The Collapse Of Everything Kontakte‘s latest album proves itself to be well worth the two years of concerted effort the duo have put into pushing the envelope of their music. It feels somehow broader, more expansive, even for a band who already knew full well how to bring out the […]
Yearly archives: 2014
232 posts
Cosmo Rhythmatic With “2024” blasting straight down to business like Pan Sonic at their grittiest and crunchiest, Centaure finds Franck Vigroux a very long way away from his guitar extrapolations and explorations (such as the recently-released Ciment). Instead, he’s got electronic beats to flay and some serious noise to bring […]
Gagarin Recorded live in New York in November 2009, 1:17 is one of those glorious conceptual pieces in which the premise – in this case, the use and re-use of a 0.7 millisecond snippet of sound originating from a Diskono collective concert in 2000, itself transformed gradually over the years […]
Stone Tapes The Dark Is Rising When it comes to art that is inspired by the horror genre, it can fall into two camps: 1. Art that references horror tropes and classic works of that genre, or. 2. Art that seeks to recreate the sensation of watching, reading, or listening […]
Labile Drenched in reverb and hissing in on waves of shimmering, steam-like vapour trails, Desire uncurls itself in sinuous ripples and grain-shifting rhythms. While the music fits generally into the shapes and forms of ambient(ish) electronica, Derrick Stembridge‘s supple approach is at once of its kind and thoroughly modern in its […]
London 2 November 2014 The Black Heart seems to have taken over from The Underworld as London’s main doom venue. It’s a small space, which means it’s quite an intimate venue and if you’re near the back of the room it can be a little difficult to see the bands. […]
Film 4 His wife mostly hides. I think she knows what he’s going to say, or rather what he’s not going to say. She’s central and peripheral in this tale and that seems about right since so is Nick. He’s in every scene and every scene is about him (or, […]
Bureau B One of the interesting things which springs first to attention with the opening notes of Adrift is the loping acoustic bass which Tarwater use to underpin their sound. Its liquid tones give a smoothed, if not entirely smooth, basis to the duo’s twelfth album of literate not-exaxtly-jazz, not-entirely-electronica […]
Zoharum Drenched in reverb and flecked with voices from the Eastern aether, Fall of Drums is Robin Storey‘s third or so new Rapoon album in the space of a year, but the first on Zoharum since To West and Blue in 2013 and various re-issues which the label has put […]
Fire There’s a Dylan Carlson–like Earthiness here, a grungy bristle, the rasping purr of the bass , counter-sunk percussion, all spiralling away on a singe of erosive geometries. “Kali Yuga Blues” is a brilliant thing, something to be savoured, the sensual core of Isobel Sollenberger‘s voice calling from within the […]
Consouling Sounds Recorded live in Berlin in May 2014, with no less than three drummers joining Aidan Baker and Eric Quach (AKA thisquietarmy) as they sweep their guitar drones into places further out than many guitarists are prepared to go, Hypnodrone Ensemble comes across as a band name as much […]
Kranky A sense of place, of space predominates on Ruins, Liz Harris‘s tenth Grouper album (not including the split releases). A music stripped of ostentatious zeal, a bare-boned honesty delving deeper, sure of its uncertainties. A haunting of Sylvia Plath or Woolf maybe, trapped in the gauze of delivery, the […]
London 28 October 2014 Wow; it’s packed in here tonight, a testament to all the hard work Purson have done over the last couple years. I’ve been singing the bands praises here on Freq since the first time I reviewed them as support to Comus at this very venue. First […]
London London Loving the swagger of the guitars here, the knuckled licks swimming the percussive candour, that tasty swoon clinging to every note. That unmistakable Ft. Lake glow about its gills, the momentum itchy-feet switching, a Hendrix fixation swapped for a pantheon of ’70s muscle with dips into the Nice […]
Front & Follow Folk (and folk-influenced) art seems to inherently conjure ideas of both memories and a specific place, like the way that American hillbilly music calls up an image of the smoky green mountains of Tennessee, or the Delta blues recalls swamps, alligators, crossroads and dark deeds. Traditional music, […]
A Year in the Country In which the affable retronauts of Howlround limber up their trusty reel-to-reel tape recorders and feed in the sound of the built environment in order to make a fearsome and at times gently life-affirming visit to pastures so old and venerable that they are of […]
Neurot Yob are a band I’ve been kind of meaning to check out for years, after reading about them in a metal mag years ago, so when this dropped into my lap it was — well, not quite a dream come true, but at least the fulfilment of a vague […]
West Norwood Cassette Library Following his recent albums Four Track Mind and Unfidelity, Ekoplekz has now released a six-track EP on the wonderfully-monikered West Norwood Cassette Library label. Rock La Bibliotek is in a different format and has a totally different vibe. On it he offers up a more minimalist […]
Gagarin Commissioned by the Deutscher Musikrat (German Music Council) for their edition elektronik series, Felix Kubin attunes his lateral ears to a subject dear to his heart — and with a title that translates to English as Chromium Dioxide Memory, it’s no surprise that its subject, sound source and (in […]
Beta-lactam Ring Records I love this, the way it spins your head in shape-shifting shadows tipsy with gypsy and Spanish flavours, a tangle of acoustic guitar couriers, whittled violins and word-wrought momentum conjuring, curling. divining. A Too Much Divided Heart starts with “Extraordinary Witch,” a Del Toro mystery remodelled in […]