This one will get him in your Lastfm top 10.

Not even Dan wants to write on here. Well, we should save it for special occasions, and here is something very special for you and your love of music. Max Richter, who's name should at least ring a little bell, is about to release a new album after being approached by a small German record label. Their request was for him to take the reins of a re composition. The work in question, Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The result, a stunning success. The best Vivaldi has ever sounded, and the best Richter has ever recorded. It is verging on perfection.


Thanks for all the suggestions this year Dan.

Past Muso Club Recommendation

Pinch & Shackleton - Pinch & Shackleton

When Burial was defining what intelligent, studio based Dubstep is all about circa 2006, these two producers were putting their own stamp on the genre. Although not as groundbreaking, their work stands as excellent exemplars of an exciting current of noughties underground electronic music. Paired together on their self-titled release I'm surprised to have not seen this on any best of lists for 2011. Whilst hardly being dubstep, this is a worthy statement of bass music in a new decade. It is also a pretty exhilarating listen!

Past Muso Club Recommendation

Exuma - Exuma I

In my continual trawl through the world of alternative folk I am constantly seeking out the holy grail of experimental quality to match the mighty Comus. I think, and this is brave, Exuma is some way on the way to achieving this goal. Inspired and thematically linked to Voodoo Caribbean religion (Obeah), this feels both spiritually authentic and reverential. It's exotic nature never feels contrived nor does it feel inaccessibly alien. Intriguing, catchy, bizarre and thoroughly gripping.

Muso Club March Recommendation

Evangelista - Hello, Voyager

Voyagers! Open your cramped legs locked in that flying suit of lights.

There’s a visceral raw edge to Carla Bozulich’s avant-rock ‘Hello-voyager’. But highlighting its rawness only tells half the story. This is at times haunting and eerie, moving through moments of beauty into utter madness. The list of female experimenters she has been likened to seems endless, and many rather fitting – Patti Smith, Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson, Diamanda Galas. Yet Evangelista and Bozulich clearly have a sound which is uniquely theirs.

Still I stand before you, dear stranger and I say: Yes!

The album moves through a variety of styles and levels of aggression. Where ‘For the L’il Dudes’ is a beautiful, string driven instrumental, ‘Smooth Jazz’ is a militaristic rock number, ‘Frozen Dress’ moves into dark ambient territory whilst ‘Blue room’ is a haunting ballad driven by Bozulich’s outstanding vocals. In fact, the variety is impressive, and the quality of each track never falls short. Yet, there is a feeling that these tracks exist to build towards the closer which makes for a jarring and dramatic climax, a real highlight of the album.

There's only one word that has hasn't dried completely in your parched throat. Can you say it with me? The word is love.

Its haphazard percussion landing like stray fire on a battlefield makes for an aggressive and unstructured backdrop punctuated by heavy riffs of fuzzed electric guitar and Bozulich’s fierce diatribe on the alienation involved in love. She is a genuinely moving voice in experimental music and this album makes a welcome exploration of where rock can (and perhaps should more frequently) go post-rock, somewhere both menacing and apocalyptic. Hello voyager is an adventure into the dark recesses of insanity – as such it is highly recommended.

Open your eyes. You are with us now.

Muso Club Feb/March Recommendations

Alain Goraguer - La Planete Sauvage (Fantastic Planet OST)

This is the psychedelic OST to René Laloux’s cult classic, La Planaete Sauvage - The Fantastic Planet or, more accurately, The Wild Planet. Goraguer is a composer worth paying attention to, whose credits include working with and orchestrating many albums for Serge Gainsbourg in the 60s. That should give you enough of a rough idea of his arrangements in general, but with La Planete Sauvage, Goraguer reached a creative peak. This score is both progressive (in a 70s rock way) whilst being laden with a funk vibe. The result is a dense and trippy affair which combines impeccably with the surrealistic realisation of the film; which itself has a Terry Giliam-esque quality but avoids Gilliam’s obscure, non-linear experimentation and is less manifestly comedic. The music is driven by electric synthesisers and a heavy dollop of wah-wah guitar producing a majestic slab of 70’s experimental prog that oozes cool, slow grooves whilst maintaining a tense foreboding atmosphere. Being a soundtrack, the record has a repetitive quality through references back to key themes, but the strength of these key pieces only adds to the enjoyment. Approaching La Planete Sauvage, I’d strongly recommend watching the film first. Of course, the music stands confidently alone, but it was specifically composed to accompany the film, and so it is only fair to listen to it in its intended habitat.

Muso Club January Recommendations

Peaking Lights – 936
No surprises here – this was released on the ever engaging Not Not Fun label and does not disappoint. Retro sounding and Hypnagogic just when we thought the hypnagogue craze had to die. This is exactly what I want from a comforting, psych pop trip – so much so it was one of my albums of 2011!

Muso Club January Recommendations

Disco Inferno – The 5 EPs
Disco Inferno are a band who, indebted to Post-Punk, take a rather British spin on Post-Rock. They are certainly experimental with enough pop sensibilities to maintain the interest of a curious mainstream listener. All this is rather nice, but this recommendation is more of a project for all of us. This release comes highly recommended and draped with superlatives – perfect, way too smart, forward-looking, mind-boggling – and even took a coveted ‘record of the week’ at Aquarius records on its release with them saying:
“Amazing collection of long out of print eps from this seminal London post punk trio, whose sound was a brilliant mish-mash of sample-based technology, post-punk intensity, and a profoundly British mope, that influenced so many bands we love, from My Bloody Valentine to Stereolab, from Notwist to Animal Collective and beyond...”
Although I have enjoyed it, I don’t quite get it. So, let’s try and crack it together.

Review: Holger Czukay & Rolf Dammers – Canaxis

Approaching any album that is accompanied by a recommendation extolling and eulogising its merits, poses a number of specific difficulties. This can’t be some half listened to response, an under masticated pronouncement of the qualities contained within. Add to the mix the complication of a direct connection with Kraut rocking uber lords Can, a favourite of any discerning music listener regardless of genre persuasion, and we end up with a piece of music which requires repeated, careful attention employing all music appreciation faculties.

Fine – I considered the challenge accepted, especially as I am counted as one of those discerning music listeners with a penchant for Can. But then the project became more muddled on first listen. For Canaxis, it became immediately obvious, is a journey of ritualistic proportions that needs to be taken in one full dose and has a rather limited recommended prescribed amount; i.e. you can’t listen to this on repeat! This didn’t bode well as, to truly do justice to a potential 10/10 listen, listening to this on repeat was pretty much a necessity. So, over a month later, and having clocked up 7 listens, a pronouncement has been attained.

The two parts of the album neatly sit together to form a cohesive whole, but are suitably different to warrant individual attention. Boat-Woman-Song feels like a sacrificial lament. It is composed of ambient sound experimentation inflected through choral loops. Add to the mix an unintelligible female wail, which I like to assume is the boat woman, the overall impact of the track is one laced with a creepy, ominous air which adds a slightly unsettling under taste to the hypnotic sacrosanct vibe. The guitar driven mid section to the track offers little rest-bite from the monastic atmosphere, which returns minutes later with a fervent sacred force. This is a hypnotically beautiful track; It’s interesting to note that, although presenting the singing of Vietnamese peasant women, there is something of a monastic Christian flavour throughout.

Title track Canaxis maintains the first track’s ambient experimentation, this time providing a haze of otherworldly sonic noodling. The punctuation at the beginning and later again by a hazy gong adds a stark attention grabber through the repetition. The chanting here is less monastic than before, feeling like a soundtrack to some forgotten Japanese surrealist masterpiece. The layering of strings in the middle of the track once again ensures this is ambient music that is hard to ignore. The tension from the Boat-Woman-Song gradually returns throughout; there’s a feeling of anticipation and impending realisation throbbing behind the entire record that makes Canaxis riveting in its plodding repetition.

How to rate it? I leave that to your discretion. You couldn’t argue with a 10/10 rating for Canaxis, but equally you couldn’t criticise someone for filing it under ‘save for later’ after a first listen. The only definite here is that this is an album I urge you to own, experiencing it will make your life just that little bit better. All that is left to do is drift off into the soothing, hazy jazz ending... nice.