8 Tracks: To Restore Your Faith In Humanity With Group Zero

From the LP Baltic Beat, I think this was my most played record the whole of last year. Maybe just owing to a slight touch of the Art of Noise’s Moments in Love, those opening voice chords really grab your attention after the initial simple and warm pad introduction. When it all gets going there’s a real sense of driven propulsion. A melancholy, yet a hope and a need to seek safer climes.

I am a firm believer in the healing power of music not just for the listener but more self indulgently for the artist. Music should be cathartic: to outpour on the floor all the shite that’s eating you up and sculpt it into something beautiful and previously unforeseen. I’m a bit jealous of this record actually, we’ve all been through the mill at times but I really wish I’d have written a few of these tunes from the album Drifters/Love is the Devil. I could have picked any track from the second half of the record but on a day like today Love is The Devil is resonating the most with me.

This is one saccharine, velvety, immersive cocoon of a record. The sub bass is heavy as fuck anchoring the whole track in a pool of fleshless minimalism. Jonnine Standish’s vocal delivery is spot on – distant and yet comforting on top of Nigel Yang’s studied minimalist dub soundscapes. Knowing exactly when and what not to play is such a skill. I have very fond memories of spending a summer’s tour driving across Europe with this playing in my headphones. The whole album, Psychic 9-5 Club, is such a positive and affirmative record and forever leaves me feeling the haze of it’s warm glow.

The first minute never ceases to fail in totally commanding my attention and in fully awaking all my senses. This piece of music is, for me, the epitome of the idea of surrender – aptly titled Love then. Oliver Coates’ cello playing is so nuanced and so emotive and Ive been a massive fan of the two ever since this record was released. I still haven’t seen Jackie yet but I’ve listened to the soundtrack a few times and it’s great. Such a shame she never won the Oscar but then when does anything actually great win those things judged by rich white men.

There’s something about William Basinski’s work that, to me is so timeless and familiar – as if you have to convince yourself that you haven’t heard it your dreams before. He really has a way of making you lose track of time and even though it’s loop based, not one bar is ever the same and forever evolving and shape-shifting into the next. He’s a master of atmosphere and of beauty. It’s really meditative music so leave your troubles at the door.

I’m a sucker for a sax and some soft poly-synths. It’s hard to single out a single track as this whole record, 69 by Wilson Tanner feels like the one journey. A message in a bottle slowly bobbing along in the open ocean eventually finding it’s way safely to shore. It’s such a soft warm and understatedly gentle track. Simply sublime.

Futurist Jazz beamed in from outer space. There’s so much atmosphere in this track, it’s quite breathtaking. There’s a real muted simplicity and subtlety to that repeating guitar motif, ever evolving, ever rising, yet delicately routed to the spot allowing Berrocal the space to go off on his exploratory dub-tinged trumpet. Whether it’s forbidding or not is to be argued but I find real comfort in this kind of eerie soundscape.

As above, so below? I’m not religious in anyway, but if there was a heaven then this piece of music surely is the direct ladder to the skies. The whole thing flows and glides along weightlessly but those ascending minor chords on the piano at the last third of the movement are gut wrenchingly forlorn and a heavy juxtaposition to the sublime violin solo which almost climaxes in on itself before gently easing off to a soft landing back in the real world. Such glimpses of beauty and hope to cling on to seem even more important today than ever.