A decade ago, Londoner Alex Peringer intrigued underground club circles with his outlandish take on dance music. Structured around dizzying time signatures and wry tales of unfulfilling lovers and pills gone wrong, his tracks referenced everything from UK funky to new wave and sea shanties. Then came several years of near silence – now broken by this self-released debut album, How Long Has It Been? The record acknowledges this break not just in the title, but also in its sound. On first listen, it couldn’t seem more different to Peringer’s early work, with those discordant constructions now replaced by the warm tinkering of the Rhodes electric piano and ostensibly earnest sentiment. But traces of that eccentricity still linger in this collection of atmospheric bedroom-pop ballads.
The record takes winter as its theme, though it feels fitting for this transitional time of year, with its stories of introspection and dodgy weather set against soft, simple arrangements. A handful of subtly wonky elements stop it from sounding overly polished or guileless: Before and After slips in a reference to a “fateful bong”; on the dreamy duet Two Lovers, glitches cut through the twinkling keys and mumblecore guest vocals. Elsewhere, the chords waver on Black Keys, one of several gorgeous and forlorn instrumentals.
The left-field flourishes and use of echo calls to mind World of Echo-era Arthur Russell, while tracks such as Water of Life and I’m Not Me channel the woozy melancholy and quiet drama of Robert Wyatt. As with those musicians, a considerable part of the charm here comes from Peringer’s delightfully off-kilter vocals, which stagger between registers. On the sprightly title track, he sounds close to breaking as he remarks upon an ex’s new baby, before he undercuts it all with an affectionate dig. Even at his least serious, these songs teem with feeling.
Also out this month
On Bunker Intimations II (Tough Love), an intense three-day improv session from London group Index for Working Musik manifests as a brilliant, haunting set of recordings. The tracks are as dimly lit and claustrophobic as you might expect, lurking between hypnotic space rock and creaking post-rock instrumentals, with the occasional jaunty folk ballad and symphonic interlude. In 1991, Rudy Tambala of AR Kane and Alison Shaw of Cranes recorded a handful of shy, soft-focus vignettes as Inrain. Three decades on, those tracks get a remaster and a fresh release, plus one new track, as Rise (Music From Memory). Their shoegaze-inflected downtempo sound feels timeless. All Shall Go (Long Gone Are the Old Traditions) is a frenzied storm of spoken word, industrial percussion and murky dub textures from Damos Room, the project of London musicians Elijah Minnelli, Luke Miles and Nicholas Elson: it’s dense but compelling.