David Sylvian, Manafon (Samadhisound); Polwechsel and John Tilbury, Field (Hat Hut)

David Sylvian’s musical retreat into the forest is one of the most fascinating career paths. Like Scott Walker or Mark Hollis before, he has seemingly near-vanished from public view, producing works increasingly at odds with those from his past life as pop icon. These later releases are monumental slabs of one man’s artistic vision, wholly unaffected by such vulgar notions as the need to actually sell some bloody records.

Ducktails, Landscapes (Olde English Spelling Bee)

If hypnagogic pop has been the sound of summer (and it has been round my back garden), then Ducktails have been the summery sound of summer. Landscapes is the third Ducktails release I’ve bought since the start of the season, after the self-titled LP on Not Not Fun, and then the collection of early scraps entitled Backyard which Release The Bats, um, released. Behind these delightfully lazy vibes there is a serious work ethic, it seems.

The Great White Dope

I’m back – in one piece, just about. I’ve seen and heard a lot of incredible nature, as you can see from the photo above, and as you can hear from this 3 minute frog chorus recorded onto my iPhone by a lake near Swellendam.

Not exactly Chris Watson, I know. But apart from that sort of thing, I’ve listened to nothing else for the last couple of weeks. Do bear with me while I get back up to speed…

Evangelista, Prince Of Truth (Constellation)

Since Carla Bozulich joined up with the Canadian experimentalists at Constellation, I’ve felt she is pretty much the only rock star I’ll ever need. Not that I imagine she’d be terribly happy with being called a rock star. I don’t listen to very much in the way of bands with electric guitars and songs; that is because rarely do I hear anyone kicking at boundaries, tilting at windmills, screaming into the abyss with the honesty and conviction of Carla Bozulich and her bands. And it is very much a stretch to call these constructions “songs” any more; her last three albums have seen her walking her cathartic path with increasing confidence, striding into ever more avant-garde lands. The ragged beauty that is Prince Of Truth carries her further down that road, taking the listener with her on an absorbing, experimental and typically emotionally draining journey.

Fabio Orsi and Seaworthy, Near And Faraway; Celer, Brittle (both Low Point)

If you were to open the dictionary at “unassuming” it could do worse than refer you to Low Point records. Everything about the label screams understatement. If you can scream understatement. Which you probably can’t. Everything from the name, to the simple, stark photography which adorns these records, to the modest price (these will set you back around £8 each), to the typically unobtrusive audio content. Operating out of that great ambient stronghold, er, Nottingham, Gareth Hardwick’s Low Point has ever-so-quietly been making a name for itself in recent years with releases by the likes of Machinefabriek, Strategy, Chris Herbert and of course Hardwick himself. The latest pair of releases are a worthy edition to this softly burgeoning canon.

Om, God Is Good (Drag City)

In 1972, five years after his death, Impulse released Infinity by John Coltrane. His widow Alice Coltrane had taken some unreleased recordings of John playing saxophone, and added – ulp – Indian-sounding orchestration. Looking back now, it is hard to believe, but jazz purists were so offended that they rioted in the streets of Philadelphia. They had to send in the jazz tanks, blasting out Grant Green records, just to get everyone in the city to chill the fuck out. 37 years after those shocking – shocking – events, and at end of their Pilgrimage, it seems Om have reached their own Infinity.

It was always going to be difficult for Om to produce another Pilgrimage, that glowering beast of a record which sat itself down amongst The Wire’s Top 10 of 2007, all dressed in black, muttering weird pseudo-shamanic stuff to itself, and generally being so scary that even Edwin Pouncey couldn’t pluck up the courage to ask it to leave. To their credit, they haven’t. Nothing has surprised me more this year than the opening minutes of Thebes – tambura drone gradually being eaten into by Al Cisneros’s familiar-sounding bass. It builds into your more common-or-garden Om track eventually, with new recruit Emil Amos (from Grails) settling into a metronomic pattern while Cisneros grumbles portentuous stuff about “cognotized avatars” and “the immanent transcendent”, but the build itself is fascinating. Is that a cello four minutes in? Some hand drums after five? A piano after six? I swear there is another guitar in there somewhere too. There is more to come: the dirge-like “Meditation Is The Practice Of Death” are interrupted by some brief yet unmistakeable dub effects (!) and then finally a flute. Yes, A FLUTE. Can you imagine Om on stage with a flautist? I can, and I’m loving it. Speaking of Can, “Cremation Ghat I” has a nimble, almost funky Can-like gait, flamboyant by Om standards, before album closer “Cremation Ghat II” reprises all the ethnic instrumentation and utter madness that has gone before.

You see, what those jazz-crazed Philadelphia purists didn’t pick up on was that is that on its own terms, free from any historical association, Infinity is a wondrous record. And I’m not comparing Om to Coltrane in any way (although it can’t be just a coincidence that Coltrane had an album called Om, can it? CAN IT?), I’m only applying the same principle: God Is Good is damn damn good. People of San Jose: stay calm.

God Is Good is released in October on Drag City, who also supplied the track previews above.

Simpson’s paradox

I’m going to be away for the next couple of weeks with a group of people cycling relatively unsuccessfully round South Africa. OK, so it can hardly compare with the slopes of Mont Ventoux, although we do cycle through something called “Hell’s Pass”, which is a little frightening. So if anyone knows where I can score some EPO, get in touch sharpish.

As you can imagine, posting will be a little lighter than normal over the next couple of weeks, and I probably won’t be responding to any comments or emails. For those who care about such things, I’ll probably keep you updated on my brandy-fuelled two-wheeled progress via Twitter

Chris Watson’s Cross-Pollination at Queen Elizabeth Hall, 06/09/09

At the start of this concert Chris Watson told that “everyone likes honeybees”, but I don’t. There, I’ve said it. I know how important they are to our fragile ecosystem, and can probably talk for, ooooh, tens of seconds about their declining population, but I won’t bring myself to love them until they drop their constitutional right to bear arms in self-defence. And move to a fully-elected head-of-state (even Americans have one of those). But if anyone could persuade me of their virtues, it would be Chris Watson. His extraordinary career has taken in membership of Cabaret Voltaire, being a celebrated recordist for BBC nature programmes, and releasing some stunning records for labels including Touch. For this event, part of Pestival, he curated an experimental evening of works which celebrated the honey bee, the cicada and, in the hands of Philip Jeck, insects more generally. By which I don’t mean Jeck was actually fondling beetles or some such. Although it is an amusing image.

Max Eastley at Kings Place, 05/09/09

I had been looking forward to this ever since I first set eyes on the website blurb. The website blurb talked about the “unofficial school of outrageously inventive designers and builders of new, unusual and rediscovered musical instruments”. That website blurb sounds great, doesn’t it? So who would we see? Well, the website blurb was far from silent on that matter; the website blurb went on to list “the experimental musical instruments of Max Eastley and Victor Gama to the custom built electronic devices, modified amplifier, portable square wave oscillator and filter, and glove controlled computer sinewaves of Rafael Toral, and finally to the found percussion and acoustic phenomenae of Z’EV” This website blurb seems almost too good to be true I thought, as I followed the link from the website blurb which allowed me to buy tickets.

OOIOO, Armonico Hewa (Thrill Jockey)

One day in 2003, I was driving around one of the less welcoming parts of south east London (I don’t know what I was doing in south east London, I have no business in south east London), radio tuned to the mighty Resonance FM (of course), when I heard a record so incredible that I damn nearly crashed the car. It was just too perfect, with its nagging two-note guitar riff, krautrock pulse, Japanese yelping, and hyperactive percussion. I pulled over into a supermarket car park to sit out the remainder. People drifted past with laden trollies, in fact entire weather systems (a grey one, a rainy one, another grey one) drifted over so long was the track; all the while I sat there, nodding gleefully. I had no idea it was possible to have so much fun in south east London.