Weirdo Rippers #9

As September draws to a close, it’s been another bumper month with not only our best September yet, but with readership remaining healthy, we are also well on track to have our best year so far. Once again, a big thank you all the readers out there.

With numbers on the climb, so are submissions, and there have been plenty of great experimental releases over the past couple of months that have kept us busy. While several releases may have missed the cut this time around, fear not – they’ll feature throughout these pages soon enough.

In the sphere of new music, generally there are certain genres throughout a calendar year that seem to experience a lull. However, this year, it seems that every scene has puts its best foot forward, with so many strong releases emerging from different sound worlds every single day. It’s sure to make something like our Top 50 albums of the year that much harder to choose from.

And there are several of the below releases that have put a case forward to feature in said list. Some of which we anticipated, and others totally new to our ears, which is ultimately the reason why we started this feature late last year. Not only is it a chance to discover something new, but also an opportunity to give voice to those who have struggled to be heard.  

Before we get into our latest selections, as an exclusive, be the first to watch the video to Grief Waves – the lead track from Mike Neaves’ latest album, You’re Welcome, which drops tomorrow via Cruel Nature.

One Hundred: In Conversation with Hell on Hearth’s Sean Wárs

Mike Neaves: You’re Welcome
Cruel Nature Records

With Aphex Twin having released his latest EP, Blackbox Life Recorder 21f, last month, fellow U.K. gadget wrangler Mike Neaves drops something that hits just as hard in You’re Welcome.

Echoing the origins of techno, drum ’n’ bass, footwork and general video game-inspired madness, You’re Welcome sees Neaves landing blow after blow in something designed for those chemically fuelled late nights and early mornings.

While a record like this wouldn’t have looked out of place on, say, Waxing Crescent Records, it’s another string to the bow for Cruel Nature whose ‘no borders’ mission statement continues with Neaves’ You’re Welcome. It lines up with another fine electronic release, which featured in our last Weirdo Rippers feature: Dissociative Identity Quartet’s Excursions – both a coalition of stark beats and acidic noise that fills every inch of the brain.

Listen/Purchase from Bandcamp

Ancient Plastix: II
Maple Death Records

Following Paul Rafferty’s debut 2020 release as Ancient Plastix, the Liverpool producer returns with the follow-up, II (again via Maple Death).

Rafferty unveils a series of sonic sketches that produce soft colours and a whirring kind of sun-reflecting-off-the glass type of vibe. There is soft sci-fi reverence while a nod in the direction of Kraftwerk is evident, too (albeit at quarter speed).

II is a nice change up from Rafferty’s self-titled debut, with these compositions more of an ally in the early hours which is where this record makes its greatest strides. Perhaps one of the more underrated releases in the world of experimentation this year, however with time it reveals an elusive charm.

Listen
Purchase from Bandcamp

Matt Christensen: Life on a Boat
Self-released

While Zelienople’s Matt Christensen is a regular throughout these pages for his more songwriter-based meanderings, the Chicago artist’s catalogue of experimental offerings is equally just as mesmerising.

Continuing to grow from strength-to-strength, his latest release, Life on a Boat, is a series of beautiful guitar sketches that feel like the companion piece to Pan-American’s A Son. Christensen carves out his owns world, of course, with compositions that take you to a different place altogether. (Look no further than the album title.)

It’s hard to know where to start with Christensen’s giant body of work, for the majority of it is on such high creative plane. Where his experimental releases are concerned, however, Life on a Boat is his most striking work this year.

Listen/Purchase from Bandcamp

Dread Zone: In Conversation with Emil Amos

eleOnora: tuuljamuud
Cruel Nature Records

Under her eleOnora moniker, Estonian-Latvian avant-garde vocalist Eleonora Kampe (also of Road To Saturn, Tencu/eleOnora and Ringhold) takes sound design to even more esoteric places on her first solo release, tuuljamuud.

Comprising of six compositions at 47 minutes, tuuljamuud is an abstract series of meditative voices conceived from the abyss. While the songs from this record are said to have been made years apart, it’s surprising just how coherent this record is, almost taking the listener on a new spiritual plane.

With a minimalist thread that runs all the way through tuuljamuud, it’s like a seance that summons the ghouls from afar. Along with fellow experimental purveyors Waterflower and Gvantsa Narim, eleOnora is another important thread to the Cruel Nature patchwork.

Listen/Purchase from Bandcamp

Christer Fredriksen: Mauve
Ramble Records

Norwegian guitarist, Christer Fredriksen, has been releasing ambient-inspired sonics since his 2011 debut, Urban Country, and following several records in the ensuing decade, he returns with his latest offering, Mauve.

On Mauve, the guitarist delivers a range of subtle sketches that are designed to ease you into the day. Essentially, they are compositions for sunrise, and engaging with them first thing in the morning is where the best results are found.

With inflections of jazz guitar and sparse noodling, the album finishes with Clearing – a piece with a voiceover lamenting the erosion of our environment. While largely instrumental, it’s these moments that possess a political undercurrent that runs through Fredriksen’s music.

Listen/Purchase from Bandcamp

Gunn Truscinski Nace: Glass Band
Three Lobed Records

While Steve Gunn and John Truscinski have forged a vibrant partnership over the last 10 plus years, their latest release, Glass Band, sees them draft in a not-so-secret weapon in experimental master, Bill Nace.

Alongside Kim Gordon, the trio featured on record documenting their live scoring of Andy Warhol’s film Kiss. Following that, the sonic shards of Glass Band emerged in what is another key alliance in the world of experimentation this year.

With Seth Manchester at the helm and mastering duties falling to Carl Saff (KEN mode), Glass Band is filled with raw, stirring compositions that create the same kind of tension that audiences were met with earlier in the century when Neil Young and Thurston Moore traded barbs. Manchester captures the right intensity with these recordings, underlining all three artists greatest strengths. It’s absurd that more people aren’t talking about Glass Band.

Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp

Droneroom: The Best of My Love

Hell on Hearth: One Hundred and Ten
Self-released

While Hell on Hearth’s landmark release, One Hundred, really got close to the ire of Sean Wárs’ unsettling world, since then a further nine recordings have followed, and it really does feel like the project is getting better with each dispatch.

One Hundred and Ten dropped earlier this month (those new to the artist’s world, key point – each release is not in sequence), and continues that subtle abrasive nature of One Hundred, dragging us even closer to those fault lines.

Just like Matt Christensen, as long as Hell on Hearth continues releasing new music, then we are merely duty bound to write about it. And speaking of, someone has really umbrage with the Liverpool Echo’s Tom Slemen. Scissors? In a laundrette? Really?

Listen/Purchase from Bandcamp

Kepla: In Furnace
Chinabot

Inspired by a weeklong residency at Capel-y-Graig in the Welsh hamlet of Furnace, Jon Davies’ latest album under the Kepla moniker showcases an array of sounds that takes us wide and far.

Backed by a host of field recordings, Davies showers these fractured compositions with everything from cello, ocarina, organ and piano, to Suona and synths. It’s something that occupies a similar sound chamber to fellow Merseyside masters, Ex-Easter Island Head.

On In Furnace, Davies reaches the eerie corners of composition and sound design, and while the album’s eponymous track may tell its own story, it’s only one of many during this journey that really is one a kind.

Listen/ Purchase from Bandcamp

Luna Honey & Norman Westberg: Aftermath
Self-released

Philadelphia experimentalists Luna Honey first came to our attention late last year with their fine album, Parables. The band, principally led by Maura Pond, takes a wonderful left-field turn on their new collaboration album with former Swans noise wrangler, Norman Westberg.

Aftermath is a slow-motion, darkwave beauty, as Pond’s voice soars above Westberg cold, harsh soundscapes. While the comparisons to Jarboe will follow, there’s more of a hypnotic vibe to Pond’s melodic wordless vocalisations that will prove a nice comfort blanket for the winter months ahead.

Perhaps a collaboration you wouldn’t have envisaged on paper, however Aftermath sees Luna Honey and Westberg spring one of the great surprises in the world of experimentation this year.

Listen
Purchase from Bandcamp

Purelink: Signs
Peak Oil

Brooklyn-based three-piece Purelink features Akeem Asani (Millia), Ben Paulson (Kindtree), and Tommy Paslaski (Concave Reflection). Originally formed in Chicago, on their latest LP, Signs, the trio deliver the kind of misty, ambient dreamscapes that drift like a morning fog along the riverbank.

Clearly influenced by the work of fellow Chicagoan Mark Nelson, Purelink intersect these subtle undercurrents of sound with the elusive vibes of CS + Kreme and even that faint IDM majesty of early Mount Kimbie.

Wonderfully executed from beyond the soundboards, Signs is undoubtedly a vibe record. For those comedown moments after listening to a hard-hitting techno record, and the more time spent in its company, the more you realise it’s one of the finest ambient-based releases this year.

Listen
Purchase from Bandcamp

Great Falls Interview: “I write these lyrics about a fear of a reality that I see may be coming”

Sam: Drone Bells on the Field
Self-released

I’m not too sure whether the cowboy aesthetic in Poland is a common thing, but I’m thinking it reaffirms Sam’s outlier tendencies. So too his name, which proves quite the conundrum for Google searches.

The experimentalist has been making ambient country for a while now, and his latest Drone Bells on the Field is the best representation of his work so far. Most certainly inspired by the sonic explorations of droneroom’s Blake Edward Conley, Sam’s spatial sonics are also aligned to the wonderous world of Suss.

There haven’t been many around over the past four years making this kind of music as beautiful as the above noted purveyors, but with Drone Bells on the Field, not only is Sam an unlikely source, but his creations also form a wonderful new path in this evolving sound world.

Listen
Purchase from Bandcamp

Stromboli: Drang
Random Numbers

Earlier this week, Bologna producer, Nico Pasquini, returned with his latest Stromboli release, Drang.

Much like the late-night escapades of the aforementioned Purelink, on Drang, Stromboli emits beautiful washes of sound that leak into the fissures of a minimalist sound world. All told, his creations prove to be a worthy accomplice to combat that late night loneliness.

With purrs, hisses and subtle melody that threatens to creep onto the dance floor, it never quite gets there. If Warp-era Seefeel and Actress’ Darren Cunningham ever got in a room together, then the results may have sounded something like Drang – yet another fine release from one of the most thriving scenes across Europe.

Listen
Purchase from Bandcamp

Trio Not Trio: Yonbanme
Gizeh Records

In the fourth instalment of Aidan Baker’s Trio Not Trio series, the Berlin-based noise merchant teams up with Japanese experimental vocalist and electronic purveyor, Ayami Suzuki, and U.K. drummer, Tobias Humble (Ghostpoet, Tricky, Gang of Four).

Yonbanme starts off as a minimal voyage into the great unknown. However, with the last two tracks, Suzuki takes centre stage, and backed by Humble’s splintered percussion and Baker’s elusive guitar noodling, the album builds into some skewed, space-rock reverie.

Suffice to say, Yonbanme marks another triumph in a series that has provided some of the most thrilling twists and turns of the year.

As an aside, do stay tuned for an interview with Baker and many of his Trio Not Trio collaborators, which is set for publication next week.

Listen/ Purchase from Bandcamp

Ulvo: Monstera Country Cybord
Self-released

To round out the last couple of months of fine electronic release – many of which feature above – Ulvo’s Monster Country Cybord is another that has come to our attention.

The Sheffield-based producer scours the more uplifting landscapes of IDM, with clever break beats and glittery dreamscapes that evoke a subtle euphoria that wouldn’t look out of place amid a sunset and a green open field.

His fifth release in as many years, Monstera Country Cybord is the result of a diet of Four Tet and Burial. Ironically, Ulvo presents something more palatable than both. The former in particular, who has already been a producer that, to these ears at least, has missed the mark. Ulvo fills that particular void, and with youth on his side, we are going to be hearing a lot more from him in due course.

Listen
Purchase from Bandcamp

Previous Weirdo Rippers features:

#8
#7
#6
#5
#4
#3
#2
#1