Newhaven Fort, East Sussex 22 September 2018 Ahhh, that relentless rain! After a blazing summer it’s great to get back to some genuine English weather, isn’t it? And boy, it rained all day, meaning a lot of the improv parade ground goodness at Fort Process‘s 2018 edition got secreted away, upping the happen-upon expectation to rise that bit higher.
Michael Rodham-Heaps
492 posts
4AD The first track on Pixies‘ début release Come on Pilgrim takes a dump in your mind with its bad Samaritans and shamanic shears. Thirty years on, it’s still gnawing at you like a raggedy chihuahua as you stumble through the wreckage of a house party’s aftermath. Those heavy drums of David Lovering‘s really feel like there being clambered over, that slow thaw of salivary guitar eating at you as
Antifrost Drawing on an ancient word for witches across German-speaking Europe in the Middle Ages, Lukas Feigelfeld‘s film Hagazussa is a gloomy feast for the imagination where plague and paranoia paint an atmospheric treasure-trove of unease. A gothic feast for the eyes
Om Kult Another unsettling listen from the master of extreme – Rudolf Eb.er, Om Kult Volume I is a cerebral feast that cancers the comfortable with needlepoint clarity. The carrion flies that dart between your hemispheres, those dirt dragging paws. It’s a focused feast that predators a pulse, shadow-plays a closely mic(ed) drama
Bristol 8 September 2018 Luckily zero nightmares on the parking front meant we only missed a small portion of Microdeform’s set, a colour-washed dronescape, needled by fractured dissidence. These tasty elasticated hues pulling you into a kaleidoscope of blistered sunsets, spreading out in grainy after-images
Self-released God’s Teeth And The Interstellar Tropics are a psychedelic improv threesome hailing from Brighton. Suitably mysterious, extra details are scant, but I’m liking the airy acrobatics on this, their third release, GNASH.
Fish Of Milk (Australia and New Zealand) / ReR Megacorp (Europe and Japan) / Northern Spy (Americas) This newbie from Australian improv giants The Necks plays a Charlemagne Palestine-like long game (or it appears so) in a snakes and ladders of subtle tone shifts and erosions. A deceptively simple premise that sleekly seduces, seeps in there, tingles in the fragmentary unison of a trickling piano and scattered percussives.
Karlrecords A Philosophy Warping, Little By Little That Way Lies A Quagmire documents the second collaboration between Konstrukt and the Japanese avant-garde / noise icon Keiji Haino. This live manifestation, captured at SalonIKSY back in December last year, (and confusingly carrying the same title as its studio sister) is a meaty two-track beast that makes you envious you missed out on witnessing it in the flesh.
Màgia Roja/ BFE Unlike the seemingly endless crop of darkwavers with weird keyboard characters for names, Silvia Konstance Costan and her partner in Dame Area, the Catalan underground veteran Victor Hurtado, stab at something less generic
London 22 July 2018 With a backdrop of toy robots, Rodney Cromwell were first up to ply their wares. A solid three-piece with a rather special take on synth-led indie, they breeze through their upbeat and groovesome set.
Ici d’Ailleurs Based on one of the final works of Carl Jung where the alchemical informed psychology, Uruk’s second outing is another psychological pleasure for the headphonically inclined.
Bristol 10 July 2018 Opening act Pip Blom shambled on to a very warm response from an already two-thirds full O2 Academy Bristol. One singing guitarist and one drummer share the stage with a fluffy bassist and a manic guitarist looking like a young Jerry Harrison. The rhythm section were taut and focussed, allowing the singing guitarist to throw the sweet but rather ramshackle songs out into the […]
Front And Follow Filled with a Grouper-esque love of shimmered atmospheres, this (for the most part) psychedelically coruscates in gentle vaporous curls attached to simplest of melodics, the odd percussive clank here and there. The first solo track from Jodie Lowther welds this Lynchian sway, a cipher dance replete with a Julee Cruise-like little girl lost
House Of Mythology When asked about this latest collaboration with the Italian band Zu, David Tibet says they “made something very beautiful and very powerful for me to skip into”, and the surrounds certainly hold his words in a perfect tension.
Dais A Thousand Lights In A Darkened Room Nestled between their experiments with acid house and the esoteric Time Machines identity, Black Light District (and ELpH before it) were temporary monikers in which to tinker, delve deeper into what made Coil tick without being overshadowed by the crippling claw of context. An elemental approach that vividly paints possibility, seems to be pawing a significant other.
OhAh This man’s been with me for ages, through the ludicrously brief existence of Rema Rema, the equally short lived Mass (their “F.A.H.T.C.F.” is still my ultimate cup-half-empty song) and then the constant outpourings as the The Wolfgang Press. Five studio albums that poked around in some satisfyingly gloomy, dark melodics and veered towards the dance-friendly, Allen’s vocals always thistling intrigue, inquisitioning the human animal to steely basslines […]
Bristol 17 June 2018 Former Throwing Muses and Belly bass guitarist Fred Abong was first up, and apparently the airport had lost his guitar so Kristin had kindly lent him hers for the night. Not heard any of his solo work, so I was at a disadvantage, but I liked that Pavement-like glimmer he was plying
Prophecy Productions The melancholic charms of The Mystery Of The Bulgarian Voices‘ first 4AD LP, released as Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, still stick with me, as does that murky Cinderella moment of the cover, like some crime scene gone all arty. Thirty years old but essentially timeless, it was very much a solemn soul search of an album, just curvy overlaps of voice to the sparse flickers of instrumentation.