Dingwall’s, London 27 April 2011 Though this gig is billed occasionally as a [post=”wovenhand-ten-stones” text=”Woven Hand”] performance, it’s decidedly David Eugene Edwards‘ show from the moment he steps onstage to a rapturous welcome. Accompanied by Woven Hand man Jeff Linsenmeir on various forms of percussion and keyboard, Edwards dispenses with […]
Monthly archives: April 2011
Ankst Klaus Kinski is a scary man. As scary as Herzog. And also a vampire. I think. (That one was a documentary, right? RIGHT?) You know that guy, right? Opera house in the jungle? Crazy Conquistador dude? Not him. THIS Klaus Kinski is an equally scary proposition, but in a […]
Beta-Lactam Ring Swooping up from the depths of infrasound, Tecumseh bring a faint whiff of glitch and a hint of industrial shiver to the emergent doom on Return to Everything, and the electronics thicken into string-driven rumbling among the encroaching wall of full-spectrum FX. The metal starts to kicking properly as […]
Parallax Sounds Brian Ellis is the guitar player with the band Astra, whose album The Weirding was one of the best of a batch of progressive rock revival albums released last year. It swept majestically over musical fields covered by Yes, early Genesis and King Crimson. On what appears to […]
Sub Pop There’s always a tension going on between artists and their audiences growing up. Back when we first encountered Low they were playing deliberately quietly, persistently black and white. . In a few years we all stopped being so bloody miserable; us, them, everyone. Although God knows there was […]
Nascente Zion Train began around 1988 and was one of the late John Peel’s favourite live bands. Their music was an essential soundtrack to the free festivals and (new age) traveller scene of the early 90s, their heavy dub sound influencing bands like Back to the Planet to add dub […]
Modisti In 1961, Harold Pinter was in Paris, attending rehearsals for the French production of his play The Caretaker. Pinter’s critical reputation was starting to gain serious traction at this time, and the literary establishment were beginning to write about him as the natural successor to Samuel Beckett in the […]
The Purple Turtle, London 19 April 2011 It’s Sunday, it’s sunny, so a 6.30pm start time for a gig seems terribly early, especially when you have the choice between a sweaty venue or a cool pub beer garden, oh well….. Also putting on four support acts before a main band […]
Crass “Feminism – what happened?” (Eve Libertine). (Writer checks footing on soapbox. ‘Secure? Good. Let’s go…’) This is a ridiculous record. I’ve never listened to Crass before, and I was still the other side of birth when it was released. Ridiculous and offensive, really. But not the record itself. Oh […]
The Underworld, London 18 April 2011 From the very first beer-waving introduction to the crowd eagerly awaiting the return to what would seem to be their favourite London home from home, Weedeater arrive in cheery mood, lapping up the adulation and ripping straight into a fearsome “God Luck and Good […]
The Scala, London 12 April 2011 Sabbath Assembly is the rather surprising spin-off from noise-manglers and avant scribblers the No-Neck Blues Band. Surprising why, exactly? Not just because they show that, yes, they are actually good musicians, but that they can also play tight, Seventies-style power pop of the sort […]
Llanberis Slate Museum 25 March 2011 to 3 Aril 2011 It was a soul-destroying experience to grow up in Wales back in the seventies in the knowledge that your entire country had only ever produced one single role model of any value. The frustration was further compounded by the fact […]
Dekorder In their download panic frenzy, labels and artists are coming up with ever more ingenious/desperate ways of providing attractive bonus content with their physical releases. It’s common for CDs to feature bonus video content, but as far as I’m aware, this is the first vinyl record to offer bonus […]
Monty Maggot OK, let’s start up here with a massive amount of respect to Lee Potts for putting this together. For from the above website, all you have to do is pay the P&P and the disc will wind its way to you from the cosmic reaches of outer space […]
Onomatopoeia The Rising of the Lights is a record that feels exceptionally English – if someone said it was some hitherto unreleased Canterbury Scene opus, or some obscure Matching Mole side project, I’d likely not arch an eyebrow. It’s a record that’s indebted massively to Drake‘s tenure in Cardiacs, though […]
Bar-None Even at their peak, The Feelies were not the most prolific of groups, but this fifth album appears almost exactly twenty years after the fourth, making it a substantial wait for even long term Feelies fans. The group’s phenomenal 1980 debut Crazy Rhythms was one of the dozen greatest […]
Drifting Falling Kontakte are one of those bands whose music is determined to make all the angst and cares of the world slip away into the place buried far, far away from the territory which they map out with bright-eyed enthusiasm, a landscape participated in through endless journeys and defined […]
Esoteric He is the God of Hellfire, and he brings you FIRE! No really, he does. Back in his 1968 prime, Arthur Brown really wasn’t fucking around. Watch the contemporary Top of the Pops footage of the finest Yorkshireman ever to leave the Dales, his flaming helmet burning like Osiris […]
MVD Audio This document of the reformed Stooges‘ performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties on 3 September 2010, seemingly shows the band to have not lost any of their visceral belligerence in the 37 years since the release of their classic third album. The CD contains versions of all eight of […]
Bureau B After their welcome batch of [post=”cluster-roundup” text=”Cluster-related releases”], Bureau B now turn their attention back to the present, and a brand new album by one of Krautrock’s spiritual offspring. Kreidler have always seemed very much the children of Can with their real time grooves that somehow sounded more […]