Label: Durtro Format: CD So the story goes that David Tibet of Current 93 found this act in some seedy New York drag cabaret and was so knocked out that he brought them to his Durtro label and released this CD as soon as possible. Well, it is little wonder that Antony & The Johnsons would cause such a stir. Thematically the most “Goth” music I have come […]
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Label: DiN Format: CD A buried thud and muffled melody curve out from this unexpected source of sounds. Collaborations are infinitely fascinating – well, they can be – and yet relatively few happen. Are we really so victim to the village mentality as all that? The headlights of the automobiles along the highways are conjured – passing sounds garbled and warbled as they drive, drive, drive…and how difficult is it […]
Label: Ash International [R.I.P.] Format: CD This is the third in Andrew Lagowski‘s excursions into the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and perhaps the most disengaged from the planet of sound. The theme is escape from Earth and oneself – hence the title. Much more Solaris than Apollo 13 in other words, and with nods to both the end sequence of 2001 and thirty years of NASA research and/or […]
Queen Elizabeth Hall South Bank Centre, London 13th June 2000 The South Bank Centre seemed to be all on with their rules of protocol as I watched David Thomas from a tiny vertical glass in the big imposing closed door or the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I was a little late and the steward decided not to send me and the long line of other late-comers in to take […]
Label: Tone Casualties Format: CD As they say on “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, the Can man can! The Can man can! Uh… hold on a second, that”s candy man, isn`t it. Not Can man. Oh bugger. So what can the Can man do? Fucking tons, as it happens. But this is something of a surprise. As is the fact that, as we reach midsummer, every fucker […]
Label: 13th Moon Format: CD Mr. & Mrs. Fiend sure know how to evolve. First listen to this go ’round of Nocturnal Emissions admittedly made me wonder why they bothered with a pared down version of their sound. Production is nice, artwork is good, and there are the bonus tracks which is a quick mix or two of “Evolution” (the “Hup 2-3-4” mix, the “Back From The Dread […]
The Astoria, London 4th June 2000 Even just standing waiting for Neubauten to arrive on stage for this Twentieth Anniversary tour (!) is something of an enjoyable experience, thanks to the wilfully obtuse nature of some of the instrumentation and sundry kit arrayed on the platform. So ignoring the usual guitars, basses and keyboards (even if it is renamed an EN[soniq] through judicious appliaction of gaffer tape), there’s […]
Label: MDZ Format: LP Here’s a House record with a difference – the tracks are based around a real drummer and bassist. This isn’t to say that Upper Disker should be listened to for the difference, it should be listened to for the music – which is something Oh. do very well. They didn’t give the track “We Rock For You” it’s name for nothing. The five guys […]
Label: Touch Format: CD Clocking in at a nadge over quarter of an hour long, Live At Revolver, Melbourne makes up for its shortness with some intensity instead. The whines and drones of clickety-snickety underpinnings meet tones at fifty paces then closing to quarters more uncomfortable. These things should sometimes be kept at arms length, but bringing the sound of what resembles a wardrobe being manhandled into a […]
South Bank Centre, London 27-29th May 2000 Now semi-permanently established at the South Bank for the past few years, the LMC Experimental Music Festival has become one of the fixtures of the London Improv and New Music scene, struggling through into something approaching mainstream cultural acceptance – though that’s a relative position of course. This isn’t to say that its become particularly watered down, blanded out or easily […]
Label: Hologram (North America)/Fünfundvierzig (Europe) Format: CD O that wacky Joel Vandroogenbroeck! I am on about my eighth listen to Alchemic Universe and what keeps happening is that I forget it might not mean to be so serious. What a bunch of flexing of the ole keyboards! This is Prophet 600tastick! ooo, the DX-7, the Korgs, the Junos even! An Eighties sort of extravaganza of synthesizer music gone […]
After The Deluge 29th May 2000 Jean-Hervé Péron is best known as the former de facto front man for Faust, a group he sometimes seemed to embody the group’s chaotic lunacy for in his onstage antics with chainsaws and naked painting sessions. Following his traumatic personal split with the band after their early Nineties re-emergence, Péron spends his time raising horses and children on his small farm near […]
May 2000 As impassioned and animated offstage as behind his massive drumkit, Charles Hayward radiates a genuine intensity. He first came to wide attention as drummer with the highly influential This Heat as the embers of Post-Punk simmered off into wilder experimental tangents. He has released a dozen solo and colaborative albums, and puts on rare solo live shows which pull the raw muscular percussion at the heart […]
Label: Pagoda Format: CD Having hung out with the Reinforced Records crew, as well as The Future Sound Of London in North-west London while cutting his teeth on the sampler, it’s no surprise that The Rise (AKA Simon Wells) makes the kind of semi-abstracted Techstep Drum & Bass that propelled his breakbeat science in Vortexation and Headstone Lane (denizens of the area may notice a, hmmmm, “streetwise” trend […]
Label: Beta-lactam Ring Records(US)/Beta-lactam Ring Records(UK) Format: CD If this recording of Edward Ka-Spel and Hero Wouters live in concert in Amsterdam’s noted/notorious Paradiso Club in May 1985 still sounds weird sixteen years later, just imagine what it must have sounded like then. Under a throbbing, scuttling digital percussion send off in post-Kosmische rhythm loops, surrounded by a whirl of effected keyboards and analogue lo-fi electronics, the contrast […]
Label: Manifold Format: CD The tentative roughing of the recording – this time out, the sound source is stone. It’s packaged between two sheets of stone. Fucking-a right! Scraping repeats repeats and so forth as other pieces of stone make occasional and spectral appearances. The wow of the feedback moves alongside the scraping repetition spinning in slo-mo dervish joy. These tones fade out and other, subtler tones take their place. […]
Label: Ytterbium Format: CD “What’s that sound?”, from the other room. Brain-wave sounds. Electroencephalograms. “Okay, whatever turns you on…” And so on. I think what he meant to ask was, “What were they thinking when they recorded this?” Which is an incredibly salient point. The sounds come from those brain-waves but what thoughts engendered those waves? So often these recordings by Nakajima-san are tied thematically but what lies behind those themes? […]
Label: Mute Format: 2CD Neubauten. Yeah, you know, Neubauten. (Somehow, after all this time, it’s kind of easy to forget that there ever was an “Einstürzende” in there at all; we are, indeed, on second-name terms. Thorough familiarity.) Because everyone knows what Neubauten do. They hit stuff, make a racket, and be German. Yeah? Fuck off. Well, apart from the third one (although there is a great deal […]