Starring
ACT!, Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman, Assistant, Maven Grace, Merope, Or:la, Svaneborg Kardyb.
The Front Runners
Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On : Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman
This is one of the loveliest albums I’ve heard for a while, combining melodic and gentle electronically washed jazz with an ambient presence to savour.
Both Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman come from the broader Scottish art community. Wasylyk has made electronic, ambient folk jazz his forte. I’d never heard of Tommy Perman before but, according to his Spotify bio, his work is more urban focused. Perhaps he’s the reason that the meditative qualities of Wasylyk’s work are given a gentle nudge by a greater, though gentle, feeling of rhythm and momentum that’s heard across the album. ‘Communal Imagination’ is just one example of how well this works.
The melodies are strong too, simple, direct and charming. They float and are as restorative as a burst of unbroken Winter sunshine. The tunes set out their melody and add layers as they go. On ‘Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On’ those layers are like a coming together of companions. This is music that could play over the end credits of a rural costume drama that has ended happily. That’s the feeling from ‘Blessing of the Banners’.
Wasylyk’s ambient leanings flourish too. In ‘The Unbearable Sound of the Roses’ you’re carried along on the sound of birdsong above a school playground heard in the distance on a lazy, warm day. It’s just lovely.
The mood is broken abruptly in the closing track by the harsh Scottish tones of Aidan Moffatt in ‘Be The Hammer’, a call to end the injustices of the real world. It’s a reminder that we don’t live in the idyllic reverie, that action is needed to progress towards it. Intentionally or not, it’s the equivalent of the telephone ringing at 03:00 when you’re warm in bed and in the middle of a wonderful dream. But even here, the music beneath Moffatt’s harsh tones is sweet and contemplative.
This album has the reflective qualities of David Boulter and the soothing qualities of Bibio’s rural electronica. It will bring you surges of overwhelming happiness.
Taster Track : Communal Imagination
Certain Memories : Assistant
This wonderful album of low key but warm songs is an inviting musical experience to cherish.
It seems to me that you can go two ways in pop. You can have an idea and build it layer by layer, effect by effect until you create something that can be special but has left the purity of the original creative spark far behind. The second way is to take an idea, find the perfection in its simplicity, and gently polish it until it shines beautifully. Assistant know that if you strip away the makeup, the bling and the image you can be left with something more naturally beautiful and honest.
They are a true indie band, not seeing indie as a genre but as meaning an independent spirit, secure in their own approach, in the value of their songs and untroubled by the kind of corporate demands that might take you into arenas and the charts. The band credit their inspirations as coming from acts such as Felt, Yo La Tengo and Stereolab. On this album I heard early Belle and Sebastian and, most strongly, The Field Mice.
Their songs are understated but lovely. Listening to them is like opening a plainly wrapped gift to find something beautiful within. Songs like these contain surprises, like the sudden diversion into French on ‘Before and After You’ or the startled realisation on ‘Derek Jarman’ that to tamper with his garden is rude.
Lovely melodies, such as the one in ‘Song For ‘Jil’ are found in such an approach. In a song like ‘Raking Leaves’ you find the ordinary and you also find you can breathe again. ‘Overwhelming’ is a dream where everything feels just right. You can’t quite grasp it when you wake but its sense of quiet happiness remains with you. Music, as life, doesn't need to be complicated.
When they add effects as they do most noticeably to ‘A Million Stars’, they are there to enhance the song, not to disguise it or take something undefinable away that lessens it. The different singers on the album create a sense of community that’s testifying to you and welcoming you in.
Assistant demonstrate that genuine treasure is always buried beneath the surface. Sometimes it’s worth looking under the radar.
Taster Track : Song For ‘Jil
Superkilen : Svaneborg Kardyb
Svaneborg Kardyb are a Danish jazz duo. They have discovered the sweet spot where electronica meets jazz. And it’s so good.
I loved their previous album, ‘Over Tage’ but ‘Superkilen’ is even better. It’s so clean, so bright, so settled in its groove. It’s like listening to music in the middle of the Northern Lights, with swirling colours all around. It’s soothing like soft refreshing rain on a hot day. This is full of songs that help you find contentment after living in a dark place for too long. It arrives as an unexpected and undeserved reward.
This is an album that sounds improvised but remains under perfect control. It’s a demonstration of the jazz spirit without ever falling into freeform jazz. That said, there are enough clearcut jazz moments to satisfy the purists who would hate to see their music hijacked by pop devils. ‘Vakler’ is one example.
Nikolaj Svaneborg’s keyboards conjure forth melodies that are exquisitely melodic, and propel your fingers straight to the save to playlist option on Spotify. His synthesiser work is inventive and surprising. The electronic effect zooming across closing track ‘Arendal’ is your bonus for the day.
Svaneborg’s keyboards lingered with me after the previous album. Here it’s Jakob Kardyb’s percussion that hits home. On ‘Cycles’ it’s built of shuffling pats and taps, all engrossing technique rather than physical force. On ‘Vaklyb’ it’s the ominous rolling thunder of the mother of all storms, but still avoiding the noise of a thunderclap directly overhead. It commands attention.
‘Superkilen’ is an early contender for the best thing I’ll hear all year.
Taster Track : Superkilen
The Chasing Pack
Face To Face, Day By Day : ACT!
I know very little about ACT! except that his social media and internet presence is minimal. That hasn’t stopped him releasing a weighty electronic album that is full of interest and surprises.
It’s a mix of styles. The most prominent is soulful, frequently treated, electronica but there’s also a dash of gospel and jazz in there. ‘Face To Face, Day By Day’ is where you find the former and the saxophone on ‘Up’ is full of the latter. The echoes of both spread across and under the rest of the album. The soul comes from the vocals and their treatment.
This makes few concessions to easy, pop based listening. You need to concentrate and consider what you find. The songs are laid out for you. All you have to do is work out what they mean with no clues to help you.
ACT! plays with heavy rhythms and incorporates electronic sounds and bleeps that are different, making something individual that sounds fresh and new. The tone of the album isn’t dark, but neither is it light. The vibe is restful though and as it seeps over you, you can warm to it.
If you want absorbing, grown up music to appreciate, you’ll find it here. This is music for the end of a long day after the chores have been completed but before you’re ready for bed. And while you listen, be prepared for the unexpected yelp, a signal that he’s testing the waters to see if the listeners want him to let rip. They don't!
It’s an achievement, a labour of love from a quality craftsman.
Taster Track : Face To Face, Day By Day
Surface With A Smile : Maven Grace
Maven Grace’s second album marks a major step up from their debut. That was good, but this intricate and cinematic collection of songs is on a different level.
They have only 92 listeners on Spotify. That’s ridiculous. This is music that should appeal to anyone who wants to make listening to music a special and indulgent occasion. Their following should be a thousand times bigger.
They’ve moved on from the simpler melodies of ‘Me Versus The Volcano’ and ‘When The Butterflies Come Down’ on their debut. The melodies are still there but they don’t need to be emphasised.Their well written songs have become works of art, demanding a bigger landscape. Songs such as ‘Four Feet, Sumatra’ are complex and detailed, rewarding careful listening.
There’s a cinematic scale to the songs. They're full of unsettling undertones, like the repressed wildness in the drums of ‘No Music’ There’s still a dreamlike quality to their songs, but they’re dreams with an edge. They tell stories you want to hear, as in ‘Queen In The Seaside Park’. In that respect, they’re like the Delines.
There are other influences too, but these songs are increasingly in their own voice - the Maven Grace sound. Mary Home calls to mind Sarah Cracknell (Saint Etienne) fronting Goldfrapp’s debut. There’s a splash of Beach House here, an echo of the Flaming Lips there. There’s also a lesson learned from Radiohead in their approach to songwriting, in how they gently take their music into lines and places you don’t expect and you won’t forget. And all the while you feel they could pull a future pop standard out of the hat.
Maven Grace are the real deal. They should have leading articles about them in the music press. They should be selling out the Festival Hall. And they should have a gold plated place in your record collection.
Taster Track : Miss Arizona
Vejula : Merope
Folk featuring a form of the zither, washed in electronic ambience. It doesn’t get much stranger than this. Fortunately it’s stranger in a good way,
This takes a bit of unpicking. On something like ‘Namopi’ they sound eastern and improvised. In fact they’re Lithuanian. It features an instrument called a kanklers. It’s a member of the zither family. It sounds like a broken harp and it’s the source of much of the music that swirls through the air towards you.
First impressions are of something experimental and ambient as if you’re picking up fragments of signals from a number of radio stations across the cosmos all at once. It’s different and it’s beautifully strange as well as being strangely beautiful. There’s no point listening to this unless you’re prepared to immerse yourself in it totally.
It’s not until the third track, ‘Lopsine’, that it starts to make any kind of sense. You’ll realise that it’s deeply rooted in a folk tradition that occasionally edges towards new age music. The images it conjures are of sun dappled valleys located deep within a fairy tale. You can imagine hearing it across fields, but not cities.
Indre Jurgeleviciute’s vocals beckon you to join their world. They contain a haunting beauty that is at once welcoming and ghostly. On ‘Aglala’ the vocals are like the twitter and flutter of birds startled into the air. There are moments of electronica that could make you swoon, but only in context. The ambient break in ‘O Underhill’ provides a few moments that are almost spiritual.
It’s unsettling too. You may not always know what to focus on, as if you were at a classical concert and didn’t know the right moments to applaud. Always, though, the songs feel as if they are soothing and nourishing.
It’s music from a different world so, of course, it’s strange, puzzling and new - even when it sounds traditional. To these ears, there are passages that sound truly remarkable.
Taster Track : Aglala
Trusting Theta : Or:la
This set of electronic, largely percussive sound is rhythmic and hypnotic.
There’s something odd about this - not the music, which I enjoyed, but the context. It struck me that, while I was listening to this at 05:45 after a few hours sleep and considering the first coffee of the day, somewhere there was a DJ playing this to a club full of revellers coming to the end of a sweaty, noisy night out. Or:la is a DJ, producer and record label owner. It’s safe to assume she knows her stuff. I’m not. For these and many other reasons our responses to this record will be different.
The music is hypnotic and occasionally intense. It feels completely percussive. It’s built around electronic beats, taps and rhythms that are wholly hypnotic and listenable. It’s clever just how engaging the non musical elements can be. ‘Cupid Doesn't Live In Clapham Common’ is a selection of beats and rhythms tumbling over each other like the energy boost of an early caffeine hit. When something approaching a tune arrives in ‘Fired Up’ it serves the same purpose, promoting momentum and movement. It keeps you hooked. Radio 6 night time shows must love it.
With all electronic music there’s a risk that a percussive approach can sound clean but hard and sterile. That’s not the case here. The beats are friendly, the rhythms are ones you want to join with and the bass and musical lines bring warmth. It may be metallic at its core but these pieces are warmly insulated.
It’s not a case of flicking a switch and allowing a pre-programmed sequence to set off on its way. ‘Milky Way of Glitter’ is electronic poetry. ‘Cooking Up Pepper Spray With Mary Lake’ is one side of an atmospheric and brooding telephone call where words and music interact perfectly. ‘Chant’ snakes around the headphones reminding me that there is something almost primeval about this music. It has a similar effect on me to the one I get when I’m listening to some of the less chart friendly sounds of Kraftwerk. I’m drawn to thinking that this is music as science not emotion.
I realise that I’m trying to understand this music, analysing why it works for me at home. And that’s where I’m taking the wrong approach. I should be trying to feel it, live and loud as a physical experience. This is music with the urgency of night time. Its natural home is as a performance in a club in the early hours of the morning, complete with vibrations through the floor and a pounding ringing in the ears.
The key point though is that I liked it. It held my attention. It’s a clever and engaging music, wherever you hear it.
Taster Track : Fired Up
As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42qDXrw3nLMlCSg45kCnRy?si=4499207642034207 or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.
The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7EjHZr5_M3m0Zn5LEu_F3fMm&si=OhQF-ZPaBjUn4VMT
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