Glitterbeat Stella Chiweshe is somewhat of a legend in certain circles — a real global advocate for mbira music as well as a feminist icon — playing mbira at a time when colonial (then) Rhodesia forbade it, establishing a woman’s music festival in Zimbabwe, and all that good stuff. Of course […]
Monthly archives: September 2018
17 posts
London 24 September 2018 There is a buzz about tonight’s concert, a certain energy filling the air; it’s a good vibe, full of excitement and patchouli oil goodness. It was 1966 when The Pink Floyd (as they were known then) last played The Roundhouse (on the back of a truck) […]
Fourth Dimension / Foolproof Projects Andy Pyne and Lisa Jayne, who make up the duo of Map 71, have been highlighting their hinterland that exists somewhere between myth and dreamstate since 2014. Perfectly described by Lisa’s book of words, Mutant Dreams, they inhabit and document that precious point between waking and sleeping […]
Beggars Arkive A case study in writing reviews on the cheap: – where possible, try and ensure that the audience is already familiar with the music. The upshot of this is that everyone’s already made up their minds — your writing is only ever manifesting an individual’s preconceptions about that […]
4AD The first track on Pixies‘ début release Come on Pilgrim takes a dump in your mind with its bad Samaritans and shamanic shears. Thirty years on, it’s still gnawing at you like a raggedy chihuahua as you stumble through the wreckage of a house party’s aftermath. Those heavy drums of David […]
Sub Pop There is often a sense of familiarity with Low albums. To a certain extent there exists a feeling that we have come to know what to expect when a new album drops. With Low’s twelfth full-length release, however, they have probably done the most that they can or […]
A quick catch-up with Robert Sotelo Dan Bolger of The Pheremoans and The Bomber Jackets talks to Robert Sotelo about his new cassette and digital release, Botanical. I first met Andrew Robert Doig (AKA Robert Sotelo) in 2004, when we moved in to the same flat in Dalston. He was in what […]
Drag City It has been about eighteen months since David Pajo‘s return with Highway Songs, but what a transformation that period of time has wrought. As entertaining as that cut and paste of ideas and snippets was it, lacked cohesion and was clearly the sound of a man in flux; […]
Antifrost Drawing on an ancient word for witches across German-speaking Europe in the Middle Ages, Lukas Feigelfeld‘s film Hagazussa is a gloomy feast for the imagination where plague and paranoia paint an atmospheric treasure-trove of unease. A gothic feast for the eyes
Transmutation LTD I must admit, after experiencing Autunna Et Sa Rose and Julie’s Haircut, I have been looking with fresh eyes towards our Italian brethren, and the latest surprise to wash over from those shores for me is Sigillum S. Having started back in the eighties and embracing a multimedia […]
Ahead of this year’s Fort Process festival, headliner Rhys Chatham kindly lent his words to some questions posed by Kev Nickells. For this edition of the festival, he’ll be bringing a performance of his solo work Pythagorean Dream. Kev Nickells: So the first thing I’d like to pick up on is […]
Om Kult Another unsettling listen from the master of extreme – Rudolf Eb.er, Om Kult Volume I is a cerebral feast that cancers the comfortable with needlepoint clarity. The carrion flies that dart between your hemispheres, those dirt dragging paws. It’s a focused feast that predators a pulse, shadow-plays a […]
Gizeh I imagine that Richard Knox, head honcho of the wonderful Gizeh Records, uses A-Sun Amissa as a kind emotional bloodletting, giving himself the opportunity to move in the kind of rarefied places and breathe in those mystical atmospheres that his other musical charges do.
Bristol 8 September 2018 Luckily zero nightmares on the parking front meant we only missed a small portion of Microdeform’s set, a colour-washed dronescape, needled by fractured dissidence. These tasty elasticated hues pulling you into a kaleidoscope of blistered sunsets, spreading out in grainy after-images
Beggar’s Arkive It’s no exaggeration to say that the late lamented David Bowie cast an immense and glittery shadow over popular music, and it would seem the darkest part of this shadow fell on one Peter Murphy, superfan and Bauhaus lead singer. Bauhaus took the glam aesthetic of the Spiders […]
Modularfield There is something enigmatic about the idea of a goddess, a sense of mystery and power that is at the same time subtle. Goddess, the duo, give little away in the sterile cover photo of their latest Modularfield release. Faces obscured by flowers, minimal movement. It is as if […]
Ipecac Still sporting the best hair in rock, King Buzzo is back with the latest iteration of his wonderful musical monstrosity. Pinkus Abortion Technician is the kind of album title that’s designed to make you go “…wait, what?”