Rustblade This is like a spider’s web of sonic backgrounds, songs hanging to the sticky radials like cocooned insect, trapped meals in the spectral dust of some netherworld. The title may give it away, but this happily avoids any chain rattling cliché. “Throwing Things” is probably the only complete song here that bears the greatest Legendary Pink Dots hallmark. Although definitions between solo and band are often mercurially […]
Monthly archives: September 2012
12 posts
Front & Follow This gives me the gargles. It reminds me a little of the tone behind James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual (it doesn’t sound much like it at all) in that it’s like Roman Bezdyk has found himself unable to distance himself from the music he’s riffing on. This seems respectable, seems right, seems like these aural artefacts (I’m talking about library music, mostly) ought to have a […]
Ritual Productions This is the re-release of Bong’s self titled album. Originally released as vinyl only and in a limited edition, Ritual Productions have decided to put out the recording for the first time on CD, allowing the tracks the extra space that the vinyl would not allow. So you not only get extended versions of the original two tracks but also a bonus track called “Asleep” as […]
Bureau B This baby’s got kinetic candy aplenty, tearing up that flat ’80s graph paper, banishing machine rigidity in a blur of angles. Any inkling of metronomic dead flesh is given a dust kicking of sampledelics bolstered by live trumpets and fret slipping guitar, the momentum throwing your head in pleasing multiples, keeping the adrenaline churned up. “Automatic” is a great start, a Rubik’s cube of flashing colour, […]
Bureau B Günter Schickert’s solo albums and the recordings he made with his band GAM for years have felt like a lost part of the classic seventies Krautrock era. It’s surely not because they sit in an uneasy space between Ash Ra Tempel and modern composers such as Steve Reich, as various other artists such as Kraftwerk were known to step over the line between rock and the […]
Bureau B By 1959, a third of all the motorcycles produced in Germany were manufactured by Kreidler, a small metalwork business bearing the name of its founder Anton Kreidler, which had been shifted into the production of two-wheel automotive transport by his son Alfred earlier in the decade. By a truly curious coincidence, in 2012 a third of all albums produced in Germany were by the band Kreidler, […]
Editions Mego/Ideal Russell Haswell‘s Further 12″ opens with a burst of what could be fireworks, or might indeed be some kind of demented “Black Metal Instrumental Intro Demo” for that matter. The rippling bursts of reverbed drum machine splutter and brap with an apparent randomness which could just as easily be blasting into the sky as into an unlit, dank Norwegian cellar club with spasmodic arhythmia and no […]
Monty Maggot The second compilation of artists from the Monty Maggot label is another eclectic mix of music. Put together again by Lee Potts it’s wonderful that the [post=allies-and-clansmen text=”first release”] was such a hit that it warranted a part two (and maybe a part three is in the pipeline). The love and time and energy put into these releases and the quality of the overall product means […]
Rocket Girl Untreated, Colin Wilson’s voice might be Paul Vaughan, the narrator of Coil’s “The Golden Section”; it has the same, slightly clipped, slightly cold authority but we don’t get to hear enough of it on this album. There’s a lot of processing here and the voice is often unrecognisable, sent off into shivers and hums and blurs. This is a strength of most of the music I […]
Editions Mego This seems chunky and real compared to the other Ekoplekz releases. You can buy it at Sainsbury’s. It’s out there, in all senses but it also feels like something of an end, like Nick Edwards is drawing a line, er, under the sand; it’s like a statement of where he’s been and how far he’s come. Nick’s always been very willing to give up his influences, […]
Cooking Vinyl Ever since The Orb’s first album The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld you could almost feel that somewhere down the line this collaboration would take place. The Orb have always added dub themes to their music to add to the blissful wholeness of the dance experience and to get the people on the floor . On this album you get The Orb at their dubby best with […]
Drag City There’s something that’s always struck me as a bit weird, not to mention lazy, in Om‘s usual categorisation as a doom metal band. Sure, they are one of the awesome phoenixes to have arisen from the ashes of doom pioneers Sleep, and they’re kinda droney and dirgey, but they’ve always been more celebratory than doomladen. Not quite joyous, but certainly devotional. They’re more like stoner metal […]