Le Petit Mignon / Staalplaat Like the ages-spanning computer game tropes that oki-chu‘s eye-popping artwork celebrates and its music soundtracks, the dayglo psychedelic sounds of Sammo Hung Quest II: Cursed Demons Season are splattered across the soundscape, mirroring the pixelated sprites from the LP labels that find themselves reflected in the half-face visor of the skull-necklaced cyborg gamer that adorns the LP’s unfolding outer sleeve.
Linus Tossio
208 posts
Front And Follow Rolling in on thecacophonous curls of “Yadnik”, battering the shore like the after-FX trails of the still-crashing soundwaves of Flying Saucer Attack‘s Rural Psychedelia, Kemper Norton‘s third full-length album slips in from the sea like a summer storm heavy with stories to be told.
Riot Season So that time that the Butthole Surfers made a grindcore album — well, something closer to a “pure” grindcore album, anyway — that really happened, right? When Shit And Shine went back through a lysergic wormhole to an alternate 1989, cribbed the murky production (lack of) values and gibbering vocals, then shunted everything through as many effects as possible? That’s what this is, isn’t it? Because Teardrops sort […]
Front and Follow At once a split release and a collaboration, the first instalment in Front and Follow‘s new series of joint releases, The Blow, finds IX Tab and Hoofus sharing the honours on this limited edition cassette and download edition.
Trace From the opening strum and distinctive twang of Mark Beazley and Michael Donnelly‘s twin bass strings, Discover The Lost sweeps up the listener in its warmly-curving arms, holds on tight and soothes the cares of the worlds outside away. This it does over the course of the next ten instrumentals with a similar ear for the simplicity found in detail, the subtleties perceived in a deft turn and an […]
Fourth Dimension Like a woozy descent into the abyss, Gary Mundy‘s latest emission as Kleistwahr seizes control of the horizontal hold as well as the vertiginous, propelling the listener into a seemingly endless spiral of dissolution and unheimlich disturbance.
Substantia Innominata The latest instalment in Drone Records‘ series of double 10″ vinyl releases comes from Pepijn Caudron, AKA Kreng. Commissioned for a dance piece choreographed by Kevin Trappeniers, and performed in Ljubljana by Dagmar Dachauer, Selfed is envisioned as a metaphorical method for breaking down the borders thrown up by both the individual and society.
Zoharum Presented in a double-disc package containing both CD and DVD versions, the former holding the music in standalone album format, while the latter combines it with the visuals, which are not merely an addendum, but integral to WIDT‘s work.
Easy Action Where most bands opting to record a take on of one of their influential favourites would opt for a more or less straightforward cover version, Band Of Pain main man Steve Pittis chooses instead to invite Andrew Liles and Lucy Cotter to join him in re-imagining the anonymous poem “Still Falls The Rain”, as found inside the upside-down cross adorning the inner gatefold sleeve of Black Sabbath‘s eponymous first album.
Play Loud! Since first appearing in 1968, Silver Apples‘ “Oscillations” — and perhaps to a lesser degree the flipside track, “Whirly-Bird” — have gradually become to be recognised as key pioneering moments in the history of electronic music that they most assuredly are. Play Loud! have pulled out all the stops for this, the first re-release of the single since its first appearance nearly half a century ago, giving […]
Zoharum Recorded between 1989 and 1992, Maëror Tri‘s Hypnobasia, Sensuum Mendacia and Somnia were originally released on cassette by various European labels, the latter appearing as one side of a split tape with Nostalgie Eternelle.
Qilin Recorded in the Gothic church of Saint-Étienne in Cully, Switzerland by the duo of Tobias Preisig and Stefan Rusconi on violin and organ respectively, Levitation sets out to do just what its title suggests, albeit subtly and in a reflexive mood. Thanks to the close miking, the sounds the pair extract from their instruments are examined and extracted in peculiar detail, and their respective tones and timbres […]
Essence Originally composed for two festivals in Berlin and taking its title from the SI unit of measurement of ionising radiation dosage in human tissue, Sv (or Sievert in full) is both immediately recognisable as Nadja and quite the departure for Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff. While the duo’s love of all things droney and epically skyscraping is present and correct, so too is an incipient percussive trickle […]
Robustfellow Prods. Psychedelic trio Был замечен (transliterated and truncated to B-Z for short) bring the heavy noise from Kharkiv, dealt out with a steadfast determination to fry the listener’s brains while shaking the rafters that’s entirely admirable. Their second album стало ещё только хуже (It Just Got Worse) sets out on a mission to befuddle, bamboozle and all-out confuse over five tracks on two sides of compact cassette […]
Aagoo Diego Martinez has been active as Lumen Lab for half a lifetime, shifting Mexico’s underground electronic music scene into new and varied dimensions well outside its established comfort zones since starting out at the age of fifteen in 2000. Drawing on an evident love of hardcore punk and the many and varied forms that dance music has taken in its long journey from techno into something altogether […]
Purple Pyramid Beloved Gong frontman and Soft Machine legend Daevid Allen‘s posthumous album, recorded not long before his death in March 2015, finds this most extraordinary of musicians in the company of Don Falcone (Spirits Burning), Michael Clare (of Allen’s own University of Errors and occasional member of the far-out collective Mushroom) and one of three drummers, Trey Sabatelli (The Tubes), Jay Radford (also from University Of Errors, […]
Hallow Ground (vinyl)/Umor Rex (cassette) Eis Heauton is an eminently suitable title to describe what Driftmachine are up to on their second album under that name. The duo of Florian Zimmer (Saroos) and Andreas Gerth (of Tied & Tickled Trio) certainly allow and encourage their devices to live up to both the group moniker as well as the Greek term that refers to being in conversation with oneself. εἰς […]
Black Plague Operating at the intersection between the dingiest of dark ambient, noise and post-industrial electronic gloom, Hell Follows turns out to be a more spacious affair than Aderlating‘s previous delves into the murk and mire. However, Maurice De Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues, Seirom, Cloak of Altering etc) and Eric Eijspaart leave no drone unturned nor mordant exposition too clearly laid out — while there is now a certain […]