Following the magnificent ‘The Calm Before’, multi-instrumentalist and composer Poppy Ackroyd is enticing us again with her new single ‘Trains’. The track is taken from her forthcoming album Resolve, and it comes with a stunning video filmed in the beaches of Norfolk and Suffolk. Jola Kudela directs.
Resolve is out on February 2nd via One Little Indian.
LA’s Anenon aka Brian Allen Simon has announced the follow up to last year’s wonderful album Petrol. Set to arrive on February 8th through Friends of Friends, Tongue was recorded near Palaia in Italy’s Tuscany region last April. Simon lived temporarily in a 16th century small villa “to attempt to find something pure and ostensibly forgotten—soul music—not in the rhythm and blues sense, but something capable of reaching deep into our DNA coding and dimly remembered past”, explains the press release. This move, it adds, “is a reflection of Anenon’s drive to find a setting staggeringly gorgeous enough to match the iridescence of the compositions.” As with previous efforts, on Tongue we find Anenon exploring and merging an array of genres including jazz, classical, ambient and electronica.
‘Verso’ is the first stunning taste to be lifted from the album and you can stream it below.
Fresh off the release of their second spellbinding album, Open, German duo Grandbrothers have shared a new video for the album’s wonderful track ‘From a Distance’. The effort was directed by Dan Medhurst, who had this to say about it:
‘The film is a loose adaptation of the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus who struggled to push a large rock up a mountain only for it to roll back down and for him to start again each day. It tells a tail of eternal struggle for our lead character (played by Mark Wingett) who appears to be locked in a convoluted journey for victory, but ultimately ends up back where he started. It also plays with the concept of eternal recurrence; That the universe and all existence has already occurred and will continue to reoccur infinitely.’
“I chose to shoot in the Brecon Beacons at night to emphasise a feeling of total isolation. We used a high powered custom built LED attached to a drone to light our character and shot on 50 year old, Russian anamorphic lenses to create haunting, unusual visuals which play with the idea of distance and anonymity.”
Here’s the video.
In other good news, and in support of the album, Grandbrothers have just embarked on a month-long European tour, which includes a show at London’s Rich Mix on November 21st.
There’s only a couple of days to go before Le Guess Who? takes over Utrecht. With over 150 artists set to perform, how do we make sense of such a monumental line-up? We made a list of the artists we’re most excited to see and asked them for their recommendations.
Performing Friday 10th November at TivoliVredenburg
Photo: Mathew Parri Thomas
Staggeringly talented British composer and pianist Tom Rogerson has impressed us many a time with his creativity and technical skill behind the keys in Three Trapped Tigers, the trio he founded a decade ago. A prolific classically trained musician and gifted improviser, and a long-time presence in the London experimental/improv scene, Rogerson has played and collaborated in various other projects. His most recent venture saw him collaborating with Brian Eno, and Finding Shore is the fruit of it, the first album under his own name. Today he shares his thoughts on which acts he’s most looking forward to seeing at Le Guess Who?.
I could have picked from so many. I’ll be trying to watch Julianna Barwick, GAS, Steve Beresford,Tiny Vipers, Prurient, Ex Easter Island Head, Yves Tumor.
But here are my three:
Performing Friday 10th November at LE:EN, curated by Grouper
“Singular vision and artistic courage. Very influential on me artistically, especially in relation to what’s ‘allowable’, how far you can take something. But I’ve never seen him live so this is a must-see.”
Performing Sunday 12th November at Theater Kikker
“Bit of a highlight of the year so far, so much so that I bought the CD. We’re used to hearing these sounds in ironic contexts, but here it’s tactile and organic. Also the album seems very loose and live so I’m looking forward to seeing how/if they recreate that in performance.”
Performing Sunday 12th November at TivoliVredenburg, curated by Jerusalem In My Heart
“Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee
This album is basically one piece so it’s hard to pick a specific track. Incredible depth of vision and ambition, someone striving to push the form forwards while reckoning with its history. Confrontational, cathartic.”
Le Guess Who? will take place 9-12 November. For the full line-up, tickets and more info visit leguesswho.com. And take a look at other artists we’re excited about picking their own Le Guess Who?’s Who.
Danish singer-songwriter Bastian Kallesøe has a new album on the way under his project The New Spring. Entitled Wholly Wholly, the album finds Kallesøe, who previously operated as a one man band, accompanied by a full band. Ahead of the album’s release next February, The New Spring have shared new single ‘The Moon’ and Kallesøe had this to say about it:
“I’ve always been obsessed with the moon, and I’ve written countless songs to it and about it. However, this is the first to get on an album. Most of what we think we know about the moon is a lie. Man has never walked on the moon and will never do so. The moon is as far away as the most distant of stars, and we are doomed to admire it from afar while imagining that it’s close. In addition, moonlight is not a reflection of the sun’s light – the light actually comes from a source in the moon’s core.”
“I’ve always thought that the struggle between the moon and the sun is a kind of ancient battle taking place everywhere. The sun is daytime, work and life (productiveness). The moon is nightime, stagnation and death (nothingness). The sun illuminates the visible, the moon induces the invisible. The light of the sun uncovers the world, the moon’s light shrouds it. Many cultures have been enormously fascinated by the moon and it’s a common story that people became crazy if they gazed upon the moon for too long (the word ‘lunatic’ says it all). The moon has always been alluring and mysterious, and at the same time dangerous as if it could swallow you up. Today, we no longer believe it is dangerous – because we are sure that we as humans have it under control – and so we do not really look at it anymore. This is the most dangerous thing we can do. We have to look at the moon!”
Wholly Wholly is out on February 2nd through Tambourhinoceros. Now listen to ‘The Moon’.
Photo: Dylan Pearce
Following the excellent Shadow Expert EP released back in May, Philadelphia’s four piece Palm have announced their second album, Rock Island, due out on February 9th through Carpark Records. On the record, the band “produces evidence of a distinct musical language, developed over time, in isolation, and out of necessity”, describes a press release. It adds: “On the island, melodies are struck on what might be shells or spines. Rhythms are scratched out, swept over, scratched again. Individual instruments, and sometimes entire sections, skip and stutter. There is the sense of a music box with wonky tension or a warped transmission in which all the noise is taken for signal.”
Lead single ‘Pearly’ is now streaming and it comes with an accompanying visualizer created by Greg O’Connell. Check it out.
