Today I’m covering albums from Audio Obscura, Henning Zinoviev and Floating Candles, Andy Fosberry, Social Union, and Bagaski. Lot’s a great stuff to dig into from some of the finest independent artists and labels currently filling our brains. Make sure to hit them up and snag it if you like it. Now grab a cup of coffee and settle in.
Audio Obscura : Tomorrow Will Offer Fresh Narratives
One of the more recent releases from Phil Dodd’s excellent Waxing Crescent Records is from Audio Obscura, which is the electronic musical project of Neil Stringfellow. Tomorrow Will Offer Fresh Narratives is otherworldly in sound and nature; experimental in spirit with buzzing, clicks, and dream-like moments while woozy and effervescent the next. 8 tracks that build to the epic closer “All That Is Still To Come”, the kind of track that begs for deep contemplation and late night space drifting.
Stringfellow describes the album this way: “Last summer I read an article on the term ‘anti-hauntology’ and it spurred me to attempt to create a new body of music, something hopeful which ‘still believes in the music of the future’. I think Audio Obscura succeeds on both counts. There’s a feeling of kind of falling into some other dimension on this album, while also melancholy seeps through. It’s quite a unique and singular bit of business.
Social Union : Fall Into Me
The four-track EP Fall Into Me from post-punk band Social Union is the kind of slap in the face I need occasionally. It’s stark production, angular riffs, and ghostly sweet vocals are reminiscent of classic bands such as Bauhaus and Siouxie Sioux as well as more contemporary bands like The Soft Moon, Cold Cave, and Preoccupations. Everything clicks on the band’s Blackjack Illuminist Records debut. One of my favorite tracks is the sleek and sinister “Choke”, while “Our Hands Don’t Fit” almost goes into A Place To Bury Strangers territory. A dreamy-yet-visceral sound world for our modern times.
Bagaski : Praeludium
I’ve been impressed with German electronic artist Bagaski ever since I heard their See Blue Audio debut Final last year. A kind of loneliness pervades the music, but not necessarily the sad kind of loneliness. It’s the kind of feeling you get in those quiet moments alone, staring off over a frozen lake in wintertime, or a car drive at dusk with the radio low as the sun catches fire on the horizon. It’s downtempo music for downtime.
On their third album for See Blue Audio, the quiet and reflective Praeludium, Bagaski makes music for contemplation. Sounds to fill the cracks on an overcast fall day. They continue to make music for alone moments with just your thoughts. Tracks like “Saint Des Leurs” and “Sunbath” convey emotion thru ambient textures and hidden messages in layered, subtle melodies. Like a dream telling you the meaning of life. The goal is to remember it when you wake up. Praeludium would be the soundtrack to that dream.
Henning Zinoviev and Floating Candles : Die Nude For Satan
The seediness almost oozes from the soundtrack for the erotic thriller Die Nude For Satan, a movie in the vein of such Euro Horror smut that cats like Jess Franco and Joe D’Amato made famous(or infamous) in the late 60s and thru the 70s(though with a little more class and tasteful cleavage.) The soundtrack lost to time was discovered by The Heartwood Institute’s Jonathan Sharp. It has been carefully restored and now thanks to Library Of The Occult this slice of sinister psych and erotic schmaltz is available on vinyl for the first time ever.
Heavy on the psych rock vibes but also willing to get a little dreamy with mellotron and sitar, Henning Zinoviev and Floating Candles give us a portal to another time and place, and to a movie that you’d only find on late night TV or in the back room of your favorite video store in the 80s.
Andy Fosberry : Night Skies
Andy Fosberry’s latest has its roots in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. There was supposed to be a sequel to Spielberg’s 1977 alien masterpiece. It even got to the point of a screenplay getting written. First titled Watch The Skies, but then changed to Night Skies, the film was supposed to be about a family farm being invaded by aliens and it was supposed to be more of a horror film. Of course this didn’t end up happening, but the film was part and parceled out into three other Spielberg vehicles. E.T., Poltergeist, and Gremlins came from the ideas of this sequel.
Fascinated by this idea, Fosberry approached his album Night Skies as a score to that original seed of an idea. Released by the always amazing Spun Out Of Control, Andy’s made a dark, harrowing, and tension-filled score that makes good on the promise of a horror version of Close Encounters. Filled with stark synths, symphonic grandeur, and big percussive strength, Night Skies is yet another big, thoughtful, and visceral release from Andy Fosberry. You can almost see the Nebraskan sky blotted with some monolithic UFO as the locals run for cover. This score has it all, and lays it all out in beautiful sonic detail.
Go forth and listen to some new tunes. It’s good for what ails ya.
Complex Distractions 