Play Loud! So here we are in London’s salubrious East End, in a period between the wars and reflecting a very different area to the one we know now. Except kind of not — London’s always been a mix of people, so no great surprise that ’20s London had Eastern […]
Kev Nickells
202 posts
Disciples I’d like to imagine there’s some Freudian primary school where aspersions are cast heartily on people’s unconsciousness, though one wonders the effects of Oedipalising on ‘your mum’ jokes. Phew describes this album as “an unconscious sound sketch” and, for all the half-finished-ness that might imply, she’s got a thoroughly […]
Mute Despite impressions of the “are they still going?” sort, Erasure records are always worth a bash. Arguably, unlike a lot of their synthpop contemporaries in the ’80s, they’ve consistently respected the format. A bunch of songs, not too long, no faffing about with excessively long instrumentals. Pop discipline, that’s […]
Editions Mego The panoply writ “disruption” was cursed paratactically; or better, pastiche’s ante-noumen should imperatively be considered hypotactically. That is, without hesitation or compunction — res ipsa loquitur — but also mured qua violence (a tendril disavowed ‘twixt Richard of St Victor / Libidinal Economy).
Bright Shiny Things It might be that “landscape”‘ is as much defined by borders as it is landmass. Jobina Tinnemans‘ music (arguably) has a dual relationship with landscape — when we say the landscape of electronic music, we might mean IDM, electronica, soundscapes, field recordings (etc), each with their own […]
Cherry Red This has been out a couple of months by the time you’ll read this. Do we worry about release cycles any more? I’m not too worried. Though there’s a strong chance that the core Fall fan, especially the sort to salivate over studio slurry, probably does worry. Bless […]
In Real Life Sometimes music appears in front of you and it seems to have come from nowhere. Like, it definitely slaps but you can’t quite plot how it got to be. Meth Math fit that description.
Intravenal Sound Operations St Galás of the plague. Obviously now is the perfect time for a re-issue of this most excruciating of records. Insofar as the general fuckedness of everything is front and centre and needs a soundtrack.
Nahal The Ondes Martenot is one of those instruments that’s absolutely lovely, but has struggled to find an identity for itself. It’s in the realm of early electronic instruments, and it’s consistently used for swoopy spacey things and occasionally in the work of Olivier Messiaen.
Elli Because who doesn’t want to have a record that’s recorded largely with scraping chairs on a floor? No-one, that’s who.
With virtually every public event in Europe and beyond cancelled, postponed or taking place on screens only, it comes as no surprise that the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 will not appear as a live and direct spectacle from Rotterdam to a billion television sets this May; but never fear, for […]
Eyeless Well, well, well. Look what these cats dragged in. There’s a witticism of Simon Munnery‘s that’s springs to mindd with this record: “Shakespeare says, ‘brevity is the soul of wit’. I say ‘Bum’. Thus, I win”. In Threads‘ schtick, such as it is, lies in vignettes of skittery improvisation, […]
Unbound Barely a biography, but… to say this book is a labour of love would be misleading; love is typically überflüssig. This is a labour of precision. And when I say it’s unsentimental, I don’t mean it’s lacking in affection; rather this is a sober, reasoned, and concise exegesis on […]
London 19 October 2019 Compere: “Jesus is a …” Audience: “CUNT!” [giggling] This is about as highbrow as it gets all evening. Camp as the campest tits. There’s also a punter dressed as Jesus displaying his irritation at everyone wearing the “Jesus is a cunt” t-shirt. #lol #classicbants.
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
Universal Music Enterprises It’s probably a fair assumption that the more rabid Velvet Underground fans clocked this on its first CD release in 2015. But if you’re not that, and also can’t be bothered with reading the remainder of this review – tl;dr – this is a very good live […]
Important Pauline Oliveros, if you’re not in the know, is somewhat of a hero in twentieth century composition and music theory. She’s also criminally under-recorded. She’s also, perhaps most frustrating of all, very difficult to pin down on a recording. Discogs currently lists sixty-five releases, but few of those are […]