Damo Suzuki’s Network – Seete Modi Per Salvare Roma - February 2012 February 19th, 2012

An expanded reissue of the Seventies krautrockers Can’s Tago Mago album stuffed the stocking of many a former head this Christmas, but front man Damo Suzuki has never become a nostalgia act. The former busker continues his endless global tour, spieling spontaneous vocalese over sympathetic sound-beds from ad-hoc assemblies of like-minded locals wherever he lands.…

Ronald Duncan and David Cain – The Seasons - February 2012 February 19th, 2012

In the early Seventies we shivered in our pants in school halls, hurling ourselves about, interpreting dramatically the sounds and words of BBC Schools’ Music And Movement programs. Trunk have saved an especially exceptional example from the BBC bins, 1969’s The Seasons, during which the violent poetry of Ronald Duncan is intoned over spooky electronica…

Michael Chapman – The Resurrection and Revenge Of The Clayton Peacock - February 2012 February 12th, 2012

Last time anyone checked Michael Chapman was a forgotten Seventies songwriter, but American revisionists, citing his guitar instrumentals, have found a lost folk-blues primitivist in the John Fahey vein. Nothing in the Yorkshire troubadour’s catalogue presaged these two lengthy electric guitar drones, buoyed on throbbing loops, and serrated with scratchy noise, the first a low…

Boris – New Album - February 2012 February 12th, 2012

The usually punishing Japanese experimental doom metal trio’s New Album is an unexpected set of sugary melodic dream pop, wrapped in Athena faerie artwork you might see on a twelve year old girl’s pencil case. Party Boy’s electronic beats and listless female vocal approach dance floor anthem territory; Luna plunges 1990s Thames Valley shoe-gazing guitars…

Rich Hopkins & Luminarios – Buried Treasures - February 2012 February 2nd, 2012

If Neil Young released Buried Treasures, it would be hailed as a return to form. And when Drive-By Truckers evidence similarly unselfconscious immediacy, we praise their ability to inhabit characters. But Rich Hopkins is for real, a regular guitar-toting guy who grew a conscience in the Peace Corps, cowriting his best songs to date with…

Matthew Bourne – Montauk Variations - February 2012 February 1st, 2012

Matthew Bourne is found in typically excitable mode on the newly released Everybody Else But Me, alongside the saxophonist Tony Bevan. But, with Bourne alone at the piano, Montauk Variations’ meditative improvisations instead use cautiously melodic figures to trace penumbral shadows of memory and regret. Bourne’s obstreperous other self surfaces on Within and Abrade, stroking…