Navel-Gazers #81 is an interview with Bill Nelson who is going to talk to us about the Trial By Intimacy series, released in 1985. I often prepare for these discussions by perusing the artist’s previous interviews. What I uncovered on this occasion was a wealth of discussion on topics such as record deals, lineup changes, transatlantic tours and so on from the rock press, who are primarily concerned with Bill’s mid-70s band Be Bop Deluxe. But what we encounter on ’Trial By Intimacy’ - originally a series of four releases on Bill’s own label Cocteau Records - is the work of an artist who by that point was pursuing more personal, contemplative forms of expression within the realm of his home studio. The album art across the series, all paper collage and oil crayons, is a series in and of itself: conceived, signed and dated by Bill, it’s the mnemonic bridge whereby these abstract sounds have managed to secure a permanent foothold in my imagination. Proudly described as “unpo...

Navel-Gazers #80 is an interview with Nika Son who is going to talk to us about ASLOPE . Every few months I set aside some time to research music released in the past couple of years. The amount of material floating out there can get overwhelming, but I always manage to uncover some gems thanks to my keen spider-sense! While I wouldn’t say that the album title is the only thing which drew me to ‘ASLOPE’, it certainly leapt out. What is “aslope” anyway: is that a name, a neologism, malapropism, just an obscure word? The music itself - which I’ve since played back repeatedly - seems to occupy a permanent corner in my mind now, with that singular title dangling overhead. Described as an “ode to the nocturnal world”, ‘ASLOPE’ drifts through the ears like nightly consciousness itself, broken from time to time by distinct snippets of waking life that seem to emerge and recede from a crepuscular haze. And perhaps we the listeners are in transit, being ushered around the haze by s...

Navel-Gazers #79 is an interview with bill bissett who is going to talk to us about awake in th red desert . Released in 1968 on a Canadian label called See/Hear Productions, it’s a long-standing object of interest for adventurous listeners, residing somewhere beyond-the-beyond at a nexus between concrete-poetry and psychedelic music’s outer fringes. It was also - in the decades leading up to my own first encounter with it while working at a record store in the 2000s - quite the collectors item, originally a limited edition of only 500 copies which was issued with a companion book full of poems, photos and ink drawings by mr. bissett. Revisiting th red desert on this occasion I’m struck by the album’s variety, the moments where its memorable freak-outs are offset by flashes of raw, unaccompanied sound poetry, along with calmer moments and even electronic passages I had forgotten about. I’ve taken special care to de-capitalise bill’s name here, as not only is he the creator...

Navel-Gazers #78 is an interview with Selwa Abd a.k.a. Bergsonist who is going to talk to us about ASL أصل ⴰⵙⵍ . From my first encounter with its title I knew there had to be a story about this album. Those last three characters are in Tifinagh script which relates to the artist’s North African origins, and in fact convey the word “origin” itself alongside Latin and Arabic scripts. In the liner notes for ‘ASL’ we learn about Selwa’s visits to Errachidia, her ancestral village of origin in Eastern Morocco, from which many of these sounds derive. The work is sonically adventurous, fanciful even - veering into textures and timbres well outside the palette of everyday life in Errachidia or anywhere - and yet Selwa seems to approach her subject through it all with a reverence for heritage, family ties and the local Amazigh community which strikes one as a personal motivation underpinning the whole project. Selwa has lived in New York for around as long as I’ve lived in the UK:...

Navel-Gazers #77 is an interview with Anthony Moore who is going to talk to us about Monkey’s Birthday . This LP, the latest archival curiosity on Paradigm Discs , is the soundtrack to a 6-hour film which was directed by someone named David Larcher between 1973 and 1975. Its liner notes recount an international sound recording journey which itself couldn’t sound more cinematic, with Mr Moore - on some sort of wayward sabbatical between musical endeavours with Slapp Happy and Henry Cow - caravanning around Southeastern Europe recording anything and everything on location, from a battery-powered studio in the back of a lorry. But these aren’t just location recordings, and that’s part of what caught my ear. The record is a sound collage, rich with compositional artistry in the form of edits, cuts, layers, loops, and the like which convinces me that maybe this work is not so radically distant and alien as it may first appear, from the avant-pop for which the artist is better ...

Navel-Gazers #76 is an interview with Gaël Segalen who is going to talk to us about SOFIA SAYS . I really don’t remember when or how I discovered this album… I suppose that it can’t have been more than 10 years ago - it was released in 2019 - but I’m perplexed by that, as now it’s almost like it’s always been there. Something about this music really gets under my skin - the texture is electronic and yet simultaneously organic to the point of seeming almost earthy in its sonic consistency. It lures me back in from time to time - as many great albums do - not only with its sound but with its visuals, its titles and also in this case the curious liner notes written in reference to a “complex mythological entity” which is its namesake. And that’s perhaps the right way to listen to ‘SOFIA SAYS’, with the mythology of these liner notes somewhere on hand or otherwise occupying one’s mind as the sounds swirl by. When I proposed to discuss this album with Gaël, I called it “the on...

Navel-Gazers #75 is an interview with Tasos Stamou who is going to talk to us about Musique Con Crète . This is firstly one of the all-time killer album titles I can think of. Perusing the artist’s discography prior to 2015 it appears that this was actually his first decisive venture into the genre of musique concrète, leading me to speculate whether the entire project was undertaken solely to do justice to that glorious pun? Whatever the story - and I suppose we’ll find out - the source sounds on this album, which are all one way or another from the Greek island of Crete, are assembled with exceptional fondness and care. I got lost a few times in the mystique of it all, my ears scrambling to discern between the archival recordings in the mix - ripped from old records and tapes, as described in the liner notes - versus elements which are recordings made by Tasos himself right there in contemporary, 21st century Crete. Above all I’m relieved: a work bearing this title has ...