Freq has been online in various forms since 1 April 1998; this iteration has been around as of 2010, with an archive of older material available.
Whilst it’s not worth losing sleep over, the tags of shoegaze, dream-pop, indie-rock and indie-pop have somewhat lost consistent meaning over time and through differing geographical points of reference. At a more fundamental level though, the commonality across such elastically bordered genres is the eternal push and pull of melody and dissonance.
The thirteen tracks collected here contain diverse vocal stylings that are put through a whole raft of effects while surrounded by synth drones, strange waverings and head on-beats that are oddly manic and disorientating.
Poland’s doyen of beautifully understated efficiency completes a trilogy of historical dramas with this pocket biopic that focuses on a road trip taken by Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his bohemian daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), following the suicide of his son and her brother, through the proud ruins of post-war Germany.
The stately melancholic nature of the pieces is well captured by the duo; but where they bring their own stamp is in the way they draw what is essentially indoor music evoking gowned ladies and bewigged gents moving in graceful arcs out into the open, lending it an air of dust and yearning...
Martin McDonagh’s latest stroll around his favourite theme of hilariously toxic masculine friendships finds him treading on a few real-life thorns of twentieth-century political history. Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich team up as a pair of ageing CIA agents sent to Coventry (well, Easter Island), where they can rifle through the spilled guts of their careers while the real action carries on without them.
They could have taken the easy option and give us a facsimile of the recorded work but instead, forty-three years later, they rip it up and scatter the parts allowing them to thrill and confound in equal measure. Remarkable.
Olivia Colman lends her estimable talents, both comic and dramatic, to this endearing and hilarious fairytale for grown-ups. She plays a fisherwoman whose ripe profession ensures a certain amount of social ostracism in her tiny village community, and it’s only exacerbated when she asks the local basket weaver to build her a husband out of any bits and pieces he might have lying around.
Collecting…connecting... cultivating... the band’s antenna always seemed to be searching out ways to bend modernity back on itself, prey to an older consciousness. As such, Gold Is The Metal has got me re-playing, dot-joining its many components to so much of Coil’s discography, seeing where the contents have leaked into future use beyond the obvious connections of this track being the demo of that.
..transplants a familiar SF / horror trope on to the gym-toned body of the superhero movie, and although it musters a few insights into the ugliness of human vanity, it’s chomping at the bit to unleash its malleable anti-hero so he can wreak his revenge.
For me there is something in the melodic approach, the ringing guitars and personal lyrics that reminds me of the halcyon days of nineties guitar bands but with a modern twist, and with the addition of fiddle from Sophia Bartlett and banjo from Michael Rea pushing things in a slightly more countrified direction.
So when An Undying Love For A Burning World dropped, it was an incredible surprise, but one that gave rise to the usual uncertainty of a band returning from hiatus -- what it they’re shit now? Fortunately, they aren’t. As
...they use the mellow side of jazz as a starting off point, but happily mix it with classical, pop and a more progressive leanings to lead the listener gently down unexpected side streets.
Over sixteen tracks and a little under an hour, their insistent distorted guitars and brutal, thuggish drums revel in a sort of set construction that feels as though they are squeezing too much sound into too small a space that the guitars and drums seem to take it in turns to add a brick or slide in a block and watch the edifice gradually grow.
...there’s the summery wonderosa of the title track "Autosmile" that’s got to be one of the best sonic uplifts / natural evolves I’ve taken in all year. Honestly, this collection of songs taps into something special, showing the acoustic guitar / singer songwriter schtick has more to offer than certain stadium-fillers would have you believe.
The way the oud steps sprightly around the treacherous tracks and narrow passes like a mountain goat is a delight to follow; and as it moves, there are times where the electronics scatter like birds causing a whirling dance in the dust swirls.
...a gripping and unobtrusively intelligent thriller whose conflation of sublime drama and ridiculous comedy is a balancing act worthy of the New Hollywood greats to whom it brandishes its artistic and thematic debt like it’s an American Express card.
Although only coming in at a little under half an hour, their third album conjoins numerous guest vocalists from all around the world with generally rhythmic but extraordinarily varied musical soundscapes to produce a journey that never lets up.
...Some sounds just find themselves fitting a mood in combination with a moment and an environmental space. Which is perfectly okay, despite what less nuanced opinion holders might decree. Enter then, two albums that best fit the listening niche for Sunday mornings bathed in a blaze of autumn sunshine… which is handy given their close seasonally-aligned arrival.