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Release Date: 14/06/2024
Theme: collaboration. Or how to remain creative in the modern world.
Nanocluster started as a bespoke one off pop up gig that turned into an album series.
Built around Colin Newman from acclaimed UK post-punk band Wire and his partner in life and sound Malka Spigel from Minimal Compact with various guests, they define collaboration.
Colin met Malka when he produced her band in 1985.The collaboration started there.
They became a couple and created their own projects like the instrumental electronic duo Immersion in 1994 and Githead in 2004 - spaces where they both ‘feel really comfortable.’
Growing out of Immersion, Nanocluster was birthed as a series of one-off gigs at the Rosehill in their new hometown of Brighton in 2017 with an added cast of influential and cutting edge musicians.
These were not ad hoc jams.
The songs had been written and rehearsed prior to each performance. This adventure led to a debut album, Nanocluster Vol 1, released in 2021 with Stereolab singer/guitarist Laetitia Sadier, German post-rock duo Tarwater, electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss and experimental artist Robin Rimbaud (Scanner).
Released again as double 10 inch with each collaboration taking up each disc, the new album Nanocluster Vol 2 has further developed this idea with a stark beauty that sounds like a future pop with sleek lines and unexpected great melodies.
Disc one is built around Thor Harris, the charismatic percussion player from Swans and many other projects, who they met and performed with at South By South West in Austin, Texas in 2023. Thor adds ideas, his tuned percussion instruments, clarinet and trumpet to the sessions.
Disc two is built around Cubzoa (Jack Wolter from the band Penelope Isles) who brings his musical craft, beguiling voice, guitar and much more.
Meanwhile Matt Schulz from Holy Fuck plays drums across both combinations helping the resulting music become a third entity.
What results is a true collaboration that, enhanced via Immersion’s production, merges its elements to develop a new harmony.
Key to the process is Colin and Malka’s radio show for Slack City radio, ‘Swimming In Sound’ with its entertainingly diverse playlist that has widened their horizons. It’s also helped build relationships not only with these collaborators but also musicians like ambient country masters SUSS, with whom they plan an extended Nanocluster tour in the USA with in 2025 and Brighton via Falmouth’s “jangly pop punk” Holiday Ghosts with whom they will perform the next Nanocluster event in their home town, as well as many more in the pipeline.
Malka:
‘Nanocluster is collaboration but in a very specific form. We don't have rules. It’s a series of creative snapshots. We start as the gig with our collaborators with tracks that we rehearse because this is not a jam and where it stops is an album.’
Colin:
‘It’s chemistry & music. Malka & I operate as a team and now we’ve taken it to another level. Malka comes from a band where they would stand in a room together and work out the material. In Wire, I would present the songs, so when Malka and I first started working together, we had to find a third path, and that was the concept behind our collaboration.’
Nanocluster Volume 2 is a 21st century collusion of shared ideas, creating a momentary extended musical family.
It’s about musical and personal relationships and the meeting place in the middle.
A temporary band of house guests.
The place where Immersion happens.
Tracklisting:
2 X 10” VWM58LP
Immersion | Thor Harris
A1. As Long As
A2. Just Close Your Eyes
A3. Rotations
B1. The House Of Thor
B2. In Snow
B3. At The Wizard’s House
Immersion | Cubzoa
C1. I’m Barely Here
C2. In The Universe
C3. Other Ways
D1. Not About Me
D2. Neptune
CD WM58CD
Immersion | Cubzoa
1. I’m Barely Here
2. In The Universe
3. Other Ways
4. Not About Me
5. Neptune
Immersion | Thor Harris
6. As Long As
7. Just Close Your Eyes
8. Rotations
9. The House Of Thor 1
0. In Snow
11. At The Wizard’s House
Release Date: 21/06/2024
Moon Diagrams – the solo project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses Archuleta – returns with a second album, Cemetery Classics, on June 21.
The 12-track album is a co-release between Sonic Cathedral (in the UK and Europe) and Angus Andrew from Liars’ new label No Gold (in the US and the ROW) and was mixed by James Ford. It features guests including Anastasia Coope, Patrick Flegel (Cindy Lee) and Josh Diamond (Gang Gang Dance).
It’s Moses’ first new music since 2019’s Trappy Bats mini-album and the follow-up to 2017’s acclaimed debut Lifetime of Love and everything seems a bit more extreme – from the Basinski-esque degradation of ‘Neptune’ to the Faustian industrial noise of ‘Listen To Me’ via Art of Noise-style postmodern pop (the first single ‘Very Much My Promise to You’), Daft Punk bangers (‘Fifteen Shows at One Time’), trip-hop, shoegaze, Jan Hammer, Depeche Mode, late Leonard Cohen and more.
“It’s about finding out your arms are too short to box with god,” says Moses of the emotional force that courses through Cemetery Classics. “It’s the inverse of a desert island disc – a graveyard disc. Songs to take into the afterlife.”
Tracklisting:
1. NRG
2. Mousetrap
3. Fifteen Shows at One Time
4. Metallics in Fur
5. Big Ref
6. Rewop
7. Brand New Effie
8. Neptune
9. Very Much My Promise to You
10. Listen to Me
11. Left Hand of God
12. Fragment Rock
Asha Well is a San Francisco Bay Area based non-binary singer, songwriter, and visual artist. “Water Words” is their debut album, featuring atmospheric textures and haunting melodies set to thought provoking imagery.
Working with co-producer Jason Kick (Mild High Club, Sonny and the Sunsets) at his Tunnel Vision studio in Oakland, CA the pair recorded 1-2 songs a week at the height of the pandemic.
Kick brought his knack for arrangement, synthesis, and drum programming, helping to create a supportive environment for Wells’ atmospheric guitars and haunting melodies.
The resulting album pairs textured sounds with tender harmonies, calling to mind the work of contemporary art forward singer-songwriters like Aldous Harding, Hand Habits, and Cate Le Bon as much as torchbearers like Patti Smith, Cat Power, and Jeff Buckley.
Tracklisting:
1. At Night
2. Mood Indigo
3. California
4. Marianne
5. Bonjour Tristesse
6. Blue Angels
7. Drugstore Perfume
8. The Well
9. Up In A Cloud
10. The Weight
11. Motorbike
Can I Communicate With the Unknown? is the new album from Go By Ocean, moniker of Northern California based singer/songwriter/producer Ryan McCaffrey. Co-produced alongside Tim Bluhm (The Mother Hips) and David Glasebrook, the album features contributions from a wide cast of characters, ranging from the tight knit community of Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads to the wider West Coast indie-rock scene, including members of The Mother Hips, Sugar Candy Mountain, ALO, Tea Leaf Green, and more.
Building upon McCaffrey’s catalog of songs, the new album finds inspiration in the down-to-earth music of 1970’s Marin County, when songwriters like Michael Hurley and Jesse Colin Young lived out in Olema and Point Reyes, the kind of places where songs blow in on the breeze from the Pacific Ocean.
Lyrically, the album trace’s a hero’s journey as the narrator struggles with addiction, eventually finding peace and freedom in a tumultuous world, wrestling with metaphysical and spiritual ideas along the way.
Tracklisting:
1. Say Man
2. Goin’ To Die
3. Should Have Known
4. One True Golden Heart
5. Ballad of a Masquerade
6. Roberta
7. Ascending Ghosts
8. Free
9. Autumn Days In Olema
10. Right Moon