Aside
from writing about a couple of upcoming new releases on the
consistently interesting Touch label (Diluvial by Bruce Gilbert &
BAW, Monstrance by Mika Vainio & Joachim Nordwall), trying
desperately to like the new 12" from Mark Fell, the music
highlight of the week was watching a performance of The Islanders at
Underbelly, part of a month-long run for the Edinburgh Fringe.
Billed
as a lo-fi musical, The Islanders is performed by Amy Mason,
enigmatic Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos and folk musician Jim Moray.
Mason talks, detailing intensely personal recollections from when she
and Argos were a couple in the Nineties; in between her monologues
Argos does the talking to music thing that have made Art Brut a
relatively unique proposition over the past decade; Argos's
recollections of the same relationship are frequently vastly
different from his ex-girlfriend's, which would be far more amusing
if it wasn't highlighting how disjointed they were as a couple. The
climax and trigger for what would become the start of the end of
their relationship was an ill-fated trip to the Isle of Wight which
informs the title of this artsy show. A more complete overview of The
Islanders that I've written can be found here.
 |
| The Islanders poster. Source: MJASmith |
A
couple of weeks ago my Swiss-based musician friend Rupert Lally
tipped me off about his new project Flöör with singer and guitarist
Camilla Matthias. The duo's debut single 'Waiting For The Summer To
Fall' was released today and can be streamed below. You can read my
thoughts on the single (and, somewhat improbably I admit, Disney's
Teen Beach Movie, which has rarely been off our DVD player this
summer) over on Documentary Evidence.
Over
the last year or so, Lally has been locked into a productive musical
union with Norwegian documentary film-maker and collector / creator
of sounds Espen J. Jörgensen. The duo have released a whole stack of
albums, concluding their partnership with This Is Art which will be
released later this year. Preceding that, the duo will release
'Greece @ Peace', a short single with Greek bouzouki master Lakis
Karnezis. As with all of Lally's collaborations, 'Greece @ Peace'
was a distance project, Lally taking environmental sounds that
Jörgensen had recorded (in this case from a trip to a Greek island
in 2009), moulding those into atmospheres before adding synths and
Karnezis's bouzouki. For a ninety second track, the results are
profoundly stirring and haunting. My Documentary Evidence site
snagged an exclusive of the video that Jörgensen created for the
song, which I've included again below. For those on email, you'll
have to head here.
This
week my vinyl collection was gently pruned with the sales of two
vintage 12" singles from Rob Brown and Sean Booth, better known
as Warp electronica stalwarts Autechre. I bought 'Garbage' and 'Anvil
Vapre' back when they were released in 1995, during a period where I
was buying any experimental electronica records I could lay my hands
on. Autechre, like their label mate Aphex Twin, have produced some of
the most consistently odd and arresting pieces of electronica for
nigh on 25 years, taking modish elements (with these two it was drum
and bass predominantly) and deconstructing the rhythms and sounds to
make something that feels like a freakish relative of whatever they
were listening to at the time. It's a formula that's never failed
yet.
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