Emma Ruth Rundle

Emma Ruth Rundle’s second installment in her Electric Guitar series, EG2: Dowsing Voice, is like the soundtrack to a film that hasn’t been made. The mostly instrumental record follows her on a trip to the Welsh coast and down a magical well into the waters of nature, myth and the Old Golds - by way of her improvised music. The 40 plus minute album was sewn together from recordings channeled during her month-long solo journey in the early days of 2020 and completed before 2021’s critically lauded album Engine of Hell was even written.

Stemming out of an offer from Roadburn Festival organizer Walter Hoeijmakers, mutual acquaintances, and a shared love of each other’s output, May Our Chambers Be Full is the first recorded document of collaboration between Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou. While their solo material seems on its face to be quite disparate, both groups have spent their respective careers lurking at the outer boundaries of the heavy metal scene, the artists having more in common with DIY punk and its spiritual successor, grunge.

Ambient metal outlier and leader of the mighty Earth, Dylan Carlson’s new solo album is the soundtrack to an imaginary western, based on the true story of a conquistador and his twenty-year journey, with his Moorish servant, through an area which is now defined by New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Texas. Featuring expansive drones and austere guitars, while being freed from the discipline of a rhythm section, Conquistador is minimalist, cinematic stuff that suggests a more leftfield take on Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to Paris, Texas.