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 […]
Kev Nickells
202 posts
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 […]
Self-released Been sat on this for ages like an absolute fuckstand, but it’s a grower. Or perhaps a seeper, in the sense of the dreadful mould problem in Brighton, or the inexorable vortex of death. That kind of deal. You’re probably not familiar with Sam Cutting, but if you are […]
Transgressive tl;dr: does this sound like the best thing you’ve ever heard? If you answered yes, read on. If it doesn’t, kindly fuck off or listen to it again, you feckless wank. So here’s the good news: it’s the album you wanted because you listened to “It’s Okay To Cry”, […]
Cherry Red Arcane shibboleths wasn’t necessarily the core of The Fall, but they were often the grist in the coal mill. I’ve bloody prevaricated on this review for yonks, which is ridiculous as it’s The Fall album I’ve probably listened to most since that fateful week in 1997 when I […]
It’s May, so it means that it’s time for Kev Nickells to get the Eurovision ball a-rolling with the annual round-up of what’s grot and what’s not. Gay Christmas comes around so quickly and by the spirit of Judy Garland we are once again blessed with another bumper bonanza of Eurojoy this […]
Faber and Faber tl;dr – you probably need this book if you’re a fan of Can. You probably need it if you’re a fan of well-written things about music.
American Dollar Bill : Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous To Look At Face On Thrill Jockey So so so… I’ve got probably more Keiji Haino albums than anyone reasonably needs. My heirarchy tends to look like Haino solo > Fushitsusha > anything else. He’s got a pretty intimidating discography […]
Little Miss Echo Recordings This is the debut EP from Johanna Bramli, who is possibly better known for being one half of “motorik electronic pop band Fröst“, but I’ve not actually heard them, while I have seen Bramli a couple of times at live shows around Brighton. And verily she […]
Mark E Smith may be gone, but not forgotten by Kev Nickells. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to the last order’s half past ten, brevity’s the soul, a fucking time ago innit. By […]
Cherry Red And with the coming of the seasons, lo a new Fall album. As ever, bastards to write about. You’ve probably established some sort of perspective on The Fall and, as I’m in my twentieth year of being a bit unwell about The Fall, I’m fairly sure that perspective […]
Music Information Centre Lithuania This has the descriptive title of Anthology of Lithuanian Art Music in the 21st Century, which could mean a few things, but what we actually have is a load of contemporary compositions from Lithuania.
Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records Metal isn’t a particularly progressive genre, in a lot of ways; for all the fluff that people throw at it, musicologically speaking, it’s rarely divested itself of fairly conventional tonalities, regular 4/4s, flattened out timbres and limited melodies. I appreciate that’s kind of “the thing” […]
Bureau B I think the first thing that should be mentioned about this record is the press release. Breaking all form and convention, it’s readable, witty, descriptive and — get this — actually tells you some information about the record.
It’s the time of year in Europe when days grow longer, spring blossoms multiply andthe Eurovision Song Contest heaves into view; which also entails Kev Nickells going through each and every entry with a vengeance.
Self-released There’s a handful of genres that, arguably, benefit most from never actually changing. Hardcore (punk), for instance, hasn’t had an idea since the ’80s. Gabber was perfect from the get to. Black Metal operates in some weird space in my head where I sort of assume it hasn’t changed […]
Intravenal Sound Operations I wanted to start this out avoiding the clichés that plague writing about Diamanda Galás — “banshee” &c — but there’s a problem. There’s an analogue between how challenging her work is and how challenging writing about it in a non-facile way is. It requires a pretty […]
Westworld …as I always say, anyone who looks at the Fall track-by-track, rather than the correct way, which is as one discrete body of work – is, no pun intended, a fool. Tobi Blackman, Dictionary Pudding When I was doing my masters, there was a seminar several times a week […]
Every Contact Leaves A Trace It seems like only a few weeks ago that I was reviewing the last batch of ECLAT releases (and that was largely due to my tardiness), yet here we are in 2017 with another pair of releases. I gather that these were released fairly late in […]
Karlrecords The classic thing to say about Iannis Xenakis is that he’s fairly close to being sui generis. Oftentimes, that’s the sort of compliment that can feel fairly weak — which is to say that there’s not a musician operating that doesn’t think they’re not sui generis, but the majority of […]