John Foxx and the Belbury Circle

When I first learned last year that John Foxx had been recording something together with Jon Brooks (The Advisory Circle) and Jim Jupp (Belbury Poly) for the Ghost Box label, I assumed it would be another entry in their Study Series, i.e. two or three tracks on a 7" single. That in itself was enough to have med longing for it. When it turned out to be a six track 10" EP instead, I was, well not quite ecstatic, but pretty damn close.

When I'm this excited about something I quite often feel a bit disappointed when I eventually get to hear the actual record. In this case that wasn't to be the case. "Empty Avenues" is a stunning piece of nostalgic synth pop at it's best. All the three main participants signatures are there clearly on each track, and yet they seem to fit together so snugly that they seem made to be working together. Even though I greatly appreciate Foxx's collaboration with Benge as John Foxx and The Maths, this is just one step ahead of those albums for me. The lyrics and their mood fit perfectly with the general sense of melancholy and retrofuturism that permeates the proceedings. The links to Foxx's lyrics on Metamatic is obvious, but these are more mature, more settled down takes on the same topics: urban desolation and man alone.

Apart from the five main tracks Pye Corner Audio also delivers a remix on the title track, which perfectly rounds out the EP. What I supposed would be a single turned out to be an EP that I wish would be a full album. Would it be too much to ask for some kind of follow up?


Read full review of Empty Avenues - John Foxx and The Belbury Circle on Boomkat.com ©

Donato Dozzy plays Bee Mask

I've never been one for remix albums, but this is one that has me intrigued. As in many modern "remix" situations Donato Dozzy has quite freely interpreted the original by Bee Mask. Vaporware was released on vinyl last year and one of that years highs in modern kosmische. When Dozzy was asked to do a remix of the track he got so inspired he didn't just make one remix but seven, and all of those remixes are what makes up this album on Spectrum Spools. What I particularly like about the album, apart from the fact that I get further takes on a track I love, is that this actually works as an album in it's own right. Dozzy manages to create a epicly flowing album that's part inovative dronish electronica and part lush neo-kosmische in an almost neo-classical way, almost Steve Reich-ish. Anyway, enough with silly name dropping, just listen to it.


Read full review of Plays Bee Mask - DONATO DOZZY on Boomkat.com ©

Willow Court Audio

Today I've put up the pre-order for the first release on my tape label Willow Court Audio on bandcamp. It's a cassette edition of my (previously only digital) AB Lundberg album Space Wars Vol. 1 and contains 2 bonus tracks. I plan to make a few other choice albums (both old and new ones) from my output available in physical form on this label in the near future. It's a really small scale affair, and the editions will be limited. I have decided not to go for numbered editions at this stage, but suffice to say that the editions will likely be in the range between 25 and 75 copies. The tapes are all dubbed in real time straight from the masters in Logic.

The tape edition of Space Wars Vol. 1 comes on a yellow C40 ferric tape housed in a matching (well, almost) yellow library case with an insert printed in black on red 130 gram paper.

The cassette is available to order through my bandcamp page now.

Sommet

I couldn't resist making a short stop at Kollaps records in Stockholm this last Saturday on the international Cassette Store Day. I didn't pick up any of the CSD specific releases but went away with two tapes nonetheless. One of them was the tape version of the self titled album by Sommet, that I had been contemplating getting for a while. This concept album focused on Mount Everest consists of seven thematically named instrumental tracks of quite accessible synthesizer music. There's obvious links to the nostalgia soaked tunes of the Ghost Box camp and various incarnations of early eighties library music. It's sometimes quite simplistic in nature, but Sommet manages to make it work beautifully. After a few days listening to this I'm very impressed. The tape edition (of only 50 copies) seems to be sold out at source (though if you're in Stockholm, Kollaps seem to have one copy left) but there is a vinyl edition and a cd edition available from Desire Records. So if you're into Ghost Box, Steve Moore or the more melodic side of kosmische be sure to check this one out.

Maurizio Bianchi on bandcamp

Part of the allure of the slightly eccentric italian noise pioneer known as Maurizio Bianchi or simply M.B is the difficulty in getting hold of his work. Both because his back catalogue, at least the privately released tape part of it, is a bit hard to survey, and the lack of authorized downloads and more commonly available editions on cd, vinyl or cassette. However with the launch of the At War With False Noise bandcamp page recently their 2CD compilation of the Computers S.P.A. and Com.SA tapes is available to stream or buy at a very reasonable price. Both cassettes were partly released on the Vinyl on demand box set Archives in 2006, but are here given a full release in all their glorious 2 hours worth of vintage noise drones. As with many early M.B. releases the tracks seems to be 2 channel recordings panned hard right and left. Some of the early M.B.s stuff is quite contemplative in a dark ambient kind of way, but this one is much more confrontational and well, quite disturbing. If you're after the more murky ambient stuff go hunting for The ACVI tapes box set or the AWWFN 2CD edition of Technology 1&2 on Discogs. But if you're interested in the origins of noise and industrial be sure to check out the stream of Computers S.P.A/Com.SA on bandcamp, and you'll probably find you'll want to order a copy before they run out.

Space Wars Vol. 2

Today I released the second installment in my Space Wars-series of imaginary soundtracks for never made sci fi movies and television series. Space Wars Vol. 2 differs from Vol. 1 (released in November 2012) in that it relies much more heavily on hardware synthesizers and drum machines. Vol. 1 was a bit of an oddity for me these days in that it contained quite a lot of tracks done with mainly software synthesis. Vol. 2 also features more rhythms and drums than Vol. 1 and is probably a bit more melodic too, well I'll let the listener be the judge of that.

Anyway Space Wars Vol. 2 is out there to stream or download for free. So get it now.

Radical Tea Party

I used to be in a synthpop band called Radical Tea Party. That was before that name would lead people to associate to certain American political movements. I thought it was a really clever name when I came up with it sometime in 2001: one quite un-radical thing (drinking tea) mated with the word radical. I'm not quite as fond of it nowadays. When I decided to put our old demos up on Bandcamp I played with the idea of shorten the name to something like RTP to avoid any misconceptions, but eventually decided against it. Radical Tea Party is a part of my musical past, and I feel I have as much right to the name (and interpretation of it) as anybody else. When we retired Radical Tea Party in about 2009, the name issue was very much a part of the decision. By then I had started to get very weird invitations from people on MySpace, urging me to "help take our nation back", people who obviously hadn't listened to a word of our lyrics, read our song titles or even checked which country we resided in.

Radical Tea Party is a part of my past, the type of music we made doesn't really interest me today, but I decided it was time to put up some of our stuff on Bandcamp, if for no other reason than to bring some structures to our back catalogue. So far our second demo album "Frostland Mysteries" has been published. I also aim to present both the first "Radically Yours" demo from 2003 as well as the 2006 "Earl Grey OD" soon, along with some kind of outtakes/archive collection.