EXPERIMENTAL PROG
Ambient, electronica and oddities through the monocle of JO KENDALL.
Welcome all to a brand-new column that’ll throw some (Fair)light on the electronic, ambient and generally experimental side of prog. We’ll start with Georgian artist Beqa Ungiadze and his album Stations (Spirituals), which carves its own shape in the ambient minimalist area with an array of textured, melodic compositions allied to plump, confident production, reflecting the journey of a migrant (a very timely subject). Bright, popping synth notes tick away Time and pluck at stars in Under The Blanket, and undulating bass unnerves in Desert Full Of Disgrace,
ending in a wiry, metallic dreamscape outro, Fear Has No Cause.
With spring officially underway, it’s appropriate that Wendy Rae Fowler’s score for artful 2017 BBC Four nature film A Year In An English Garden: Flicker + Pulse (Ghost Rhythm) finally gets a releasee, the atmospheric opener
The Bells Of Ditchling evoking tinkling bluebells waking up. The US musician is also known for her experimental rock band We Fell To Earth and collaborations with the likes of Queens Of The Stone Age, UNKLE and more, and some of this desert rock/trip hop comes through on
Goo and the moody Quiet Sounds
In A Dark Hole. Elsewhere, Roger Eno-ish piano brings romance The Sound Of My Heart and celestial vocals beguile in Heart Of Darkness.
A shinier, sound effects-hyped listen is A Plastic Bag Filled With Water by London artist JQ (Green Records). Abstraction and melody sit side-by-side in this intriguing, euphonic set; the soundworld is built on everyday samples of conversation, TV and public address systems, melded with snapping percussion, rippling synth notes and, by the end, decaying loops, all put together over a decade.
Drawing our attention with its epic, capital-lettered album title, Mats Gustafsson and Joachim Nordwall’s
collaboration Their Power Reached Across Space And Time-To Defy Them Was Death-Or Worse (Thrill Jockey) is a sonorous, low-end and unsettling set of tempered body noises and instrumentation that purrs, pats and snuffles its way around eight tracks. Gustafsson’s use of horns/ winds is typically boundary-smashing, and occasionally it’s like having an argument with a goose, but the whole work is very original.
Finally, it’s Lancashire-born artist Richard Skelton.
Known for creating music around locations holding emotive resonance, Selenodesy (Phantom Limb) finds Skelton turning to the Kielder Observatory in Northumberland to tune in to the sounds of the universe with some divine ambient projections, the self-designed sleeve referencing Copernicus’ 1543 treatise, On The Revolutions Of The Heavenly Spheres. Don’t expect twinkling fluffiness, though – there’s awe-inspiring oomph and sometimes terrifying cinema in tracks such as Faint Ray Systems, with little solace to cling on to as we drift through yawning chasms of space in Fallback.