There are so many good neo-krautrock and neo-psychedelic bands that it’s almost impossible to keep up with them. It seems a new one comes out every day, and the quality is consistently great.
Take Expo ’70, a band out of Kansas. They tie together Krautrock with a minimalist aesthetic that balances out very well.
There’s not much better than New Wave era Ultravox!
A Beginner’s Guide To Hard Hat Color Coding is a new project by BlindººCoyote, longstanding monicker of Drem Bruinsma, a Dutch-born composer now based in Alicante, Spain, whose work under this moniker reminds me of peak-period Cluster finding a bit of time to carouse with an early-wave Industrial band (think Cabaret Voltaire’s more daring experimental work than the dark funk they would produce during their heyday). It would make sense, as BlindººCoyote has been alive as a project since the early 1990s, and this particular sound to me is timeless. The project has been active (with some periods of non-activity) since its first 1993 release, Phantom Pain/Genkaku no Itami, a project which stemmed from a collaboration with legendary jazz fusion trumpeter Toshinori Kondo.
There’s something very kosmisch about this particular release, though it has flourishes of a cold, metallic bent. This floats surprisingly easily and envelops this listener into a dreamy, lulling feeling. There’s also a reminiscence of sounds made by such acts as BlindººCoyote’s one-time collaborators Tuxedomoon (he wrote scores for video, dance, theatre and collaborated with the individual members of Tuxedomoon, amongst others).
As a side note, and quite a tasty one, the first track on this EP, Chapter One: Red Hard Hat Area, will also appear on the compilation Radio Nautilus, released by No Records on June 1.
To explore more of BlindººCoyote’s works, visit his Bandcamp site here, and his Reverb Nation site here.
The Gorehounds are, perhaps, Ireland’s finest rock band. No, U2 isn’t, sorry. They haven’t put out a great record since The Joshua Tree. These guys, rather, were a pure rock and roll band.
You have to be something else to make a song called Andrei Rublev, especially one with a Krautrock influence. Nice one, lads!
Liverpool psych-pop five-piece The Vryll Society have released a new single, “Andrei Rublev.”
The band are currently working on their debut album, and have released a series of singles and an EP titled Pangea through famed Liverpool indie label Deltasonic Records (The Coral, The Zutons, White Room). The band recently supported The Kooks, Blossoms and The Coral in the U.K., and they also made an appearance at last year’s SXSW festival in Austin.
Their stunningly beautiful new song, “Andrei Rublev” is as mellowing as it is hypnotic, with frontman Mike Ellis’ calming lead vocals, their kraut-rock rhythm section, lush synth soundscapes and intricate psych guitar lines. The song’s raw power sneaks up on listeners with its trotting bass line and shimmering Procol Harum-esque keyboards before it erupts with euphoric sonic textures and biting guitar solos.
The Vryll Society’s new track’s title refers to a 1966 Soviet historical drama of the…
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Amazing things keep showing up in Mexico. Sonido Gallo Negro are a band out of Mexico City, and mix a wild cumbia sound with psychedelic music. The results are thoroghly in keeping with the best of radical Mexican alternative music.
The first time I came across San Francisco, California resident Leila Abdul-Rauf’s name was when she was playing with the all-female avant-garde metal/dark ambient band Amber Asylum. She has become a far more powerful musician as time has passed (if you know anything about her previous work, that’s very high praise), and, given the brutal darkness of the one track shared, this new album should end up quaking my speakers rather badly (and yes, I’m looking forward to that).
The album is due to be released on April 13.
Planeta Post-Rock is a (you guessed it) post-rock label out of Portugal. So far, from what I gather, they have made four compilations, with Flama being their most recent. It was released on April 1, so it’s all of a few days old, and it paints a great picture of what the post-rock and post-metal scene must be like old Lusitania.
If you feel like purchasing the whole catalog for 3 Euros, click on this link here.
Though not as long in the tooth as INA-GRM nor as exotic as the scenes in places like Egypt or Iran, it seems that Ireland has developed a venerable electroacoustic music scene which has spanned over five decades. This compilation, A Map of the Kingdom of Ireland, a compilation of Irish Electro-Acoustic music featuring works by Ireland’s most celebrated Electro-Acoustic artists, was released on March 2, 2018 by Dublin, Ireland-based Heresy Records, is quite a gem of not only electroacoustic music, but of pure, non-theoretical music of many stripes, including contemporary classical and even new wave/post-punk.
The comp starts off gently with a cut by Paul Morrin. It is a bit like a boat taken off its moorings, and drifts along until about the two-minute mark, when the tempo changes to something a bit more lively and focused – one could even say it has a post-rock feel to it, reminding me a bit of the band éf.
Tóirse Ó Ríordáin comes up next with something that feels slightly like an early Penguin Café Orchestra piece if it were composed somewhere near the border of Brazil and Colombia.
It is Daniel Figgis’ piece, Timothy Cream’s Crown of Wines, which really gets into a more freeform composition, referencing avant-garde music and perhaps Krautrock. There is a lilting, marching quality to the composition which allows one to drift off into the ether while.
Even freakier are the two pieces turned in by Dublin mainstay Roger Doyle. This is a bit away from the avant-garde – this feels more like a cleaner, more updated sound referencing Tangerine Dream. As my old Kraut friends would say, “sehr Kosmisch…”
The fun surprise of the compilation for me were the two tracks included by Princess Tinymeat (a reference to actor Montgomery Clift’s… er… shortcomings in the boudoir, I’d imagine). His (her?) back catalog is screaming for a re-release, as I haven’t come across this name since I was collecting cassettes in the late 1980s.
Finally, Spooky Ghost gets a mention for some of the most pleasant guitar work I’ve heard since Vini Reilly was in peak form with the Durutti Column in the early 80s.
There isn’t a duff track on the compilation. If you find this collection enjoyable, you may want to also consider purchasing On The Nature Of Electricity & Acoustics, another remarkable compilation curated, this time, by Figgis.
Track Listing
1. Compass – Paul Morrin
2. Atop D’Seefin (Educution remix) – Tóirse Ó Ríordáin
3. Timothy Cream’s Crown of Wines – Daniel Figgis
4. Avant Garde Your Grille – Deep Burial
5. Little Train To Heaven – Richard G. Evans with Daniel Figgis
6. Eighties Rampwalk – Roger Doyle
7. Sleep Circus (remix) – Paddy Hunt vs. Charles
8. Richard Harris Blesses The Dawn Flotilla At Guilvinec – Cathal Coughlan with the Grand Necropolitan String Band
9. Finale from The Room In The Tower – Roger Doyle
10. handsinmyhead – GREETINGS
11. DriftDin – Vincent Doherty
12. Arcticus – Donald Teskey
13. Your Majesty – Princess Tinymeat
14. Stutter – Spooky Ghost
15. Unscan Ó Malley – Tóirse Ó Ríordáin
16. MegaMix – Princess Tinymeat
17. Wandering Compass – Paul Morrin
* The digital version of the album includes the following four tracks
18. Old Piano – Vincent Doherty
19. Reverse – SOM
20. Audacity – Deafector
21. Rampwalk – Roger Doyle / Olwen Fouéré
In 2008, Legendary Pink Dots members Edward Ka-Spel and The Silverman trekked over to Chile where they made a collaboration of Michel Leroy of Un Festín Sagital, Chile’s finest experimental neofolk group.
This hazy, drony, Krauty improvisation is the fruit of their meeting. Stunningly hypnotic work.
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