Pulver und Asche Drawing on their collective backgrounds in electro-acoustic composition, electronic music and free improvisation and with a general avant-garde interest in pushing at boundaries and generally mashing things up musically, El Toxyque, Luca “Xelius” Martegani and Zeno Gabaglio do their best to evoke the spirit of TS Eliot‘s The Waste Land on their second album as Niton. Through the application of cello, self-built instrumentation and a […]
album review
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New Nihilism Jarosław Leśkiewicz‘s (AKA Naked On My Own) first CD as Opollo delivers ten tracks of wool-gathering shoegaze ambience which pulse, glide and drone at the listener, prompting the attainment of theta wave-heavy states of consciousness, or perhaps more simply nudging them towards a kind of wakeful sleep state. As with the best of this kind of thing (Leśkiewicz is obviously a fan of both Brian Eno […]
Universal Music Has it been twelve months already? Twelve months since Conchita Wurst swooped into our hearts and planted a big blue, pink and white flag in the heart of Europe for the second time in Eurovision‘s history. I realise that for a lot of people Eurovision is some chintzy, end-of-the-pier nonsense, but when you can have someone advocating trans* politics in front of millions of people across […]
Crónica Ma.Org Pa.Git is the fifth solo release from the Norwegian sound artist and experimental musician Alexander Rishaug. Here he is exploring the space and the acoustics of a church organ and the hiss, overtones and feedback of an old tube amp and electric guitar. The album consist of two long pieces, recorded in the Norwegian seaman’s church in Rotterdam. Even though the material is heavily processed and […]
4AD (UK)/RVNG Intl (USA and elsewhere) About two thirds of the way in to Holly Herndon‘s Platform, on the track “Lonely at the Top”, there comes an intimacy so disarming that, on first listen, I was unsure of what I was hearing. Platform is Holly’s second album; I reviewed her first album, Movement and, though I liked it a lot, I found it a little too disjointed, calling […]
Miasmah “Naught” is a great start with its verby bass plunges and clip-winged percussion from The Necks’ Tony Buck. James Welburn‘s music brings to mind the grim determination of early Swans or the merciless grind of Godflesh, here coupled with the distant hum of nose-diving Stukas. The minimal muscle underneath grinding away like a clogged artery, extra drones weaving in, gathering like a Godspeed venture sans the orchestral […]
Acrobat John Coltrane then. I’ve not really listened to a great deal of ‘trane. So it’s probably pretty stupid to review a 4-CD box of stuff that’s likely for the jazz collectors market, right? Except, y’know, jazz is a thing that exists in the cultural memory, so if it’s just written by and for folk who are already in, it kind of stops being a live culture and […]
Young God/Mute Combined into a CD trilogy with Body To Body and a disc combining E.P.#1 with a dusted-off set of live recordings, the fearsome brute that is the first Swans album Filth emerges once again in a deluxe edition (and by itself on remastered vinyl via Young God) to terrify the listener and brutalise them into unwavering submission. Michael Rodham-Heaps reports. Disc 1 — Filth If an […]
MVD This review is based on the CD and DVD releases; the set is also available on vinyl and blu-ray. Before rising to fame, Devo experimented in basements and garages in Akron, Ohio during the years 1974–1977. This was a time whenthey were just doing whatever they wanted, and as they say themselves, they made “raw, unfiltered songs with no commercial intent”. Many of the songs that were […]
Staubgold Confusing record, that’s the synopsis. It’s got all the ingredients of a blinder — fully world-class players, uncommon mix of instruments, well recorded and mixed… but it’s lacking a certain something. That something being length. There’s arguably a problem with Jaki Liebezeit‘s pedigree — Tago Mago‘s one of my favourite records and, obviously, I’d really like to hear a version of that album with an hour-and-a-half mix […]
Red Wharf They’ve been here before. Well, not quite here but near enough. This isn’t the first collaboration and, on this evidence, it won’t be the last. They’ve found that . I’ve been in and out of the NWW canon for what seems like all the years now; I drift away, malcontent; having heard it all before (the creaks, the sighs, the gushes and rattles) and then something […]
Svart Wow, ten years between albums is quite a feat; I mean we are talking Kate Bush levels of time here. But it’s not as if Acid King have been sitting around doing nothing — in fact the band have been constantly touring over that time, playing festivals and building an even larger loyal following. So were all these years worth the wait? The album opens with “Intro”, […]
Interstellar Based on sounds recorded above and below the surface in the Lofoten Islands, Angélica Castelló‘s compositions on Sonic Blue create an imaginary underwater exploration on the theme of the effects of human sonic intervention in the aquatic soundscape. While both whale and water sounds have been a staple of the new age relaxation industry for decades, Castelló constructs an altogether deeper and different listening experience on Sonic […]
Deep Distance (2LP)/Sulatron (CD) Sci-fi is the theme behind David Schmidt’s latest (re-)release as Sula Bassana. Even though part of this was originally available on CD, Deep Distance have done a marvellous job with the vinyl version. Not only do you get two different coloured discs (it’s a double album) but also Komet Lulu’s artwork looks absolutely gorgeous on 12” vinyl size and gives off the perfect visual […]
Dancing Wayang The third album turmbling forth from the fertile pairing of Alan Courtis (Reynols and more) and Aaron Moore (of Volcano The Bear, Dragon Or Emperor, Invisible Sports, Textile Trio, etc) follows on from the phonographic slurs of last year’s KPPB with four new tracks which find the duo pushing further at the avant-garde fringes of ludic surrealist interplay. For Bring Us Some Honest Food, while the […]
Plombage Bursting with the same sort of demented energy which characterise much European music of the Seventies and Eighties, Anthony Cedric Vuagniaux‘s bizarre space opera Le Clan Des Guimauves (The Marshmallow Clan) tells the story of “the adventures of a gang of Alien Gypsies lost on our planet. Their physical feature is to have a big nose and seven fingers on their left foot.” Part pot-head pixies, part […]
Zoharum The fourth re-release of the Hybryds back catalogue by Zoharum expands at length on their 1991 composition, adding in three more pieces of music, two more parts of the title track and a bonus piece from the same era. Together, they now make up a full album’s worth of largely unheard material. The late Eighties and Nineties saw an upswell of music that aimed for some form […]
Öm For their third album, K-X-P have upped their psychedelic game as well as expanded their kosmische disco credentials (with a hint of prog) by not only naming the LP III, but Part I thereof, with who knows how many more instalments yet to come. If those aren’t real Mellotron sounds which introduce the thumping tribal drums of “Psychic Hibernation”’s overture, then the synths that sweep majestically into […]