Blog: mapsadaisical

Maurizio Ravalico is an Italian percussionist, and Oren Marshall an English brass player. Which should make In Thunder Rise a duo album, and most definitely the first conga and tuba duo album I've covered on this site (I'm pretty confident on that one). But look a little closer: there is a third name below the two headliners on the front cover of this new double album - that of Isambard Khroustaliov, the alter ego of Icarus's Sam Britton, and one of the founders of the Not-Applicable label. Britton's role is an interesting and important one - he was [...]

With this residency at Cafe Oto, in a strange way it feels like Ikue Mori has come full circle. Over the course of these three days, Mori is playing with some of the UK's - and indeed the world's - top improvisers. Mori is, after all, someone who was once described by Lester Bangs as [...]

It is pretty hard to get away from Chris Watson at the minute. That is probably because I'm kept locked in his dungeon, along with his collection of giant moths. No, wait, I'm getting confused. What I mean is that the remarkable amount of Watson-related activity in the last few months means that his profile [...]

By the time of The Cloud Of Unknowing, it seemed that James Blackshaw was such a proficient twelve string acoustic guitar player that he may even have been a little bored of people like me telling him so. Being compared to the likes of John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Leo Kottke would probably be enough [...]

A couple of years back I took a chance on the debut release by Ensemble Economique, aka Brian Pyle of Starving Weirdos. Released by Digitalis, At The Foot Of Endless Roads began with a couple of tracks of mimimalist drone, before heading into much denser and darker terrain, picking up tribal percussion and strange instrumentation [...]

New Ghost Box-esque video for Phonophani's "Kreken", the title track from his new album for Rune Grammofon. Lucky Dutch readers can see Espen play at the Bimhuis on 21 October, on the same bill as Oval.

The album opens with some weary strings, suffused in vinyl crackle and distortion, while strange noises rumble in the shadows behind. We are unmistakeably back once again deep into Miasmah territory. Erik Skodvin's label of haunted cinematics reaches its own horror movie landmark with its thirteenth release: Swedish composer Marcus Fjellstrom following up his excellent [...]

Christ, it is hot. I can't remember a summer as ceaselessly and oppressively warm as this one. Well, not since I moved out of that bungalow on the planet Venus. I really don't know what I was thinking of there. All the radiation from the sun meant that 3G reception was a bit patchy too. [...]

This is an absolute blast. Given the personnel involved, that may not be a surprise. Between them, Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilsen-Love have played with some of the heaviest heavyweights around, from jazz titans like Peter Brötzmann and Fred Anderson (RIP), to noise behemoths like Kevin Drumm and Lasse Marhaug. Here, [...]

Yesterday the nominations for the 2010 Mercury Music Prize were announced. If you took it at its word, as a list of the twelve best albums released by UK and Irish artists in the last 12 months, you'd be left of the opinion that our music scene is in a pretty depressing state. That our [...]

Hellosquare are, as they kept reminding us through the course of this evening, "a small Australian label". Humble Australians. Fancy. They made this voyage round the globe to put on a one-off show at Cafe Oto featuring some friends of the label - not just from Australia, but from Canada, Italy and the UK too. [...]

On Friday night, Can legend Damo Suzuki played a gig in my local pub. I'm going to have to repeat that, just to try to convince myself that this actually happened. On Friday night, Can legend Damo Suzuki played a gig in my local pub. His designated sound carriers for the evening were London's Bleeding [...]

After yesterday's post, covering some of the more boundary-pushing electronic music to feature at the North Sea Jazz Festival, you could be forgiven for wondering if there was any jazz worth seeing at all. And while it wasn't all tame vocal jazz and funk-lite, you still had to navigate the programme carefully to avoid making [...]

Just look at some of the headliners at this year's North Sea Jazz Festival: Norah Jones. Earth, Wind & Fire. Macy Gray. Diana Krall. Jools Holland and His Sodding Rhythm & Blues Orchestra. You're probably already wondering what on earth possessed me to get the bus, train, tube, train, ferry, train and Metro from London [...]

Have I ever mentioned a band called The Necks on here? Hmmm, I'm not sure. Certainly not recently. And what about Fennesz? Actually, I'll check the press release to make sure I'm spelling his name right. Yes, Christian Fennesz, that is right - I don't recall ever reviewing anything by him. So you're probably pretty [...]

Taylor Deupree doesn't work quickly. In the three years that have passed since the release of the majestic Northern, there have been but a few short releases of new material- the Weather and Worn 123, the Snow (Dusk, Dawn) and 1am CDs, and the Live:Mapping download. Maybe he was waiting for inspiration. Maybe his other [...]

At one point during the set of the Malian griot Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba, Kouyate - who played at the Glastonbury festival last week - held his instrument up towards the mic. "This is a ngoni", he told us. "It is not a guitar". And despite the obvious differences - the ngoni [...]

The last album by The Necks, the excellent Silverwater, wasn't at all what the casual observer would have expected from The Necks. In terms of its structure, and more so in terms of the choice of instrumentation, it was an unusual record, and not what one would have expected from the famously slow-building piano/bass/drums trio [...]

There is an expectant hush as I approach my keyboard. I remove my ring, place it to one side. I sit, head bowed, waiting. Waiting. Waiting for inspiration. Waiting for an idea, a theme, some sort of motif around which the review can be built. Waiting. Waiting. Finally, it comes. Slowly I tap out the [...]

Regular visitors to this site will no doubt approve of this downloadable mix put together by my dear friend @MandrewB, a brilliant collection of zither, dubstep, and clangy minimalism. Tracklisting is a follows: 1. Svalastog – The Wood Metal Friction (Rune Grammafon 2006) 2. Edward Larry Gordon – All Pervading excerpt (1978 / Universal Sound [...]