The Outer Church is a Brighton audio/video event created and curated by noted music journalist Joseph Stannard, of this parish. Stannard noticed that, ‘something weird is stirring in modern music which resists categorisation, manifesting itself in unsettling cadences and temporal distortions across a wide variety of occult strategies'.
It won’t fit on a T-shirt, but as mottos for progressive music go, it’s a good one. This double album presents 28 previously-unreleased track by artists on the Front & Follow label who’ve worshipped at The Outer Church, including Grumbling Fur, Pye Corner Audio, Ekoplekz, Anna Meredith and Hacker Farm.
This is music from the deep end of the electronica ocean. You can imagine these muso quants hunched over their laptop in the dead of night, chugging Red Bull, tweaking envelope filters while Pro Tools burns itself onto their retinas. Those cadences and distortions are here alright, as is the spirit of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Vangelis, even the Tangs.
If (unlike some of our recent correspondents) you’re broad-minded enough for concentrated doses of modern progressive bleepage free of traditional melody, vocals and structure, then pull up a pew.
