The Haunted Generation

Reviews originally published in Issue 103 of Electronic Sound magazine, July 2023:

CO-PILOT
Rotate
(Dell’Orso)

Anyone fancy a 99?

It’s telling that surely the album of Summer 2023 begins with the distorted, dream-like tinkles of an ice cream van recorded from Jim Noir’s bedroom window. Because Noir and collaborator Leonore Wheatley have crafted an album that is the psychedelic pop equivalent of those mouthwatering price lists stuck beside the hatch of every roving, white-coated Mr Whippy. Opening track ‘Swim To Sweden’ is a smooth white chocolate Magnum, perfect to the point of disquiet, but don’t worry – we soon dive headfirst into the tangy orange Solero of ‘Move To It’. ‘Motosaka’, meanwhile, is a chocolate-dipped Fab lolly with… oh, what’s that? You want more detailed thoughts than just a few lazy ice cream comparisons? Spoiled kids, the lot of you.

There is something of every treat-filled, bittersweet summer holiday here, though. Davyhulme dabbler Noir has, of course, long since mined the unfettered creativity of childhood for inspiration, even if 2019 album AM Jazz and 2021 EP Deep Blue View were in serious danger of sounding mature, the drizzle-soaked Manchester equivalent of Beck’s early Noughties confessionals. And Wheatley too has something of the innocent about her, having lent deliciously floaty vocals to the retro beats of The Soundcarriers and International Teachers Of Pop. Holed up in Noir’s DookStereo studio, they’re like presenters from some parallel version of Play School, surrounded by battered toys, a teetering pile of xylophones, cracked maracas and that weird metal thing that goes “dooooing” when you hit it.

Certainly, there’s a whiff of hauntology here. Just listen to ‘Swim To Sweden’… it would be a wilful contrarian who heard Wheatley’s mantra-like refrain “Be careful how you go / There’s danger in the snow” without picturing an ill-fated Tufty the squirrel vanishing beneath the blizzards of some crackly Public Information Film. And ‘Brick’ feels like a glorious homage to the deceptively unsettling nuggets lurking in the strangest corners of old Play Away albums. “Now you’re safe, now you’re home, close the door and light the fire,” sings Wheatley, as squelchy synths and sinister fuzz guitars mass menacingly outside the front room window. “Those dark days, light years away / It’s so strange to think we never planned to stay…”

Noir and Wheatley have stressed the playful DIY nature of it all, citing blissful afternoons experimenting after trips to the local offy for liquid inspiration. That woozy joy comes over, too. The money they saved in bar bills presumably went on clearing Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1978 classic ‘Thousand Knives’ to become the foundation of ‘Motosaka’. With the addition of a rubbery McCartney-esque bassline and Wheatley’s winsome sigh of a vocal, it becomes a different song but an absolutely fitting tribute.

Similarly soulful is ‘I Am One’, with Wheatley’s vocal prowess fully unleashed on what feels like a glassy-eyed cousin to Harry Nilsson’s heartbreaking ‘One’: “We are the numbers, you and me / All of the others change, no-one said it was meant to be”. As her voice cracks, Noir gives free reign to his longstanding Pet Sounds obsession, joining her with an overpowering choir of his own massed, multi-tracked vocals: “I am one and you are two / Freeze the water, forgive you”. It’s the most touching moment on the album.

It marks a subtle turning point, too. If the album is a summer holiday, then ‘She Walks In Beauty’ is the wistful afternoon when the ice cream van stays shuttered up and the rain hammers against the boarding house window. Built around Lord Byron’s lovelorn 1814 paean to the ethereal radiance of (ahem) his cousin’s wife, it begins with woozy Boards of Canada synths and drifts elegantly into the kind of blissful melancholia that Air once made their stock-in-trade. “Footsteps sold by duty, it trickles down the rooted line / Her tears have hardened over time”. It is, apparently, a poignant tribute to Wheatley’s own grandparents.

Then it’s nearly time to pack our cases. ‘Spring Beach’ is a charming collision of jazzy cymbals, chattering synths and Wheatley at her most ethereal. And closer ‘Cornerhouse’ is the most unashamedly retro offering here, beginning with descending Kinks guitars that will melt the heart of anyone (surely everyone?) who has ever wept a wistful tear at ‘Waterloo Sunset’. Then it swells into something darker, with Wheatley almost spectrally intangible: “Don’t be so close, dear / You aren’t what you might appear”. Let’s go back to the ice cream analogies – it’s the last trickle of melted rum and raisin, running down the sleeve of a cagoule still caked in sand. But your dad’s car engine is idling, and it’s time to head for home.

Album available here:
https://copilotmusic.bandcamp.com/album/rotate

ARDALA
Halls Of Antiquity
(Bandcamp)

Ardala? She is, of course, the villainous (and never knowingly underdressed) princess from Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. And Gavin ‘The Metamorph’ Brick and Phil ‘British Stereo Collective’ Heeks are clearly enthusiastic admirers of her work, brazenly adopting her name for this bombastic paean to their love of lavishly camp early 1980s sci-fi.

While Buck was strutting his futuristic stuff on ITV, the Radiophonic Workshop had donned BBC-issue snoods and turned Doctor Who into a synthpop riot. And this whole giddy cultural melting pot has left deep psychic scars on both Brick and Heeks. ‘Time Pilot’ sounds like Vince Clarke arriving at the Cheggers Plays Pop studio by TARDIS, and ‘The Men Of Mystery’ is ‘Vienna’-era Ultravox soundtracking Midge Ure’s desperate fight for survival on a planet where Classix Nouveaux are No 1 forever. If your childhood fishfinger sandwiches were regularly augmented by a generous helping of latex monsters and spaceships made from Fairy Liquid bottles, it’s an album to cherish.  

Album available here:
https://ardala.bandcamp.com/album/halls-of-antiquity

PULSELOVERS
Northern Minimalism 3
(Castles In Space)

“A love letter to South Yorkshire, or at least to Doncaster and Sheffield” is how Mat ‘Pulselovers’ Handley describes this aptly-named album, and you can already picture the disappointed faces in Rotherham and Barnsley. Don’t lose hope, though! Volume 1 was a 7” single, and Volume 2 a 10” EP. At this rate, Northern Minimalism 4: The Revenge will be a quadruple album with a gatefold sleeve by Joe Scarborough and plenty of scope for a 20-minute suite about Wath-upon-Dearne.

In the meantime, this third instalment will do nicely. Eschewing the bucolic sweetness of his previous Castles In Space album Cotswold Stone, Handley has sculpted a stark homage to the post-punk electronica that defines the region’s musical heritage. ‘Shock Cubes’ is a fuelled by a deliciously organic dub bassline, ‘Kitchen’ adds Harriet Lisa’s elegiac violin to slabs of Brutalist synths. ‘The Pansentient Hegemony’, meanwhile, is surely the closest it’s possible to get to Mk 1 Human League without actually rifling through Martyn Ware’s underpant drawer. A beautifully crafted and oddly touching collection.

Album available here:
https://pulselovers.bandcamp.com/album/northern-minimalism-3

VIOLET MIST
Fading Light
(Woodford Halse)

Space, as Douglas Adams once pointed out, is big. And the gentle beats of Manchester club scenester Joseph Kindred are taking us on a decidedly lonely interstellar journey. ‘Celestial Drift’ is the smooth lift-off here, a hum of weightless synths floating effortlessly towards the amniotic pulses of the title track. The seven-minute ‘Minor Planet’ is the lynchpin, a familiar heartbeat subsumed by swirling melodies before the doleful bleeps of ‘Orbital’ and the Huxley-inspired ‘Aphroditaeum’ cast us into blissful, cosmic somnambulance. In space, no-one can hear you dream.
 
Album available here:
https://violetmistmusic.bandcamp.com/album/wf-74-fading-light

PERKINS & FEDERWISCH
…Something Known As Music
(Superpolar Taïps)

Uli Federwisch, apparently, runs a company producing weight limit signs for bridges. Chip Perkins is a scientist specialising in snake venom. And, presumably, industrial-scale hogwash? Still, whoever they really are, they’ve made a splendidly arch homage to an era when men with peroxide wedges took themselves a tad too seriously. “When I’m swimming off Domberg and a shoal of jellyfish entwine me in their tentacles,” sings Federwisch on the Japan-esque ‘Music’, “I call upon the power of something known as music”. Easily the finest album to emerge from the Euskirchen Avant-Schlager scene.

Album available here:
https://superpolar.bandcamp.com/album/something-known-as-music

TINY LEAVES
Mynd
(Bandcamp)

The Long Mynd might sound like some long-lost Syd-influenced beat combo from the fag end of psychedelia, but it’s actually a moorland plateau in Shropshire. And Joel Pike’s fragile album is a soothing homage to the restorative solitude of walking. ‘Portway’ is a dark cloud of grumbling strings, ‘Long Mynd Snow’ a wintry flurry on piano, tumbling softly past foreboding hills of cello. ‘With The Hollow At My Feet’, meanwhile, is a ray of pale sunshine slowly gathering strength, the sweet spot between Virginia Astley and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
 
Album available here:
https://tinyleaves.bandcamp.com/album/mynd

PULSE:
Zyggurat

Who they?

Birmingham-based Pete Grimshaw, creating mellifluous modular synth workouts with a decidedly jazzy feel. And the perfect musical accompaniment to these electronic experiments? The hypnotic drone of an accordion, obviously. Peira Onacko does the honours, and Nathan England-Jones adds free-flowing organic drums. “I’ve been trying to bring the acoustic and electronic elements into the same sonic space,” says Pete. “Joining the celestial with the terrestrial…”

New mini-album ‘Broken Circle’ has been picked up by Clay Pipe Music, the perfect label for a soothing, contemplative record with a distinct link to place. As Pete explains, “I wanted to tie the music to the city we live in”.

Why Zyggurat?

They’re named after the shape of Birmingham’s lamented Central Library, a Brutalist masterpiece completed in 1974 but demolished in 2016. “A few years ago I put on an event at a speakeasy in the jewellery quarter, and wrote some music to perform there,” explains Pete. “One of the tunes was called ‘Klatch at the Zyggurat’, and it was about a dystopian rave in the library.

“There’s just something about Brutalist architecture that captures my imagination. Birmingham is well known for re-imagining itself architecturally, and the demolished Central Library is a bittersweet reminder of this progress. It’s interesting how something that seems so permanent can be erased, and how our visions of the future can change.”

Tell us more…

“In terms of synths, my game changer was Luke Abbott’s 2012 album, Modern Driveway,” says Pete.

As further influences, he cites contemporary Italian outfit Tweeedo and the groundbreaking work of Suzanne Ciani. But Zyggurat are forging their own style. Pete’s love of Brutalism, he claims, derives from the movement being “simultaneously ancient and futuristic”. Listen to ‘The Dream’, the concluding track of Broken Circle, and it’s hard not to apply the same description to the wheezing bellows and whirling bleeps of a band fuelled by delicious contrasts.

Album available here:
https://zyggurat.bandcamp.com/album/broken-circle

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

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