SUSANNAH STARK - 'MINOR GESTURES'

Formats

• LSSN102 - LP

Details

Drifting in on a stream of birdsong, synths and field recordings of rivers, Susannah Stark posits questions from the outset of Minor Gestures, her second studio album. Sung in both Gàidhlig and English, Stark is in constant dialogue with her surroundings, with history, mythology and with the listener on her second album for cult label Stroom of Brussels and Glasgow’s Night School. Recorded with an ensemble curated from the worlds of experimental and folkloric music in her adopted city, Minor Gestures is an omni-directional conversation, open-ended and infused with curiosity and sensitivity. Using primarily acoustic instruments and folk modalities, the songs here display an almost preternatural confidence as Stark shifts perspectives and narratives throughout. Minor Gestures is a body of work that celebrates standing in vulnerability and cultivating resistance to the onset of the corporatisation of daily life. Stark’s duo-linguistic approach feels like a love letter both to the Gàidhlig language and term for translation: eadar- theangachadh, 'inter-tonguing' itself as a creative act. Much of the album was composed from visual cues, and experimenting with the fundamentals of existing in bodies, in this time and place: breath, drone, whisper, song, and primal rhythms inhabiting the unknown space of the mouth. These practices suffuse Minor Gestures with a physicality and immediacy that feel akin to practice of zen meditation: in an age of constant distraction and speed, perhaps truly living, with all its corporeality and massiveness is a form of resistance? A leap forward from the more electronic and solitary practice of her previous album Time Together, Minor Gestures features collaborators Phil Cardwell, Caroline Hussey, and seasoned percussionist Laurie Pitt, who's combination of abstraction and intuitive rhythm provides a tactility to the music. Joining the ensemble more recently, Hussey’s accordion is the thread that ties the album together, offering expansive pitch bending notes and drones which the other musicians play off. “Which way does a river go?” Stark asks on opener Caochan, directly addressing the water, which itself responds in Gàidhlig. On Ceistean gun freagairtean, Stark’s voice sits above soft-blown trumpet and accordion drones, asking questions that explicitly require no answers. Instead, the questions are used as linguistic signposts of the myriad perspectives contained in the song: people wracked with existential dread, the singer’s conversation with a dead lover from a Pictish cave burial. Minor Gestures describes the worlds around it with boundless sensitivity, searching curiosity and a collective love that permeates each instrument, voice and gesture documented across the 8 recordings. Second single Trì stiùirichean makes ample use of Stark’s vocal, augmented with close harmonies that are have a faint redolence of Gàidhlig psalm singing and traditional folk music melodies. Stark’s deftness with melody and atmosphere manages to be highly evocative of both Scottish musical traditions and ambient-adjacent practices while steering a path between both. Like the subjects of the song, the musicians are travelling, interwoven, sailing close but never quite resolved. A reference to the Govan knot, here the form of the music is the message. Mu choinneamh, ri taobh features guest vocals from Cinder (Cindytalk) and is a spacious, wide-open chasm of sound which the voices of Stark and her sister Katherine hover above. On closer Minor Gestures - as on its parent album - the natural world, the mythological, narrative worlds we construct, historical worlds didactically enforced on us and the rigidity of reality - the real world - are all challenged and set free. The protagonist morphs, changes form, dissipates into the natural world, re-anthropomorphises and evaporates again. The music provokes, posits questions, gurgling synths swirl into the upper register, percussion babbles like the rivers of the album’s beginning. On Minor Gestures, Susannah Stark opens up its myriad worlds to the listener but never describes them fully. Instead the listener is invited to discover for themselves. Stark and her band have provided a sonically tactile, almost physical space for this exploration, for these questions to be asked. Which way does a river go?

Tracks

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Audio & Video

GRASS - 'S/T'

Formats

• SPIRITUAL031 - LP

  096962271763

Details

Grass—the legendary “lost” psychedelic / experimental rock masterpiece featuring members of Espers, Vetiver and Brightblack Morning Light. A band of six individuals who met, played some shows, recorded an album, and then went dormant until, in Spring— or thereabouts—they revived their cherished document in hopes that it would not again go to seed. New England in the early 2000s was home to a plethora of kindred psychedelic, experimental, folk, and rock bands who played shows together, recorded each other’s records, and otherwise felt something like a large extended family. Grass was formed, for a brief moment in time, out of members of several of those bands, from across Vermont, New York and Philadelphia: Espers, Currituck Co., Feathers, Brightblack Morning Light, and The Valerie Project (a band solely devoted to live soundtracking the 1970 cult classic Czech film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders). During the late summer of 2006 the band sequestered themselves in a barn in rural Northern California and wrote or arranged the bulk of the material that would go on to be the album. Many songs emerged out of group improvisation, others were brought to the band either partially or fully formed, for collaborative arrangement. The album was recorded throughout 2006 at band member Greg Week’s Hexham Head studio in Philadelphia. The all analog studio solely used 2-inch tape at the time. Improvisations from the previous writing sessions were refined and recreated in the studio. Dueling acid leads were conjured by Weeks and Kevin Barker, and the band’s two drummers, Otto Hauser and Ben McConnell, held court. A range of vintage and invented instruments were also played; omnichord and space echo (expertly wielded by Brooke Sietinsons), Fender Rhodes, and a homemade electrified gamelan Meara O’Reilly designed and built, fondly dubbed “The Jamelan” by members of the band. And then the project languished for almost two decades. By 2023, Weeks and Barker had begun discussing the album again in earnest. It was decided to remix the tracks at Miner Street Studios with seasoned mix engineers Brian McTear and Amy Morrissey. Label Spiritual Pajamas got involved, and the emergence of this musical time capsule was set. 

Tracks

A1. Jamelon
A2. Summer In The Wasteland
A3. Sleep

B1. Taunta
B2. Redwing
B3. Killing Time
B4. 6/6/06

Press

Unreleased 2006 psychedelic /
experimental rock masterpiece by band
featuring members of Espers, Vetiver, and
Brightblack Morning Light

Audio & Video

TRIMDON GRANGE EXPLOSION - 'DREAMS BURIED UNDER THE SEA'

Formats

• FC62 - LP

  5061041821721

Details

Next up on North London’s FERAL CHILD label, comes a real treat- the long planned full length from the great TRIMDON GRANGE EXPLOSION. A superb 10 track record that follows 2018’s self titled debut on Cardinal Fuzz | Feeding Tube (which prompted Rolling Stone’s David Fricke to describe them as “arch modernists within their historical domain…like a farm-house Velvet Underground.”) Recorded in rehearsal rooms and homes in the aftermath of a pandemic, “Dreams…” carries a sense of Autumn: an ending of things, and new beginnings. Of harvesting and the storing of all that is good, in preparation for the harsh winter to come. Initially falling together from the ashes of sometimes celebrated electric-folkies The Eighteenth Day Of May back in 2006, Trimdon Grange Explosion have a way of taking their time. Built on the strong friendships of the individuals going way back, their approach to music-making has involved infrequent London based live appearances, but lots of recording, the results offered forward only when necessary. The years following have seen the departure of founding member, viola player Alison Cotton to concentrate on well received solo work, but still appearing on three tracks on the new record. Alison’s departure preceded the arrival of new member, formidable bassist Ben Reed whose long resume includes work with Frank Ocean, Sampha and Hannah Peel, in addition to making solo records, the most recent being “Bandaged” on Esoteric in 2023. His arrival frees up original bassist Mark Nicholas to join Ben Phillipson on guitar duties. Phillipson also takes sole charge of vocals, double-tracked and harmonised. Drummer Karl Sabino completes the line-up, also handling most of the recording and production. Not completely putting their folk tendencies to one side, the album documents a band learning to communicate with the new line-up; a sound that stretches from the Albion Country Band’s pastoral intricacy to Pavement’s lo-fi inscrutability by way of The Rain Parade/Byrdsian school of chiming guitars. A recent live review in Shindig! (July 2025) noted the “propulsive ride-cymbal-driven drum and bass groove underpins intertwining dual raga-drone guitar lines; when one goes high, the other goes low and vice versa, making for sublime psych-head listening”. “Dreams Buried Under The Sea” is at times uplifting, often heavily melancholic, and marks a culmination of sorts for Trimdon. Its release on Dom Martin’s Feral Child label also completes a circle, their debut release being a 7” on his previous Great Pop Supplement imprint way back when. 

Tracks

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Audio & Video

JAMES STEVENS - 'OST: THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE'

Formats

• BUTR135 - 10"

  5061041821738

Details

**COMES WITH FILM POSTER!!** As is often the case with vintage b-movies, it's the poster for the 1967 Amicus production of They Came From Beyond Space that draws you in. The curvaceous space woman and her menacing alien team fi ring upon a terrorised planet Earth suggests more action than perhaps the fi lm delivers, but it does the job. The movie is a typically low-budget aff air - a sci-fi drama (released as a double bill with The Terrornauts) directed by Freddie Francis, the celebrated cinematographer who went on to shoot The Elephant Man and Martin Scorcese's Cape Fear. Whilst it’s a cheap aff air, it’s also good fun, helped along by a tense, swinging, jazz infl ected score. The opening titles grab you immediately with psychedelic lighting and a swaggering big band theme by British composer James Stevens. Having worked as an uncompromising avant-garde composer for the BBC in the 1950's, Stevens was skilled in blending unusual and dynamic sounds into mainstream projects. A lifelong pacifi st, CND campaigner and buddhist, Stevens was highly regarded in serious music circles but failed to gain wider acclaim during his lifetime. He passed away in 2012 leaving a sizeable collection of classical, operatic and experimental works alongside his soundtrack recordings. Despite lengthy investigations, the only surviving copy of They Came From Beyond Space's score that I could locate was a musty 1/4 inch compilation tape tucked away in his archive at the British Library. After careful digitisation by the Save Our Sounds team, additional work was needed to remove heavy wow & fl utter along with some nasty tape scrunches. It was a challenging process but hopefully we've managed to present the best available version of this groovy, long forgotten soundtrack. The score has a distinctly Brit-Jazz, Soho swing feel with it's bombastic themes countered by moments of drawn out suspense and some lovely, pastoral grandeur. Considering jazz wasn't his main repertoire, Steven's music stands up alongside 1960's big-band contemporaries such as Michael Garrick, Tubby Hayes, John Surman, Ian Carr, Mike Westbrook, Alan Skidmore and Tony Oxley.

Tracks

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Stands up alongside 1960's big-band contemporaries such as Michael Garrick, Tubby Hayes, John Surman, Ian Carr, Mike Westbrook, Alan Skidmore and Tony Oxley.

Audio & Video

NOVELTY ISLAND - 'JIGSAW CAUSEWAY'

Formats

• NXN039LPX - LP (COLOURED)

  0632556093344

• NXN039CD - CD

  0615625581089

• NXN039LP - LP

  0615625581072

Details

**ORANGE VINYL** Ten track collection of Lo-Fi, melancholic, and surreal pop. It expands theclassic-pop influence of their earlier material, into the fuzzier wooziness ofBeck, Grandaddy, and Boards Of Canada, and was composed by utilisingfragments of music in a variety of combinations. Novelty Island is theproject of Liverpool-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer,Tom McConnell. He grew up between Liverpool and Newcastle, and takesinspiration from the pop music, surrealism and melancholy of the North.

Tracks

1 Jigsaw Causway A2 Northern Nowhere A3 Someone Disappearing A4 Foam Animals A5 I'm Glad its not Sunny B1 ApolloB2 Floating B3 Rainy B4 The Only Train Driver in England B5 An Orange Goodbye

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Audio & Video