Back catalogue: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: 'The Sevens' by A Place To Bury Strangers unveils previously unreleased tracks from the band's acclaimed album See Through You. Renowned for their visceral post-punk and shoegaze sounds, the group delivers a sonic revelation across this white 7", which is one of a series of four. Each one invites you to delve into their universe and explore raw and personal tracks that capture life's most emotive essence. 'Chasing Colors/I Can Never Be As Great As You Are' is the second release that A Place To Bury Strangers founder Oliver Ackermann has said reflects on returning to their roots and embracing the unique format of standalone tracks, thereby offering a glimpse into a unique moment in time.

Review: Not a lot sounds like The Amorphous Androgynous, which is a relief because with a name like that you really do need to back it up with something experiential. A quick search online can tell anyone the duo - better known as Future Sound of London - have a strange relationship with Noel Gallagher, having recorded with him only to then be told by the Manchester man the outcome was shit so he destroyed the masters. Apparently these then turned up in a sock circa 2018 and you could almost be forgiven at least one of the tracks is here.

Actually, The World Is Full of Plankton comprises three tracks from 2005's album Alice in Ultraland, but the wailing, trippy, spaced out vocals that float in and out of dominance on the title number almost sound like the old Oasis lad. It's a deep and very operatic affair, which contrasts the exotic spatiality of 'All Is Harvest' and the prog rock piano stepper, 'The Emptiness of Nothingness'. Amazing stuff.

Review: After Dinner is like one of those molecular gastronomy adventures, where dishes are both playful and highly complex, not necessarily revealing themselves until the very end. Done with talk of food? Let's just say this is a loose art collective led by a composer called Haco, who were concerned with taking musical plurality and splicing disparate elements together to create a kind of friendly Frankenstein's monster of sound.

And friendly it definitely is. Considered a true one-off of Japanese pop-art rock-avant garde, Paradise of Replica is jaunty, it's amusing, it's beguiling and, ultimately, incredibly immersive. There are moments where the clash of pianos plucked straight from a comedy of manners opera and rough electric guitars (to give one example of the juxtapositions) feel rather strange, but it doesn't take too long for you to get sucked right into the centre of this insane sonic universe.

Review: Originally formed in 1967, legendary avant-garde progressive Krautrock legends Agitation Free return with their first album in over two decades, following on from 1999's often overlooked gem Rivers of Return. While the band would reform in 2007 for a series of Japanese shows, later released as the Shibuya Nights live album in 2011, followed by a subsequent 2012 tour, Momentum marks their first collection of newly crafted material in the 21st century. Complete with new tour plans set to commence at the Burg Herzberg Festival, which will be the members' first show together in over ten years, there's never been a more ample time to bone up on your classic 60s prog knowledge in preparation for the pioneers' sonic self-examination.

Review: Air Formation are Brighton-based shoegazers who are back now with their sixth album, a self-titled record on Club AC30, that is inspired by their love of pioneering bands like Flying Saucer Attack, Spiritualized and The Jesus & Mary Chain. It is a collection of tracks drenched in droning keys, heavy feedback, delayed guitar loops and heavenly vocals that float up top above the noise. It takes in the likes of the blissful opener 'Pressure Drop', the sweeping crescendos of 'Only So Much Light', shimmering and swirling melodies on 'I Don't Want To Talk' and 'Crashing Out' and plenty more.

Review: A re-pressing of a classic album that's been on plan for over 15 years, we're delighted that Air Formation's Daylight Storms has finally landed in store. And trust us, taking the form of a special limited edition sunburst red and orange vinyl, it's well worth the wait. Receiving a swathe of categorisations from dream pop, dream gaze, to post rock, one thing's for sure - this album is definitely of the dreamy variety. Journeying through a collage of surreal, gently enveloping noise and held against a backdrop of choir-like vocals and picturesque melodies, this is an album that floats into view. Sounds you'll want to sink into time and time again.

Review: Originally formed in 1977 (the year punk supposedly died), the Mark Perry-led collective known as Alternative TV are often cited as one of, if not, the first act to marry reggae rhythms to punk rock motifs. Refusing to rest on these laurels for long, however, the group would go on to utterly defy easy categorisations over the ensuing decades, with their 1979 second album Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One) eschewing much of the anthemic mayhem of their debut The Image Has Cracked, in favour of a more experimental free-jazz form. This early anecdotal evidence is vital when attempting to unpack their new eleventh LP Direct Action. Following on from 2015's Opposing Forces, and serving as their first project of new material in almost a decade, this latest collection opts to be their most challenging, impenetrable and unwelcoming yet. Utilising tape loops, isolated guitar passages, minimal vocals and an overall industrial-leaning quality, the fact that the group so many decades ago had their first rehearsals at Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records studio seems like no great revelation in retrospect. Unconcerned with listener expectation or radioplay, Direct Action demands animated response yet refuses to offer any helping hand down its path of caustic, alien sonics.

Review: Talk about adaptive design. Zoh Amber, Chris Corsano and Bill Orcutt are anything but household names, but rank among the finest musicians in the US today. All three have carved a name for themselves as improvisational maestros, capable of working with others on-the-fly to create powerful sounds and soundtracks in a display of artistic talent you just don't get to see - or hear - everyday. Corsano and Orcutt were no strangers when Flower School was recorded, around spring 2023. Nor were Amba and Corsano - the pair had just finished a joint tour of the US West Coast. The three had never engaged together, though, but they probably should have. An album that represents each individually, but also shows how they can create something greater as one, this is a freewheeling, freeform exploration of sounds between jazz, industrial, grunge, alternative rock, blues and noise.

Review: Traditionally the liner notes of an album take on a kind of third-party address, where a writer is delivering their thoughts about how an album makes them feel without breaching that space where they are representing themselves or the moment in time directly to the reader. The goal is typically a kind of timelessness, but as we live in unprecedented times, unconventional methods take on new life, and hopefully importance. In the spirit of that idea... man, is this the kind of album we all need right now. So many of us feel like we're constantly walking a tightrope, are feeling like we can't unwind, are in genuine need of a few moments of respite. Every so often an album emerges from an artist that most likely did not realize when they were composing how timely the results would be, and Lofi Dimensions is exactly that kind of record. It doesn't really matter why it's coming when it is, what's important is that it's here, offering peace to the perturbed and inspiration for the downcast. The American Dollar have long been one of those artists operating in a kind of middle ground, a band with a long history of creating moving instrumental rock that has somehow avoided ever becoming synonymous with modern American post-rock acts. They retain a sort of autonomy in a valued position just outside the boundaries of classification. Blending electronic textures with moving guitar and keyboard melodies, their music has always traveled somewhere in the spaces between trip-hop, electronic, post-rock and ambient, and this inability to be defined is ultimately what sets them apart from the trappings of genre, allowing them to be whatever they want The American Dollar to be in a given moment, always on their terms.

Review: Athenian producer Aggelos Baltas gets conceptually deep on his latest album, Earth, as Anatolian Weapons. It is one, he says, that captures a sense of hope for our future that grows from the "sweet bitterness of the present and the past." It is another fantastically polyrhythmic work of percussive ingenuity and authentic Greek folk fusions that unfurls with all the hypnotism of a prime kraut record. There are psychedelic elements, hints of prog-rock, plenty of ancient dancing traditions and future-facing electronics all seamlessly woven together into an album of otherworldly and cinematic moods and grooves.

Review: The festive season can be busy, stressful and quite frankly hard work. Thank you to Joel Andrews then for serving up this perfect excuse to take half an hour to yourself and get lost in his most lush and soothing ambient sounds. The A-side is taken up entirely by 'Paradise Bird' which is rich with spring-like energies and delightful uplifting melodies. But this limited long player also offers more quiet moments of calm and introspection such as on the harp-like and heavenly melodies of 'Chamber Of The Heart.' Glorious stuff that will enrich and energise your life with its subtle and charming beauty.

Review: Ash Ra Tempel are something of a ground zero for the krautrock movement, and their 1971 debut album is the logical first step in exploring this profound, captivating world of sound. Made up an alarmingly youthful Manuel Gottsching, Klaus Schulze and Hartmut Enke, and recorded by the legendary Conny Plank, it's an expansive two-pronged excursion which takes psychedelic rock and plunges it into the possibilities of early electronic music with mesmerising results. This 50th anniversary edition has been put together with due care and attention by Gottsching's label MG Art, and it comes with additional posters, inlays and the informative manifesto of the band as written by Gottsching all those years ago.

Review: Musician and producer Mehmet Aslan digs into the post-punk sonics of Switzerland during the 1980s on this all new compilation for Strut. Senza Decoro: Liebe & Anarchia In Switzerland 1980-1990 is a spotlight on what was a hugely innovative period for experimental electronic outfits once the country had fully gotten over the punk explosion of the 70s. "It was like a wild laboratory for all forms of new and strange sounds, rackets and compositional experiments," says a writer who knows and this double album very much backs that up.

Review: Japanese psychedelic pop singer-songwriter Ai Aso hails from Tokyo and has an almost impossibly wispy thin folky style to her singing that makes her utterly unique. She has been active since 2000 and has worked both solo as well as with the likes of White Heaven members You Ishihara and Michio Kurihara. Her solo album arrived back in 2014 and now a decade on gets a vinyl press via Ideologic Organ. It is beautifully delicate and whimsical, with lullaby-like guitar melodies and her own vaporous vocals drifting gently with a real sense of innocence in the sparse tracks. Lo-fi and intimate, this is a quiet gem.

Review: The latest offering from serial collaborator and cross-genre tastemaker Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ imprint is a tender filigree bureau of acid folk sketches from Tokyo's Ai Aiso. Across seven tracks, she patiently meanders through broken and phased chord progressions, her simultaneously pure and wavering vocal lines forming elegant arcs over sparse beds of instrumentation and washes of room tone. Some tracks are bookended by applause, and it is this ostensibly 'indoorsy' atmosphere which lends the mini LP a great deal of charm; the delicate atmospherics seem to issue from an intimate and isolated space. Indeed, Bandcamp user Everyvillianislemons317 describes it as "The perfect album for a lonely night in the city." We're more than inclined to agree.

Review: Loren Connors and Alan Licht's collaborative journey spanning 30 years culminates in their eighth album, At The Top Of The Stairs, is a great example to their enduring partnership and musical evolution. Recorded live in 2018, the album features two side-long pieces that showcase the duo's ability to create ethereal, abstract soundscapes with intricate arrangements. Throughout their collaboration, Connors' ghostly blue tones and Licht's meticulously crafted feedback and harmonic patterns have formed the core of their unique sound. At The Top Of The Stairs captures the duo's ascent through layers of atmospheric tension, punctuated by Connors' thunderous waves of effects. Connors and Licht have left an indelible mark on the experimental music landscape.