On Record – Tunng: Love You All Over Again (Full Time Hobby)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Tunng have enjoyed 20 years’ existence as a band, in which time their musical philosophy has remained constant. They might ask themselves ironically on Everything Else, “why do we do this?”, but their particular brand of music continues to spread its peculiar brand of warmth.

The band have always tended towards ‘switched-on’ folk music – that is, lyrics that find a common ground over glitchy, electronic loops and beats, with curious field noises and riffs that seem initially harmless but burrow into the listener’s brain.

Love You All Over Again celebrates all that and more, harnessing everything the band loved about their debut LP, This is Tunng… Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs, feeding in the experience gained in two decades and – typically – putting it through a slightly skewed blender.

What’s the music like?

Still very Tunng – which is, of course, a big compliment. The band have retained their singalong choruses, their quirky but meaningful lyrics, the bits of open air recording and processing that lead the ear this way and that, messing with perspective as they suddenly pan out from close intimacy to a stone’s throw away and then back again.

Unexpectedly tender moments cast a spell too, like the softly played guitar motif of Didn’t Know Why, which cuts to a wistful, singalong chorus – until suddenly you realise what the lyrics are, the familiar character of the murderous Jenny brought back amid lengthening shadows. Sixes is a satisfying blend of acoustic and electronic, but Snails shows how the group’s aptitude for new colours remains as keen as ever, its lovely clarinet and pizzicato strings an ideal match. Drifting Memory Station creaks and whirs, casting a sleepy spell as its mechanics grind lazily together.

The band’s vocals are still an ideal match, Becky Jacobs complementing Sam Genders and Mike Lindsay as the three main protagonists. They sing together rather movingly on the haunting Laundry, against a backdrop of chattering electronics and tender woodwind.

Does it all work?

It does. Tunng have an appealing mix of confidence, vulnerability and darkness that blend together in sounds that can move between rousing choruses and mildly horrific confessions.

Is it recommended?

Enthusiastically. In their own way, Tunng are national treasures, and have a corner of the interface between folk and electronic music all to themselves.

For fans of… King Creosote, Efterklang, Beta Band, Stereolab

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,442 – Tuesday 11 February 2025

On Record – C Duncan: It’s Only A Love Song (Bella Union)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Glasgow songsmith Chris Duncan moves seamlessly onto his fifth album, his second for Bella Union.

“I love the idea of something being so romantic that it almost hurts”, he says ahead of the modestly-titled opus, which is something of a family affair. Described as a ‘song suite’, it celebrates marriage with his long-term partner, but also reflects on times of stress and loss. The latter is expressed in symbolist terms on Triste Clair de Lune, where Duncan writes a “song about the moon losing a part of itself that floats down to earth, and this exquisite light being found by humans. And all the stars above lamenting the loss of this light.”

The family connection extends to his parents, both classically trained string players, who helped realise most of the lush orchestrations.

What’s the music like?

Once again, C Duncan delivers windswept pop music of the highest quality. Clearly borne of personal experience, his writing tugs at the heart strings with its powerful yearning, expressed through the beautiful soft timbres of his vocals.

This is immediately apparent in the title track, but also Lucky Today, a song of heartfelt sincerity. The sense of loss and hurt can be felt but ultimately these songs are uplifting and reach upwards in wonder, as on Sadness, where the lyric “dry those weary eyes” is set to positive melodic thoughts. Worry is an absolute beauty, softly delivered but far reaching, its harmonic shifts melting the hardest of exteriors and its multilayered vocals a true chorus of angels.

It is amazing how a song like Think About It is not a radio staple, for Duncan harnesses the best of 1980s soft rock while adding some extra twists and turns along the way, with unexpected harmonic sleights and lush orchestration. Delirium brings more urgency to the vocals, while Surface could even be a big Tim Burton show number, with its swirling chorus and textures. Duncan wraps up with iTime And Again, a twilight epilogue of serene beauty and swooning orchestral forces.

Does it all work?

It does – another volume of winsome songs, beautifully delivered.

Is it recommended?

It is, enthusiastically – but with the proviso that if you haven’t heard the music of C Duncan by now, you really should get to know it. Not just this album, but the four before it.

For fans of… The Blue Nile, Prefab Sprout, 10cc, Brian Eno

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,441 – Monday 10 February 2025

Switched On – Sunroof: Electronic Music Improvisations Vol. 3 (The Parallel Series / Mute)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones’ Sunroof project is proving to be both productive and enriching. This third volume was released late in 2024, a collection of nine tracks is recorded using the duo’s Eurorack modular systems, building on the self-imposed restrictions they had imposed in 2021.

The pair delve into their electronic archives for material, using a TEAC four track machine picked up by Miller in the late 1970s, used for The Normal’s Warm Leatherette and here powering the track Splendid.

What’s the music like?

Consistently inventive and intriguing. Splendid is the first track on the album, and it crackles into life before the pair apply a booming bass sound. The music is simultaneously graceful, with some elegant outlines, and edgy in mood, a trait running through the album.

Brotherly flickers, the music behaving as though heard in a flash of memory, a half-heard dance repeated in another room. Ensnare has a kind of rolling percussion, liked processed steelpans, exhibiting a strong rhythmic thread that runs through the album. Stratus teems with activity, like an insect colony, then Freezer starts like a Philip Glass organ piece, given rolling bass as accompaniment. Earthen has friendly chatter like a 1980s game, while by contrast Link goes low in range, like a big cricket. Meanwhile Conspiracies carries a latent threat, evoking memories of Cabaret Voltaire.

Does it all work?

It does. The freeform approach that Miller and Jones take is consistently engaging and engrossing, and the musical ideas are teeming with life.

Is it recommended?

Very much so…with evidence on this third instalment that Sunroof are only just getting into their stride. More instalments of this series would be welcome, for the musical chemistry between the pair is evident.

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,440 – Sunday 9 February 2025

Arcana @ 10… Musical moments: Loscil

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As part of Arcana’s 10th birthday celebrations, we invited our readers to contribute with some of their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years.

Editor Ben Hogwood, after much consideration, has chosen a piece of immersive ambience from the Pacific coast.

“Getting to know new music is one of life’s joys – but it does bring with it a danger that the listener does not return to their successes as often as they might or should do. When I was thinking through my musical highlights from the last 10 years it was difficult to bring one specific artist or event to mind. There have been several from my work elsewhere, writing for musicOMH – discovering Bruce Hornsby’s new direction, or following the music of Erland Cooper and its Orcadian connections. Western classical music has provided some memorable moments too, few more so than Sir Simon Rattle conducting Mahler at the BBC Proms.

Yet the one I settled on for Arcana’s 10th anniversary is a thread running through the site’s whole decade, my love of the extraordinary music of Loscil. This is the alias used by Scott Morgan, a Canadian who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia – and whose music is like none other.

Perhaps it’s the fact I have been to Vancouver on several occasions, visiting relatives, that I feel such a strong connection to Loscil’s music. But there is something primal about it that really tugs not just at the heart but at the very fibre of our being, a connection formed between music and the earth. It is the deepest ambience you can imagine in music, an extraordinary achievement when you examine the relatively simple tools used in its construction.

The best example for this is the third section of the Equivalents album from 2019 – a timeless wonder that is deep as the ocean, as wide as the sky. There are clouds on the horizon, and the music paints all these and more in its extraordinary span.

In a memorable interview for Arcana, Scott summed it up. “There is a way of using the creative process and the creation of music to express that which you can’t express in other ways, and that’s what ends up coming out a lot of the time.” Later he noted, “a lot of my work accidentally plays with the spectrum between the natural world and the industrial world…ultimately I think I’m after some sort of balance of what it is to be human, and what it is to be human inside of this natural world we live in.”

I saw Scott perform this music live, at Rich Mix in the heart of Shoreditch – and it was only seconds before we were transported away. In my head I was stood on a beach at the far west of Vancouver Island, experiencing the weather with all its primal force.

You can listen to the album on Tidal below:

Published post no.2,439 – Saturday 8 February 2025

In concert – Isabelle Faust, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Akio Yashiro: Symphony, Shostakovich: Violin Concerto no.2 & Bartók Dance Suite

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Isabelle Faust (violin, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada (below)

Bartók Dance Suite BB86a (1923)
Shostakovich Violin Concerto no.2 in C sharp minor Op.129 (1967)
Yashiro Symphony for Large Orchestra (1958) [UK Premiere]

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 5 February 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Isabelle Faust (c) Felix Broede

It may not have been a popular programme, but tonight’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra drew a pretty decent attendance in music clearly to the liking of music director Kazuki Yamada, who duly gave of his best for what proved a memorable evening.

Often seen as a breakthrough work in terms of its fusing indigenous musical expression with Western formal conceits, Bartók’s Dance Suite makes an ideal concert-opener. At its best in the rhythmic propulsion or harmonic astringency of the second and third dances, the present account felt a touch inhibited elsewhere; Yamada making overmuch of rhetorical pauses that should motivate rather than impede ongoing momentum. Not that this precluded a forthright response from the CBSO, pianist James Keefe making the most of his time in the spotlight.

Although not now the rarity it once was, Shostakovich’s Second Violin Concerto will always lag behind its predecessor as to performance. Coming near the outset of its composer’s final decade, its inwardness and austerity belie its technical difficulties – though these latter were rarely an issue for Isabelle Faust, who kept the initial Moderato on a tight if never inflexible rein so its demonstrative outbursts and speculative asides were more than usually integrated. Even finer was the central Lento, muted anguish finding potent contrast with plangent solo passages, and a closing contribution from horn player Elspeth Dutch of subdued pathos. Nor was the final Allegro an anti-climax, Faust drawn into engaging confrontation with timpani and tom-tom then heading to a denouement with more than a touch of desperation in its hilarity.

Inquiring listeners may have encountered a recording in Naxos’s Japanese Classics series of a Symphony by Akio Yashiro (1929-76). One of the first group of Japanese composers to study in Europe after the Second World War, his limited yet vital output witnesses a determined and distinctive attempt to fuse certain native elements with the more radical aspects of timbre and texture stemming from the West. Messiaen (with whom he studied) is audible in the fastidious harmonies of this work’s Lento that, building from pensive melodies on flute and cor anglais into a threnody of real emotional power, is its undoubted highlight. Otherwise, the music feels more akin to that of André Jolivet (whose three symphonies deserve revival) in its abundant orchestral colour and predilection for rhythmic ostinatos that galvanize the musical argument.

Such is evident in the implacable unfolding of a Prelude whose motivic ideas secure a more purposeful accord in the ensuing Scherzo, while the finale draws upon the slow movement’s intensity as it expands over successive waves of activity to an impetuous Allegro of no mean velocity prior to a seismic, even brutal peroration. Whatever its intermittent lack of subtlety and cohesion, Yashiro’s Symphony remains an imposing musical edifice such as makes one regret that the composer never managed to pen its successor during his subsequent 18 years.

It certainly found the CBSO at its collective best, so making one hope that Yamada (above) might yet schedule pieces by such as Toshiro Mayuzumi or Sadao Bekku. His next concert has a rather more familiar symphony by Tchaikovsky in the orchestra’s annual Benevolent Fund Concert.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about violinist Isabelle Faust and the CBSO chief conductor Kazuki Yamada, and also the composer Akio Yashiro’s symphony

Published post no.2,438 – Friday 7 February 2025