Beak - El Hacedor EP

It's been a long, long time since I posted, but here's a short and very sweet little EP for you all to download from the Monotonik netlabel(s). Ploughing a similar furrow to Bacanal Intruder, the new EP by beak is melodic glitched-out flamenco guitars, and complex, imploding epileptic IDM beats. It's only three songs, but worthy of your time.

Download it here from the Internet Archive.

Alexander Tucker

Kentish acoustic balladeer Alexander Tucker has been gradually making his name as a purveyor of what could be described as folktronica or perhaps even - in a pathetically transparent effort to maintain ever more spurious genres - countrytronica. With two albums released through ATP/Recordings, Old Fog (2005, from which Hag Stones is taken) and Furrowed Brow (2006).

Hag Stones is typical of Tucker's looped open-string and detuned acoustic style. Layered over this country-tinged finger picking and strumming are distant droning vocals and occasional bursts of blissed noise. On record, this is comparatively polite, but live, one man and his army of effects combine to create an ear-splitting, often highly improvised wall of noise. I recommend witnessing one of his sets very highly (and for anyone living in southwest England, he is playing at the ATP festival, 18th May in Minehead).

Tucker is also a visual artist, creating artwork for all of his album covers and side projects, including ongoing drawings and comic artwork for 'Sturgeon White Moss' (White Moss Press) and the new cover for Nordic doom-master Wolfmangler (Aurora Borealis).

Alexander Tucker - Hag Stones MP3 off of Old Fog (ATP/Recordings, 2005)

Alexander Tucker on myspace