With just the two of them on an array of esoteric instruments including electric pencil sharpener, frog guiro, saxello and waterphone, they cover the most extraordinary textural ground and encompass works from the likes of Kandinsky, Pollock, Picasso and Monet. A clear labour of love, the pair bounced ideas backwards and forwards, editing down until twelve diverse and thought-provoking pieces emerged.
We know what No Title As Of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead refers to, but we also know that it doesn’t have to. Yes, it’s the response to that, but though there’s always been clear signifiers in Godspeed You! Black Emperor releases (including references to Palestine) and even clearer references in their actions, the music has often taken a less dogmatic approach, swapping 'mere' words for rhythmic sweep and crescendo, finding emotional aggregates and passion in the interleaving of string and guitar.
It is an intriguing proposition and one that veers over twelve diverse tracks from folk-inflected whimsy to stunning feats of acrobatic electrification. Star Quality starts out fairly simply with acoustic guitar and Eleanor's pure clarity, but with the interjection of a found voice that joins her in an unusual duet. "Willow Tree : A Dialogue" is the only piece with words and the found voice causes an electric bluster in the guitar, a sense of darkness developing as the vocals turns frantic and faintly upsetting.
Past and future intertwine in Alex Emslie's powerful prismatic video for Jack Cheshire's "Let Go Lightly".Haunting revolving landscapes, cityscapes, elemental forces and apocalyptic future visions blend and blur amid perpetual change and transformation. Straddling darkness and light, this piece is an impressionistic meditation on change, technology, life 'out of balance' and the mysterious power of nature.
Recent material lists towards the two-minute assault and it's all fun. It occurred to me that given the tempos and the fact that it's sequenced drums, Melt-Banana may well be the world's most successful speedcore band on a technical level. It's got a lot of similarities with punk and hardcore, but it has an intensity that's uncommon to guitar music, for my money. So let's say they're a speedcore band.
A His Name Is Alive boxed set – Wow! — this is beyond incredible, especially so soon after the Silver Thread pre-group groundwork of Warren Defever’s formative years. Loads of unheard bonus material to salivate over too, enough to fill another three records in addition to the 4AD trio.
...he's certainly not occupying Low territory -- not in terms of timbre, arrangement. Chord progressions maybe. This record is something like an answer to the question "what if Alan Sparhawk got stoned and made a loop-based record with absolutely gratuitous use of vocal effects?"
Over six albums in the 1990s, The Jesus Lizard probably became the benchmark by which post-hardcore four-piece guitar bands were judged and more often than not, those being compared were found wanting.With a rhythm section described by Steve Albini as the best he had produced, a guitarist whose angularity and dissonance were second to none and an apparently unhinged and obfuscatory vocalist, they had it all. Choosing to bow out in 1998 with the under-appreciated Blue, they went on to various other projects so it was received with some surprise and a little trepidation when news arrived of a new album from the reconvened group.
Of all the posthumous records that shouldn't be posthumous. It's a particular cruelty that SOPHIE left us because my feeling is that, while she was definitely 'a name' in certain circles, she'd never quite broken through. The first EPs and that first album (Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-insides) were blinders but all too little. I'll take this record, but I'd rather she was still about.
Bristol 20 September 2024 Well this is a real trip down memory lane. Not only are Seefeel on the road (the last time I saw them was 1995) with the first new material in thirteen years, but they have brought AR Kane along with them to a sold-out Strange Brew. […]
The members of this singular quartet have played together in various permutations for the last twenty years, ever pushing the sound envelope; but here the angle is an acute one. Recording over one day, they based their improvisations on sounds that were generated by synthesisers programmed to listen to and respond to what the players were initially playing. An oddly circular conundrum that turns the idea of AI generation on its head and an intriguing proposition to say the least.
Sonic Cathedral Currently conducting year-long commemorations to recognise two full decades of its stoic existence, the indomitable Sonic Cathedral label is keeping us well-stocked with new releases from both returning shoegaze pioneers in new guises and their younger disciples. Enter then, the debut full-length from Simon Scott’s side-project, Three Quarter […]
The first new music from Seefeel since 2010's self-titled LP is a really welcome return and although now down to a duo of Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock with assistance from bassist Shigeru Ishihara on a couple of tracks, it sounds as though they have never been away.
The fact that the originals are included on the second disc allows the listener to sort of follow the process although Andrew's compositions really only share the lightness of mood and gentle air, choosing banjo as his favoured instrument over guitar. What we have is two thirty-minute selections that share some space but offer the listener an opportunity to take a breath, step back and allow the warm sounds to wash around you.
You probably know 33⅓ by now -- they do book-length essays about albums of interest.It's a pretty broad-ranging series - Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love has had a round, as have (arguably equally) asinine rock standards like Let It Be, Use Your Illusion, Wowee Zowee etc. That's deliberately antagonistic, but for good reason -- the series is arguably part of establishing what 'canonical' music albums are, for which it serves a useful purpose -- while also re-asserting the existing canon, it's done good work in expanding it, or recognising that the average listener has a wider idea of canon now.
Electronic composers Heiko Maile and Julian Demarre have been working together on and off for the best part of thirty years, but mainly in the world of film scores.Finally the duo has decided to release Neostalgia, their ultimate paean to the classic era of electronic music. Uncovering rare Japanese keyboards from the seventies and dipping into ideas that fondly remember the Barrons and Tangerine Dream in equal measure, but also inject elements of tension, recalling the likes of S U R V I V E in the end result, some of which wouldn't be out of place on the Stranger Things soundtrack.
Zappi Diermaier did a good job with Daumenbruch and continues to play to his percussive strengths on this latest faust fragmentation for Bureau B.
It was plain to see from reading the poisoned blood of the lyrics that the overwhelming negatives of the HIV/AIDS epidemic were at the forefront, that misinformed scaremongery that condemned thousands to a lonely and socially shunned death. The same disease her brother (who this album is dedicated to) sadly succumbed to.
Australian percussionist and composer Laurence Pike is always thinking beyond the obvious realms of percussion-based music and over the course of the last few years has been deliberating over a requiem for voice and percussion. The death of his father-in-law was the catalyst that saw this project begin to take shape and what he has finally released is an outstanding memorial that also works as a fine musical adventure.
Over the years the band's sound has changed, but has still remained uniquely ‘them’; no other band sounds like Neubauten. When I first saw them they were the sound of the dynamite exploding the collapsing new building -- now they are more akin to the dust and debris falling to the ground in slow motion.