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(DIGIV026/SLGV001) Lawrence English ‘A Colour For Autumn’ LP – $14
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Edition of 300 copies total, silkscreened packaging. When it comes to contemporary experimental and drone music, one of the first names on the team sheet should always be Australia’s own Lawrence English. When he’s not busy running one of the best and most innovative labels around, Room40, or playing in the modular synth duo Holy Family, he’s cranking out incredible solo works for the likes of Touch Music and 12k. This, his first full-length available on vinyl, was originally released on the latter and finds new life inside these black analog grooves. “A Colour for Autumn” is the second in a series of albums from English that explore the changing seasons and his innate ability to transform such esoteric imagery into sound is immediately on display. ”Droplet” opens the record and immediately grabs you and cradles you beneath undercast skies. Dean Roberts’ lends voice to the track, giving it an otherworldly feeling but also a degree of warmth against the underlying sea of tones. But it’s on “Watching it Unfold” where the album really takes flight. English’s simple guitar patterns reek of nostalgic debris. As the piece coalesces and the leaves change from green to gold, everything gets washed over by brassy drones. The horns return, but more muddled, on “Galaxies of Dust” and add another element of cacaphony to an already dizzying track. It’s in passages like there were English’s incredible compositional talent shines. Fennesz lends his electronic expertise to “The Surface of Everything.” Whenever I hear this, I always think of crisp October nights, the smell of chimney smoke perfuming the air while you wax nostalgic about summers past. English provides the spine with his methodical crystal-toned guitar exercises but it’s the added crackle and texture from Fennesz that makes this the stand-out song on the album. There’s so much depth and subtlty to “A Colour for Autumn” that it would be easy to gloss over on first listen. On repeated trips, however, the whole picture reveals itself. This is an approachable album full of all the emotion and understated beauty that I associate with the fall. English covers the spectrum expertly. And then, as the glassy remnants of “…And Clouds for Company” begin to shift and fade away, you can smell the snow coming and winter is almost here.
(SLG007) Jeremy Kelly ‘Shortwaves’ C30
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Pure black dope on tape from Jeremy Kelly. “Shortwaves” bubbles over with a cacophony of circuit-bent radio signals and modular synth granularity before the slackening cord is severed completely and you are lowered into a pit of low-end doom viscosity and psychedelic trawling. Crack the windows open, this one needs to breathe a little. Limited to 70 pro-dubbed cassettes.
(SLG005) Andreas Brandal – ‘Into Thin Air’ C37
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Before we get all hyperbolic in here, let’s just assert that “Into Thin Air” is (all biases aside) one of the finest cassette releases we have ever heard. A thirty-seven minute, hand-held tour through haunted parallels that have only ever before been revealed to Andreas Brandal. No noisy, screeching specters can be found here, though. Just gossamer wraiths spooling cryptic melodies off the tape reel and into the miasma. Fucking fantastic! Limited to 100 pro-dubbed cassettes.
(SLG003) These Wonderful Evils – ‘Cerro Rico’ C60
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An enveloping new piece of work from Zak Boerger aka These Wonderful Evils. A 30 minute opus featuring old live tapes, field recordings, and new compositions. You can ride the snake to the lake, but he won’t tell you how deep it is. You’ll have to jump in. Program repeats on the b-side – one more chance to figure out “what it all means”.
