The Helm - Olympic Mess - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Luke Younger returns to PAN with an eight-track album of his most direct work to date. Composed alone at NO studio in the Essex countryside, to start an album with a piece called InchCapital Crisis (New City Loop)Inch seems an intentional misnomer. Long, sustained periods in the rural studio setting see Younger working with an array of fragmented, disassociated sound sources to build upon 2015's Olympic Mess (PAN 063CD/LP). It shares a similarly inclined vision of the urban environment, but here Chemical Flowers makes reference to paradoxical notions of authenticity and creative practice by way of questioning the structures around us. Collages are assembled and dismantled, temporal and spatial boundaries fluctuate and movement is an overarching theme. Surrealist drowned world atmospheres sculpted far enough away from the source of inspiration leave plenty of room for ambiguity. The nocturnal nature of the recording process is self-evident, and pieces like InchLeave Them All BehindInch tap into a deep psychedelic undercurrent. Confused narratives, emotions and aleatory hallucinations ebb and flow throughout. InchI Knew You Would RespondInch evokes murky soundtrack terrain with eerie repetitive strings and ambient respite, disrupted periodically by brief bursts of granular noise. It's one of the records most unnerving moments, possibly as it's one of the most recognizably human. The album navigates dense passages with recurring signifiers. Hollow percussion, modulating delay and curious field recordings come and go, maintaining a perpetual state of flux where nothing stays the same for long. The drowned world theatricals return on the swamp-like InchLizard In FearInch whilst string rhythms creep in on the penultimate track to incite momentary electroacoustic harmony. Floating synthesis slowly washes over and the title track unfolds - five minutes of reverb-laced portame

London exploratory industrialist Luke Younger characterizes the creation of his latest collection, Axis, as a liberating return to roots InchIt felt like going back to the beginning, it felt freeing.Inch Begun before the pandemic as a soundtrack to a dance performance, the initial vision was for something Inchvisceral, with physical movement in mind.Inch When the project shifted to indefinite hiatus, he reimagined the material in the context of an LP, while retaining it's sense of dynamic physicality. The result is grim and gripping, seasick throbs lurching in a low-ceilinged space, strafed with fractured clanging, hissing steam, and grinding spirals of granular haze. Noise in it's most elevated and compelling form, from and for the body as much as the mind.The album's unique immediacy stems from Younger's instinctual muse, reactivating raw methods with fresh energy. InchI tuned back in to working with noise techniques again more primitive equipment, cheap FX, contact mics, noise boxes.Inch Key guest contributions by Lucy Railton (cello), Mark Morgan of Sightings (guitar), Alex Tucker (vocals), and the late, legendary John Hannon (violin) further enrich the record's bristling palette. Although half the tracks were begun pre-Covid at Hannon's Essex studio, the rest were finished in Younger's kitchen and living room during lockdown. The final tracks were then relayed to veteran mix specialist Randall Dunn, who further honed the material, adding a vivid spatial quality.From the hellscape metronome of InchMoskitoInch to the insectoid warzone pulse of InchRepellentInch to the seething orchestral undertow of InchAxis,Inch this is music of ominous gravity and worlds in peril. But it's the closing cut, InchTower,Inch which Younger calls Inchperhaps the most dramatic piece of music I've ever made.Inch A lurking, blackened descension conjured on keys, guitar, and wormhole wah

2014 vinyl LP repressing of the 1984 collaboration between the two Reggae giants. During the late '70s and early '80s, Yellowman rose to prominence on Jamaica's DJ scene. He ushered in the dancehall era after years of roots reggae dominance. The most famous of these aficionados includes Charlie Chaplin, Ranking Toyan, General Echo, Jah Thomas and Josey Wales. In this compilation, Wales has honed his once hoarse-toned delivery, and the resultant album is dancehall at its best. Besides some top toasting, it also features remarkable backdrops from Henry InchJunjoInch Lawes and the Roots Radics.