Fifty-nine years after their first album and seventeen years after their last self-written one, they're back with new material, crunchy riffs and a whole lot of attitude. As a Hackney resident myself, I gotta love the title, though I do think they missed a trick by calling it Hackney Diamonds instead of Exile On Mare Street.
Album review
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Agitated California’s psych trio Carlton Melton have been distilling the best parts of the Hawkwind and Spacemen 3 for the best part of fifteen years and producing a sound that is inimitable. Expanding to a four-piece for their second album of 2023, but still pursuing an instrumental nirvana, Turn To Earth manages to sound like a natural progression and finds them pushing further into the fiery heart of […]
John Zorn, in 2023, is a tricky one to pin down. His catalogue is positively seam-splitting and well varied. While there's plenty of artists with similar-sized outputs, there's not many with as many genres, let alone as many genres done well. He's as capable of sombre renderings of traditional Jewish music in Masada as he is the American Football-by-composition of Cobra, the ruthlessly savage Painkiller or the who's who of experimental music collaborators.
This commercial swerve was quite a revelation at the time (for me at least) and I was kinda thankful the brooding angles of the next ‘Ordeal’ dirtied things back up again. Those screechy distortions that bat-wing into the melody are great, so is the solid kick of those drums.
The line-up of players gathered together here must be the largest so far, with thirty listed, including three very different vocalists and three very different drummers. As ever, the one thing tying the disparate pieces together besides the questing sense of adventure is Guy's inimitable elastic bass.
Unearthing buried treasure is what this label’s all about, dipping into the hauntological hangover of years gone by, to resurrect or recreate their own interpretations. An ethos that seeps into this recent compilation, a tenth anniversary celebration that features a whole host of new, remixed, rare and unreleased material, giving the curious a decent taste of what floats their boat.
Its rolling rhythm courtesy of Steffen Schmidt on the drums means the track almost cruises into being like a giant craft entering the Earth’s atmosphere after a long trawl through hyperspace. Echoed guitar from Sebastian Vath calls out across the solar system, as if trying to send a message to its home world. Max Leicht’s bass and synthesizer flesh out the sound, helping it springboard beyond Kuiper Belt objects to the farthest reaches of our solar system.
Experimental Irish duo Ex-Isles fuse warmly delivered and enigmatic prose poetry with wandering pastoral piano arrangements that draw you into their subtle, politically and personally motivated universe.
It is wonderful to have this kind of diverse compilation available and would be great for current fans, as well as those people looking to dip their toe in. The only problem is, on the strength of the tracks here, you would just want to load up in the entirety of The Monochrome Set's twenty-first century catalogue...
Source Of Denial — a simple, apropos punning album name — hits the air with “Kudistro”, frantic organic drumming and blaring electronics that suggest an adrenaline junkie rave-up or the klaxon wails of public emergency.
For her latest missive from the stratosphere, Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns has gathered two illustrious sonic cosmonauts in the shape of drummer Ole Mofjell and keyboardist Ståle Storløkken. Together they have managed to squeeze six enormous tracks of varying complexity onto this Weejuns album that will leave the listener reeling.
So while I felt a little trepidation in the news that they would be performing with Sinfonia Leipzig, in New Model Army's case I was prepared to make an exception- firstly, the sheer quality of their recent material doesn't suggest that this is a band in any real danger of running out of ideas any time soon, and secondly they've never really given that much of a shit about having to validate what they do do anyone.
A darkened ambience of spiralling guitar that extends the experience, anchored by a pulsing undercut as chords dramatically feast, density dine in wavering cut-ins, solar-flare the imagined vastness.
Thoughtful minor key repetition is allied to rolling percussion, a background rush that evokes cars passing on wet streets. It is no surprise that the first four pieces are titled "Murmurations" and "Meditations", the minimalist scene setting of the two finds the insistence of the piano notes needled by the prodding of drums that bubble and turn with constant presence
Cyclic Law A full thousand years after its inception, Gregorian plainchant had an unexpected pop cultural moment in the 90s. Enigma — producer Michael Cretu — mixed chant, dance beats, and whispery sensuality to garner unexpected chart success. Soon, recordings of Gregorian liturgy enjoyed a spike in sales. Enterprising monks got in on the act, recording arrangements of songs like The Yardbirds‘ “Still I’m Sad” and REM‘s “Losing […]
Their reconvening finds them in robust mood with a touch of romantic disillusion, their tales of frustrated love and burning desire tempered by the reality of what it is like to really feel. The fourpiece set up is augmented here by strings, voices and sympathetic production that draws a series of lovelorn vignettes from a band that are confident enough to play it extra hard when necessary and then dial back to a tear-stained throb.
don't know what the popular idea is of Sonic Youth in 2023 -- I hope they're considered as slightly more important to younger people than just "yeah Dad, we get it -- New York, 1980s... well done". There's so much timbre from the unison strings, and so much harmonic invention from the tunings that it's really worth keeping them in the canon.
With one foot very firmly in the exotica camp, thanks to the dreamy vocals of Tatiana Nova and the lightness and deftness of the horn section's interplay. Ally that to a percolating rhythm section and you have what starts out as manna from supper club heaven, a late night '50s vibe, evocative of a breezy trip or a mild sashay across a smoky dancefloor.