The Purple Turtle, London 19 April 2011 It’s Sunday, it’s sunny, so a 6.30pm start time for a gig seems terribly early, especially when you have the choice between a sweaty venue or a cool pub beer garden, oh well….. Also putting on four support acts before a main band on a Sunday when public transport is hardly at its greatest (even Lori S from Acid King pointed […]
Crass “Feminism – what happened?” (Eve Libertine). (Writer checks footing on soapbox. ‘Secure? Good. Let’s go…’) This is a ridiculous record. I’ve never listened to Crass before, and I was still the other side of birth when it was released. Ridiculous and offensive, really. But not the record itself. Oh no. It’s brilliant. No-one. Obviously. The problem is that this should, by all reasonable rights, be a record […]
The Underworld, London 18 April 2011 From the very first beer-waving introduction to the crowd eagerly awaiting the return to what would seem to be their favourite London home from home, Weedeater arrive in cheery mood, lapping up the adulation and ripping straight into a fearsome “God Luck and Good Speed,” as powerful a statement of intent as any sludge-doom-stoner-rock band is ever likely to open a show […]
The Scala, London 12 April 2011 Sabbath Assembly is the rather surprising spin-off from noise-manglers and avant scribblers the No-Neck Blues Band. Surprising why, exactly? Not just because they show that, yes, they are actually good musicians, but that they can also play tight, Seventies-style power pop of the sort which has a solid groove at its heart and an earnestly-sharp, clear guitar raising the rooves, church-band style, […]
Llanberis Slate Museum 25 March 2011 to 3 Aril 2011 It was a soul-destroying experience to grow up in Wales back in the seventies in the knowledge that your entire country had only ever produced one single role model of any value. The frustration was further compounded by the fact that hardly anyone here seemed to have even heard of him, certainly not the Welsh media, and the […]
Dekorder In their download panic frenzy, labels and artists are coming up with ever more ingenious/desperate ways of providing attractive bonus content with their physical releases. It’s common for CDs to feature bonus video content, but as far as I’m aware, this is the first vinyl record to offer bonus video footage – on the actual grooves of the record itself! The aptly named Rotary Signal Emitter is […]
Monty Maggot OK, let’s start up here with a massive amount of respect to Lee Potts for putting this together. For from the above website, all you have to do is pay the P&P and the disc will wind its way to you from the cosmic reaches of outer space to brighten up your day. The album starts with the Omenopus track “Call Your Name,” a beautiful melancholic […]
Onomatopoeia The Rising of the Lights is a record that feels exceptionally English – if someone said it was some hitherto unreleased Canterbury Scene opus, or some obscure Matching Mole side project, I’d likely not arch an eyebrow. It’s a record that’s indebted massively to Drake‘s tenure in Cardiacs, though a great deal less acerbic and more light and whimsical. The first two tracks particularly shimmer in a […]
Bar-None Even at their peak, The Feelies were not the most prolific of groups, but this fifth album appears almost exactly twenty years after the fourth, making it a substantial wait for even long term Feelies fans. The group’s phenomenal 1980 debut Crazy Rhythms was one of the dozen greatest records of the twentieth century and it was no surprise that it took the group six years to […]
Drifting Falling Kontakte are one of those bands whose music is determined to make all the angst and cares of the world slip away into the place buried far, far away from the territory which they map out with bright-eyed enthusiasm, a landscape participated in through endless journeys and defined by bright colours sharply-defined in broad, dynamic strokes. This is not to deny the hint of melancholia, but […]
Esoteric He is the God of Hellfire, and he brings you FIRE! No really, he does. Back in his 1968 prime, Arthur Brown really wasn’t fucking around. Watch the contemporary Top of the Pops footage of the finest Yorkshireman ever to leave the Dales, his flaming helmet burning like Osiris reincarnated in Manchester, and then try telling me that Alice Cooper – and a whole generation of latter-day […]
MVD Audio This document of the reformed Stooges‘ performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties on 3 September 2010, seemingly shows the band to have not lost any of their visceral belligerence in the 37 years since the release of their classic third album. The CD contains versions of all eight of Raw Power’s songs (in a different order), together with lost single classic “I Gotta Right,” all . This […]
Bureau B After their welcome batch of [post=”cluster-roundup” text=”Cluster-related releases”], Bureau B now turn their attention back to the present, and a brand new album by one of Krautrock’s spiritual offspring. Kreidler have always seemed very much the children of Can with their real time grooves that somehow sounded more precise than machines. Their earlier austere miniatures have gradually given way to more expansive grooves and tonal palettes […]
MVD Audio Where do you start with the Dwarves? Having listened to this album words like offensive and puerile spring to mind; I guess I am a bit older and wiser since I last listened to them. That being said I do have few of their albums in my collection and on very rare occasions when the family are far away and I fancy some mindless political incorrectness […]
The Troxy London 2 April 2011 So nostalgia culture bravely forges into the ever more recent past. John Foxx ambles amiably on; I think people are welcoming, the odd chin wobbling in appreciation, but this is not a high energy crowd. I am used to hot venues, sweat dripping off the walls, a cloud rising off the mosh-pit. This, however, is the heat of the retirement home and […]
Tin Angel Green and grey, the grass and the concrete, the juxtaposition between the natural world and the man-made built environment that must now co-exist with it, ideally in harmony, yet in practice all too often in conflict. Across the 11 tracks contained within, New York-based Canadian cellist Julia Kent builds a beautiful tone poem in which to explore the tensions inherent in humanity’s relationship with the world […]
L.M. Duplication In the early 1980s, Ivo, founder of the 4AD record label (historic home of acts including The Cocteau Twins, The Birthday Party and Pixies, and current label behind Camera Obscura, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Tindersticks and Scott Walker), was given an audio cassette by razor-cheekboned Bauhaus frontman Pete Murphy. Although it was an umpteenth generation copy, and probably sounded like it had been recorded through an […]
Lizard If prog is still heretical, NichelOdeon are some top league profaners. Il Gioco del Silenzio has lots to keep puritanical ‘keep it simple’ sorts foaming: plenty of sax, classical flourishes, frequent time signature changes, operatic singing in Italian… There’s also a generous helping of instrumental sections lingering too long to be realistically be chaperoning the vocals. And by God, it’s some of the most dramatic music I’ve […]