2/12/2018: 2018 In Review, Part 3

The tour continues! We've passed the halfway mark now, but there's still plenty of year left to go. Without further ado...

29th June: Old Town

Between this and Six Questions, Twelve Answers, it's been a good year for silhouettes.

Evenflow is a BEM double act, a dream team of instrumentalist Stuart Stephens (from Whitewater) and vocalist Mike Kershaw (from, er, Mike Kershaw). This compact little EP, only just breaking twenty minutes but deserving of every one, is a great exhibition of both musicians' talents, a mellow, thoughtful collection of smart tunes and Kershaw's signature slightly unsettling stylings (of which we shall see more later in the year).

6th July: Synchestral Works Vol. 1

Anyone else getting Rez vibes from this? Just me? Okay.

When Jordan Brown isn't playing up a storm as part of The Rube Goldberg Machine, he's jamming out in homage to the majestic soundtracks of sci-fi classics. This album is the culmination of a longstanding love affair with 80s science fiction. Close your eyes and picture the blazing neon and gritty retro-tech of the cyberpunk golden age, and you really can't go far wrong - there's even a track specifically labelled as "Montage Music". Synths are the order of the day here, whether soaring lead riffs or booming pads, and aficionados of sci-fi grimdark or just damn good electronica will find much to like here.

20th July: Unidentified Dying Objects

Don't look at the water, don't look at the water, don't look at the -

This hotly anticipated return from German prog legends Argos was a pretty exciting release for us, as several in the BEM camp were already fans, and it's an excellent continuation and evolution of form. With many comparisons drawn to the 70s but enough diversity and weirdness to keep it distinct, Unidentified Dying Objects is about as progressive as they come, complete with a near-20-minute epic to close it out, but this is a rare prog album that can evoke the past without feeling overly tethered to it, and continue carving out what's becoming a very recognizable signature sound.

17th August: Arms Open Wide

Don't look at the brickwork, don't look at the - wait, I've done that one already.

If you like your music thought-provoking and absolutely dripping with atmosphere, they don't come much better than Mike Kershaw. Arms Open Wide is his second solo release with BEM and it only reinforced how glad we are to have brought him on board back in 2016. Mike has a genuinely uncanny talent for knocking listeners off balance with thoughtful critiques and open questions. We often compare music to music, but Arms Open Wide draws the strongest comparisons to The Twilight Zone or the better episodes of Black Mirror: it's good entertainment and good food for thought rolled into one.

Status Update

Ooh, new music! Every Night Something Happens, the debut from psych-pop supergroup Lost Crowns, is now available to preorder, complete with an instant-access preview track. The album drops on January 25th, so, if you've ever wanted to hear Vox amplifiers and harpsichords in the same place, or if you just can't get enough of Charlie Cawood (making his fourth appearance as part of a BEM act), don't miss out!

Review Roundup

Jerry Lucky rates The Great War - well, he doesn't give it a rating, but presumably he would rate it highly if he did, is my point, because he likes the... ah, never mind.

And here's a big one: Sanguine Hum got a four-page feature in the most recent edition of PROG. Here's page one - buy the magazine for the other three, featuring some great musical insights from Matt and the team!

25/11/2018: 2018 In Review, Part 2

Welcome back to this whistlestop tour of the year that was. Climb back aboard and hold onto your hats - here's another four albums BEM released in 2018.

20th April: The Singularity

Wow, I knew Fallout 76 was a new direction for the series, but...

The Trunk's author is, at heart, a nerd. Say "electronic rock heavily influenced by retro gaming" and I'm already scrabbling for my headphones. But this impressive debut delivers on the hype I felt and possibly even surpasses it, with a collection of hard, driving synths and powerful riffs that I still play from time to time as gaming music - it's difficult to listen to this album without picturing the kick-ass boss battles it could accompany. The Singularity is vibrant and unexpected, a true feast for the imagination as well as the ears.

(The album was also released alongside a working text-based adventure game! Play it here.)

18th May: The Euphoric

I feel sorry for air traffic control.

What's this, another instrumental rock album with "the" in the title and gaming-inspired visuals? Spring was definitely the season for headbanging, but The Euphoric is a very different beast, all about unstoppable waves of guitar and bone-shaking drum lines. TFATD have had a very good year all round and this is their best offering yet, critically acclaimed and boasting a surprising amount of cross-genre appeal despite (or perhaps because of) a distinct shift towards metal. Plug in and prepare to have your face comprehensively melted.

15th June: Suite for Piano and Electronics

Wash your windows, mate?

Matt Baber's had a pretty busy year as far as releases go, between this solo project and the more recent release of Now We Have Power (but let's cross that bridge when we come to it). Suite for Piano Electronics was a welcome change of pace after the double threat of Singularity and Euphoric, offering something calm, measured, and perfectly handcrafted. Baber's style as a soloist is rather different from his band offerings, but the compositions here are assembled with the kind of skill and vision that sometimes only comes from a genuine one-man army like him.

18th June: Exo-Oceans

That is clearly not an ocean. I want my money back.

Okay, so this isn't technically a BEM release, but it's hosted on the webstore so we're counting it anyway. Exo-Oceans is an album of "Musical Sci-Fi" from The Tangent's Andy Tillison Diskdrive, and definitely one of the proggier offerings on our store this year: three tracks, between 15 and 42 minutes, about otherworldly oceans. This is another solo work, pulling in styles and influences from all over the musical sphere under a single watchful eye with a strange, coherent vision. And, from Tillison, the synth work is, of course, second to none.

Status Update

Cyclonic 5 or 6, increasing 7 to severe gale 9, occasionally storm 10 for a time in central areas, then becoming westerly 5 or 6 later. Moderate or rough, becoming very rough or high for a time except in north. Rain or thundery showers. Moderate or poor, occasionally good.

18/11/2018: 2018 In Review, Part 1

God, is it that time already? The end of a long, exhausting year is finally on the horizon, and, as we all look ahead to what fresh horrors 2019 might visit upon us, we must also spare a moment to look back at BEM's progress this year and some of the music we've unleashed on the world. This has been a slightly quieter year than last, but we still have plenty of albums to get through - let's get to it!

2nd February: A Map in Fragments

All these moments, like tears in rain...

As is traditional (kinda), the BEM year started in the early days of February, this time with art-rock outfit Tonochrome and their first new music in almost five years. With an impressive array of guests - both strings and brass! - and Charlie Cawood, by now a BEM veteran, on guitar, the bar is set high, but A Map in Fragments surpasses it with easy, genre-melting aplomb, delivering a characteristically unclassifiable collection of songs with elements of everything from grunge to jazz. The big challenge of writing for BEM has always been in describing music with very few clear points of comparison, and... well, "damn good" feels like a bit of a cop-out. But there it is.

23rd February: Close to Vapour

This is what Amazon delivery drones looked like in 1850.

Dutch duo Fractal Mirror have been releasing music since 2013, but they climbed aboard for their fourth album this year, and it was a delight to host and to listen to. This is one of the best albums I've heard in a long time for relaxation - there's enough subtlety to the arrangements that you can tune in and dissect them to your heart's content, and enough depth to keep the songs alive for multiple listens, but Close to Vapour doesn't demand that kind of close examination, and is equally effective as a chill-out album for a long, slow afternoon such as the one on which you might be reading this.

23rd March: Where the Moonlight Snows

"What's that noise? Why's the ground shaking? Is this a volcano?"

"Um... kind of?"

Mothertongue made a huge impression on us, and on the listening public, with their BEM debut two years ago, and Where the Moonlight Snows is a truly worthy successor. You wouldn't expect a band with three guitarists and complex vocal arrangements to be this good at sharp, carefully crafted moderation, but they pull it off. More so than many, this is an album that feels like a genuine collaborative effort, everything working in concert towards a magnificent, harmonious whole that'll have you humming the hooks for days to come.

6th April: Six Questions, Twelve Answers

This is what passed for a professional recording studio back in '99.

Our fourth major release of the year was actually a charity effort: a collection of unreleased tracks, almost twenty years old, by brothers Jem and Simon Godfrey, compiled and sold in support of Tim Smith, legendary frontman of the Cardiacs. These twelve instrumental pieces, six apiece composed in response to the same set of six very vague questions, are a fascinating insight into the musical development of these two great names, while also being smart, eclectic, and downright listenable in their own right.

Status Update

BEM continues to wind down for the winter and hatch plans for the year to come. Be cautious and watch the skies.

Review Roundup

Kev Rowland's hotly anticipated review of Dial is out now! Like Kev, we can't quite believe that it's been five years since Shineback's debut, but he seems to agree that it's been worth the wait.

And The Great War has picked up another review. Unfortunately for us, it's in Polish, but I've enlisted the help of a Polish friend of mine and, according to him, it says the album's an appropriately difficult listen for appropriately difficult subject matter, and well worth the effort.

The Trunk 17/12/2017: 2017 In Review, Part 4

Welcome to the fourth and final part of our year in review - and, with it, the last Trunk of 2017!

collective groan from the audience

But don't worry - we're determined to make this year go out with a bang. If you've just joined us, we highly recommend skipping back to parts one, two and three before proceeding.

Alright, enough preamble. Prepare yourselves for the final chapter!

22nd September: Universal Medium

"The coastline was something to behold, even though my monocle was irreparably broken."

Alliterative duo Stuart Stephens and Paul Powell gave us this slice of ambience-infused prog back in September, and it quickly became one of Elephant Towers' go-to chill-out albums. Universal Medium is like a good dessert - deep, rich, and easy to lose yourself in. Shying away from the kitchen-sink tendencies of some of their prog contemporaries, Whitewater exhibit an admirable degree of restraint, making careful use of musical space to ensure that the many, many layers never become overwhelming - at least, not in a bad way.

13th October: Fukushima Surfer Boys

Look, I know that last one wasn't exactly A-grade material, but it's getting very hard to write amusing captions for these abstract covers, okay?

We move now from something relaxed to something decidedly less so: Fukushima Surfer Boys is a concentrated ball of electric energy. Clever application of distortion, both vocal and instrumental, is what really makes this album. There's a fuzzy, staticky edge to this joyously weird album which, far from bogging it down, lends it a unique verve that combines with the overall hectic pace to create a record that takes you on a breathless and brilliant rollercoaster ride.

3rd November: The Divine Abstract

Like, look at this. How am I meant to say something funny about whatever this is?

I've tried not to bring personal opinion into this year-in-review too much, but there's no hiding the fact that The Divine Abstract is one of my favourite albums of 2017. Justly critically acclaimed for its bewildering range of instrumentation and impressive laundry list of guests, this album grabs you by the brain from the moment you first hear it, and is unlikely to let you go anytime soon. There's an easy, jazzy confidence to The Divine Abstract that really sells the diversity and technical genius of its music. Charlie Cawood may well have a masterpiece on his hands.

1st December: Murder and Parliament

A leaked X-ray of Tom, behind the frankly unconvincing human suit.

Can Tom Slatter, an artist known perhaps first and foremost for his weird lyrics and surreal narratives, pull off an album with no vocals at all?

Apparently so. Talented git.

Status Update

Christmas is in full swing at Elephant Towers, and various members of the team have been sighted hiding in pine trees, shovelling handfuls of chestnuts into their greedy maws, and, most bafflingly of all, watching primetime television. 'Tis the season - but the season for what, we know not!

Review Roundup

We've a surprising number of reviews to cover in this last Trunk of the year! First of all, two in French - Chromatique's take on Irritant and Profil's review of Fukushima Surfer Boys. We are reliably informed that these are both positive. (It's times like these that I really regret abandoning French at 14.)

Jerry Lucky of The Progressive Rock Files has also given Murder and Parliament an "Intriguing" rating, calling it, um, "intriguing". And Roger Trenwith, in his annual list of the best albums of the year, gives spots to a plethora of BEM bands - see how many you can spot!

That's it from us for this week, and, indeed, this year. We're taking two weeks off for the holidays, so The Trunk will return on the seventh of January in the shiny new year of 2018. Until then, take care, and enjoy the music!

The Trunk 10/12/2017: 2017 In Review, Part 3

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that ends next week - but we've eight releases to get through before then, so let's get back to it.

9th June: Irritant

This is what lab safety posters look like in the mirror universe.

Bristolian melodic prog quintet Schnauser kicked off our summer (shut up, summer totally starts at the beginning of June, solstices be damned) with a wacky, psychedelic slice of a very special kind of music. If track names like "Chinese Brainwork", "Hypertension" and "Sorry, You Were Out" don't grab your attention, the smooth, groovy sax and perfectly cheesy synths most definitely will. So, whether or not you've got PPI, you should find Irritant enjoyably weird - and weirdly enjoyable.

23rd June: Confound and Disturb

Sadly, we didn't have the budget to photograph the other half of Rob's head.

BEM released a spoken word album in 2017.

It's bloody good, actually.

Robert Ramsay is a longtime friend of the label, but we had no idea what to expect from his first solo project. What we got was a combination of Rob's brilliantly unsettling voice and an assortment of weird noises, with an atmosphere all of its own. Make no mistake: this is music, unfettered though it may be by such petty mortal concerns as "instruments" and "tunes". On a label full of strangeness, it's still easily our strangest release of the year.

4th August: Minotaur

Insert awful joke about taking the bull by the horns here.

After This, you'd think Simon Godfrey might be content to hang up his hat and call it a year on the new music front, but you'd be wrong. Nothing can stop this man, and Shineback, the project that gave us BEM's very first release, returned with a vengeance in August, giving us both a powerful twenty-five-minute package of smart, precise electronic beats and a harbinger of bigger things to come next year. (Oooooh.) It even features Rob on the track we've chosen to represent it! Man, those two are so close, you'd almost think they used to be in a band together or something.

1st September: My Tricksy Spirit

Who spilled all that paint all over our nice clean green screen?

My Tricksy Spirit's self-titled debut album brought us into autumn with characteristic flair. It's a spacey, melodic journey, featuring a wide range of performers and many, many instruments from all manner of cultures to explore. Ever heard a tabla? A tsouras? How about a gender wayang? Here's your chance! A kitchen sink in the very best way, My Tricksy Spirit reminds us that innovative music isn't just about iterating on the traditional Western canon. One of MTS' members, a certain Mr Charlie Cawood, would give us another stark reminder of this later in the year... but that's a story for next week!

Status Update

Tumbleweed wheels past BEM head office, at least until we can catch it with the hoover. 2018 draws ever closer, and we must sit tight and brace ourselves for the wonders and horrors it will bring... as should you.

Review Roundup

Schnauser were featured in this month's issue of the CRS magazine! For the full article, we highly recommend picking up a copy, but you can find a very small preview right here...

It really is very small indeed. We did warn you.

Join us again next week for the fourth and final volume of our 2017 year in review!

The Trunk 3/12/2017: 2017 In Review, Part 2

Welcome back to our whistlestop tour of what BEM's been up to this year! Last week's Part 1 took us up to March, and today's feature will get us as far as mid-May, so let's cut the preamble and get back to it!

14th April: Baritonia

"David, can you think of something witty to say about a literal coffee stain?" "Nope." "Aight."

How do you explain The Bob Lazar Story? Well, the men behind the project, New Zealand-based noodlers Matt Deacon and Chris Jago, have called it everything from "ProgMathsyFusion" to "tritonal wankery", but honestly I still don't think I'm any further forward. Nonetheless, an album with track names like "Toptop Switcherooney, Elbow Patch Man" surely deserves a listen, and such curiosity would indeed be rewarded - this is an odd album, but a thoroughly satisfying one, with equal parts moderation and flair and superb musicianship across the board.

28th April: Field Recordings

Efforts to establish a BEM annex in the Hell Dimensions are still underway.

Field Recordings is proof positive of that there's nothing quite like The Fierce And The Dead live. After Spooky Action, we and the band wanted to give everyone a taste of the TFATD live experience, a finely honed wall of guitar that hits like a goddamn express train, and this album, featuring some extremely pretty artwork by Mark Buckingham, is effectively a half-hour chunk of concentrated, unfettered power.

There's more to come from the boys in the new year. In the meantime, present your face for melting.

5th May: Unlike Here

"Morning, Greg." "Morning, Hal."

Italian prog-fusion quartet Syncage were unleashed on the world in full this year, dragging us headlong into an unsettling world of "manner masters" and "unaware actors" in their first full-length album. A smart, vibrant concept piece that tells of an escape from a strange, repressive society, Unlike Here is a highly experimental record that draws elements and themes from so many genres that it's easy to lose count. It also gave us one of the best music videos I've ever seen, a dazzling display of both musical prowess and screwball humour.

The band put together a half-hour documentary film about their experience of putting together the album, and it's well worth a watch (don't worry, there are English subtitles). In a musical field that can tend towards staleness, Syncage are an injection of youthful energy.

19th May: This

Scientifically proven to be our most anxiety-inducing album cover.

Simon Godfrey, eh? First he, as Shineback, gave us an impressive slab of intelligent dance music in Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed - BEM's first ever release. Then he showed us his singer-songwriterly cred with the two volumes of Black Bag Archive. And this year, we got this. And by this I am, of course, referring to This. (We've gotten a lot of mileage out of that joke and we're not stopping anytime soon.)

This (by which I mean... oh, alright, I'll stop) is a kinda-sorta-supergroup fronted by Simon and filled out admirably by Echolyn's Tom Hyatt, Cold Blue Electric's Joe Cardillo, and Stone Jack Baller's Scott Miller. By their powers combined, we received a collection of eminently singable pop-rock tunes that are as diverse as they are brilliant. With influences from XTC to 10CC, it's often unexpected and always a delight to listen to.

Status Update

Murder and Parliament is out now! Stream or purchase the whole album from the Bandcamp page now and see what magic Tom Slatter can achieve with no lyrics whatsoever.

And the Elephant hopes to see a few of you at Masquerade 2 today, featuring Tom, Big Hogg, and plenty more great music!

We're into December now, and Christmas approaches on swift wings. That means a lot of cloak-and-hopefully-not-dagger operations in the dark corridors of Elephant Towers... and not just for presents. Stay tuned.

Review Roundup

Anyone here read Greek? Against the Silence just reviewed The Divine Abstract and Google Translate only gets us so far - but we certainly agree that this album is "a really impressive moment in 2017". Tap into that moment here.

Our year's review is halfway done - next week, we'll have another one! Well, four. But that doesn't rhyme.

The Trunk 26/11/2017: 2017 In Review, Part 1

Wwwwwelcome, ladies and gents, to the first exciting installment of the Bad Elephant Music 2017 Year In Review Feature! Over the next four weeks, we're going to look back at all sixteen of our major releases of 2017, which will take us through to the end of the year. (The Trunk is taking the last two weeks off - David almost wouldn't let us, but we did our best desperate Victorian child impression ("but it's Christmas, sir!") and he relented.)

All these albums are still very much in stock, and you can click those titles to head over to the BEM webstore, where you can buy copies, or, in most cases, stream the whole album for free! We'll also be including a sample track from each album to give you a taste right here on The Trunk.

Without further ado, let's get down to business!

3rd February: Flightless

Note: Music, though good, will not induce brain geysers. Hopefully.

Our first album of 2017 was a reissue, taking us almost three decades into the past to revisit and remaster original recordings dating back to 1988. Rog Patterson describes Flightless as an example of his "characteristic bleating on the subject of human stupidity", and it's telling of both the songs and the society surrounding them that the former feel even more relevant now.

In the tradition of the "heavy wood" genre brought to light by Rog's old band Twice Bitten, stripped-back, strings-only instrumentation accompanies Rog's melodious yet biting vocals. Flightless may be older than certain members of the BEM staff, but it has undoubtedly stood the test of time.

3rd March: Tope's Sphere 2

That big planet looks a bit like those plastic flying saucers you put in the laundry.

I had no idea what to think when I first heard this album. I'm still not completely sure what to think even now.

The unique, unpredictable wit of Orange Clocks is probably better experienced than explained. The music is a heady psychedelic blend that evokes the vintage TV to which the album pays homage, and the narration is by turns unsettling and hysterical. That first listen to Tope's Sphere 2 was one of the strangest half hours of my adult life, and I think that's a better pitch than anything else I could say about it.

Well, except telling you all that Tope's sidekick is called Chode. That might sway you.

17th March: Happy People

Apparently, if I mess up a press release, I'm going to get put in one of these.

If there's one BEM artist we can rely upon to make us think and sing along at the same time, it's Tom Slatter. Happy People is a concentrated burst of lyrical bitterness that brings new voices into the mix alongside Tom's own, telling a compelling tale of a dark, paranoid world not so very different from our own. More of a conceptual whole than his previous work, it's a story in and of itself, of which this preview track here is just a single chapter.

It's also catchier than an album with this much depth seemingly has any right to be. We here at Elephant Towers were humming lines from this record for months after the first play, and it still gets played, even from a music library as crowded as ours. Not only does he tell great stories, Tom writes bloody incredible tunes too, and combining the two is a recipe for genius.

31st March: Gargoyles

Jessica never cared much for family reunions.

In their own words, Big Hogg make "electric music for the mind and body". Paying homage to the Canterbury scene with a series of intriguing modern twists, Gargoyles delivers on that promise with a twisting, almost hypnotic series of songs. Laid-back, but never soporific, it's a perfect album for relaxed Sunday mornings (maybe even the one you're currently having!), and for any time when you just want to lose yourself in a tune.

Between carefree whimsy and subtle foreboding, there are many steps to this journey, but somehow none of them feel jarring or out of place. This album closed up a very busy March in admirable fashion, and, just like Happy People, it still gets plenty of play over here.

Status Update

Murder and Parliament is out this coming Friday! If you've not preordered yet, we highly recommend that you do so now so you get the goods as soon as possible.

Masquerade 2 is just around the corner - if you liked the sound of Big Hogg or Tom Slatter in today's feature, both acts will be playing there, so grab your tickets and prepare for a great day's music, "plus masks, madness and pre-Christmas revelry". Fancy!

Review Roundup

Progarchives Special Collaborator (what an ominous title) Kev Rowland has published his review of Fukushima Surfer Boys, and concluded that "those who have more discerning tastes will find much here to enjoy". Oooooh.

And, while it's not strictly a review, Simon Godfrey showed up on Future Feature this week to talk about his experience with Valdez and the production of This. Simon says some words, and we think they're well worth a listen.

We've got nine whole months left to get through, so join us again next week for part two of our retrospective!