Polyvinyl/ATP The release of Deerhoof vs Evil means that San Francisco-based Deerhoof have been putting out their genre-hopping ditty-bopping noisy beautiful schizophrenic pop for about 16 years now – for the record, that’s 60% longer than the Beatles were around. Deerhoof haven’t sold nearly as many records as the Beatles though. Even in France, where the Beatles have apparently sold less records than astigmatic Greek charity-shop stalwart Nana […]
Yearly archives: 2011
168 posts
Triple Bath The title Soundscape Study is immediately misleading – while ostensibly sourced from the sonic ambience of dreary and audibly sodden holidays (in Scotland’s Isle of Barra and France’s Fitou respectively), this disc lacks the arid mic-fetishising of a great many soundscape pieces. Daniel Hignell has come to this work with a peculiar ear for the ambient sounds of thunderstorms and tidal crashes, holistically stitching and interlacing […]
Dekorder The latest offering from Campbell Kneale (late of the recently-disbanded ambient/drone outfit Birchville Cat Motel and also responsible for the immensely heavy [post=”black-boned-angel-verdun-2″ text=”Black Boned Angel”] doom project) finds him tackling the wonky end of electronics (de)composition in what comes over as part demonic exercise in digital bricolage, part attempt to submerge the listener in so many sounds that . Dissonance in expansion is the order of […]
Topplers Topplers Records are an old-style independent label based in Scotland who specialise in limited runs of beautifully presented eccentric pop gems. Depending on your point of view (or age), it’s a sign of either the label’s willful obscurity or unquestionable genius that a high proportion of these releases are by ex-members or associates of Swell Maps. To someone whose formative years were soundtracked by the likes of […]
ROIR
Like many of the best things in life, the Legendary Pink Dots are a mystery. At least, it's a mystery how come they're still so criminally obscure, when not only have they been releasing awesome music for a good thirty years now, they also have tunes and a fanbase who tend to verge on the obsessively evangelical side of things. They straddle genres like a post-modernist doing the MC Hammer dance over an ADD sufferer's iPod, with everything from industrial to pop, from jazz to space rock, from folk to dub being dragged into Edward Ka-Spel and co's music factory, later to emerge from the crystal chimneys as beautifully majestic music.
Staubgold As the slipstream of punk washed its way through the record industry in the late 70s and early 80s it seemed to many of us that commercial music might be changed forever to become permanently open to imaginative, offbeat constructions and general weirdness. That was, of course, the kind of naïve illusion that makes youth bearable. What really happened was that the genuine musical revolution happening at […]