18 Kingsland Road, London 7 March 2001 18 Kingsland Road is not a squat, but looks a bit like one, or that it once might have been. It’s now an art gallery and occasional music venue, with steep leg-endangering staircases twisting into the depths of the improvised cellar bar among the salvaged chairs and exposed brickwork, and up to the tiniest of tiny toilets. It really is quite […]
Label: Planet µ Format: CD This album rocks like a solid gold bastard. This is how Hardcore should be. It’s dirty and brutal to the nth degree. Hellfish will have you bouncing off the walls with this corrosive sonic collage. Hardcore Techno has it’s origins in Hardcore Rave and Gabba – that wonderful amphetamines-only Dutch creation. The sound has much more of a Rap influence here though. So […]
Cargo, London 28 February 2001 It only seems like, ooh, five years since Rough Trade were celebrating their 20th year as the Indiest of Indie shops; tonight’s gig in the cavernous railway arches which are the hyper-trendy Cargo venue showcases some of recent years’ emergent electronic and guitar-droning artists. First up is the geekly-chic Duplo, who continues in jump-cut noise Electro style even through his towered-up PC crashes […]
Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts 25 February 2001 The present-day composer refuses to die, according to Edgard Varese, a man with legendary eyebrows. He also influenced the guy whose music an eager bunch of resurrectionists revived in the Paul McCartney Auditorium. The Liverpool based-band The Muffin Men and the classical Ensemble 10:10 came together to re-create some of the compositions Zappa produced in his thirty-odd creative years of […]
Label: Nonplace Format: CD Ahh, Burnt, you have done it again, wooing the worlds of the cocktail-spping Lounge devil and Electronica studio boffin alike with your splendid charms, equally divided between raunch and drum roll science. How long before the Galactic Prize For Extreme Cleverness will have the name B Friedman inscribed upon its shining sides? This is not a piss-take – Plays Love Songs really is that […]
Label: Eskaton Format: 2CD,2LP Presentation is important. This is an element that Thighpaulsandra understands very well indeed. This double album is packaged in a lavish sleeve which folds out to reveal a epic photograph of the man himself standing by the seaside dressed in really groovy Druid gown, throwing a spell with his magic wand. On the inside sleeve there is a picture of Thighpaulsandra floating a few […]
Label: Caciocavallo Format: 2CD As might be expected, Robin Storey‘s take on drum & bass is somehwat denser than the usual clatter of hyperspeed breaks, rolllllls and rewinds. Instead, the two discs of Cold War Drum ‘n’ Bass are crammed with unfurling meditations in rhythm and texture, linked by the ideas of paranoia and mutually assured destruction of a childhood surrounded by the hardware and attitudes of unfought […]
The Union Chapel, London 21st January 2001 Back at the Union Chapel for another of its most appropriate events, A Silver Mt. Zion playing their coolly Classical and most definitely Goth set from the album “He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms”. Union Chapel being as it is the most gothic of venues sans the cobwebs and Halloween decoration […]
Label: Force-Inc. Format: CD,3LP Auch‘s Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye was by all accounts one of the albums which brought the glitch to the wider dancefloors filled with the minimal Techno put out by Force-Inc and similarly-inclined labels. Here it gets demixed further into the realms of attenuated, deracinated clickety-snips and thumping grooves alike by eleven co-creators (plus one crackling self-mix) of electronic bleeps, belches and occasional blasts. No-one gets a track title, just […]
Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London 17 January 2001 It’s something of a joy to behold – the entire Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer buzzing with anticipation before the start of the London event in the Japanorama tour of eleven British towns and cities. Why a joy? From Kendal to Liverpool, Colchester to Manchester and Sheffield, in venues with capacities of a few hundred to tonight’s couple of […]
Label: Submergence Format: 2CD The psychedelic rock freak out is not dead, despite rumours to the contrary, and Flourescent Tunnelvision is here to prove the point, ramming home on a coasting scrawl of fuzz, wah, delay and phasers set to half-past stun; the amps probably go a long way over eleven, too. The full benefit of this collection is naturally to be gained at the maximum volume the […]
Label: Mego Format: CD One of the elegant possibilities proposed by this record is of the recursion of loop upon loop; as skeins of glitch or oscillator pulse become intertwined around, along or through each other, they work into the backbrain and get the blood streaming to electronic time signatures derived as much from the sine wave frequency as from intervention by Ilpo Väisänen. One of the legacies […]
Club Mesa Costa Mesa, California 19th December 2000 AA23 opened the night, and I thought they had some really, REALLY nice moments. but things did seem a bit sloppy and loose at points – especially with the excessive scratching (which when ON – was wonderful.. but less is more when it comes to scratching). The set was MUCH more active than when they opened for Sol Invictus of […]
15th Anniversary Show Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London 4th December 2000 As usual, I arrived at this show in a rush, a little late and with no idea of what to expect. Straight into complete darkness and tracked by lovely ambient sounds and an over-zealous usher trying to get me to take any seat as there were plenty available and filming was going on, so wandering […]
The Underworld, London 2nd December 2000 What was supposed to be a World Serpent presents show with Sol Invictus, Sorrow, and Ostara turned out to be a lot less/more, depending on how you look at it. Due to illness, Tony Wakeford and Sol Invictus were forced to cancel, and due to lateness(my own), I missed seeing Ostara. I did arrive in time to catch the end of a […]
November 2000 Bobby Conn does his very best to be the model of a post-Modern underground superstar. His two albums to date, Bobby Conn and Rise Up!, have placed him somewhere in a grey area between parody and genuine adulation of crooners, cabaret singers and all-round stars of the spangly stage. This interview took place after his New Orleans gig in November 2000, and as Bobby remarked “I […]
The Garage, London 25th November 2000 Ahhh, poor Suicide… always just missing the boat but still trying to hitch a ride thirty years after Alan Vega claims to have coined the term “punk”. These guys are getting old now, and I must say I did feel a bit sorry for them tonight, faced with a boring as stiffs crowd and faint memories to go on. My sympathy was […]
Label: Threshold House/World Serpent Format: CD,LP Coil, man. What the fuck can you say about Coil that even comes close? Whether they’re slowly frying your brain with drones and disturbingly unidentifiable sounds (Time Machines, for example, or the wonderfully bizarre Elph album Worship The Glitch) or beating the shit out of you with percussion and noise (much of Scatology) they plough a furrow very much their own. A […]