Phosphorescent Dreams
CD version. Available for the first time outside Japan, and on LP and CD, Phosphorescent Dreams is another epic album of symphonic schizophrenic avant-rock from Univers Zero, originally released in 2014 -- only on CD -- on the Japanese label Arcàngelo. Phosphorescent Dreams presents at the same time, in the same track, even on a single moment, the complex musical schemes and ways of Univers Zero, ranging from maximalism to minimalism, classical avant-garde with a 2020 vibe in a constant flux. In…
Open Spaces
Cambridge-based experimental group Contemporary Music Unit was formed in the late 1960s by the guitarist, author and visual artist, Ed Lee, with former student Terry Mortimer on guitar and keyboards. Lee recruited bassist Adrian Kendon, who brought drummer Roger Odell, the latter a powerful foil to Lee’s experimental visions. When Kendon left, Lee assumed bass duties and Odell’s wife Lorraine became a primary vocalist (after the departure of early member Sally Knox), along with teaching comerade…
The Skull Mailbox (and other Horrors)
The strangest so far. Mostly songs; a lot of acoustic instruments, a lot of unidentifiable sounds, a lot of fragments borne on a wind from somewhere else; bizarre picking interludes, humour (maybe) and snatches of incandescent playing. You can't pin this one down; it's full of twists and turns and a geometry that doesn't quite add up. Seemingly casual, there's not an ounce of fat on it, and the production - or anti-production - is, on repeated listening, quite extraordinary. Impressive.
Little Black Train
Thinking Plague, Hail, EC Nudes, 5UU's bassist and mixmaster with his second solo CD. Fast and furious country picking meets weird fragmentation and fast cut compositions. Guitars, Bass, Drums, Violin and odd unidentifiable noises all flawlessly performed, recorded and mixed into a single organism of musical strangeness. One of a kind.
Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
Continuing the twisted pop explorations of Here Come the Warm Jets, Brian Eno's follow up album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), is more subdued and cerebral, and a bit darker when he does cut loose, but it's no less thrilling once the music reveals itself. It's a loose concept album about espionage, the Chinese Communist revolution, and dream associations, with the more stream-of-consciousness lyrics beginning to resemble the sorts of random connections made in dream states. Eno's richly l…
Carpaccio Esistenziale
Entity formed by musicians strongly professing their psychedelic faith , sons of post-modern breaking-up, incapable of choosing between jazz noise and Italian tunes of Japanese manga, ill at ease in paying our respects both to Pink Floyd and to the most tremendous metal .After ten years, conflagration leaves room to the need of building up a more constant and meditative way, creating EX-P.Improvisation and an estranged kind of sound are still the main features, searched inside the huge territori…