RVNG Int’l This seems both unlikely and likely. The kind of thing you look at initially and sort of ‘Huh?’ but then creeps up at you as you stop thinking about it and suddenly seems like an obvious decision (cf. the Julianna Barwick, Ikue Mori release). Sun Araw can (almost) do no wrong in these parts but previously in collaborations I’ve always felt that the message is over-diluted. […]
Album review
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19F3 This came in, slipped under the door like a thin slice of cranial pie… A friend of mine was prone to petit mal seizures, seizures of absence, slow-wave spikes. They’d often occur in the middle of a sentence; she’d just… go away for a few moments, sometimes long minutes, sometimes the last word she was saying would simply repeat and slurrrrrrr ad infinitum: “The thing with Feynman […]
Riot Season With its pun title based on the Syd Barrett Pink Floyd album, the new Acid Mothers album seems to be one of their most scorching psychedelic yet, but in a very traditional way. The opening track “Chinese Flying Saucer” has Led Zepplin’s “A Whole Lotta Love” stamped all over it, from the opening riff to the faux Robert Plant vocals to the bizarre middle instrumental lead […]
Room40 “Oansome” is a word coined by Russell Hoban, American author of the triumphantly bleak post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker, set in Kent after a nuclear war has ravaged the land and left the survivors scrabbling to survive and speaking in a language as changed by the Bomb as the landscape and people have been. Indicating a sense of despondent solitude, of being left abandoned and profoundly alone in […]
Kranky Well, I don’t hear a “lost krautrock classic,” though that phrase seems to be cycling through the blogs and reviews like a Manuel Göttsching guitar loop (and not just for this album; it’s appearing more and more in all kinds of guises – pretty sure it’s leaked malevolently into some of my reviews, so clearly I’m not immune; it’s a nasty little word virus) but neither is […]
Crammed Discs This could have been. The idea behind Belgotronics is zeitgeist-tappingly brilliant; , those alien sounding timbres and treads, that otherness. Everything seems in place; the name – Hoquets references “hockets” (the technique used in Western medieval music, Africa, Bali and elsewhere of sharing a melody line between several voices or instruments) and “hoquets” (pronounced “OK”, and the French word for “hiccoughs”) – even the music itself, […]
Southern Lord/Ideologic Organ (Editions Mego) Not long ago, in the relatively balmy days of early December, I found myself, as is my usual daily routine, strolling through the local cemetery, Abney Park, all overgrown and witch-haunted, broken angels and grasping stone hands. And that’s on a normal day. But this particular afternoon the region was visited by the harbinger of truly apocalyptic weather. About an hour earlier than […]
Drid Machine I’m on a train a foggy winter afternoon, beats rocking me away into an unfamiliar yet known landscape. The steady beat accompanied by bass-noisy distorted guitar rhythms feeds to the familiarity of the sounds. Suddenly strange background screeching brakes hits, but without any effect on the speed, like the change of mood when entering a tunnel, but still continues when coming out of it, . The […]
Important Oh, caveats. They’re buggers right? Yeah. Well, here’s one anyway – without wanting to get into the ‘how do ‘we the west’ appropriate non-Western music?’, there’s always a massive problem writing about this sort of thing. I’d not suggest that my lack of knowledge of Carnatic/ Hindustani music is in any way an impediment to enjoying/ talking about Indian classical music, but I always get this feeling […]
United Dirter Sweeping in on modernist orchestrations, Rupture is a very different kind of Nurse With Wound collaboration, though there is plenty which harks back to Steve Stapleton‘s tape-loop manipulations of orchestral music both in Nursey guise and with Current 93‘s earlier harshly overbearing recordings in the pre-Apocalyptic Folk days. Here there is an explicit theme hinted at in the title, as the ensemble attempt to envisage musically […]
Norton For most bands, tackling that ‘difficult’ second album can be a daunting experience; the expectation, the pressure to top their debut, and the need to break new ground can all conspire to form a perilous trap for the unwary and the uninitiated. . Figures of Light, a ghost legion of the proto-punk army who fought almost single-handedly around New York and New Jersey during the early 1970s, […]
Dekorder Organic grinding. The music humming inside the skulls of cannibals as they try to decide which would go better with their longpig; rosemary or thyme? Are chives too much? Too little? What would Michel Roux Jr. suggest? They’d hardly want to spoil the meat with excess seasoning, or overpower the flavour with some badly chosen shallots or unnecessary garnishes. Here, we are treated to imaginary soundtracks to […]
Umbilical Ok, where do I begin? This is a monumental release! Yeah, I like that even though it feels somewhat understated. Hmmmm, all right lets start with a bit of background info; Omnia Opera first appear in the mid-Eighties new psychedelic boom that spawned venues like The Deptford Crypt and big one-off festivals like Acid Daze and watched Ozric Tentacles shoot to fame. A little later Delerium Records […]
Recommended The Necks seem to have been around forever and they’re still boiling the elements of jazz down, adding their signature dabbles and occasional electronic bursts, collecting and sieving through new sounds, gold panning their way into new forms. This album collects two 20 minute-plus tracks that shadow each other like long lost relatives at a wake. Not that this is dark music as such (though the bass […]
Sunday Best Hey, who’s the new guy? He’s in his mid sixties. He’s got a good quiff. Meditates a lot. Smokes a lot too. Claims to not be a musician. Is he one of those Punk Rockers? Don’t think so. He’s a former Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana. His father worked for the Department of Agriculture. Faced down some pretty scary times in Philly.
Industrial OK, quickfire ‘proper review’ bit – lovely re-issue with lovely packaging all put together in a lovely way with some additional pictures, re-mastering, general loveliness, a lovely essay from Jon Savage and a lovely live show being lovely. Worth buying? Oh yes. Very much so. Perhaps their most commercial record, which is a relative term, and has a lovely mix of the very studio-y 20 Jazz Funk […]
Monty Maggot Over the past year or so Monty Maggot have steadily been releasing high-quality albums including a marvellous [post=allies-and-clansmen text=”free album”] that could be seen as a taster for future releases. Its certainly a label that deserves support for the diversity of artists they are looking to put out. So what is there to expect from the album by Nineteentwelve? A lot of cracking tunes, that’s what! […]
Nostalgia Blackrain From the opening chimes of “Garten,” it’s apparent that Corrupted have taken on what could almost be considered a upbeat and cheery atmosphere in their music making – if only by the very heavy sludge standards they have helped define, of course. For almost anyone else this track would seem crushingly powerful, especially once the bass guitar kicks in and the cymbals crash; but no, there’s […]