Simon Greenwood

Listening Diary 20241203

  • Alan Sparhawk - White Roses, My God - https://alansparhawk.bandcamp.com/album/white-roses-my-god: First post end of Low solo LP from Sparhawk is primarily electronic, with a vocoder on the vocals that is disorienting in variable ways. It’s too tempting to read things into the drum machines and obscuring of the words, but as it progresses it finds a path and some moments as intense as anything Low created.
  • Underworld - Strawberry Hotel - https://underworld.bandcamp.com/album/strawberry-hotel: Looking at The Quietus’ 2024 Hundred Best LPs reminded me that I hadn’t bought this yet, so I had to rectify that. Underworld, like The Fall and Mogwai, are always the same and always different, and this one is at times melodic and at others stripped back, with the usual grooves sometimes pared down to 7" rather than 12" single length and even not being grooves at all. There’s a theme and more of a collective effort to it, but it may need a couple of listens to work out what it is.
  • Shellac - To All Trains - https://shellac.bandcamp.com/album/to-all-trains: I also didn’t buy this at the time, wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it after Albini’s death, but of course it isn’t there this time, just a speeding train of taut riffs to get dragged behind, the best half hour’s joyride you’ll have today.

Listening Diary 20241202

  • Pefkin - The Rescoring - https://pefkin.bandcamp.com/album/the-rescoring: HT to @REEL: three immersive pieces based on layers of viola, synth amd voice. Sonically reminiscent of early Dead Can Dance between their post-punk and mediaeval phases, and autumnal lost wandering.
  • Scholars of the Peak - Polymorphic - https://thescholarsofthepeak.bandcamp.com/album/polymorphic: Hauntological music from the High Peak area of Derbyshire, so it got my attention right away. Soundtracks for afternoon schools programmes on psychogeography with a nod to Plone and the Radiophonic Workshop.
  • RadioPhobicSherkPop - low beats and fat fingers - A RadioPhobicSherkPop mixtape - @RadioPhobicSherkPop: https://soundcloud.com/user-967338943/low-beats-fat-fingers-a-radiophobicsherkpop-mixtape: a meaty, beaty, big and bouncy 20 minutes from the attic of Birmingham’s premier purveyor of wonky bedroom electrofunk and uneasy listening. A look inside the creative mind you probably didn’t want but glad you did anyway.
  • The Home Current and Peter Wix - Unfortunes - https://thehomecurrent.bandcamp.com/album/unfortunes: Continuing my exploration of Subexotic’s discography. In which techno purveyor The Home Current makes a lyrical dance record with the lyrics presented as spoken word monologues in variety of voices, which create an elusive and ephemeral narrative that seems to walk similar maps to Iain Sinclair.
  • Cub\cub - Trig Point - https://cubcub.bandcamp.com/album/trig-point: More from Subexotic: woozy BoC-sh electronics from Leeds based Cub/cub, stretched tape loops that for morning after country walks.

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