If the accelerating success of Animal Collective in 2009 was weird enough, the level of anticipation surrounding their projects for 2010 must be astronomical, following the placing of “Merriweather Post Pavilion” at Number One in so many end-of-year polls. It’s predictable, then, that the band seem to be beginning the new year with solo projects that may, at least partially, defuse some of the hype. Deakin has been playing the odd solo show without too much fuss, though a recent Panda Bear gig where he previewed almost entirely new material (presumably from the fairly imminent follow-up to “Person Pitch”) has been drawing a good deal more heat. Before that, however, Panda Bear – Noah Lennox, that is – crops up applying vocals to “Stick To My Side”, a track on the new album by Pantha Du Prince, a German producer. If Animal Collective – and Lennox’s solo work – have reached out towards dance music in recent years, it’s still striking to hear him placed into a more-or-less pure techno context. Pantha Du Prince – Hendrik Weber – is often described as a creator of minimalist techno, but here, and for most of the excellent “Black Noise”, he artfully and meticulously layers various subtle bell-like melodies and rhythms beneath Lennox’s relatively straight vocal melody, as it gradually multiplies and expands into a characteristically yearning series of loops. It’s lovely, as is the whole album. There’s something silvery and hard to pin down about much of Weber’s music here, not insubstantial, but insidious in a very discreet way which can be hard to articulate. “Stick To My Side” might seem to stand out as his big stab at indie crossover or whatever (he's now on Rough Trade, too), but actually it blends fairly seamlessly into the whole immersive experience of the album. Weber’s often categorised alongside a bunch of Kompakt artists, and I can see certain affinities with, say, parts of The Field’s music. But there’s something a little different, precious but not fey, about the way he favours a certain glistening, bobbling sound palate, which reminds me of some ‘90s IDM stuff on Warp, and also a more graceful iteration of the work done by James Holden (another Warp throwback in some ways, I guess) on “The Idiots Are Winning”. Tracks habitually begin abstractedly and ringing, then gradually resolve themselves into rich, gently pulsating marvels; “Bohemian Forest” being a classic case in point. Inscrutable but not alienating, perhaps, and the cover painting, of an alpine church, set on the edge of a mirror-like lake, seems nebulously apposite. Weber’s last album, “This Bliss”, is reputedly even better: to my shame, I’ve not heard it. But check out “The Splendour” on his MySpace and see what you think.

Not so much a preview, this one, since I believe “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele” may have come out the best part of a year ago. Forgive the tardiness, anyhow: this pretty amazing album has only just showed up on my radar, shamefully. Harappian Night Recordings are, by all accounts (there’s an article in a recent Wire, which I must admit I missed), part of a very underground free psych scene focused on Sheffield, also involving Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, Chora and The Hunter Gracchus. Again, I’m going to have to apologise for what I can best describe as a formative knowledge of this scene: Part Wild Horses are great on brief exposure; Chora and The Hunter Gracchus I’m going to investigate later today, all being well. Doubtless it would’ve been more sensible to wait until I was better informed about the whole scene, but “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele” has exerted a strong pull this week, a heady, playful and intense piece of work by one Dr Syed Kamran Ali who knits (and I’m quoting Bo’Weavil’s label description) “Duelling ouds, whirling mizmars, screeching jouhikkos, tapping finger harps, rumbling monosynths, groaning harmoniums, a fist full of khene, talking gamelan.” There’s been a lot of talk lately, focused on Vampire Weekend’s “Contra”, about the perceived morality or immorality of using (or plundering, as those in the latter camp would argue) non-western musics as inspiration (I wrote about it a bit here). Seems like a healthy rather than malign trend to me; an argument reinforced by “The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele”. Harappian’s most obvious antecedents in their “ethnological forgeries”, if you like, are that Pacific Northwestern cluster of activity originally centred on the Sun City Girls, their Sublime Frequencies label, and the Master Musicians Of Bukkake (especially "The Visible Sign Of The Invisible Order"). Pasted together like a freestyled, headspinning collage, “The Glorious Gongs…” takes culturally diverse snippets of sound, smudges them with disorienting fuzz, applies found sounds, breaks and God knows what else, and comes up with an exhilarating fourth-world psychedelia. Like Sun City Girls, there’s a strange and sometimes unnerving tension between pranksterism and mysticism, but at heart there seems to be a liberated, adventurous relationship with the possibilities of music. We’re reminded here, too, of perhaps the rickety juxtapositions found on very early Cornershop records, plus the ghostly imprecations of someone like Third Eye Foundation. I suspect there might be connections with the subterranean improv world inhabited by the mighty Vibracathedral Orchestra, too. It’s all, as you might imagine, a hell of a long way from Vampire Weekend, MIA and other global fusionists. But when I hear something as exciting as, say, “Bare Cairo” or “Headless Mule” (and there’s another, only slightly inferior Harappian album called “Non Euclidean Elucidation of Shamanic Ecstasies” I’ve found; maybe more?), Harappian seems part of an upsurge in musical open-mindedness among musicians, from the top of the US charts to the most obscure leftfield explorers. Not, I suspect, that Harappian or their ilk would ever like to be categorised that way… Have a go on the Myspace, anyhow - www.myspace.com/harappiannightrecordings - some brilliant stuff there.

A bit unusual actually blogging about someone who sits in the same office, but a lovely reissue to start off today: the solitary EP by Apple Boutique, out for the first time on CD and pretty much unavailable since 1987. “Love Resistance” counts as one of the great lost Creation singles, made by John Mohan and Uncut’s picture researcher Phil King around the time they joined Felt (both had been part of The Servants, previously, for those of you still keeping an eye on C86 Family Trees). Since then, Phil’s played bass with The Jesus And Mary Chain, Lush, Earl Brutus, Jackie De Shannon and God knows how many other bands. I think I’m right in saying, though, that this is the only time he’s fronted one. Which is a pity, because “Love Resistance” is a terrific record: very much of its time, but with something about it that has made it age a lot better than many of the other jangly records I listened to when I was a student. The antecedents are pretty obvious: Orange Juice, The Go-Betweens, Felt themselves, the latter especially on the instrumental “Ballad Of Jet Harris”- though oddly that’s reminiscent of Felt’s earlier incarnation than the band which featured Mohan and King. Inevitably there’s a degree of feyness here, but the tunes are much more robust than many of the time, and Mohan’s nimble, elaborate guitar-playing is in a very different class to the determinedly amateurish types that proliferated in the mid-‘80s. A really fine record, out on tiny CD through Vollwert. Another reissued curio that we’ve been playing a lot of late is FJ McMahon’s “Spirit Of The Golden Juice”, the sole, 1969 album by a Californian Vietnam vet that Rev-Ola are putting out. McMahon has one of those well-seasoned folk baritones that immediately put him into the company of Fred Neil and sundry Tims, gruff and diffident on one level, but can also carry a song with a real lightness of touch and emotional delicacy. Someone here (Phil, actually) has mentioned Dino Valenti, too, which makes sense on a good few of these nine potent songs (the opening “Sister Brother” is especially wonderful). There are points, too, where McMahon unwittingly seems to act as bridge between Greenwich Village and a coming wave of weathered singer-songwriters like Townes Van Zandt. Again, great stuff.