This time we've included a couple of our favourites from last year, some old favourites and some highlights from the first few months of 2016, a year that seems determined to wipe out as many musicians and actors as it possibly can. As I type this news has broke of the passing of Gareth Thomas who, as Roj Blake (in 'Blake's 7') and as Adam Brake (in 'Children of the Stones') amongst many other roles, is an icon of Wyrd Britain. This one is for you sir. We thank you for your work.
The player is, as ever, at the bottom of this post.
I hope you enjoy
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Opening this here cavalcade of sinewy, sonic shapeliness is the bone aching loveliness of The Dandelion Set whose gobsmackingly good new album we reviewed in these here pages a short while ago. This track, 'Tone Garden', is an itty bitty ditty that seemed like too good an opener to not use especially as it begins with such cool opening dialogue.
https://buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com/album/a-thousand-strands-1975-2015
The horticultural theme is continued with one of my own tunes, 'The Synaesthetic Garden' by The British Space Group which is part of my 'Phantasms' trilogy of radiophonic miniatures newly collected together and released on disc and digitally as 'The Phanstasmagoria'. You'll excuse the shameless self promotion but needs must and all that.
https://ian-quietworld.bandcamp.com/album/the-phantasmagoria-the-collected-phantasms-eps
Jon Brooks' 'Walberswick'was a real highlight of last year and here but one that was fairly difficult to get hold of and so here we present a track to help tide you over until a reissue appears.
Another one of last years gems was the debut EP from Reading's tongue mangling folktronica collective Revbjelde. This years new album is a slightly more angular affair but one that is filled with delights such as this fun ditty that feels like it's been lifted from the opening credits of a 1970s kids TV show which is something Wyrd Britain heartily approves of.
https://buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com/album/the-weeping-tree
King Crimson are a band that never managed to grab me, prog was never my thing, but I stumbled across this the other day and was a little bit blown away. Prog tropes are noticeable by their absence and in their place is a rather lovely, floaty Krautrock-like guitar and electronica tune.
We gave an early shout out the Matt Saunders' Assembled Minds album in our best of 2015 list but as we had an early copy and it wasn't actually out until a few weeks into this year he's not actually featured in one of these mixes and it's something anyone with an interest in electronic music will thoroughly dig.
https://patternedair.bandcamp.com/releases
Orbital are one of those bands that always seem to have been there. I still maintain that their version of the Doctor Who theme should have been used for the revised series but you can't have it all so here's a tune about, I presume, underwear.
I do like to include a Trunk Records release in these mixes and so this month it's the turn of the unusually named Cults Percussion Ensemble, this is an album made by young (female) musicians living in and around the Aberdeen suburb of Cults - and you all thought it was something creepy - and features a young Evelyn Glennie as part of the group and it's an album I really can't recommend highly enough.
http://www.trunkrecords.com/turntable/cults.shtml
Drew Mulholland's Mount Vernon Arts Lab investigate the ghosts of martians past on a track from the Ghost Box reissue of the fabulous 'The Séance at Hobs Lane' before the Mix ends with a beautifully calm piece from Godflesh's Justin Broadrick's dark ambient project Final.