The Magic of New Beginnings

I have to be careful with this review. I thought it was great, truly enjoyable, well within my comfort zone and exactly what I wanted to hear on an early, grey Monday morning in November. I suspect though that Night Tapes may want more of a 'wow' reaction to their labour of love.

If this is an anti-climax, so be it. 'Portals // Polarities' is a strong album by many measures, containing a blend of sweet pop melodies and splashes of experimental atmospherics. Its great strength is an attention to balance. There's nothing too challenging to disrupt you from sinking fully into the music but it's never allowed to become bland and insubstantial.

It's an album with no stand out tracks simply because they're all strong. Listen to it in one sitting and you won't begrudge it one of the forty nine minutes you've spent in its company.

For some, part of any problem might be that they hark back to the feel of those early 21st century chill out compilations but they were the High Street's introduction to so many good bands - Lemon Jelly, Zero 7, Dubstar to name a very few. Night Tapes would acquit themselves well in the company. They'd stand out with their tone of Massive Attack at their most melodic and the shoegaze feel to a song like 'Patience (Waiting For The Setting Sun)'.

This is a completely danceable collection of dream pop in a gentle, post club, comedown sort of way. It's a light and floaty record. 'Babygirl (Like No1 Else)' will haunt you like a happy memory. The 70s influence melody to 'Swordsman' is at once retro and contemporary. Saint Etienne would approve. 'Tokyo Sway' is like being swept at speed along a neon lit motorway as you drift towards and away from sleep. If that sounds too 'pleasant', 'Leave It All Behind, Mike' is more eerie, dipping its toes into something darker. Iiris Vesik's elfin vocals are a massive part of the appeal, ranging from the shy little girl at the disco to the quiet, soaring banshee wail of 'Storm'.

Night Tapes have provided an album that many will love and return to again and again. Discover them now.

Taster Track : Babygirl (Like No1 Else)

Now You See Me, Now You Don't : Marina Zispin

Best for: Those excited by the possibilities deep within synth pop.

'Now You See Me, Now You Don't' is what you get when synth pop falls into the wrong hands. They rearrange pop in a way that rearranges your mind. Marina Zispin are not a duo who wonder what might happen if you cooked a metal saucepan in the microwave. They find out and present you with the consequences. They're artists who do not feel bound by the conventions governing the rest of us. They'll happily paint the grass blue and sky green to see what you think of it.

This is music full of exciting possibilities that they explore and stretch to breaking point. These feel like 12" remixes of songs you've not heard before, pushed over the edge. You can't help but wonder what pop gems are buried at their heart. Take the opening track 'Death Must Come'. It's full of distortion, unexpected fades in and out, broken and random spoken voices. Crucially though it also has an insistent bass riff that holds everything together and keeps it tethered to the world of pop. It's the soundtrack to a film noir where the hero has been drugged and the fragments of sound and noise he hears around him as he comes to. 'Piece of Mind' which follows is even better. It's how Eurythmics might have sounded if they were unfettered by commercial concerns.

It makes for some spectacularly enjoyable messes, driven by propulsive riffs. Two tracks feel outside the core of the album. They're the Venus tracks - 'Venus Decadence' and 'Venus Opulence' - and they're more sombre, lacking the exuberance that carries the rest of the album.

Marina Zispin operate where the past, the future, experimentation and pop collide. It's a synth pop refurbishment job, full of energy and confidence. It's an artistic triumph.

Taster Track : Piece of Mind

Supra : Dijf Sanders

Best for : People who like their music exotic but safe

'Supra' is an album that hints at a multitude of curiosities in its list of titles, titles such as 'A Thousand Suns Rose In the Sky', 'Seven Fridays A Day' and 'Knight In Panther Skin.' Unfortunately it doesn't deliver on that promise. It's pleasant but a little dull, earnest and worthy but likely to be left on the shelf of your local music library for months on end.

It's an album that's aiming to soundtrack your exotic holiday, one where trekking and exploration rather than sun lounging and cocktails is the order of the day. It's not that it stints on trying new textures or setting out new worlds, it's just that it feels like you're experiencing them through pictures in a brochure, not in real life. This is music that never fires up and sets the pulse racing or the imagination free.

I can believe that this album emerged from an afternoon wandering around a scrambled library of new age music, chill, ambient and electronica, grabbing anything that comes to hand and making good use of it. Dijf Sanders undoubtedly has and uses a creative and inventive approach to his music. He displays a willingness to take unexpected twists and to introduce sudden shifts in approach, but it's as if the tunes are pressing for a way to escape the paths they're bound by..

That's the feeling of a tune like 'Seven Fridays A Day". In 'Bird's Milk' the opening of Indonesian chants sound as if they're coming to you direct from a new age rain forest until the prototype of a tune emerges after two and half minutes. 'Mingrelian Song' has more energy, momentum and purpose than elsewhere, but it's not enough to lift an album that is otherwise locked into a groove of its own making.

Ultimately, this is for the frustrated clerk working on spreadsheets from home as the clock ticks down on a Friday afternoon and wishing they could be somewhere, anywhere else.

Taster Track : Bird's Milk

Michaelangelo Dying : Cate Le Bon

Best for : Those that like their break up albums intense and literary

Cate Le Bon took her recording name from Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon. That's as close as she gets to the sound of chart focused, heavily commercialised pop.

You can form a few expectations from the title Cate Le Bon chose for this album. The reference to Michaelangelo points us towards Renaissance art, all lavish beauty and deepfelt emotion. The dying ? Well this is about nothing less than a traumatic break up, the death of a relationship. It's above all, a record that's mourning love not celebrating it.

Cate Le Bon offers you a world you may not care to enter, but once there you want to savour every note and explore every nuance. 'Michaelangelo Dying' is the musical equivalent of a deserving Booker Prize winner. She paints a dream that reaches back through millennia to Ancient Greece and Rome. It's not a world where frivolity can be allowed. This is the music that might be played as you enter a natural, steam filled sauna prior to meeting divine oracles.

Befittingly, it can make the lyrics opaque. This, from 'Is It Worth It? (Happy Birthday)' takes a little thinking about. "I'm checking out / Even with my language in him". It certainly sounds great. This, from 'About Time' is fascinating. "I'm not lying in a bed you made". It's a line to unpack and unpick, heavy with interpretation and multiple meanings. It contributes to the satisfying richness of the album as a whole,

Musically, this sits where electronica meets the guitar. It's considered and washed with shoegaze vibes, unhurried and sorrowful. It's an album that's all chiming chords and electro acoustic treatments. A lazy comparison would be with the Cocteau Twins and the blending of voice and music heard most clearly on 'Love Unrehearsed'. It's forgivable because it's so lovely.

I'll save the last words for 'Ride' It's a slow, drawn out fever dream, not unlike the album as a whole.

Taster Track : Love, Unrehearsed

EPs, Singles and Songs

I'm becoming a big fan of shoegaze, which passed me by with its first appearance back in the 90s. I'm making up for lost time now, thanks to bands like The Suncharms. There's something about pure vocals with simple, heartfelt melodies emerging from a squall of distorted and reverberating guitars that is surprisingly moving. I've never heard it sounding better than on their new song 'Endless Departures'. It's one of the best things they've released - one of the few songs I've heard this year that went immediately onto repeat. You can find it on a new shoegaze compilation 'Aspirin Age Volume 5'. It's available on Bandcamp - 48 songs for under a tenner!

It may strike as a slightly odd couple collaboration but Gorillaz featuring Idles have released 'The God of Lying' and it's good. It sounds more like Gorillaz than Idles, who are reined in to sound more conversational than in mid rant.Their despair, anger and contempt for what they see around comes through, just more quietly. Musically it chugs along like one of those march of the dead processions that is preparing to burst into a carnival, the lyrics lightened by its toe tapping qualities.

Emerging from the post-punk ether in 1985, jim's twenty-one released the careering 'Throwaway Friend' EP in 1987, a record hailed as a "total classic". After a flurry of coverage in the music weeklies and airplay by John Peel and Janice Long, the jims went into hibernation becoming what some call "one of the great lost post-C86 bands". A chance discovery of some lost cassettes and an encounter with long time fan and now record label owner, Tim Alborn, and their debut 'Nadine' can finally be released on November 23rd.

They shared three tracks with us as a preview of what's coming. 'That Means Nothing To You' is a slice of raucous energy wrapped in alternative clothing. It's a short, frantic burst of thrilling noise that gives us its all in under two minutes. 'Knowing You' is similarly energetic but with indie guitars reaching out of the maelstrom around it to carry the song. And how good is it to witness a blast of raw, authentic feedback at the end. It's 'I Want To' that bears the hallmarks of a John Peel classic. It's friendlier than punk but contains the same devil may care ambition and intention to make its mark. It succeeds.

Something that couldn't be more different comes with Haakon Ellingsen's latest single. It harks back to a world of pop that doesn't exist any more. It's innocent, simple and uplifting. 'Come Back To Me' has the sweet folk pop 60's / 70s vibe that your parents bought in sufficient qualities to register on Top of the Pops. 'Sing You' is sincere, heartfelt, pure and lovely. Listen to this and think of Donovan, Clifford T Ward and, even the Norwegian Gilbert O' Sullivan.