Audio Obscura Neil Stringfellow‘s Audio Obscura has followed up 2020’s Love In The Time Of The Anthropocene with another expansive and hugely diverse litany of the destruction that has been caused since the time that our species has been on the earth. It is an affecting and far-reaching suite of pieces that make great use of the spoken word, set against the backdrop of expansive electronica that is […]
Yearly archives: 2021
167 posts
Broken Tape I’ll apologise for being brusque, but there’s a lot to get through and we haven’t got all day. – What is harsh noise wall? It’s harsh noise, except less happens. Typically fairly long, typically just white noise, typically minimal if not no dynamics. Often abbreviated to HNW. If it’s quieter it’s ambient noise wall (ANW) – Great, so what’s this compilation? It’s called 100 Harsh Noise […]
Injazero There is something kind of fitting about the title to Mike Lazarev‘s latest mini opus. It is a work of real compositional thought and love, but although it comprises ten tracks, it clocks in at a little over twenty minutes. You may think that it would only constitute sketches or fragments, but each of these short piano-led pieces is perfect in its integrity and the moods captured […]
Death Waltz Originals Gong possessors ANTA, of Bristol legend, sutured to the might of international man of Italo mystery Antoni Maiovvi, who is definitely not from Bemmie before it got poncy. What is the score? Well. I am here for PURE MUSIC. And how pure it is! Pure as the water from the mountains of the Gods. As I understand it, Herr Maiovvi wrote a bunch of tracks […]
Bureau B Conrad Schnitzler is one of Krautrock’s founding fathers; he was part of the original line up of Tangerine Dream along with Klaus Schulze and he was an original member of Kluster, who renamed themselves Cluster after his departure. Schnitzler’s work straddles the line between avant-garde pieces to cosmic electronica, all with a sense of darkness imbued within his sweeping epics. The pieces presented on Paracon are […]
Miasmah James Welburn certainly conjures up a sense of epic with this new LP, Sleeper In The Void. The reactive pleasure that is “Raze” ritually burning through your mind like a restless phantom, then plunge-pooled into a corrosive bath of grainy noise, twisting Soliloquy For Lilith-like on bassy parabolics and flickers of percussive recoil until the drama is daggering divergent colours and serpentine mirage.
Gizeh The brief spoken-word section, remote and benign, of the drifting opening track to Christine Ott‘s latest release, Time To Die, lends an air of tired truth to the doomy and distorted soundscape. Electronic sounds waver in the dust of a far-flung outpost, distant and interminable.
Sulatron Before I discuss the music, I have to say what an incredibly beautiful re-release this is from Sulatron Records. Not only does Mind Control: The Ultimate Edition look wonderful in its yellow and black splatter 180-gramme vinyl, but it sounds fantastic as well (also available on two CDs with bonus tracks as well). Its gatefold sleeve just adds to the overall feel of a wonderfully put-together quality […]
Misanthropic Agenda Quite where we are here I’m not entirely sure. I don’t really follow a lot of noise or musique concrète or, like, whatever this is. But that this is a 4CD boxset suggests that either Francisco Meirino‘s of some standing or the label owe him a favour for a hit or something. I certainly hope it is for being of some standing, because this is fine […]
Ala Bianca The latest release from Sicilian percussionist Alfio Antico finds him staring out form the rural cover like a nineteenth century mesmerist, his gaze unyielding as he prepares to draw us in to his unique soundworld of sung-spoken folk tales set against the musical wealth of his players and collaborators as they dip into European folk and trail through acoustic-industrial unrest to a galaxian drift.
Kindarad Those of you who’ve been following MXLX (he of Fairhorns, Knife Library, very etc) will know he’s a slippery bugger. His earlier days — mostly characterised by the now-defunct Team Brick project — went through a series of phases, sometimes in the same gig, pulling in stimmy noise, klezmer-after-burial, shouting hardcore, Shaggs-esque lop-sided indie — again very etc.
Discus For Treppenwitz‘s third musical adventure, the trio set up in a living room and pressed record to see what could be captured over the course of two days’ improvisation. That sense of intimacy and immediacy is perfectly captured on this document that finds them further blurring the boundaries that might constrict a trio that leans towards jazz, but is completely immersed in a wealth of styles and […]
Zam Zam The synth duo of Kevin Valentin and Benjamin Moutte have a proper appreciation of their wares, something that the ominous plunge of the opener on their new Surprise Barbue album Kabukichō solidly demonstrates. It mindscapes a lovely tensive herald, spiralised in jewelled splashes and a subtle creep of melody that glitters its periphery. A drama that twists in “Cerf-Souris”’s unfurling keystrokes as a sweetened glaze of […]
Jazzland John Bishop‘s latest Tortusa release, Bre, finds him teaming up with a group of like-minded sonic explorers to prepare a series of fantastical, elemental soundscapes that act as ciphers for the extraordinary images on the cover. The sounds sweep from the speakers, appearing at once modern yet ageless, as if they were generated with no understanding or knowledge of the current state of music. With a guest […]
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 Pisani’s flinting frets carve its introverted entry point, while a Basho barbecue of crystal chord called “Dropped A […]
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, but lacking the asceptic cleanliness of one of your fancy towns. There’s a raft of touchstones for this […]
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 B have produced not one but two retrospectives devoted to the band — one covering the early days […]
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 called Untitled [n] and largely a kind of textural building from exceptionally quiet to pretty blaring. All with […]