OTOroku A decoy is usually defined as a person, device or event meant as a deliberate distraction, something used to conceal the real intension of an individual or a group. Under such a definition, unless they would really rather be performing Viennese light operetta, the success of this Decoy – a collaboration between Hammond maestro Alex Hawkins, London improv drum supremo Steve Noble and bass whirlwind John Edwards […]
Album review
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Imprint “Well I heard that you were spoken for/it’s hard to imagine anyone speaking for you,” sings Amity Joy Dunn in the opening of “Rosy Technology,” the latest Morning Bride single, taken from The North Sea Rising. It’s a great line and one that has fuelled my anticipation as I’ve been listening to this track for weeks after I received my copy of the CD. To call this […]
Bad Seed Ltd Last summer whilst I was living it up in my small way in the south of France, celebrating true heat and the glories of car-crash-like French music spectacles which dominate the season of the votive festivals, I was utterly unaware of the fact that just half an hour away, down a treacherous twisty road lined with diseased plane trees, some of my most revered musical […]
ReR Megacorp Many years ago, I laid my hands on the Der Durchdrungene Mensch/Indianer Für Morgen LP by the multi-instrumetalist duo Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth, a fantastic avantgarde -New Wave/Neue Deutsche Welle/improv record. The way they blended jazz and improv with avantgarde classical and new wave style music triggered me to wanting to hear more of the work of these guys. The duo formed in 1975, and […]
Hidden Shoal The internet is a wonderful thing. I had no idea that western Australia had a rich experimental music scene. With my northern European prejudice I probably assumed that all too brief and rather damp summers were a necessary precondition for musical innovation. But thanks to the web, my prejudices can be confounded. Gilded are Matt Rösner and Adam Trainer, both notable composers and performers in the […]
Tmymtur –Yusei ENSL AMDC So the blurb reads that Yusei (“Spring voice”) is all about frequencies that you can’t hear, up in those registers over 20kHz beyond human hearing. Which reminds me of those audiophile tropes about how analogue LPs transmit sounds well beyond human threshold which make for ‘fuller’ tones and all that jazz. I’m perennially ambivalent about these ideas – I like the idea that somewhere […]
Sub Pop “Feeds my passion for transcendence/Turns my water into wine,”‘ sings Mimi Parker on “Holy Ghost,” the fourth track on The Invisible Way, and if I had to sum up my own reaction to this album, I could not have put it better. Low are a band that have been making music together in various configurations since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker being the cohesive force […]
LF This was conceived after a particularly arduous eighteen months whilst a basement flat beneath Seth Cooke‘s Leeds home was being renovated. Building noise, pneumatic drills, shouting, workmen urinating in the garden… you name it, and it was probably suffered. The sheer beauty etched into the metallics of this disc seem testament to how scarring this experience must have been. In fact Seth describes this work as alchemy, […]
Monotype A couple of years ago a friend took me to Café Oto to see Londoners John Butcher and John Edwards teaming up with US guitarist Elliot Sharp. Not knowing what to expect, I was amazed by the gig, especially learning that Sharp never met the two others before, not to mention never played with them. This ended up being one of the best improv gigs I had […]
Bo’Weavil Here we have a collection of British folk song interpretations by guitarist Chris Joynes and singer Stephanie Hladowski. Without even listening to this album, one can’t help recall the inspiring union of singer Shirley Collins and guitarist Davey Graham on the 1964 album Folk Roots, New Routes – a regular spinner in my car’s CD player. From listening to The Wild Wild Berry, I find my deconstructive […]
Esoteric Antenna A slew of new Hawkwind-related material has appeared of late, as Dave Brock and his ever-changing cast of merry men enter their fifth decade of existence, still flying their pirate freak flags high. The group released a double album, the patchy Onward, last year, a new Brock solo album (see below) has just come out, and to top it all – in every sense – comes […]
Disco Gecko This is Banco de Gaia’s first new studio recording for seven years and the thing that has impressed me initially about it is the beautiful cover design. The painting of the ancient Greek temple on the front of the sleeve gives you some indication to the music contained within. Automatically it makes me aware that Banco is on the move again geographically. From the ancient Mayans […]
Neurot There’s something eternal, something relentlessly omnipresent about Neurosis, despite their constant shifts in sound. They’re not so much like a band who play music at you and every couple of years record some of it; they’re more like a BIG FUCK-OFF ASTEROID where the music is ALWAYS playing, and which sometimes passes close enough to Earth that we can hear it for a while. Although it’s fucking […]
Chagrin I’ve been trying to find a way to review this record without simply comparing Rasp Thorne and The Briars to other bands I enjoy. I could, of course, write a comprehensive list of other acts that make this kind of gothic punk gypsy burlesque, but the first thought that struck me was that what it reminded me of most was the Australian dark cabaret of Mikelangelo and […]
Editions Mego “Concret PH” begins with glass splattering, not in a Vagina Dentata Organ way, but made to seem like static, or phrases in static – . With Xenakis, your brain often has to look the other way. I know nothing about Xenakis as such but he seems like a tough guy: a hard philosophy. He doesn’t seem like he’s the kind of guy who values compromise. “Concret […]
RVNG Intl. This album has been around since November 2012. So I’m a little late to the chorus of adulation. I’m doing my best not to read all the reviews that scroll up when I google Holly Herndon‘s name. Is it awful to admit I had no idea? Oh well. I didn’t have any idea, but when it was suggested I might like to review this, I was […]
(self-released) In an era of bands reforming, reappearing and generally revising, sometimes apparently out of the blue, few albums have been as eagerly anticipated as My Bloody Valentine‘s third; and after twenty-two years it finally appeared on their own website with barely a breath of warning to the waiting throngs – and on YouTube when their servers crashed too. Freq offers three opinions on the mbv brouhaha. 1. […]
Cold Spring Tanith and the Lion Tree revels in that rich and sumptuous world Edward Ka-Spel has carved for himself, one where the surreal becomes vivid, a vibrant play of words that like Kenneth Anger’s pleasure dome inaugurations, slowly unfold, ensnaring you in simmerings of dark fascinations. Tastes that jump from macabre to tender heart felts, from spite to cheerful jaunts of observation. Nuggets that refuse to give […]