Council Meeting Memo #125 — Five for Friday
Dylan Henner: Star Dream FM (Phantom Limb, Album)
’A mysterious radio station broadcasting Henner’s favourite memories from adolescence — that’s the conceit, and he commits to it fully. Less a collection of individual songs than a single unified 41-minute picture, it drifts through idyllic ambience, plunderphonic collage and retro synthwave, with choral denouements of magisterial elegance arriving like weather. The track titles — diary entries, really — do half the emotional work, but the music earns them. Nostalgia for things the listener never experienced, yet which feel undoubtedly real.’ (SA)
Bookworms: Depth Perception (Self released, Album)
’A sprawling 90-minute hardware jam from Brooklyn’s Nik Dawson. The best tracks balance blown-out sound design with genuine melodic hooks, and the live, improvisatory feel keeps things urgent. The flip side is tracks that cut out abruptly or outstay their welcome — but as self-released Bandcamp records go, it’s a worthwhile dig.’ (SA)
Hayward x Dälek: HaywardxDälek (Relapse, Album)
’A genuinely unlikely pairing that earns its keep. This Heat drummer Charles Hayward and MC dälek’s Will Brooks recorded the bulk of this live in Salford in 2023, and the spontaneity shows in the best way. It moves elegantly from slow drones through eye-popping rhythms into melancholic synthscapes, with Brooks adding politically charged lyrics to three tracks back in New Jersey. Not an easy listen, but a startling and inventive one.’ “As the children chant…Free Palestine!” (SA)
Isambard Khroustaliov / Ben Carey: Field Recordings From Other Constellations (Not Applicable, Album)
’Inspired by Stanisław Lem’s ‘The Cyberiad’, this debut collaboration between a UK and Australian electronic improviser plays out like two robot constructors trying to outdo each other — synths slurping, sputtering and whirring in dialogue, pieces adding, multiplying, dividing at a frantic pace. Closing track “Discovering Alonta” earns a rare moment of prismatic calm. The kind of record that shocks you back into a sense of what electronic sound is actually capable of.’ (SA)
Boards of Canada: Inferno (Warp, Album)
It Is No Measure of Health To Be Well-Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society (PR)
