Articles
Anile, dBridge, and Mako
Liam Singer's Arc Iris

Albums
Allison & Owen
Billy Bang
Barbacana
Tim Bass
Ben Lukas Boysen
Chasing Kurt
Deep Magic
Drumcell
Lawrence English
Esmerine
Ex Confusion
Fazio
Gideon Wolf
A Guide For Reason
Andreas Henneberg
Ikebana
Illuha
Jumpel
The Last Hurrah!!
Lazercrotch
John Lemke
Nektarios Manaras
Maps
Sean McCann
Melorman
James Murray
Sarah Neufeld
David Papapostolou
Personal Life
Ross, Oberland & Claus
Seaworthy & Deupree
Liam Singer
Wadada Leo Smith
Tonefloat: Ikon
Wenngren & Nästesjö
Sebastian Zangar

Compilations / Mixes
dBridge
EPM Selected Vol. 1
Friction
Kode9
The Outer Church
Michelle Owen

EPs / Cassettes / Singles
Andyskopes
Anile
Rudi Arapahoe
Rachael Boyd
Break / Detail
CKSNL
Ed:it / Mikal
Marcus Fischer
Full Intention
Gain Stage
Lullatone
Pillowdiver
Gail Priest
Skittles
Andy Vaz

VA: The Outer Church
Front & Follow

What, pray tell, is The Outer Church? A performance venue established in Brighton in 2009 by music writer Joseph Stannard (The Wire, Mojo) to, in his words, allow “various forms of unheimlich audio [to] converge with moving images of a similarly anomalous nature.” A scan of some of the acts that have appeared—among them Demdike Stare, Raime, Old Apparatus, and The Haxan Cloak—offers a reliable impression of the kind of music featured by programmer Stannard on this twenty-eight-track compilation. You'll be excused if words like Ghost Box, H.P. Lovecraft, Mordant Music, hypnagogic, and hauntological enter your thoughts as you digest this wide-ranging collection of previously unreleased recordings by acts that have performed at the locale.

An early standout is “Tilda Holds a Sword and Lilies” by Grumbling Fur (Daniel O'Sullivan and Alexander Tucker), which could pass for a missing track from Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), the vocal delivery reminiscent of Eno's and the arrangement and composition likewise very much in the rarified style of that album. The song's oddball character is one shared by many another track on the compilation, which, at slightly less than 150 minutes, is comprehensive, to say the least. Another strong vocal cut comes from Hong Kong in the 60s (Mei Yau Kan, Christopher Greenberg, Tim Scullion), whose “Summer's Bird” evidences a sweet, Stereolab-like charm in its wistful pop melodies, while Angkorwat's (Niamh Corcoran) “I Hope He Had” takes its inspiration from the doomed romance of Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates in a warbly slice of electro-pop that resembles a less feverish track by The Knife.

The release includes everything from harrowing plunges into diseased soundscaping (Black Mountain Transmitter's “Drawn In Silhouette”) and spacey dub-techno (“96D” by Broken20 associates Ruaridh Law, Dave Donnelly, and Dave Fyans under the name BrokenThree) to garage-punk synth-pop (Graham Reznick's “Tomorrow in New York City”), sample-spliced stutter-funk (VHS Head's “Freight Night”), and woozy dreampop (Paper Dollhouse's “Swans”). Not unwelcome, occasional restrained settings surface, such as “Thrones of Nitre,” an astral synth meditation by The Wyrding Module (Team Doyobi member Christopher Gladwin) and “Unnatural History,” seven minutes of ghostly isolationism by the aptly christened Robin The Fog (Robin Warren).

August-September 2013