Sumerian A logical follow up to Side A, Palaye Royale‘s Boom Boom Room (Side B) is exactly that, the other side of the album that didn’t quite make it to the first cut, but is still worth a listen. I find it is quite a mirror image to the first side, with the first four or so tracks being uplifting and fast, still with the ever-present angsty lyrics about […]
Thrill Jockey Thalia Zedek has spent a long time in the independent music trenches, becoming particularly well known for periods in Live Skull in the 1980s and Come in the ’90s, plying a ferocious strain of guitar-orientated indie-rock. For the last ten years however, Thalia has fronted her own band and over five albums, including this latest, has allowed life and the influences of complementary band members to […]
Glitterbeat Stella Chiweshe is somewhat of a legend in certain circles — a real global advocate for mbira music as well as a feminist icon — playing mbira at a time when colonial (then) Rhodesia forbade it, establishing a woman’s music festival in Zimbabwe, and all that good stuff. Of course this isn’t why you should buy this record. You should buy it because it’s lovely and you like […]
London 24 September 2018 There is a buzz about tonight’s concert, a certain energy filling the air; it’s a good vibe, full of excitement and patchouli oil goodness. It was 1966 when The Pink Floyd (as they were known then) last played The Roundhouse (on the back of a truck) and it seems that some of the people who attended that benefit show for the International Times (the […]
Fourth Dimension / Foolproof Projects Andy Pyne and Lisa Jayne, who make up the duo of Map 71, have been highlighting their hinterland that exists somewhere between myth and dreamstate since 2014. Perfectly described by Lisa’s book of words, Mutant Dreams, they inhabit and document that precious point between waking and sleeping where things appear normal, but have a touch of the surreal in the tiny details.
Beggars Arkive A case study in writing reviews on the cheap: – where possible, try and ensure that the audience is already familiar with the music. The upshot of this is that everyone’s already made up their minds — your writing is only ever manifesting an individual’s preconceptions about that band. Whether fatuous or heartfelt (probably both), the caprice that #musicjournalism is anything other than vainglorious ballast and […]
4AD The first track on Pixies‘ début release Come on Pilgrim takes a dump in your mind with its bad Samaritans and shamanic shears. Thirty years on, it’s still gnawing at you like a raggedy chihuahua as you stumble through the wreckage of a house party’s aftermath. Those heavy drums of David Lovering‘s really feel like there being clambered over, that slow thaw of salivary guitar eating at you as
Sub Pop There is often a sense of familiarity with Low albums. To a certain extent there exists a feeling that we have come to know what to expect when a new album drops. With Low’s twelfth full-length release, however, they have probably done the most that they can or have ever tried to do to cover the trail that the last twenty-five years has left.
A quick catch-up with Robert Sotelo Dan Bolger of The Pheremoans and The Bomber Jackets talks to Robert Sotelo about his new cassette and digital release, Botanical. I first met Andrew Robert Doig (AKA Robert Sotelo) in 2004, when we moved in to the same flat in Dalston. He was in what seemed then to be about a thousand bands, playing guitar mostly, facing an amp. He was hardly the […]
Drag City It has been about eighteen months since David Pajo‘s return with Highway Songs, but what a transformation that period of time has wrought. As entertaining as that cut and paste of ideas and snippets was it, lacked cohesion and was clearly the sound of a man in flux; unsure of his place in the world or the direction in which his music should be going. In […]
Antifrost Drawing on an ancient word for witches across German-speaking Europe in the Middle Ages, Lukas Feigelfeld‘s film Hagazussa is a gloomy feast for the imagination where plague and paranoia paint an atmospheric treasure-trove of unease. A gothic feast for the eyes
Transmutation LTD I must admit, after experiencing Autunna Et Sa Rose and Julie’s Haircut, I have been looking with fresh eyes towards our Italian brethren, and the latest surprise to wash over from those shores for me is Sigillum S. Having started back in the eighties and embracing a multimedia existence, the three main protagonists have released the best part of thirty albums.
Ahead of this year’s Fort Process festival, headliner Rhys Chatham kindly lent his words to some questions posed by Kev Nickells. For this edition of the festival, he’ll be bringing a performance of his solo work Pythagorean Dream. Kev Nickells: So the first thing I’d like to pick up on is a point from the last interview I did with you — there was a bit where a distinction […]
Om Kult Another unsettling listen from the master of extreme – Rudolf Eb.er, Om Kult Volume I is a cerebral feast that cancers the comfortable with needlepoint clarity. The carrion flies that dart between your hemispheres, those dirt dragging paws. It’s a focused feast that predators a pulse, shadow-plays a closely mic(ed) drama
Gizeh I imagine that Richard Knox, head honcho of the wonderful Gizeh Records, uses A-Sun Amissa as a kind emotional bloodletting, giving himself the opportunity to move in the kind of rarefied places and breathe in those mystical atmospheres that his other musical charges do.
Bristol 8 September 2018 Luckily zero nightmares on the parking front meant we only missed a small portion of Microdeform’s set, a colour-washed dronescape, needled by fractured dissidence. These tasty elasticated hues pulling you into a kaleidoscope of blistered sunsets, spreading out in grainy after-images
Beggar’s Arkive It’s no exaggeration to say that the late lamented David Bowie cast an immense and glittery shadow over popular music, and it would seem the darkest part of this shadow fell on one Peter Murphy, superfan and Bauhaus lead singer. Bauhaus took the glam aesthetic of the Spiders From Mars, mixed it with the abrasiveness of punk and swapped out the science fiction for horror cinema
Modularfield There is something enigmatic about the idea of a goddess, a sense of mystery and power that is at the same time subtle. Goddess, the duo, give little away in the sterile cover photo of their latest Modularfield release. Faces obscured by flowers, minimal movement. It is as if they are posing for a surrealist still life, but once the cassette starts to roll, then all bets […]