Mr Youngs is an incredible tour de force; a musical maverick, who shares a striking resemblance to Blue Peter presenter John Noakes (or is that just me?), both of whom coincidentally have an amazing capacity to make something out of virtually nothing. I’ve witnessed Richard Youngs totally captivating an audience for 40 minutes with little more than a penny whistle, and still have vivid memories of the spittle […]
Drag City Listening to Cave is a motorik clockwork trance. Visions of huge gleaming chrome puzzle pieces in the sky twist and churn like some angelic Mecha. Cave are clearly obsessed with minimalist German psychedelic music from the ’70s, as Threace is chock full of pulsing krautgrooves, but this time the band expand their bag of tricks to include other underground sounds of the decade. Threace veers between […]
Iotacism Back in the day, there was tape-trading. Conducted by post, y’know, when there was a postal service rather than a mausoleum of “a good idea we used to have”. I used to do a fair amount of it. It was a great way to find out about stuff you didn’t know about. Someone would put together a selection of stuff they liked, and you’d do one in […]
Corsica Studios, London 15 October 2013 Corsica Studios was once again filled to bursting for the return of Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. for what seems to be their London home (alongside Café OTO). The crowd’s anticipation at seeing the Japanese psych legends was at a high, but unfortunately we would all have to wait. The support band was running over time, this was compounded […]
Bristol 14 October 2013 Motorway delays meant totally missing most of Teeth of the Sea‘s set… I’ve been loving their latest Kraut-infused offering Master for some time now and was eager to get that all-important live perspective, but only ended up catching the trumpet soaked finale. A Miles Davis-shadowing sundowner of a track on anti-phonic wings; parabolic, infectious…the briefest of taste that left me floundering in the disappointment […]
Mute Released as a taster for the forthcoming Spectre album, the S EP finds Laibach in slower, reflective mood on the opening “Eurovision,” the track unfolding with almost trip-hop intent in a fashion which harks back in tone to 1992’s Kapital. Of course they can’t help but get epic on the refrain “Europe is falling apart” – but even then the bombast is held back, and instead there’s […]
New Wave Films Irish film maker Pat Collins, largely known for his documentary work, has successfully merged genres here. The star, Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhride plays a sound recordist of the same name and it just so happens that Bhride is a sound recordist in real life. Seemingly not a natural actor, the scenes have this extended reality to them, which transcend the boundaries of fictional cinema and […]
Seventh Five DVDs into Magma‘s series of live sessions at Le Triton,we find the pioneers of Zeuhl way out there beyond the Theusz Hamtaahk trilogy and exploring some of the stranger byways of their œuvre along with some dazzling new material. The entire programme runs to about two hours. There are a few interludes during which audience members, including Steve Davis, are interviewed about their relationship to the […]
Bristol 8 October 2013 The Exchange was rammed… Anthroprophh (Big Naturals and Paul Allen) were sprawled in front of the stage, their kit eating away at the room’s capacity. Sounded even better than when I saw them back in February, but tucked into the back corner of the venue, I couldn’t see a blinking thing! After squeezing through the sardined bodies I managed to catch their blistering finale. […]
Leather Apron Hi there. I have some shocking news for you. You ready? Hogarth was wrong. HOGARTH. WAS. MOTHERFUCKIN’. WRONG. Yup. You heard right. Hogarth, with his celebrated piece of anti-gin propaganda, Gin Lane, was utterly wrong. (He was, however, right when it came to its companion piece, the pro-beer Beer Street, but that’s not really relevant here. I’m all about the Hogarthian WRONG). . Also, nobody in […]
Bureau B Remember that brief, optimistic period in the late ’90s when it seemed that every style of music could be bettered by adding electronics? Like William Orbit‘s Pieces In A Modern Style or Tortoise‘s dub-infused exotica, we were hell bent on improving the past and stitching it to the present. That mission has been re-instated on Tiden, the second collaboration from legendary future classicist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, best […]
Peripheral Conserve A few predictions: you like sleeves by Babs Santini. If you’re my age you’ll have spent a fair amount of time in obscure record stores and fairs staring at Nurse With Wound covers and wondering if it’s worth the 25 – 100 quid they were asking for the original vinyl. You’ll have grown to love those sleeves even if you didn’t shell out at the time. […]
LM Dupli-cation Bahriye Ciftetellisi is the fourth release on Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost(AKA A Hawk and a Hacksaw)’s new label LM Duplication, which is proving to be prolific considering it only gave birth to its first release a year ago. From the moment the percussion kicks in on the first track after Cüneyt Sepetçi’s clarinet solo “Bahriye Cif Ciftetellisi” proves to be an aggressive assault to the […]
Rocket Bloody hell lads. Bloody hell. So I’ve seen Teeth of the Sea a few times. First time a good four years ago when they were playing with Gnod and Thought Forms at a time when Gnod were, with due deference, about the best band in the country. So my memory of that night is a bit tinted in Gnod’s colours. TotS live, as I recall (this is […]
Corsica Studios London 29 September 2013 Ok, there was a lot of buzz on the internet about these shows. First it was the fact that this would be Mainliner’s first European tour for a long time, and second that it would not feature the original line up. But the more I thought about it the addition of Bo Ningen’s Kawabe Taigen wasn’t such massive leap into the realms […]
Bureau B I have to say I was ignorant of Asmus Tietchens until he played recently in Brighton at Spirit of Gravity (an experimental electronica night that’s very much worth your time if you’re in the area). A load of my mates who were of age in the ’80s speak in hushed, reverent tones of the man Tietchens. I have to confess, I’m often a bit sceptical of […]
FatCat Blurbgloss: Niger, cheap gear, poor part of the world. Seems like Tal National are more like a big band (shifting members) than a group/band per se. As with proper parts of the world with a decent live music culture (e.g., everywhere other than the UK), they play five hours sets most nights. It seems like they’ve been popular for a fair while and, as with a million […]
Bristol 27 September 2013 This trio were incredible! The noise flowing from them was full on, bouncing with a rip cord of incentive and bold colour. A lock-horned, tri-cornered combo of gristly riffs going off into wah-wah Hendrix hedonism. Drums becoming bass, guitar chiselling percussion; a bewildering soup of pure energy, blissfully heavy in the repetition department, spurring off into delicious landslides of angles and tempos. Just as […]