RIP. A weekly roundup of releases on Bandcamp and Soundcloud selected and delivered by Aidan
How’s it going? How are you? Lots going on. I’m back on radio on Sunday, no theme just good music. Hope you can tune in for a bit.
Chained Library is a mysterious entity, releasing a series of untitled works by unpronounceable artists in their catalogue. They have ties to the Aught label, having reissued Xth Réflexion’s two tapes on vinyl, as well as releasing something from Eliza B.C., aka Elizabethan Collar. The Library has just resurfaced with three new works. One not really attributed to any artist in particular (but inspired by Emily Dickinson), one to litüus and one to labile mundi. It translates to “a fluid world”, and that aligns with the music as well as the aura around the label. The four tracks here are all mired in a kind of dank, but the sounds themselves are quite varied. There is deep, smudged work, reverbed church bells, as well as what sound like repeated strokes of a glockenspiel. I’ve no idea who the artists are and for all I know it could be the singular work of one being, presiding over this mystical tape empire. But in the end, who cares? Enjoy the murk.
More slimy murk here, with a remastered release from Nathan Young and Brad Rose as Ajilvsga. I actually featured an Ajilvsga release way back in 2014 in Bandcloud #9, so this feels like full circle or something. ‘Salt Plains’ is built around what I think is a modulated guitar shred, snarls and screams under wailing synth lines, a kind of terrified melody that could be the sound of birds or a resigned communication. ‘Wolves Standing in Water’ is even murkier, heavy feedback colliding with a wobbling sound straight out of Leftfield’s ‘Melt’. Then ‘Fire Builder’ is in another realm, just ethereal and exciting and unbelievable.
I tweeted about this at length last week, but I feel it really needs a place here. Released on Eris Drew & Octo Octa’s T4T LUV NRG, it’s a thunderous mix. I remarked that it was fittingly spiritual for a Good Friday release, but it’s as much a rebuke as a celebration of the spirit’s earthly representatives. Throw your hands in the air in praise and defiance, enjoy familiar tropes rendered new, dance your pain away, sweat out your problems, get loose. JACK.
qgb returns with his second album, an exhilarating selection of squidgy and exciting tracks that sit somewhere between heady club heaters and drifting ambient floaters. ‘Everything Is Black and White Now (Making Me Feel Like Something I Knew)’ sounds like it’s from another dimension.
Romance & Dean Hurley - In Every Dream Home A Heartache
Anything by Dean Hurley is worth a look and if you enjoyed Romance’s Once Upon A Time back in January, then this collaboration is essential. Wistful, delicate, waiflike, sinister, tracks like ‘A Single Day, A Thousand Years’ burrow down into your soul leaving you hollow and cleansed.
When listening to this I thought “this could be the sound of a plane taking off, it could be the sounds of an eternity in hell”. When I checked the release page I read the following:
This music feels as though it takes place within a massive temple made entirely of stone, with heavy blocks being dragged somewhere unseen, allowing for beams of diminished light to slowly expand and engulf one another, highlighting the varying thickness of the dust while they move. It's unclear how safe it is, but you can still find peace within.
Much more hopeful than my assessment.
Ayrisis | Mutant Radio X RR 08/04/2022
A wonderfully diverse hour of sounds from Ayrisis, about whom I can’t find much other than that she’s from Turkey but based in Lyon. Scuzzy 60s rock, breathy soundtrack vibes, 70s Croatian disco, 80s Arab pop and more.
Gnarly, scuzzy techno that belies its title. This is hazy and opaque.
This is on a serious Halloween III Carpenter tip. Electro but not, ambient but not, dancey but not. Decidedly and unquestionably excellent though.
The Nook Collective at The Cheese Factory - I Have A Special Cheese For This Cracker
This is exceptionally weird. You may recognise the artwork, it being a cartoon rendering of Wendolene Ramsbottom from A Close Shave. The release features a series of utterances of lines from different films in the Wallace & Gromit series, as well as an underlying quiet hiss and some soft drones. It’s quite surreal and unnerving.