Plutonic Rainbows

Watkins Group is a new project from one half of infamous Crust House vagrants Watkins & Almodovar, taking inspiration from the landscapes, myths and legends of ancient Scottish & Celtic culture. The title of this debut album on the newborn Frequency Consortium label, Beanntan a’ Bhròin (Mountains of Sorrow), might already give an indication as to where we’re headed here; evoking Nan Shepard’s meditations on the Cairngorms at their most isolationist & uncompromising as much as it does the creatures that occupy the crags, gullies & glens of old Caledonia. Watkins Group dive deep into fx-drenched grot and expansive somnambulant driftworks over six tracks, as spacious as they claustrophobic, recalling the works of Deathprod, early-90s Lustmord and at times even the stark soundtracks of Mica Levi. credits

The acclaimed Austrian composer has detailed a new album on the way. It is released on 6th December. This is Fennesz’s most reflective album to date. Composed and recorded at the end of 2023 and completed in the summer of 2024.

Offered as a sort of mediation on displaced, non-linear flows of time in a flatland age of everything-at-once, where the timeline has become ever more elusive, ‘Time For No Memory’ hacks into perception of temporality and time-based art with a really trippy nuance. It was realised during 2023 and now arrives via Berlin’s Vaknar (Mats Erlandsson, Tape Loop Orchestra, KMRU, Kevin Drumm) with a wonderfully disjointed, evocative ebb and flow thru ten vignettes of backcombed, curled tape loops that fray and bifurcate in gently hypnotic patterns.

In an age where the unyielding flow of time often overshadows the deeper resonances of our existence, Daniel Majer’s latest album, Time for No Memory, serves as an evocative meditation on the ephemeral nature of experience. Produced throughout 2023 and released in the latter half of 2024, this collection of tracks swerve through what seems like a cacophony of FM radio frequencies while oscillating between the familiar and the uncanny, leaving us with a sonic landscape that feels both timeless and retroactive yet palpably present.

‘I Dreamed a Beating Heart’ surely reminds us to a Pita classic, and ‘C Pop’ hops out of the box between what sounds like a Chinese ballad, pinging digital decays and screwed field recordings like Carl Stone cutting up a Sublime Frequency grabbed from the airwaves. The fever dream restlessness of his pop cut-up ‘Dressed’ surely conjures comparison with Jan Jelinek and Joseph Hammer’s Pan album, and the tongue-tip thizz of ‘Em’ could almost be one of Novoline’s recent pop abstractions. The relatively straight-played bit of exotica feel like it fell off a V/Vm oddity, and leads to pill-bellied sensation of ‘Divided Heart’ and by extension the proto-vaporwave of 0PN’s Chuck Person on ‘Contact’, with a waking dream-like ‘German Tacos’ that ideally signs it off and leaves one with the strangest, fleeting feels, ready to do it again.

I've just started the new book from Stephen King. For me, he has been a bit hit or miss these past few years. However, I have always enjoyed his short story collections and this new publication of twelve tales is pretty good. These stories are about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen.

Chanel have released a new iteration of Allure Homme Sport. This new edition is called Superleggera. A limited edition in a 100ml bottle.

An intense fragrance with fresh, woody, ambery notes. A work of precision and balance that has been tuned to perfection. A tension between lightness and intensity, which reveals the allure of a man who is free and who strives for the ultimate in performance.

Sleek and compact with a streamlined shape, the iconic Allure Homme Sport bottle has been reimagined using clear smoked glass. The emblematic Superleggera name, a symbol of excellence and distinction, is stamped in raised red lettering on the bottle, adding a touch of sporty allure.

I picked up a bottle today. It is indeed, very nice. Not groundbreaking in anyway but a nice addition to the Allure line. Despite reports from reviewers on-line, I find the sillage and longevity to be just as good as the older eau-extreme edition.

Glooming folk drone ambience from Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and Lisa McGee aka Higuma. This gorgeous pressing is every bit as dark and brooding as you'd expect from someone involved in Barn Owl, conjuring arcane drones and spellbound choirs of forest folk to commune with the gods during a sixth month winter.

This is the kind of stuff that would have been banned in 1342. If they had electricity. And turntables. It feels like we've stumbled across a meditative ceremony where simple folk voices gradually emerge from the gloom into haunting choral hazes. Coruscating guitar notes provide faint light, gaseous shimmers which sometimes grow into subdued swells and moments of intensity but always dissipate into the black background, lost to the night. The drawn-out bowed strings are a constant, maintaining a slow burning tension throughout while occasional occult percussion chimes across the scene, jangling rhythms gently dusting the surface with bells and gongs.

This record creates it's own fully formed alternate dimension for a limited opening of time, allowing us to enter and observe the proceedings from a branch on a tree before receding into the run-out grooves and wondering where we just were. Magnificent.

This is Alexei Navalny’s life in his own words: his Soviet childhood, political awakening, his marriage and beloved family, his total commitment to taking on a corrupt regime and his enduring love of Russia and its people. His 2020 poisoning by the Russian security services was a global news event. In 2024 he died in a brutal Siberian prison. He began writing Patriot whilst recovering from his poisoning; it ends with his prison diaries, seen here for the first time.

We witness the growth of his nationwide support. We see his many arrests and harassment and, in stunning detail, the attempt on his life. We understand why he felt he had to return to Russia. In prison, he shows a spirit and a sense of humour that cannot be crushed.

Patriot is the exhilarating life story of one of the most fearless and inspiring figures of our time, who became a beacon to millions and the sole political threat to Vladimir Putin.

Richie Culver's debut full-length album under his Quiet Husband alias, 'Religious Equipment' on independent Jordan-based label Drowned By Locals.

'Religious Equipment' drills deep into the gritty depths of industrial techno and noise, pulling no punches with a set of tracks named after opiate blockers or substitute drugs like Methadone and Subutex, which serve as sonic stand-ins for suppressed urges, blurring the line between resistance and surrender. Fresh from his live assault at Berlin's Atonal Festival, the album draws on the brutal, repetitive rhythms of techno, while spoken word passages — including one featuring his mother — cut through the chaos with a deeply personal narrative. From the gates of hell to the empty solace of noise, 'Religious Equipment' paints a harrowing portrait of addiction and substitution, where noise becomes a proxy for silence, and intensity replaces numbness.

The album drops on 22nd November 2024.

Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, has won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. Known as hibakusha, the survivors of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been recognised by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

I think this comes at a very unstable time, especially with the current conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. I think the committee are sending a message and maybe a warning.