Away from the churn of the hype cycle and the gloss-riddled Crack magazine parasites, vital music is being made without permission or compromise, with a distinct refusal to entertain chart-chasing and industry-approved noise.
Notes Of The Underground is the first bi-annual instalment of hand-picked, impossible to ignore releases that have rejected fading into the abyss of digital releases. This is a celebration of the underground, of what we love, what has gripped us, and what we’ve been listening to. No algorithms, no consensus, just real music, from real voices.
Total Con photo by Andy Jones.
Cyfarwydd – Cyfarwydd
– Digital
– Self-released
Leeds based Larissa Salix & Andy Horn have waded up into the place where the clouds meet the skies – where other-worldly electronics intertwine with rustic strings, and transport you into a whole new realm. Self-recorded and steeped in primitive, folk-adjacent textures, the album meanders through weathered acoustic instrumentation that dissolves into spectral electronics, as folk-lore, memory and unknown become indistinguishable.
Sanctuary of Praise – A Hard Rains Gonna Fall
– Cassette
– INFOmatiON!
The latest rune from Maidstone’s gothic corner, Sanctuary of Praise, A Hard Rains Gonna Fall compromises ‘near 70 minutes of cuts up recordings from the live arena between 24-25’. Oscillating between the murky and the jangly, Sanctuary of Praise dig further into the hypnosis, drawing on The Virgin Prunes soundscapes, Throbbing Gristle tape-loops, and windswept blossoming melodies of the Chameleons. Medieval imagery collides with flashes of C86 jangle-pop and darkened paisley-shirt psychedelia to carve out a unique and timeless space, distinctive and defiantly bold in defiance.
Total Con – Idolatry
– 7”
– Brainrotter Records x Unlawful Assembly
A new ten-track diatribe from Leeds’ TOTAL CON, Idolatry is a ferocious, angry and fully charged statement that harks at subjects such as organised religion, landlords, homegrown racism, the media and more. Bobby Cole and TC scratch firmly at the itch, stripping everything back to pure raw intent, distilling the primitive urgency of early hardcore, and channelling the frustration and fury into a direct assault on the forces that govern daily life. Ten tracks in as many minutes, Idolatry captures outrage in its purest form: urgent, confrontational and unwilling to compromise. A record built on anger, conviction and the need to make noise when silence is no longer an option.
Dawn Terry – Why hold one stone dear? They are each as beautiful.
– Digital
– Self-released
A neolithic mis settled over the mind in Dawn Terry’s new experimental electroacoustic drone release, ‘Why hold one stone dear? They are each as beautiful’. String-based drones emerge from the ether, layering into one another to create a ritualistic listening experience where silence is never empty, and the sustained tones are never static; they shimmer with incidental fluctuations, room resonance, and the subtle instability that makes concoction sound, and feel alive. Terry treats repetition as a way of revealing gradual transformation, allowing seemingly static pieces to evolve through subtle shifts in texture, resonance, and emotional weight.
