Happening Again #51
It comes around quicker every year
Hello!
Christmas is almost upon us. I hope you’re all suitably prepared, because I’m not. This will be the last Happening Again of the year. I will return at some point in January having eaten double my weight in cheese over the festive period.
Thank you to all of you who continue to read and share this newsletter. It is no secret how hard things are and continue to be for creatives of all stripes. I never take any audience for granted and I feel that, in some ways, the pendulum is slowly swinging towards smaller, more indie outfits in a world full of insane tech conglomerates and ever-growing AI sludge.
So a very merry Christmas to you all, and best wishes for 2026. See you on the other side.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been spinning recently…
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Sulk Rooms
REWILDING
Floodlit
Despite recently finishing up a tour, Thomas Ragsdale isn’t done with 2025 yet. Oh no, that would be far too simple. Cramming in one more record before the year is out, ‘Rewilding’ takes us on another jaunt through Ragsdale’s sonic universe. With a palette that now includes high-gain guitars and kick drums, Ragsdale says the album nods as much to Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze as it does South Yorkshire industrial and Belgian post-metal. Never a dull moment! ‘Rewilding’ is rich with cinematic auditory panoramas - not that unusual considering Ragsdale’s previous output, but it does feel like everything has been turned up a notch this time. I love the motif that runs through ‘Innellea’, arpeggiating through a film of fuzz before bursting into a hiss of scratchy industrial. ‘Hyper Action’ feels like following the pheromone flightpath of a butterfly, flickering melodic synthesis that undulates and echoes against a drone. And let’s talk about the epic ‘Let’s Choose Our Words Carefully’, a chuntering steam engine of percussion acting as a propelling force, blurring the reverbed guitar chords that whizz beside it. What a way to round off the year. I can’t wait to see what Ragsdale’s got on the agenda for 2026.
Robinson’s Village
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MATE
Bandcamp
While “Happy Birthday” is not something one regularly says to others on Christmas Day (unless it’s to Jesus), ‘Happy Birthday, Mate’ has an undefinable sort of Christmas feel to it, which isn’t that surprising considering its conception. Armed with his Tascam Portastudio, Nottingham-born, London-based electronic musician James Burns started writing the tracks for this record while back in his hometown during the Christmas period of 2024, with a couple done during the summer of this year. There’s something very soothing about the ambient soundscapes here. A hazy wall of distortion cascades in waves like snow in a storm on the aptly named ‘Christmas’; modular tones twinkle like fairy lights against the growl of electronics on ‘Fun’s Over’; and the finale that is the title track is a dreamy drone that fades in and flows alongside gurgles and clicks, swirling with an edge of melancholy but never veering fully into mournful. There’s a delicate beauty to ‘Happy Birthday, Mate’. It’s the perfect soundtrack to a walk through the snow at night, that barely perceptible muffle as snowflakes hit ground, as your feet crunch through an already-made ice carpet.
Merry Christmas, James Burns. I think I’ll make a habit of putting this on at this time of year, every year.
Brett Naucke
GROUND FAULT MATINEE
Gateway Gardenia
We went to go and pick up our Christmas tree yesterday, and I ended up having a conversation with the guy at the nursery about Silver Apples, the psychedelic rockers from 1960s New York. We then moved onto ‘Silver Apples Of The Moon’, the seminal electronic composition from Morton Subotnik, released in 1967, the same year Silver Apples formed. Not a particularly festive conversation, but welcome all the same. Why am I telling you this? Well, Subotnik is namechecked as one of Brett Naucke’s influences, an experimental composer from the US that really grabbed my ears with this record. ‘Ground Fault Matinee’ comes after a three-year break for Naucke, and was conceived as a two-EP suite: Side A ‘Universal Voltage’ and Side B ‘FM To FM’. ‘Universal Voltage’ is influenced by the aforementioned Subotnik and his heavy on vintage analogue synths, while ‘FM For FM’ was originally a Radio Arts programme commission for Black Mountain College Museum. I love how chunky this all is, with sounds so visceral you have a clear image of the machinery being used. The warped squeals and squelches that litter ‘Krylon 78’? Glorious. There’s a touch of ‘Blade Runner’-era Vangelis about ‘Roland’s Theme’, while ‘Eden-Olympia II’ sparkles with crisp ambience, like looking up at a clear night’s sky and hearing the stars. And ‘FM For FM’ is like listening to the field recordings from a mechanical planet; electronic crickets chirping, the drip of liquid bass in a cavern, while chimes echo in the background. It all has that organic feeling, like these were the sounds Naucke’s hardware just happened to make, and he deftly wrangled them to his liking. I’m embarrassed I hadn’t heard of Brett Naucke prior to this album. But I’m hoping I won’t have to wait another three years for his next record.
Carpenter Brut
LEATHER TEMPLE
Quarter Prod
Christmas has come early, for me at least. With all the energy of an angry big cat released from a cramped, too-small cage, Carpenter Brut (the alias of French composer Franck Hueso) unleashes ‘Leather Temple’, the final act in a trilogy of albums that started with ‘Leather Teeth’ in 2018. Protagonist Bret Halford is certainly a far cry from the lovesick teenager he started this journey as. As Heuso explains in a post on the Carpenter Brut Substack: “From the basement to the light, this is how Lita Connor leads the resistance rising in the shadows of Midwichpolis. With the help of a genetically enhanced Bret Halford, she pushes back against Iron Tusk, a ruthless tyrant who keeps the entire city locked under fear and control.” ‘Leather Temple’ is as abrasive as you’d expect from Carpenter Brut, synthesised howls like circular saws and drums so explosive they could blow the barn doors off. I’m excited to see the direction the narrative goes in. Midwichpolis seems like it will be the beating neon heart of ‘Leather Temple’, a kind of ‘Mad Max’-cum-‘Blade Runner’, contrasted with the poverty of the Midwich Slums. Midwich Valley has already played a role in the Carpenter Brut canon with the slowly building ferocity of ‘Escape From Midwich Valley’ (the first Carpenter Brut track I ever heard). Expect the full album sometime next year, but for now this single will more than suffice.
That’s it for this time. As always you can find my ramblings elsewhere in both print and online in Electronic Sound. I am going to tentatively dip into the world of microblogging again, so follow me on Bluesky if that’s your sort of thing.
But before I go, here are some things from across the internet that have caught my eye…
Some Stray Thoughts
// If you like the sound of the above Carpenter Brut track, the accompanying video is suitably bonkers. You can watch it below.
// There’s nothing to say that hasn’t already been said about Netflix buying Warner Bros. (to quote ‘Alien Vs. Predator’, we all lose), but whether or not Paramount’s hostile bid for the company goes anywhere remains to be seen. What amused me the most was the press release that announced that HBO Max is (allegedly) launching in the UK next spring, only for this news to upend it all.
// I mean, I’m not even sure where to start with this one. Disney has inked an initial three-year $1bn deal with OpenAI, while at the same time has sent a cease-and-desist letting to Google claiming their AI model is engaging in copyright infringement on a “massive scale”. While I understand the concept of rights holders, famously litigious Disney suddenly not caring about how their own IPs are used signal a huge shift in the media landscape. Quite why they’ve decided to allow OpenAI to use their characters, especially for a video generator that is no doubt going to be used to make a lot of Elsa porn, is lost on me. I thought this reaction from games designer Seamus Blackley was very interesting. I for one can’t wait for videos of Mickey Mouse saying the Holocaust was fake or whatever.