Sunday, 18 August 2013

Audio Journal: 18/08/2013

There are many reasons to look forward to Fridays, but in the past six months I've found another reason: Jonny Trunk's 50p Friday emails.

Jonny runs the archival Trunk label, which remasters and reissues albums that their original labels don't feel there's a demand for any longer. Often issued as beautiful vinyl repressings, Trunk has become the place to go for unusual obscurities, forgotten soundtracks and much more. Back in February, Trunk reissued a single by The BBC Radiophonic Workshop as a download for a mere 20p and since then Jonny has been hand-picking an album from the label's back catalogue and offering it up as a download for a mere 50p. Over the past six months he's offered Louis and Bebe Barron's early electronic soundtrack to Forbidden Planet, albums from Peter Cooke, the Herbie Mann record I wrote about recently, cool bossa nova from Charlie Rouse, wonky jazz from Raymond Scott and primitive computer music - it's mindbendingly diverse stuff.

Sadly Jonny's taken a holiday this week and so there was nothing on offer on Friday, but if you want a means of comprehensively expanding your knowledge of music in these austere times, Trunk is the place to head. Navigate to the 50p Friday menu link on Trunk's website to fill your ears with great tunes you'd never think to listen to for less than the price of packet of crisps.

The past week I was tipped off about an album of covers of predominantly Eighties pop tracks by an Australian unit called Parralox. Recovery tackles classics from Erasure, Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, The Cure, Front 242, Depeche Mode and many others. My full review can be found over on Documentary Evidence here, but suffice to say it's probably the best electronic pop album I've heard for a long time.

Dave Fleet, who works under the alias Laica and who I wrote about ages ago (click here for that post) has a number of new projects in the can. Not content with lining up the Environs project for Alrealon, he's contributed to my upcoming MuteResponse project, is realising tracks inspired by my short story The Engineer and today let me know about another project, this time an EP for the Phatic Musk label. A short teaser for his latest dystopian soundtrack hit YouTube today – check it out below or hit here if you're reading on email.



Finally, I was recently sent a new track from Iggy & The German Kids which is presently doing great things on German radio. The mastermind behind this great, towering pop electronic moment is Ignacio, who I also wrote about way back in the early days of this blog. The Lynchian suburban nightmare video for 'So Hard' can be reached below, or for those reading this on email, click here to watch over at YouTube.

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