Editions Mego “Concret PH” begins with glass splattering, not in a Vagina Dentata Organ way, but made to seem like static, or phrases in static – . With Xenakis, your brain often has to look the other way. I know nothing about Xenakis as such but he seems like a tough guy: a hard philosophy. He doesn’t seem like he’s the kind of guy who values compromise. “Concret […]
Yearly archives: 2013
214 posts
The Lamb, Devizes 8 February 2013 Gentleman’s Relish are a wicked combo, a spiky pop duo of tight guitar evolves, countered by neat percussive candy. Those quirky poetics of lyric, comically charged and made further so by the drummer’s Bill Bailey mannerisms. A lot of sweet action indeed: that switch-a-roo guitar slashing in an angelic upstart-esque insistence as the syllables broke across your head in a bank of […]
RVNG Intl. This album has been around since November 2012. So I’m a little late to the chorus of adulation. I’m doing my best not to read all the reviews that scroll up when I google Holly Herndon‘s name. Is it awful to admit I had no idea? Oh well. I didn’t have any idea, but when it was suggested I might like to review this, I was […]
3 February 2013 The Exchange, Bristol Giant Swan were first up, a duo plying a lush clamour of harsh ear schisms that materialised into gristlised rhythms, a lot of box teased goodness to soak up. These boys certainly knew a thing or two about the art of bending circuitry. Loops and pick-up burrs literally ear danced in textural plugholes of echoed vox, resurrected in scars and sycamore incisions […]
(self-released) In an era of bands reforming, reappearing and generally revising, sometimes apparently out of the blue, few albums have been as eagerly anticipated as My Bloody Valentine‘s third; and after twenty-two years it finally appeared on their own website with barely a breath of warning to the waiting throngs – and on YouTube when their servers crashed too. Freq offers three opinions on the mbv brouhaha. 1. […]
The Sound of White Columns Unlike Star Trek fans, Can enthusiasts never have to choose between the two key vocalists of the Can oeuvre. Partly this is because Damo Suzuki and Malcolm Mooney both found idiosyncratic ways in which to interact with the rest of the band. It is also because Can enthusiasts are not necessarily Star Trek fans. Mooney’s sojourn with The Can initially manifests as one […]
Spoon/Mute Bringing together musicians who have worked together separately before – Burnt Friedman and Jaki Liebezeit have released several outstanding records of electronic dub together, among numerous other guest spots and collaborations; Irmin Schmidt and Jono Podmore made two albums as Schmidt & Kumo; and of course Schmidt and Liebezeit were Can members together, as well as collaborators since the band’s demise. Add in Podmore’s sterling work on editing The […]
Cold Spring Tanith and the Lion Tree revels in that rich and sumptuous world Edward Ka-Spel has carved for himself, one where the surreal becomes vivid, a vibrant play of words that like Kenneth Anger’s pleasure dome inaugurations, slowly unfold, ensnaring you in simmerings of dark fascinations. Tastes that jump from macabre to tender heart felts, from spite to cheerful jaunts of observation. Nuggets that refuse to give […]
Thrill Jockey I’d waited for an opportunity to listen to this album where I’d have some uninterrupted space and so the epic Megabus journey that started at 03:00 in the morning was the perfect place. I got on the bus, walked to the top of the stairs, plonked my self down at the back and was greeted by a wonderful centred perspective view of empty bus seats and […]
Rocketgirl “Bound for Magic Mountain” is a whopping start. A neonised cascade choked full of bouncy goo and bleeping keylines breezes through your head like a mechanised kiss. The guitar kingpins transmitting a massive joy in kegs of wah-wah and laser, everything tilting to the max, smothered in copious effect shadowing. This has the cool scent of somebody totally enjoying what he does, mingling the past with present. […]
Bureau B Conrad Schnitzler’s late ’70s and early ’80s period is difficult to pigeonhole within his larger body of work. By this point he had moved on from the early expansive drone pieces that featured on his first three releases and begun to amalgamate rhythmic patterns along side more condensed song structures. His Peter Baumann-produced 1978 album Con touched upon pop signatures but also allowed typical Schnitzler areas […]
Rune Grammofon The Swede Mats Gustafsson (The Thing, Fire!, and also appeared with Sonic Youth, Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, etc.) and the Canadian resident Colin Stetson from the US (Arcade Fire, and has also appeared with Laurie Anderson, David Byrne etc.), met for the first time on stage at the Vancouver Jazz Festival in 2011. The performance was recorded, and the result is these four tracks on Stones. […]
Sacred Bones A band who have obvious influences aplenty, Föllakzoid embrace, upgrade and expand upon the sound of motorik percussion and rippling fx-laden guitars. No matter where they draw from; they let loose five long-form tracks on their second LP which may owe substantial debts to places and times a long way removed from twenty-first century Chile, but which are nonetheless presented in a highly engaging manner. […]
Attack Attack 1979. A young snot-nosed punk steps up to a microphone, shouts “GO!” and a national treasure is born. The punk is Justin Sullivan, New Model Army the national treasure, and the “GO!” the unleashing of the hounds which heralds “Christian Militia,” the opening track on their classic mini-album Vengeance. 2013, and Vengeance is back (has been since the end of 2012, in fact) and it’s now […]
Fire Being a late explorer of Pere Ubu, my first encounter with them was The Tenement Year album from 1988, and I was sure I had found a pop band, but with something out of the ordinary still. Going back into their discography – to more experimental releases such as The Modern Dance or Dub Housing, not to mention the boxed set Datapanik in Year Zero, which also […]
Monotype I’ve been struck by this band’s mysterious flavours since hearing them on numerous compilation LPs from the early ’80s, and then much later, on the Tionchor CD back in ’98 which gathered them all up in one (very odd) listening experience. ‘Nouvelle Concrète’ that was, and continues to be, inspired.. inspiring, with this collected umbrella of Passagen as a pathogen no doubt infecting a whole new generation […]