The Haunted Generation

Reviews originally published in Issue 95 of Electronic Sound magazine, November 2022:

MODIFIED TOY ORCHESTRA
Silfurberg
(Bit-Phalanx)

Faced with a giddy tower of luridly-wrapped presents, some children eschewed the actual gifts and spent Christmas Day playing with the empty cardboard boxes instead. Birmingham’s Brian Duffy went one step further, and – since 2004 – has been pulling the sound chips from discarded toys to create evocative symphonies of vintage parps and bleeps.

It’s 12 years since previous album Plastic Planet, and Silfurberg feels less playful, more purposeful. The title itself? A transparent stone used by seafaring Vikings to locate the sun on gloomy expeditions. And intrepid voyage is the theme here, as dismantled Casio keyboards transport us to the stars. ‘And Yet It Moves’ has the warm throb of an interstellar colliery band, and by the time we reach the discordant tides of ‘We Live To Look Out The Window’, we’re clearly passing into new dimensions. ‘Pathloss’ is riddled with the final, pulsing beeps of a vanishing space probe, while the closing ‘Into The Bulk’ finds glacial, piano-led calm beyond the hurly-burly of our own cosmic plane. It’s a bold and beautiful journey. 

Album available here:
https://bitphalanx.bandcamp.com/album/silfurberg

THE LEAF LIBRARY
Library Music Vol 1
(Where It’s At Is Where You Are)

Ssssh! Using the musical equivalent of the Dewey System, the bespectacled curators of The Leaf Library collate 14 years’ worth of rarities into a charming double album. Opener ‘Agnes In The Square’ sets the mood perfectly. Dreamy pop with a steely edge, it’s a lament for the fractured love lives of refugees. “I’m sorry that you lost everything you own / I don’t know where you go when the borders close,” sings frontwoman Kate Gibson, as pulsing synths transport us across musical boundaries.

Elsewhere, ‘Goodbye Four Walls’ is a wonderfully jangly C86-style homage to urban optimism, and ‘Walking Backwards’ perhaps the closest descendent of guitarist Matt Ashton’s former life in Peel synthpop favourites Saloon. ISAN’s 2008 remix of ‘Losing Places’ is the oldest track here, a tinkling cousin of Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks theme, with Gibson heart-tuggingly unsure. And the sax-drenched ‘A Stone In Water’ – recorded in 2022 for the Modern Aviation label’s beautiful Look To Imber compilation – brings matters bang up to date. A long-overdue anthology, it’s just the ticket.

Album available here:
https://wiaiwya.bandcamp.com/album/library-music-volume-one

INFINITY ROOM
Stratospheric Scatter
(Bandcamp)

Who’s that, lurking outside the MoD base with an Argon8 hidden beneath their cagoul? Why, Nottinghamshire Cold War obsessive Jez Shearing, tramping across drizzle-soaked moors with this fine sequel to 2021’s similarly squally Tropospheric Scatter. With the opening bars of ‘Cold’, the mood is established: John le Carré quotes swathed in austere synth lines. Boards of Canada fans will find much to love, as will admirers of The Soulless Party’s similarly bleak take on post-war paranoia. From the fuzzy bleeps of ‘Nord’ to the spectral choirs of ‘Agnusdei’, it’s deliciously desolate stuff.

Album available here:
https://infinityroom.bandcamp.com/album/stratospheric-scatter-2

SHABASON AND KRGOVICH
At Scaramouche
(Idée Fixe)

Unwinding amid the faux glamour of their favourite Toronto eaterie,Joseph Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich conceived this opulent homage to their surroundings, a gentle riot of jazzy easy listening. “When it’s dark before supper, and the rain falls on the house / Happy for no reason,” croons Krgovich on misty-eyed starter, ‘Soli’. ‘What Comes Back’ is an autumnal aperitif of woozy minor keys, ‘I Am So Happy With My Little Dog’ a main course of sumptuous synthpop with a side salad of deliciously wonky guitar. A quiet night out of an album, with a wistful walk home.

Album available here:
https://shabasonandkrgovich.bandcamp.com/album/at-scaramouche

BOERD
Caution: Fragile
(Blunda)

By day, Bård Ericson is bassist in Sweden’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. By night, he assumes the lower case persona of boerd to create crystalline trip-hop, and his sixth album is a soothing confection. Lead single ‘Stay’ boasts a heavenly string section, transporting the icy vocals of Stella Explorer to a soaring chorus. The contributions of Explorer and fellow Swedish songstress Venus Anon provide translucent pop glamour, but Ericson’s own instrumentals also create heartwarming magic. ‘Lullaby’ is sumptuous, late night piano bar jazz, ‘Slow Ghost’ reeks of woodsmoke in lonely log cabins.

Album available here:
https://boerd.bandcamp.com/album/caution-fragile

BURD ELLEN
A Tarot Of The Green Wood
(Mavis Recordings)

Higher than ‘The Fool’? ‘The Hermit’! Playing their mystical cards right, Glaswegians Debbie Armour and Gayle Brogan shuffle a deck of largely traditional songs into a stirring homage to the Major Arcana Tarot. Armour adds limpid vocals to Brogan’s alarming folktronic soundscapes, the combination epitomised by the extraordinary 13-minute ‘Under No Enchantment (The Star & The Moon)’. “First thing she gave me / Two sprays of old Dog’s Mercury…” sings Armour, this winsomely poisonous woodland perennial the ideal metaphor for an album of evergreen beauty entwined with dark terror.  

Album available here:
https://burdellen.bandcamp.com/album/a-tarot-of-the-green-wood

KAYLA PAINTER
Infinite You
(Castles In Space)  

“We measure time and our experience on Earth in a particular way,” says Kayla Painter. “But in space, none of those rules apply…” Back in August, Painter’s science fiction obsession took her to the ‘Blood Orange Beach’ of her album Planet 9. For her Castles In Space debut, she’s delved even further into the great void. And, as the dark beats and throbbing static of ‘Broadcast From The Collapse’ lead to the hymnal piano and wordless whispers of the title track, it’s clear that Painter has found some of kind of salvation in the cosmos. Beautiful, and appropriately timeless.

Album available here:
https://kaylapainter.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-you

PULSE:
Dilettante

Who she? 

The fabulously-named Francesca Pidgeon, Leeds ex-pat marooned in Manchester. “I’ve just moved into a lovely flat where I can literally see Strangeways prison,” she smiles, and wobbles the webcam round to prove it. She seems chipper enough, but her debut album is called Tantrum and it’s a white knuckle ride of gloriously tuneful twentysomething angst.  

“People always said I would be someone / Platitudes make good lullabies,” she sings on lead single ‘Big Fish’, perfectly encapsulating that killer moment when the childhood bubble is finally popped by grotty adult concerns. And ‘Teeth’ is a jazzy, brassy paean to modern anxiety: “Gotta stop clenching my teeth / Gotta start learning to breathe”.

“Someone said to me that if you’re anxious, you clench your teeth a lot,” she explains. “And now I do it all the time! Sorry if I’ve made you do it as well…”

Why Dilettante?

“I play keys, sax, clarinet, guitar, loop pedal, sometimes even drums. And the name is me admitting I’m not very good at any of them!” she laughs. But it’s pish, she’s a consummate multi-instrumentalist making brilliantly extravagant art-pop soap operas. Take a song like ‘Surrogate Lover’, it’s like Kate Bush singing Victoria Wood. On Broadway. “I stayed too long at his staff Christmas party / Then told him my life story, drunk on Bacardi…”

To ask a question that’s probably been posed before, Francesca – is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?

“It’s all real stuff, I have no imagination,” she admits. “Being too honest is what I like about writing songs.”

Tell us more…

She tours with open-hearted US indie star BC Camplight, has supported Self Esteem and cites Tune-Yards as a major influence.

“I didn’t realise what you could do with a loop pedal until I saw them live in about 2012,” she explains. “Most of my album was written with one. Tune-Yards, Fiona Apple and St Vincent are my three guys. My holy trinity…” 

Tantrum available here:
https://dilettantesongs.bandcamp.com/album/tantrum

Electronic Sound – “the house magazine for plugged in people everywhere” – is published monthly, and available here:
https://electronicsound.co.uk/

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