The Sick Man Of Europe may be an anonymous musical act, but there is a strong identity to their work. Having released a self-titled debut album last year, they quickly follow up with a sequel that looks to explore a more processed means of communication.
“Through repetition the message has gained weight and become something more urgent,” The Sick Man Of Europe explains on the album’s press release. “The vehicle for this message needed to evolve, grow to attain the strength to carry it. We’ve landed on something more expansive, immediate and immersive. Less is more. Until it isn’t.”
What’s the music like?
There is an impressive assurance about this music that grabs the listener right from the word go, a poise and stature to the production that is only enhanced by the vocals.
There is an extraordinary voice behind this work – The Man bringing a resonant, doom-laden and authoritative voice to music that brings to mind some of the 1980s’ leading vocalists. None more so than Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, though this instrument has a power to its lower register that even he would be proud of. The music has a Germanic feel; sleek and clinical like a well-polished automobile.
The songs are powerful and very much of their time, harnessing formidable Krautrock beats in the likes of Cadogan Gate, a superb song, or the coruscating Love Song. Apathy hammers out its conclusions in an unusual meter, while the title trackbuilds with real purpose, the voice and electronics a thrilling mixture.
Does it all work?
It does. Powerful and distinctive, this music makes a strong impression.
Is it recommended?
It is. An album whose impact only deepens with repeated listening, The Intermittent Signal is darkly uplifting, with a deep resolve that is ultimately inspiring.
For fans of…Depeche Mode, Interpol, Blancmange, The Human League, The Cure
Listen / Buy
Published post no.3,071 – Saturday 7 November 2026
Gaspar Claus delivers his first artist album since Tancade, released five years ago. The cello may be his main instrument, but Claus works with Basile3 to use it as a departure point, with electronics intervening as appropriate to create a host of original and intriguing soundworlds.
When speaking of the recent single release Ecstasy, one of the standout points of the album, Claus speaks of how “These sounds were transformed, put through machines, digitized, stretched, sometimes metamorphosed into synthetic textures or even percussion. So it’s not a meeting between cello and electronics, but rather a story of -transformation.”
With Basile3, Claus worked in a custom-built studio alongside producer Basile3, the press release describing their output as “an album shaped by friction and breath, moving between intimate memory, desire, and vital energy. Driven by a fertile tension between the cello and its digital transformation, the record unfolds a shifting sonic landscape where organic fervour meets electronic metamorphosis.”
What’s the music like?
Highly charged. Claus wrings every bit of emotion out of his cello, but also uses it imaginatively when building the electronics, so that on occasion it sounds like a full orchestra.
World of Idols is a solemn but richly coloured opening, making a powerful impression with its broad and slightly sorrowful melody, not to mention the fulsome bass section. Ecstasy on the other hand is brightly coloured and adds beats effectively. Amour constrictor (Fugue) is also a lively number, light hearted and brilliantly realised with its ticking figurations. Meanwhile Chrysalis is evocative, its polka-like dance a proper foot tapper.
Does it all work?
It does, to the point where it is difficult to comprehend this is music born from the cello – Claus covers all voices in his use of polyphony. The pioneering efforts are even better with repeated listening.
Is it recommended?
Yes, without hesitation. An effective, stimulating and deeply moving piece of work.
For fans of…Julia Kent, Sarah Neufeld, Manu Delago, Olafur Arnalds
Described as balancing ‘raw sonic exploration with a strong sense of atmosphere’, Dmitry Polivenko delivers his first solo work as Vigilant for Glacial Movements.
Taking up the story, he describes the album as “an exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the passage of time. It reflects a feeling that returns to me every year—a yearning for a fleeting moment of happiness preserved deep within my childhood. Winter, with its silence and wonder, remains one of my earliest memories: sitting wrapped in a blanket on a sled, carried through snow-covered streets by my father. Today, I walk those same streets alone, guided by fragments of the past. Time can feel like a storm that clouds our vision and pulls us away from ourselves. Yet beneath the weight of accumulated experiences, expectations, and endless information, there remains a quiet certainty: beyond the noise, beyond the dreams and fears, lies the possibility of rediscovering who we truly are. This album is a journey through that landscape of remembrance and self-discovery.”
What’s the music like?
As evocative as the cover art. This music is deep as the ocean but weather-beaten too, its elemental power immediately obvious as the slowly shifting harmonies evolve with the slow tread of a ship or an iceberg.
Winter has his house is as cold as you would expect, though some of the more consonant harmonies raise the temperature a little. By contrast Lullaby is not so restful, with a searching treble line.
There is an icy, industrial air to the likes of Cold silent love but a contrasting charm to the quieter Crystals, which operates above a soft, sonorous drone amid footsteps in the snow. Here Polivenko appears to be channelling childhood memories of being pulled through icy streets on a sled by his father.
Into the black light is shifty and twisted, a fever dream in the snow, resolved by the bright consonance of Somewhere, whose sweeping beauty looks skyward.
Does it all work?
It does, and with its quieter central core the album is ideally structured.
Is it recommended?
Yes. Vigilant writes powerfully from the heart, and the remembered threads of the title combine here to make a substantial and lasting piece of work.
For fans of…Loscil, Tim Hecker, Schneider TM, O Yuki Conjugate
After Come Out was over, I remember thinking, “What is this? Am I gonna be a mad scientist trapped in a loft with a tape recorder? So, I immediately thought, “I’ve got to return to live music.” – Steve Reich, talking to Michael Tilson Thomas (from Steve Reich: Conversations)
Background
Having vowed to return to live music, Reich encountered difficulties. “Unfortunately, it seemed to me at the time impossible for two human beings to perform that gradual phase shifting process, since the process was discovered with, and was indigenous to, machines.”, he says in Writings on Music.
Yet he was in for a welcome surprise, realising that having recorded a short loop on the piano, he could indeed play against it as though he were a second tape recorder. “Doing it is really incredible”, he recounted to MTT, “because the only way I can do it is to close my eyes and listen as closely as possible so that I don’t move two sixteenths ahead, or just get stuck in unison.”
The rhythmic interval of a sixteenth is critical, for while the two musicians begin in unison, the second starts to gradually increase their tempo so that the phase shifting begins, and eventually they move one beat (one sixteenth) ahead. This continues until both align back in unison, at which point a new melodic pattern is introduced, and the shifts begin from scratch. The home key is B minor, and the piano notes are largely mid-range.
Listen
Thoughts
Piano Phase is one of Reich’s most hypnotic works, and once again it rewards the active listener with a dazzling array of riffs that can be picked out of the crowded textures seemingly at will. The shifts of rhythmic emphasis are thrilling, and as the second pianist moves ahead of the first there are moments of euphoria when torrents of notes are unleashed like a waterfall, then reassuring blocks where everything falls metrically into line.
There are dancing figurations created by the constant movements, the left hand acting as the ‘legs’ to support the movement in the right hand’s ‘upper body’ figurations. These shapes constantly shift in the listener’s imagination.
Halfway through, when you might expect the piece to drag, it regenerates, fresh energy added as the rhythms bounce off each other, while fifteen minutes in and what seemed to be a simple, single line is now a dazzling wall to well ringing of bells, with very little bass
By the end the melodic elements are almost done, bouncing between two notes a tone apart and seemingly trapped in a vacuum. This feels like exactly the right point for the piece to stop, which it does in unison. As always, the quiet at the end of a minimalist piece feels like the loudest part of all, until things subside to silence – yet the effect lingers, the musical equivalent of a double espresso.
Quotes / Legacy
“It’s one pattern, but it’s a completely different way of playing the piano…it requires a completely different skill set. You’re playing the piano like a percussionist. You were asking the performers to do something that up until that point people had not been asking performers to do.” – composer Michael Gordon on discovering Piano Phase (from Steve Reich: Conversations)
Is it too fanciful to suggest modern pop songs such as Alex Warren’s Fever Dream have been indirectly influenced by Reich’s workings?
Recordings
There are several. Reich’s first recording, made with Double Edge (pianists Edmund Niemann and Nurit Tilles, clocks in at just over 20 minutes. Ensemble Avantgarde on Wergo are 18’40”, while Vincent Corver and Keith Ford are a nippy 13’40” with their account for CPO. All are enjoyable, but Reich’s is more authoritative. You can compare on this Tidal playlist
Also written / released in 1967 The BeatlesSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; The Jimi Hendrix ExperienceAre You Experienced; ShostakovichSeven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok; StockhausenHymnen
Archives may sound like a B-sides compendium, or a host of rediscovered demos, but it is a wholly new album from intriguing trio Vanishing Twin.
The title reflects the trio’s creative process, where, as singer and founder member Cathy Lucas says, they have a process of “gathering material together, riffing with it, turning it around on itself, trying to put the pieces together and create a story with it”.
The trio have a fluid approach that allows them to exchange ideas through a virtual studio, play each other’s instruments and adopt an improvisatory air on occasion. This keeps a light-hearted air to their music and keeps creativity to the forefront.
What’s the music like?
As original as the creative process suggests it should be. At the root of Vanishing Twin’s music is a beat-based style of music that has close musical alignment with Broadcast and Stereolab, but never sounds like pastiche.
Instead, the trio create compositions with a dark and eerie edge, their music akin to catching sight of an unexpected reflection in the mirror, seeing a sudden shadow out of the corner of your eye or, more playfully, seeing a bat or a bird flit quickly across your vision.
Their combination of funk and wariness is unexpectedly strong, with a cool vocal on Familiar Fruit taken out of its comfort zone by creepy scrapes on the bass. Hazama has an eerie vocal, the end of So Calm even more so in multitude, while the scrunched up, glitchy rhythms of Bring Me The Axe are like a dub ritual in preparation. The title track wavers, the shrill electronics circling ominously.
Does it all work?
Yes – at times Vanishing Twin have a creative tension at play, with something ominous in the air. Creepy, colourful and original.
Is it recommended?
Yes. Archives is a compelling listen, with three imaginative minds making music that both warms and chills the cockles, often simultaneously.
For fans of…Broadcast, Stereolab, Jane Weaver, Dry Cleaning, Peaking Lights
