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 […]
Ipecac Still sporting the best hair in rock, King Buzzo is back with the latest iteration of his wonderful musical monstrosity. Pinkus Abortion Technician is the kind of album title that’s designed to make you go “…wait, what?”
Upset The Rhythm When the lovely clear vinyl copy of this latest Terry album arrived, I have no idea who they were and from where they hailed; but on putting it on the stereo, it could only be Australian. There is something about the sound, about the slightly deadpan voices and tumbling wordplay
PNL Lazy adjective adjective: lazy; comparative adjective: lazier; superlative adjective: laziest unwilling to work or use energy. “he was too lazy to improvise” synonyms: idle, indolent, slothful, work-shy, shiftless, loafing, inactive, inert, sluggish, lethargic, languorous, listless, torpid, enervated, slow-moving, slow, heavy, dull, plodding. *
Self-released God’s Teeth And The Interstellar Tropics are a psychedelic improv threesome hailing from Brighton. Suitably mysterious, extra details are scant, but I’m liking the airy acrobatics on this, their third release, GNASH.
Gizeh After a collaboration between guitarist / sound manipulator Jean DL and film-maker Sandrine Verstraete in 2015, Jean called in Canadian cellist Julia Kent to help provide a soundtrack to Sandrine’s latest video installation The Great Lake Swallows. Over a perfectly succinct twenty-six minutes, split into four subtly different tracks
Tom Bench interviews composer and film-maker Phill Niblock as he embarks on a series of concerts around Europe.
Fish Of Milk (Australia and New Zealand) / ReR Megacorp (Europe and Japan) / Northern Spy (Americas) This newbie from Australian improv giants The Necks plays a Charlemagne Palestine-like long game (or it appears so) in a snakes and ladders of subtle tone shifts and erosions. A deceptively simple premise that sleekly seduces, seeps in there, tingles in the fragmentary unison of a trickling piano and scattered percussives.
Thrill Jockey I was fortunate enough to catch Glenn Jones playing with Cul de Sac in support of Damo Suzuki many years ago and their freeform repetition was a perfect match for Damo’s mantra-like vocalising. The freedom and experimentation that Cul de Sac embodied is quite a contrast to Glenn’s solo guitar work, and really goes to show how varied and thoughtful he is as a performer.
Hubro Yet another ideas-filled release from Hubro finds Anja Lauvdal and Hans Hulbaekmo from improv monster Skadedyr joining up with double bassist Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson to strip things down a little and see how far they can push the capabilities of a piano / bass / drums trio in the light of how far Norway is pushing jazz. This is not necessarily jazz as we may recognise it, but more three […]