Second album of 2012 for the full-group line-up of John Elliott’s (Emeralds et al) solo project, now featuring Drew McDowall of Coil, Jeff Hatfield (Fragments/Field Of Hats), Andrew Vere and Adam Miller, with cover artwork by Graham Lambkin of The Shadow Ring: II presents a more expansive sound, with lucid classical synth stylings that part like slow moving clouds over achingly extended slow-motion melodies. Some of the doofier beat-driven tracks have the kind a-musical twonk of Conrad Schnitzler’s colour-coded LPs while the arpeggiated keyboard set-ups come across like the view over Dusseldorf circa 1973. Something a little more ‘stately’ about this one than previous blats from John which makes it all the more engaging. 

All-improvised follow-up to Chapman’s widely-lauded The Resurrection And Revenge Of The Clayton Peacock: Chapman came up in the late 60s/early 70s with a run of remarkable LPs on the UK progressive label Harvest and he has an internally implosive style that is classic downer, sitting nicely alongside Roy Harper and Bill Fay in terms of the sounding of some kind of personal apocalypse married to aspects of deconstructed genre. Pachyderm gets even further out than his previous Ecstatic Peace release, pushing his vision of the guitar into a new heavy droning zone where the sound of a single finger-picked cord is elaborated to the point of almost complete dissolve, gradually accruing detail and tonal tributaries as its re-stated again and again. There are aspects of the more experimental ‘binds’ used by Steffen Basho-Junghans as well as the guitar minimalism of, say, Hallock Hill but this is a uniquely mesmerising set, where repetition gives way to higher-minded drone epiphanies. The flip features an almost Eno-like reworking by Rob Antony, a young Cumbrian neighbour of Chapman’s Another dazzling and unlikely footnote to one of the most unpredictably unravelling adventures on the fringes of 20tth century rock/folk modes.