Industrial …right, so I’ll get the actual review part out of the way, assuming someone’s reading this from either the perspective of not knowing Throbbing Gristle or is interested in what’s new in this re-release/re-master. This shouldn’t take too long, don’t worry. First – if you don’t know TG, and […]
Kev Nickells
200 posts
Striate Cortex You might not know joinedbywire, but if you do, you’ll probably know them for their exquisite packaging. Their latest is no exception to that rule – it’s an entirely beautiful, apparently home-made, fabric-on-hardcase thing which makes me wonder quite why most CD packaging looks so hopelessly crap – […]
ReR It’s a curiosity, this one. I don’t know if you’ve seen Paolo Angeli‘s prepared guitar (have a look on YouTube), but it’s legions more cumbersome than the old crocodile clips and ebows that pass for prepared guitar in some circles. Part of me thinks of tacky one-man-bands when I […]
Raster-Noton Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto‘s partnership is nearing a decade now, and it’s odd to think that (from what I remember), the pairing of a laptop and an acoustic musician was quite odd at the time – especially given Sakamoto’s history as a ‘proper’ classical musician. It could be […]
Touch Field recording is, for me, one of those genres so fraught with problems I generally disregard it almost entirely. Natural environments have a worse habit for being sonically unruly than the average coked-up drummer. A friend reminded me of the rule of festivals recently: “remember it’s in a field.” […]
Zeitkratzer Since 1999 Zeitkratzer have done a sterling job of carving a particular niche for themselves in the under-explored hinterland between academic/serious music and the less academically considered world of noise/ ‘other’. I first came across them on the formidable 2002 release Noise \ … [Lärm], where they interpreted pieces […]
Dekorder Soundtrack albums are troubled beasts – the relationship between visuals and music can forever colour how we feel about the music. Who can hear “Summer Loving” without thinking of that scene in Grease? Interesting, then, that this record doesn’t have the direct film-soundtrack relationship – while it was designed […]
[Self-released] Two sides of Mr Hignell’s [post=”daniel-alexander-hignell-soundscape-study-001″ text=”oeuvre-coin”] here – first, his math-rock (ish) band affair, and second his more ambient/home listening outings. Some Cartographers is the hopefully final name the band previously known at various points in the last six months as (deep breath) Bygrayvpartynmyrytarm, Tourist killed in Shark […]
Daddytank Hangin’ Freud‘s Sunken has been lurking around like an illicit bruise on the interwires for a while now. And now it’s got a proper release on a CD, the sleeve all soft-focus dirty purpley hues and malevolence. The release made me quite pleased, for two reasons: first, I forget […]
Innova Lukas Ligeti: Paris Hilton of c21st avant-garde. No, that’s bollocks. I just wanted to say it. I did pick this CD up because György Ligeti is one of my favourite composers, and Lukas is his son. But, save for a striking similarity in surname, there’s only glib, superficial similarities […]
[Self-released] Ok, cards on the table: my cards are not metal. In the game of music, I picked up a ‘go straight to noise, do not pass metal’ card in my teens. I’ve picked up on a few things here and there since – you know, the sedate stuff. Agorophobic […]
130701 Prepared piano always struck me as one of those ideas that shouldn’t really have stopped dead with John Cage‘s nearly-pensionable pieces. I’m no scholar of modern piano, but I’ve not heard many people having a tinker about with the inners of a piano. A real shame, as I quite […]
Crass “Feminism – what happened?” (Eve Libertine). (Writer checks footing on soapbox. ‘Secure? Good. Let’s go…’) This is a ridiculous record. I’ve never listened to Crass before, and I was still the other side of birth when it was released. Ridiculous and offensive, really. But not the record itself. Oh […]
Onomatopoeia The Rising of the Lights is a record that feels exceptionally English – if someone said it was some hitherto unreleased Canterbury Scene opus, or some obscure Matching Mole side project, I’d likely not arch an eyebrow. It’s a record that’s indebted massively to Drake‘s tenure in Cardiacs, though […]
Lizard If prog is still heretical, NichelOdeon are some top league profaners. Il Gioco del Silenzio has lots to keep puritanical ‘keep it simple’ sorts foaming: plenty of sax, classical flourishes, frequent time signature changes, operatic singing in Italian… There’s also a generous helping of instrumental sections lingering too long […]
Northern-Spy At the risk of prematurely blowing my journalistic load, this is a great record. And that’s the bottom line for any review really. It’s not, perhaps, a record that fits with Rhy Chatham’s reputation for Glenn Branca-baiting massed guitar works. Outdoor Spell is nothing like 2005’s Crimson Grail, at […]
Karl/Aagoo/Nonclassical Classical music, for some, is burdened with various odd stigmas – that it’s somehow posh, academic or too expensive to watch live. In my experience none of these are true – I have the stub of an £8 ticket for a five hour Messiaen opera attended by a musically […]
LF Four new-ish releases here from Bristol’s micro-label LF, run by one Mr Dsic (not his real name), documenting aspects of noise and noise-ish music. A mixed bag, but that’s no bad thing – my weekly shop includes all sorts of things, from washing powder to aubergines (exotic, I know), […]
ReR Steve Maclean’s oeuvre touches a fair few nodes on the circuitboard of ‘experimental’ music – from collaborations with insects, multiple-effected guitars to ensemble compositions and ‘academic’ work, in line with his post at Assistant Professor in Music Synthesis at Berklee College of Music. The first of our two records […]
Triple Bath The title Soundscape Study is immediately misleading – while ostensibly sourced from the sonic ambience of dreary and audibly sodden holidays (in Scotland’s Isle of Barra and France’s Fitou respectively), this disc lacks the arid mic-fetishising of a great many soundscape pieces. Daniel Hignell has come to this […]