Back catalogue: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: Heartworms are brand new outfit releasing under Speedy Wunderground - one of the few contemporary imprints giving fresh faces a fighting chance. Their debut EP 'A Comforting Notion' embeds the dystopian vision of one Jojo Orme into our minds - the frontwoman is a grandiose performer, giving tired tropes of delicate female bandleaders a run for its money through means like gritty post-punk and dark synth instrumentation, and a macabre sense of humour. The band's name references a heart-defecting parasite that is commonly found in dogs and is spread through mosquito bites - but don't worry, this EP will make your heart feel nothing but joy (permitting, at least, that you're a fan of bleak music!)

Review: The heavyweight trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi return with their 12th and most epic release to date, a triple LP no less. Documenting the entirety of their final performance at the dearly departed Roppongi home of Tokyo underground institution SuperDeluxe in November 2018, the music spread across these six sides splits the difference between the guitar-bass-drums power trio moves and experiments with novel instrumentation that have defined the trio's decade of working together. Containing some of the most delicate music the three have committed to wax since the gorgeous 12-string acoustic guitar and dulcimer tones of the
only wanting to melt beautifully away album, this wide-ranging release also offers up some of their most blistering free rock performances yet.

Review: Wow. To put it mildly. It takes about three minutes of this stunning contemporary classical masterpiece to realise just how breathtaking this contemporary classical masterpiece actually is. So hard is the task of conveying the depth of its beauty we might as well give up now, although there's no harm in trying. As tragic as it is uplifting, subtle but bold, we veer from the sunrise cinematics of "In The Shattering of Things" to mournful melancholia on "We Try To Make Sense Of It All". Strings soar, keys gently play, harmonies so emotive it's enough to break your heart seem to pour from the album. Completing a trilogy catalysed by the death of a loved one, logically - for those who have ever experienced grief in its purest forms - it's as much about the power of silence and what's not there as what's in the score.

Review: French-German duo Nina Harker are made up of Apolline Schoser and Nocola Henry, who have been testing at the fringes of folk across intermittent albums with an introverted brilliance about them. Now they make a cosy home on Aguirre Records with this extended excursion into their strange sound world, where skewed finger picking and disembodied vocal snatches lope around in a distorted soup, only for Schoser's singing to cut through the mix and bring your focus into a re-calibrated present. It's considered chaos played out with patience, constantly delivering the unexpected and leaving a strong impression from its very first notes to the last.

Review: Leeds-based duo Hawthonn express their inspiration from Coil in their artist name (a tribute to the late Jhonn Balance) and it doesn't take long listening to their music to hear that indelible mark on their sound. Earth Mirror marks Layla and Phil Legard's second album for the Ba Da Bing! label out of NYC after 2018's Red Goddess (Of This Men Shall Know Nothing). Weaving a compelling mixture of low, murmuring industrial tones and pastoral folk with an occult twist, the duo move through enveloping, atmospheric spaces. At times Layla Legard's voice cuts through the mist, and elsewhere we reside in instrumental pastures, but the mood remains haunting and evocative from start to finish, not to mention masterfully rendered.

Review: Ever since Los Angeles noise-rock trio HEALTH provided the score to Rockstar Games' Max Payne 3, both their sonic and career paths have veered down a direction that avid early fans still have trouble reconciling. Shifting from predominantly instrumental, spasmodic chaos to a unique form of laser-focused, industrial metalwave; their 2019 opus Vol 4: Slaves Of Fear newly established them as the ultimate electronic act for metal fans. While lockdown led to the Disco 4 collaborative albums, split into two separate volumes and boasting a remarkably dynamic array of features from the likes of alt hip-hop guru JPEGMAFIA, trap-metal phenom Ghostemane, hyperpop absurdist duo 100 Gecs, industrial overlords Nine Inch Nails and even groove metal legends Lamb Of God, their fifth full-length Rat Wars draws on the insidious influence from these more aggressive collaborators while simultaneously offering some of their most vulnerable, melancholic and fragile material to date. Complete with a Godflesh sample, it's rather fitting when considering HEALTH's attempts to marry such disparate yet equally punishing sonics mirrors Justin Broadrick's forays from decades ago. Grinding, mechanical percussion fuses to ethereal, androgynous vocals all drowned within EBM sickliness, whilst unpacking utterly nihilistic worldviews. Imagine Placebo or The Pet Shop Boys writing an album with Ministry, and you may start to have an idea of the war you're heading into...

Review: LA based industrial trio HEALTH have had quite the curious trajectory from their confrontational noise-rock beginnings, to providing the acclaimed score to Max Payne 3, all the way to redefining themselves as a gritty, synth-metal behemoth on 2019's Vol 4: Slaves Of Fear. Following on from their lockdown-inspired two-part Disco 4 collaborative project which boasted cuts written in tandem with artists ranging from a multitude of differing sonic spheres, such as alternative hip-hop (JPEGMAFIA, Ghostemane) to hyperpop (100 Gecs) and even grindcore (Full Of Hell), their latest endeavour appears to be taking cues from both their more vicious experiments as well as their newfound collaborative ethos. With features from the likes of Godflesh and Willie Adler of Lamb Of God, whilst embracing both their metallic and techno-leaning indulgences simultaneously, Rat Wars promises to distil the myriad of components essential to the sonic makeup of HEALTH into one oppressive, melancholic, hellish, absorbing and vital collection.

Review: Hedvig Mollestad has a considerable weight of recorded music under her belt from her pre-existing trio with Ellen Brekken and Ivar Loe Bjornstad, and now the Norwegian experimental guitarist is heralding a new outfit for further explorations on the outer edges of jazz fusion. Joining Mollestad on her journey this time around is Stale Storlokken on keys, fresh from Supersilent and Elephant9, and promising improv drummer Ole Mofjell. Weejuns is a freewheeling excursion somewhere around the orbit of bands like Henry Cow, Soft Machine and Mahavishnu Orchestra, captured live from various gigs in Oslo and Stavanger and spread across an expansive double album.

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Review: A cast of 47 musicians including a gospel choir and 16-piece orchestra came together to work on this wildly ambitious second album from HMLTD. It took over two years to put together and is not so much a concept album as a fully realised musical universe that crosses all genre and medium boundaries. It is set in a version of Medieval England steeped in sci-fi fantasy and is part a political polemic and part a moving and psychological journey. Frontman Henry Spychalski draws on his own struggles to tell a modern tale about the impotence of people feel stuck inside system of power.

Review: First released in 1998, the last album from the sadly missed Mark Hollis was originally set to be a Talk Talk album, scheduled to follow up 1991's "Laughing Stock". Described by engineer Phil Brown as "open, restful and at times fantastically beautiful", Hollis' only solo effort is quite the opposite of the dark and claustrophobic direction of Talk Talk's final album. Entirely self-produced, the record takes Talk Talk's pared back, emotive intimacy further into yet more minimal, private territory, of sometimes almost unbearable intensity. A complex, compelling last dispatch from an indisputable genius.

Review: David Holmes' first solo album since 2008's The Holy Pictures, Blind On A Galloping Horse now comes to Heavenly Recordings. A politically-charged LP full of sonic interrogations of political disaster and turmoil, Holmes here joins the cast of artists using their art to provide solace to music fans suffering at the hands of the Uncertainocene. With updated versions of the previously released singles 'Hope Is The Last Thing To Die' and 'It's Over If We Run Out Of Love', as well as a recording of an unreleased song by Holmes' late friend Andrew Weatherall, we're reminded of conflict, migration and othering, as all manner of voices combine to form a diverse but unified whole against a backdrop of leftfield post-punk - be they the spoken word accounts from Afghan and Ukrainian refugees now welcomed as residents in Belfast, or the French and Irish observers of the UK's turmoil of recent years.

Review: Julia Holter's sixth album Something in the Room She Moves might just be the Los Angeles songwriter's best work. In the past she has often explored memory and dreamlike futures but on this new outing she is very much more in the moment throughout. She explains herself hat "There's a corporeal focus, inspired by the complexity and transformability of our bodies." Musically the album mixes fretless electric bass pitches with her unique vocal melodies. The recognisable sounds of the Yamaha CS-60 interweave with more organic wind instruments and add up to a fluid, watery sound that flows smooth and carries you along with it amongst the gorgeous harmonies.

Review: Julia Holter has subtly shifted focus on new album (her sixth in total) Something In The Room She Moves, moving away from exploring memory and dream-like states to instead focus on (in her words) "the complexity and transformability of our bodies". To create this rather distinctive (and rather good sound world), she added her own ethereal vocals to self-created backing tracks rich in electric fretless bass, warming wind and reed instruments, and distinctive synth sounds plucked from a Yamaha CS060. The results are predictably immersive and soul-enriching, with highlights including stunning opener 'Sun Girl', the percussively inventive 'Spinning', and the pastoral, dreamy 'Evening Mood'.

Review: Julia Holter's sixth album, Something In The Room She Moves, is a dreamlike exploration of complexity and transformability, featuring flowing harmonic universes and fluid, water-like melodies. Her vocal register, reminiscent of Siouxsie Sioux, Nico, or Kate Bush, possesses a matchstick intensity, rekindling its own flame through the conversation in her voice. Holter's diaphragm shifts between instruments, creating a continuum of fretless electric bass pitches counterpointing with gliding vocal melodies. Glissing Yamaha CS-60 adds a touch of experimentalism, while her production choices and arrangements maintain a sense of simplicity and refinement. Holter's singing resonates in somatic frequencies, evoking a deep connection between mind and body. With its liquid, ever-changing nature, 'Something In The Room She Moves' invites listeners to immerse themselves in a world of sound that is both ethereal and profoundly human.

Review: Hailing from Phoenix, Arizona, Holy Fawn have become quickly renowned thanks in no small part to their acclaimed debut LP Death Spells, released in 2018. Combining overwhelming levels of reverb-drenched shoegaze with blackened metallics whilst avoiding the obvious blackgaze assumptions, their unique brand of cathartic post-metal has been refined and polished to a severely impressive degree on the much anticipated sophomore effort Dimensional Bleed. Arriving toward the end of 2022, the work builds upon the melancholic grandiosity of their The Black Moon EP with shimmering ease, conjuring levels of emotive despair usually occupied by acts of the more extreme metal variety. Atmospheric, forlorn and utterly crushing, this is doomgazing at both its most ethereal and punishing.

Review: Cork based musician Elaine Howley is part of many locally successful bands including The Altered Hours and Crevice, but this is her debut solo venture. The Distance Between Heart And Mouth is the haunting final culmination of an audio diary first noted down on a four-track tape recorder, later translated into gorgeous musical form. Glitchy darkwave and boxy dream pop tempered by ghostly vestiges of goth are among its sonics, as the album slinks through nine synthy meditations on intimacy, communication and ritual.

Review: A 2020 surprise album from Illinois rockers Hum - their first in over twenty years, following Downward Is Heavenward in 1998 - Inlet charts the band's morphology-over-time from the past into the modern day, and amounts to a sendoff the band's original drummer Bryan St. Pere, who died on July 1st 2021. Recorded over several years, it was made between intermittent appearances at festivals and short tours; from 'Waves' to 'Shapeshifter', we're met with a super-high-fidelity get-together, mixing notes of black metal and shoegaze to procure sludgy, crashy and synth-driven Hums.

Review: La Perversita is something of a seminal French underground record first released back in 1979 but still sounds way ahead of its time today. It's a concept record and collage of found sounds, guitars and synths that was designed to "sublimate sexual perversion." It comes from Jacques Pasquier who was the founder of S.C.O.P.A./Invisible Records and a key part of the alternative scene that was rife in Paris in the 70s with producer Hector Zazou amongst other creative talents and outsiders. This remastered reissue comes with extensive liner notes from people in and around the project at the time.