Karlrecords The classic thing to say about Iannis Xenakis is that he’s fairly close to being sui generis. Oftentimes, that’s the sort of compliment that can feel fairly weak — which is to say that there’s not a musician operating that doesn’t think they’re not sui generis, but the majority of […]
Yearly archives: 2016
178 posts
Trace It has been nearly twenty years since we first marvelled at the extraordinary sounds and textures that three gents could elicit from bass guitars. Catching them in support of Appliance was a revelation and following Mark Beazley‘s mercurial career has been both fascinating and frustrating. I haven’t heard much since […]
Nefarious Industries So the main reason I picked up this record for review is because I think that it’s the responsibility of the writer to pick up things for spurious reasons. The reason I will never review, or listen to, Jaga Jazzist is because the name is terrible. Bangladeafy is […]
Freaksville This comes from a world that feels very familiar to being a teenager listening to indie radio, but also not. There was a lot of this kind of stuff around — retro-ish fetishists for ersatz ’70s string arrangements and Rhodes pianos
London 13 December 2016 Boris are back! One of Japan’s finest rock bands are back in town to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their crossover hit album Pink, by… well, by playing it, obviously! But first we get The Broken Oak Duet, who I don’t want to sound too mean […]
London 15 December 2016 Winter in Britain in 2016 is grey, dreary affair, the trains are on strike nearly everyday, the post office is on strike and now you can’t even get away from it all as the staff on the airplanes are on strike. What is needed is the wonderful […]
Essence Music Recorded as part of a travelling art exposition of the same name, the sessions released as America Here And Now finds Expo Seventy in a rare four-piece configuration, mainstay Justin Wright joined for the sessions recorded in Kansas City by Aaron Osborne of Monta At Odds and Mysterious Clouds on bass alongside drummers Mike Vera […]
Hiatus Having released the first three 7″ singles in the Sound X Sound series over the space of just over a year, Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has progressed to delivering the last four discs in the set at the same time, nearly two full years after the first appeared. Following the well-established […]
Clouds Hill James Johnston often seems omnipresent, having lent his dark twang to the likes of Lydia Lunch, The Bad Seeds, Faust, PJ Harvey and of course his own baby, Gallon Drunk, over the past few decades. It comes as a bit of a surprise then that The Starless Room […]
Bureau B This is the second instalment of Bureau B‘s Con-struct series, with Schneider TM taking up the posthumous reins, grappling with Schnitzler‘s daunting archive. In direct contrast to Pyrolator‘s take on the subject (a few years back), this dwells on the more investigate side of Mr Conrad‘s oeuvre, something Mr […]
Touch Lustmord has long had an affinity with space, both the sonic space of his heavily dub-inspired soundscapes and the actual physical space of the cosmos. For people of Lustmord’s and my generation, space was our future — where we all expected to be hanging out by the start of […]
Hallow Ground I’m not going to use the C word, but he’s not hiding from it. As much as Danny Hyde is his own man, and Electric Sewer Age is his own creation, there are several tantalising trails and in-jokes and red herrings for the fanatic(al). Some of these traces […]
Atomhenge Hawkwind will inevitably be remembered for “Silver Machine” — an unlikely (even in 1972) top ten hit — and Space Ritual, possibly the greatest live album of all time. From 1970 to 1973, they were indeed the voice of the underground, the UK’s version of Grateful Dead, had that […]
Tonefloat The final instalment in Dirk Serries‘ long-running series of releases, Resolution Heart sets a fittingly uplifting mood for the end of a process that started with the first Microphonics CD in 2008.
Hornschaft Back in 2014, two guys spent one day recording music for a 10″ record in an old school in Nowa Hut to accompany a hardback book of photographs. The result of photographer Giordano Simoncini and musician Alessandro Incorvaia‘s labours, hand-numbered and limited to 500, I hold in my hands and it is […]
Double Six / Domino This is a very welcome reissue of John Cale‘s 1992 solo live album and on listening to it again, I am struck by various things. We know him so well as producer — The Stooges, Nico, Jonathan Richman, Patti Smith, etc — and as a collaborator […]
Benedict Taylor: dashing young blade of the London (and beyond) free improv scene. He’s a busy man and a fine player and in possession of a veritable encyclopaedia of techniques. The scratchy ones, the frittery ones, the ones that sound a bit like a helicopter in the distance. But not […]
Bristol 7 December 2016 St George’s Hall in Bristol is one of the city’s finest venues, a church set in a lofty position halfway up Park Street, this evening looking splendid in backlit winter gloom. Inside, the stage was lit in red, mysterious yet comforting. I half expected to see […]
Sulatron OK, are you ready for take off? A big heavy stoner riff, swirling noise and a cosmic chant vocal from Komet Lulu — it can only be the title track from the reissue of Electric Moon’s classic The Doomsday Machine.
Bureau B Well, Bureau B have unleashed another Camera album like some hyperactive missile of joy for us all to experience. This is the third LP from the Berlin duo and this time there is a lot more to it than the feeling of Neu! songs being played by adolescent […]