Reviews originally published in Issue 102 of Electronic Sound magazine, June 2023:

CRAVEN FAULTS
Standers
(The Leaf Label)

Since 2017, fuelled by a myriad of perfectly-formed EPs and an acclaimed 2020 album, Erratics & Unconformities, speculation has been mounting. Who is Craven Faults? Well, let’s look at the clues. It’s someone obsessed with the windswept topography of West Yorkshire, because hypnotic 15-minute opener ‘Hurrocstanes’ takes its title from the loosely-assembled cairns once used as boundary markers on rain-soaked moorland plateaus. It’s someone with more than a passing interest in Nordic mythology, because the industrial beats of 10-minute closer ‘Odda Delf’ are infused with the spirits of the Norse deities whose unforgiving presence seeped into the Yorkshire landscape from the early medieval period onwards. Previous releases, meanwhile, suggest a fascination with the lingering remains – both physical and economic – of abandoned textile mills and decommissioned collieries. All things considered, it’s probably not Taylor Swift.

The anonymity has certainly fuelled Craven Faults’ reputation, but it shouldn’t detract from the majesty of the music. As the clamour for a great unveiling grows, Standers ascends into ever more glorious isolation, eschewing the minutiae of sadly moribund industry for a solitary life in the shadow of lonely megaliths. ‘Meers & Hushes’ is modular melancholy, the sound of March winds whipping across ancient trackways. ‘Idols and Altars’ adds wistful, elegiac piano chords to the electronic hummadruz and gazes wistfully across patchwork fields and belching chimneys to a cluster of ancient stone sentinels on the horizon.  

At the heart of the album is the 18-minute ‘Sun Vein Strings’, a jagged symphony for buzzsaw synth and the wailing, distorted spectre of an antiquated Farfisa organ. Just like the best moorland walks, it’s four seasons in one bloody day – evolving from blue-skied optimism to face-stinging sleet and back again. Will we ever find out who’s hiding beneath the cagoul? Well, it’s a matter of months until Craven Faults is scheduled to make four sold-out live appearances at a restored Victorian watermill on the outskirts of Leeds. If the anonymity somehow remains, that’s commendable in its own right. But if the mask (and the woolly hat) slips, let’s look them in the eye and say heartfelt thanks for an album that – like the Yorkshire landscape itself – is both forbidding and beautiful in equal measure.

Album available here:
https://cravenfaults.bandcamp.com/album/standers

TAROTPLANE
39.28°N 76.62°W
(Woodford Halse)

In case you were wondering, it’s in Baltimore. The home of ambient wizard Tarotplane, although this immersive album takes lengthy detours to Lancashire, combining mellifluous psychedelic guitar stylings with the modular pulses of two distinctly British knob-twiddlers. There are two 20-minute suites, with the opening ‘53.77°N 2.70°W’ (We’ll save you the effort again, it’s in Preston) slowly sliding into the gently hypnotic grooves of moustachioed maestro Stephen ‘Polypores’ Buckley. It’s a soothing, sun-soaked paddle… until patters of Santana-esque noodles emerge from a gathering mist of somewhat darker ambience.

Mark ‘Field Lines Cartographer’ Burford slips into the hotseat for ‘54.05°N 2.79°W’. And yes, it’s in Lancaster. Here, gentle waves lap on the shore of a dreamstate that feels more abstract, more elusive. Spiralling guitars escort ghostly, half-heard voices to the brink of an increasingly grouchy-looking skyline. It’s the perfect conclusion to a strange, summer’s afternoon of an album. Now, everyone down to 54.07°N 2.87°W for a pint of mild and a bag of chips?

Album available here:
https://tarotplane.bandcamp.com/album/wf-80-3928-n-7662-w

SPARKS
The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte
(Island)

Ron and Russell Mael make light work of that difficult 25th album. Insidious pop melodies? Check. Soaring, dandyish vocals from the younger Mael? Check. Offbeam lyrical concerns from his older brother, a man who has always taken that “sideways look at the world” ethos disarmingly literally? Hell, yeah. Although the opening title track adds a streak of wistfulness that lingers throughout. “So many people are crying in their latte,” chants Russell on this infectious exercise in minimalist melancholy.

So ‘Veronica Lake’ and ‘We Go Dancing’ pay homage, respectively, to the peekaboo hairstyle of America’s wartime sweetheart and the synchronised frugs of the North Korean military. But elsewhere, the Maels seem endearingly world-weary… never moreso than on the glorious ‘Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is’. An absolute thumper the equal of anything in their canon, it has guitars that go whoomph, synths that go plink and a lyric of perfect, studied cynicism: “I was born just 22 hours ago / But I want to go back to my former quarters”. Midlife misery has never sounded so life-affirming.

Album available here:
https://sparksband.bandcamp.com/album/the-girl-is-crying-in-her-latte

THE METAMORPH
The Man On The 99th Floor
(Werra Foxma)

By night, Gavin Brick is the Eno-esque keyboard player in Pete Wylie’s resurrected Mighty Wah. By day, he retreats to his own Brutalist mind palace to become The Metamorph, purveyor of starkly sinister synth earworms. Named in honour of a 1967 short story by JG Ballard, this pristine collection is as creepily insidious as Ballard’s own tale of post-hypnotic skulduggery. From the throbbing electronic heartbeat of opener ‘Days Of Nemo’, it’s an album that mithers and niggles irresistibly.

Brick’s own Edgar Froese-inspired workouts are augmented by the expressive, mercurial guitars of Robin ‘Scanner’ Rimbaud, and it’s a stroke of genius. The conversation begins on ‘The Precipice’, a grumbling ballet of pent-up foul temper. On ‘Baroque Duel’ it spills over into a dyspeptic argument between keyboard and fretboard, and by the time we reach ‘Scandroids’ it’s clear both parties are reconciled to a dark future of dystopian bleakness. When Brick clicks his fingers, will we awake? Possibly, but the memories of this glacially gorgeous album will take a long time to fade.

Album available here:
https://themetamorph.bandcamp.com/album/the-man-on-the-99th-floor-2

BENEFITS
Nails
(Invada)

“Formulate your own ideas, don’t get bullied by hate speech / Ignore cartoon fascists, REJECT HATE”. The opening salvo of ‘Marlboro Hundreds’ epitomises an album of furious noise, with frontman Kingsley Hall – once of Teesside goth-punks The Chapman Family – eviscerating the carcass of a country on the bones of its arse. There are lighter touches, though. ‘Shit Britain’ is witty trip-hop (“You’re Churchillian if you’re posh and mumble”) and ‘Council Rust’ a sliver of ambient positivity. Its own grimly determined mission statement? “To never let the bastards win”. Beautifully brutal.

Album available here:
https://benefitstheband.bandcamp.com/album/nails

FOSTER NEVILLE
The Edge of Destruction
(Subexotic)

Durham-dweller Neville seems an eccentric cove. He is, we are told, chairman of the Society For Italic Handwriting. Or should that be the Society For Italic Handwriting? He approaches this splendid ambient album from a similarly curious angle, citing the mathematical philosophies of Matila Ghyka and the architecture of Le Corbusier as influences. But, as befits an album named after a 1964 Doctor Who story, it’s the spirit of the Radiophonic Workshop that pervades, with ‘Wenlock Clouds’, ‘Hookland’ and the ten-minute title track all exuding an air of disquieting vintage weirdness.

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

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