The annual tradition of Kev Nickells giving the entries to the Eurovision Song Contest the benefit of his particular opinions has come to Freq once more. Strap in for his guide to the ups, highs, downs and disappointments of the musical dream of the year to some, a nightmare of […]
Yearly archives: 2024
82 posts
You get glimpses of what might have been and also an insight into how good at editing their own ideas Coil were. John Balance might have been canonised as the archetypal wide-eyed soul-in-flames, but here we can see the amount of revision he put into his work. Drugs and drink may have been a part of his stream of consciousness, but there’s more lucidity in here than you’d expect and a lot better editing. He’s more James Joyce than William S Burroughs.
Adventurous Canadian sound sculptor and songwriter Kee Avil sounds as though she is disconcertingly whispering in your ear on her latest Constellation release, such is the intimate production. The heartfelt and slightly disturbing revelations make for a claustrophobic experience as the words are draped and slathered across atonal guitar and creeping, sinister electronics. At times it is a strange, harsh, almost industrial setting for her low-key delivery; and at others, it becomes more expansive, leaning in a twisted folk direction.
Having spent time in well-respected indie bands Veronica Falls, Ultimate Painting and Proper Ornaments, songwriter James Hoare is finally stepping out on his own. Sheltering under the moniker Penny Arcade, this collection of dreamy, intimate reflections that hint at seaside memories and rural idylls are a step in a fresh direction, albeit a sleepy and melancholic one.
The Dar Es Salaam duo build on their live breakout with one of the best records of the year Sisso is a bulletproof legend of the Singeli scene at this point; his production stands as a core pillar of his label, which formed the backbone of 2018’s Sounds Of Sisso compilation. It was this album that first broke the Dar Es Salaam sound in Europe, and brought its compiler, Nyege Nyege Tapes, into focus as one of the most exciting labels on Earth.
Keeping his amorphous Angles group at a steady eight and enlisting a string quartet as well as Other Woman performer Elle-Kari Sander as vocalist, they have constructed a far-reaching and emotionally resonant suite that reflects a self-indulgent modern humanity.
What a IDM scuzzy-jazz-noise joy this is. A total fresh skewer on dance music where the ‘I’ is for injured and the dance bit is an interpretative crisp-bag of Ian Curtis-like scutterings. The fragmented energy spurring between Anthony Brown on upright bass and Aron Ward on assorted electronics and effects is a wonderful thing, slipping into the ill-fitting shoes of a host of worn-out genres to monkey-spanner some seriously unhinged magic.
Managing to do so much more with a guitar, bass, drums set-up, they push and pull in new directions, partly thanks to three very different songwriters and also due to the myriad of mysterious sounds wrestled from the guitar by Jason Sanford and his boxes of electronic trickery. It is a wild and at points uncomfortable ride, with three diverse vocalists stretching song structure into taut, complicated patterns, pummelling instruments and insinuating messages into eager ears.
Ozu stands apart. There are few film-makers who command such unanimous acclaim, detractors few and far between, critics as one enraptured by his singular style of delicate, melancholy social satires. This acclaim largely sits upon his post-war films until his death in the early sixties, but his early films remain in need of being seen by a larger audience. It’s a task the BFI has set about with its ongoing blu-ray releases of early Ozu works, and they have chosen two more corkers to focus on this time around.
This line-up of Elephant9 has been together for the best part of fifteen years now and although keyboard maestro Ståle Storløkken is the main songwriter and ideas person, the strength of the trio lies in its interplay and the flexibility of rhythm section Nikolai Hængsle and Torstein Lofthus. Although a little influenced by '70s prog, Ståle's variety of keyboards, including Hammond L100, Minimoog and Arp Pro and the forward-looking, constantly searching bass and drums puts this very much in a modern context.
For decades, and across an extensive discography, Six Organs Of Admittance / Ben Chasny have split the difference between delicate folk and brooding drone, usually by placing them next to each other in successive tracks. Along the way, Chasny has dipped into many musical currents, deploying middle eastern sounds, psychedelic builds, more and less extreme drones, gossamer vocals, and a long list of collaborators.
Not that Tarantula Heart is about forcing Philip Larkin to eat wasps either; but come on, if anyone was going to write an album about forcing Philip Larkin to eat wasps it'd probably be Buzz Osborne, who has lost none of his energy -- or his famous hair -- in the forty years since Melvins first decided to crank up the bass.
Having set up a new studio in Margate, the freedom and sounds of life by the sea have subtly insinuated themselves in to the pieces here which, along with the album celebrating the sixty-third anniversary of Yuri Gagarin being the first human in space, lends it a strange dichotomy between the weightlessness and movement of being in orbit and the freshness and positivity of time spent idling on the seafront.
A product of the ever-shifting sands of the group and hot on the heels of VHF’s Hypnotape comes this prime spoken word smothering from those sunburnt folks over at Three Lobed.
With two primary percussionists, you could be forgiven for thinking this s a journey into rhythm; but it is far more thought-provoking than that and the opener "The Ggraveyard Of Sharks", with its distorted blasts of debris and simmering radioactive warehouse vibe, is a dense, compulsive introduction. The percussion spills and bursts, drifting into almost silence and the sense of unknown and echoing mystery hangs heavy.
MNRK Heavy It’s been an incredible six years since High On Fire’s last album, Electric Messiah and its evil Santa cover. Since then, High On Fire has tasted Grammy success, Matt Pike posited as the logical successor to Lemmy Kilminster’s title of biggest badass in rock … and then the […]
Discus It has been a couple of years since Carla Diratz‘s The Scale was released and you could be forgiven if the line-up for that album viewed it as a one-off; a unique meeting of post jazz rock minds. But when Carla contacted Martin Archer to suggest a more blues […]
Well-regarded but under-seen on initial release a decade ago, The Borderlands has become something of a beloved cult favourite, one that along with Ben Wheatley’s early work was key with reviving folk at the centre of horror culture. On its tenth anniversary, this Second Sight re-release gives an opportunity to re-examine the film, and to find it even stronger than the first time round, standing head and shoulders above many of the films that have followed in its footsteps, whilst remaining kind of inimitable, a totally singular concoction.
Oh, a festival of ugly music - how could I refuse? Quite a varied line up too, the action split between two rooms -- the main stage and a cellar-like space further into the venue.
Folio is a new thing that Greyfade are doing; on top of their gorgeously designed and delivered records,they're putting together books that complement and wrap the recordings in a load more context. We get a record, Three Cellos By Kenneth Kirschner and a book alongside it. The introduction to the book sets out their store in this regard -- a record is more than just the given digital artefact, it's an accumulation of a load of work. I don't think the idea is to take away the recording in its place as the primary 'form' of a work, but there's certainly a commitment to furnishing the recording with a bunch of context.