Hunter Complex: Call of the Wild and Void

On the new album by his electronic ambient project Hunter Complex Dutch musician Lars Meijer combines New Age textures with the melodicism of Vangelis and the subdued production values of bands like Tangerine Dream. Call of the Wild and Void is a very relaxing excursion, with a prominent role for the piano, on top of the soft-spoken electronics.

With the exception of the solo piece Back To The World he invited guest musicians to add adding dabs of colour to his gently undulating sonic tapestries. Among them are Lucy Valentin (guitar), Ruben Braeken (guitar), Kat Epple (flute) and Aquiles Navarro (trumpet), all of them players with a signature tone that never gets in the way of Meijer's vision, but acts an extra layer giving the track a glow that can't come out of keyboard. It is an album that taps listeners gently on the shoulder, inviting them to step into a dream world where beauty and art reign in unison.

Dez Dare: "Insolvent Soldiers" video

Dez Dare filmed himself in his home studio for the video for Insolvent Soldiers, a track from his These Days Are Wild & Blind album: "Darren Smallman keeps it a bit closer to home and more personal on (...) the latest album by his one-man trash punk band Dez Dare. That doesn't mean that he is no longer shouting at the heavens (and for good reason), but a bit of introspection has found its way into his music - some of it is even played on acoustic instruments."

» dezdare.com

HCTF review of These Days Are Wild & Blind

Chris Spedding: crowdfunding campaign for cancer treatment

A GoFundMe campaign has been launched for guitarist Chris Spedding (Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry, Elton John, John Cale, Jack Bruce, Tom Waits, Paul McCartney, and Robert Gordon) to make ends meet during a cancer treatment that will keep off the road for nine months. Cale's daughter Eden is helping him out to raise awareness of his plight. Spedding is her uncle. His wife is the sister of Cale's ex Risé Irushalmi.

In recent months, Chris was diagnosed with large B-cell high-grade, non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He begins intensive chemotherapy on August 20th, initiating a challenging 9-month treatment process.

Jumble Hole Clough: I'm Waiting for My Mam

Leave it to avant-garde musician Colin Robinson to mislead the listeners with I'm Waiting for My Mam, , the new album by his one-man project Jumble Hole Clough. Why not start with I Just About Remember The Revolution a glam-rocker of T-Rex variety to take a sharp left with the skewed I am Still Listening just as people were bobbing along contentedly. Things only get weirder after that one-two punch, as he mixes up krautrock with psychedelica, noisy rumblings that sound like mushy demos made by Mark E. Smith on his own again after he fired all the pickup players that made up the latest incarnation of The Fall.

Each track comes with an explanation, well sort of. Twenty Colden Grates is a nod to a project with his mate, the late, lamented Mick West. Tension & Release is an Ian Dury-esque nervous electronic ditty could be about not being able to navigate a flight of stairs. Death is the Poor Man's Doctor and Prelude to a Down-Payment on a Gas Cooke would have fitted on one of his "music for imaginary puppet shows" albums, had they been offered as instrumentals.

Martyrs: "Hyacinth" video

Welsh synth duo Martyrs have made a video for Hyacinth, a track from their Last Summer EP: "Michael Hall and Jon Howells don't give a fuck about what is fashionable right now and recording their music in splendid isolation, away from the suits and A&R types gives them the freedom to release anything they feel that deserves to be heard. This DIY ecleticism resulted in a string of EPS that all sound different, safe for the vocals who were left as is. People who think that utterly danceable music and meaningful lyrics can't share the bed willl stand corrected."

Nice touch filming only multi-instrumentalist Jon for this one, as most videos focus on the singer.

» Martyrs on Bluesky

HCTF review of the Last Summer EP