Glacial Movements Line Spectrum‘s Bruma goes beyond music to the Earth’s inner workings; an inspired soundscape of tidal movement, the fabrication of fossils and the erosion of landscapes. The idyllic lapping of waves gradually subsumed by the roar of the surf as dolphins call is eventually dissolved in a wash of static and morse code structures.
Yearly archives: 2019
261 posts
Universal Music Enterprises It’s probably a fair assumption that the more rabid Velvet Underground fans clocked this on its first CD release in 2015. But if you’re not that, and also can’t be bothered with reading the remainder of this review – tl;dr – this is a very good live document of VU.
Church Ceilings Deaf Joe‘s long-player Love Stories is an attempt to convert some of his most cherished travel memories into a kind of series of ambient soundscapes, retaining those souvenirs in a more fulfilling and long-lasting way than a pile of unseen photographs and scattered postcards.
London 14 July 2019 It’s Rick Wakeman’s seventieth birthday, and what better way to celebrate than two nights of his early concept album Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, played in full with lots of extra tracks to help the extravaganza become fully realised. Originally the piece was performed and recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday 18 January 1974. At this point, Wakeman was […]
Upset The Rhythm The ceaseless band-hopping of the two Rachels has seen a five-year gap since the last Trash Kit album, and also the departure of Ros Murray and arrival of Gill Partington on bass. Bas Jan, Bamboo, Shopping and Sacred Paws have kept them plenty busy, but thankfully they have reunited for their third album for Upset The Rhythm, and what a treat it is.
Important Pauline Oliveros, if you’re not in the know, is somewhat of a hero in twentieth century composition and music theory. She’s also criminally under-recorded. She’s also, perhaps most frustrating of all, very difficult to pin down on a recording. Discogs currently lists sixty-five releases, but few of those are anything like broadly available, and of what I’ve heard of the available / semi-available ones, there’s a number […]
Jeshimoth Entertainment Jute Gyte are somewhere out on the periphery of metal doing something that could probably best be described as “amazing”. It’s a one-man project of Adam Kalmbach, who has taken a look at metal and gone “I wonder what happens if I make something that’s a bit black metal, but using microtonal serialism” and then done exactly that.
London 20 July 2019 It’s 6:30 — SIX FUCKING THIRTY — on a Saturday evening and I have never seen The Forum so packed so early (in fact, I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever seen it this early at all). The place is an oven. Fortunately, metal crowds tend to be the nicest crowds, so a room filled with this many daytime drinkers isn’t likely to erupt into […]
Honeystreet, Wiltshire 1 August 2019 Nestled within the rolling Pewsey downs, tonight’s debut from Luminous Foundation (a freshly inked joust between Téléplasmiste’s Mark Pilkington and Urthona’s Neil Mortimer) takes place at The Barge Inn, one of the few Wiltshire country pubs that have escaped gentrification, a canal side drinkery and campsite that’s always been the home of the interesting, conspiratorial and now danceable electronics.
Castle Face I had a real soft spot for the slightly psychotic electro-punk disco dust-up of Six Finger Satellite and was sorry when they called it a day both times, so it is good to hear that Rick Pelletier is back on the scene with Dare Matheson and Jon Loper, both of whom helped out with the band the second time around.
Hastings, for those not hip to the south-east coast of England, is a funny old place. In some senses it’s got that run-down seaside town vibe. On the other some banging folk and a small but keen crowd of local weirdos turning out on a Tuesday night for an evening of rackets
Crammed Discs Band Apart were a short-lived US/French duo that blossomed at a time that put them in the eye of the New York No-Wave storm. Vocalist Jayne Bliss was a poet who had been performing with various members of the US avant-garde such as Bill Laswell and Don Cherry. On being introduced to Marseille-based musician M Mader, they judiciously decided to set off on their own sonic adventures […]
Dio Drone / Dirter Promotions About a year ago, we discussed a pioneering piece of Harvard University research, Thorsten A Cardy’s 2005 work “An Experimental Field Study of Ambient And Drone Based Music on Temporal Perception in Higher Mammals”. (The Annals of the American Academy of Auditory Zoology), which demonstrated how extreme ambient / drone music stimulates the part of the brain called Shatner’s Bassoon, which is the […]
Hubro The title and track names for Exoterm‘s first album read like stage directions or parts of a screenplay, and the atmospheres that they produce over the course of the six tracks on Exits Into A Corridor are dark and foreboding but suffused with a giddy mania.
Dreaming Of Ghosts is the pairing of Robot Koch and Fiora and their second single appears in the form of the Shallow Water EP, which is released on 2 August via Trees and Cyborgs. The track is remixed by Hamburg’s Skyence (Modularfield), and comes from Dreaming Of Ghost’s forthcoming debut album.
Courier The latest beautifully packaged release from the ever-reliable yet increasingly diverse micro label Courier is the four-track EP Silences‘ from south-east England-based duo of the same name, James Green and Nick Dawson. Intended as the first in an ongoing series, the recording took place on one day in Southend and the end result takes you far away from any obvious points of familiarity.
Sub Rosa Premiering seven compositions, this Noise of Art CD by the Opening Performance Orchestra, a Czech avant-garde and noise group from Prague who milk their “no melody, no rhythm, no harmony” ethos completely, documents the long-lost sound of Futurism
Epping Forest Until 28 July 2019 Something is stirring in the forest. Epping Forest to be precise, that area of ancient woodland straddling the divide between London and Essex. The woodland there has existed since Neolithic times at least, and scholars now believe it was granted legal status as a royal forest by Henry II as far back as the twelfth century.