Thursday 20 April 2017

Swamp Sounds/Uncle Pops & The Dumbloods (Bearsuit)



The latest split release from Edinburgh's Bearsuit label pairs Japan's Swamp Sounds with Uncle Pops, who hails from Dundee.  As we've come to expert from Bearsuit, the release is a triumph of experimentation paired with the kind of obtuse hooks that somehow lift the whole thing very much into the realm of the eminently listenable.

Uncle Pops, aka Douglas Wallace, is a little more low key about it, specialising in meandering soundscapes and fascinating temporal shifts that come out sounding like the soundtrack to some film whose sense you won't be able to make out but which you really wanna see.  He was involved with Anata Wa Sukkari Tsukarete Shimai's album The Lost Charles Underscore and if you loved that album as much as I did, you'll have some idea of the territory we're getting into.

Swamp Sounds are the work of Nagoya's Yuuya Kuno, an experimental musician who also records under the alias of House of Tapes.  His half of the release is less texturally complex, more perky and an absolute delight throughout its five tracks.  I'm opening my Dandelion Radio show this month with opening track 'Marionette', the mutant disco rush of which offers a snapshot of the warped, exhilarating journey Yuuya is about to take us on.

At times bewildering, at other times faintly unsettling, but always mad and always magnificent: get it here

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