Rudi Arapahoe – False Self

The concept behind Rudi Arapahoe's new album False Self is an interesting one, especially to anyone curious about the grey area between composition and improvisation. As detailed in the album's liner notes, Arapahoe used the SuperCollider programming language to create "an algorithmic musician designed to compose and play alongside my true self". The results were then used as a springboard for further improvisation, composition and performance of the musical information by human musicians on keyboard instruments, tuned percussion, bass flute and bass clarinet. The results are otherworldly and beautiful.

The six pieces, ranging from six to ten minutes in length, are decidedly eerie in atmosphere, hovering like phantoms unsure of their next life. The song titles 'Mechanical Mask', 'Petrification Phastasy' and 'Ice Carnival' offer a vivid glimpse of the soundworlds mapped out and available to explore. Sustained tones bleed out into '80s reverb. Struck metal shimmers and blooms. The spaces between the sounds are as important as the sounds themselves.

For some, this will probably fail to register as music, or will test the endurance like water torture. It's certainly firmly in the abstract ambient camp, yet I find there's just enough musical connectivity between these sounds to lead me, rapt, across this chilly chasm. 

False Self is available now to download on a pay-what-you-want basis via Music Glue.

Ian William Craig – Centres

It's cold and windy up in heaven. Noisy. The voices of angels rattle and rasp.

Damaged instruments are left there to die. They still vibrate with life; ascension sharpens their purpose.

This drifting, shimmering void is no place to rest.

Everything overflows. 

Gersey – What You Kill

For about a year, before Gersey vocalist/bassist Craig Jackson and his wife Camilla left Melbourne for L.A., I was lucky enough to play guitar in their band, The Sirens of Venice. Craig and Milli started writing songs together after Gersey guitarist Matt Davis moved to Paris, where he formed the instrumental band Bombazine Black, and things wound down for Gersey. Or so it seemed. Despite the friction of distance, the band reconvened for What You Kill, their fourth album since forming all the way back in 1997.

Before Craig left for L.A., Gersey (minus Matt) recorded 14 songs in Melbourne over the course of two weeks, with 12 making the final cut. The fact that the bulk of the album was completed quite quickly comes across in the easy, flowing nature of the performances, no doubt a product of the long-standing chemistry within the band. In Gersey’s soundworld, simplicity is a virtue, with chord changes and melodies unfolding naturally, unhurried. There's a sense of melancholic drift tempered by resilience, Craig's lyrics and vocal performances keeping things ambiguous, coloured equally with sadness and happiness. When they hit their straps, they're like the best bits of mid-tempo Mogwai with vocals – which is a very good thing.

  
For me, the highpoints of the album come when the band stretch out across six or seven minutes, such as on 'When You Hollow Out', 'Endlessness', and ‘She Knows’, a swooningly gorgeous waltz. On the more concise end of the songwriting spectrum are 'See Lucienne', and ‘Summer Days’, which evokes that mid-afternoon music festival grogginess, where you realise you’re happy and drunk, but dead on your feet with hours of bands left to watch – you can practically see the sun glinting off Jackson’s sunglasses.

The countless hours spent in rehearsal rooms and on stages across Australia, plus the new-found distance between members, could have resulted in an album that sounds tired and needless. Though the album stretches out across nearly an hour – so perhaps losing a couple of the less engaging cuts may have enlivened the whole – there's little here that doesn't sound vital and woozily ethereal. Like the gruesome monster on the cover, about to sink its teeth into a severed arm, Gersey still sound hungry.

Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool

Five years may be a long time to wait between albums, but for Radiohead to follow up their underrated eighth album The King of Limbs with A Moon Shaped Pool still feels miraculous. After the carefully planned teaser campaign – the flyers sent via snail mail, the whiteout of their social media accounts, the superb videos for advance singles 'Burn the Witch' and 'Daydreaming' – Radiohead's ninth album is deeply beguiling and occasionally overwhelming. 

The first surprise was the alphabetical tracklisting. A lucky accident or reverse engineering? Nothing with this band feels accidental, so I'd guess the latter. The second surprise was the generous running time of 53 minutes. Who the hell releases an album longer than 4o minutes at this time of fast-click attention deficit? Thankfully, A Moon Shaped Pool is more than worthy of focused, album-length listening; indeed, it feels neglectful to begin playing this album unless I can give it my full attention. 

My first impression was how well it works as a whole. The feeling it left me with was similar to my first listen of Portishead's cinematic Dummy – I felt like I'd experienced a profound and painstakingly crafted work of art, undoubtedly beautiful but emotionally heavy. Comparing this album to Radiohead's previous work, what's most immediately apparent is how different it sounds to not only its predecessor, but also their most widely revered releases, OK Computer and Kid A. There's plenty of piano, strings and choral voices, and not much in the way of effected guitars or fretboard histrionics. Even Thom's vocal performances are, on the whole, pretty restrained. Its closest cousin in their discography is probably In Rainbows, my personal favourite.

In terms of structure, the album feels 'circular', echoing the cover art, with the music radiating out from the centre in concentric waves. 'Glass Eyes' is the gorgeous, glistening sphere around which the rest of the album orbits. Among heavily filtered piano and a subtle, aching string arrangement, the lyrics tell a simple tale of arriving at a destination via train only to feel alienated – so the protagonist takes a walk out into nature to regroup.

Either side of the centre are two of the album's most upbeat, electric numbers, both of which were performed live during the band's 2012 tour. 'Ful Stop' reins in some of the hurtling urgency of its live incarnation, especially in the first half, but still manages to seethe and throb with almost sickening malevolence before erupting into a head-nodding krautrock groove. 'Identikit' has evolved notably in the studio since being played live, and wasn't immediately convincing on early listens; the dubby treatments, choir and itchy guitar solo all felt a bit 'remixed'. Thankfully, repeat listens have revealed the song's dynamism and winning melodies. 

Step out from the centre again to find the pretty, open-tuned folk of 'Desert Island Disk' and 'The Numbers' (previously known as 'Silent Spring'), which Thom Yorke debuted in Paris last December. Then, either side of these songs are two of my favourites. 'Decks Dark' is reminiscent of 'Subterranean Homesick Alien', with some fantastic bass playing from Colin Greenwood and splashes of spring reverb on the rhythm guitars. 'Present Tense', which Thom has been playing solo since 2009, is backed by a shuffling samba rhythm and swaddled in eerie tape echo treatments. 

'Daydreaming' is utterly devastating, especially when accompanied by Paul Thomas Anderson's video, which has brought me to tears more than once. While plenty has already been written online about the fact Thom is saying "half my life" at the song's menacing conclusion, I feel it's more likely he's referring to his time within the band than his relationship with the mother of his two children, especially because the song also features the line, "We are just happy to serve you". Penultimate track 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief' has taken the longest to reveal its charms, but is now sinking in nicely.

Finally, at the album's extremities, where Radiohead often position their most startling songs, we have the two oldest cuts. Addictive single 'Burn the Witch', supposedly dating back to the sessions for Kid A, scythes through the upper registers with its col legno string arrangements and soaring chorus. A long-awaited studio version of 'True Love Waits', debuted live back in 1995 (!), closes out the album on an elegiac note, with a similarly waterlogged piano tone to 'Daydreaming'. 

While it's easy to read the personal backstory that will no doubt have coloured the creation of this album – whether Thom's separation or the death of producer Nigel Godrich's father – Radiohead have never been a band to be taken so literally. If anything, some of Thom's lyrics suggest a potential environmental theme, which is also reflected in Stanley Donwood's recently posted artwork, with what looks like an aerial view of a planet flooded, engulfed in flames, swirling with pollution or smothered in vegetation.

Ultimately, like all enduring art, A Moon Shaped Pool is open to interpretation and richly rewards close attention. It's a dark, swirling vortex of glorious songcraft that reflects our hopes, our fears, our vulnerable, aching humanity.

[A Moon Shaped Pool is available digitally now, and on vinyl and CD on 17th June.]

Shearwater – Jet Plane and Oxbow

When I first moved to Melbourne and joined a band, I received some advice I shouldn't have heeded. After our first gig, a friend's wife recommended that I face the crowd more and perform in a way that acknowledged someone was watching. (Admittedly, I was playing in an instrumental band, which can be notoriously boring to watch unless there are visuals.) I tried being more animated for a couple of the gigs that came after, but it felt weird and unnatural, so I gave up and concentrated on playing the music well, hoping this would be enough for anyone watching.

What's this got to do with Shearwater? Well, this new album sounds like Jonathan Meiburg is self-conscious that more people than ever will be listening to his music, all of whom want to be impressed – and few of them will be paying for the privilege. Like its superb predecessor Animal Joy (2012), and the disposable covers album Fellow Travelers (2013) that followed, Jet Plane and Oxbow is released on Sub Pop. The stakes are high. It sounds like Meiburg may have considered that he needs to go big or go home. (He does have a parallel career as an ornithologist, so if Shearwater tanks, he could do that instead?) The promotional emails touting this release implored Shearwater fans to preorder, especially if they want the band to tour Australia. (I live in Australia, I'd love to see the band live, so my preorder dollars were immediately thrown their way.)

As much as I applaud the band's perspicacity, something feels awry. Let's suppose, for a moment, that it's possible to create a mid-tier indie-rock album in the 21st century without paying any attention to what's going on in the music industry, or of hoping to recoup the hours and dollars invested. Let's suppose that this music was created because its creators had a burning desire to do so – that this music needed to be made. Then, let's listen to Jet Plane and Oxbow and wonder how Shearwater got here, to these particular eleven songs. Much like Wild Beasts and Lower Dens – two bands whose recent albums (Present Tense and Escape From Evil, respectively) I also eagerly anticipated – there have been pre-release murmurings of a more '80s-sounding direction for Shearwater. First single 'Quiet Americans' seemed to suggest as much, with its prominent synth lines, strident drum sounds and in-your-face production.

Indeed, in an interview with Michael Azerrad on the Sub Pop website, Jonathan Meiburg makes reference to Bowie's Scary Monsters, Eno and Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, and Talking Heads' Remain In Light as influences. Great albums all, but their relationship with Jet Plane feels tangential at best. Those albums may have inspired Meiburg to employ synths, rototoms and gated snares, but these instrumental additions feel superficial.

What seems to have changed is Meiburg's confidence in occasionally reaching for a sound that could best be described as 'stadium rock'. When this confidence over-reaches, I can't help but cringe in embarrassment. 'Pale Kings' is the worst culprit, its breakneck banjos falling over themselves to keep up with the fist-pumping pace, the songwriting falling short of Meiburg's ambition. As far as I'm concerned, the song should never have made the final cut, which is especially perplexing when more worthy songs, such as 'Evidence' (the demo of which features on the Headwaters podcast), were abandoned. Later in the album, 'Wildlife in America' is a bland and uninspiring piano ballad, and 'Radio Silence' strives for a motorik momentum that soon wears out its welcome, dragging on for nearly seven minutes.

That said, when Jet Plane hits home, its power is undeniable. 'Backchannels' is stunning, with a guitar break reminiscent of Talk Talk's sublime Laughing Stock. 'Filaments' sounds like a re-work of Radiohead's 'Bangers and Mash', all bass filth and percussive clatter. New single 'Only Child' has elegance and restraint on its side, with a lovely turnaround on the bass. 'Glass Bones' is an anthemic rock song done right, its riff down and dirty enough to cut through my skepticism. And glorious closer 'Stray Light At Clouds Hill' injects some welcome space into the mix, its vocals sent boomeranging through a tape delay.

Listening to the Headwaters podcast, it sounds like Meiburg and his band developed the songs on Jet Plane through jamming. However, little on this album conveys these origins. Somewhere along the way, something has slipped off kilter, taking Shearwater in an unsatisfying direction for such a great band. With a frontman as intelligent and articulate as Jonathan Meiburg, some of the musical decisions here are frustratingly inexplicable. My expectations of this release were high, but like Spoon's latest album They Want Your Soul, what could've been a great album is simply a quite good one.

My favourite albums of 2015

This year has seen such an embarrassment of riches, I've found it exasperating trying to keep up. Case in point: I think I'd only just started to digest disc two of the three that comprise Joanna Newsom's monumental Have One On Me when she released the impossibly dense Divers in October. Then, when I learned that January 2016 will see new releases by Shearwater, The Besnard Lakes and David Bowie, I laughed out loud. How does anyone absorb all this wonderful music with just one pair of ears?!

The following 10 albums felt the most deep and satisfying, and knocked me about in various beautiful ways:

10. Never Enough Hope – The Gravity of Our Commitment (Milk Factory Productions) 
I have Roommate's Kent Lambert to thank for introducing me to this monster: four massive pieces totalling 80 minutes of some of the most intelligent, dense and wonderfully played instrumental jazz-rock. Notable for including the instrumental talents of luminaries such as Colin Stetson on saxophone, Dina Maccabee (Julia Holter's touring band) on violin and Nick Broste (Roommate producer) on trombone, but amounting to way more than the sum of its parts, it's dizzying to imagine how composer Toby Summerfield pulled all this together. Imagine Frank Zappa's epic '70s Wazoo ensemble updated for the 21st century, or Jaga Jazzist minus the synthesizers. Pretty mindblowing. 

9. Destroyer – Poison Season (Merge)
Until now I've never fully understood the appeal of Dan Bejar's droll songcraft. He's always come across as an aging hipster with one too many ironic accessories, tongue firmly in cheek, and one foot out the door. Maybe I've just never got the joke? However, on Poison Season he's invested his MOR pastiche with a degree of intimacy that feels more engaging. His lyrics are oblique, but his delivery is more direct, and the music is unashamedly gorgeous. I still don't trust Bejar, but for as long as Poison Season is playing, I'm bewitched by his bullshit.

8. Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld – Never Were The Way She Was (Constellation)
Saxophone and violin – and that's it. Admittedly, Colin Stetson is the kind of player who's able to make a single instrument sound like a weird, underwater dub orchestra, but it's the mesmerising interplay between his saxophone and Sarah Neufeld's violin that's most notable here. Like the tree on its cover, Never Were The Way She Was is dark, gnarled and far-reaching, persistently refusing to be relegated to background music.

7. Jaala – Hard Hold (Wondercore Island) 
Short, sharp and sinuous, the debut album by Melbourne-based art-rock quartet Jaala shields its tender, bruised heart amid dazzling guitar-bass-drums interplay worthy of prime Magic Band, while at the centre of it all, Cosima Jaala's voice ricochets from a wounded coo to an ear-splitting scream. (Plenty of open-ended major-seventh chord voicings to satisfy my inner music geek, too.) I was gutted to have missed December's album launch, so one of my new year's resolutions will be to catch Jaala live in 2016. Looks like they'd be unbelievable.

6. Jim O'Rourke – Simple Songs (Drag City)
It's been a six-year wait since The Visitor, so a new Jim O'Rourke solo album is a cause for celebration. Thankfully, Simple Songs is an achingly beautiful salvo from a master craftsman. Here he's unashamed of pulling classic '70s rock and MOR moves. With typical O'Rourkian verve, these songs are far from simple. Knowingly absurd at times, but never resorting to cheap shots. He's too damn good for that. He may have his back to us, but the man is wearing his heart on his (cardigan) sleeve.

5. Björk – Vulnicura (One Little India)
Ouch. It's sad to think that Björk suffered a painful separation from partner Matthew Barney in order to create her greatest album since Vespertine. Album as open-heart surgery? Perhaps. But what's most heartening about Vulnicura is alluded to right there in the title: the cure for her vulnerability, the salve to her volcano of emotions, is to express her pain through the process of musical creation itself. And what music, updating the awesome strings-and-beats template of Homogenic with the help of Arca and The Haxan Cloak. 

4. MG – MG (Mute)
While most critically acclaimed electronic music this year seems to have been preoccupied with warping the boundaries of what's possible/listenable (Oneohtrix Point Never, Arca, etc.), leave it to an old master like Martin Gore to create one of the mightiest electronic albums I've ever heard. A gloriously deep, thick and crunchy record that combines the best of minimal electro, kosmische and science-fiction soundtracks, MG is an unbelievably satisfying experience, a lesson on the wonderful music you can create on vintage synths if you know what you're doing. The sketch of a knob on the front cover feels like an imperative: turn it up.

3. Fred Thomas – All Are Saved (Polyvinyl) 
Listening to this album feels like rooting around under the sofa cushions for the remote control, only to find a photo of your beloved departed dog, an unopened bottle of beer, a dusty cassette compilation made by an old friend, a dog-eared journal, and a pack of gum. It's surprising, ridiculous, hilarious, infuriating, brilliant, silly, beautiful, profound, knowingly throwaway and deadly serious. And the baffling thing is that the deeper I dig into what I love about All Are Saved, the more elusive its appeal becomes. All I can do is put it on again, writhe around in its warm recesses and itch-scratching edges, and let Thomas's inspired outpourings work their dark magic. 

2. Jenny Hval – Apocalypse, girl (Sacred Bones)
It may be confrontational and unsettling in both its lyrics and musical settings, particularly on opener 'Kingsize', but there's no denying that Apocalypse, girl is a humane and beautiful record, dazzling in its artistry and deeply moving on many levels. While it's not an album I can listen to often, each time uncovers new wonders in both Hval's vocal delivery and the eerie musical settings she's painstakingly crafted with Lasse Marhaug. A work of art.  

1. Roommate – Make Like (Strange Weather)
Having been unhealthily obsessed with this album for the last few months, I think I'm finally ready to take a break from it. There's no denying the hold it's had over me – more so than any other album released this year. I've already detailed all the reasons I love it, plus I've interviewed Kent Lambert about its creation, so all that's left to say is this: if you haven't heard this album, I strongly recommend you spend some time with it (and its predecessors Guilty Rainbow and We Were Enchanted). It's not flashy, it's not trendy, but like a good friend, the time you spend in its company will be handsomely rewarded.

And here are 10 more I also love:
Oren Ambarchi & Jim O'Rourke – Behold (Editions Mego)
The Balustrade Ensemble – Renewed Brilliance (Serein)
Ian William Craig – Cradle For The Wanting (Recital) 
Steve Hauschildt – Where All Is Fled (kranky)
Julia Holter – Have You In My Wilderness (Domino)
Julia Kent – Asperities (Leaf)
Matchess – Somnaphoria (Trouble in Mind)
Lee Noble – Un Look (Patient Sounds)
Joanna Newsom – Divers (Drag City)
The Singleman Affair – The End of the Affair (Strange Weather)