Tag Archives: Full Time Hobby

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

New music – Bibio: Phantom Brickworks (LP II) (Warp Records)

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published by Ben Hogwood, text taken from the press release.

Bibio has announced the imminent release of Phantom Brickworks (LP II) on Warp Records on 22 November. The first excerpt from the album, DINORWIC, can be heard here:

PHANTOM BRICKWORKS is an ongoing ambient/drone project by English musician and producer Stephen James Wilkinson aka Bibio, inspired by nature, landscape and places haunted by the faint ghosts of industry. It explores the human echoes still present in various sites around Britain which Wilkinson visited, observing their gradual decline.

“Human beings are highly sensitive to the atmospheres of places, which can be enhanced or dramatically altered when you learn the context of their history… echoes and voices can sometimes be heard, in some way or another. Places sometimes have things to say,” says Wilkinson. He continues, “Since releasing ‘PHANTOM BRICKWORKS’ in 2017, I have come to realise that it is an ongoing project. Although elements of ‘PHANTOM BRICKWORKS’ have seeped into my other albums over the years, it feels like its own separate entity.”

PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LPII) brings attention to new sites; some are intriguing, vast scars on the natural landscape, others survive only in local memories, historic clips and photographs. A few remain submerged from ordinary sight, while some exist purely as legends and stories. Under blankets of improvised evolving loops of piano and baritone guitar, the muffled spectres of working life can be heard, implying nature will come for everything and eventually hide the scars.

“When I announced the first ‘PHANTOM BRICKWORKS’ album, I discussed how places can be charged with meaning, depending on what they’d been through. That observation continues with the new album. It consists of mostly improvised music, using some of the same techniques as before as well as developing new ones that are unique to this album. Some familiar territory is revisited, both musically and in terms of the types of locations that interest me. North Wales plays a significant role, but this album reaches beyond –  extending into the realms of legends, as stories passed down through generations can sometimes haunt a place more vividly,” says Wilkinson.

You can pre-order Bibio’s album here:

Published post no.2,326 – 9 October 2024

New music – Tunng: Don’t Know Why (Full Time Hobby)

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published by Ben Hogwood, text taken from the press release. Photo (c) Paul Heartfield

The much-loved band Tunng are returning, celebrating 20 years since their first release. In those two decades they have maintained a fascinating musical balance, with a blend of electronica, folk and leftfield pop that has consistently marked them out as a band of special interest. Now the announcement of a new album in early 2025 comes with the following press release:

“Time flies when you’re being Tunng. Can it really be over two decades since the band’s genre-blurring, self-styled ‘pagan folktronica’ first emerged from an east London studio. It surely can, and what’s more, January 2025 will mark the twentieth anniversary of This is Tunng…Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs, a debut longplayer whose acoustic guitars and poetic disquisitions on nature, mythology and the human condition, courtesy of Sam Genders, sieved through fellow band founder Mike Lindsay’s lattice of fractured beats and crackling electronics, still sounds like an impiously postmodern wedding of the rustic and the synthetic, the arcane and the futurist.

That 20-year-old signature sound makes a warm return on Tunng’s eighth studio album, Love You All Over Again, a winning amalgam of texture and melody, disconcerting imagery and shapeshifting production, predicated, Lindsay reveals, on a conscious reacquainting with the band’s first principles. “I went back to the first two albums just to listen to how we fused genres – things like Davy Graham, Pentangle, the Expanding Records catalogue and the Wicker Man soundtrack. Over the years, Tunng’s sound has varied and twisted, but at the root there is always a flavour of what Sam and I made on that first album. Rather than searching for a new avenue we went back to what we used to do, which, after all this time, felt like it was a new avenue… Love You All Over Again is our way of coming full circle.”

Lead single Didn’t Know Why, which you can watch above, is a dauntless face-off between metallic synths and pellucid guitar arpeggiation with lyrics about a familiar Tunng song character, Jenny. “It’s very Tunng: dark but then warm and melancholic. Sam heard this and immediately brought back the murderous Jenny, who has appeared on two previous Tunng albums”.  Genders offers his take on Jenny. “She once represented a kind of romantic ideal – ‘the one’ – but now she’s a sort of every-person – a kind of archetype of all of us!”

Love You All Over Again is an album that gets to the very essence of Tunng. “For Tunng to work, it has to feel surprising, odd and unpredictable, and the new album has all that. It’s all about Tunng being back, as a family, within our original boundaries, bringing the love to all who have been a part of our journey over 20 years.”  Lindsay sums up nicely.

Published post no.2,325 – 8 October 2024

On Record – Dana Gavanski: When It Comes (Full Time Hobby)

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written by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

The story behind When It Comes is a powerful one. The second album from singer-songwriter Dana Gavanski, it celebrates the voice as an instrument, from the perspective of recovering lost vocal cords. She uses the album to bring her voice back to a musical way of thinking, a celebration of music itself.

The story explains the album’s precise but very natural vocal style, with strong communication the name of the game.

What’s the music like?

Bewitching. Gavanski has a lovely voice, bolstered by an accent that celebrates her heritage – Canadian raised and of Serbian descent, recording in the UK – as much as it celebrates her voice as an instrument. Gavanski’s partner James Howard deserves a great deal of credit for the instrumental support, and how he makes the voice the star of the show but creates a lovely tapestry behind it.

There is simplicity to this music, but welcome quirks too. I Kiss The Night, with its pure arpeggios, is the most obvious example, rooted in the ‘simple’ key of C major but actually revealing more layers with closer listening. The Reaper finds subtle humour in its straight faced delivery, with increasingly hypnotic offbeat vocals as it progresses. Gavanski’s vocal is beautifully weighted throughout both songs, as it is for Letting Go, an expressive admission that “I need your love” with hints of vulnerability around the edges in the oblique harmonies.

Bend Away & Fall has a different atmosphere entirely, powered by metallic harpsichord but with comforting sighs in the vocal line. It is a charming song. By contrast, Lisa – the most substantial song on the album – creates a portrait from the viewpoint of the sea, watching subjects pass by day after day. For the author it is about recognising what’s in front of her, in this case a richly coloured and textured seascape, brought to life in multicolour.

There are elements of Stereolab vocalist Laetitia Sadier in her delivery, also a little Jane Birkin and Cate Le Bon, but these should be used as guides rather than influences, as Gavanski’s style is very definitely her own. Knowing To Trust, the closing song, shows the voice at its purest and most romantic, bringing the listener in close with its often hushed delivery. “I know your face”, she coos at the end.

The instrumentation is often worth listening to on its own, responding to the voice with music of dexterity and colour. The Day Unfolds gets locked into a charming, hypnotic repetition, and the same fate befalls Indigo Highway, its gentle triple time oscillations complemented by Gavanski’s longer phrases.

Does it all work?

It does. There is both strength and vulnerability in Gavanski’s singing, and the album works its magic through this combination, with a rich mixture of styles and moods.

Is it recommended?

It is. When It Comes is often a memorising album. Dana Gavanski has created a rarefied atmosphere that offers us a route in to the very soul of her music. She is a profound singer and songwriter whose emotive music deserves to be heard far and wide.

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Warp Records website