Gwymon The “quiet one” from Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci has been somewhat, well… quiet of late. In the five years since his former group officially called it a day we have been treated to no fewer than five releases from his ex-bandmate Euros Childs and yet We Went Riding is only Richard’s second solo offering, following on from 2006’s superb Seven Sleepers Den. As with his Beatles counterpart George, […]
Ipecac The Bride Screamed Murder is superb. Not at all what I expected, but sees the Melvins in fine form. A Senile Animal (2006) and Nude With Boots (2008) saw the Melvins gelling as a tight four piece unit, with Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover playing alongside Big Business’ Coady Willis and Jared Warren. Now I love both these albums, and I would have welcomed a third helping. […]
Ambolthue/Synesthetic Recordings Apparently this is the debut CD of Torstein Wjiik, which is really hard to believe when you look at his discography, where you can find lots of MP3 and CD-R releases. Wjiik is the alias of Norwegian experimental artist Kjetil Hanssen. Knowing that this young man has been around and producing sound since 2004, some would say it is about time he appeared on the proper […]
Pica Disk The May edition of Jazkamer‘s monthly series starts with an almost twenty minute long drone track. It’s very deep dark and with mellow synth sounds to start with, moving about in my headphones, almost without recognising it, the track creeps upon me, moving more, being more intense and distorted. I hear adding layers, adding sounds, but almost not noticing it. I am feeling relaxed by this […]
Pan Sonic‘s extirpated crackle and hiss approaches the low end of dub with a fiercely deracinated edge, not so far removed from the stepping imperative as might perhaps be assumed from its harsh extremity. This is the sound of oscillators and radio noise in decaying mutual orbits, the capture and release of tensed bass thumps and scarred metallic shards of noise describing the heat death of not only […]
Thrill Jockey Wow, this is a really different kind of Trans Am album. But wow in general, too, it’s also a pretty fucking great album. The first thing that struck me about Thing was its soundtrack-like quality. At points it is more like a vision of Blade Runner rather than the electro rock we know and love from Trans Am. Thing began life as project for a sci-fi […]
Thrill Jockey Lazer Crystal come from Chicago and this is their first full release. The title MCMLXXX is a real declaration of intent, or at least a real advert to the albums contents. And it is, but at the same time it isn’t. I’ve heard many bands that are really stuck in the 70s or 80s to the point of sounding like a stale copy. Lazer Crystal aren’t […]
Pure Pop For Now People Along comes the latest release from PPFN, the label run by Joachim Gaertner of German psyche/kraut powerhouse group S/T, and it’s another that explores the territory somewhere on the borders of electronica and a peculiar concept of pop music. As with most of PPFNs releases, the album is a heavyweight vinyl LP with equally characteristic high-quality hand-made covers. In this case its a […]
Klangbad Faust were the most radical and baffling of all the 70s German groups to acquire the ‘krautrock’ label. Their music was only tangentially related to the likes of Amon Düül, Can, or NEU! – on the group’s early albums, musique concret, tape loop experiments, folky guitars, parping saxophones, proto-industrial noise and impenetrable dadaistic lyrics all rub up each against each other in an endlessly fascinating musical and […]
Southern Rules of music journalism, part 479. Don’t trust any band, artist or performer who claims to actually be from space. Roky Eriksson? Roky Eriksson was actually NOT from space. He just took long holidays there. Sun Ra? Sun Ra was also NOT from space. Like Captain Kirk, he wasn’t FROM space; he just worked there. A cosmic commuter, if you will. (Interestingly, Hawkwind were once OFFERED a […]
Brigadisco Instrumental surf music seems to be making something of a comeback this year, and a most welcome one too. I’ve recently thrilled to the live sounds of excellent Welsh twangsters Y Niwl on a couple of occasions and now the tide has just washed up this split 12” featuring two groups from Italy’s foam-drenched Tyrrhenian coast. The sleeve depicts a pointy-toothed delinquent with a Black Flag tattoo […]
Applebush/Easy Action The world finally caught up with The Stooges when punk exploded, while Iggy himself ingeniously morphed into an alienated teutonic modernist, simultaneously retaining his appeal with the punks while appearing several steps ahead with his two 1977 Berlin albums The Idiot and Lust for Life. By 1979 however, he seemed to have back-pedalled slightly, recording the New Values album with latter day Stooges James Williamson and […]
Earache Canadian speed merchants Annihilator have really gone back to their roots for this outing, and it is going back a fair bit. Annihilator is their thirteenth studio album since 1989’s début Alice in Hell. They’ve undergone numerous line up changes over the years with guitarist, and these days also vocalist, Jeff Waters remaining the sole original member of the band. For all the years and changing line […]
Earache Wow, they don’t make em like this any more. What am I talking about, this is how they make em these days. Its like Nirvana and grunge never happened. White Wizzard, along with fellow Earache stable mates [post=cauldron-chained-nite text=”Cauldron”], are part of what sounds like a NWOBHM/hair metal revival. White Wizzard give us speedy riffs, powerful melodic vocals, and big anthemic sing along choruses … if you […]
Pica Disk The Monroe Doctrine is the March edition of Jazkamer‘s 2010 monthly abum series. This CD is a 30 minute track with full on noise rock free jazz improv beat hysteria. Performers are the regular four piece of Gross, Hegre, Marhaug and Drønen. Beautiful artwork by José De Diego. To make it short, the album immediately struck me as something heavy but lovely, a full on wow-factor […]
(Leather Apron) What do you get when you cross a dandified occultist comedian (Andrew O’Neill) with the jovial former frontman of Creaming Jesus (Andy Heintz, now rather splendidly decked out in purple muttonchop whiskers), the drummer (Ben Dawson) from Million Dead and another comedian, Marc Burrows, on bass, all with a penchant for brass eyewear and dressing up like their great-grandfathers at work, rest and war? The Men […]
(SideOneDummy) All ‘tached up and nowhere to go, here come Eugene Hutz‘s roving raggle-taggle band of gypsy punks, like an Eastern European (via New York) Pogues, raised on Rollins and Biafra instead of Strummer and Vicious. Dressed like a variety of seafarers, circus performers and drunks, the aesthetic is clearly a grubby one as Gogol Bordello take the stage with Ultimate. And, predictably, the crowd go absolutely fucking […]
Rascals, Bangor 2 March 2010 For a supposed “Land of Song”, Wales has thrown up surprisingly few truly great musical mavericks over the years. Sure there’s been John Cale and David R. Edwards, and maybe Gruff Rhys and Brian Lustmord but that’s about it. It may then raise an eyebrow or two that despite her scant handful of releases to date, I wouldn’t hesitate to add relative newcomer […]