Dissolving As synthesized sci-fi goes, this does a really good job, drawing its inspiration from a Philip José Farmer novel of the same name. That Seventies Panther pulp cover of scarred red and Space 1999 data font of the inlay warming you to this homage to those late ’60s/early ’70s explorations into the electronic unknown. A distinct doff of the cap to Tangerine Dream‘s pioneering vision, this is […]
Album review
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Bureau B I first came across this album in a particularly smelly charity shop in the middlings of the ’90s. Sandwiched between some mouldering ’70s fodder, the massive sans serif Palais Schaumburg red of the slightly worse for wear cover, screaming out 2buy me now, or you’re gonna regret it!” I didn’t know anything about them at the time, my expectations were for some noisy, at the best […]
Unsounds The Ex has been around on the edge of Dutch punk and improv since 1979, veterans in the explorations of sounds and music on the wide outer side of mainstream. So when the modern energetic avant-jazz-improv duo of the US saxplayer Ken Vandermark and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, who has been performing together since the year 2000, meets up with The Ex guitars of Andy Moor and […]
Les Disques Victo The meeting of five titans of noise and experimental music onstage at the Victoriaville Festival in May 2011 was an occasion for a well-formed on the hoof composition from the five performers involved: Richard Pinahs of Heldon fame; Merzbow; and Wolf Eyes. While the latter have frequently been lauded as being in the same league as Throbbing Gristle, their albums and live shows have been […]
Cleopatra Cover version albums are always an odd thing. People will either complain if tracks don’t sound close enough to the original songs or sound too different from the original versions, so bands who do them are always in a no-win situation. The best things to do is to try and ‘own’ the tracks themselves and make them yours – after all, some bands covers have outstripped and […]
Ektro Following on from their debut album Meronia (originally released in 1994) come two more remastered and re-released albums from 1997. For a goodly chunk of Meronia, Circle seemed to be wanting to show themselves as Finland’s very own Loop-worshipping post-metal dudes on a mission to out “Arc-Lite” the template of heavy-riffing guitars in collision with the metronomic sound of Munich, Cologne and Düsseldorf some twenty years earlier, all […]
Photek Productions I was surprised to hear that Photek had released a new album – somewhere along the line I had heard that he had hung up his Sennheisers. When Freq asked for a review it was with some trepidation that I took it on. When someone has withdrawn from the scene at the top of their game, the inevitable question is whether their return will be triumphant […]
Agitated Anyone wondering what kind of album Mugstar would follow up the far-out and extra solid Lime and the soundtrack to Ad Margineum can now find out. Lime was the point at which all the ideas heard floating around (and sometimes above) …Sun, Broken… and Mugstar coalesced into something greater than the sum total of the band’s reference points (of which let’s just mention Hawkwind, NEU! and The Heads […]
Fingertips Oud Vibrations. It’s a pun, you see? You do? Good. So, the fluff is that these are two of the earlier ventures by jazz hands into Arabic lands and this is a two LPs on one CD of two chaps who worked with Arabic stylings. There’s a faint sense that they’re both jazz sorts borrowing from Arabic ideas, but it’s essentially two fairly different records. So, I’m […]
Dirter Really glad to get a proper chance to listen to this again – disc rot, the scourge of so many early World Serpent gems (the un-initiated should see here) and barmy auction prices have totally scuppered my chances to get re-acquainted with its Frankensteined charms until now. Dirter, those bastions of the unusual, have done a sterling job of dragging A Sucked Orange back into the light […]
VCO VCO is a label that specialises in limited cassette-only releases. They have released tapes by Zombi, Majeure, Steve Moore and Jonas Reindhart, with most of these editions running between the 50 to 100 copies mark. This edition of music recorded in 1996 by Schickert has had a hundred copies made.* The album opens with “Morning,” tablas and percussion building a steady rhythm under an eastern-sounding guitar fugue […]
7th In a time when most CD albums stretch beyond the 60 minute mark, to receive an album with only two tracks that lasts a mere 32 minutes seems rather odd. But what we have to remember here is that this is not any ordinary 32 minutes, it is 32 minutes of Magma, which is the equivalent to 70 by a lot of other artists. From its opening […]
Ipecac A lot has been written and said about the importance of Isis, that rare breed of heavy band who not only garnered widespread critical acclaim in the metal world but also succeeded as a crossover act, appealing to fans of shoegaze, post-rock, avant-garde and beyond. This crossover appeal, combined with vocalist/guitarist Aaron Turner’s (now sadly soon-to-be defunct) label Hydra Head Industries introduced the more curious fan to […]
Young God When Michael Gira announced that he was reactivating Swans (not a reunion, remember?) it came as a bit of a surprise; albeit one that garnered some excitement. The album that followed showed that the band had fleshed out the folk trappings of Gira’s Angels of Light project; instilling some of Swans heaviness onto the Angels’ southern twang. Some people liked it, some didn’t, but it was […]
Trestle When James Johnston releases a solo album, it is really difficult to know what to expect. To my knowledge, this is his very first solo album. Being a bluesy rock star front man of Gallon Drunk, guitar hero in Lydia Lunch’s Big Sexy Noise, or session and live musician with The Bad Seeds is only one side of this multi-talented Englishman. Collaborating with Philippe Petit, and a […]
Exceptional This is evidence of time travel. Not in a good way. In the future, we’ll still be in thrall to the past, still looking back and longing. We’ll still be unable to understand the terrible now. We’ll read and re-read Simon Reynolds’s Retromania (really must get round to that; it’s on my Christmas List. The irony of not reading it yet is killing me) and we’ll use […]
Constellation I believe it was the great Neil Young who sang “…only Swans can break your arm” back in the dim and distant mists of musical history, and up until now he’s been right. No band other than Michael Gira‘s monolithic spacegod-baiting machine has ever had the capacity to damage limbs simply through sheer heftiness. But all that’s changed now with the arrival of the new Godspeed You! […]
Exotic Pylon Absolutely love the cover for this! A grinning turnip head with nasty teeth, pipe and wire glasses. A comedy shaman vibe which fits well with the jovial surrealism enclosed. Sharing a similarly damaged vibe to fellow Nordic maverick Goodiepal, the first track “Animal accompaniment is a cage they can fly out”‘ (well that’s what Google is telling me) is like some fairground attraction filled with weird […]