Important The second album-length outing from Lesbian finds the self-professed prog-doomsters reaching further into the upper reaches of the psychosphere on a craft constructed from some seriously heavy sounds and equally convoluted musicianship. Lesbian like to rock, they like to soar, and it’s quite possible they’re rising high over the […]
Linus Tossio
Rooster When this album was released way back when, in 1996, it was at a moment when electronic music of all sorts was riding high in the charts and otherwise, and stoner rock riffage as produced by a hirsute quartet from Bristol somehow became buried in a slew of trip-hop […]
The Forum, London 18 July 2010 Skinny Puppy shows are pretty much bound to be weird, and more than a tad befuddling; bemusing even. Where else can a grown man shimmy onstage dressed like cross between a lightshow-bejewelled Torquemada and the dead king of Sutton Hoo, all pointy white cone-hat […]
Pan Sonic‘s extirpated crackle and hiss approaches the low end of dub with a fiercely deracinated edge, not so far removed from the stepping imperative as might perhaps be assumed from its harsh extremity. This is the sound of oscillators and radio noise in decaying mutual orbits, the capture and […]
(Leather Apron) What do you get when you cross a dandified occultist comedian (Andrew O’Neill) with the jovial former frontman of Creaming Jesus (Andy Heintz, now rather splendidly decked out in purple muttonchop whiskers), the drummer (Ben Dawson) from Million Dead and another comedian, Marc Burrows, on bass, all with […]
Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London 22 & 29 January 2010 Strange Attractor Journal, now in its third edition of writings promoting unpopular culture, has long been intertwined with the visual, musical and performing arts. For January 2010, the Strange Attractor machine has moved into exhibitionist mode, taking over the Last […]
Dingwall’s, London 7 August 2008 Chrome Hoof should be appreciated by the light of a billion braincells misfiring; by the sound of a world exploding, because that’s what they’re capable of resembling on a good night – and tonight is one such event. Though it takes while for Dingwall’s to […]
Label: Beta-lactam Ring Records Format: CD Fom the opening blasts of the title track, it’s apparent that Epitafio a la Permanencia is going to be more than just strange – it’s going to be weird. First off Un Festín Sagital get top marks for impersonating Magma within the first few bars, then […]
Label: Central Control International Format: CD,LP Not so much a supergroup as a superhighway-connected collective, mostly based in the south of France, Strings Of Consciousness delight in melding acoustic instruments with electronics, sliding one over the other and processing the former with the latter. The results could be messy, or could be described as extremely […]
Label: Vivo format: CD Featuring guest musicans (or sound carriers as Damo Suzuki prefers to refer to his collaborators) from Rovo, Ruins and the legendary Hoppy Kamiyama of God Mountain records and Optical*8, The Fire of Heaven at the End of Universe was, as its subtitle indicates, recorded live at […]
Bush Hall, London 11th May 2007 Bush Hall is a strangely grand venue for A Hawk And A Hacksaw to appear, all faded burlesque glamour in the plaster cherubim and beneath the voluptuous chandeliers. Given Jeremy Barnes‘ reinvention and re-imagining of a multitude of folk styles, the image conjured by […]
Sunrise Label: Ektro Format: CD Alotus Label: Klangbad Format: CD Operating at the junction between hard rocking metal and psychedelic space exploration groove melodramas, Circle‘s sound is certainly enveloping in a total manner with nods to the Kosmische sounds seeping across the other side of the Baltic Sea to their native Finland for the last three decades […]
Label: FatCat Format: 2LP,CD Sometimes there are groups who are so off the wall that it’s a bit of a trip just hearing them for the first time. With Animal Collective, it’s fair to say that their oddness continues for the second, third and pretty much every listen, and Feels […]
Label: Ad Noiseam Format: 12″ Forsaking his love of distended gabba-ragga-breakcore noise for something not entirely unrelated, Jason Kohnen has applied his carefully-crafted breaks and furious percussive cut-up skills to grindcore metal – and what a rushing mashup the result is too. Big riffs meet monster bass and hyperspeed rhythms, […]
– Does The Cosmic Shepherd Dream Of Electric Tapirs? Label: Space Age Format: CD – The Penultimate Glactic Bordello Also The World You Made Label: Dirter Promotions Format: 4CD With a band as prolific and expansive as the Acid Mothers Temple, it’s somewhat difficult to select a “typical” release to […]
The Forum, London 9 October 2004 Having reincarnated with a new touring band as PTV3, Genesis P-Orridge returned to the London stage five years after his triumphant – if ultimately unsatisfying – Royal Festival Hall cocking of snooks and other no doubt pierced appendages (how does one pierce a cocked […]
Label: CTI Format: CD Based on Cosey Fanni Tutti‘s inital live Selflessness action at Disneyland in California in May 2002, EAR Four aims to transmit her feelings of disorientation and being placed apart from of time the resort engendered. Remixed mainly from recordings made on site and and then broadcast […]
Label: Locus Solus Format: CD Charles Hayward‘s unique observations on the grimness and greatness of human existence are usually slightly off to one side of the general flow of music and song, and Abracadabra Information is decidedly at a tangent to, but entirely redolent of the pains and pleasures of […]
The Garage, London 9 April 2004 It’s good to know Thrash is alive and well and kicking up a stir, and tonight The Garage is graced with a queue down the street and eventually with a venue full of The Kids, Heavy Metal or otherwise, almost visibly churning with excitement […]
Label: 13th Moon Format: CD There is something at once comfortingly ordinary and outrageously Other about Alien Sex Fiend – the extraordinary seems such a part of the Fiends’ image that they wear it to the point of blending into the landscape of the musical landscape. Nik Fiend has always […]