Southern Lord Ten minutes and ten seconds of stoner riffs that some waited some sixteen years to arrive since the last hazy wafts of Sleep‘s 1998 LP Dopesmoker faded out, “The Clarity” finds Al Cisneros and Matt Pike joined by Jason Roeder of Neurosis on drums. Originally released as a […]
Yearly archives: 2017
239 posts
Sulatron /Deep Distance “It was an evening in summer upon the placid temperate planet Mars. Up and down green wine canals, boats as delicate as bronze flowers drifted. In the long and endless dwellings that curved like tranquil snakes across the hills, lovers lay idly whispering in cool night beds” […]
Gizeh Back in 1931, FW Murnau, director of the Expressionist classics Nosferatu and Faust amongst others was directing a docu-drama in the South Sea Islands about forbidden love between two young islanders. After filming and just before the preview, he died in a vehicle accident and the film, although winning an Oscar, was […]
London 25 January 2017 Charles Bullen of This Heat fame was up first, ricocheting a rich stream of bubbling metallics from a specially adapted lap-steel contraption. A set of gamboling percussives and deep Balinese-like bounces drawn through a shanty town of effects. All very fragmented, his sparse trajectories sped off […]
Accretions The Argonauts are a four-piece underground supergroup of sorts, surfing out of Japan with this high octane album of instrumental jams that shows all the players, guitar, bass, drums and keyboards to be in excellent form.
Umor Rex Bringing together odds and ends, remixes and new studio work, Radiations takes it title from a track originally included on 2016’s Colliding Contours. While at first it might seem odd to repeat the track on a new record, the appearance of Shackleton‘s remix of the track on Side […]
Confront It’s a truism that free jazz and all manner of improv is best appreciate live, rather than on record, as it is when in front of an audience that a quartet such as Akode really come into their own. North And South therefore comes from that other great tradition of […]
Consouling Sounds Packing a lot into its two sides of vinyl (or one track on the CD edition), Forever And A Day finds Mathieu Vandekerckhove (Amenra, Kingdom and Sembler Deah) in a musical meditation on his relationship with his father, and the sculpture that he made for his son around […]
Consouling Sounds Werl documents a supercharged powerhouse in action, one that came from the meeting of the guitars and FX of Aidan Baker (of Nadja and also Hypnodrone Ensemble, Caudal, etc) with the heavyweight percussion of Tomas Järmyr (from Zu, Barchan and Yodok in various forms). The album stretches to […]
Gizeh (CD) / Pleasance (Vinyl) The title track pins you early on in fuzzy cushions and muted percussion, this elastic line of rhythm stitching the goods as vaporous panthers prowl the collaterals. Claire Brentnall‘s vocals make a brilliant foil to Aidan Baker‘s shoegazery sensibilities and pedal prowess.
Bureau B “Allons enfants de la Patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé.” When the musical “Marseillaise” is sung, there can surely be no more fitting embodiment of Gallic savoir faire than Richard Pinhas. Philosopher, guitarist, innovator, electronic music pioneer – his visage is perfectly placed to flutter aloft on […]
Touch Sometimes, the press releases just absolutely nail it and I hate it when they do. This latest release from the band that fell from the belly of The Amal Gamal Ensemble came with a description that’s clearly trying to ruin my review before it’s even got going.
Round 2 Oriental Sunshine‘s sole album, Dedicated To The Bird We Love is one of those treats that come along rarely in our musical travels. A psychedelic folk album recorded in Norway in 1969 with a surprising Eastern influence, it received a release from Philips back in the day but […]
Every Contact Leaves A Trace It seems like only a few weeks ago that I was reviewing the last batch of ECLAT releases (and that was largely due to my tardiness), yet here we are in 2017 with another pair of releases. I gather that these were released fairly late in […]
Second Language After twenty years of exploration, Glen Johnson (one of the tirade that first initiated the project and its lasting member) is closing the lid on and drawing a line under everything Piano Magic, and as the glissotronic swirls clear on the opening track, he’s straight in there voicing his […]
three:four This is Mike Wexler‘s third album, originally recorded in 2013/4 and thankfully receiving a belated release through the lovely people at three:four. It has the feel of being magically recorded in some sunlit glade hidden far from view; and as it it transpires, it was recorded in rural Vermont, the studio lurking […]
Echoic Memory This self-financed five-tracker from Stereocilia nails you to the spot cinematically. The sun-caught melodics of “River” holding you hostage with its Basho/Fahey sense of openness and fertile flourishes, as does that dissolving warmth in the loopage that emotionally flies off the handle at any given point.
Bureau B Back in 2012, Dieter Moebius was asked to score Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis and for that purpose produced some pre-arranged tracks to be played during the film which along with some live improvisation would suit the film as he saw it. One imagines that this would have been a roaring […]
Disco Gecko After some wonderful reissues of classic albums with a plethora of extras, here is Banco de Gaia’s long -awaited new album; and typically the sound of this album moves off into different directions that Toby Marks may have only touched upon before.