Music On Vinyl / Seventh Claude Vorilhon was a racing car driver. He was a typical French man of the 1970s. Long hair, cigarettes, fast cars; he probably watched Un Homme Et Une Femme in the cinema. All of this changed for him abruptly at the end of 1973 when he had an alien visitation from an entity that called itself Jehovah. Those of you who are looking […]
Trace It still amazes me after twenty years or so how Mark Beazley can still make the bass guitar sound so different and vital across his various releases as Rothko. It feels like a personal crusade, a one-man (sometimes with help — Johny Brown, Michael Donnelly) to keep that cavernous echoing dream sound alive in the hearts of the listening public; and Rothko albums never fail to overwhelm, […]
Courier Sound Back in 2018, while creating sleeves for Graham Dunning‘s keg/Bulkhead release, Stuart Bowditch recorded the sounds of the Silhouette Cameo 3 plotter cutter and then offered it as basis for other artists to record a response. Now, if like me you have ever worked in an office and been surrounded by the rhythmic, mechanised sounds of copiers, printers, bursters, plotters and the like, you may have […]
Cherry Red Choose your own opening pun adventure: BEATification; aPOPtheosis. Mark E Smith as can/n/on. In fact naïf-historiographical Fall are legions worse than Nicene method – the archive is interminably tumescent, engorged for torrid bores. Better still see what Falls off the table, innit. Method — you see, this boxset is all 1982. An auspicious year. The year I was born. Now, I’m not arrogantly claiming my presence […]
Temporary Residence The recent collaboration between Date Palms‘ Marielle Jakobsons and Cali guitarist Chuck Johnson under the name Saariselka has yielded an album of exquisitely crafted and slow-moving beauty that employs steel guitar and the romantic thrum of Fender Rhodes to devastating effect.
Chocolate Monk On their second album, Psanck turn in a sprawling yet concise document of impressionistic free improv and modern minimalism, transporting you to some mud-spattered Welsh village to witness an ancient, timeless ritual.
(self-released) Meriheini Luoto‘s love for the forest and how the violin can be used to translate the mystery and wonder that it entails was used to excellent effect on 2017’s Metsänpeitto, which received much critical acclaim. Having been given the opportunity to perform it live, the idea was sown to produce a sequel and two years later, here it is.
London 17 October 2019 “Crom! How do the Four Winds get in here?” one might be forgiven for thinking, stepping into the Shepherd’s Bush Empire through clouds of weed smoke from the pavement outside. And it would be entirely appropriate, as the first band to take the stage this evening are Liverpudlian “caveman battle doom” merchants Conan. And they are mighty indeed.
Rockerill / Freaksville Josy And Pony have been gigging all across Europe since their first album dropped in 2017, and now they return with another fun-packed ride through the important matters of the day — but given their unique twist on ’60s French pop, ’90s indie and carefree hypnotic abandon. It is all topped off as ever with the mysteriously masked Josy’s winning French vocals, sometimes sultry, sometimes […]
Beggars Arkive Was it really forty years ago that I popped into my local Our Price record shop on my way home from school to pick up a copy of Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric“?
Zehra Cross-genre collaborations, eh? They’re sometimes banging, sometimes embarrassing. Gnawa trance from west Africa meets luminary of free jazz doesn’t fill one’s heart with hope, but rest ye assured, this is much closer to a banger.
London 4 October 2019 The last time I saw Magma live was at an incredible performance in Paris in February 2017, when they played backed by an orchestra. This added an extra stirring and unearthly quality to Magma’s already off-world sound. It was also the finest performance I had seen the band play in the many times I have seen them. Islington Assembly Hall is a perfect kind […]
Important At some point it’d be nice to talk about a composer who’s a woman without reaching for the term “overlooked”. But here we are. Éliane Radigue fits that pattern well: gorgeous tonalities, sensuous, modest, quietist… disinclined to shout about herself, letting the music do the talking. She operates somewhere on an axis between musique concréte and minimalism, primarily working with Buchla synths and generally being affiliated with […]
Hubro Just looking at the cover of this album with Oyvind Skarbø and his musical friends and colleagues dressed as a school marching band gives you a vague idea of what to expect inside. They have quite serious looks on their faces, but the uniforms are a bit ill-fitting, as if they were borrowed and not taken too seriously. They are clutching various instruments that make them look […]
Babymetal Nine years into the fold, third album, first without Yuimetal. Where are we at with Babymetal? Well. Basically, the thing that was bangingest about the earlier stuff was that it was an astonishing mess. Stock metal riffs, abrupt major keys, hoover synths, super cutesy choruses and children way too young to have the slightest idea what they were up to.
Bristol 6 October 2019 Getting to finally see the Circle offshoot Pharaoh Overlord is a real treat, a melodic spattered-smorgasbord of kraut-inspired groovesomness. Theirs is a full-on sound, juttering in multiples, holding a riff perfectly, mulling it round in daggering dynamics, then throwing it to a glittering horizon that combines with the strobe lighting to just eat into your head.
Cobblers Diagonal don’t trend to release albums in a rush, this being their third since 2008; but once they are in the studio, the ideas come pouring out. It has been seven years since The Second Mechanism and since that time, two original members, Alex Crispin and Daniel Pomlett have returned to the fold, the band once again becoming a six-piece. In the past few years, life has […]
Riot Season The cover of The Cosmic Dead‘s new album Scottish Space Race appears to be making an impassioned plea for national independence, depicting as it does a Scotland that is so independent it has become an island away from all the bullshit going on in the rest of the UK. And right now I can’t exactly say I blame them. But it’s not a political album. It’s […]