Demiurg / London 3 March 2019 This is a story of two enigmas. One is an inscrutable totalitarian art-rock collective, and the other is the most secretive state on Earth. And this is all about what happened when the two collided to the strains of a much-loved feel-good musical with […]
Monthly archives: March 2019
21 posts
Omnibus Press Damo Suzuki will be seventy years old next year and has spent the best part of half of those traversing the globe with two distinct iterations of his musical caravan; first the Damo Suzuki Band / Network and latterly the ever-evolving global musical cast that are his Sound […]
Blue Tapes The latest release from The Blue Tapes House Band has only one disappointing element; the cassette isn’t blue, but white. I don’t know what is going on here and it is fair to say I have no idea what the House Band are trying to do, except drive […]
Dur Et Doux As your brain tries to get a grip on the multi-perspectives of the MC Escher-like arts, you’re pummelled by the intensity of the vibes on Ni‘s Pantophobie (the fear of everything) LP. I don’t know much about Ni, but I like the souped-up King Crimson metal-headed math […]
Rune Grammofon Maja SK Ratkje‘s latest album for Rune Grammofon is a really intriguing piece. Written for the Norwegian National Ballet‘s interpretation of Knut Hamsen‘s breakthrough novel Hunger, it is entirely centred around a modified pump organ. The device was something that she played every night live on stage with […]
Silken Tofu An improvised collision between W (James Welburn) and V (Juliana Venter), the first side of which (“Concave”) goes straight in there with vocal exorcism. A cathartic off-the-bone presentation that has Juliana Venter shrieking satisfyingly into the void.
Archaeological Notoriously diverse sound artist Andrew Liles first met ex-Mayhem vocalist Sven Kristiansen (AKA Maniac) at the 2008 Roadburn Festival and was later invited to join the latter’s group Sehnsucht. A desire to continue performing together saw the pair reconvene at various points up to this current point, when they […]
Courier Back in 2014, sound artist Stuart Bowditch produced a series of pieces for an exhibition that was taking place in the old Co-operative Bank in Colchester. Created solely using sounds discovered in the thirty rooms of the old edifice, it was installed as a loop playing on an in-car […]
Zoharum The twenty miniatures on Short Scenes barely push beyond three minutes in length, but each fits neatly into a cohesive whole that makes the album work as both abstract background music and an engaging delight to become lost in. Anne Bakker‘s violin moves deftly from mellow and swooping to […]
Discus Martin Archer founded Discus thirty years ago this year and has pushing the envelope of what we might expect from jazz-based music ever since. Describing itself as the adventurous label, two recent releases that dropped through my letterbox are both vivid sonic adventures that use very different foundations as […]
London 2 March 2019 PFM (Premiata Forneria Marconi) were one of the earliest progressive rock bands to emerge from Italy in the early 1970s. They were certainly one of the best known Italian bands of that era, mainly thanks to being signed by Greg Lake to Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s […]
Upset The Rhythm Fresh on the heels of Vital Idles‘ 2018 LP comes a four-track 7″ vinyl EP containing all-new material. The resonant post punk bass intro of “Break A” puts me straight into a good mood and the clear guitar slashes strike through at just the right tempo. Jessica […]
Cleopatra A lot of people were very surprised when the 73-year-old Hawkwind veteran Nik Turner blew our heads clean off with the single “Fallen Angel STS-51-L”, ahead of the release of his Space Gypsy album. It was a Newtonian as all fuck, hurtling ride of a number. It had all […]
Constellation The opening track on Light Conductor‘s Sequence One nods to the experiments that Spiritualized undertook on their second album and blasts them into space. It involves the simplest of ingredients, but the effect is quite astounding; a six-note repetitive pattern, three lazy notes on bass and other analogue squelches […]
Jahtari Originally released in 2009, Hissing Theatricals was Jackson Bailey‘s début release as Tapes and now receives this vinyl re-issue treatment commemorating its tenth anniversary. A decade on, and Tapes’ resolutely 8-bit sounds have both never seemed more contemporary nor somehow as timeless as they do now. This is perhaps […]
Tapete I find it really heartening that Stephen Lawrie is continuing his Telescopes trajectory in such a self-contained manner. This latest album, The Telescopes’ eleventh and the third for Tapete, finds Stephen solely in charge of the band’s direction and after the centre of the Earth feel of As Light […]
Ruton Music The Circle-helmed home of all things hairy and guitar-heavy, Ektro Records has recently taken on a synthetic hue, with key members of the core group of musicians from Pori in Finland (and beyond) picking up their drum machines and keyboards instead.
Preceded by the “Chateau” single earlier this month, unconventional musical subversives R.O.C return with their first album in twelve years, Bile And Celestial Beauty, appearing on rocmusic on 29 March. Oleg Rooz has created seven short films to go with the album, and his video for the track “Divorce”, which is […]
Cleopatra / MVD Visual Conny Plank and his circle were, as record producer David M Allen says: “The hippies who fell in love with machines”. * Much has been said about how the youth of Germany needed to reinvent themselves – and their art – at the end of the […]
Tenement George McFall‘s first release under his own name, after stepping out from behind his Clean George IV pseudonym, has quite an intense edge with an arch and literate drive that stands it out from a lot of the synth-based music of the moment.