Constellation Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Becki Foon’s (Thee Silver Mt. Zion) latest release as Esmerine (now expanded to a quartet, with harpist Sarah Page and percussionist Andrew Barr) is dedicated to Lhasa de Sela, the Montréal-based singer-songwriter who succumbed to breast cancer in 2010. I know nothing about Lhasa, but I’m guessing this is a fitting and heartfelt tribute. The tones are uniformly elegiac and […]
Album review
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[Self-released] Two sides of Mr Hignell’s [post=”daniel-alexander-hignell-soundscape-study-001″ text=”oeuvre-coin”] here – first, his math-rock (ish) band affair, and second his more ambient/home listening outings. Some Cartographers is the hopefully final name the band previously known at various points in the last six months as (deep breath) Bygrayvpartynmyrytarm, Tourist killed in Shark attack and Mockery Goggles. I’m not sure if it’s me being a miserable bastard or if the song […]
Spectrum Spools I saw someone head-butted over an album like this. Well, I say headbutt but I’m guessing it was more an headglance, a floppy-haired headslash, a vaguely embittered coming together between two Kosmische fans with half an eye on the past and a bellyful of animal tranquilisers. I’m paraphrasing, but it seemed as if Kosmische Fan 1 (you know what he looked like) was angry at Kosmische […]
Daddytank Hangin’ Freud‘s Sunken has been lurking around like an illicit bruise on the interwires for a while now. And now it’s got a proper release on a CD, the sleeve all soft-focus dirty purpley hues and malevolence. The release made me quite pleased, for two reasons: first, I forget to listen to things if they’re not physically in front of me; second, it’s too good to be […]
Innova Lukas Ligeti: Paris Hilton of c21st avant-garde. No, that’s bollocks. I just wanted to say it. I did pick this CD up because György Ligeti is one of my favourite composers, and Lukas is his son. But, save for a striking similarity in surname, there’s only glib, superficial similarities between father and son: bits of Pattern Time could bear a passing resemblance to Ligeti Sr’s “Movimento Preciso […]
Room 40 John Chantler hasn’t released any significant solo albums for seven years and The Luminous Ground suggests he’s spent that time wrestling with his machines until, finally, he’s given up and has let them speak for themselves, twisted electronic entrails and all. The album opens with a peak-experience rush of oscillation, no gently evolving crescendos here, we’re thrust right into the eye of the storm; wave upon […]
[Self-released] Ok, cards on the table: my cards are not metal. In the game of music, I picked up a ‘go straight to noise, do not pass metal’ card in my teens. I’ve picked up on a few things here and there since – you know, the sedate stuff. Agorophobic Nosebleed or whatever. All fun and games. I wouldn’t say metal wasn’t my cup of tea. But I […]
Tin Angel “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” In the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel, broke and depressed, inserted this insanely great Biblical quotation from Corinthians into a little number he managed to belt out in a mere 24 days. The fact that the end product of this feverish tumult of composition was The Messiah, one of […]
Klangbad Listening to new Klangbad releases is like visiting a beer festival – no two releases are ever the same yet none of them are ever less than enjoyable, and many prove quite intoxicating. This month sees two almost simultaneous releases, both by ad hoc quartets that feature Klangbad boss and Faust organist Hans-Joachim Irmler. While B.I.L.L. are presented as a democratic foursome, this similarly improvised release gives […]
Klangbad Klangbad are having a busy month, treating us to two almost simultaneous releases by intriguing quartets. Bob Rutman’s Steel Cello Ensemble is reviewed elsewhere, and here we have Spielwiese Zwei, the first release by B.I.L.L. This group brings together two of the most respected instrumentalists of the original krautrock era, Can’s Jaki Liebezeit and Faust’s Hans-Joachim Irmler, alongside their spiritual heir Robert Lippok of To Rococo Rot […]
Mute One of the hardest-working sidemen of the past three decades, Mick Harvey contributed enormously to the artistic success of both Nick Cave and PJ Harvey as well as the more low profile careers of Crime and the City Solution and Anita Lane. He seems able to turn his hand to just about any instrument, has a finely honed ear for arrangement and apparently even handled The Bad […]
ConSouling Sounds Rippling with softly-struck piano strings echoing through a slow accretion of sonorous drone fragments, the opening minutes of Lost in the Rat Maze finds Aidan Baker stepping briefly into the brightly-lit fresh air from the more weather-beaten fuzz and feedback soundscapes of Nadja and some of his other solo releases. Which is not to say that he has abandoned all things gritty and texturally-touched by the […]
Gnostic Dirt Even in this age of Tunng, Espers and countless assorted other groovy out-there New Folk outfits who are busy fusing ancient melodies and instrumentation with samples, beats and all the trappings of hip urban coolness as fast as their little hands can programme, for most people the word ‘Folk’ still brings to mind images of worthy acoustic sing-a-longs, beards and real ale as relentlessly as driving […]
Broken Horse Peaches and cream, assault and battery, Damon and Naomi…some things are just made to go together… With the unbelievable proliferation of ‘Americana’ over the past dozen or so years (just check out the bulging racks in Rough Trade), it’s hard to remember a time before such market segmentation set in so ferociously, when acts such as Giant Sand, Galaxie 500 and The Palace Brothers wafted in […]
130701 Prepared piano always struck me as one of those ideas that shouldn’t really have stopped dead with John Cage‘s nearly-pensionable pieces. I’m no scholar of modern piano, but I’ve not heard many people having a tinker about with the inners of a piano. A real shame, as I quite like the idea of some flat-capped old fella lugging the upright into his shed to make gamelan sounds […]
Susan Lawly/Very Friendly THIS REVIEW IS UNSUITABLE FOR THOSE NOT OF AN ADULT PERSUASION OR LACKING A SENSE OF HUMOUR She fumbled with the lock, scratching at it unsteadily with her key. Her head was swimming slightly from the drink, and she could feel his hot breath on the back of her neck, urgent, lustful, and bestial. Finally the key engaged and turned, and the door swung open […]
Important (CD) / Agitated (vinyl) Once upon a time, a long time ago (but not long in the annals of Britain’s space rock godfathers), a bunch of dishevelled reprobates, part time musicians and full-time dopeheads used to play around with Hawkwind songs, frequently changing the words of “Psychedelic Warlords” to “My name’s Dave/And I’m a good bloke/Got a wife and kids/But I still like a smoke” in a […]
Esoteric Armaggedon (sic) have an interesting place in the fecund story of German music in the late Sixties and early Seventies. as guitarist Frank Diez tells it in the sleeve notes for this re-release, he was recruited over the phone and flown from Berlin to Munich to record the album over the space of six days with a bunch of musicians he’d never met before for the small […]