Magic + Dreams Of Human Bondage; salvation through restriction. An intriguing premise, where all the artists in the series were given not just the limitation of time per se but the ultra-specific requirement of actual track times (0:06, 0:23, 1:11, 2:37, 3:03, 3:14, 4:20 and 6:06) to conform to. It doesn’t matter if the actual mathematics is wrong, that it’s 60 seconds over. The extra minute seems necessary. […]
Yearly archives: 2014
232 posts
London 18 December 14 We are heading towards the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, and this will be my last gig of a fairly packed year. In a strange way it’s comforting to know that as I head out into a cold winter night that I already know I’m going to have a great evening hearing some wonderful songs that have swum around in my […]
Freaks R Us See, I managed to miss The Pop Group, though this is kind of forgiveable given that I would have been like eight years old or something at the time. Slightly less forgiveable is the fact that I managed to continue missing them for the next thirty years. Which is weird, because not only was I a big fan of bands who had been influenced by […]
Brighton 10 December 2014 Gig-craft. It’s a tricky thing. Something that’s a perennial irritation for me is the way you’ll get a touring band and three-five clones of that band. I always have this problem with things like grindcore gigs where you just get five of the same band. Which is great, for about two acts, then I get bored. SO one of the things about this gig […]
London 11 December 2014 Entering the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club was almost like taking a trip back to 1973. I was told, most politely, at the door that there was no photography allowed, that there was no re-entry into the building once you left and finally my hand was marked with a massive X. It was like I had entered some Wicker Man cult, and to be […]
Ipecac At the start of Lautréamont’s Maldoror, the disclaimer suggests: “This is not for you” and this is where I find myself with Sleaford Mods. I like this album, find it witty and funny and I’ve always liked The Fall and it’s not as annoying as Renegade Soundwave but… this isn’t for me. I feel wrong listening to it, feel like I’m inevitably going to like it in […]
London 28 November 2014 A few years ago, Daevid Allen unexpectedly reconstituted Gong with a new and (relatively) youthful line-up, and long term fans were initially rather flummoxed (no doubt this was part of the idea — the Alien having long delighted in wrongfooting his audience). But after a series of barnstorming live performances and a fine new album, I See You – the best Gong album since […]
mottomotto There’s a certain mild krautishness nurturing in those Kinder Egg diode flashes, a light-hearted flush of danceability that’s swimming in the real and the synthetic in equal amounts. Oddly punctured textures and filtered sequins that seem to bubble-burst plenty of satisfied grins, a childlike tinkering perfectly matching the lurid orange vinyl and crayoned graphics of its package. Innard Listeningestion by Now “Innards” starts the ball rolling, its […]
Cold Spring Right, it seems there must be two Andy Swans. There’s the Andy Swan who heads up Iroha, one of the UK’s most underrated “massive hooks with massive riffs” bands. Then there’s the Andy Swan in Khost – an outfit where melody isn’t part of the deal and crushing slabs of claustrophobia are the order of the day here. Copper Lock Hell is a brutal, brutal record. […]
English Heretic English Heretic is an on-going multimedia exploration of various occult threads of British lore — everything from the polished chrome dystopias of JG Ballard to pagan pageantry, all corn rigs and jigs. He draws in tendrils of Crowley‘s 93rd current, mixing with Patrick Keiller‘s situationism and Julian Cope‘s wide-eyed megalith worship. On The Underworld Service, English Heretic unearths the zombified corpse of 1969 into 1970 — […]
Acrobat The 1960 tour of Europe of the Miles Davis Quintet is a significant moment in jazz. It stands at a fulcrum for the development of John Coltrane as a musician and as a distinctive voice. The Quintet here is essentially the Sextet featured on Kind of Blue, but with Bill Evans swapped for Wynton Kelly on piano and without Cannonball Adderly. Coltrane had played with Miles Davis […]
PNL Large Unit was born when Paal Nilssen-Love was asked by a festival promoter to put together the band of his dreams. Nilssen-Love found the musicians among long-time friends and collaborators or by looking for young musicians with the extreme qualities he needed to present his musical visions. This all-Norwegian band (apart from one Swede) has no lack of skills and all the abilities to improvise in all […]
Corsica Studios, London 3 December 2014 One of the bonuses of the gig being at Corsica Studios is that I can have a wander around inside the Elephant and Castle shopping centre beforehand. It’s a truly gargantuan space, way too large to justify its enormous real estate footprint in these slavering Neoliberal times, but somehow it manages to persist, its small-flecked 1970s flooring and wooden handrails clinging on […]
Universal Maybe it says something about the staid state of mainstream music fare at the moment but there has been a glut of reissues recently. 20 years after its first release, Underworld’s dubnobasswithmyheadman is the latest album to be remastered and repackaged in search of a new audience. In this case, if for no other reason that you have not heard it before, the re-release is worthwhile. Apparently […]
To accompany their release of Ariel Kalma‘s An Evolutionary Music, RVNG Intl. have put Matthew McGuigan‘s documentary about a day in the life of Kalma online
Disco Gecko The Sound Of Absence “If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings would there be any sound?” – George Berkeley Have you ever wondered what happens when you’re not around? What Somewhere Else might look like? To look through someone else’s eyes? The limits of knowledge is one of the most frustrating things about being alive – the fact […]
RVNG Intl. Ariel Kalma first came to my attention after snagging myself up his 0smose re-issue some years back, a startling re-imagining of ambient music from 1978 centred round the rainforest sounds of Borneo, a strung-out beauty well ahead of its time, and a revelation I was happy to hear more of. Now fast forwarding to 2014, the New York RVNG INTL. label have just unearthed a perfect […]
Bristol 26 November 2014 Warming us up between sets was turntablist Simon Wildrfid; now some people play records, but this chap gave them another life completely, filter-feeding and FXing the blighters with a nice skull-scouring intensity, a rejuvenating diaspora of pulsing colour and industrialised zest splattered in cordoned beatologies and copious gristle. He had a mysterious selection of releases on the merch table too, that wackILy entitled Innerself […]