Category Archives: Switched On

Switched On – Methyl Ethel: Are You Haunted? (Future Classic)

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methyl-ethel

written by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

The fourth album from Methyl Ethel sees a slight shift in direction. Announced in January, it sees the band break from the 4AD label to move to Future Classic, and it sees an elevation for Jake Webb to take a more prominent role of front man, not too dissimilar to Oli Alexander’s way of thinking with Years + Years.

Are You Being Haunted? looks to bring out more of the band’s electronic side, while returning to the studio where they made their first records. This is a significant nod to the passing of a dear friend who Webb recorded with at the time.

What’s the music like?

Smart, chic and extremely enjoyable. There are some excellent songs here, tightly packaged and produced with a knowing hand. Proof is especially good, its winning couplet “What can you see now?” dressed with sweeping strings. “My head is heavy, I’ve had awful dreams!” sings Webb. Something To Worry About is great power pop on a larger scale, strutting its stuff with a stately tread. Kids On Holiday is similarly inspired, with torch song lyrics and occasionally irregular rhythms.

Neon Cheap is if anything even better, making a lasting impression with its sharp couplets and catchy hooks. Matters zips along, showing the strength in depth of the album as it leads onto the epic Castigat Ridendo Mores, which has a wall of sound at the heart of its chorus. Finally In A Minute, Sublime, offers a questioning coda, by turns elegant and powerful.

Does it all work?

Yes – because the Methyl Ethel approach is an ‘all killer, no filler’ variety. The album is a compact design, clocking in at around 40 minutes, and packs plenty of incident and verve into that time.

Is it recommended?

Yes, enthusiastically. The new chapter looks set to be a fruitful one for Methyl Ethel, and with Are You Being Haunted? it is off to an auspicious start.

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Switched On – Vanessa Wagner: Study of the Invisible

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Take some time out this weekend – three minutes and forty-one seconds to be precise – and enjoy this video, a taster of pianist Vanessa Wagner‘s new album Study of the Invisible.

Released today on InFiné Music, the album is a carefully constructed suite of modern piano music, taking in minimal approaches but casting its net wider to hear from composers such as Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe and Harold Budd.

Arcana will carry a full review of the album, and an interview with Vanessa where we discuss the recording of the album and her approach to the piano. For now, though, enjoy the peace and stillness of this video!


You can read more about Vanessa Wagner at her website – and to hear more from the album, listen on by using the Bandcamp link below:

Switched On – Amphior: Another Presence (Glacial Movements)

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amphior

reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

This was made during the first Covid lockdown, described by its author as ‘a strange vacuum of feeling lonely and isolated’. However Amphior – aka Mathias Hammerstrøm – emerged from the period with a positive outcome, connecting with himself as a person and addressing some long-held feelings on introversion and sensitivity. Another Presence allowed him to express those feelings and be more himself in the process.

What’s the music like?

Haunting. It is possible to hear what sound like disembodied voices in many of these tracks, and though they are not noticeably lyric-based there is a primeval vocal quality to a lot of Amphior’s writing.

Void, the first track, has wisps of sound in the middle ground, some of them vocal, above a distorted and cracked profile underfoot, like standing on a large geological feature in a cold wind. The voices become more ominous in the course of the second track Phantasm, as does the darker musical language. After these two heavier pieces of music, Imaginary Shelter is just what’s needed, a comforting wash of sound and soothing harmonies. Dream Traveler offers the same welcoming cushion, though is consciously on the move, with that sounds like slow footsteps in the snow. The slow walking continues, with gradually changing vistas, as Sleepwalker takes in a range of colours both dark and light, before Pathfinder pans right out again. The warm colours of Another Presence find Amphior returning to a settled harmonic base, from which What Was Lost offers thick ambience if a hint of unresolved conflict, before ultimately fading away on the wind.

Does it all work?

Yes. Through the eight tracks here Amphior captures both the claustrophobia and strange, twisted freedom lockdown seemed to offer in equal measure, the qualities complementing each other while never becoming fully satisfying. Here the music is ultimately satisfying, finding its resolution from darker thoughts and feelings earlier on.

Is it recommended?

Yes. Another Presence is an affecting and occasionally disquieting listen, moving at a very slow pace as it examines feelings and experiences held deep beneath the surface. Ultimately those examinations bring forward a positive and deeper calm, the listener able to appreciate the long form ambience of this extremely descriptive album.

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Switched On – mōshonsensu: A Strange Dystopian Tundra (Rednetic)

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moshonsensu

reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

mōshonsensu is the moniker for Daryl Robinson, a UK producer making a fresh start under a pseudonym of Japanese origin. The commentary for his new album speaks with refreshing honesty of the importance of IDM and ambient music during the plight of a depressive episode in his life.

A Strange Dystopian Tundra could easily be a description of the landscape as we currently view it, as Robinson notes. “For me it represents dark times but also better times ahead hopefully. This album is combined with glitched beat patterns, melodic beauty and ambience woven together in a heuristic nature.”

What’s the music like?

Robinson’s music is equal parts meaningful, mysterious, uplifting and just occasionally troubling. In these respects it is an accurate reflection of feelings we have had throughout the last few years, but ultimately there is solace to be found in the ambient contours of his work.

Mystical Minds is a wonderful way to start, a track with a light touch but rich colours turning golden in the mind’s eye of this particular listener. Some of the mōshonsensu titles are amusing – Tedious Cricket, anyone?! – but in fact this is a track with a slowly rippling rhythm against a more distant hook line. The Detectives Walk In The Tundra is a striking addition, featuring a penetrating vocal from Jo Joyce, her contribution becoming a concentrated vocal refrain that sticks in the head. Sea Of Sound feels just like scattered footsteps on a shoreline, its beats allowed to run free, while Feel Down Innit also has busy activity, percussion flitting across the broad picture behind, like moths unwilling to settle – in this case possibly an effective depiction of anxiety and the fight against troubled thoughts.

Tribe has a serene but uncertain treble line, while Lost & Found Tape is a curious combination of angelic voices and grubby electro beats, a kind of inner city collage between the street and the church. Disposition Intact heightens this contrast, with big beats and airy voices, becoming a longer study of remote beauty.

Does it all work?

It does. The more you hear this album the more the emotional investment becomes clear, and yet it operates well on a surface level too.

Is it recommended?

Yes. By making an album that acknowledges the importance of ambient music to counter stress, mōshonsensu successfully faces the problem and gives us the obvious solution. As its title implies, A Strange Dystopian Tundra is not an easy ride, but it leaves the listener in a better place for hearing it.

It is also a timely reminder that to describe music as ambient does not short change the effect it can have on the listener.

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Switched On – Francis Harris: Thresholds (Scissor and Thread)

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francis-harris

What’s the story?

Francis Harris has already delivered a brace of thoughtful electronic albums in Lelend (2012) and Minutes of Sleep (2014), where he has considered some of our slowest moving and abstract ‘virtualities’. The train of thought continued with two albums as half of the Aris Kindt duo, but now Harris turns back to a solo identity for Thresholds.

In it, he ‘aspires to sonic universality and the presentation of a fully formed psychoacoustical world’, though it is not an ‘album of ideas’. In the commentary from his label, ‘inspired by the ecological and political upheavals of the present and the role of speculative thought as an avenue of global transformation, Thresholds is the work of a mature artist fully in control of his powers’.

What’s the music like?

While it is certainly important to consider the elements above, Thresholds stands on its own two feet for the listener who is completely new to its thoughts and sound worlds.

Often these worlds cross over, the album acting as the sonic equivalent of being on a train journey, or standing still while observing an object pass against overhead against a starry backdrop. The most effective tool here is the wide range of percussion, some of it very subtle, that Harris has at his disposal. The instruments and sounds, both acoustic and electronic, decorate the slow awakening of Useless Machines, then pepper Rebstock Fold with what feels like spots of electronic rain as a slower moving sequence of chords takes hold.

Harris keeps a background haze to proceedings, while a variety of musical languages unfold in the foreground. Many of these are slow moving, honing in on certain details, such as the muffled trumpet solo or vocal snippets that feature in Earth Moves. The dappled colours created by the music are often softly mesmerising. The title track, for instance, has digital chattering in the foreground while chords shift slowly in the background. The trumpet reappears on Speculative Nature Of Purposive Form as part of a largely static soundscape, but Cut Up responds to this with a good deal of nervous energy, its percussive buzzing suggesting an outlying jazz influence.

Does it all work?

Yes. These thoughtful compositions are consistently engaging but work as a whole in shifting the focus of the mind to calmer areas, the listener taking in the musical activity around the stereo picture but able to let it run on its way simultaneously.

Is it recommended?

Yes – Francis Harris makes ambient music with a difference, its intricate construction creating all sorts of moving patterns that the listener can either latch on to or allow to run free. Its imaginative colours and textures reveal something different with each encounter.

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