Bleep

Gearbox crank out the goods with Unpopular Music, an exceptionally compiled album of recordings lifted from BBC Radio 3's Late Junction show, featuring stunning collaborations from an all-star cast of musicians including Gudrun Gut, Simon Fisher Turner, Tunng, Kate Tempest and many more, each artist was placed in the BBC's all analogue studio, Maida Vale with another performer with whom they have not worked with before and given a day to write and record an original piece of music. Gearbox have teamed up with Nick Luscombe to compile and present this luxurious compilation featuring some of the very best recordings, all spread across two 12"s that have been cut at 45 rpm for maximum pressure at Gearbox studios, London.

The sounds within Unpopular Music go a long way to shining a light on the incredible knowledge and diversity of Nick Luscombe's Late Junction show. Instant highlights have to be Drilling An Ocean For You - the jaw dropping AGF and Gudrun Gut's collaboration, vast washes of greyscale drone resonate with a slow-motion sheen breaking against whispered vocals that unleash a wonderfully cathartic effect when deployed at a loud volume. While John Paul Jones & Erland Dahlen's Piece No.5 rolls out a half-time percussive flex akin to a 3D acoustic soundwave update of Photek's breakbeat jungle classic Ni - Ten - Ichi - Ryu (aka unmissable). Elsewhere Kate Tempest & Elysian String Quartet convey a modern classical rooted tale of inner city urban turmoil before Simon Fisher Turner & Martin Baker's Citius Altius comes to the helm with what goes a long way to imagining what a thousand pianos being crushed by Hokusai's Great Wave may sound like.

Elsewhere there are prime time tropical library escalades from Eska, Jesse & Louis Hackett with Many People Of The Songbird, low-slung positive hip-hop kicks from Seb Rochford, Chartwell Dutiro, Leo Abrahams and Jyager, before BJ Cole & Nils Økland's heavy hearted string led piece Jeg Har Så Lun En Hytte settles the LP into its final minutes. This is a truly diverse album and we'd be hard pressed to find another record this year that brings together such a vast array of musicians, each contributing their own unique sound while retaining such a strong narrative and theme throughout. From spoken word industrial interludes, far flung folk, oceanic ambience and outer reaching library soundtracking, no matter what your taste in music, we strongly urge you to give this some of your time.