Sub Rosa Almost unbelievably, Rubhitbangklanghear/Rubhitbangklangear is the first album that Charlemagne Palestine and Z’ev have recorded together, though they have apparently played together a couple of time in the last twenty-odd years. This double CD (there is an LP edition with half the tracks) is released as part of Sub Rosa‘s series of Laboratoire Central collaborations and finds the veteran (and it’s fair to add legendary) improvisers/composers in […]
Monthly archives: May 2013
27 posts
Aix-en-Provence 19 May 2013 A night of metal and more in one of the heartlands of Provence; not an area generally well-known for its enthusiasm for all things dark and loud. Luynes is a placid near-suburb of Aix-en-Provence, and close enough to Marseille to bring a decent audience from the current European Capital of Culture and beyond, but Le Korigan (a mischievous Breton elf-like creature – none more metal […]
Metropolis Weapon, Skinny Puppy‘s twelfth studio album and the latest entry in a catalogue going back more than thirty years, doesn’t really fuck about. Tangentially, at least, it’s all about guns. Apparently. Of course, , all delivered over, or rather in the midst of, their trademark dancefloor-friendly beats, squirts, whooshes and bleeps. And you wouldn’t want it any other way. Or I wouldn’t, at any rate. And it’s […]
Important Well, here I am strapped into my capsule in preparation for another blast off to the planet of the Acid Mothers Temple and this album doesn’t disappoint. A large crash and we are straight into “Space Speed Suicide.” Immediately Kawabata Makoto’s Hendrix style guitar solos assault our ears over a massive Pink Fairies-like riff underneath and some wildly clattering drums. This is the violent explosion of Saturn […]
Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire 17-19 May 2013 Bearded Theory is, pretty much by definition, a party that got out of hand. It started out as a birthday bash, and is now in its sixth year as a music festival. Somewhere in among this tangled web of history is an obsession with beards, and on the Sunday they have an attempt at the world record for the most fake beards […]
Sex Lies Magnetic Tape It seems as if Nick Edwards, sometimes known as Ekoplekz, must sleep in his studio, nestled in tangles of thick rubbery cables, lulled by blinking red-and-green LEDs. He’s released 12 albums and six EPs under that guise since 2010, while recently instating the Nunton Complekz and Ensemble Skalectrik projects, as well. The man clearly has something to say. In a way, he is an […]
Instrumentarium This is a great little double A-side 7 inch by cosmic electronic trio Metamono. Side A is a cover of the Bowie/Eno track “Warszawa”. Rather than the sad – almost dirge – of the original, Metamono add a punchy sprinkling of beats and some wonderful synth sounds, some of these sound like Tomita meets the early Human League in outer space as . The track is largely […]
London 19 May 2013 Stuck in traffic, time was slipping away from us like a buttery thing, a total nightmare as impatient idiots decided to forge an extra lane in front, and I’m behind this person in a huge sports car that was probably twice the price of my house! He’s busy checking the mirrors – for gazes of envy, no doubt – I feel like making silly […]
Editions Mego So, here we are again. I think I’ve reviewed in some way every Ekoplekz release – even if some of them were just 140 character yelps in the empty rooms of Twitter – and now, for the first time there’s signs that Nick’s relentless pursuit of his sound is cracking. Slightly. Okay. It’s not really cracking. I’ve heard marketing gloop that suggests that this sounds nothing […]
Thrill Jockey The Sprummer has burst out in full bloom here in Blighty. That’s no typo. Spring forgot to happen this year, so we’re enjoying blossom trees and warmer evenings. Saying that, we had a hailstorm yesterday. Never the less we’re enjoying abundant daffodils growing in our parks and meadows. My Garden State is the perfect music to listen to whilst riding a bike and looking around at […]
London 15 May 2013 It had been a while since I was last at The Underworld in Camden. At one point I almost seemed to live there, seeing some great doom bands week after week, so it’s always good to come back here. And what a night to do it on, a night of diabolus in musica with three of the hottest bands around. As I enter the […]
Bexhill on Sea 11 May 2013 Personal history, you can skip this bit if you like: Back in the late 1990s I discovered what was London’s finest, most idiosyncratic record shop, These Records, following a tortuously convoluted traipse through the back-streets of Elephant and Castle guided by an A-Z and an address label stuck on the back of a second-hand Nurse With Wound CD. Behind the shuttered windows […]
Front & Follow There’s buckets of finely congealed empathy here, beautifully presented. Front And Follow is an unusual, old-fashioned label, not quite made for these times. And thank God for that. This box set is a collection of nie EPs from a host of incredible artists, all working within the confines of some strange call & response routine which sees invited artists submit audio clips into a central pot, […]
Carrot Top (N America)/Loose Music (Europe) Aptly titled, this latest album from Rennie and Brett Sparks is like a beautiful life sciences lesson. Packed with facts I presume are correct, and I wouldn’t argue with songwriter Rennie’s instructions – one can . The worst beasts being of course ourselves, mankind. The Handsome Family deliver stories in their songs which seem almost always like age-old tales but are cunningly […]
Glacial Movements Aneira appears as one long track, and this time round it’s simply Aidan Baker on his own with a twelve-string acoustic guitar. This is a piece which is far more isolationist than that simple statement might at first appear, as Baker uses the instrument as a sonic generator to produce a whole host of glacial textures and tones. While the sound of steel strings is still […]
Oaken Palace Oaken Palace is a different kind of a label, as for a start it’s a charity, and all profits from each of its vinyl-only releases go to an environmental cause of the artist’s choice. Since Nadja have decided to support Whale and Dolphin Conservation with their album, it only seems right and proper that the LP should be titled Flipper. “Drown” is a melancholic reflection, entering […]
MVD Video Bath Salt Zombies sets out its stall pretty early on; which is just as well, seeing as how it’s probably not really for everyone. It opens with a great animated spoof public information film about the dangers of bath salts (the drug, not the actual toiletries) which sees . By the time the announcer says “Bath salts may seem like a crackerjack time, but believe you […]
The Third Golden Age of Welsh Pop™ shows little sign of abating any time soon. Following his contributions to Cate le Bon‘s two extraordinary Cyrk releases and Euros Childs‘ sunshine classic Summer Special last year, Stephen Black now unleashes his own long awaited fourth album as Sweet Baboo. Originally from Trefriw in north Wales’ Conwy valley, SB has long been an integral part of the Cardiff musical community […]