Alex Franquelli

Freelance journalist and writer

United Kingdom

Alex Franquelli is a freelance journalist and writer. He focuses on Mongolia and North-East Asian politics and ethnomusicology. Find him on twitter @alexfranquelli

Portfolio
PopMatters
Zu: Cortar Todo

It roars, dilutes, squeals, shrieks, pulsates and squawks. Welcome to the world of Zu. Cortar Todo materializes roughly six years after Zu's previous album, Carboniferous, and its task is indeed of a difficult nature.

All About Jazz
10/23/2014
The Necks at Cafe Oto

The Necks Cafe Oto London October 8, 2014 It is always a good sign when the imposing windows of Cafe Oto are misted up. If one could see through the condensation, if one could, with just one finger, remove the minuscule droplets amassed on the vertical plains, one would almost invariably spot fine music in the making.

All About Jazz
05/22/2015
The Remote Viewers: Pitfall

How we rate: our writers tend to review music they like within their preferred genres. I love a bit of Remote Viewers in the evening. If it's not in the scarcely busy second to last northbound Victoria Line carriage, I follow their urban drifts while strolling, hands in my pockets, on a straight line: the shortest trajectory from A to home.

PopMatters
Rabbitsss: Penguins

This is a delicate texture suspended between a colourful rendition of the rigors of contemporary music and ambient pop that somehow manages to retain a playful tone, slightly clouded by a few melancholic lines.

All About Jazz
05/30/2015
Francesco Nastro Trio: Colors of Light

How we rate: our writers tend to review music they like within their preferred genres. As soon as one lets Francesco Nastro's fingers fondle those keys the way he does on "E all'Improvviso il Sole," the musical geometries that create Colors of Light finally come to life.

PopMatters
Tristan Perich: Parallels

Like pure mathematics, Tristan Perich's music is something else. Waves or quanta? Mass or abstraction? One or zero? The focus of the discussion could be confined to the aesthetics, but in doing so we would lose sight of the method; vice versa, aim at analyzing the mode and you will never fully appreciate the principles of his art.

PopMatters
John Supko and Bill Seaman: s_traits

John Supko and Bill Seaman This is chance over method: a real post-industrial display of art born out of an immediate flow of ideas, immortalised onto a disk, assembled by the very negation of art that is genuine calculus and roughly adjusted by man One should never inconvenience Socrates when discussing the whats and hows of electronic music.

PopMatters
Pink Floyd: The Division Bell (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

Welcome to the machine. I started writing about music in 2002, when Tarwater came to town. A gig like many others, but the cunning art of self-admiration, combined with the romantic idea of receiving free albums and press passes kept me going for quite a few years.

PopMatters
smallgang: San

The main discriminant between a bluff and the worthwhile is quality, and smallgang have plenty of it. Oh yes, the 1990s. I remember having the following conversation with a friend or two as another person was trying to hang the de rigueur Pulp Fiction poster on a wall right on top of a massive PC monitor: - Do you think we'll ever look back and celebrate this decade in music?

OndaRock
Fiberglass - Hush :: Le recensioni di OndaRock

Pare, si dice, che Martin Scorsese una volta abbia affermato che la colonna sonora della sua vita è formata da nient'altro che la musica popolare. Vero o meno, l'aspetto interessante della questione è che il percorso dalla musica pop (nella sua accezione più ampia) alle colonne sonore è riuscito in molteplici casi.

PopMatters
George Harrison: The Apple Years 1968-75

George Harrison Listening to the entire production on offer here means delving inside an artist's trajectory. Naivety, genius and clever pop. The Beatles' legacy is like that certain 19th century empire "on which the sun never sets, and whose bounds nature has not yet ascertained".

PopMatters
Exit Verse: Exit Verse

One can't help but being drawn in by the output, rather than the method, by the pure creative act, instead of the artistic potency The worst thing that could happen to a scribe is to run out of coffee. Or write about their favourite artist.

PopMatters
Contretemps: Pronouncement

Con-tre-temps. The word itself retains a certain musicality, but the aftertaste it leaves once the three syllables have been pronounced undeniably betrays a latent feeling of uneasiness. Distressing, awkward, disturbing and almost upsetting, this aura of discomfort, if combined with the sound of the term itself (|ˈkɒntrətɒ̃|) is the essence of the music presented by Joel Ebner.

Popmatters
Cult of Luna (Beyond the Redshift): 10 May 2014 - London

This is no rocket science: the redshift and the expanding universe. The Forum, in London, stands in silence, as Cult of Luna take control of the light and toy with its frequency. They cast no shadow, and the wavelength of the photons elongates, shifting to red like that of a faraway object in the expanding universe.

Popmatters
Area: 11 April 2014 - London

Italian Prog Giants Are Back With a Mission The warm air, for once, arrives from the busy street, where what remains of the day casts long shadows on the sun-drenched shop windows. Soho is hidden behind a Victorian building protecting a vague combination of ordinary debauchery and weekly perversion.

PopMatters
04/02/2014
John Zorn: Fragmentations, Prayers and Interjections

As peculiar as the thought might sound, avant-garde can sometimes revel in vintage clothes, toy with retroactivity, instigate a certain eagerness for obsoleteness and still sound quintessentially fresh.

Opendemocracy
02/20/2014
North Korea: totalitarianism in transition? | openDemocracy

It is recent news that the North Korean regime has purged Jang Song Thaek- uncle of the hermit state's Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un-with accusations ranging from "traitor" to "careerist" and "womaniser". All direct relatives of the once second-most-powerful figure in the regime were executed in ways the popular media, not without the usual hint of sensationalism, have defined as both "horrific" and "shocking".

Popmatters
Kangding Ray: Solens Arc

According to the press release that comes along with it, Solens Arc is "what remains after the subtraction of the goal, a simple parabolic curve defined by gravity, impulse and starting angle. No target to hit, no catharsis to wait for, just the beauty of the flight."

Opendemocracy
10/09/2013
A tipping point for Mongolia's democracy? | openDemocracy

Sandwiched between the giants of Russia and China, Mongolia is looking to develop its vast mineral wealth. How will this affect one of the most stable democracies in the region, and what will happen to the benefits of development?

Popmatters
Boris: Noise

This Review Will Not Answer That Question If you are here because you think I might have an answer to that question, keep looking. I have no clue. I have found myself discussing the matter in question with Japanese music critics, Norwegian musicians and even a prominent, young British historian.

Thequietus
The Quietus | News | LIVE REPORT: Shellac

You could not ask a band, any band, to be rawer than Shellac. The trio's sound is a sonic manifesto of their leader's ethics, and their live sets are an obvious extension of it.

Popmatters
British Summer Time at Hyde Park

"Will the people in the upper-class sections clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your loose change", the bare-chested, slightly intoxicated male shouts from a distance as he leans against the barrier. From where he is, the stage is not too far, but the view is obstructed by one of the many delay towers adorning Hyde Park today.

Opendemocracy
07/10/2013
Mongolia: is stability the new challenge? | openDemocracy

Countries like Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which, following a brief stint of democracy in the early 1990s, have returned to a state of authoritarianism, serve as a warning to a country that is yet to find a balance between poverty and potentially immense wealth. On 26 June, Mongolia chose its new president.

Popmatters
Chris Brokaw: Now, Forager OST

The Gentle Art of Writing Poetry The obligatory string of titles, achievements and collaborations adorning any review or interview with Chris Brokaw as its protagonist is sometimes an intimidating and cumbersome presence. The variety and notability of most of the acts involved tends, to somehow create a prejudicial aura around this American indie mastermind's new releases.

Angrymetalguy
09/09/2013
Grumbling Fur - Glynnaestra Review

" Why did you start making music?" I asked, while pretending to sip the amazingly cheap red wine in my half-broken glass, scouting for what was left of my dignity while lying on the cold floor. I don't think he ever gave me an answer, but there are times when Daniel O'Sullivan does not even bother formulating a reply.

Popmatters
Dave Porter: Breaking Bad OST

Journey to the centre of a man Everything starts with a "click". A single snap, then two, four, eight and sixteen. Then again. The music is hidden somewhere between the motion of an imaginary pendulum and somebody else's vision.

Allaboutjazz
11/04/2012
Anglagard: Viljans Oga

Complexity can sometimes be considered a form of art in itself and it seldom follows simplicity. Complexity is also impressionism in its purest form. Its faithful depiction of the present may be deemed naïve and unsophisticated, but it remains an unfiltered, pure representation of the being.

Popmatters
Mayhem: Esoteric Warfare

The Implosion of a Black Metal Star Let's face it, everything dies. A body's energy gets transferred to other bodies or objects, in a process which sees the decaying matter's fate slowly morph into its legacy. The later stage of this body's life is sometimes the brightest and, for some of them, it coincides with a creative, desperate apex.

Allaboutjazz
09/13/2012
The Remote Viewers: City Of Nets

From A to B. The language spoken by The Remote Viewers is one that feeds itself with the interferences caused by lines crossing each other at various speeds in a continuous effort to connect the dots. We, the humans, are the thriving beads forever longing that 'B' we, sometimes, don't even want to reach.

Popmatters
Fennesz: Bécs

Beautiful Noise Whenever I listen to Fennesz, a distinct and powerful image unveils ahead of me. The Austrian experimentalist's music unveils itself in a slow but sensual fashion like a nearby galaxy when its lights emerge from behind a nebula of gas and dust.

Angrymetalguy
06/21/2013
Locrian - Return to Annihilation Review

Locrian// Return to Annihilation Rating: 4.5/5.0 - A drone falls in the woods Label: Relapse Records Websites: facebook.com/locrianofficial | myspace.com/thelocrian Release Dates: EU: 2013.06.21 | NA: 06.25.2013 Have you ever wondered what happens to the music nobody listens to? It implodes. It does not even make any noise.

Opendemocracy
10/10/2014
Prominent Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti jailed for life

With its shocking outcome, this trial might result in an increase in violence in the Xinjiang region, where protests for the mistreatment of a moderate voice could motivate the more radical factions. When poet Abduxaliq Uyghur penned the verses of "Oyghan" in 1921, the times were dire for the Uyghur minority in Western China.

Angrymetalguy
10/25/2013
Mamiffer & Circle - Enharmonic Intervals (for Paschen Organ) Review

There is a tendency, among music critics, to emphasize anything even vaguely related to experimentalism. For them, any album that smacks of avant-garde is either 'a step forward' or simply 'beyond'. The trajectory, the direction and what boundaries the sound has allegedly trespassed are details that are almost always left undisclosed.

Opendemocracy
10/10/2014
Prominent Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti jailed for life

With its shocking outcome, this trial might result in an increase in violence in the Xinjiang region, where protests for the mistreatment of a moderate voice could motivate the more radical factions. When poet Abduxaliq Uyghur penned the verses of "Oyghan" in 1921, the times were dire for the Uyghur minority in Western China.

Angrymetalguy
01/19/2013
Cult of Luna - Vertikal Review

Cult of Luna // Vertikal Rating: 4.5/5.0 - Reaching new heights... Label: Indie Recordings Websites: cultofluna.com | facebook.com/cultoflunamusic Release Dates: EU: 2013.01.29 | NA: 01.25.2013 I started listening to Cult of Luna with The Beyond.

Popmatters
Kronos Quartet: A Thousand Thoughts

This is the way it is. This is an album about distances, a record about the space inhabiting the "between" category. It is a geographical territory in the middle-that speck of earth perpetually missing from everyone's map, which proudly dangles in a specific space-time dimension. This is an album about diversity without intellectual compromises.

Amazon
Mongolia 2014: New Information and Cultural Insights Entrepreneurs Need to Start a Business in...

Mongolia 2014: New Information and Cultural Insights Entrepreneurs Need to Start a Business in Mongolia - Kindle edition by Derek Sivers, Alex Franquelli. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Mongolia 2014: New Information and Cultural Insights Entrepreneurs Need to Start a Business in Mongolia.

Popmatters
Mike Weis: Don't Know, Just Walk

On Mortality and Beauty Whatever happened to Mike Weis, it happened for no reason. There are no lessons to be learned from a battle with cancer. There is absolutely nothing a portion of body tissue gone crazy can teach us, apart from announcing its own location and existence.

Angrymetalguy
06/15/2013
Author & Punisher - Women & Children Review

Author & Punisher // Women & Children Rating: 4.5/5.0 - Ov man and machine. Labels: Seventh Rule Author & Punisher | Tristan Shone Release Dates: EU: 2013.06.11 | US: 06.11.2013 There's a moment in time, at a certain point and it doesn't even matter where, when one starts to wonder: how big is this machine?

Popmatters
Horseback: Piedmont Apocrypha

A new American dream The raw, honest, and ultimately humane way in which Jenks Miller utters the words "I was born to lose / I won't have this form forever", on the aptly titled opening track "Passing Through", tells a story in itself. It is more than a comment and yet something less than a statement.

PopMatters
Aisles: 4.45 AM

The real variance between a band of sophisticated copycats and this bunch is indeed intelligence. Virtus in medio stat ("Virtue stands in the middle") is a moral tenet of our times and, like most of the ethical dogmas, it loses most of its emphasis when it becomes a mere adage.