Various Artists – Album Roundup

It has been a long while since I reviewed any music: my life became rather full of obligations, which reduced my output and eventually halted it altogether. Between then and now I have had the chance to reflect on what had become a somewhat procedural activity, and I have reached a few decisions. From now on, I will write about only one record at a time, and I will write about only those submissions that I feel are particularly interesting objects for discussion, rather than prioritising by quality, by aesthetic preference, or by the receipt of a physical submission. However, at the point at which I realised I couldn’t possibly…

Various Artists – Singles and EPs

Wayne Myers, singer, songwriter and principal instrumental culprit, sent me this mini-album in early February according to my records, but it somehow slipped through the net and never got reviewed. Well, better late than never. Sleeping Beauty is pure poetry. I intend that as a value judgement, but also a literal description; Myers is a poet who works in the medium of song. Now I’d think of it as a species of insult to say that this was an EP of poems set to music, but that’s not what I mean: these are songs, written as such, and the musical materials they incorporate are neither a commentary …

Various Artists – Singles and EPs

Cassette mushes everything up and squeezes it together; on top of the warm, lush distortions naturally imparted by magnetic tape, the whole stereo recording is crammed onto half of a tape less than four millimeters wide. It takes some clever mastering to get a really spacious, clearly separated soundfield, but if what you want is a totally integrated sound then the format does half the work for you. This, you may be thinking, says ‘punk’ in brackets after the title, so why am I not talking about the songs? Production and other technical matters are a means to an end at best where punk’s concerned…

Urban Homes – Centres (electronica)

Altin Village & Mine sent me some great CDs for Christmas… well ok, it was after Christmas, and they sent them to me to review, but you get the picture. This is the third and last of that batch (and looking through their recent release schedule it appears that I’ve reviewed the label’s entire output since October 2011). Like Pttrns’ Body Pressure, Centres has a sound that’s redolent of the 1980s, although unlike that band Urban Homes don’t wear an allegiance to the decade on their collective sleeve. The resemblance is less clear and direct, but striking nevertheless, for all that it is arrived at by an additive process of combining ‘house music, dub, kraut rock, balearic and disco’; of course the combination of kraut rock with more …