More At Ban Ban Ton Ton

I've continued writing some guest posts at Ban Ban Ton Ton, the Japan based Balearic blog run by Dr. Rob. I say Balearic, Ban Ban Ton Ton's remit runs far wider than that. Since the start of February this year I've written about these four albums.

Jason Boardman's second compilation of obscure post punk and dub cuts, music from the outer fringes of the early 1980s. ...And The Native Hipsters open the album with the surreally brilliant There Goes Concorde Again, low fi, DIY post- punk recored onto 4 track in a band member's bedroom. 

No One's Listening Anyone 2 is a trip back to a time of invention and inspiration, the swirling creativity that was thrown into the air by punk, giving everyone and anyone who had an idea the confidence to go out and have a go. It was also a period with an ever present threat of nuclear war, economic recession and warmongering, clinically insane leaders... hmmm... You can read my review of No- One's Listening Anyway 2 here. 

In March I reviewed the latest album by Craven Faults, an ambient outfit who make music inspired by the post- industrial landscape of northern England, a world of engine sheds, derelict mills, paths and cobbled streets walked by people from two hundred years ago. Craven Faults are dark and immersive, an experience. My review of Sidings is here. This is the fifteen minute long track Far Closes that ends the album. 

A month ago I wrote about the latest album by Thought Leadership, a mysterious Stockport based guitarist who has released three album now, each one named after a suit from a deck of Tarot cards. The latest one is called IV Of Cups and indicates that Thought Leadership is showing no signs of running out of inspiration or ideas. IV Of Cups has ten new guitar led ambient/ instrumental pieces, all named Roman numerically from XXI to XXX. It's a joy of an album, inventive and hypnotic, some obvious influences worn on its sleeve but very much its own thing too. My review of IV Of Cups is here and the album can be found at Bandcamp with some vinyl still available here. 

Most recently, two days ago in fact, Rob posted my review of the new Pan* American album, Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane, an ambient/ electric./ acoustic tribute to travel- physical travel by airplane and the kind of metaphorical travels we can make at home, transported by music to another place. It's also a response to the decline and death of Pan* American's parents so there's a third kind of travel involved and referred to, the passage from life to death. Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane is by no means a depressing or downbeat album though, it's an album of possibilities and of taking flight. You can read my full review here and listen to the album at Bandcamp. 

Bounds

In 2020 I bought a double album by Craven Faults, Erratics And Nonconformities, six tracks of foreboding analogue ambient, modular synths, dark kosmische, made to accompany walks across post- industrial northern Britain, the soundtrack to abandoned foundries, stone walls, damp valleys, murky canal towpaths and moorland. It was hugely atmospheric and difficult to ignore, not the sort of ambient that becomes background music but foreground instrumental ambient, a very present sound. Sometimes it would leave me feeling totally enveloped by the sound, layers of recorded sound that bore a hole through me and left me feeling like something cathartic had happened. One evening listening to it it made me feel anxious and like the world was caving in. Full disclosure- this was after Isaac died and maybe is as much about how I was feeling as about the music, but I haven't been back to Craven Faults since. 

A new EP came out last month, four tracks that are intended to soundtrack a thirty seven minute trek across some part of northern England. Craven Faults is non- specific about the precise location but it's 'less than twenty miles north west of the city' (Leeds? Sheffield? Bradford?) and takes in the gathering dusk, a gritstone pillar destroyed by lightning, a tarn, and hillsides. The tracks- Long Stoop, Groups Hollows, Lampes Mosse and Waste & Demesne- vary from five minutes through to eighteen and are best encountered in one sitting, a kosmische but also earthbound trip where repetition is central and layers of analogue sound and drones build, with occasional sudden bursts of synth swooping in, like a flock of birds wheeling overhead. Buy Bounds at Bandcamp.

Monday's Long Song

Craven Faults specialise in long tracks, music inspired by lengthy excursions in post- industrial landscapes in northern England made with analogue synths and modular synths. It's a sound they describe as 'Detroit via The Orbit in Morley, 1992. Istanbul, 1967. We travelled by rail with old friends. Vienna, late night café, straight connection. Lower Manhattan, 1966. New Year’s Day in Filey, making mental note of the patterns played out by the church bells. 1991. Revisited several times over. Mutated by the passage of time.'

The EP Nunroyd Works has sold out on vinyl but you can get it digitally at Bandcamp. The first track is  Engine Fields, clocking in at a relatively concise seven minutes. The second is the ten minutes trip of Dye And Size. The third, below, is the monumental seventeen and a half minutes of Foddergang, a relentless, intense kosmische synth journey, with rippling arpeggios and a thunderous kick drum. 

Monday Mix

I did another mix for Scotland's Tak Tent Radio and it went out yesterday from their nerve centre. I put it together back in March when the days were shorter and I seemed to spend a lot of time walking round in the dark after work- seems a bit gloomy now that it's May and the evenings are lighter much later. At first I intended it to be a fully ambient/ drone mix, partly because I was listening to a lot of ambient music in my headphones while walking and partly because I'd just begun reading Harry Sword's book, Monolithic Undertow, a history and appreciation of the drone from Neolithic times to the present day (highly recommended if you haven't read it) but I got twenty five minutes into the mix and thought we needed some drums (and a voice or two too). Tak Tent Radio is here, loads of great stuff to listen to. Bagging Area Tak Tent Three is at Mixcloud. Tracklist below. 

Tak Tent Three

• Luke Schneider: Anteludium
• Daniel Avery: Tremor
• A Winged Victory For The Sullen: The Dead Outnumber The Living
• Richard Norris: Hilma
• Craven Faults: Cupola Smelt Mill
• Pye Corner Audio: Quarry Rave
• Herrmann Kristoferson: Gone Gold
• Ruf Dug: Dominica (Kenneth Bager’s Sunset Ambient Mix)
• Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: Estuary Embers
• Art Of Noise: Moments In Love
• Cheval Sombre: It’s Not Time
• Vangelis/ Blade Runner: Pris Meets JF Sebastian 
• Vangelis/ Blade Runner: Spinner Ascent

Craven Faults, Smoke Test

A double post of ambient weirdness from post- industrial lockdown England. Craven Faults are a Yorkshire based outfit who make industrial ambient pitching up somewhere between 1970s West Germany and 2020s West Yorkshire. Walks across the countryside to see decaying mills and workshops turned into music using an array of modular synths, keyboards, organs, pianos and drum machines. A three track EP called Enclosures is out in physical formats now, available at Bandcamp and led by the ten minute trip of Doubler Stones.

Further south to the East Midlands and a city which was under lockdown and tiered restrictions longer than anywhere else in the UK. Leicester duo Smoke Test send out dark, ambient transmissions built using a similar sonic arsenal- synths, found sounds, noises. This isn't ambient as a calming, music for healing experience but uneasy ambient, a wordless shout into the void. They've just released their second album, cunningly titled Volume II. Opener Tender bubbles around for four and a half minutes, loops building and folding in on themselves with a touch of acid in there. The Owl Sanctuary is a disquieting walk at dusk, birds chirruping. Wasted Time, echoes bouncing around the inside of a container, is anything but. Buy it here. 

Monday's Long Songs

This album, Erratics And Unconformities by Craven Faults, came out last year. I missed it but am making up for lost time- six tracks, analogue synths and drones from the 20th century, used to conjure up atmospheres and surroundings. The album is inspired by and built around walks through the post- industrial landscape in northern Britain where the ghosts of people's lives and their work echo round the decaying infrastructure, extinct textile mills and foundries, canal towpaths and derelict workshops. The opener, Vacca Wall, is eighteen minutes long (here) and quite upbeat, full of promise and melodies beamed in from the Federal Republic Of Germany, circa 1974.

The last track, Signal Post is the shortest at only eight and a half minutes (here)  and is heavy, an ending, the sun going down on. 

In between there are four others, the pick being Cupola Smelt Mill, the musical influence of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger being felt and heard long after they started out, the synths hypnotising as the rhythms unfold in their own time. Superb stuff. Buy it at Bandcamp.