(First published in Issue 108 of Electronic Sound magazine, December 2023)

SUZY MANGION
Days Lost To Snow
(Turning Circle)

“Will I play with them in the snow? / Showing them games, holding a hand that I have made? / Not in this year…”

There’s an overwhelming sense of loss here. Of loved ones, of time itself, and – in the opening lines of the heartbreaking title track – of the opportunity for motherhood. Mangion, who began work on this superlative album in 2008, even shelved her recordings for over a decade until the emotional wounds that inspired these extraordinary songs healed sufficiently for work to continue.

Finally finished, it’s an album of fragile glories. Accompanied by hymnal piano lines, church organs and her own jaw-dropping harmonies, Mangion offers both pain and redemption. “I was the first to go / The first changed to someone you don’t know,” she sings on ‘Winter Hymn’. But the closing refrains of ‘The Snow Line (Reprise)’ offer glimmers of hope. “When we reach the snow line, only in our own time / I’ll be there to keep an eye on you.” It’s a flickering log fire at the end of a bone-aching but beautiful journey.

Album available here:
https://suzymangion.bandcamp.com/album/days-lost-to-snow

BAS JAN
Back To The Swamp
(Fire)

The swamp? The unmistakeable stench of depression. “Been trying to put the blame / On things like diet and lack of sleep,” sings Serafina Steer amid the stop-start synths of ‘No More Swamp’. “I’m saying it right now – no more swamp!” It’s an uplifting moment of defiance, but the follow-up title track suggests the temptation to wallow is sometimes irresistible. “I’m down on my knees babe, missing the mud / That sinking feeling that was our drug…”

Bas Jan’s excellent third album adds open-hearted grit to their trademark quirky synth-pop. And it feels joyously collaborative, with Steer, Rachel Horwood, Emma Smith and Charlie Stock even swapping Temptations-style vocal lines on ‘At The Counter’. This celebration of mundanity (“Living my best life / I’m at the pet shop”) is echoed throughout – there’s a glacial tribute to Margaret Calvert, designer of Britain’s road signs, and the funk-driven ‘Singing Bar’ plays out a troubled relationship through barbed karaoke choices. “I sang Salt N Pepa ‘Push it, push it real good’ / You sang ‘Killing me softly’.” Wonderful.

Album available here:
https://basjan.bandcamp.com/album/back-to-the-swamp

PENNYCROSS COVEN
Between Shadows And Lore
(Woodford Halse)

Steve Netting’s 2022 album ‘A Plan For Plymouth’, recorded in his guise as Town & County, included a touching homage to the local bus operator. His metamorphosis into Pennycross Coven, however, suggests Devon is home to more esoteric knowledge than just the Sunday timetables. The eerie synths of ‘Casting The Circle’ set the tone for an splendid album playing melodic homage to Devonshire’s foremost witches, and by the time we reach the sepulchral whispers of ‘Astral Temple’ it’s hard not to imagine John Carpenter in a ceremonial robe, catching the 42A from Tinside Lido.

Album available here:
https://townandcounty-woodfordhalse.bandcamp.com/album/wf-75-between-shadows-and-lore

THE EYES AND THE MISTOIDS
Frock
(Waxing Crescent)

Charlie Brown and Snoopy never went fully psychedelic, but – if they had – then Vince Guaraldi’s bittersweet jazz soundtracks might have sounded a bit like this. The opening title track sets the tone perfectly. A toe-tapping piano rag accompanied by the disorientating squawk of a modular synth, it leads perfectly into the muscular rhythms of ‘Gigachad Timelord’. Stuart Smythe is the man behind this “menagerie of mayhem and mushrooms” and he effortlessly combines immaculate musicality (‘Prelewd’ is genuinely beautiful late-night piano jazz) with Zappa-esque mischief.

Album available here:
https://waxingcrescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/frock

LINOLEUM DEPARTMENT
Get Ready For Emptiness
(Pylon Phaser)

“A fever dream induced by a combination of the modern world and gone-off corned beef,” claims the label, but it’s more like an afternoon off school with chickenpox. ‘Handle It As You Would Handle Sausages’ is Pink Floyd’s ‘On The Run’ played on a Commodore 64, ‘Grubs and Beeswax’ is the school glockenspiel turning sentient and digging itself into the vegetable patch. Tom Wickstead is the brains behind this charming collection, and – on ‘Limbs Of Amphibians’ – he becomes perhaps the first man ever to have composed a seven-minute prog opus on a Casio VL1. Great fun.

Album available here:
https://linoleumdepartment.bandcamp.com/album/get-ready-for-emptiness

BURIAL GRID
Waves Of Quietus
(Spinal Constellation)

Massachussetts-based Adam Michael Kozak claims Waves Of Quietus – recorded simultaneously with 2021’s ‘Shores Of Quiddity’ – will be Burial Grid’s final offering. It’s to be hoped he reconsiders, because these tunes of “despairing solitude”, inspired partly by his own anxiety issues, are both affectingly jarring and oddly soothing. From the fragmented synths of ‘A Gale Of Tranquility’ to the ambient, modular tinkles of ‘Last Sequoia On Earth’, Kozak has created an album that touchingly evokes both the melancholy of degrading technology and the turmoil of the troubled mind.

Album available here:
https://burialgrid.bandcamp.com/album/waves-of-quietus

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

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