Cherry Red High Wycombe, 1977. Thirty miles north-west of central London, famous for its illustrious furniture-making history,1 Wycombe has always been a voraciously music-hungry town. A strong local music scene took root some years ago, but viewed nationally, the town is still renowned more for its notable venues than for the visibility of its indigenous talent.
Yearly archives: 2017
239 posts
Bureau B Another important Bureau B collaboration finds two early doyens of German music joining forces for six tracks of far-reaching, future-spanning electronic visions.
Zoharum Consisting of otherwise unplaced material from Echoes Of Yul‘s The Healing album and originally released as limited run of cassettes, The Healing Sessions now appears on CD.
Tourette Bristling with brightly sparking passion and a mischievous sense that, in a musical world where all genres and forms are available, and (over-)familiar to everyone with a will to listen, therefore everything is permitted — as long as it works, and works well.
Psychomat Jono Podmore (AKA Kumo, of Cyclopean and Metamono) provides the music backing up Reason Stendec‘s sonorous multilingual vocals on the Impulsion EP. Intriguingly, “Stendec” was mysterious final Morse code transmission from a flight that crashed en route to Santiago in Chile in 1947
Room 13 Everybody knows The Radiophonic Workshop. Electronic musicians, eccentric polymaths and computer savants have been tinkering away in the bowels of Maida Vale on and off for the past sixty years, scaring and thrilling at equal turns with their wild and imaginative effects and soundtracks for BBC TV and radio shows.
Mute OF COURSE THEY DID. So Laibach made an album called Also Sprach Zarathustra. Which displays the kind of self-confidence, arrogance and sheer fucking balls for which Laibach are famous.
Everlasting Desert rockabilly trio Guadalupe Plata have been ploughing their Spanish language furrow since 2010 and with this, their fifth full-length record (four of them self-titled), the band find themselves leaping straight into the fray with a salute to the famed Chilean songwriter and activist Violeta Parra.
Bureau B They may have slipped out of the Neue Deutsche Welle limelight sometime ago, but this surprise newbie from Der Plan hits back with that familiar quirkiness that gave us “Du Bist Es Nicht”, “Gummitwist” and the sublime “Space Bob”.
Bureau B Once again, Bureau B are doing us proud with a couple of releases that showcase a couple of earlier generations of German electronic music, and also go some way to showing just how important and diverse the label has become.
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 overground
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 to go incredibly smoothly.
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 among people who up until then had been tripping away merrily on that self-same acid.
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 or desire.
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 was interesting to dip my toe back into their murky waters.