Euterpe Sequence

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One of the joys of being involved with motion is that occasionally we're approached by a label of whom no-one on the team has ever heard. It's happened with, among others, Portugal's AnAnAnA, with the UK's Discus and Sound & Language, and here, with Australia's Camera Obscura. Based in the rural university town of Burnley, the label is dedicated, in its own words to "all things psychedelic, from 60s-influenced psych-pop and acid folk, heavy improvisational explorations, and other things drone-based and and experimental. I have been inspired by the kind of do-it-yourself panache exemplified by the Xpressway and Siltbreeze labels, and many that followed in its wake." Other releases on the label are pure psych: guitar freak outs, acid vocals, the works. This album, the second by Welsh soundscapers Our glassie Azoth, is a very different thing. The group is a couple: Dafydd and Ruth Roberts, who operate under two main sobriquets: OgA and the more song-based, folkish Alphane Moon. Their eponymous debut, released by Germany's Plate Lunch Records, married ambient and noise, and this follow-up, Euterpe Sequence, follows much the same path. From electronics and guitars, they create very long, hypnotic, rhythm-less drone pieces whose intensity and depth gradually build over - in the case of "Insist Upon The Way" - upto 20 minutes. The pieces are at once serenely contemplative and very, very noisy, yet buried in each there's always some, albeit deeply buried melodic or harmonic kernel. Contemporary reference points, off the top of my head: guitarist Roy Montgomery in solo mode, Windy & Carl or Amp in their less rhythmic moments, and Richard Youngs for his sense of minimalist primitivism. Yet, very much their own people. I should point out that the album (which has some beautifully-designed mediaevalist cover art) comes in an edition strictly limited to 500, so serious ambient and psychedelia collectors should strike while the iron's hot.