Listening Diary 20250115

On an 80s tip, plus new music from Subexotic

• Syncbeat - Peel Session - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HIZZLpMwuE: A 1984 A Certain Ratio spinoff that recorded a single, several tracks under different names for the first UK Electro compilation and this Peel session. Funky digital breakbeat before breakbeat was a thing, driven by Donald Johnson's slap bass, which still sounds amazing even if slap has mostly been relegated to Level 42 and 80s nostalgia now.
• A.R. Kane - Up Home - https://arkaneband.bandcamp.com/album/up-home: Shoegaze or dreampop before those things existed. Fuzzed out guitars, stoned and wandering in caverns, an accompaniment to their debut LP '69'.
• Drew Mulholland and Garden Gate - Night Blooming Flowers - https://gardengate.bandcamp.com/album/night-blooming-flowers-2: New from Subexotic. A hauntological soundtrack that is sometimes pastoral, as in 'shadows in the woods' and sometimes reminiscent of David Lynchian industrial noise.
• Audio Obscura - Acid Field Recordings in Dub - @Audio_Obscura https://audioobscura.bandcamp.com/album/acid-field-recordings-in-dub: Audio Obscura returns with a collection of dubbed up environment ambient pieces that remind me most of late (mid-90s) Cabaret Voltaire and not just because he mentions Chris Watson in his notes.
• Miles Otto - Desynclined - https://milesotto.bandcamp.com/album/desynclined: The debut full length LP from Otto and the first I've heard of his music, a sort of deconstructed electronica that verges on techno sometimes and abstract crunchy noise at others. Interesting for its approach but coming as much from an academic exercise as the dancefloor.