Japan Italy Nuremberg Todmorden

A truly globetrotting post today, from the Far East to Europe, with two reviews I've done over at Dr. Rob's Japan based Ban Ban Ton Ton blog in the last month, a pair of albums that are lighting up summer 2026. Both albums have something in common in sound and outlook, a European cosmische sensibility, one from Italy and one from Germany. 

First, Italian ambient artist Gigi Masin and an album called Movement which spans the electronic spectrum with ambient drones, heavenly choirs, cosmische excursions, sidesteps into jazz and breakbeats and more besides. My review is here and the album is at Bandcamp here. 

Deception Dance is a seven and a half minute triumph, a marriage of the synthetic and robotic with the organic and human. 

From Italy we head north through the Alps to southern Germany and Nuremberg's Konformer who have just released their second album, Konformer II. The band play instrumental kosmische, synths and drums following the bass guitar which usually takes the lead and creates the energy- loops of bass that become grooves, spacey, minimalist and motorik sounds. Three of the six tracks are named after places, Mont Ventoux, Marseille and Todmorden. The last of these three will host Konformer when they play a week long tour of the UK in late August/ early September, concluding at Manchester Psyche Fest.

My review at Ban Ban Ton Ton is here and the album, out now on Jason Boardman's Before I Die, is here and below.  

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. 

Monday's Long Songs

There are things going on in Stockport. Luke Una called it, not entirely seriously, 'the new Berlin'. Not only does Stockport have the largest brick built structure in the UK (as seen partially in my photo above), a viaduct constructed from 11 million bricks, and a 60s modernist shopping centre (the Merseyway) that used to have outdoor escalators, and a car park with a lovely Alan Boyson concrete frieze as its wall, but it also has the Underbank. The Underbank is a maze of old streets directly below the old market hall and the Robinson's brewery that dominates the skyline. In the last few years the Underbank has become a regeneration area with independent businesses (clothes shops, a magazine and book specialist, SK1 records) and a growing number of bars and restaurants. In one of these bars, Bruk, Nuremberg dub artist Klangkollektor played, back in August. The set was recorded and released recently as The Stockport Tapes. 

Klangkollektor's twin albums Dubtapes Volumes One and Two, came out on Jason Boardman's Stockport based Before I Die label- both are wonderful albums and Dubtapes Two is sure feature highly in my end of year list. When he played at Bruk, Klangkollektor played tracks from both albums, turning up the echo and the bass and stretching the already dubby tracks out into seriously heavy dubbed out pieces with their lovely Balearic melodies stripped back but still dancing around on top. Baund, from Dubtapes Volume One, completes the live set, an eleven and a half minute deep dive into sound, opening with speaker feedback and guitar chord noise. From this the bass drum emerges and the Space Echo burps and wobbles. The sounds converge, gradually,running into line with each other, the rhythm picks up and the noise flutters around, ricocheting round the room it was recorded in. Its an absorbing and heady trip. 

Baund live at Bruk is at Bandcamp here. This is the original version from Dubtapes Volume One.

The Stockport Tapes is available digitally at Bandcamp. There was a small run of cassettes complete with a hand drawn front cover showing the Underbank and its famous bridge but they've all gone. The Stockport Tapes album in full is here. 

Klangkollektor's Dubtapes Volume Two is four tracks that have helped light up 2025. The last track on the EP is Isle Of Stonsey, a rich and detailed nine minute excursion into blissed out charm with slo mo beats, acres of dub space and a pedal steel guitar that sounds like its gone to Hawaii and isn't planning to come home any time soon. 

 

The Ban Ban Ton Ton Connection

Over at Ban Ban Ton Ton, Dr Rob invited me to review some new releases. This pair of releases have become part of my September listening, both highly recommended. There's daily posts at Ban ban Ton Ton by Dr. Rob and a cast of contributors, music and words that are always worth checking in on. 

Manchester trio Sonnenspot came together after times spent playing in various Mancunian related line ups and records- Alfie, Badly Drawn Boy's Hour Of The Bewilder Beast album, Jane Weaver's band and Mother Sky all feature as do the current Rainy Heart team who are doing some really good events around the city. Sonnenspot's debut album is out on Jason Boardman's Before I Die and so is automatically of interest and is in part a tribute to the sounds of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, Kraftwerk, Manuel Gottsching and other 70s cosmicshe bands as well as some 90s influences. 

My review is here and the album can be listened to at Bandcamp here. This is an edited, shorter version of the song at the album's core, Motorway.

Before that I took on the latest EP by Warmduscher, a song that didn't make their last album (2024's Too Cold To Hold) because it didn't fit and needed a release of its own- Yakuza. Warmduscher formed to play at a house party in 2014 and have close connections with some other top class London post- punk/ electronic punk/ sleaze- techno bands including Fat White Family, Paranoid London and Decius.

Yakuza is a Spaghetti Western theme crossed with Tom Waits and Big Audio Dynamite, a rollercoaster ride, a blur of action on the big screen. There are two remixes on the EP, one by Sworn Virgins and the other by David Holmes. Holmes doesn't hold back with his remix, turning everything up as far as it will go. My review is here. 

 

Dubtapes

Dubtapes Volume 1 by Klangkollektor came out a year ago on Jason Boardman's Before I Die label. Volume 2 was released last Friday, a four track EP, four more slices of dub space, slo mo drums, echo and piano. All four tracks are superb, the opener Ferry From Torkwrith setting the scene- langourous, beatific Balearic dub from Berlin, music to hide inside, to temporarily block the out the outside world with. Second track Morning Hour is slightly more sunlit, a guitar joining the mix. Starlings sets off with birdsong and the thud of a kick drum, a wave of synth chord and some bass guitar, unhurried and mellow. Fourth track Isle Of Stonsey drifts in, a nine minute excursion into a chilled out version of space, Hawaiian guitar and dub bass prodding us gently into the cosmos. Lovely stuff. It's at Bandcamp, available in digital and vinyl formats. 

Klangkollektor is Lars Fischer, the drummer of Trak Trak, a psychedelic Cumbia band from Berlin. Klangkollektor is a side project that he's been working on for some time, mastered by the legendary Conny Plank. 

Broken Beauty

Jason Boardman's Manchester based Before I Die label has become one of the ones to watch in 2023 and 2024, a small is beautiful aesthetic coupled with some very strong music, with Nuremberg's Konformer making one of last year's best albums and this year releases from Klangkollektor and Khartomb both raising the bar again. The latest release is from J- Walk (otherwise known a Martin Fisher/ Martin Brew), an album called Broken Beauty, made in a room in Stockport using cheap and long forgotten keyboards, guitars and amps, unplugging from the world, switching the Casios and Yamahas on and seeing what happens. The result is a ten track album that blends dub, post- punk experimentation, tropical rhythms, digi- dub and DIY culture. 

There is something special about Broken Beauty, something spontaneous but also something that can only come from a lifetime of soaking music up, steeping oneself in the culture and coming at making music anew. It also sounds like Martin had a lot of fun making it. This is Black Lion Passage, Stopfordian dub of the highest quality. 

You can find the album at Bandcamp, and if you're lucky there may be some vinyl copies left at some of the shops- Bandcamp have sold all of theirs. Pick any of the ten tracks and you'll find gold. This is Walking In The Sunshine, more superb sounding J- Walk tropical/ dub from the sunny streets of Stockport, a cover of the 1982 Balearic pop  song by Laid Back, the Danish duo of John Guldberg and Tim Stahl. 

V.A. Saturday

We're getting some lovely evenings in the Manchester area at the moment, the fall of dusk and warm September weather combining to give us some pretty spectacular moments just before it goes dark. Out for a walk by the river Mersey on Thursday night I saw this cross in the sky. Maybe it's a sign...

Last week I wrote a review for Dr. Rob at his esteemed Ban Ban Ton Ton blog. Jason Boardman, a Manchester DJ, promoter, crate digger and record label owner of note, is putting out a sixteen track compilation on his Before I Die label, a record called No- One's Listening Anyway: UK DIY Post Punk And Dubs 1980- 1984 (Vol. 1). It's a fantastic collection of obscure singles from the intersection of scratchy guitars and bass culture, dole culture and pop culture with bands including Swamp Children, The Sirons, Club Of Rome, Skeet, The Four Kings, Sprout Head Rising and Methodisca Tune. My review of it is here. 

Rifling through my collection of various artist compilation CDs for something I knew I had from a similar area I found Messthetics Greatest Hits: The Sounds Of D.I.Y. 1977- 1980, twenty two songs from the frontline of the D.I.Y./ indie world, indie before indie even, people fired up by punk, with something to say and in some cases the barest notion of how to go about playing, writing, recording and releasing. Messthetics includes one crossover with Jason's album- Anorexia appear on both- but otherwise its another rollcall of the obscure, the lost and the forgotten. These three jumped out at me, almost at random. 

We Love Malcolm

We Love Malcolm is well under two minutes long and is the work of O Level, a DIY band formed in London in 1978 while all the band members were still at school. Some of them would reappear many times in the 80s and 90s- Ed Ball, Dan Treacy, Joe Foster and John and Gerald Bennett would between them later make records as The TV Personalities, The Times, and Slaughter Joe and Foster would be one of the trio who formed Creation in 1983. We Love Malcolm is an answer to The TV Personalities single Where's Bill Grundy Now?, a tribute to Malcolm McLaren- 'We love Malcolm/ Cos no one else does'.

£100 In 15 Minutes

Cardiff band Puritan Guitars released £100 In 15 Minutes in 1980, the lyrics concerning not the recording costs for making the single but the money Rough Trade put behind the bar at the final gig on a Raincoats tour, a party attended by the assembled indie/ punk/ DIY world who drank the free bar dry in quarter of an hour. Primitive, out of tune guitars, cardboard box drums, flat spoken vocals, no production- all of these are good things obviously. 

Girl On The Bus

Girl On The Bus is by Thin Yoghurts, from Carlisle and released this single in 1980 Lowther Street Runner Records, a song recorded in Shap in Cumbria. The sleeve notes thank 'Robin for the use of his drums, and Boggis for fetching beer and pies'