28 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

This trio featuring ubiquitous pianist Nils Frahm is one of the more pleasant surprises that have come across my path in recent memory, as I expected some sort of bloodless avant-jazz/post-rock hybrid, but was instead treated to quite an innovative and unique album (albeit quite an understated one as well).  I suspect a lot of that success is due to the band's exceedingly unconventional recording process, as they spent 8 years recording, re-recording, editing, recombining, and endlessly tweaking these pieces before finally concluding that The Gamble was finished.  Consequently, whatever these songs sounded like when they were originally played is probably a hell of a lot different from what ultimately wound up here.  To my credit, I was right about this album being a sort of avant-jazz/post-rock hybrid, but all of the instrumentation is so blurred together that The Gamble transcends either genre entirely and instead sounds like a strain of dub techno that is just as influenced by Latin percussion as it is by Jamaican dub. Except when it sounds like the greatest album that Tortoise never recorded.  Or when it sounds like something else entirely.

R & S

If their colorful biography (featuring a major fairground ride tragedy) is to be believed, this trio of Nils Frahm, bassist Sepp Singwald, and drummer Frederic Gmeiner have been playing together since childhood.  Even more suspicious than the carousel tragedy, however, is the fact that their biography makes absolutely no mention of Übertonmensch, a previous band featuring the exact same line-up.  Instead, Nonkeen is framed as the culmination of a lifelong journey.  I suppose it probably is in some ways, but these guys are still quite an inscrutable bunch.  Their backstory and previous output go a long way towards explaining their current sound though, as the trio have flirted with both jazz and electronic music, but were originally brought together by their shared love of tape machines and their possibilities.  Consequently, it makes perfect sense that they would eventually shake free from more straightforward genre fare and embrace the studio as their true muse.

They also embraced current Miasmah artist Andrea Belfi, who contributes guest drums and percussion on five songs.  That certainly adds further to The Gamble's blurring effect, as it is impossible to say where Belfi's contributions end and where Gmeiner's begin, especially since no instrument credits are provided except for Belfi.  In fact, it is entirely possible that Belfi steals the show, as two of his five songs are among the best on the album ("Animal Farm" and "Chasing God Through Palmyra").  Naturally, everyone's contributions swirl together at all times, but Nonkeen are at their absolute best when their hazy almost-jazz is driven by a strong pulse.  "Animal Farm," for example, boasts a very cool organ-like chord progression and a nice slowed-down tape loop of a male voice, but it is the sexy Latin groove that makes it seem like a bombshell compared to the earlier songs on the album (especially when the beat takes on an ominous, industrial texture).  The album's lead single, "Chasing God Through Palmyra," is equally Latin-tinged, tape loop-enhanced, and quasi-industrial, but even more propulsive.  In fact, I believe both pieces were culled from many of the same parts, but "God" is a bit more sped up and consequently feels quite different.  Elsewhere, the tensely clattering and improvisatory-sounding "Ceramic People" is another high point, benefiting from some fairly wild live drumming.  The Belfi-less closer ("Re: Turn!") might actually be my favorite piece of all though, sounding like a dreamy treatment of a simple, repeating piano motif that calls to mind a hallucinatory reimagining of Steve Reich’s "Music for 18 Musicians."

My sole grievance with The Gamble is just that it has much more filler than I would expect on a 9-song album that took 8 years to make: not much happens at all in either "Capstan" (sounds like someone noodling on a vibraphone while someone else practices drum rolls) or "Pink Flirt" (a few melancholy chords, some tape hiss, and a prematurely aborted good idea).  Otherwise, however, Nonkeen seem to have had plenty of fine ideas in a number of different directions, yet made them seamlessly fit together with an unwavering commitment to space, mood, and understatement.  I was especially struck by how ego-less this album is, as few things are rarer than getting three musicians with reasonably solid jazz chops together in a room and having them all try to smear together unrecognizably in service of a smoky, dub-wise aesthetic.  Even when Nonkeen sound like an actual jazz trio, as they do on the excellent "Beautiful Mess" and "The Saddest Continent on Earth," it sounds like a noir-ish afterhours jam designed not to wake any neighbors.  Equally significant is the fact that I never would have ever guessed on my own that The Gamble featured a pianist of Frahm's caliber: not because the playing is unexceptional, but because Nonkeen somehow manage to make everything feel so seemingly effortless, simple, and natural.

• Ceramic People
• Animal Farm
• Chasing God Through Palmyra

 

22 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Like her debut release, Valence (2012), Montreal's France Jobin’s work is from the traditional school of electronic minimalism, in which the sparsest of sounds and instrumentation are utilized to create complex, nuanced sculptures of tone and texture.  Inspired by quantum physics and actualized by a variety of processing and modular synthesis, this album is yet another strong entry in her growing discography.

Line

One aspect that sets Jobin's work apart in this often-crowded field is her judicious use of dissonance.Rather than relying on distorted processing effects or abrasive synthetic tones, her work is instead more restrained and nuanced.Gliding, almost bowed-string like tones cut through dramatically on "l," as she builds upon simple loops into a richer, almost conventionally melodic sound.The lengthy opening piece "n" features a swirling, almost organ like tone that fights with pure silence during the opening.The piece transitions to a shimmering, sharper quality not unlike Robert Hampson’s work as Main in its most stripped-down capacity before blending extreme, yet low volume frequencies in its conclusion.

That is not to say that France's work is all pure sounds and open spaces, however.Sustained low-end vibrations stretch throughout "m," which results in a piece with just the right amount of grit, but one that complements the rest of the piece well.Even with these darker rumbles and the occasional bit of what most closely resembles digital interference, her use of quiet, almost melodic passages contrast extremely well and give the piece a distinct feeling of beauty.

The 13 and a half minute concluding composition, "s," makes for the perfect culmination of Singulum and encapsulates her style as a whole.The opening passages are bleaker and less inviting, exemplified by icy sounds and a slowly pulsing, slightly menacing layer of noises.It never becomes overly powerful or commanding, but the sound has a distinctly sinister characteristic to it.However, she uses the piece's duration to evolve and develop the sound, rearranging the various layers to alleviate the tension she created beforehand.By the conclusion of the composition, the layers have been shifted to a more open, spacious arrangement that lets light shine through what previously was kept in the dark.

Singulum is one of those albums that requires focused and dedicated attention, as any sort of distraction significantly hinders the impact of the work.But through these hushed volumes and carefully treated electronic passages, France Jobin has constructed an album of quiet, yet lush arrangements.While it is difficult to exactly imagine how quantum physics can translate to sound, Singulum is undoubtedly a pretty close approximation.

samples:

• n
• l
• s

 

22 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Federico Durand’s music has always had an extremely intimate, hushed quality to it; akin to being in a small room with him as he records, and his newest release is no different. A Través Del Espejo, which translates to "through the mirror" is an apt metaphor for the sound of this record, given its glassy clarity and deliberate, brilliant use of loops and repetition. His use of Spartan instrumentation is especially effective, making the absolute most out of even the smallest sounds culminating in a gorgeous, multifaceted record.

12k

Much of this album is constructed from the use of cassette tape loops, but the medium is usually secondary to the sound being played.A song such as "El Jarden Encanto" seems to be constructed from a plucked strings of some sort (Durand is fond of working with non-traditional instruments), and the whole piece ends up having an almost toy music box feeling to it.The brief "Mirador en la Montaña" (featuring Andrew Chalk on synthesizer) captures what could be gentle plucked strings and delicate chimes, with a distinct purity and clarity to the sound.

On "Teatro de Sombras," he once again constructs from sounds that most closely resemble chimes or pure, glassy tones, but by placing an emphasis on the lower end parts of the sonic spectrum, the resulting piece takes on a very different quality than some of the other, lighter moments on the record."Diorama" may be a bit lighter with the expansive tones and twinkling bits of noise that define it, but it is a cold, frosty beauty rather than a warm, embracing one."El Grillo de Nácar" is one of the album’s softest moments, with what could be a low fidelity nature recording blended with some light, airy plucked notes that is anything but cold.

Durand's use of analog tape as a source material does creep to the forefront at other moments, however."Linternas Junto a la Laguna" slightly sputtering analog noises and inconsistent tones feel much more in line with the unpredictability of cassettes, and also culminates in a piece that stands out due to its less pristine sound quality."Hora de Dormir"'s only obvious musical element seems to be a piano of some sort, but instead the focus is on the taped conversations, children in the distance, and so on.It has such a distinctly domestic feel to it that, while not specifically musical, fits in squarely with the more intimate moments of the album.The title song begins with wet noise akin to that of rewinding tape, with Durand including sustained, ghostly waves of reversed sounds.The early moments are more dissonant (at least in relative terms), but by its conclusion, the loops lock into a near groove, to end the album on an almost conventional passage of music.

Like his previous album El Estanque Esmerelda, Federico Durand blends the sparsest of instrumentation and the lightest of processing to make for an album that resonates with the most delicate of sensibilities.His unique approach to instrumentation and deliberately luddite-like approach to recording ties together as an inviting, extremely personal sounding record that renders the simplest string pluck into a dramatic, beautiful orchestral passage.

samples:

• Teatro De Sombras
• El Grillo de N√°car
• A Traves Del Espejo

 

21 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

According to the website, Suppedaneum’s mission is, in part, to probe the relationship between music and composition. All the more reason to pay special attention to the score that accompanies The Letter, Joseph Clayton Mills's 22-minute cassette EP that comes close to not being an EP at all. With the exception of the first, each of the 100 cassettes that Mills assembled for this project is a hand-duplicated copy of an earlier copy. Thanks to the technological shortcomings of the medium, successive renderings of The Letter past the first contain imperfections not present in previous versions, meaning each tape is a uniquely worn-down object. As the liner notes put it, "The Letter is a piece of music designed to approach disappearance." Strangely, the music is not a performance of the aforementioned score, a piece titled Abscission that comprises the images of two trees and three pairs of musical staves. The tape’s sine tones, Throbbing Gristle-like noises, and warped piano phrases were inspired by those images, but the disconnect between them predominates. It’s one of the ways in which Joseph distills the disjunction and cohesion between sound and writing.

Suppedaneum

A phrase like "the letter" possesses clout. It means "the letter I received from my parents" or "the letter he wrote to me." Significance is implied. That’s true even if what is meant is something like "the letter S" or "the letter of the law." Mills could have intended any of those things and in different ways The Letter touches on each one. The piece begins with someone (or something?) reciting the English alphabet and ending on the letter "zed"—not "zee"—which might say something about the speaker’s origin or the recording’s original use. It then introduces a piano melody (letters A through G) and concludes with a story that sounds familial, a recollection of how someone came to be who they are and where they are. Law is in there too, in the confusion of compositional fidelity and performance.

But the familial tint is strongest. It stands out against the field recordings, buzzing plastic, and metallic howls. It’s the thing the ears strain to hear as the sound of a busy market blows through the speakers and it’s the element that draws the drama of the surrounding noise to it, as if by gravity—the voice of someone explaining what it was like to be poor at the end of the Great Depression, to pick strawberries for two cents a quart during the summer, and to deal with the hardships of a massive flood afterward.

Even if the narrator and Mills aren’t related, the details resonate empathetically. How else to interpret the black-and-white photograph of "Violet Cowie and her siblings" included in the set, apparently taken in Scotland, or Joseph’s decision to assemble in one place sounds recorded between 1989 and 2015? That span of time suggests someone thinking about the past. It’s a recollection that parallels the anonymous narrator’s. The music is another layer in that nexus, residing somewhere between the certainty of the details and the ambiguity of the score, which might remind some of a family tree and others of the cycle of the seasons.

Abscission is what trees and plants do when they drop their leaves, needles, or fruit, usually to protect themselves, as in winter, or to reproduce. In the case of The Letter, it’s the process by which music, time, and memory are cut away. And as with the trees, something persists after the foliage falls. It takes root in innuendos and multiplicities and subsists through silences and interruptions even as it disappears into the past.

samples:

• Four samples are available on the Suppedaneum Soundcloud page

 

21 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Newly resurrected by Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle imprint, this would-be landmark 1987 recording was originally slated to be released on Glenn Branca’s short-lived Neutral Records.  After sadly sitting on the shelf for roughly a decade, it was finally issued by Dutch label Barooni in 1998 and thankfully reached enough people to warrant yet another resurfacing almost 20 years later.  It is hard to understand how this album wound up so cursed while the very similar Strumming Music became so revered, but the world is not a fair place, I guess.  In any case, Godbear is a suite of three solo piano pieces recorded in a church and it is wonderful.  While perhaps not quite as essential as Palestine's more ambitious and unusual recent work (2015’s Ssingggg arguably eclipsed absolutely everything that came before it), Godbear’s rumbling storms of overtones are quite visceral and inventive by solo piano performance standards.

Black Truffle

In a curious bit of temporal coincidence, Godbear is being reissued at roughly the same time as La Monte Young’s Dream House, making 2016 a banner year for former Pandit Pran Nath students who released seminal albums on Shandar.  Unlike Dream House, however, Palestine’s 1974 Shandar release Strumming Music got a major reissue in the '90s and kickstarted a career resurgence.  Remarkably, given how prolific he is today, Palestine did not release a single album between 1974 and 1997–a hiatus that the doomed Godbear would have ended.  Aside from being 1.) cursed, and 2.) quite good, Godbear is also significant for essentially being a reprise and improvement upon the 13-year-old Strumming Music.  In fact, Godbear’s second piece is even called "Strumming Music," though it condenses the previous album's epic 52-minute duration into a mere 11.  The other two pieces have different names, but the simple, underlying idea is very much the same for all: rapidly hammered notes at neutral intervals (octaves and fifths) that gradually become much more complicated and much less neutral.

The first side of the album is filled completely by the 20-minute "The Lower Depths," which is arguably the album’s highlight (though competition is fierce).  The title likely has its root in the fact that the piece gradually descends into the more rumbling, lower reaches of the piano's range, but its infernal connotations are warranted as well.  It does not take long at all for the ringing and rolling harmonies to descend into a darker mood, but Palestine does an excellent job rationing out the tension and dissonance, always returning to calmer, more consonant harmonies…until he finally stops circling around and decides to get dark in earnest.  Taken on its face, "The Lower Depths" is a dynamic and compelling piece of music, but its real power is somewhat sneaky and not instantly apparent with casual listening: there are the notes that Palestine is actually playing and then there are the complex clouds of dissonance that start to cohere with increased regularity due to the use of the sustain pedal.  Once I became fully aware of the latter, the piece took on a whole new unpredictable life for me.  The combination of the clattering, rumbling lower keys and the oscillating, spreading black mass of overtones is quite spectacular when it comes together just right.  Also, it is kind of a neat magic trick, as the piece often feels improvisatory and roving, but it is all in service of creating eventual rich and unexpected blossoms of looming, dissonant harmonies.

"Strumming Music" is considerably more radiant and rippling in nature, using the same tools to evoke a very different mood.  It also seems considerably more structured and indebted to earlier minimalist composers than the rest of the album, as it feels like a single strong motif that recurs and evolves, whereas "The Lower Depths" is significantly more freewheeling and messy (albeit in a good way).  That said, "Strumming Music" is still absolutely lovely, cohering into a wonderfully shimmering and undulating haze of bliss.  That respite is brief, however, as things get heavy again for the closing "Timbral Assault," which immediately delivers exactly what it promises.  In fact, it sounds a lot like an impressively prescient precursor to Tim Hecker’s "Virginal."  Unlike "The Lower Depths," however, "Timbral Assault" is instantly dissonant and ominously minor key in mood.  Also, it is the most rhythmically unusual and unpredictable piece on the album, as its forward motion is constantly disrupted by stuttering flurries of notes.  Despite those strengths, or perhaps because of them, "Assault" is the weakest of the three pieces, as it lacks the slow-burning build-up to a pay-off that makes "Depths" and "Strumming" so satisfying.  "Timbral Assault" certainly starts off wonderfully, but it does not leave itself many places to go when it does and consequently starts to fade and meander a bit as it unfolds.

Anticlimactic final act aside, Godbear boasts a solid half-hour of near-perfect music that is both distinctive and powerful, so it definitely deserves a place in the upper echelon of Palestine's oeuvre.  It makes complete sense that the later phase of his career spread out in such varied, experimental, and eccentric directions, as Godbear and Strumming Music both took Palestine’s solo piano vision as far as it could reasonably go.  Until they build a Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano with even more keys in the lower octaves or make some radical breakthroughs in sustain pedal technology, there is no need to ever return to this well again.  The definitive statements have been made–they are just waiting around to be heard.

• The Lower Depths
• Strumming Music
• Timbral Assault

 

21 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Back before the days of MP3s and file sharing, it was not uncommon for me to slowly lose my goddamn mind because there was some album that I desperately wanted to hear, yet could not find anywhere.  Naturally Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound were all regular members of that exclusive club, but the reigning king of maddening elusiveness was always La Monte Young–more specifically, The Well-Tuned Piano, though Dream House (now finally reissued) would have been a lovely consolation prize (both albums have regularly turned up on Discogs' "most expensive items sold" list).  The reason for my obsession is quite simple: Young was the ur-visionary at the root of many of the more compelling strains of underground culture that have blossomed over the last 18 years, heavily and directly influencing the aesthetics of Brian Eno, Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground, and Terry Riley (in fact, John Cale, Angus MacLise, and Riley were all members of Young's Theatre of Eternal Music ensemble).

Aguirre

Originally released in 1973, Dream House is one of the inaugural releases in Aguirre’s series of reissues from the amazing and forward-thinking French label Shandar.  Before its basement office was largely destroyed by a flood in 1979, the label run by Daniel Caux and Chantal Darcy released an unprecedented string of crucial avant-garde albums featuring everyone from Charlemagne Palestine to Sun Ra to Pandit Pran Nath.  Even among that milieu of iconoclasts, however, Dream House stands out as exceptionally outré.  Comprised of two side-long pieces, Dream House explores Young’s obsession with idea of eternal music without beginning or end.  Few (if any) Western musicians were as invested in the idea of hypnotic, trance-like repetition as La Monte Young was in the 1970s.  Significantly, it was not so much a musical choice so much as it was a lifelong obsession, as the idea of a "dream house" was later expanded into a series of installations (of varying degrees of permanence) built around Young’s sine waves and Zazeela’s accompanying light sculptures.

The first and far more distinctive piece, "13 I 73 5:35-6:14:03 PM NYC," features a stripped-down version of the Theatre of Eternal Music ensemble, in this case just future avant-garde luminaries Jon Hassell and Garrett List.  The general idea is quite simple, as it is basically just a drone piece built from Young’s sine waves, Zazeela’s voice, and the ensemble’s sustained brass tones.  Over that, however, are Young’s otherworldly, nasal, ritualistic, and chant-like vocals.  On one level, Pandit Pran Nath’s influence is abundantly clear, but there is a buzzing, quasi-insectoid quality to Young's voice as well.  As such, the piece still sounds quite alien today, so I cannot begin to imagine what unsuspecting American listeners in the early ‘70s made of such a bizarre, time-stretched blending of Indian classical music and the hum of high voltage power lines.  Nor can I imagine what listeners would have made of the hyper-minimal second piece, "Drift Study 14 VII 73 9:27:27-10:06:41 PM NYC," a gently oscillating 39-minute sine-wave solo.  Neither piece offers anything in the way of conspicuous evolution or strong melody, as the emphasis is quite squarely on the hypnotic properties of endless repetition and on small-scale shifts in harmony and oscillation.  Dream House was far more than an unusual synthesis of Eastern music, minimalism, and the more experimental strains of jazz and classical music–it was a radical experiment in transforming how we hear and experience music.

There is no question at all that Dream House is a radical and significant work by a woefully underdocumented and hugely influential figure.  However, the inevitable downside to being a groundbreaking visionary is that when one of your seminal masterpieces is finally reissued 40 years after it was recorded, the rest of the experimental music world has already long caught and surpassed it.  Granted, the first half of the album still sounds quite unusual by 2016 standards, but its capacity to blow anyone's mind has long expired.  In the case of most composers, there would be some sadness to that, but La Monte Young’s career almost seemed completely independent of his albums.  Dream House is merely a snapshot of an ephemeral instant in an endless evolution, as any clips that I have heard from Dream House installations are considerably more immersive and harmonically complex than what is documented here.  Also, "13 I 73 5:35-6:14:03 PM NYC" is allegedly just a mere section of a larger piece called "Map Of 49's Dream The Two Systems Of Eleven Sets Of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery."  And, of course, that piece is itself allegedly just a section of Young’s even larger and never-ending opus "The Tortoise, His Dreams And Journeys."  Odds are quite high that most of Young’s greatest work probably existed only live or in concept alone, so we are probably lucky to get to hear any of it at all.  There is not much available, so every single bit is cause for excitement.  I am absolutely thrilled that this has finally been reissued.

Samples:

• 13 I 73 535-61403 PM NYC
• 13 I 73 535-61403 PM NYC
• Drift Study 14 VII 73 92727-100641 PM NYC

 

20 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Traditional Synthesizer Music is a collection of songs created and performed live exclusively on the modular synthesizer by Aaron Funk. Each sound contained within was created purely with the modular synthesizer. No overdubbing or editing techniques were utilized in the recordings on Traditional Synthesizer Music. Each song was approached from the ground up and dismantled upon the completion of it's recording. The goal was to develop songs with interchangeable structures and sub structures, yet musically pleasing motifs. Many techniques were incorporated to "humanize" or vary the rhythmic results within these sub structures. An exercise in constructing surprises, patches interrupting each other to create unforeseen progressions. Multiple takes were recorded for each song resulting in vastly different versions of each piece.

More information can be found here.

20 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Few years ago, an idea germinated while reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. An idea not driven by the narrativity of the book, but by the traces and the aura invoked in it. That was it: an audible auratic journey trough the memories of a place lost in the heights of the Swiss mountains.

A century after the events depicted in the book, we went where the story took place, trying to capture the remaining sounds that could have been heard at the time, and the ghosts who might have still wandered around.

Zauberberg is based on these captures, on recordings of the music played by Hans Castorp (the novel’s main character), on acoustic/electronic instrumentation and digital processing. The result is an evocation of time and duration, an exploration of what remains and what is lost, a meditation of the dissolution and persistence of the aura surrounding everything.

— Kassel Jaeger, Nov. 19, 2015

More information can be found here.

20 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Ethics and passion in their purest form. Welcome to the world of Sarah Records, active between 1987-1995, and possibly the most indie of all indie labels. This is a documentary where principles prevail and attitude and actions are just as important as the music. Heroics and belligerence, ephemeral-eternal-pop, fanzines and the incorruptible founders Clare Wadd and Matt Haynes. Their inspirations, the records, the bands, the letters, the long list of journalists that detested Sarah, the fans that love Sarah...The defiance and determination of our founding duo and and their final declaration. Their focus on something that was non-commercial and exciting, as if music could change lives and mean SOMETHING. My Secret World is a resounding reminder that music doesn’t need to be about posturing, production or money to be an outright success.

My Secret World.  The Story Of Sarah Records is the first feature length documentary to explore this influential and often misunderstood label. Now the label founders, former Sarah band members, music critics and those that have been inspired by the label tell their story.

The production of this documentary has been made possible by the generosity of everyone involved; the artists who've permitted their music to feature in the soundtrack, the interviewees for their time and help, the film makers who helped film the interviews and the Sarah fans who donated archive footage and photographs.

Directed and funded by Lucy Dawkins, My Secret World has been 4 years in the making.  More information can be found here.

"Intimate portrait of a quietly radical indie outfit" -Uncut

20 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Front 242, Tuxedomoon, Eric Random and more not-disco classics for the dancefloor.

JD Twitch has done more than most to improve our record collections this year, introducing us to some incredible post-punk rarities on his Optimo Music compilation [Cease & Desist] and releasing an inspired intercontinental collaboration featuring young musicians from Glasgow, Ghana and Belize on his Autonomous Africa imprint.

For his next trick, Keith McIvor is going back to his roots with a compilation of club favourites from his earliest days behind the mixer. "So Low is an occasional night at The Poetry Club in Glasgow where I play some of the music I played when I first started DJing back in 1987," McIvor explains.

"At that time the audience I played to mostly loathed what I was playing and rarely danced, but then shortly after, when house music arrived, I found a different audience who actually liked to dance."

At the request of his wife, and some friends who were too young to hear these songs in the club at the time, he now runs the So Low night as an excuse to give records by the likes of Front 242 and Chris & Cosey another airing. "It has an extremely enthusiastic audience, a joyous atmosphere and is the antithesis of what a club in Scotland playing this music nearly 30 years ago would have been like," he explains.

The So Low compilation focuses on some lesser known stars of cold wave, from UK and European minimalists like P1/E, Colin Potter and Gerry & The Holograms, to US industrial band Hunting Lodge and avant-garde San Francisco collective Tuxedomoon, as well as a number of French and Belgian acts such as Siglo XX, Front 242, Marc Verhaeghen’s The Klinik and Clair Obscur.

Teaming up with The Vinyl Factory for the releases, McIvor has also enlisted contemporary cold-wave fans Powell and Helena Hauff to provide remixes for their favourite tracks on the compilation, which seems like a very good idea to us.

Check out the tracklist below, and look out for the compilation on February 19 on 2xLP, CD and digital, with the remixes following soon after.

More information can be found here.

Tracklist:

• John Bender – ‘Victims of a Victimless Crime’
• Hunting Lodge – ‘Tribal Warning Shot’
• Throbbing Gristle – ‘Discipline (Berlin)’
• Front 242 – ‘Kampfbereit’
• The Klinik – ‘Moving Hands’
• P1/E – ’49 Second Romance’
• Colin Potter – ‘Power’
• Eric Random – ‘Fade In’
• Conrad Schnitzler & Wolfgang Seidel Meissner – ‘Fabrik’
• Gerry & The Holograms – ‘Gerry & The Holograms’
• Chris & Cosey – ‘Passion’
• Hard Corps – ‘Porte Bonheur (Remix)’
• Holger Hiller – ‘Das Feuer’
• Siglo XX – ‘Dreams of Pleasure’
• Clair Obscur – ‘Toundra’
• Tuxedomoon – ‘No Tears’