KLOF Mag Regular
Obscure Sounds Mixtape, Off the Shelf with Constant Follower, plus Richard Dawson, Thorn Wych, Andrea Belfi and Jules Reidy, The Delines, Bill MacKay, Japanese psych-rock trio Kuunatic...
I dropped a new Mixtape earlier this week, a very eclectic offering featuring some fairly obscure tracks. This was only five days after the last one…I was clearly in need of some music therapy.
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I highly recommend Bluesky if you’re looking for an alternative; there are many artists, writers and creators there; it’s a breath of fresh air, and the engagement and reach aren’t bad either (much better than Threads, at least). I just hope it lasts.
Back to the Mixtape:
The strange opening is from Thai Radio transmissions recorded over a 15-year period from 1989 to 2004 and is from Radio Thailand: Transmissions From The Tropical Kingdom via Sublime Frequencies, one of my favourite record labels.
The main cover image used for the mix is a video-still for L’Entourloop’s—the French music collective featuring Sir Johnny and King James—powerhouse single Florilège, which featured three MCs: Lyricson, who was born in Guinea, West Africa; Queen Omega, a dancehall queen from Trinidad and Tobago; and Red Fox, a New York-based MC from Jamaica.
The smaller image shown in the artwork is from the album cover for Dabke: Sounds of the Syrian Houran (the track by Mohamed Al Ali, Mili Alay, is from the album), which was released in 2012 on Sham Palace, a label founded by Sublime Frequencies collaborator Mark Gergis, who also recorded some of the broadcasts from the Radio Thailand album I mentioned above. From the liner notes:
“Dabke is the celebratory music and dance performed at weddings and parties across the Levantine Middle East…The Houran refers to a swathe of south Syria and north western Jordan, beginning just below Damascus, and encompassing the Syrian cities of Daraa, Suweida, Bosra and the Golan Heights. It’s population includes Syrians, Bedouin, Duze, Palestinians and Jordanians–and this unique confluence of cltures is evident throughout these tracks.”
The Pip Proud track, Latin Version, is a rare recording from a private demonstration record from 1967 that sounds more like it’s from the mid-70s punk era.
A far older track comes from the twin Anglin Brothers with what I thought was an aptly titled ‘It’s An Unfriendly World’, recorded in 1938. They apparently recorded 34 songs together, but only 14 were ever released.
There are plenty more obscure tracks to enjoy:
Recommended Albums and Reviews
Those with just extracts are underlined, just click on the title to read it in full on KLOF Mag.
Richard Dawson – End of the Middle
Contemporary life seems an increasingly fractured thing, multifaceted in ways that can be disconcerting and maddening and frequently dangerous, but also beautiful and hopeful. Richard Dawson is one of the finest chroniclers of this state of existence: his songs follow the spidery faultlines that these fractures create, resulting in exhilarating and sometimes epic journeys to unexpected destinations.
His last three solo albums – Peasant (2017), 2020 (2019) and The Ruby Cord (2022) have mapped an increasingly complex terrain of imagined pasts and dystopian futures, calling on a cast of characters that includes Anglo-Saxon peasants, robot knights, disgruntled pub landlords and schoolboy footballers. Taken as a trilogy, those albums acted as a kind of state-of-the-nation address, only stretched out over the course of a millennium. End of the Middle is a slightly different proposition. Although apparently narrower in its focus, Dawson’s songwriting here is no less ambitious in its startling imagery and idiosyncratic subject matter.
Thorn Wych – Aesthesis
Released on Hood Faire (Cassette, Vinyl, Digital), the sibling record label of Folklore Tapes, Aesthesis is the debut release of Thorn Wych, an instrument maker and musician based in the Lancashire town of Bacup. From her backyard workshop, she makes instruments from the branches of UK native trees, especially Wych Elm, Lime, Wild Cherry, Oak, and Yew. She records these bowed string instruments, flutes and percussion at home and then loops and contorts them through effect pedals to create some of the most unexpected music, made in a world cut off from our own…an earthy and ancient-sounding form of off-grid music.
Auld Hunt resembles the long drones of Tibetan ritual music crossed with the ancient folk sound of Epirus. Her singing, especially on Ramble in the Brambles, is wonderfully universal sounding, like an amalgamation of tribal music that restlessly flutters East then West.
While there are wonderful traditional-sounding touchstones across this release, it’s also a uniquely individual sound that sits well alongside the likes of Milkweed’s Folklore 1979 release for its equally invigorating and engaging approach.
Andrea Belfi & Jules Reidy – dessus oben alto up
Recommended Listening: Released back in November, dessus oben alto up is the first collaborative recording between drummer, composer, and experimental musician Andrea Belfi and the respected polymath and acoustic musician (notably guitar) Jules Reidy. The four expansive pieces, dessus, oben and alto form side A and the fifteen minute, slow and unfolding up, side B. The album was recorded by Marco Anulli during a residency at Caille’s, a sound studio and arts institution housed in a 19th century machine factory in Berlin where both musicians are based.
The accompanying notes share how Reidy and Belfi’s approaches have much in common, bringing together compositional precision and electroacoustic rigour with improvisational freedom, the immediate gratifications of rhythmic pulse, and an overtly lyrical sensibility.
A personal favourite is alto, a piece that fizzes with a transformative vibrant energy, propelled by Belfi’s percussive groove and Reidy’s explorative 12 string acoustic. An album to offer yourself up to and just let go.
The Delines – Mr. Luck And Ms. Doom
Mr Luck and Ms Doom, the fifth album by Portland-based country-soul band The Delines, demonstrates a mastery of big lounge ballads and further proves why Willy Vlautin is rightly considered one of America’s greatest songwriters and novelists.
Off the Shelf with Stephen McAll (Constant Follower)
Scottish songwriter Stephen McAll, of Constant Follower, is our latest ‘Off the Shelf’ guest. In this series, we ask artists to present objects from a shelf or shelves in their homes and talk about them.
Constant Follower’s latest album, The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, is due for release on 28th February 2025 via Last Night From Glasgow (pre-order here). In his early review of the album, Thomas Blake described McAll as: a rare kind of songwriter: an artist inspired by trauma, personal loss and grief whose songs deal honestly with those emotions but are never afraid to offer up a little hope. This was true of last year’s collaboration with Scott William Urquhart, Even Days Dissolve, and it’s even more apparent on The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, his second solo album, where the songs often drift through liminal states before focussing on a bright musical passage or a sharp lyrical phrase.
As was the case on the Urquhart collab, McAll’s songs take inspiration from the literature of landscapes, and in particular, the poetry of Norman MacCaig, with whom he shares a certain kind of heartbroken optimism and a tangible affinity for the topography of his native Scotland. In fact, McAll credits MacCaig’s poetry for helping his recovery after a violent attack two decades ago left him with serious head injuries and long-lasting issues with memory and cognition.
The short lines and plain-spoken vocabulary of MacCaig’s poetry mask hidden emotional and philosophical depths, and the same can be said for McAll’s songs.
He concludes: It may have taken McAll two decades to realise his musical ambitions in the face of personal hardship, but that long gestation period has resulted in a handful of releases that are characterised by maturity, perfectionism and an unmatched emotional depth. It feels as if the songs on The Smile You Send Out Returns To You have been nurtured, perhaps subconsciously, over that whole twenty-year period, resulting in an incredibly moving and distinctive album.
Explore Stephen’s shelves and read the full piece here.
Also:
Japanese psych-rock trio Kuunatic announce new album ‘Wheels of Ömon’
Japanese psych-rock trio Kuunatic announce new album ‘Wheels of Ömon’, performed by ritual rhythms, chanted vocals, throbbing electric bass and ancient folk instruments. Listen to their lead single, Disembodied Ternion.
Bill MacKay – March 2025 Ireland, UK, EU Tour
Last year saw the release of Bill MacKay‘s Locust Land, his third solo outing for Drag City, which KLOF’s Glenn Kimpton described as “his most diverse yet, but also his most harmonious and satisfying, which is high praise, considering the quality of Esker and Fountain Fire. It feels like this one has been painstakingly put together, with every detail pored over, from the tight run time of a fraction under half an hour to the ratio of woozy versus uplifting music.”
Drag City have just shared details of Bill’s upcoming solo tour in March (details and ticket links below), which includes co-headline Ireland dates with Brigid Mae Power, whose latest self-released album Songs for You was described by Thomas Blake as a record that will melt the heart of even the most cynically covers-album-averse listener. His London date is a co-headline with Six Organs of Admittance, whose solo album Time is Glass was also reviewed by Tom: “The one apparently simple thing that has always made Six Organs of Admittance stand out from the crowd is his ability to create cerebral music that’s brimful of soul, and ‘Time is Glass’ is a perfect example of that winning combination.”
In case you missed it, Glenn Kimpton spoke in-depth with Bill about Locust Land:
Extract: What is very apparent upon listening to Locust Land is its focus as a piece of work, a detail that shouts confidence and clarity. “It’s nice that you have that perception,” Bill says. “It was in my mind to make it so that it was determined in that way. That’s not to say that I wasn’t going with an intuitive side, or that there aren’t things that are left open or those moments left to chance. But it was definitely an aim and I also felt that with Cooper [Crain, BCMC] and with Dougie [McCombs] and Charles [Rumback] on the Black Duck one, so that’s nice and when you feel that happen it’s like a new template in a way, or at least a reminder that it’s right to continue in that vein.”
Another note was the album’s length, which at just half an hour is neat and appropriate to the material. “It’s interesting that you picked up on that, because I thought quite a lot about it,” Bill says. “I was wondering how long it should be, because it can’t really be fifteen or twenty minutes. So I was close to half an hour and there was a chance to put another thing on there, but it just didn’t need it and it didn’t feel right. And it feels like there’s a density to the material that feels rich, so that makes up for lost time, you could say.”
This is an interesting point, especially when considering songs like Oh Pearl and Glow Drift, both of which have a drive to them that is less common in Bill’s solo work. “They’re some of the most driving and uptempo songs I’ve ever done,” Bill nods. “I realised it was an area of music that I hadn’t explored that much, because tempos can become integral to your creative backbone in a way and most writers tend to aim for certain tempos. So it was nice to hit that area and it felt natural, part of which was having the band too, I think. Oh Pearl is all me, but Glow Drift has Sam and Mikel on it and I think it really helps with that lift off. And when it comes to slow ones like Half of You, that shift of gears makes sense and shines a light on the other things.”
Bill MacKay European Tour
March 2025
21st @ Dolans – Limerick, IE *
22nd @ BelloBar – Dublin , IE *
23rd @ Black Box – Belfast, Northern Ireland *
24th @ Róisín Dubh – Galway, IE *
26th @ The Glad Cafe – Glasgow, UK
27th @ Metronome – London, UK #
28th @ The Rose Hill – Brighton, UK #
29th @ Chair de Poule – Paris, FR
*with Brigid Mae Power
#with Six Organs of Admittance
Order Locust Land:
Next up: The Monday Morning Brew Playlist for Premium Subscribers.