Trace The latest Rothko release, initially a cassette through Jukebox Heart and now a download through Trace, finds Mark Beazley in an even more contemplative mood than last year’s Make Space Speak. Spread over six tracks and forty minutes, there is far less reliance on the bass as rhythmic instrument […]
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Multi-instrumentalist Chlöe Herington has moved through the multi faceted likes of Chrome Hoof and Knifeworld before alighting at V Ä L V Ē, an opportunity for her, along with fellow Chrome Hoof alumnus Emma Sullivan, to explore more literary-minded and progressive ideas that don't necessarily fit into the various collaborations of which she is part.
The EP spins out on Dorothy’s silvery words to a backdrop of softly brushed instrumentation, “Moon”’s cradling circadians bringing to mind the eerie elegance of Anaïs Nin’s poetics on Bells Of Atlantis, its dream-caught atmospherics cloudy with vaporous validation.
Working around found sounds and interweaving the thoughtful sentiments of her fellow players, pianist Russ Lossing and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, so that it becomes a windswept and all-encompassing traipse across the city; taking in cafes, Métro stations, markets and more, enveloped by and embracing completely the quotidian city life that generates its own element of the soundtrack.
What's being reviewed here is two things: a book, Subcontinental Synthesis: Electronic Music at the National Institute of Design, India 1969–1972 , edited by Paul Purgas, and a record, The NID Tapes - Electronic Music From India 1969-72. The NID of the LP's title refers to the National Institute of Design, a home for electronic music within India of the late 1960s. The book is a more expansive look at electronic music in that era, and one is a taster for the other.
That heavy fug of distorted guitars will be familiar to any alternative fan of a certain age, but their way of weaving them together is warming and effective. With feet on pedals they push on as the vocals drawl and drip, melting into the lolloping '90s groove as stuttering solos burst out of the surf.
Appearing as a tribute to the recently departed Jane Birkin, who stars in the film, Je T'aime Moi Non Plus, Serge Gainsbourg’s 1976 directorial debut, returns to UK screens and it's a chance to re-examine a film that demands you engage with it, for good and for bad.
With Jon Rune Strøm on bass and Gard Nilssen on drums, you know that you have a limber and flexible rhythm section able to bend themselves to whichever whims come their way; but to make it truly magical we also have Johan Lindström on pedal steel and Mattias Ståhl on vibes. This is an unlikely combination but works so well, propelling the pieces from feel-good jazz into some other parallel universe where we might be sashaying around a tiki bar on a sunlit beach.
One of the great lost traditions of British television, the BBC’s Ghost Stories For Christmas ran through the seventies and remain fondly remembered, a singularly British reading of classic horror stories.
While Earth 2 has undoubtedly influenced a generation of experimental and drone musicians, its impact goes beyond the confines of genre. The album is a pilgrimage, an exploration of the primal power of vibration and resonance. It transcends the boundaries of conventional rock music, offering an immersive experience that is both challenging and rewarding for those willing to embark on the journey.
We make our way towards it and spy the ancient instruments intone slowly and tremulously, and a roll of thunder embodies a warning of things yet to come. Water seeps in threatening to engulf as Maja's wordless utterances throw you somewhere completely new, just the Hardanger fiddle and bells indicating we are still within the warm reach of the campfire.
Their music often feels like a dark comfort blanket that you could pull around yourself, relax into — and tonight it’s hitting the spot. A brooding brew of blurring intention and fleeting impression that grasps at and enhances the storyteller’s weave of tangible disappointments with the human animal and the redeeming embrace of love.
Diverse trumpeter and flugelhorn player Charlotte Keeffe is a restless soul and one who itches for musical opportunities. For this album, she has has re-assembled the quartet that appeared on the previous album Right Here, Right Now and thrown them into the studio to see what can come from this immediate interaction.
Blue Tapes I’ve yet to see this band live; life always conspires against it, but I’m glad this tantalising snapshot from their 2022 Café OTO show has made it out there. A beautifully packaged Blue Tapes item that amplifies the primal weirdness of Staraya Derevnya‘s studio recordings, takes things to […]
After scoring a resounding early success, with his debut Love At First Sight winning the Best First Feature Film award at the Cesars, Thomas Cailley slipped into television and writing with his frequent collaborator Victor Saint Macary. Almost a decade after his first film, he returns with The Animal Kingdom, a film that sells itself as a political sci-fi but is far from it, and all the better for it too.
When establishments come under new management there are sometimes doubts from the old clientele about whether it would be as good as it was before, whether it will have the same ambience and charm or even quirkiness. Tonight, a packed house at the Union Chapel has no doubts that this revamped Penguin Café still has everything that the old one did and has added some delicious extras as well.
That stop-start mania leaps at you right off the bat. They turn on the taps and liquid craziness assails us immediately; that searing acoustic drive, the internal rhythms and prettiness of the drums and guitar together, ever entwining and ever expanding, twisted into unexpected shapes. The cheval gallop, the occasional strut of the guitar or its dizzying cyclical patterns, or even the Spanish-inflected modesty. It is all here.
For this solo album he’s clearly built on his Erasure-ing — it’s not a swerve into cumbia or zydeco, but it’s also not ‘Erasure minus vocals’. Tempos are typically on the slower end of things and melodies are perhaps more pronounced. Critically though, there isn’t a moment on the album where melody disappears entirely.
To this end, the existence of this film alone is heartening. Varda now sits at a place where a documentary like this can get green-lit; broad, populist, removed from the academic and cinephile discussions she was once the reserve of. Here we get Varda by those that new and loved her and her work; her family, fellow filmmakers and critics, and as such it’s by no means a deep dive, though enjoyable all the same.
A track that finds "Blass Schlafen Rabe"’s sleeping raven caught in the tumble of some synthesised ambulance / car horn honk. A Keystone Cops comedy that sizzles in its simplicity, finds Holger a zombified poet in a driven piano gallop beset in peculiar interjections and shifting signatures that insistently flood you with plenty of pigeon-toed footwork.