NEW MUSIC FROM GENRE PEAK

As I think I have noted in these pages before, that the world of the music journalist has changed immeasurably since I started writing for fanzines back in the late 1970s.  As I guess it has for everybody, the Internet has changed everything.  Whereas once upon a time, I received large bundles of vinyl LPs to review, and then - a few years later - bundles of CDs or DVDs, now - as often as not - I receive an e-mail, and a link from which I can download an entire album months before it is actually released.

In some ways this is disappointing.  I still like to feel the product in my sticky little fingers, but I'm quite aware that with the current state of a
ffairs within the music business that this is largely impractical.  In other ways, getting hold of material so long before it is actually released is a very exciting thing, and one which I enjoy massively.

Last week I received the new album from Mr Averill, and I have been listening to it ever since.  To sum it up on in a nutshell, this is some of the most peculiar music that I have heard all year; melodic high strangeness inhabiting much the same area as the more accessible parts of recent Tom Waits, and I greatly look forward to speaking to the perpetrator either this week or next.

But yesterday, I received something else; a special advanced preview of the new album by Genre Peak.  It is called 9 Microspheres and I'm downloading it as we speak.  I really enjoyed their last album Redux and after hearing it had a long chat with main man Martin Birke. He wrote to me:

I hope you will enjoy this dark & beautiful ambient release done by me & former Robert Frip student Stephen Sullivan.

I will be listening to the new album as I work this morning, and - no doubt - you will be reading all about it later this week.  In the meantime, refresh your memories with this interview with Martin that I conducted last year...