Three Lobed Leaping off Headless’s comfy sofa, those Sunburned peeps are more frazzled and distinctively vocal with this year’s follow up release Pick A Day To Die on Three Lobed Records. The sleek-lined kiss of the previous LP seems to be left to unravel more, to tail-spin adventurously as Jeremy […]
Yearly archives: 2021
167 posts
Monzen Nakacho For the uninitiated, Monzen Nakacho is something like the two-step-gone-goth solo project of one Gary Short from sunny Worthing in the UK. And it’s the sort of music that you can only imagine coming from somewhere like that — parts end of the pier glee and lurid flourescence, […]
Bureau B I know very little about Die Welttraumforscher. They’ve (or should I say he’s, as all this is a predominantly solo affair of Christian Pfluger) been going since 1981 as one of Switzerland’s most enigmatic musical projects, sung almost exclusively in German. Luckily for a newbie like me, Bureau […]
Crónica There’s a quality that some music has of being like an old friend. I’ve not listened to any new Francisco López in a decade or more but the ’00s CDs of his I have get a fairly frequent spin. Those CDs tended towards a kind of quietism — usually […]
Niafunken Mirco Ballabene has studied double bass to the highest level and has used that grounding on his latest album to probe the links between the academic music of the twentieth century and more improvisational techniques. This melding of the two is what makes Right To Party tick and also what […]
(self-released) That guttural bleakness punctuated by a lone-slap of reverbed timpani is impressive — a real sit up and listen asthetic tied to a wine-glass hum and a circle of Galás gulls that drag you into a ritualised scrape of brutalist electronics and scatter-cushioned skin. Lay In The Salt Of […]
Label Fandango Modern Hinterland trade in the kind of anthemic nineties-influenced indie pop-rock that I thought had gone out of fashion. The sort that bands like Morning Runner and Longwave used to ply, and I am pleased that people out there still feel there is mileage in it. Chris Hornsby […]
KrysaliSound The latest release on KrysaliSound finds two Italian artists, Pier Giorgio Storti and Nicola Fornasari, joining forces as That Which Is Not to produce The Basic Sharpness Of Emotions, a series of contemplative soundscapes on captured through the lonely environs of a distant forest. It has a rarefied feel […]
Music For Nations Despite being fronted by ex-Gorgoroth drummer Einar Selvik and having in the past featured Gaahl on vocals, Wardruna are very much not a metal band. Oh sure, metalheads love them, and they did a bunch of stuff with Enslaved, but they are not a metal band. Because […]
Fire (Europe) / Flying Nun (Australia and New Zealand) It is hard to believe that Martin Phillipps‘s Chills have been around in one iteration or another for the best part of forty years. Forming in 1980, it took them seven years to produce their debut album, having spent that time […]
Phantom Limb / Dekorder / and forty-two others worldwide Senyawa apparently move in circles that include your Stephen O’Malleys and your Damo Suzukis and your Oren Ambarchis. But let’s not hold that against them. They’re an Indonesian duo that use… well, it’s not clear what of these sounds is orthodoxly […]
Courier On another of Courier‘s delightful cassette releases, we find Cousin Sharky trading in “sub-dimensional bass street electronics”. Although this goes part way to describing the sound contained therin, there is something at times distant and ancient about some of the wide variety of moods and textures on offer on […]
Zoharum And so, Phurpa are back. Like Russian Cenobites stepping slowly from the shadows and wreathed in a thick fug of juniper smoke, they are here once more to bathe us in their power and resonate our chakras in sympathy with the universal vibration. For those not already familiar with […]
Off World, the studio project of Sandro Perri and Lorenz Peter (Corpusse, Processor) has so far released Volumes 1 and 2 of three planned LPs for Constellation, “rich in deconstructed melody, aleatory composition techniques, and interplay between acoustic and synthetic-electronic instrumentation”. Sandro says of their new video, premiered here today, […]
Discus Serial collaborators Tony Oxley and Cecil Taylor had this 2002 show recorded, and Discus have released it as a showcase for the kind of joyful power of which the duo was capable of. That it is the overriding sensation that comes from Being Astral And All Registers: joy; at […]
Hummus Swiss fourpiece Convulsif certainly understand the power of tension. On Extinct, their third album, the opener “Buried Between One” had me checking the CD player to make sure it was s till working, such was the space between the resonant bass notes. When you leave it to play and […]
Disciples The beginnings of a thing are rarely seen, beyond its creator and co-conspirators, an initial spark so easily buried in the bushfire it nourishes; so it’s something of a privilege to soak up the plenitude of ideas that would give His Name Is Alive their distinctive play of light […]
Francisco Meirino (also known as Phroq up to 2009 when creating harsh noise). Using instrumentation including modular synths, reel-to-reel tape recorders and various home-made electronics, he has collaborated with artists such as Leif Elggren, Michael Gendreau and Gerritt Wittmer and also writes for contemporary music ensembles and dance with releases on […]
Buried Treasure Named after a sunken granite reef in the Celtic sea, Haig Fras takes this remote place as a source of inspiration, to sonically spill in a subterfuge of folding texture and swifting aquatics bleached in a Derek Jarman-esque gleam. Part Urthona, part Téléplasmiste, Neil Mortimer and Mark Pilkington seamlessly […]
Trace Eternally keeping his unique flame alive and forever pushing the sound somewhere fresh, Rothko‘s Mark Beazley is an irregular collaborator, but always uses the opportunity to discover something unexpected. This is his first since 2016’s full length A Young Fist Curled Round A Cinder For A Wager, and here the […]