THIS WEEK’S NEW ALBUMS REVIEWED | FEATURE
Ultrapop (Sargent House)
It’s a welcome change when a supergroup end up being more than the sum of their parts. Billed as hailing from Detroit but shrouded in secrecy, it’s never explicitly stated who is in The Armed at any one time, so a multitude of influences are scattered throughout these 12 songs. Once you strip back all the viral marketing and hype, Ultrapop is a great standalone album. With Kurt Ballou in the executive producer’s chair, and a revolving door of punk and hardcore musicians, Ultrapop is a life affirming and uplifting collection.
There’s a definite consistency throughout the album despite the genre hopping, and the common theme running throughout is a distinctly maximalist approach. More is more. Taking elements of punk, hardcore and metal and adding a distinct poppy gloss from twinkling synths and deep bass, Ultrapop is a huge record designed to be witnessed in a live setting as a bookend to the lost year of 2020.
words GARETH MOULE
Late Spring (Gearbox)
Considering Chihei Hatakeyama has released a prodigious 70+ albums of ambient loveliness since 2006, he’s managed to spectacularly elude my radar by some margin there. This is the first I’ve heard of the fella, and I’ll be digging deeper if the splendid Late Spring is anything to go by.
A sequence of vignettes around the changes in season underpinning ordinary life, the album links to a 1949 film of the same title by Yasujirō Ozu, and is inspired by the concept of circular movement from the mind-melting Twin Peaks – The Return. There’s subtle delays and a cyclical dawn chorus on the Eno-esque Breaking Dawn; the Moomins on mogadon melancholia of Rain Funeral wobbles like Boards of Canada. Butterfly’s Dream is in touching distance of the light of eternity has a devout, almost choral feel to it, while the gentle static hiss of Thunder Ringing In The Distance represents a dreamlike, meditative state that would keep David Lynch damn fine.
The chiming treated guitars of Sound Of Air I And II and the distant thunder drums match Cocteau Twins circa Treasure, while Late Spring Spica is a close relation to the meet-your-maker music box sound of Pris and Roy at JF Sebastian’s apartment. Join the offworld colony.
words CHRIS SEAL
The Greatest Mistake Of My Life (SharpTone)
In an age defined by irony and obfuscation, a release like The Greatest Mistake Of My Life feels like the first breath after a coma. Defined by their naked and heartfelt emotional honesty, Cardiff’s Holding Absence wield a sonic palette of impassioned maximalism, and offer up an engrossing rebuttal to this era of arch nihilism.
Every second of The Greatest Mistake Of My Life screams pure, undiluted sincerity. There’s not an ounce of cynicism to be found across its tightly-structured 11 songs. Vocalist Lucas Woodland opens the album crying out a mantra of “I’m alive” and this simple sentiment neatly encapsulates the tone of the album. Woodland’s duet with his sister (whose Hayley Williams-esque vocals are quite astonishing) on Die Alone (In Your Lovers Arms) is equally heart-wrenching, not for sorrow nor despair, but for the pure cathartic emotion it allows itself to unleash.
The album isn’t quite perfect, there’s a few clumsy track titles (Die Alone, Curse Me With Your Kiss) and a little more tonal variation would have been interesting to hear. However, these are minor quibbles; The Greatest Mistake Of My Life is a minor miracle, and through its emotional directness and clarity, it points the way to a brighter, optimistic future.
words TOM MORGAN
XMIT (Alter)
XMIT is a collection of brilliantly ominous instrumentals from the endlessly creative Alexander Tucker (Grumbling Fur, Imbogodom, visual artist, graphic novelist etc.). Like Tucker himself, this record is impossible to categorise: it showcases a wide range of influences, most prominently a deep and rich love of cinema. Tucker doesn’t so much hop genres as invent them: XMIT is a constantly shifting feat of sublime sequencing, moving from lost-in-space electro, to hushed horrorcore, to apocalyptic dance.
This is immersive, world-building headphone music of the highest order, at times sounding like the score to a film that’s too dark to ever see the light of day. There are brilliant features from Gazelle Twin, Simon Fisher Turner, Nik Void, and Astrud Steehouder, none of which intrude on or distort Tucker’s vision. And what a nightmarish vision it is. These shadowy soundscapes could be the perfect soundtrack for our fractured world.
words JOSHUA REES
Kingdom Of Oblivion (Rune Grammofon)
Norwegian rockers Motorpsycho [pictured, top – credit Terje Visnes] have been around since 1989 and, with so many lineup changes, are more of a collective than a solid group. Their latest release is a bit of a collage too, differing instruments and styles amounting to a genre of their own.
Album opener The Waning is spacerock with bees, of all things, but songs get less annoying from then on. Hawkwind’s The Watcher is the weakest moment of the album – why cover a song if you’re not going to up the ante? – while Dreamkiller and Atet don’t carry much weight either and At Empire’s End sounds remarkably like Fleetwood Mac’s Dragonfly.
Originally planned as an album of hard rock with heavy riffs, interruption from the pandemic seems to have scattered Kingdom Of Oblivion in all directions. It’s the heavier tracks that have the power here and more of those would have been welcomed.
words LYNDA NASH