Dais / Sacred Bones Allegory And Self Ahhh, “Godstar” was a surprise back in the day, a light and airy departure from the Crowley curves and noisy exorcisms that had nailed the first two Psychic TV albums. Further Throbbing Gristle fan head-scratching ensued, more so when it hauled the operation completely […]
Yearly archives: 2017
239 posts
Trinity Community Arts, Bristol 8 July 2017 On a roasting Saturday, a beautiful day in July, the wonderful Trinity Arts community centre hosted the juggernaut that was the fourth Bristol Psych Fest. Squeezing two dozen bands into one day on two stages was quite a feat to attempt, but seemed […]
Aphelion Editions Straight from the cultural antenna of Aphelion Editions comes this intimate sonic experience, tonally chased in whirlpooling vibrato.
Metropolis Ah, The Brown Acid Caveat. We’ve all heard of it, though not necessarily by name. Delivered over the PA at Woodstock, it was an exhortation to avoid a particular type of tab that was doing the rounds. Probably well-meaning, it almost certainly led to a huge amount of freakouts […]
Music Information Centre Lithuania This has the descriptive title of Anthology of Lithuanian Art Music in the 21st Century, which could mean a few things, but what we actually have is a load of contemporary compositions from Lithuania.
Zoharum Recorded in the vast space of the CK Agora theatre in Wroclaw, Something Between is an album that reflects the size and shape of the venue in which it was performed through its reverberant feeling of volume and density.
Svart At the intersection of Stephen O’Malley‘s mammoth-sized drones, Oren Ambarchi‘s avant electronica and Attila Csihar‘s throaty imprecations lies Gravetemple; a ponderous yet often surprising three-headed beast that wallows and grinds its way from the depths further downward, if that were possible, into the cthonic shallows that lie beyond human understanding […]
Tapete I remember listening to The Telescopes at the back end of the ’80s, but was never as convinced of their power as that of the likes of Loop and My Bloody Valentine. I am sure Stephen Lawrie is sick of hearing the comparisons and after a long time, it […]
Rocket Sometimes, a little gentle trepanation is what’s needed to broaden the psychic horizons; at others, it’s less optimal than a plain old hole in the head. Temple ov BBV is seemingly all about the downsides; it’s not a happy album by any means, but it might cheer those prone […]
Southern Lord That rock-hopping, prog-psych behemoth that is Circle have been comfortably straddling every rock-related genre that you can imagine for the best part of twenty-five years now and have been haemorrhaging albums at the rate and quality that would have most bands green with envy
Marionette With a title that refers to a book about near-death experiences, suitably enough, Burnt Friedman‘s first release for Marionette draws upon his archive of recordings to construct a new EP of circling, abstract rhythms topped off with ghostly musical remnants.
London 22 June 2017 Hindsight can be a famously cruel opponent. On the freezing New Year’s Eve of 1961, The Beatles drove all the way down to London from their native Liverpool amidst swirling snowstorms and treacherous roads. The following day, whilst the nation sipped delicately at some Alka-Seltzer and […]
Sulatron Beautiful artwork by Komet Lulu is wrapped around this new release by Sula Bassana, which already tempts the listener to give it a spin. This is Sula’s first soundtrack album and is for Michael Yates’s new movie The Ape Regards His Tail.
Northern Spy Seeing Larkin Grimm at the (now demolished) Seymour’s Family Club in Bristol back in 2006(?) was a real pleasure, that incredible voice of hers just held its own, her musicianship spurring and stirring her wordy glow-forms.
Consouling Sounds This is a first for me, listening to Nadja. For some reason they didn’t cross my radar, but on the strength of this re-release, I have seriously been missing out. Consouling Sounds have chosen to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the Alien8 release of this album by reissuing […]
The Gatherer Consouling Sounds A-Sun Amissa‘s The Gatherer weaves a rich cadaver of intrigue. A sombre dream horned by a raspy clarinet yarn and a trickle of hypothermic piano. A poetically pinned bleed with a lysergic slur of percussion and convulsive coils of sax, burning bright in sulphurous melodics to […]
London 14 June 2017 ‘Are you going to see Kings X?’, the guy in the pub says to me. ‘No, I’m going to see a band called Blood Ceremony at The Garage’, I reply. ‘They sound a bit weird to me, mate’; and with that he shuffles off, pint in […]
Zoharum Emil Mat’ko‘s tenth year of recording as Strom Noir is marked by the collection from Zoharum, bringing to light old and new material alike.
Zoharum Hallucinatory and suffused with a sense of being largely abstracted from place and time as it is generally understood to exist, Rapoon‘s My Life as A Ghost seethes with fluctuations in the space-time continuum. Drenched in reverberant FX, the album is in part a product of its era
Bureau B Magnetband: Experimenteller Elektronik-Underground DDR 1984-1989 Like Play Loud!‘s excellent Ende Vom Lied, this collection from those bastions of Germanic goodness Bureau B gives you another whistle-stop tour of the DDR’s vibrant underground tape culture. Magnetband is a fourteen-track compilation from the mid- to late Eighties salvaged from a load of […]