Situated somewhere between shoegaze, ambient and left-field electronics, Bottletown, the artist's fourth album, evokes a varied landscape - an exploratory series of warm, expansive pastorals punctuated by angular, otherworldly spaces. Gauzy, saturated synth lines swell and unfold into equally-beautiful, glitched-out arrangements of audio detritus and soaring, ethereal vocals. At any given moment, the atmosphere might be cosy, unsettling or somehow both simultaneously.

Music and Production: Carl M Knott (boycalledcrow)
Vocals on Mushroom and Wunderbeast: Elizabeth Joan Kelly
Mastering: Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw
Photography: Chris Rodenhurst

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"Time passed by so quickly I missed reviewing Carl M Knott’s most wonderful fourth album before its release date. Which in reality doesn’t really matter as the music of importance should cause the same effect at any given time or date. From the serene impulse of Electric Sky to the twist of Fucked Jazz Melody this once again demonstrates a natural prowess when it comes to pulling together sounds and moods, then engaging with them in deeper ways. I particularly like the blissful escape found in tracks like Oz and Rainbow Silk which all seems to point towards lost and found memory, or maybe that’s just me. Either way, the music generates experiences to be realised and cherished across its entirety."

Magazine Sixty
www.magazinesixty.com/boycalledcrow-bottletown-strategic-tape-reserve/

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"I don’t review everything I pick up via a yum code, you know – that wouldn’t really be fair, since there are times when the style of music is itself something I can’t get on board with. Beyonce-style smooth R&B, say, or especially bland Europop. And sometimes, the genre’s fine but the music itself isn’t – and since I both got the music for nothing and, often, the musician is just pursuing a hobby, it’d be an arsehole thing to then slam them on a website (even one with as few visitors as this one!).

So these reviews are always just the five tracks or albums that most took my fancy in the previous week of listening. I think they’re all good in other words.

But even amongst a set that has already been pre-selected because I like them, there’s usually one in each week which stands out. And this is this week’s, particularly good album. It’s got a bit of everything for a start – it’s unashamed electronica, but across its 13 tracks it takes in ambient, cut up, IDM and plenty else. It’s often a deliberately uncomfortable listen – where there’s a warm soothing flow to some tracks (check out ‘Fucked Jazz Melody’, for a gorgeous example) it’s frequently immediately counter-pointed by insistent drums and ragged synths on the next song along (in this case, Elf Machine, which itself moves from smooth to jagged and back mid-track), while other tracks use static and found-sound to unsettling effect.

This isn’t an album to put on in the background and ignore – but that’s a good thing; ambient you can do that with is usually of the ‘let’s meditate and think of whales and lotus blossoms‘ school, and that’s the sort of thing that ends up in the ‘do not review’ pile…

(and only as I finished writing this did I realise where I’d heard the name boycalledcrow before – along with Xqui, he’s one-half of Wonderful Beasts, who did a glorious album called The Art of Whisper last year.)"

The Obverse Review
obversebooks.co.uk/bandcamptapes/2021/05/26/you-got-to-have-a-codepart-5/

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"Available for pre-order from Cologne’s Strategic Tape Reserve, Bottletown is the new album from Chester’s boycalledcrow. A series of not-quite-ambient instrumentals cast a mischievous eye over a landscape of dream-like, glitchy electronics. There’s a certain level of paranoid kitsch at play in titles like ‘Elf Machine’ or ‘Mushroom’ while the production is satisfyingly over-saturated, as though heard through a fuzzy, psychedelic gloaming. All of which is not surprising when you know that Bottletown is a dilapidated housing estate in the fictional Manchester Jeff Noon depicted in his fondly-regarded, druggy sci-fi novel Vurt."

God Is In The TV
www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2021/05/07/lost-in-musique-ah-giittv-recommends-for-bandcamp-friday-2/

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"This upcoming fourth album from boycalledcrow promises to be a glitchy, trippy, and wonderfully abstract album. Expect to hear glitched-out vocal clips alongside thick and luscious textures. Being released through Strategic Tape Reserve, this album will most certainly be available on cassette tape upon release. Currently available for pre-order with two-track available to preview."

The Fringes
www.onthefringesofsound.com/post/the-fringes-on-the-radar-may-12

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Released on Strategic Tape Reserve where the album is available on Cassette.

strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/album/bottletown
strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/album/bottletown
strategictapereserve.bandcamp.com/album/bottletown

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Released on Wormhole World, where the album is available on CD.

wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/album/bottletown
wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/album/bottletown
wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/album/bottletown

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