The writer and director of the zombie-not-zombie horror classic 28 Days Later reunite in a commendable if not completely successful attempt to produce a sequel that revisits the same storyline after an entire generation’s worth of time has passed, and during which they’ve hopefully matured as filmmakers here in the real, and perhaps not all that different, world.
Hedvig Mollestad on guitar, with Ellen Brekken on bass and Ivar Loe Bjørnstad on drums are a power trio in the old sense of the term with the riffs on opener "See See Bop" truly heavy and distorted. They ply a slow, boogie rhythm with an epic '70s production that brings to mind ZZ Top with that kind of Southern-fried sound, but blown through with noise.
Having delivered two top-drawer albums already this year from this side of the Atlantic – in the form of recorded outings provided by The Gentle Spring and Brian Bilston and The Catenary Wires (see Freq reviews passim) – the indie-pop renaissance operations of Skep Wax now enter a creditable new co-release arrangement with the US-based Slumberland Records for two like-minded East Coast ensembles.
Finnish pianist Antti Lähdesmäki plays in a number of different groups. but for We Tend To Help Each Other Out Here, it is just him and his piano. Over thirteen diverse pieces, he allows his personality and the foibles of the instrument to insinuate their way into our consciousness.
Brussels-based composer Valerie Leclercq has been recording as Half Asleep for the best part of twenty years. Although essentially Valerie's brainchild, there is assistance from like-minded friends who allow her unique vision to be brought to fruition.
Having hooked-up as a low-key instrumental explorer super-duo of sorts in recent years -- under the moniker of Whin – the Glasgow-based Martin John Henry (De Rosa, Jewel Scheme, Henry and Fleetwood) and Robert Dallas Gray (Life Without Buildings, Even Sisters) unpack themselves again for near-simultaneously dispensed solo albums. Whilst both releases feature varying degrees of supportive intermingling from the pair, they plough determinedly divergent furrows.
Since the last Neurosis album back in 2016, Steve von Till has concentrated on his solo career, releasing seven solo albums, including this one, that continue to plumb the depths of Gothic-tinged Americana and explore his relationship with melody in ever increasing ways.
To a certain extent you know what to expect from a Loscil album, but somehow each outing is very different from the previous, the imagery specific to a set of ideas.
A militant-singleton serial killer, whose MO is to target couples on Valentine’s Day, makes the mistake of picking on a pair of work colleagues (who are just friends, no honestly, definitely not going to fall in love by the end, no way) in this farcically fun mixture of horror and romcom.
The constant state of evolution for Constellation Records is a wonderful thing. As they approach their thirtieth anniversary, the label continues to release essential albums from doyens of the Canadian underground that cover all musical styles. post-classical chamberHere we have two very different string-oriented releases that use the post-classical chamber genre as a starting point
Five years after his thematically interesting and thoroughly gripping adaptation of the story of The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannell returns to Universal Studios’ pool of classic monsters, only to find that someone’s clogged up the plughole with hair again.
Running to over an hour and spread over eight tracks, Henke allows the repetitive nature of the techno-oriented beats to run without boundaries, but the electronic details and evocative atmospheres are what make the album something which piques the curiosity.
...it’s also Desertfest weekend, so I’m off to sunny Camden Town to see the world’s finest collection of Orange amps and hear some of the finest crushingly loud music available.
With the addition of Marc Sarrazy on piano for one section and Loïc Schild on drums and metallophone for the other, the initial idea transformed into something more abstract and ritualistic; an ever-evolving widescreen sweep that sets various textures against a desert wind backdrop.
As the schemer-in-chief, Benicio del Toro’s stone face is a perfect vehicle for Anderson’s deadpan style of humour, and his capacity to straddle even the thickest borders between good and evil, nasty and nice, callous and ingenuous, allows him to play with the darker tone of his director’s latest verbose, and unusually action-packed, screenplay.
Bassist and composer Vilhelm Bromander has reconvened the players from 2023's In This Forever Unfolding Moment and they are now trading as The Unfolding Orchestra, taking the previous ideas and extending them, creating four very different long-form pieces that allow the talented musicians to play against one another and push themselves a little bit further than the last release. There are a few changes of personnel, but on the whole it is the same group and that familiarity gives them a greater sense of adventure, covering far more ground than before.
Fear Street: Prom Queen splits the difference between its twin target audiences of ageing VHS-weaned gorehounds and their phone-thumbing teenage descendants with [pullthis id="axe"]a big axe[/pullthis] and a mordant smirk on its face. Its thrills are cheap, and it panders to your basest requirements; but then the exact same thing could be said about a Netflix subscription.
As we near the end of Glaciers, so the pieces grow sparser, a lugubrious atmosphere of impending doom is upset by the most incredible vibe shimmer and the two instruments as they circle one another collapse into one another’s arms, spent for now and drifting away, becoming more and more distant, leaving the listener with echoes of what came before