...the artwork’s suggestive shapes feel texturally tethered to the audio’s pitted surface – artwork and sound a collaborative whole, each feeding the other. As much as I love the lyrical bite of those early years, Cindytalk’s introspective canvas has grown infinitely richer in the succeeding years, emboldened by a desire to delve deeper, ridding itself of conventional restraints.
Michael Rodham-Heaps
492 posts
... a solid slice of guitar / synth graze, psychologically skewered on Adi’s impassioned delivery ...White Souls In Black Suits is a welcome Clock DVA reissue with the promise of more classics to re-released in the near future.
Paul Horlick has long been one of the of the most influential people on the Bristol gig scene. As well as co-owning Invada Records and running the sadly missed Swarf Finger, he has been a Teenager In Trouble, been part of Black Sheep and exhaustively and enthusiastically promoted shows in the city for longer than I can remember. So to hear that another label was up and running and there was to be a showcase for Black Mound Sound Lab in the cellar of The Exchange with five acts, entrance for a fiver and lots of merch available
There’s a falling spaceman on screen and you feel the helplessness in the sonic tumble of those sharpened melodics rush on over you. A life-affirming experience that ends on an updated version of "The Hacker" that mauls supernova, stuttering in harshly beaten majesty, rough-cut keys and an urgent thrust of images that pile upon your retina in stark black'n'white.
...my first time seeing these legends, and with their recent Touch LP figure-heading the proceedings those open-ended adventurers flew fiery from the start. Nevada(ry) soft focus they descend -- all desert twilights and snaky rhythms, the cold black backdrop behind rippling with an ochre glow as John Herndon’s drums held command over the flex.
This dark and contemplative work, inspired by the blazing spike of William Blake's Albion, is a haunting torchlit journey into some imagined underworld, something the opener "The Milk White Path" unloads in plentiful supply. That farm-gate creak, bathed in a slow dronic yearn, pitted in plunging bass.
Gala feels very summery to me, the staring at the sun splintering of "Sweetness And Light" -- that over driven roar that just erupts, released on a daisy-chain sparkle, something the sun-kissed cursives of "Sunbathing" heightens, scuttered in stormy subtleties. The bright-eyed bleed and steady kick of "Breeze" dipping gorgon-headed into a saturated sea of effects gorgeousness, tightly wound round some wickedly catchy refrains.
When Phew starts it’s a slow hypnosis of slippery sounds, her voice recoiling a merry-go-round full of twisty vapours. This bamboo beat is introduced, whipped in rhythmic rat tails and trapped moth zither. The sounds are rich, roll into each other with stretchy squishability I totally warm to.
What an adventure this is. All The Horned Animals have taken a massive bite out of the impossible task of documenting Nigel Ayers’ (the man behind Nocturnal Emissions' enduring existence) ever-evolving soundscapes.
The last night of a short UK tour for the rejuvenated Prolapse found us making our way on a miserable evening up the Gloucester Road in Bristol to The Golden Lion pub, a proper old English corner boozer with a 200-ish capacity room at the back. There was a good vibe in the place on arrival and with three bands on the bill, a sense of expectation.
That all-important hypnotic unison that each attentively drives towards until the density manifests, literally just appears and things lock into a gristled repeat full of vaporising trajectories. In this case it’s almost industrial -- a buzzing solid wasping your head with its cavorting sibilance. A miraged montage, where you’re not sure who’s doing what, all reverberating in delicious tribal splashes.
Building on the dictaphone rawness of Matt Loveridge’s Atworth release as MXLX comes a devotional enrichment minus the tape hiss atmospherics, eight tracks that delve deep into the hammered soul of the piano.
A slowly evolving space full of tapering shapes and vortexed growth. Mr York adding flute to the modular carpet Steve Davis and Kavus Torabi supplied. A rich and heady concoction, edged in feathery floating viewpoints and ashened in peppery paper cuts.
Why they aren't playing to at least a few hundred people per night is a complete mystery, but they clearly enjoy their peripatetic lifestyle... enjoying the enthusiasm of those people that made an effort on a Tuesday night. It was one of the best things I have seen in a long time; the joy, the intensity, the love for the songs and respect for the audience all added up to an unforgettable evening and long may they continue.
Cusping the halo of consciousness, Rosa Arruti AKA Nad Spiro conjures up a sonically charged space full of moth-like flutters and abstracted transits on Limbo Channel. An investigative inventory of sibilant vocals and murmuring otherness that flutter-flowers your skull in broken orbits and Coil-like elves.
A show of shimmery frets and arrowed harmonics carpeted in the subtle ebb of swirling effects. The bayoneted brilliance of Tom Greenwood’s words hazily biting that drumless flow.
The eerie pull of Sky's otherworldly atmosphere was ignited by Eric Wetherell's soundtrack that for its time felt futuristic. Butterings of tensive harpsichord along with glockenspiel, timpani and cello that verged towards the experimental...
Dylan Eil Ton’s canvas is a beautifully charged one, texturally resplendent in the lowercase clamber of nature, the hissy brush of branch and canopy, the leafy scrunch of wondering feet. A satisfying minimalism conspiring with the knothole whirr of some aqualung and whispered disturbances on strung out heralds. Subtle magic pollinating in a sudden scattering of threadbare words to funnelling breath, or trembles of fluted exhale / intake suckling on a pebbling tide.