MiG/Captain Trip After spending the last few years playing live with Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard, Klaus Schulze thought it was time to get back to playing some ‘pure’ Schulze live and this is exactly what this double disc delivers. Schulze had not played in Japan since 2003 and these shows were set up by a fan of the man. It seems as if Klaus took this on […]
The Lexington, London 19 January 2011
It's a red-light night tonight at The Lexington, north London's finest whiskey bar and excellent venue to boot. Red décor and red lights make for a surreally-flattened visual experience, as if watching tonight's bands during one of the more blood-soaked sections of Suspiria. But there's no gothic horror show from Eat Lights, Become Lights - their take on psychedelic immersion is far more in the Düsseldorf tradition, as befits what is effectively Klub Motorik's house band.
Polyvinyl/ATP The release of Deerhoof vs Evil means that San Francisco-based Deerhoof have been putting out their genre-hopping ditty-bopping noisy beautiful schizophrenic pop for about 16 years now – for the record, that’s 60% longer than the Beatles were around. Deerhoof haven’t sold nearly as many records as the Beatles though. Even in France, where the Beatles have apparently sold less records than astigmatic Greek charity-shop stalwart Nana […]
Triple Bath The title Soundscape Study is immediately misleading – while ostensibly sourced from the sonic ambience of dreary and audibly sodden holidays (in Scotland’s Isle of Barra and France’s Fitou respectively), this disc lacks the arid mic-fetishising of a great many soundscape pieces. Daniel Hignell has come to this work with a peculiar ear for the ambient sounds of thunderstorms and tidal crashes, holistically stitching and interlacing […]
Dekorder The latest offering from Campbell Kneale (late of the recently-disbanded ambient/drone outfit Birchville Cat Motel and also responsible for the immensely heavy [post=”black-boned-angel-verdun-2″ text=”Black Boned Angel”] doom project) finds him tackling the wonky end of electronics (de)composition in what comes over as part demonic exercise in digital bricolage, part attempt to submerge the listener in so many sounds that . Dissonance in expansion is the order of […]
Topplers Topplers Records are an old-style independent label based in Scotland who specialise in limited runs of beautifully presented eccentric pop gems. Depending on your point of view (or age), it’s a sign of either the label’s willful obscurity or unquestionable genius that a high proportion of these releases are by ex-members or associates of Swell Maps. To someone whose formative years were soundtracked by the likes of […]
ROIR
Like many of the best things in life, the Legendary Pink Dots are a mystery. At least, it's a mystery how come they're still so criminally obscure, when not only have they been releasing awesome music for a good thirty years now, they also have tunes and a fanbase who tend to verge on the obsessively evangelical side of things. They straddle genres like a post-modernist doing the MC Hammer dance over an ADD sufferer's iPod, with everything from industrial to pop, from jazz to space rock, from folk to dub being dragged into Edward Ka-Spel and co's music factory, later to emerge from the crystal chimneys as beautifully majestic music.
Staubgold As the slipstream of punk washed its way through the record industry in the late 70s and early 80s it seemed to many of us that commercial music might be changed forever to become permanently open to imaginative, offbeat constructions and general weirdness. That was, of course, the kind of naïve illusion that makes youth bearable. What really happened was that the genuine musical revolution happening at […]
Applebush/Easy Action Back in the late 60s, Up were part of the same fired-up Detroit scene that gave us the MC5 and the Stooges but have been largely forgotten over the years. This is perhaps understandable as their only releases at the time were one and a half 7” singles – 1968’s “Just Like an Aborigine/Hassan I Sabbah” and “Free John Now,” which appeared on a split release […]
The Forum, London 17 December 2010 This is Earth calling, this is Earth calling…… It’s mid-winter, snow is on the ground and Arctic winds blow and London is bought to a stand still by Tube strikes and 2cm of the white stuff (no not the “Right Stuff”). Beaming down from their planet, Hawkwind are on their usual winter solstice space ritual tour and tonight is its final night. […]
The Scala, London 11 December 2010 The first time I saw The Orb play live was at the time of the release of their album Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. At that time the techno/ambient/trance scene was at an all-time high with a plethora of new bands using psychedelic images and pushing at making the underground become overground. The Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds” drifted through the spring and summer […]
Neurot Run Thick in the Night is USX‘s (as they are sometimes called) fifth album and the first I have heard and I’m really quite impressed… The album begins with the 13 minute opus “In the Night” witch starts off with a guitar and keyboard drone reminiscent in sound to that of The Doors‘ “The End” before the track catapults into the main section of big power chord […]
Important Smegma was formed in Pasadena, California in the early 70s, found no fans there and moved to Portland, Oregon, though they’re still an important part of the Los Angeles Free Music Society. Geographical lessons aside, in addition they have made wonderful avant-garde free noise improv music ever since. So a new release by Smegma is always something to look forward to, and not to be drowned in […]
Leather Apron News having recently reached my ears of a troupe of performing “Gentleman Ne’er-do-wells” giving themselves the grandiose name of The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, who have of late been Turning a fair few Heads, chiefly among the lower orders and the varied Forms of Scientists, Slatterns and Scum of London’s East End, I despatched a young Boy, who had been lurking around […]
The Vortex, London 3 December 2010 It’s thirty years now since Eyeless in Gaza released their debut single, “Kodak Ghosts Run Amok” (1980), and in all that time there’s never been a moment when they could be made to fit in with whatever else was happening around them. In the early days they were seen perhaps as part of DIY post-punk; once signed to Cherry Red they were […]
Mark Sanders has been a professional drummer for almost thirty years. His diversity is unmatched, running the gamut between jazz, free improvisation, pop, avant-rock, modern classical, dance, new complexity, dub and folk. He’s one of the few free improvisers who integrates the learning that he accumulates from these broad activities: most improvising musicians’ approach rarely synthesises or overlaps their sets of experience from other styles. You would be hard pressed to find musicians currently working within free improvisation who he hasn’t worked with.
There are four main ways of making music that sounds different to anyone else: by devising your own conceptual framework; using rare or unique instruments and equipment; developing an unusual approach to your instrument; or by training until your technique is broader, faster or more specialised than that of other players. Depending on your level of insecurity you may reinforce these with deliberate obfuscation, whether that entails removing the labels from your vinyl, claiming that you don’t understand or aren’t interested in your own process or ability, hiding your equipment or simply not answering questions. It depends whether or not you’re afraid of the competition or you think you’re the kind of person who’s only going to have one decent idea in your lifetime...
Ectopic Ents Orchestras. I wanna talk about orchestras, the poor maligned things that they are. Once mighty engines of bombast and glory, capable of simultaneously breaking your heart and conquering the world, like smooth-talking dictators of sound. People rioted at the opening performance of The Rite Of Spring. Hitler had a successful second career as one of those guys who concentrates rather too much on the bits of […]