November’s Jupiter Room show is due for broadcast Thursday November 24th 10PM GMT 5PM EST and this is a new feature to support and add background and wider context to the tracks and artists featured. It’s also an opportunity for me to showcase some of the bands and artists featured, enabling you to dig a little deeper and explore their work beyond the radio show. I won’t be featuring the tracks being played on the show but I will be linking to their various YouTube, Soundcloud and Bandcamp pages. So go and explore, embrace and support the artists featured.
So let’s kick off with a few musings on some of the artists featuring in this month’s show…
Dreamy and swirling synth bubbles are formed and floated by Dutch synthologist BEA1991 on her track “Wrong” from her album Songs Of 2k11. Embracing a distinct 1990’s warm and woozy sound the track wafts in and out of whatever reality she is constructing for us the listener. Ghostly grooves coalesce with slow-warping synthesizers to build an atmosphere of cool detachment and subterranean beats to produce a track of disquieting beauty.
The Industrial music scene has been faltering for around 20 years now, maybe more. With Skinny Puppy‘s release of The Process in 1995, the end of the golden age of industrial was heralded (that album was bang average). The album was such a disappointment, lacking the edge of previous Puppy albums and was nowhere near the majesty of Too Dark Park (still one of industrial music’s finest moments). So to discover an artist from who embodied all that was good about that scene I loved is a real joy. Nurse Predator, hailing from the northern town of Lancaster, conjures dark and brooding sounds that creep and crawl around the darkest recesses of your psyche, scratching, like rats in the walls, as drones ripple across still ponds of ambience. Having been producing music for over 20 years and recording back in the day when everything had a moving part and no mouse clicks were involved it really shows in the quality of the tracks.
She Swims is Wirral-based Stefanie Chew (formerly Faded Gold) who produces melodic, bright and emotive electronic music. Stefanie is a trained pianist and uses her instinct for composition and arrangement to craft emotive and immersive tracks. Check out She Swims on Soundcloud.
Listening Center is a New York-based retro-synth artist who makes use of analogue equipment, tapes and samples to create dream-like melodies and BBC Radiophonic inspired grooves. The whole genre of hauntology is probably over-represented (as is synthwave, techno, ambient, Boards of Canada-esque electronica and many many more) however Listening Center stands out with taught production and floaty melodies. If you’re a fan of Peter Serafinowicz‘s pastiche 80’s school science TV show Look Around You will recognise the sound and style. It very closely resembles his musical compositions (under the name Gelg) used throughout that show. Well worth a look.
Ulrich Schnauss is back and is still producing wonderfully organic and immersive electronica. His new album No Further Ahead Than Today revisits the sounds and textures of his early albums Far Away Trains Passing By and A Strangely Isolated Place. Seeming to exist in between the two it is isn’t as minimal as Far Away Trains and doesn’t delve a deeply into shoegaze territory as A Strangely Isolated Place but still manages to evoke the warmth and heavy density of those two albums. Lots of complex structures and slow-groove beats keeps things evolving in a quasi-Tangerine Dream fashion. This is the first time I have featured Ulrich on The Jupiter Room and being a big fan I’m chuffed to be doing so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t460CgRCLUs
Plike has featured a couple times before and I’m a huge fan of Em Baker’s lavish and atmospheric Gothic productions. Her instinct for dramatic musical shapes and huge atmospheric productions enable her songs to ebb and flow with an emotional intensity that can be quite overwhelming. Red Queen, White Queen is an album of dark, dramatic and immersive songs that strike at the core of our collective emotional being. It’s great to be able to feature Em once again.
https://soundcloud.com/plike-1/the-ghost-of-anne-boleyn
Scatter Factory create motorik, ghostly and infectious roller-skate bass grooves. The solo project of Will Foster, a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and arranger and former member of art-pop band Delicatessen, Scatter Factory is fast-emerging as fine purveyor of elegant instrumental music that manages to be both vividly imagistic and intriguingly open-ended.
