Architects of Harmonic Rooms and Records There’s something tantalisingly unreal about these direct to DAT solo twelve-string guitar compositions, recorded between 2000 and 2006. Capturing almost exclusively the twang, scrape and buzz of the strings, the instrument sounds almost disembodied, a shimmering, glistening, glassy surface with barely any hint of the guitar’s resonating chamber, let alone any sense of the environment in which it was played. . Steffan […]
Album review
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Mute Woman when I’ve raised hell, there won’t be a star left untouched in your sky When my lighting crashes across that night No shadows of doubt or of turnin’ in that questioning little mind Just a burnin’ rekindled truth and one single agonizin’ blinding white light The greatest protest songs contain a moment when the political becomes personal; the greatest spiritual songs relate the personal to the […]
Crammed Discs To borrow the imprecation that Debbie Harry once sang so passionately in 1978, “Picture this.” However, rather than a sky full of thunder, or for that matter Debs’ telephone number (wistful sigh…), try instead . For a finishing touch, decorate the neck and body of this Heath Robinson musical contraption with band names (in the manner of a rock band’s kick drum), slogans and even designs […]
Smalltown Supersound Top Auto road tests the latest model to roll off the production line at Helsinki’s Bleep Factory. First Impression Wow, this little baby can really move. Finland’s K-X-P have put together their first effort, and the time and effort pay off in no uncertain terms. Motoring along at speed, the K-X-P feels solid and stylish. The Finnish design team have certainly gone to town in the […]
Karl/Aagoo/Nonclassical Classical music, for some, is burdened with various odd stigmas – that it’s somehow posh, academic or too expensive to watch live. In my experience none of these are true – I have the stub of an £8 ticket for a five hour Messiaen opera attended by a musically self-taught scumbag (myself) that will attest to that. And, as purse-strings constrict further day-by-day, the classical music world […]
Esoteric Six years after their surprise reunion, it still seems unreal to be listening to a new Van der Graaf Generator record. Stranger still, lowering the stylus onto A Grounding in Numbers instills the same rush of anticipation as when I ran round to David Hilton’s house back in April 1976 with the newly released Still Life because he had the nearest available record player to County Records. […]
Dekorder Alexander Rishaug is a sound artist, producer and musician from Oslo, Norway, and one of the original members of the improv-collective ARM with Are Mokkelbost and Arne Borgan. He has also collaborated with artists such as Lasse Marhaug, Ingar Zach, Martin Horntvedt, and remixed albums by Jazkamer and metal bands Ulver and She Said Destroy. A new release from the minimalist is a rare event, as this […]
Aurora Borealis 12th February 1923, Cefalù, Sicily – Evening. Aleister – God I hate Mondays, they’re so dreary. Aud, why don’t you put something on the gramophone? Surely you must have brought some of the latest sounds with you from London? Raoul – Yes, great master, I have with me a choice selection of discs. What can I tempt you with? Some Coil? Horse […]
Dekorder Branching out into conceptual composition with Ensemble Intégrales, Felix Kubin acted as a sort of central engineer/conductor for this piece, with each instrument recorded live with no overdubs in separate rooms at the Westwerk cultural centre in Hamburg under Kubin’s supervision, and the results edited by him down into the resulting album. As a result, each room sound is almost as important as the tones recorded for […]
Enraptured The most obvious thing to say about Autopia in the first instance is that Eat Lights, Become Lights are unafraid of putting their influences to the fore, wearing them proudly as signposts to a whole series of strands of underground music across the decades, and as with their live shows, their début album takes the hints and explicit quotations and rebuilds them as a thoroughly enveloping gestalt […]
Hey kids, welcome to another exciting edition of “Fuck Yeah Science”, with me, your host, Dr Deuteronemu 90210, here to show you that not only is science a thing, it's also a FUN thing! Now, if you'd like to start your educational CD (or whatever you youngsters are listening to music on these days), Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light, you can listen along to it as an accompaniment to the lesson.
Everyone playing the album? Great. Then let's begin.
First, let's take a look at PHYSICS. Physics is a particularly awesome science, dealing, as it does, with many things, the most relevant to today's lesson being the parts about how much stuff weighs, and how it moves.
Riot Season Serious noise rock from Belgium, the third album from Ultraphallus and their UK début on Riot Season. Where do I start? With a name like Ultraphallus am I serious? And what a name it is! Its the mother of all names to trip up spam filters. Sowberry Hagan was recorded over four days in a farm in Liege, but you wouldn’t guess at such folkish origins. […]
ReR Steve Maclean’s oeuvre touches a fair few nodes on the circuitboard of ‘experimental’ music – from collaborations with insects, multiple-effected guitars to ensemble compositions and ‘academic’ work, in line with his post at Assistant Professor in Music Synthesis at Berklee College of Music. The first of our two records here, Expressions on Piano, is closer to his day-job in the academic world – a series of rhythmically […]
The Remote Viewers What a difference a well deployed field recording can make. The Remote Viewers’ ninth album, To the North begins with what sounds like footsteps on gravel, an approach made on private land, a trespassing, intrusion or return home. It’s sufficient to throw the ensuing material off-kilter; what could be otherwise described as a comfortable and comforting tour through a variety of approaches to jazz derivatives […]
Robot Elephant/Homeopathic Collecting Acid Mothers Temple releases can leave you very light in the wallet area (I know this from experience) due to the volume of their output . So there is quite a minefield of material out there to negotiate, some amazing, some a little like the band treading water. As I know AMT well it was going to be interesting to hear what Stearica, a band […]
Static Caravan In 1977 I got hold of a copy of Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene – and if you would like to get the 21st century version of this album you could a lot worse than buy the new Steve Moore album… Well, there’s one thing you have to say about Zombi man Steve Moore, he must have a very healthy bank account judging by the amount of […]
Bureau B Ok, as most of the people reading this will know Faust were one of the most important bands of the 1970s Krautrock movement and have an incredible important body of work behind them. Also at this moment in time there appears to be two Fausts, so this is Jean Hervé Péron and Zappi W Diermaier’s Faust aided and abetted by Gallon Drunk‘s James Johnston and Bender’s […]
MiG/Captain Trip After spending the last few years playing live with Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard, Klaus Schulze thought it was time to get back to playing some ‘pure’ Schulze live and this is exactly what this double disc delivers. Schulze had not played in Japan since 2003 and these shows were set up by a fan of the man. It seems as if Klaus took this on […]