Junkboy - Littoral States

Junkboy's previous album Sovereign Sky was one of my favourite albums from my first stint on the Active Listener so it's only natural that I should belatedly draw your attention to its follow up, 2023's Littoral States. 

Like Sovereign Sky, it's an exquisitely arranged and produced affair, with gorgeous string arrangements that can trace their distinctly English lineage back to Robert Kirby's work for Nick Drake, and beyond.

Sussex folk singer Hannah Lewis is a welcome presence on a number of tracks, but for the most part this is a wistful instrumental ramble through the Sussex countryside, evoking a strong sense of place - not surprising given their interest in psychogeography (they were interviewed for Phil Hubbard's book "Listening To Landscape" which looks fascinating and is on my to-read-when-I-can-find-a-copy list).

It's all impeccably done of course. A perfect Summer listen which has accompanied me on many trail walks already with many more to come I'm sure.

Others have already covered this more eloquently, so I'll leave it to your ears to be the judge, but anyone who enjoys investigating the meeting place between hauntology and pastoral folk will find plenty to enjoy here.

Magick Brother & Mystic Sister

Discovering the music of this Spanish duo was pretty much single-handedly responsible for me reviving the Active Listener. They really opened my eyes (ears?) to how much great music was still being made out there, and this is just too good to not share.

The Gong inspired moniker makes it pretty clear what to expect, and these two have really got their vintage seventies space-rock / psychedelic / progressive vibes honed to an impressive degree. 

Their self titled 2020 debut shows no signs of trying to find their way and aptly demonstrates how fully formed their sound already was at that stage, but it's their two Tarot albums, released six months apart in 2024 that really show the full mastery of their craft. Beautifully produced, these albums make full use of the sonic spectrum and the spacious mixes give the rich instrumentation (including plenty of mellotron, flutes and sitars) plenty of room to shine. And the treated vocals are absolutely on point.

Broadcast meets early seventies Pink Floyd would I guess be a starting point, but there's plenty more touched upon here and it's all done masterfully. These would be holy grail albums if they'd been released in the seventies, no doubt.

I'm sure a lot of you will already be familiar with these albums but for anyone who has yet to discover them, now's the time. Superb stuff.

Luster

This Belgian group describe themselves as "the missing link between Mazzy Star, Pentangle, Broadcast and Enhet for Fri Musik", so in all honesty there was no way I was not going to check this out. 

Often with these press-releases the reality can't match the hyberbole but in this case they're right on the money - no pipe dreams here.

It's spooky and a bit ethereal and has some doomy drones that give it a bit of a ritualistic folk-horror vibe at times. And at other times it's beautifully evocative and naturalistic.

This 2022 release was ten years in the making apparently. Hopefully a follow up doesn't take that long to manifest.

A Return + Moonrite

Six years! It's been a while since I was last on here. 

How you all doing? 

Life got pretty busy here and for the longest time I almost completely stopped investing time in new music. I got comfortable listening to what I knew and found that I had to really work to connect with anything new.

But over the last month or so I've made some positive lifestyle changes which have, among other things, put me in the right sort of headspace to start being receptive to new music again. And it turns out that there's a lot of pretty impressive stuff still happening out there. So I'm going to start sharing it again.

Time won't allow for anything like the scope of what was going on here before. It'll just be me, not the wonderful team I had working with me previously. I won't be posting lengthy reviews or compiling samplers. But the urge to share has returned with the urge to discover so I'll be posting links and sharing my thoughts on music that speaks to me as I come across it. And we'll see where things go from there. I've got a lot of catching up to do it seems.

Here's a new discovery to get the ball rolling: 

 

Moonrite are a French duo (two brothers) who released two albums and a 7" between 2016 and 2019 but seem to have shut up shop since then which is a pity as they really had a handle on what they do, namely early seventies style psychedelic occult rock. Not your garden variety stoner / doom either, we're talking serious vintage sounds here. And the treated vocals are amazing. 

 

Check them out - and if anyone knows what they're doing now, let me know.

 

The Return of The Active Listener Sampler

Hi folks. I hope everyone is doing OK in these crazy, uncertain times.

It's been a few years since you've all heard from me, but I figured everyone (myself included) could do with a little distraction, so I put a few feelers out to see if anyone was still interested in our old samplers. To my surprise, I received an overwhelmingly positive response from readers and artists alike so here we are with a brand new sampler. No idea at this stage whether this will just be a one-off or the start of something that appears on at least a semi-regular basis. To a certain extent that will depend on you and the response this receives.

So, assuming this is the start of something, I'm now open to receiving submissions for future samplers as well. If you're an artist who would like to feature on a future sampler please feel free to email me at theactivelistener@hotmail.com with download codes / links etc. Please note that these will only be used for sampler purposes - I have no plans to start reviewing again. And that due to the number of submissions I receive, I cannot guarantee a feature.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the new sampler. Enjoy it. 26 tracks from artists familiar and new, including teasers for upcoming albums and lots of demos, outtakes and otherwise unavailable material from a host of your favourites.

And please remember that it's pretty tough being a musician at the moment. With widespread gig cancellations and few outlets currently available to sell merchandise, artists need a bit of a helping hand right now. If you hear anything you like here, please visit the individual artist links on the Bandcamp page and buy some merch and music.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Hi All.

I just wanted to make official what you've all probably suspected for months now.

The Active Listener has closed up shop and ceased operations. There are a number of reasons for this, but mostly it comes down to the time it consumes, and my lack of time to commit to it.

So there will be no further posts on the Active Listener. I hope you've enjoyed what we've done over the years. If we've turned you on to one thing that you wouldn't have found out about otherwise, then we've done what we set out to do.

The website, Bandcamp page and Facebook account will all remain active resources for your use so hopefully they will continue to spread the good word about these wonderful artists in that capacity.

I'd just like to offer a big thanks to all of the contributors, artists and labels that have helped spread the word and create a community which I hope will continue to thrive.

Most of all though I'd like to thank you, the reader, for your continued support through our various ups and downs. You're all champs.

Live well and be happy x

Thin White Rope - Exploring the Axis / Moonhead

Tempus fugit. It seems scarcely credible to me that I first listened to Exploring The Axis by Davis, California guitar heroes Thin White Rope some 33 years ago. Now remastered by the good folks at Frontier Records and unleashed on limited vinyl runs, the first two Thin White Rope records emerge once more blinking into the light of a red sun reclaiming their rightful place at the very forefront of what we call great independent guitar music.

Context is a good thing. There are two main narratives that are generally considered when we examine California as a centrepoint for musical excellence. The first is the one that radiates in the sunlight and the surf and took the likes of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks into the realms of odyssey - mythologizing a place of endless summer and good vibrations where fun,fun,fun can be had with reckless abandon. The second narrative is less settling and juxtaposes worldliness and black humour with emotional entropy and the mundanity of violence both real and imagined. This is the one picturing a Venice Beach with Jim Morrison lashed to the joists of Venice Pier, blood spewing from his mouth, of Arthur Lee alienated and sitting on the hillside watching all the people die, of punk rock disaffection with posters strewn at Johnny Mathis' Feet.

This dystopian California, of loathing and bittersweet wonder is the territory that Thin White Rope would pitch up in and proceed to rule for the best part of a decade. Their studies of personal dysfunction, mental illness, relationship breakdown, chemical hallucination and (barely suppressed) violence are shot through with some of the most original guitar playing you will ever hear anywhere. This marked them out from their sunny 'Paisley Underground' contemporaries like the black sheep of the family that they probably never belonged to in the first place. This was underground rock from the magma under the desert soil, claustrophobic and often dark. At times they resembled a desert baked Television, at others a peyote chewing Steely Dan but always and ultimately Thin White Rope transmitted their own new and thrilling musical language that once tuned into can never be vanquished.

Exploring The Axis, the bands 1985 debut, remains amongst the best debut LPs recorded and released in the 1980's. This probably shunts it comfortably into the best debut LPs ever recorded. The band's principle songwriter and dual lead guitar player Guy Kyser writing almost all of the songs with a keen eye for dissonant melody and in partnership with key ally, Roger Kunkel, probably the most consistently intelligent use of controlled feedback that I have ever heard. Opener 'Down in the Desert' is the story of the bands associate 'Karl' who drives into the desert one day and has a nervous breakdown, coming back to his friends profoundly changed but unable to tell them what happened or why. This narrative sits astride a melody and arrangement that I can only describe as a really rather pissed-off/sawn-off 'Alone Again Or'. As a first sonic signal to the wider world it was bold and new and brilliant. 'Disney Girl' is about as far away from The Beach Boys as you can get, its unsettling feedback drones and detached analytical vocal/lyric giving way to sumptuous guitar interplay and flagging another of their innovations - feedback as a swooping, swirling, background vocal - no one had pulled that before. 'Lithium' is the best song with that title from many contenders with its beautiful guitar interplay and feeling of high plains drifting - an essay in distance to borrow a phrase. Awesome. 'Dead Granma's On A Train' poses the question of what might happen if you soul mate's antecedents were killed generations before you came around. This is framed in what would become a classic 'Indie-Americana' arrangement with spangling country-fried guitars and a fiery Kyser vocal reminiscent of Johnny Cash at his most snotty. A gem. The title track closes the record and is just monolithic. It is to Exploring The Axis what 'The End' is to The Doors debut. A chilling tale of hallucination, madness and possible (imagined) murder wrapped in a melody and vocal performance that relentlessly stalks you and reels you in to it's utterly terrible climax. Its "Marquee Moon" meets The Shining. A ridiculously powerful closing statement and one that had me desperate waiting for the follow-up.

By 1987, the speed at which Thin White Rope were evolving into standard bearers at the vanguard of intelligent independent guitar music was becoming abundantly clear. If Exploring The Axis unveiled a Pandora's Box for our inspection then Moonhead not so much opened it as detonated it into a million tiny pieces. The music on this sophomore release is pulled deeper into the earth with terrible certainty, sulphuric and volcanic plumes of guitar ejecting across the night sky. The performances captured here crackle and smoulder with an incandescent and dazzling fury .

Opener 'It's Not Your Fault' looms into view on a truly gargantuan and twisted feedback laden guitar riff, its accompanying narrative setting the tone for the remainder of the record with its feelings of guilt, disappointment, bemusement and fatalism. The ante is upped further on the following detonation of 'Wire Animals'. This is a conflagration posing as a primitive hoedown that scorches your ears and blows your head off before those amazing twin guitars relent, squalling to a molten finale. In my humble opinion it is as good a song as you will hear. Ever. 'Thing' on one level is incongruous and perverse with its simple acoustic guitar and brief, tender vocal disarming you but ultimately it's still a song about disappointment and unresolved feelings. The titular 'Moonhead' is spectacular - a beautiful construction that builds on silvery guitar lines before pulling back the covers to expose a terrible secret. 'Wet Heart' is a dilemma, surgically removed from its author on twin incisions of feedback guitar. 'Come Around' provides an almost light relief with it's conversational, bar-room tone and lightly skipping Nashville beat. This is soon discarded 'If Those Tears' is as dark as a Mojave midnight, swinging and dangling shards of guitar that endlessly criss-cross over an intensely delivered vocal focused on betrayal. 'Crawl Piss Freeze' closes the set - a grindingly abstract Lynchian prose piece that leaves the listener stranded by the side of the highway in the starry silence of the night as the tail lights of the battered pick up truck you were hitching a ride in fades away. Moonhead has changed you but like most of the protagonists in its collection of songs you aren't completely sure how or why.

And there we leave the story for now. Two crucial outings from the 1980's that defined much of what would follow have been cleaned up and sent back into battle. Exploring The Axis and Moonhead are available directly from the label here or from selected stockists around the globe. It's worth noting that the label is selling some super limited vinyl variants (150 of each on vinyl) so if that floats your boat go straight to the source.

Shaun C. Rogan

Bong Wish EP

Before the end of 2017, Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records released Bong Wish’s self-titled EP on a limited-edition cassette. It’s now in its second limited-edition run.

Bong Wish is the moniker of Boston-based musician Mariam Saleh, and is enigmatic in scope, splitting the difference between the counterculture folk-rock of decades past and the modern conundrum of existence particular to the 21st century. Just take a look at the video for the wonderful cassette opener, “My Luv,” in which Miriam both wanders through nature and contemplates her smartphone.

Lyrically, Bong Wish leads listeners through universal themes, themes familiar to the genre’s followers – interpersonal relationships, loneliness and nature – but there’s mystery in the familiarity, particularly in ambiguous and beautiful lines like “When the night hasn’t left in days… The light is just a door away.”

Everything is delivered with such confidence the result sounds almost prescriptive, a cure for age-old ennui and new skepticism – and perhaps it is. With both whimsy and assurance, Bong Wish is a small dose, at four tracks, of just what’s needed now.

In just four songs, Saleh and friends cover a lot of ground, but standout track, “Conversation with Business People,” sees the most divergence from its peers. With a tight rhythm section as a background, layers come and go across its full six minutes. There’s room for some interesting experimentation and instrumentation in its middle, though its use of minimalism over maximalism maintains the earthy core that ties everything so neatly together.

I’ve sat with this review for a long time, and these songs just keep getting better.

Highly recommended.

Joseph Murphy

The Bong Wish EP cassette and digital files are available from the Beyond Beyond is Beyond Bandcamp page. Stream it all there, too.

Retep Folo - Galactic Sounds

Ah 2018 begins to really swing into action with a new release on the ever dependable Clay Pipe Music. 'Galactic Sounds' by Retep Folo (or Peter Olof Fransson to you and I) signals a departure from the rather more earthbound and hauntological releases we have come to expect from this most exquisite East London based label. This new offering is concerned with more celestial matters although, it must be said, the fit with Clay Pipe is as strong as any other output despite a rather more cosmic frame of reference. It is a match made in the heavens.

So, 'Galactic Sounds' - a series of 16 often joyful soundscapes and playful sonic riddles, mainly driven by vintage keys and synths evoking that wonder of the universe many of us begin to engage with in childhood and often retain throughout the rest of our lives. Part reminiscence, part homage to 70’s library music and part futuristic hymnal musical adventure. The pieces here are simply constructed, allowing the visitor to wander in and out of them and to luxuriate in the gently compelling thinking space they offer. This approach, tastefully deployed, contributes to 'Galactic Sounds' being a resounding success and very worthy of your time.

As with any mission to the stars, a smooth take off is absolutely essential and opener ‘Galactic Pulse’ performs this feat perfectly, gently lifting off from the launch pad and sending us up toward the heavens. A combination of sparkling synth and vintage electronic rhythmic accompaniment providing all the fuel and direction we need. This is a first class sonic cabin and the only way is upward – would you like a Martini?

Picking out particular pieces for praise can be a rather futile exercise on this particular mission as everything hangs together beautifully but perhaps the dazzling optimism of 'Galactic Spring' is a good place to start. Its shimmering drifts of sound gently orbiting the listener, decorating the mind with all manner of lovely pictures. ‘Galactic Friends’ flutters and drifts gently across your minds eye, its awe and musing hidden beneath gaseous clouds of musical neon. 'Galactic Dream' recalls Bacharach as imagined by Isaac Asimov with its insistent major chord refrain giving it an almost 'Walk On By' quality. 'Galactic Cruise' is as close to a romp as anything on this fine record with a strange dislocated groove - part swinging bossa-nova and part bluesy supernova.

Elsewhere, the mood is more contemplative such as the interstellar waltz of 'Galactic Children' which threatens to send us into a lunar orbit that places us permanently witnessing a corona rather than dazzling sunshine. Similarly, 'Galactic Flare' has an undertow that warns the passenger that not all in the Universe is benign and that respectful distance is sometimes the order of the day.

Our tour of the galaxy is brought to a suitably cosmic conclusion by the deeply impressionistic and infinitely monolithic 'Galactic End'. A backdrop of deeply ecclesiastical organ drones coupled with an icing of starry skied twinkling filigrees of sound. Its a sonic message in a bottle sailing gently away from the gravitational pull of our Sun and heading serenely toward other distant, perhaps more peaceful worlds.

Thanks to ‘Galactic Sounds’ you, the active listener, have found your spot in the firmament and Retep Folo waves you a fond farewell as he recedes into the infinite distance. This has been a very satisfying voyage and one that I will be seeking to make again soon. I suggest you buckle up and do the same, after all, we are all made of stars.

'Galactic Sounds' is available on vinyl (with download) directly from Clay Pipe and from independent retailers of taste and discernment. Don't snooze on this one if you want a physical copy, Clay Pipe vinyl releases invariably sell out shortly after release.

Shaun C. Rogan

Trappist Afterland - Se(VII)en

Trappist Afterland, the vehicle for the sound and visions of Melbourne based Adam Geoffrey Cole and his fellow travellers, have subtly and gradually become one of the most crucial and critically acclaimed psych bands of modern times. Album such as 2015’s essential ‘Afterlander’ and their most recent masterwork ‘God’s Green Earth’ have spread the word, as have extensive European tour schedules and a carefully and beautifully presented repressing of their back catalogue by both Sunstone and Sugar Bush Records. Trappist Afterland’s richly detailed and esoteric instrumentation (bowed psaltery, hammered dulcimer, cittern), not to mention their spiritual and existential convictions and themes and their enduring melodies have placed them in the position of an Incredible String Band for our times. This new opus then comes at a time when their critical fortunes have never been as high and not only does it not disappoint it adds to their deserved reputation and takes the band into new and deeper territory.

Opener '1+1=3' begins with the hypnotic and circular mantra style guitar that Trappist have become known for, hand drums and tabla picking out a steady, processional pace as Cole's distinctive vocals intone and incantate, with flutes and strings weaving in and out of view. Heady but also tight, economical and without indulgence, there is a quiet, inherent brooding power to be found in Trappist’s singular and inspired vision. 'Burning Bushes' guitar is yet more insistent, building and layering amongst violin and finger cymbals, hinting at some of the early work of Six Organs of Admittance (such as Dark Noontide), a dark hued tension developing as the song grows and loops, lost in its own trance. Sounding more haunted than 'God's Good Earth' and sparser and more stripped back than its predecessor, the opulent and esoteric 'Afterlander', 'Se{VII)en' is Trappist Afterland distilled, refined and at their most pure. 'Elm And Bracken' is a case in point; with its haunting Jew’s harp and harmonium this is a ghost of a song, walking the earth in its percussive earthly chains, every footstep a funereal drumbeat. Here Trappist have much in common with their spiritual and musical brothers Stone Breath, the persistent and rhythmic strum and beat becoming its own heartbeat.

Next, 'Forest Mass' enters on a hushed bed of finger picked guitar, Cole's vocals yearning and desperate, moss covered and rooted in the heart of the woodland. Eerie backwards sounds drift through like mist between trees, a lament to the shadows, leaves and branches. 'Knot In Wood's mandolin march is hugely stirring and deeply emotive, the eastern tinged strings whipping the song into a dervish of pleading and devotion whilst 'Sundog', a paean to a lost companion, is bookended by a moving spoken word piece by Alan from Kitchen Cynics, the piece a funeral mass of quiet dignity and beauty. 'Stickboy' meanwhile is a delicate and wistful work that reminds this listener of Joseph Budenholzer's Backworld project, both pensive and wounded but filled with earthy beauty. 'The Blood in the Wood' begins as a chant or prayer, before the steady, hand drum calls time to a swirl of strings and percussion. As the song builds pace you can feel the hairs on your neck rise; Trappist Afterland are an immersive experience, they are not and will never be background music. 'This Clock, Tick Tock' broods and buries itself into the soul, vintage synth punctuating the guitars with a spectral melancholy until album closer 'Trace Your Root' offers a brightness, sitar and flute emerging into sunlight, reminiscent Mike Heron's 'Audrey' and a thing of genuine loveliness.

'Se(VII)en' then is a further triumph for Trappist Afterland, a new jewel amongst their already burgeoning treasures. Perfectly formed for newcomers and old hands alike there is a profound vision and cohesion to this work that suggests a timelessness, that in twenty or thirty years this album will be seen as a classic psych release of this (or indeed any other) era. Seek this out without hesitation; highly recommended.

Grey Malkin

Available through Bandcamp (below) and from the splendid Sunstone Records.

And UK folks have still got a couple of chances to catch him over the coming few days, performing with the illustrious Keith Christmas, Kitchen Cynics, David Colohan and more. Info here.