Ragnar Johnson
Crying Bamboos : Ceremonial Flute Music From New Guinea Madang

Searchlight Moonbeam is the new narrative compilation from Time Is Away (Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney) whose eponymous monthly NTS Radio shows, tinctured fusions of fugitive sounds and reverie-inducing archival speech, have won them an ardent following. It follows from the London-based duo’s Ballads, a remarkable driftwerk released on A Colourful Storm in 2022.
Searchlight Moonbeam is an autumnal dreamscape, intimate and vespertine, pensive and irresolute. An imagined community where differences drop off and resonances emerge – between Maher Shalal Hash Baz affiliates Kasumi Trio, Taiwanese score composer Chen Ming Chang whose ‘Rainwater’ (written for Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1986 film Dust In The Wind) is exquisitely heartbroken, and the plangent improvisations of self-taught French pianist Delphine Dora.
Revelations are frequent: the bedsit isolationism of Bo Harwood and John Cassavetes’ ‘No One Around to Hear It’ (from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie); the narked minimalism of Klang (an early 2000s band formed by ex-Elastica guitarist and featuring prize-winning experimental novelist Isabel Waidner on bass); the etude-grooves and echoic wobble of below-the-radar French avant-gardists Omertà ; the beautiful, plaintively dubby ‘Is It You?’ by Slapp Happy; a psych-tinged reimagining of PiL’s ‘Poptones’ by Simon Fisher Turner (one half of Deux Filles, and here, recording for él as The King of Luxembourg) that's as perverse as the cover of Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats.
Searchlight Moonbeam is the musical analog of an Italo Calvino novel or a medieval fable. Associative, intuitive, borderless. Emotional and mysterious. Endowed with the tactility of Braille. A private language that is both unknowable and understood. It is a record of the seasons, for the seasons.2023 marks the tenth anniversary of Time Is Away’s first broadcast. Featuring an evocative essay by writer Jeremy Atherton Lin and disarming cover art by Penny Davenport, Searchlight Moonbeam showcases Rollo and Tierney’s still-unrivalled talent for gloaming melodies, disques du crépuscule and ensorcelled storytelling.

EM Records: ...EM Record's release of little known koto auteur Kōhei Amada continues the label's tireless mapping of multi-hued human expression, sitting outside genre convention and confusing record store clerks everywhere. "Shinshunfu" is sectioned into two parts: a more recognizable duet between koto and Irish harp, and a complete 180 into an elongated vocal piece repellent with droning shō and taiko drum bass hits. This concoction brings up familiar scents: Lou Harrison's small ensemble harp pieces, or a Japanese recasting of the Medieval troubadour songs performed by transcultural-minded early music groups like Studio der frühen Musik or Hespèrion XXI. Yet these comparisons are merely abstract, "Shinshunfu" exists at a crossroads, a form both distinctly Japanese and distinctly "other", a complex blend of folk strains that is deep with emotional resonance and hard to place even for aficionados of Japanese traditional music.SUGAI KEN's rework renders the source material almost unrecognizable, pushing even further in the non-deterministic, GRM-like meta-concrète direction of his recent work, jump-cutting in high definition between synthetic birdsong, haunted vocoded voice and arresting, back-of-the-head foley. Of "Shinshunfu", only the drone of the shō and the occasional taiko hit appear in plain view. The exploration sits comfortably in the idiosyncratic sound world that Ken has been prolifically constructing for himself in the last few years (what he has come to call "Japanese electronic-folklore"), just as brilliant as one would expect.

Pierre Bujeau is an expert at creating temporary escape zones - musical structures to evade the everyday. Sometimes he works collectively as part of the mysterious French groups Omertà and Tanz Mein Herz. But it’s when he’s on his own, performing as Megabasse, that he offers the most complete break from reality.His kit is simple: a few bottles of cheap lager, twin Fender amps, and his double-necked guitar. An instrument like this normally signals maximum rockist excess - think Jimmy Page, Geddy Lee, or that dude from the Eagles. In Pierre’s hands, it becomes more like a zither or a dulcimer, producing soft chiming patterns that build against themselves until the sound of the room, passed back and forth between his two amps, starts to blur everything, and we are away in another world. Wait, though - let down your yoga bun and don’t light the palo santo yet. The new space he creates has nothing to do with smug wellness. It’s a rough, do-it-yourself psychedelia, scuffed but hopeful. Not a perfect blank space to be your best self in, but instead a communal dreaming, an uncanny place where all are welcome.Until now, without catching him live, the Megabasse experience has been difficult to find: CD-Rs, short-run tapes, and one blink-and-you-missed-it LP. Thankfully, this record on Efficient Space, a... morecreditsreleased March 28, 2025Recorded in November 2023 with D'Incise at the Pacheco' Chapel,BrusselsTracks originally released on cassette via MascarponeDiscos, 2024Mixed by Guilhem LacrouxMastered by Mikey YoungOriginal woodcut by Valentin CaponyDesign by Steele Bonus