Weirdo Rippers #12

The last Weirdo Rippers feature was in, what, early February? Time flies when you’re up the wall. Yes, it’s been one of those years, and the first since the lockdown days where it finally feels like the shackles are off (in a new music sense, at least).

While the last couple of months have felt like a tidal wave for new releases, it almost pales in comparison with what’s in store for the next couple of weeks. The pressing plants are queuing up and so too are the punters for the next Bandcamp Friday, it seems.

The report from these parts remains the same: it’s all hands-on deck. This feature alone, has been in works for at least a month, so it’s great to finally see it out in the wilderness. That’s just how things have shaken out so far this year; it really has been one thing after another where at times it’s been like walking through treacle. Like always, though, we’ll always do our best.

For those who like to venture through the esoteric portals where the Weirdo Rippers experience awaits, well, this edition sees the good oil flowing with a swathe of interesting sounds delivered from all across the world. Preceding this, those familiar around these parts may have indulged in our recent chats with Poppy H, Nnja Riot, Nonconnah, and most recently with the venerable Dirty Three hell-raiser, Jim White (link to the latter below).

For now, though, here’s a bit more for your palate. Stay tuned for the next couple of weeks, for more interviews, features and the like. Stay safe and until next time…

Jim White Interview: “Music is a dream and so are memories.”

Aidan Baker: Pithovirii
Glacial Movements

Barely a month goes by when Aidan Baker doesn’t get name-checked around here, and following Januar – the wonderful collaboration with Stefan Christoff, the Berlin-based experimentalist is at it again with Pithovirii.

The Nadja mastermind is in long-form mode with two thirty-minute compositions that are like a cinematic backdrop after the world’s been flattened. It’s beautifully eerie, and subtly majestic.

Baker always tries to extract vignettes of hope through despair, and through these two ambient dreamscapes, he just about achieves the goal. Pithovirii is a total zone out record, and oddly enough, works well alongside the above-noted Januar.

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Allison Burik: Realm
Self-released

Montreal, Québec saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Allison Burik rivals fellow Canadian, Jason Sharp in dispensing jagged, thought-provoking sound collages.

On Burik’s latest full-length release, Realm, they extract deep from the genre pool, splicing together ideas from ambient, avant-garde jazz and folk in something that is positively earthy and defiantly left of centre.

There’s a lot happening during Realm, however Burik manages to make things seamless in what is 32 minutes that strikes and pops with fresh ideas aplenty (see Solstice I Dreams and Memories). Of all the releases that land in our orbit from week-to-week, perhaps this is the most exciting in this latest edition of WR.

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Demetrio Cecchitelli: Unity
Rohs! Records

Experimental guitarist, Demetrio Cecchitelli, makes the kind of wispy static ambient music that creates a post-war kind of vibe.

A continuum from his first cassette for last year’s Lontano series, Unity sees the Italian experimentalist explore free movement within sound, and while there is a post-war quality about these compositions, such as the multi-dimensional facets at play, they could also be mistaken for Christian Fennesz scoring a David Lynch film.

Unity is very much what its title suggests, and while there is a lot of artists plying their trade in the slow-motion guitar sketches game, Demetrio Cecchitelli is one of the more impressive purveyors of this craft.

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Luce Mawdsley: Northwest & Nebulous

The Corrupting Sea: Cold Star: An Homage to Vangelis
Somewherecold Records

The Corrupting Sea is the project of Somewherecold founder, Jason T. Lamoreaux – a veteran who dips his hand in just about everything you can imagine to keep the dream of DIY culture alive.

The Kentucky native has been slaving away under The Corrupting Sea moniker for a while now, and his latest, Cold Star: An Homage to Vangelis, is another odyssey that is parts abstract and glacial. Not a world away from the collage sonics of fellow lifers Nonconnah, however on Cold Star: An Homage to Vangelis, Lamoreaux manages to adopt the kind of altitude ambience The Field mastered earlier in the century.

The latter is not immediate but spend a little time with this release and you’ll begin to recognise the influence. And from there, have a trawl through the back catalogue of The Corrupting Sea: it won’t disappoint.

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Filalete: For Family
Cruel Nature Records

Filalete is Tbilisi, Georgia-based composer, Irakli Bakuradze. Also a producer and DJ, Bakuradze is the architect of a series of beautiful compositions that make up his latest release, For Family.

A collection of sparse, classical piano compositions inspired by – you guessed it – family, these compositions form a heartfelt journey, heavy with emotional weight through the ups and downs that all families go through at some point.

Although many of the artists inside the Weirdo Rippers broadchurch perhaps contain outlier tendencies, Filalete’s For Family is the great leveler. The kind of expressive dreamscapes that bring everyone together purely through sound. This is something we can all relate to.

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The Jonny Halifax Invocation: A​ç​id Bl​ü​ü​s R​ä​ä​gs Vol​.​2
God Unknown Records

The Jonny Halifax Invocation returns in 2024 with the second instalment of his A​ç​id Bl​ü​ü​s R​ä​ä​gs adventures.

On A​ç​id Bl​ü​ü​s R​ä​ä​gs Vol​.​2., the London lapsteel maestro emerges from the sun cracked fissures that inspired Vol.1 for something a little bit on the calmer side. With a series of guests, including fellow God Unknown label mate Duke Garwood on clarinet, Vol.2 is more a series of sonic wanderings where you find yourself thinking about Turkish has dens rather than being engulfed in the black acid nightmares of its predecessor.

While A​ç​id Bl​ü​ü​s R​ä​ä​gs Vol​.​2. is a lovely continuation in Halifax’s fantastical world of cosmic psychedelia, listening to both volumes back-to-back proves a nice contrast.

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Balance of Nature: An Interview with Claire Welles

Hell on Hearth: One Hundred and Twelve
Self-released

Another year, and Liverpool noise wrangler, Sean Wárs, continues to find untapped resources across the terrains of his chaotic sound world.

With a swathe of releases already under his belt in the first quarter of 2024 (he dropped another just yesterday), One Hundred and Twelve is was the latest document of dread in the Hell on Hearth canon. Disturbing minimalism that feels like been tossed into the primordial soup.

Two tracks clocking in at just over 20 minutes, One Hundred and Twelve reaffirms Wárs’ position as the producer of the most frightening noisescapes out of Merseyside. Noise music for haunted houses. Enter if you dare.

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Julia Holter: Something in the Room She Moves
Domino Recording Co.

It only feels like yesterday since Julia Holter released her landmark Ekstasis LP, and scouring the CD collection, it’s surprising to see that it turns 12 later this year.

Since then, the Los Angeles-based avant-garde tinkerer has enjoyed a career that, to these ears at least, has offered mixed results. Still, when Holter’s music hits it hits, and Something in the Room She Moves (her latest) contains some of the artist’s most magical moments.

Opener, Sun Girl, is like being guided into open green fields were worry doesn’t even exist. Meanwhile, Evening Mood just about sounds like Enya on the shrooms, and that’s essentially the whole experience from over the years with Holter’s music. It’s avant-garde for altered minds and carefree zones, and on Something in the Room She Moves, it’s the best bits of the Julia Holter experience rolled into one.

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HR Giger Counter: What Do The Atoms Hold For Us?
Cruel Nature Records

H.R. Giger Counter is the new hallucinogenic, electronic project between Jeremy Hunt (QOHELETH, Aint Pancakes and Philip K. Discs founder) and Andrew Gladstone-Heighton (waheela, Radio Free Ul-quoma).

On their debut album, What Do The Atoms Hold For Us?, the pair scour the cutting room floor for sound bites taken from B grade horror and sci-fi films. The result? Samples that sound like jumbled dispatches amid an apocalypse. Not here, though, but from another planet!

Hunt and Gladstone-Heighton create an entire new world on What Do The Atoms Hold For Us? The kind that if some kid getting into music for the first time uses this as their yardstick, well, for better or worse, it’ll probably shape their life.

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Riders on the Storm: An Interview with The Body & Dis Fig

Petar Klanac: Sept cordes
Self-released

For those yearning for the inner grains of sound in minimalism, Petar Klanac may just be your ticket.

Through his latest release, Sept cordes, the Parisian experimentalist thinks well and truly outside of the box, presenting different versions of his compositions through a series of variations (confused? Klanac explains is far better via the link below).

You can either listen this way, or in the most traditional way (yes, there are original versions to Klanac’s creations). Whichever way you decide to tackle Sept cordes, it’s certainly well thought-out and masterfully executed. Those who enjoyed the weird and wonderful sound portals Kepla took us through with last year’s In Furnace, here’s another one to indulge.

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MAbH: Orbit
Cruel Nature Records

Following his excellent 2022 Aggro Dulce collaboration with Karen Schoemer, UK sound purveyor Peter Taylor returns under the Mortuus Auris & the Black Hand / MAbH moniker with his latest release, Orbit.

Two long-form compositions at just under 25 minutes each, Orbit sees Taylor producing the kind of collage minimalism that sinks slowly into the pores.

It’s a rich tapestry of sounds from deep, meditative soundscapes to the kind of religious ceremonial-inspired collages that spit and crackle with an emotional rawness not unlike, say, The Caretaker. Taylor’s creations take you to other places, and the more time spent with Orbit, aptly enough, the further you launch into it.

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Sun 13’s Albums Quarterly #13

Kali Malone: All Life Long
Idealogic Organ

On with her latest offering, All Life Long, once again, Swedish-based U.S. composer, Kali Malone, finds new ways to haunt the soul.

Accompanied by Sunn O))) and Ideologic Organ founder, Stephen O’Malley, Malone orchestrates something that oozes with elegant grandeur. While All Life Long requires patience, it rewards the listener in spates. The pipe organ chords, something truly eternal, and those who dare to wait around long enough, well… the drones and vibrations will melt your heart.

In what is a hymnal-scaped, ceremonial drone, even at an hour and 18 minutes, All Life Long feels like it’s over in a flash. Such as the hypnotic, immersive nature of Malone’s compositions, this is a truly sweeping affair, finding new emotional depths that stir up embers of the past.

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Modern Silent Cinema: Passages X-XXI (for Solo Piano)
Bad Channels Records

Modern Silent Cinema is the brainchild of New York-based experimentalist, Cullen Gallagher. A multi-instrumentalist by trade, however on Passages X-XXI (for Solo Piano) – as the title would suggest – Gallagher brings us a series of piano sketches eked out on a whim.

Written during a visit to his mother’s during Thanksgiving, Passages X-XXI (for Solo Piano) is all about the homespun warmth – the crackles you hear throughout these short compositions, courtesy of the lounge room fireplace.

While this is one of two Modern Silent Cinema releases so far in 2024 (the other being the OST for the Matt Barry directed The Cinema Detective), Work your way out from Passages X-XXI (for Solo Piano) and enjoy.

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Mouchoir Étanche: Le jazz homme
Cellule 75

Under one of the many monikers of his, Marc Richter is back under the Mouchoir Étanche guise with the project’s second album, Le jazz homme.

Perhaps better known as the Thrill Jockey provocateur Black to Comm, on Le jazz homme, Richter uses the Mouchoir Étanche vessel to bring us a series of weird cuts-ups of jazz, almost painting an alternative history in feverish ways.

Just check out the Bandcamp link below which unveils a series of wonderful descriptions of the compositions that make-up Le jazz homme. Something that is widely incongruous yet doesn’t take itself seriously at all, it’s Richter having some fun with some of his greatest influences. It shines through clear as day.

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Nakayama Munetoshi: Compass for Nychlf
Salmon Universe Records

Bandcamp tags are always interesting. You could literally find a new genre a day without looking too hard and here’s another: Post-vaporwave…? Yup, amazing.

Anyway… that’s what Japanese producer, Nakayama Munetoshi, is billed as, however on his latest release, Compass for Nychlf, it feels more like a spacious environmental tour-de-force that takes you to the most tranquil corners on earth.

A hairdresser by trade, Munetoshi is said to record most of his music from the salon where five synthesisers are set into the wall beside the cash register. Again, amazing, and with guitar loops and re-recording of cassette tapes, Compass for Nychlf is a new kind of ambient release every crate-digger needs in their lives.

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Articulate Silences: Remembering Brian McBride

Paige Alice Naylor: The Unearthing
Monastral

On her debut album, The Unearthing, Chicago multimedia and electronic artist, Paige Alice Naylor, deconstructs the idea of melody, chorus, and hell, even the avant-garde!

Monastral have released some out-there records over the last three years, and Naylor spearheads the extremities, with wild collages of field recordings and vinyl samples that completely break the rules.

Those taken with the aforementioned Julia Holter release need to dovetail that with this. Yes, The Unearthing is true to its title, for there’s nothing out there like it! This is pulsating, avant-pop with a totally different approach and result, and where the cross-pollinations of scenes and ideas are concerned, Naylor has achieved something mightily impressive.

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Jimmy Peggie: Book of Erosion
Self-released

While there has been a lot of environment-based experimental artists to emerge from the shadows over the last 18 months, Phoenix, Arizona’s Jimmy Peggie remains firmly entrenched in them.

Just one glance at the artwork to his latest release, Book of Erosion, and it tells you that Peggie is inspired by the darker aspects of experimentalism. Simply put, this is greyscale ambience that grows darker the deeper into the vortex you go.

While some may expect this to be a harsh slab of noise, Book of Erosion is anything but. Soundscapes to let wash over you, Peggie doesn’t ride against the decay that inspires his music; instead he’s completely immersed in it.

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Previous Weirdo Rippers features:

#11
#10
#9
#8
#7
#6
#5
#4
#3
#2
#1