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What Colour Is Sound? Vol. 2

by Various Artists

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about

All proceeds from this release will go to The Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, Devon: www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk

Compiled by Michael Plater

Technical supervisor: Tony Millman


Dedicated to my beautiful little companion, Byron, forever xx


Artist links:

Astralingua: astralingua.bandcamp.com

David CW Briggs: davidcwbriggs.bandcamp.com

Sand Snowman: sandsnowman.bandcamp.com

Light Magnetic: lightmagnetic.bandcamp.com

Velatine: velatine.bandcamp.com

Michael Plater: michaelplater.bandcamp.com

(episodes from) The Field Bazaar: soundcloud.com/thefieldbazaar-1/tracks?fbclid=IwAR1k2vae1xFkL8KCm3gqVTJVrN8rilBZzgwXpISI1k5rP-goDT-UAiDczUY

House of Light: houseoflight.bandcamp.com

Andrew McCubbin: andrewmccubbin.bandcamp.com

Penny Ikinger: www.pennyikinger.com

Mark's Paranormal Dysneyland: www.facebook.com/marksparanormal/

Ill-Gotten Booty: www.facebook.com/Ill-Gotten-Booty-563031180534753/

Rosie Haden and Greg Hoepner: rosiehadenandgreghoepner.bandcamp.com/album/rosie-haden-greg-hoepner

Tony Millman: tonymillman.bandcamp.com

Jane Cameron: janecameron.bandcamp.com

Maßimiliano Gallo: maxgall.bandcamp.com

"A welcome 15-song sequel to the What Colour Is Sound? series is out now on Bandcamp. This exotic various artists compilation veers wildly from expansive psych-folk, low-key acoustics, to dramatic soundscapes and everything in between, on this pay-what-you-like release with all proceeds going to The Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, Devon.

The intriguing art-meets-artist project is again overseen by UK-based, Australian singer-songwriter and all round dark troubadour Michael Plater, who is deftly carving out a niche in the world of independent music, this set churning out choice cuts from a multitude of performers around the globe, creating an intimate musical world of buried treasures and wistful emotion.

Evocative opener ‘Seattle Rain’, by Denver’s space-folk duo Astralingua, is an emotive, barefoot affair with a stark arrangement, allowing eerily-harmonised Joseph and Anne Thompson’s versatile pipes to impress, ushering in ultra-prolific Londoner David CW Briggs with his edgy ‘Time Has Not Been Kind’. It’s a bittersweet synthesis of layered acoustics and fuzz-tone space-rock soloing, the song stretching out over the six-minute mark then fading into the skilled acoustic instrumental delights of fellow-Londoner Sand Snowman with the ever-building energy of ‘Just Like Home’. Calm and confident as an ambient sunrise, it makes way for the ethereal vocals of Kat Amiss draped across the smoky atmospheric restraint of Melbourne three-piece Light Magnetic and their cascading ‘Weeping Willow’.

The next track is ‘Very Sad Very Alone’ by Melbourne-based studio engineer/producer Loki Lockwood, also known as Velatine. Delivering a seductive warped-country instrumental, the lo-fi guitar virtuosity is lean, precise, and full of fire, and flows nicely into Plater’s immense Saint John’s Eve featuring the classic couplet “Broken Gods / And suicides / Graveyard ghosts / And corpse lights”. A monstrous career-peak for the artist, the soaring intensity gives way to respite; the charming pastoral majesty of UK’s The Field Bazaar and their decorative ‘The Bane Tree’, a track akin to a stroll through the radio dial and hitting upon that perfect mystery channel.

The ghostly resilience of ‘More Than This’ by former-Berliners House of Light adds dark post-rock elements to proceedings, before an awakening into some fine piano balladry (‘Animal Song’) by Andrew McCubbin, an album highlight. The established Melbourne artist delivers a moving melody of broken domestic bliss in an accomplished croon and elegantly expressed misery: “Neighbours keep askin’ / How you getting along / I say that you’re doing well / And that you won’t be long”.

Legendary guitarist Deniz Tek from Radio Birdman, and musicians from Japan’s psychedelic rock underground, accompany renowned Australian guitarist and vocalist Penny Ikinger on a track lifted from her highly regarded Tokyo (2018) album; a beautifully textured flute accompaniment, a bucolic contrast to the concrete nu-prog of ‘Tokyo City’, relatively linear in comparison to the freewheelin’ indie-rock lifer Mark Spinks’ project Mark’s Paranormal Dysneyland, returning here on Vol 2 with ‘Too Much Confusion’. It’s all indie-quirky and addictively catchy on the surface however upon closer inspection (“One million lives are barely recognised / Systemic breach of trust / They’re holding out on us“), darkly relatable.

A band comprised of the varied talents of May Stone, Clare Bligh (Hannah Francis & the Fake News), Brendan Gray & Ashley Jones is Ill-Gotten Booty. They have a knack for storytelling, wordplay and a warm voice carrying sufficient wit and energy to ride their shanty undercurrent on ‘Pale Moon’, then a suitable thematic sequence into Rosie Haden’s stunning ‘The Indian to His Lover’, a track lifted from her and Greg Hoepner’s current self-titled album. You can’t help but smile at the faux-bossa and swelling verses on a song that likens a romantic walk on the beach with a lover to: “Here we were lonely ships / Wander wherever with woven hands / Murmuring softly lip to lip / Across the grass along the sands”.

Tony Millman’s soul-bearing collaboration with fellow Australian artist Jane Cameron, ‘Thousand Years Ago’, is a curiously tasteful and dramatic performance, conjuring a vibe of crushed velvet and dried flowers, with traces of heaviness into a cacophonous climax, really finding itself in the tender moments. The album closes out with Italian multi-instrumentalist Massimiliano Gallo’s ‘Before the Void’, a lysergic collage of hazy synths, strobing repetitions and shifting layers, it recalls Tim Hecker’s cosmic excursions on Radio Amor, but with an impulse towards dreamy abstraction.

And with this, What Colour Is Sound? continues to provide an increasingly noteworthy aesthetic charm amid simmering acoustic laments both macabre and reassuring, deserving of our attention now more than ever."

Pierce Brown, The Press: thepressmusicreviews.wordpress.com/2020/08/08/what-colour-is-sound-vol-2/

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released August 6, 2020

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What Colour Is Sound? UK

Label specialising in compilations of the wyrd and wonderful. Indie folk. acid country, European chansons, psych rock, electronica, experimental and beyond.

"Music at a remarkable level of quality between creative folk, gentle droning, ambient soundscapes, prog approaches, chansons and a number of places where approaches of this kind skillfully overlap," (African Paper)
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