Brixton Academy, London 18 December 2011 Brixton is a place that has changed a lot over the past twenty odd years. It feels very different now then when I lived (well squatted) there in the late eighties, at that time the riots had calmed down but there was still a sense of unease . It now feels less tense and has quite up-market café culture and some of […]
Yearly archives: 2011
168 posts
Shepherd’s Bush Empire London 11 December 2011 Ok, I admit it…..I missed Hugh Lloyd Langton’s set because I was in the pub watching Hawkwind covers band Hoaxwind and enjoying them way too much. They played a superb set of Hawkwind classics (including “Needle Gun” which I had not heard in years and sounded amazingly good), and were fantastic great fun and sounded quite amazing. If you have not […]
Norton For most bands, tackling that ‘difficult’ second album can be a daunting experience; the expectation, the pressure to top their debut, and the need to break new ground can all conspire to form a perilous trap for the unwary and the uninitiated. . Figures of Light, a ghost legion of the proto-punk army who fought almost single-handedly around New York and New Jersey during the early 1970s, […]
MVD Visual This is the DVD and Blu Ray edition of a performance of Raw Power by Iggy & The Stooges‘ at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in September 2010, not long after the untimely death of founder member Ron Asheton. The CD edition included all eight songs (albeit reordered) from their classic third album alongside single cut “I Gotta Right,” and Alan Holmes‘ review of the disc can be […]
Freq talks to Steve Ignorant of CRASS To a young mind searching for meaningful music in the early 1980s, encountering CRASS for the first time was a frightening proposition. In those hazy, far-off days, when the Californian IT development nerds responsible for YouTube and Google had barely finished breastfeeding and the ZX Spectrum was the hot shit in cutting edge computer technology, one really couldn’t be entirely sure […]
Lumberton Trading Company As part of the Lumberton Trading Company‘s limited edition subscription series (others in the set include Glass Out – with vox from the late Jhonn Balance; the ever-crackly Main; Brian Conniffe; Human Greed;and Jean-Hervé Péron plus guests) of 12″ singles, Cindytalk – (AKA Gordon Sharp) teams up with Philippe Petit for a double-A side mini-album. Taken together, the two sides of vinyl make for an […]
Dekorder Organic grinding. The music humming inside the skulls of cannibals as they try to decide which would go better with their longpig; rosemary or thyme? Are chives too much? Too little? What would Michel Roux Jr. suggest? They’d hardly want to spoil the meat with excess seasoning, or overpower the flavour with some badly chosen shallots or unnecessary garnishes. Here, we are treated to imaginary soundtracks to […]
Umbilical Ok, where do I begin? This is a monumental release! Yeah, I like that even though it feels somewhat understated. Hmmmm, all right lets start with a bit of background info; Omnia Opera first appear in the mid-Eighties new psychedelic boom that spawned venues like The Deptford Crypt and big one-off festivals like Acid Daze and watched Ozric Tentacles shoot to fame. A little later Delerium Records […]
Recommended The Necks seem to have been around forever and they’re still boiling the elements of jazz down, adding their signature dabbles and occasional electronic bursts, collecting and sieving through new sounds, gold panning their way into new forms. This album collects two 20 minute-plus tracks that shadow each other like long lost relatives at a wake. Not that this is dark music as such (though the bass […]
Sunday Best Hey, who’s the new guy? He’s in his mid sixties. He’s got a good quiff. Meditates a lot. Smokes a lot too. Claims to not be a musician. Is he one of those Punk Rockers? Don’t think so. He’s a former Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana. His father worked for the Department of Agriculture. Faced down some pretty scary times in Philly.
Industrial OK, quickfire ‘proper review’ bit – lovely re-issue with lovely packaging all put together in a lovely way with some additional pictures, re-mastering, general loveliness, a lovely essay from Jon Savage and a lovely live show being lovely. Worth buying? Oh yes. Very much so. Perhaps their most commercial record, which is a relative term, and has a lovely mix of the very studio-y 20 Jazz Funk […]
Monty Maggot Over the past year or so Monty Maggot have steadily been releasing high-quality albums including a marvellous [post=allies-and-clansmen text=”free album”] that could be seen as a taster for future releases. Its certainly a label that deserves support for the diversity of artists they are looking to put out. So what is there to expect from the album by Nineteentwelve? A lot of cracking tunes, that’s what! […]
Corsica Studios, London 17 November 2011 I’ve probably seen Acid Mothers Temple play at Corsica Studios more times than any other venue in London and they always seem at home and relaxed on stage here. This I’ve sometimes felt is quite odd, as Corsica feels like one of those venues that is struggling to find its own identity. It caters for the Hip crowd but also puts on […]
Tourette To celebrate 20 years of Dead Voices On Air, Mark Spybey is in the process of releasing a series of 7″ singles in cahoots with a variety of friends and accomplices. The first appears under the name MzMz LalaLa, and consists of Spybey and Simon Fisher Turner. Together, the two sides of the 7″ offer , so (seemingly) brief is their span – seemingly, as the A-side […]
Norton Records 25th Anniversary All Star Spectacular, The Bell House, New York 11-13 November 2011 New York punk, we all know the story, right? It starts in the late Sixties when The Velvet Underground redefine popular music by deciding not to take the A Train, instead heading up to Lexington 125 in search of some serious narcotics and a life on the wild side; it continues in 1973 […]
Nostalgia Blackrain From the opening chimes of “Garten,” it’s apparent that Corrupted have taken on what could almost be considered a upbeat and cheery atmosphere in their music making – if only by the very heavy sludge standards they have helped define, of course. For almost anyone else this track would seem crushingly powerful, especially once the bass guitar kicks in and the cymbals crash; but no, there’s […]
(self-released) Cozmic Onion Express are one of those bands it would be far better to see live than listen to on this record. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with it at all; in fact it’s a great introduction from one of the most zanily accomplished head-messing bands in London right now. The recording quality is fine, the dynamics are sharp, the energy conveyed is high – but they just […]
Agitated Taken – kidnapped, stripped, re-educated and reborn, even – from Mugstar‘s heavyweight slab of spacerocking goodness [post=mugstar-lime text=”Lime”] and given a thorough going over by Robert Hampson of Main and Loop fame, “Serra” reappears in a 39 minute extended format on clear green vinyl (split in two parts) and CD. And what a re-imagining this is. Hampson extracts the essentials, then reprocesses, extends, twists, unravels and distends […]