Music For Nations Hi there. Can we talk about Justin Broadrick again? I like talking about Justin Broadrick. What’s that? Hymns remaster? That’ll do nicely. OK, let’s talk! Justin Broadrick has been responsible for more amazing music under more identities and in more bands than I have written pieces praising them, which is quite a lot. Final, Jesu, Techno Animal, Napalm Death, Pale Sketcher… the list goes on, […]
Album review
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Divine Records This is what Time-damaged sounds like and I’m not sure this is a good thing. I don’t believe the sleeve notes any more than I believe the record. Something is very wrong about this record. Actually, that’s not true at all. In fact, there are too many things that are just right about it. It’s just too… convenient. A quick confession (for most of you this […]
Important I first heard Overhang Party via their contributions to a couple of PSF’s Tokyo Flashback compilations back in the ’90s and a CD-R of their second album 2 that cultural commentator Jon Savage gave me around the same time. Since then I have almost completely failed to find any records by this most elusive of Japanese groups, the sole exception being a copy of their (I assumed) […]
Staubgold It’s unusual to encounter a CD reissue where the ubiquitous ‘bonus tracks’ amount to more than inessential filler. The extras here, taken from the group’s first single and LP, turn out to be far superior to the actual album itself. The good news is that there are no less than 23 of them – swamping the LP proper’s meagre 17 songs and making this CD an invaluable […]
Convexe (N America)/Salvo (Europe) At the end of 2010, the Metropolis television company organized a series of intimate concerts at their London studios, each showcasing a ‘heritage’ act to 140 people, each of who paid £175 for the privilege. Apparently a glass of champagne and a meeting with the artist was also included in this price. The series included Caravan, Barclay James Harvest, The Zombies, Roy Harper, Bill […]
Future Noise The Pop Group reunion gigs seem to have revitalised Mark Stewart. Rather than basking in the overdue glory accorded his old group, Stewart was straight back in the studio recording his first solo album for four years. The Politics of Envy came out last March, featuring guest spots from many of his punk era peers – Keith Levene, Gina Birch, Tessa Pollitt, Richard H Kirk, Youth […]
Handmade Birds Spluttering rupturing, discordantly eviscerating the sounds and tropes of analogue and digital synthesis, Takahe Collage arrives in three parts but leaves music (once again) shredded in to far, far more. The first two pieces, the title track and “Tendeko,” weigh in at around the half-hour mark each, and after a through listen their presence soon becomes inscribed upon the ears like a permanent tattoo. “Takahe Collage” […]
Monotype When listening to noise, collages, field recordings or other kinds of abstract music, new compilations have always been a welcome listen. Mainly as it is usually very diverse, and for me almost never tiresome. The Grief That Shrieked to Multiply is of course not a compilation as such, but a collection of remixes, done by a big number of well known and some unknown artists from the […]
Gizeh/Southern Aidan Baker‘s Already Drowning marks something of a departure for his solo releases, as each piece finds him collaborating with (in this case, women) singers with lyrical inspiration coming from the likes of Angela Carter, Philip K Dick and various folk sources. recorded over the space of two years, it’s also one of Baker’s most assured works in an already impressive catalogue both as a solo artist […]
Cardinal Fuzz For their 2013 contribution to Record Store Day, Mugstar unleash eight tracks (previously available as a tour-only CD) which emerge over the space of two sides of vinyl in an almost continuous mix of muscular psychedelic rock. Each instrumental merges with the next, the fading-out split between each side providing a suitable point to remind any stoners who might just possibly be listening that it’s probably […]
Rise Above Purson’s first album has been long awaited in some quarters. After the sell out limited release of their first single “Rocking Horse” and support slots for both Electric Wizard and Comus there’s been something of a buzz about this band and this LP doesn’t disappoint. “Wake up Sleepy Head” is a beautiful acoustic opener with lush-sounding Mellotron and owes much to the lineage of ’70s psychedelic […]
Rustblade As Legendary Pink Dot chemistry lessons go, this latest instalment to the series burns with a slow slip of reality, the simplest backbone of rhythm caught in the tattered net curtains of Edward Ka-Spel’s mind. Absorbing word weaves hooking you in as the trancelike vibes dribble the vowel fall, reflecting everything back panoramically from inside an idea’s skeletal sheen. Love “Immaculate Conception”‘s agoraphobic airs: the slippery backing […]
three:four . But not only that. I hear a lot of new experimental music, and some of it has as a sound or quality that will wear you out if you listen to full albums. Not necessarily on account of the music itself, which can be very interesting and varied, but some experimentalists tend to use the same approach to the soundscape or palette of sound throughout an […]
Grönland Brian Eno once famously stated that there were three crucial beats in the 1970s: Fela Kuti’s Afro-Beat, James Brown’s funk and Klaus Dinger’s NEU!-beat. The latter – a hypnotic, strict and Spartan 4/4 that Dinger initially christened the ‘lange gerade’ (‘long straight’) or ‘endlose gerade’ (‘endless straight’), and later referred to as the ‘Apache Beat’ – came to be virtually synonymous with entire canon of German music […]
Sulatron “How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland “A very irregular head” is how the late, great Syd Barrett once described himself, and from the sounds blasting from my stereo Dave Schmidt AKA Sula Bassana could lay claim to the same quote. Dark Days is the fourth Bassana album, […]
Black Axis Pombagira‘s last album Iconoclast Dream was a revelation to me with the immense dirty darkness they presented. Upon receiveing a brand new CD from the duo, hopes for more dark dirtyness appears in my mind. But after the first spin, I was in doubt. I am not sure if it was the day, or anything else, but it didn’t do anything for me at the time. […]
Requiem Productions NXP is a solo noise project from Norway, focusing on ambient noise, sometimes rythmic, sometimes just dirty noise. He collects samples, field recordings and various sounds and instruments to create his world of darkness. I see this album in two parts. The first three tracks are quiet dirty ambient noise. So quiet from the start that you have to go and check whether you have turned […]
Invada Loving that crayon lava of the cover, sleek minimal, that infra red chalkiness dwarfed by a sea of matt black, a darkness from which the title track “Landing” seems to howl. An epic opener, that grinding millstone riff all Bolan-esque beef, . An incredibly powerful vibe, made more so by the purposeful drop into a reflective quietness which effectively notches up the tension for the raw-throated re-entry […]