Kourosh Yaghmaei – Back From The Brink, Pre-Revolution Psychedelic Rock From Iran 1973 – 1979 - August 2011 August 21st, 2011

Two recent compilations of Iranian psychedelia, Pomegranates and Raks Raks Raks, suggested hidden deposits, but this double set is the motherlode. Raised on Allied radio rock, Kourosh Yaghmaei slipped Western acid-pop into Persian scales, creating headily perfumed hybrids from reclaimed microtones. One in five Iranians bought his 1973 debut 7″, Gole Yakh, but Yaghmaei was…

Joe Morris & Augusti Fernandez - August 2011 August 14th, 2011

Recording a duet with Derek Bailey in 2005, the pianist Augusti Fernandez was drawn into stark stillness by the British guitarist’s meditative mood. The American improviser Joe Morris displays a more obviously kinetic approach. His fingers tumble around the frets of a bubbling acoustic guitar, the strings skewered and scratched, provoking liquid right hand cascades…

Various Artists – The Inner Octave - August 2011 August 14th, 2011

Mumford and Sons, and their singer-songwriter followers, aren’t really folk musicians. Folk fans, still looking to the likes of Topic records and the Waterson-Carthy dynasty for an uncut fix might wonder, wither the next generation? But the Rif Mountain label, comprehensively showcased here, offers a cross-fertilised family of younger artists, quietly future-proofing the form. The…

The Last Hurrah!! – Spiritual Non-believers - August 2011 August 7th, 2011

HP Gundersen spotted a special guitar tuning in Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Suite Judy Blue Eyes, and then spent two years playing only the modal drones it inspired, while the jazz prodigy Heidi Goodbye sang. The resulting album, augmented by other top Norwegians, centres around the thirty minute Ballad Of Billy And Lilly, a harmony-heavy,…

Fire! with Jim O’Rourke – Unreleased - August 2011 August 7th, 2011

Having wet-nursed the experimental ambitions of upwardly mobile rock bands, such as Wilco and Sonic Youth, Chicago’s irrepressible musical explorer Jim O’Rourke split to Japan in 2006 to rediscover the personal voice he’d subsumed somewhat into star names’ signature sounds. The Swedish free jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafson’s Fire! trio came to Tokyo and invited him…

Longstone – Sakura - July 2011 July 31st, 2011

Cheltenham’s durable electronics duo, Longstone, enlist various local experimental luminaries in a suite of fizzy noise, with all profits to Japanese Tsunami relief charities. Clattering blips arrive, from Dusseldorf via Detroit, and bleed into becalmed woodwinds. Cautious melodic progressions emerge from shuddering systems of un-danceable beats. Ice sheets of high end drones slide into the…