Esordio è una definizione piuttosto anomala riferita all’opera prima firmata in solitaria da Francesca Bono. Lo è perché l’autrice di stanza a Bologna vanta un’esperienza ventennale in campo musicale collezionando collaborazioni importanti – l’ultima in duo con Vittoria Burattini dei Massimo Volume nell’ottimo Suono in un tempo trasfigurato – e militanza in diverse compagini quali gli Ofeliadorme di cui è fondatrice. Un bagaglio che traspare nitido dalle otto tracce dell’album, rivelato da una scrittura matura densa di rimandi perfettamente inglobati nella propria visione artistica.
Tom Brown is a indie DIY scene veteran who released a number of “fuzzy, jangly and melodic” records with his bands Rural France (on Meritorio Records) and Teenage Tom Petties (on Safe Suburban Home and Repeating Cloud). Let’s get to know his new project, Lone Striker. Captured at home using a selection of bedroom instruments and samples, off-kilter soul drum loops and found sounds, Tom has spent five years making a record that takes a lifelong love of warped Americana (think: Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev, Silver Jews) and puts it through a very British lens. A patchwork of sounds and stories, beamed from a broken transistor radio. The songs themselves are immaculately crafted. With nods to the melodies, structures and arrangements of the Brill Building golden years, Lone Striker’s scruffy, warm heart has melancholy and melody pumping through it. While Lone Striker has been a long and mostly solitary pursuit, there was room for a few guests. Most notably, Billy Fuller of BEAK>, who lends his beautiful bass lines to the weary first single, Dunno (and to Cursed Like Roy).
Charlie Kaplan is an independent songwriter from New York, a muisc writer and the bassist in New York art pop/soft rock trio Office Culture which just released its fourth album, Enough, in October. As a solo artist, Charlie had three LPs and two EPs out, all via the Glamour Gowns imprint: Sunday came out in 2020, followed by Country Life In America in 2023. Eternal Repeater, Kaplan’s latest solo album, which came out on November 1st, is a great folk rock work, and was produced by Nico Hedley. About the album Charlie said: “My third album, Eternal Repeater, centers around mankind’s entropic inclination to cruelty and fear. To my ears, each successive song radiates out from the most private paranoias to, by the end of the album, the terrible form these atoms take in aggregate: mass panic, prejudice, demagoguery. I found this theme in the eerie mode of music I was writing, which recalled the spooky, northern English folk that seems to ooze out inevitably from heavy music from Pink Floyd to Ty Segall. I decided to put together a playlist of sounds like these to illustrate why my ear led me to paint this picture, one that combines both tempting sweetness and an abiding darkness“.
Bell Monks (Jeff Herriott and Eric Sheffield) create slow, dreamy, haunting music. They call their music sleepy rock, blending lush sonic textures with slower, mostly traditional song structures. The Onion’s AV Club, back when they still had a Madison-focused section, fairly accurately referred to the band as “combining the minimalism of Brian Eno’s ambient work with the gloomy songwriting of Low“, though experimental composers like Morton Feldman and John Cage were equally on their mind when the duo first started working together more than fifteen years ago. Eric and Jeff cherish the creative aspects of the recording process, often finding songs in the studio; recording and mixing become tools to conjure aural magic, almost like sleight of hand, through the misdirection of multi-tracking, layering, and the subtle use of processing techniques they’ve developed in their academic careers (both are music professors). Inspiration for their music regularly comes from their natural environment – the birds, the sun, the trees, and the landscape. Jeff routinely walks in the parks near his home in rural Wisconsin, spaces that have served as lyrical inspiration for much of their recent music, both in the specific description of visual environments as well as the philosophical sensations that these spaces conjure. For their new album, Watching the Snow Fall, Bell Monks have partnered with Wayside & Woodland Recordings, a label that is focused on “a psychogeographic approach to the exploration of music, photography, field recordings and landscape.” In some small way, this music invites people to slow down and take a break from technological onslaught, perhaps so they might notice more of these kinds of spaces themselves, or at least to enjoy the sound of some cool synthesizers.
Edinburgh-based Gurry Wurry is the solo project of Scottish “indie-psych-pop pedlar” Dave King. He’s featured on BBC 6 Music, Triple R, Apple’s New In Alternative, Hype Machine’s Top 10, and Tom Robinson’s Fresh on The Net; been acclaimed by the likes of The Skinny, Snack Magazine, Clunk and Is This Music; opened for indie darlings Florry and Dent May; and been championed by the BBC’s Roddy Hart and Vic Galloway. Having been an avid record collector for over two decades, he’s now sharing his own highly original and thoroughly enjoyable sonic output: In March last year, his homemade debut Not As Bad As It Sounds came out (and made Vic’s 2023 Albums of The Year). The follow-up Happy For Now was recorded with indie legend Rod Jones (Idlewild, Hamish Hawk) and is an ode to caring less. Or trying to. The vibe sits in a half-dreamt world where a California breeze blows through the streets of Leith. A world where Randy Newman digs The Beta Band. And Steely Dan go lo-fi. Where Kraftwerk share a writers’ room with John Martyn and Thelonious Monk. It’s as eclectic as you’d expect from a guy who’s been collecting records for the last 25 years. A sort of warm, woozy, anaesthetic pop for times of trouble. An alternative medicine. In the words of The Skinny, ‘the good kind of weird’.
Indie Sunset in Rome 