Label: Matador Format: CD I respect any album that contains references to Harry Harlow‘s somewhat cruel tests on Rhesus monkeys. The album is Quasi-Objects by Matmos, and the track is of course “Cloth Mother/Wire Mother”. You may not be surprised to find that the baby Rhesus monkeys preferred the cloth mother to the wire mother. What is more surprising is the fact that someone felt the need to […]
Album review
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Label: Quarterstick Format: CD Rachel’s may be the logical conclusion of the tradition of Tortoise and Slint. This is not to say that they sound like either of these bands, but rather that one may trace an evolution in contemporary American music from a highly developed No-Wave to an end of millennium conservatoire music. Of course this music is not really specifically millennial either and at its best […]
Label: WEA Format: CD First off-yeah, I was suprised as fuck, too. Ministry. New album. Live dates. There’s a whole Snake Plissken thing going down here. (As in, I thought you were dead.) And I am pleased to report, continuing the Plissken metaphor possibly a little too far, that this album is no Escape From LA. I mean, yes, it rocks. As in ROCKS. As in R-A-W-fuckin’-Ks. Like several bastards. Absolute bastards. Nay, a WHOLE […]
Label: Go Beat Format: LP,CD Having ploughed the returns from their first two proper album releases into a full studio set-up, Fridge have been playing with the new toys to some good effect it seems. While there is much indeed to be said in favour of the recording of albums at home on four-track machines within tight time-constraints, previous releases have always seemed like not-quite complete sketches. Eph […]
Label: Warp Format: 2×12″,CD The first challenge to Autechre‘s latest release is which side to play. I received a blank CD, no markings, nothing to even hint that it had passed through the hands of Messrs Booth & Brown. I’ve not seen the version that’s going out for release, but I hold out the hope that it too will be just as uninformative. (It’s black – Ed.). EP7 isn’t really an EP, as it lasts for 70 […]
Label: Output Format: LP,CD Sharing less of the rock part of post-rock of his other band Fridge, multi-instrumentalist Kieran Hebden expands into wider areas with his debut album as Four Tet, leavening the cycling live drum kit and guitars of opening tracks like “”The Space Of Two Weeks” and “Chiron” with increasing amounts of synth burbles as well as more prominent Jazz elements. What emerges is a transition […]
Label: Cherry Red Format: 2CD Okay! Hands up everyone. Gimme your Alien Sex Fiend Moment (if you don’t have one, go out and buy this album and wait until something funny happens. May spoil the whole point of the review, but quite frankly, who gives one?). Mine? Here we go. Off me tits, so to speak, watching Sex Fiend at The University of London Union, oooh, a fuck […]
Label: Acrylnimbus Format: CD Hmmm. where to start with this one? From the packaging (which is, incidentally, very nice) and the track titles (which are, incidentally, very funny) you’d be forgiven for expecting something along the lines of Nurse With Wound. Funnily enough… …though I don’t remember the boy Stapleton ever having a passion for Drum’n’Bass. Think about that last sentence. Think harder. Yup, they said it could […]
Label: Satellite Format: CD Hmmm – I found myself reciting a mantra over and over as I loaded up the pretty blue-backed disc… “Please don’t let this be like Marilyn Manson, please don’t let this be like Marilyn Manson, please don’t…” It isn’t. At all. Psycho patience may as well get in the car and volume up, rev up, run over some beautiful people along the way. Like […]
Label: City Slang Format: CD,LP There’s a thing with prefixes and the word “Rock” (or “ROCK!” if you prefer) – Post-Rock, Art-Rock, sometimes (dare I say it) Prog-Rock. Salaryman seem content to slide about in this general area, not quite difficult enough to be Post-Rock, too much fun to be Art-Rock (“Thomas Jefferson Airplane” as a track title for example. Cool!) and never going quite that little bit […]
Label: Staalplaat Format: CD At first seemingly a strange departure for Robin Storey in his Rapoon guise, The Alien Question starts out as a series of simple sound loops and harmonium chords accompanying the spoken words of alien ambassador Hoh Krll. The increasingly paranoiac ideas which Krll outlines are of course familiar to almost everyone from Western popular culture’s obsession with all things alien and Grey (or from […]
Label: City Slang Format: CD, LP From their beginnings as the musical department of an art exhibition, To Rococo Rot have shown themselves to be something special – it’s not the methodology alone, not the combination of sequencer, sampler, drums and the sometimes floor-threatening bass they favour live, but is to be found in the precise combination of all the above with that special spark of warm humanity […]
Label: MDZ Format: CD,LP Oh. are a band from Germany who like to combine Electronica, Dub and Ambience; while there is a steady stream of such movers and shakers coming from that country at the moment (and have been for the last four-five years), Oh are among the most pleasantly gentle of them, streaming with warm basslines, head-down complex drumming and wilted, washed out and occasionally bubbling synths, […]
Label: 4AD Format: CD Mid-’80s effusive journalism alert! I mean, for fuck’s sake, they’re on 4AD, the tracks range from ’81 to ’85, and one of them (“No Motion”) is produced with the aid of Robin Guthrie, creator of the “swirling sonic cathedrals” (see what I mean?) The Cocteau Twins hung out in being all elegant and ethereal and giving it some with the “Frou-Frou Foxes”. It has to be ethereal (see, it’s that word again; […]
Label: Warp Format: CD,LP How do I start talking about Jimi Tenor? He`s mates with Pan(a)sonic and certainly one of the most curious individuals I`ve come across of late – rumour has it that our Jimi likes to appear on stage on top of a white horse. A lot of Organism has a cocktail lounge Jazz Funk feel, rendered through Electro of course. This doesn`t go anywhere near summing our Jimi up. As I was […]
Label: Touch & Go Format: CD,LP Don Caballero are part of the recent contemporary phenomenon of American men with big guitars, no vocals and, thankfully, a sense of humour. Much of their musoid noodling would have been tarred with the Progressive brush in halcyon eras of wide trousers, big hair and expansive stage concepts but what Don Cab bring to the boot fair is their own brand of […]
Label: D.N.W. Format: CD Despite being recorded live in Austria in January 1990, Vernissage has only just now received a release through Damo Suzuki‘s own record label (incidentally packaged in a neat gatefold corrugated card sleeve, for those who care). Perhaps ominously, it precedes a threatened seven-CD set of live recordings from 1986-90, though judging by this disc and the recent live tour, it may still be more […]
Label: Duophonic Ultra-High Frequency Disks Format: Limited 2CD,2CD Stereolab have been known for their prolific releases on limited-run seven-inches, compilations and sundry other media – fortunately, they’ve also been very good at collecting their ephemera into neat bundles for those unable to find the original editions. Aluminum Tunes is Switched On Stereolab Volume 3, though quite why the extra name was needed isn’t clear. The two CD package […]