Stepping from the metaphoric shadow of her peers, ‘Peaks’ presents Hamann as a skilled sorceress of quietly rustic, funereal music It’s sorta dewy with pastoral melancholy in a vein recalling everyone from Laura Cannell to Anne Guthrie and Kassel Jaeger in her dreamlike transitions between real instruments and their processed apparitions.
Deftly repatterning her daily life into a woozier dream state, Hamann combines fragments of recordings made on tour into a pair of durational dreamscape collages that, to our ears’-eye, sounds like a music for steep sided valleys to the ‘Peaks’ of the title, hugging wooded clefts where the sun doesn’t always get through and life deciduously goes on in the shade.
Her decayed, organic decompositions connote a sense of melancholy whoch can be taken as intended - reflecting a state of homesickness on tour - or perhaps a sense of sehnsucht for something more indescribable, existential, most like Elodie or Akira Rabelais, that’s always going to haunt and soothe us at the same time, especially when it’s done well; just like this very fine introduction to Judith Hamann’s dream world newly uncovered by Oren Ambarchi’s ever on-it Black Truffle.
I thought the Silver edition was nice but the Gold is just absolutely stunning. A truly beautiful blend of Vanilla, Nutmeg, Coriander and Spices. This smells like true class. A man or a woman can wear this easily. Maybe better for Autumn and Winter.
This is the second fragrance I’ve tried from Maison Francis Kurkdjian that I’ve been really impressed with.
Heavily based on synths and keyboards and clocking in on no less than close 70 minutes over 4 LP-sides, this is arguably THE epic album from the cluster around the Förlag För Fri Musik empire. Gustaf Dickssons’ fascination for christianity/religious assemblies shines through once again, the title Livets Ord (“The word of life”) derived from the Swedish free church/sect with the same name that was based in Uppsala between 1983-2013 and casting a pastoral shadow over the ambient music of the album.
While dabbling with a long tradition of kosmische musik and private-pressed new age wonders, Blods now patented sound of a Björn Isfält-gone-sour still lingers throughout the entire recording. A cornerstone in contemporary Gothenburg underground music. Featuring guest appearances by Emelie Thulin and Jerker Jarold.
Tenth anniversary reissue that still sounds remarkably good. It could have come out yesterday, to be honest.
Boomkat:
Perversely and brilliantly, Yellow Swans disbanded right at the point when they were tipping into wider recognition, just as the rest of the world was catching up with the noise scene which shattered into myriad strains of kosmische noise, Neo-industrial and power noise and would give us everyone from James Ferraro to 0PN, Wolf Eyes and Prurient. But a decade later Yellow Swans’ ‘Going Places’ feels like a scrawled note left by a lover who has fucked off to somewhere more exciting, and leaves behind a ragged palimpsest of memories, forgotten or suppressed emotions and maybe even an encrypted map of where to find them in the future.
Today, the video streaming service created by the BBC and ITV released a nice new selection of classic 60s and 70s entertainment - mostly focused on science fiction.
The Prisoner
Sapphire and Steel
U.F.O
Thunderbirds
Randall and Hopkirk Deceased
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
Captain Scarlet
Space 1999
If you’re a fan of these shows, you’ll be thrilled at this news with the added benefit that many of them are in HD too.