South Bank Centre, London 27-29th May 2000 Now semi-permanently established at the South Bank for the past few years, the LMC Experimental Music Festival has become one of the fixtures of the London Improv and New Music scene, struggling through into something approaching mainstream cultural acceptance – though that’s a […]
Monthly archives: May 2000
14 posts
Label: Hologram (North America)/Fünfundvierzig (Europe) Format: CD O that wacky Joel Vandroogenbroeck! I am on about my eighth listen to Alchemic Universe and what keeps happening is that I forget it might not mean to be so serious. What a bunch of flexing of the ole keyboards! This is Prophet […]
After The Deluge 29th May 2000 Jean-Hervé Péron is best known as the former de facto front man for Faust, a group he sometimes seemed to embody the group’s chaotic lunacy for in his onstage antics with chainsaws and naked painting sessions. Following his traumatic personal split with the band […]
May 2000 As impassioned and animated offstage as behind his massive drumkit, Charles Hayward radiates a genuine intensity. He first came to wide attention as drummer with the highly influential This Heat as the embers of Post-Punk simmered off into wilder experimental tangents. He has released a dozen solo and […]
Label: Pagoda Format: CD Having hung out with the Reinforced Records crew, as well as The Future Sound Of London in North-west London while cutting his teeth on the sampler, it’s no surprise that The Rise (AKA Simon Wells) makes the kind of semi-abstracted Techstep Drum & Bass that propelled […]
Label: Beta-lactam Ring Records(US)/Beta-lactam Ring Records(UK) Format: CD If this recording of Edward Ka-Spel and Hero Wouters live in concert in Amsterdam’s noted/notorious Paradiso Club in May 1985 still sounds weird sixteen years later, just imagine what it must have sounded like then. Under a throbbing, scuttling digital percussion send […]
Label: Manifold Format: CD The tentative roughing of the recording – this time out, the sound source is stone. It’s packaged between two sheets of stone. Fucking-a right! Scraping repeats repeats and so forth as other pieces of stone make occasional and spectral appearances. The wow of the feedback moves alongside the […]
Label: Ytterbium Format: CD “What’s that sound?”, from the other room. Brain-wave sounds. Electroencephalograms. “Okay, whatever turns you on…” And so on. I think what he meant to ask was, “What were they thinking when they recorded this?” Which is an incredibly salient point. The sounds come from those brain-waves but what […]
Label: Mute Format: 2CD Neubauten. Yeah, you know, Neubauten. (Somehow, after all this time, it’s kind of easy to forget that there ever was an “Einstürzende” in there at all; we are, indeed, on second-name terms. Thorough familiarity.) Because everyone knows what Neubauten do. They hit stuff, make a racket, […]
Rectangle Bells come ringing and buzzing and oh, that French! It reminds of first listenings to Einstuerzende Neubauten – unsure of what was being said but perhaps something profound…one never knows, so, keep shrugging those shoulders. Irrevocably humourous liner note photographs – salvation in the hovering black angel, the war […]
Label: Geffen Format: CD,LP This album marks yet another, slightly revised, slightly more reflective return in sound for Sonic Youth; all the way back to the rugged melodic scamblings of Daydream Nation. With their amazing capacity for distinction of sound, SY are immediately recognizable from the first stretched note, thoough […]
Queen Elizabeth Hall South Bank Centre, London 7th May 2000 It’s City Slang‘s birthday – ten years old and going stronger than ever at the interface of good old-fashioned Post-Indie Rock, Country dispatches from the edge and exuberent German Electronica. Tonights show is the first London event, featuring the latter […]
Sonic Boom Live Queen Elizabeth Hall South Bank Centre, London 4th May 2000 Presented in conjunction with the excellent Sonic Boom exhibition of sound installations at the Hayward Gallery, the line up for this event features three groups and artists who have also been selected for inclusion in the gallery. […]
Label: Quarterstick (North America) City Slang (Europe) Format: CD,LP Calexico are not trying to be subtle in any way with Hot Rail. From the Mexican Mafia gang tatoo font to their immediate delve into Mariachi horns on track one, it is apparent that this is border town type music for […]