)    In The Kitchen (The Matinee Orchestra Remix)
14)    We Still Live With Our Parents (Dave Curle’s Dub Remix)
15)    The Mr. Men Groove (Dressed In Wires Remix)
16)    Give A Little Love (d_rradio Chain Remix)

Sweetness, Yes Please! by Moira Stewart is released on Distraction Records.

Back in 2007 Tristan Abgrall walked into a studio in Paris wher Jack Sims was playing around with the vocal on Famous and immediately came up with a riff for the track.

A rearranged version of Famous appeared on the self released Ex-Men debut A Life Of Love in April 2007 after Sims formed the band alongside Matt Green.

After hearing The Ex-Men play at the Are Flowers Electric? night in June 2009, Flowers in the Dustbin founder Stephen McKee is desperate to sign the band and release Famous as their first single.

The Ex-Men signed to the Flowers in the Dustbin label in April of this year and in June their producer Albert K created a new version of the track, featuring backing vocals from Karine Betou and Albert K’s searing analogue synth.

The EP will be released on November15th containing the single edit alongside seven remixed versions of the song.

The Ex-Men have gained support from Huw Stephens, Vic Galloway, Tom Robinson and Jim Gellatly from BBC radio as well as Sharon Oakley at Clyde1, VITV, Tiscali and MTV Europe.

Warning-The track does contain explicit language

The Ex-Men – Famous

For further information visit the Ex-Men on MySpace.

RR Scorpii EP-Remember Remember

Remember Remember, the project of  ex Multiples/Royal We, member Graeme Ronald has been playing elaborately staged shows around the city of Glasgow where they are based for the last few years.

Originally a solo project, Remember Remember started collaborating with other musicians in 2007 the outcome resulted in the bands self titled debut, featuring some of the most epic-sounding and ambitious music to emerge from the city in a long time.

Tapping into the hypnotic repetition of Steve Reich and the endless instrumental landscapes of 70’s rock, Remember Remember’s intricate compositions make for an entrancing listen on record, and an increasingly stunning live show.

The EP RR Scorpi will be released by Remember Remember on November 1st and will particularly appeal to fans of Mice Parade, Animal Collective, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Yann.

For further information visit the Remember Remember MySpace page.

d_rradio release their fifth album Parts on 2nd August

d_rradio release their fifth album Parts on 2nd August, if you count Underscore released in 2004 as their debut album and not an extended EP, and not Making Spaces, a collaboration with Lianne Hall released earlier this year on Sentence Records.

With every release,  d_rradio have moved their music goalposts.  It’s not as straightforward as saying, like other artists their music has progressed, that’s simply not true.  It’s as if they are continually evolving or reinventing themselves.

If you are familiar with their beautiful, spacious forms of ambient electronica then you will possibly expect the forthcoming album, Parts, to continue in this vain though like myself, be uncertain what path that change may take.  The only common thread I hear throughout all d_rradio studio albums, Underscore, d_rradio, Leaves and Parts is that they are all exceptional, light, minimal and contain some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard.

Parts sees d_rradio move even further away from song structures and err towards orchestral, classical music. Here are 19 tracks, some short interludes, some akin to beautiful yet dark film scores.  But always with an attention to detail so fine that d_rradio are in a league of their own.

The crackle and hum accompanying the tracks evokes an old dusted down, well-played 78 found in the attic and reminds me to file this under electronic not classical in my record collection. Though the intro to the title track Parts is reminiscent of my favourite piece of music Bailero from Canteloube’s  opera Songs Of The Auvergne.

Parts goes so much further into ambient solace than Dif Juz, Brian Eno and Susumu Yokota that when I finished listening for the first time I simply sat in silence not wishing to spoil the sense of calm and beauty that had washed over me.

d_rradio began releasing recordings in 2003. Their odd name (pronounced D. R. Radio) stands for deathrowradio – the intention of their music is to bring comfort and light to the most dark and difficult hours, and to make you feel alive.

You can listen to Parts by d_rradio by visiting www.distractionrecords.com

Parts by d_rradio is released on 2nd August on Distraction Records.

Black Moth Super Rainbow lynchpin Tobacco, returns with Maniac Meat, follow-up LP to his 2006 debut Fucked Up Friends.

Tobacco, Maniac Meat

Rumour has it that as a teenager Tom Fec had no interest in any music; nothing synched with the young man’s strange cranial waves. But then he heard The Beastie Boys and everything changed. Morphing into Tobacco, Fec started to play with old school analogue synthesisers, drum machines, effects pedals and a vocoder.

After featuring in a number of weird and wonderfully named bands, Fec found what appeared to be a permanent home with Black Moth Super Rainbow. The band’s psychedelic electronica has been honed over seven years and peaked in 2009 with sell-out SXSW shows and a fourth studio album, Eating Us, produced by David Freidman. And then Fec decided that it was time to be just Tobacco again.

“Mostly everything I’ve done with Black Moth Super Rainbow is made to be pop. And a lot of people say Black Moth Super Rainbow is bordering on hip-hop beats. So with Tobacco, I wanted to embrace my beats and get darker and sleeker with it all. I want to make you feel paranoid in a good way.”

Compared to the polished and, at times, tranquil pastures of Eating Us, Maniac Meat is a psychotic, bewildering beast, boasting two cameos from Beck and a mutant-eyed wink in the direction of Aphex Twin.

Opening track Constellation Dirtbike Head rushes in on a pounding backbeat with vocodered vocals riding helium high, pillion posturing with words of wisdom: “Don’t let the fairies clone you”. Tobacco revs six throttle lyrics in and out of gear and the track speeds and skids around a screaming synth line. As the distorted groove fizzes and fuzzes to a climax he throws down the challenge “burn all your things”. In the flame-flowered aftermath of this opening onslaught no doubt.

Beck makes his first appearance on second track Fresh Hex, the crazed, angry doppelganger of The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.’s. And Orpheus has dragged this blistered spirit to Hades, along with the opening refrain from DJ Shadow’s High Noon, letting them swelter and warp before returning back top for Beck to wax unlyrical with unfathomable intent; words shunted together, scraped and bleeding.

Throughout Maniac Meat Tobacco slips from beatbox to live drums, introducing swamped analogue synth stabs before switching to melodic pulses and electronic, harmonic waves. The results are often alarming but strangely addictive. Keep the headphones on long enough and you’ll find yourself trapped in an eight-bit psycho killer Atari game, where claustrophobic, hallucinatory voices compete with unholy, demonic rhythms.

From Aphex Twin to Air and even Jean Michel Jarre, there are plenty of sonic sign posts on Maniac Meat. But this is no cut and paste rip-off. Tobacco has his own intoxicating sound. The fuzz and static is surprisingly warm and despite the guttural exhalations, from both artist and machines, there are melodies lurking under the surface of most tracks.

Tobacco is more than happy to let his music do the talking….and when you possess a voice tinged with gravel-dust from the outer reaches of the universe, why not. But it makes finding out about future tours incredibly difficult. An extensive European outing is promised, so to find out when, I’d suggest keeping in touch with his Anticon page. In the meantime…enjoy the meat on youtube…

Four Tet @ Village Underground photo: Daniel Hutchinson

Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet played a live set at the excellent Village Underground venue in East London on Sunday 30th May 2010 ably supported by a DJ set from Joe from Hot Chip and the emerging and talented Roska.

The club is an old brick walled Victorian basement with a high ceiling and full of sweating bodies ready to enjoy the undisputed English king of electronica.

As I’m waiting for the main event I look around at those gathered.  Some forty-somethings but mainly twenty-somethings made up of student types not yet able to grow goatee beards to scratch.  Standing next to me is a tall geeky looking white guy with a white man’s unkempt afro sporting a plain white long sleeved t-shirt, jeans and a rucksack; a typical look for a Four Tet gig.

Understated like his music, it was Kieran Hebden.  He asked the guy next to us if he was ready, removed his rucksack and walked through the crowdto a purpose-built plinth in the middle of the dance floor & immediately took centre-stage as he launched into his set with the heavenly Angel Echoes from his latest wonderful album, There Is Love In You.

Unlike the last time I saw Four Tet play, the audience were pretty motionless. Those in touching distance stared up as if in total awe of this genius as he twiddled nobs and flicked switches on two laptops and a mixer.

The set built evenly and included the tracks Love Cry and Circling from There Is Love In You; and by the time he finished his set with the perfect Sing everyone has loosened up and smiles and shapes were being thrown by everyone.  A net of coloured balloons fell from high over Kieran Hebden and for a time Four Tet led a merry dance like the Pied Piper of underground dance music.

With nowhere to go Hebden appeared a little awkward as he stepped off the makeshift stage soaking up the rapturous applause before stepping back in true rock n roll style for an encore he delivered an experiment in how fast could he play Spirit Fingers from the Rounds album and not lose the audience.  I personally dipped out at about 180bpm though others without facial hair appeared more in tune with the experiment which peaked somewhere near a Napalm Death onslaught.

Four Tet’s music amalgamates so many strands that you’re never quite sure what is going to happen.  But on this occasion it was the right choice for the set to be more upbeat than atmospheric and moody.

The crossover from mixing a track from behind a desk in darkness and a live spot-lit ‘performance’ where you feel compelled to stare at the artist is a strange one; and something that can be a complete damp squid – boring to watch but great to listen to (see The Chemical Brothers).  But Four Tet pulls it off.  To be honest, the set had several peaks and a few troughs for me personally, but the experience, the venue and the sound was spot on.

The gig followed the death of Steve Reid, Hebden’s close friend and collaborator who died in April after a long battle with cancer.

Washed Out - Life of Leisure

Washed Out is Ernest Weatherly Greene, a 26-year old from Georgia. His debut EP, Life of Leisure, is a pop-bleached, synthesised journey into the ambient outreaches of his mind.

Crafted in Greene’s bedroom, the EP’s six tracks are wrapped in a woozy, woolly mix, where simple, soaring melodies, low-slung frequencies and sunset synthesisers bleed into one reverb-drenched wash of the wave.

Life of Leisure opens with Get Up, which swaggers with a hazy dance floor funk, before gliding into the ethereal thermals of New Theory, a track that blends the psychedelic strains of MGMT with the otherworldly whispers of Angelo Badalamenti.

Based on a sample from Gary Low’s 1983 single I Want You, Feel It All Around perches on the cusp of eighties cheese; the synth vocal, popping baseline and Caribbean percussion interludes all move close, dangerously close depending on your tastes, to Phyllis Nelson.

However, the only bodies touching in Greene’s work are those of a celestial nature. The track is powered by so much reverb that it leaps from Nelson’s grasp on a never-ending, upward trajectory, where it floats free in time and space among the star-burst echoes of Chapterhouse and Slowdive.

Washed Out play six UK dates around the bank holiday weekend and the proposition of seeing Greene live is a fascinating one. If outputs are channelled through the motherboard of all reverb units then expect to take an untethered helium-balloon ride to the other side of consciousness. 

These are Greene’s first European dates, coming on the back of critically acclaimed performances at this year’s SXSW Festival.
Thu 27th May - LEEDS Nation of Shopkeepers
Fri 28th May - GLASGOW Stereo
Sat 29th May - BRISTOL Dot to Dot Festival
Sun 30th May - NOTTINGHAM Dot to Dot Festival
Mon 31st May - MANCHESTER Dot to Dot Festival
Tue 1st June - LONDON Cargo
Wed 2rd June - BRIGHTON Freebutt
Thu 3th June - AMSTERDAM Trouw
Fri 4th June - HAMBURG Indra
Sat 5th June - GENT Charlatan
Sun 6th June - PARIS Villette Sonique

 Visit Washed Out’s Myspace site.

Listen to Get Up, by Washed Out.

Gold Panda: You 7"

What makes Gold Panda stand out from other artists creating digital music from found sounds, manipulated samples and blips? Musically I’m not sure – it has a rawer texture, perhaps, it is rhythmically slightly more pressed, maybe. Emotionally though, the Chelmsford producer’s music is something of a revelation, taking the introspection of Burial and Four Tet and mixing it with the collective ecstasy of The Go! Team or M.I.A..

At times his music are the words you only ever wrote for yourself, at others it is the love you irrevocably spilled in nightclubs, in parks, in bedrooms. At times his music is the pulse of late night suburban pavements swathed in an orange glow of street lights, at others it is a rainforest.

Gold Panda featured in the BBC’s list of nominees for the Sound of 2010 award, something he should feel honoured to have missed out on if we are to judge by Ellie Goulding’s strangely vacuous music and success. He followed this success with the brilliant Quitter’s Raga 7” and Before. His music has been influenced by, variously, living in Japan, B movies on VHS and minimal techno.

His single ‘You’ on his own NOTOWN label is to be released on 7” vinyl with the B-side ‘Before We Talked’ on 10th May and the digital version will see his contemporaries create those annoyingly ubiquitous and unexceptionally uninteresting remixes that fill up the EPs on iTunes Store.

Appropriately, Gold Panda will support Caribou across Europe as well as performing at various festivals.

UK Live Dates:

May

15th Brighton, Great Escape
21st Liverpool – Sound City
22nd Glasgow – Stag & Dagger

July
30th Dorset – Camp Bestival
31st London – Field Day

Follow me on Twitter

Gold Panda’s MySpace