London 16 June 2011 Returning to the London stage after testing the waters at Hellfest, Roadburn and the redoubtable Supersonic festivals (the latter of course taking place on their home ground in Birmingham), GC Green and Justin Broadrick make an admirable choice to not overdo their stage dressing at The Forum tonight. One modestly-large amp stack each, and a screen for projections, plus some smoke. Actually, a lot […]
Meltdown The Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 17 June 2011 A soaking rain in London tonight makes it thinkable to skip out on a trip to the South Bank Centre and opt for home movies instead. In New Orleans it can rain much harder and you’d never think of staying home when there’s good music to be heard, so I try to take on that spirit and trudge on. […]
Tin Angel I love Little Annie’s voice. It’s a time-stretched instrument; a voice wracked with melancholy, a voice you’ll find singing alone in a bomb-blasted, ex-colonial hotel at the outer edges of the Empire. The press release puts her way down in the mix, as if she’s on there in the same way she was on Coil’s Love’s Secret Domain, but this is misleading. This album isn’t hers […]
The Lexington, London 22 June 2011 What can be said about The Cesarians that hasn’t already been described, outlined, put into the public sphere? That Charlie Finke is one of the great cavorting besuited frontmen of the century? That Justine Armatage arranges tunes to set the heart pounding and the pulses racing while being cool and intellectual too? That the ever-evolving band can multitask like no-one’s business, swapping […]
GEO Gagarin’s sole member Graham ‘Dids’ Dowdall, has played with various cult and avant-garde and electronic musicians over the years including Nico, John Cale and Suns of Arqa. This polymath of musical activity may go some way to explaining the patch-bay electronica of Biophilia as it majestically slides through 11 tracks of uneasy ambience. At times it’s hardened-edge electronics seems to have more in common with Ben Frost’s […]
Neurot The Valley Path is a spiralling one track mini-album that last just under 40 minutes (that would have been a full length album in the old vinyl days). The track opens with doom laden three note riff with sad sounding vocals that put it more in the vein of Boris and Om as it sludges its way to a wonderful psychedelic guitar solo that sonically uplifts the […]
Riot Season I’m in a marquee, somewhere in the midst of pre-Empire, pre fucking ‘Glasto’ Glastonbury. An odd hour. Somewhere just behind me, people are bartering over the price of admission to the Healing Pyramid: “Nah, mate; three quid each.” “Each? But it’s the same energy, isn’t it?” “If only it were, my son, if only it were (shakes head sadly)… you should see what the Orgone Accumulator […]
Klangbad In The Brain of Moebius, Moebius – his mind now encased in a hairy Frankenstein-style monster body – responded to taunts from Conrad Schnitzler, and the two Kraut Lords battled it out in a mind-bending contest which saw Moebius eventually chased out onto the mountains, plummeting over the cliffs to his doom… Now I admit I could have that wrong. It’s possible that 1971 in fact saw Schnitzler […]
Constellation Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Becki Foon’s (Thee Silver Mt. Zion) latest release as Esmerine (now expanded to a quartet, with harpist Sarah Page and percussionist Andrew Barr) is dedicated to Lhasa de Sela, the Montréal-based singer-songwriter who succumbed to breast cancer in 2010. I know nothing about Lhasa, but I’m guessing this is a fitting and heartfelt tribute. The tones are uniformly elegiac and […]
[Self-released] Two sides of Mr Hignell’s [post=”daniel-alexander-hignell-soundscape-study-001″ text=”oeuvre-coin”] here – first, his math-rock (ish) band affair, and second his more ambient/home listening outings. Some Cartographers is the hopefully final name the band previously known at various points in the last six months as (deep breath) Bygrayvpartynmyrytarm, Tourist killed in Shark attack and Mockery Goggles. I’m not sure if it’s me being a miserable bastard or if the song […]
Spectrum Spools I saw someone head-butted over an album like this. Well, I say headbutt but I’m guessing it was more an headglance, a floppy-haired headslash, a vaguely embittered coming together between two Kosmische fans with half an eye on the past and a bellyful of animal tranquilisers. I’m paraphrasing, but it seemed as if Kosmische Fan 1 (you know what he looked like) was angry at Kosmische […]
Daddytank Hangin’ Freud‘s Sunken has been lurking around like an illicit bruise on the interwires for a while now. And now it’s got a proper release on a CD, the sleeve all soft-focus dirty purpley hues and malevolence. The release made me quite pleased, for two reasons: first, I forget to listen to things if they’re not physically in front of me; second, it’s too good to be […]
Innova Lukas Ligeti: Paris Hilton of c21st avant-garde. No, that’s bollocks. I just wanted to say it. I did pick this CD up because György Ligeti is one of my favourite composers, and Lukas is his son. But, save for a striking similarity in surname, there’s only glib, superficial similarities between father and son: bits of Pattern Time could bear a passing resemblance to Ligeti Sr’s “Movimento Preciso […]
Room 40 John Chantler hasn’t released any significant solo albums for seven years and The Luminous Ground suggests he’s spent that time wrestling with his machines until, finally, he’s given up and has let them speak for themselves, twisted electronic entrails and all. The album opens with a peak-experience rush of oscillation, no gently evolving crescendos here, we’re thrust right into the eye of the storm; wave upon […]
[Self-released] Ok, cards on the table: my cards are not metal. In the game of music, I picked up a ‘go straight to noise, do not pass metal’ card in my teens. I’ve picked up on a few things here and there since – you know, the sedate stuff. Agorophobic Nosebleed or whatever. All fun and games. I wouldn’t say metal wasn’t my cup of tea. But I […]
Tin Angel “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” In the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel, broke and depressed, inserted this insanely great Biblical quotation from Corinthians into a little number he managed to belt out in a mere 24 days. The fact that the end product of this feverish tumult of composition was The Messiah, one of […]
Optimo Simon Reynolds has a great new book out entitled Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past, in which he argues that pop culture has been killed off by its obsession with its own past and that we are now trapped in a mire of tributes, reissues and revivals. It’s his opinion, and being a music journalist, he has a fair chance of being wrong but hey! […]
Klangbad Listening to new Klangbad releases is like visiting a beer festival – no two releases are ever the same yet none of them are ever less than enjoyable, and many prove quite intoxicating. This month sees two almost simultaneous releases, both by ad hoc quartets that feature Klangbad boss and Faust organist Hans-Joachim Irmler. While B.I.L.L. are presented as a democratic foursome, this similarly improvised release gives […]