Psychic Hotline Tim Bernardes, one third of Brazilian indie-tropicalia band O Terno, chose the start of 2020 to regroup and focus once again on a solo album that took him from the touring treadmill and allowed him to concentrate once again on crafting something that was entirely his own. The sixteen tracks that make up Mil Coisas Invisiveis come straight from the heart and highlight a voice that […]
Album review
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Discus The second album from Bo Meson this year finds his focus reverting to his own unstructured universe, taking the final opportunity to work with cellist Sarah Palmer before she departs these shores. That impetus finds Bo and the assembled players taking one long improvised run at the assorted material, plucked from various ruminations and ad-libbed like a music hall spectre; dramatic, arcane, sultry and .
Upset The Rhythm Shake Chain are a confusing and disturbing car crash of semi-danceable proportions. Their Snake Chain album opens with the sound of a post-punk band idly observing some horrifying local disturbance and it kind of grown battier from there.
Constellation “Everything goes, everything comes back; the wheel of being rolls eternally. Everything dies, everything blossoms again, the year of being runs eternally.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9 There is a certain comfort in knowing that everything comes back around, from the morning sunrise to […]
Bureau B The mid- to late nineties was a pretty purple patch for German electronica and it coincided with a similar flurry of genre-less electronic based bands arriving from the States. The beauty of the German acts, like those that preceded them, was the lack of obvious Western tradition and unlike the bands from the seventies, a greater access to and greater complicity with the new electronic instruments. […]
Jazzland Not content with the numerous collaborative activities which he has undertaken recently, Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft and German producer Henrik Schwarz have chosen to release a second chapter in their duo format, the initial one having been released back in 2011. Their interaction of post minimal piano and electronic escapism has been given a further boost by the addition of some well-chosen collaborators.
Nuclear Blast In which Kev Nickells (right) and Harmony Parker (left) listen to Cradle Of Filth‘s 2021 album Existence Is Futile at the same time and share their thoughts and/or review the record by direct message:
Discus Martin Pyne‘s idea behind Ripples, that of duets between his vibraphone and David Beebee‘s Fender Rhodes, had me hooked immediately. The gauzy, shimmering haze of the vibes let loose from formal shackles and allowed to wander at will is accompanied by the sympathetic shiver of the Rhodes, and sounds like a dream made real and spread across the twelves watery vistas enclosed.
Discus Another month and another Martin Archer collaboration. You have the feeling that the man never sleeps, adventures in sound flowing through his veins at all moments. The thing is, the quality never seems to dip even when the variety is so great. Here, he reconvenes with old friend John Jasnoch on bass guitar, percussionist Lee Allatson and Sarah Farmer on violin and electronics. The title of Wasp […]
Bellissima Strip away the commercialism and associations with Christianity, and Christmas is actually rather lovely. In colder climates, coloured lights reflect and refract on snow and ice while friends and family come together over a cosy hearth to exchange gifts and good cheer, insulated against the hoary darkness outside. It’s no coincidence that many if not most cultures in the Northern Hemisphere have some form of celebration near […]
Jahtari Denizen of WaqWaq Kingdom, Kiki Hitomi and German clarinetist Volker Hemken have teamed up with Jahtari supremo and erstwhile disrupter Jan Disrupt as Cosmic Threat for a strangely removed journey into the outer limits. As if beamed in from some distant, forgotten outpost, Cosmic Threads merges dub reggae, electronica and gritty atmospherics with a soupcon of spiritual swing that leaves the listener constantly gaping at the imagery, […]
Erototox This is a feathery snake of an album. The quality of drone hovers in there like a forgotten memory that ensnares. The first track’s clustering notes messing with your wiring in a good way, its perfume potently levitating in your skull, ominously glowing like the matt-black gloom of the stately artwork. The up close and personal of the instruments that adorn the cover giving material context to […]
Efpi The fourth album for the agile pigeonhole-dodging quartet Let Spin finds them mixing things up a little, taking ideas of pieces into the studio and working them into a lather over the course of a couple of last year’s late summer days. This way of working, attempting to bring the vivacity of their live show into the studio, has been a great success; plus their idea to […]
SOFA The latest releases from experimental Norwegian label SOFA are very much on the cutting edge of musical discovery, or how our environment or things we take for granted can be manipulated to provide entertainment or a new aural experience. Having recently listened to the new Sarah Davachi album and read the reviews of the new Greg Davis LP, the search for how minimal drone music can affect […]
Discus I often think that the purest format for improv is the duo where one of the players is a drummer. There is something about the interplay between two musicians, both questing for fresh knowledge, plus the space provided between the grounding of the percussion and the wind scattered revelations of the instrument.
Lava Thief Clean is a warm acoustic delight, sees known Thought Forms songs stripped back and reconfigured, born anew with fresh titles reflecting this. The slow creeping weave of “Hiding Beneath” invites us in, its spidering vocal spiral chased in recoiling twang and cello, attentively sweeps you off your feet for the words of “Our Ghosts” to vividly burn, buoyantly pull around that sinewed strum, shuffling percussion and […]
Computer Students™ Yet another discovery that I can’t believe has taken twenty years to cross my path. Cheval de Frise were a French guitar and percussion duo operating at the turn of the millennium, trading in the kind of tight, angular guitar rock that was coming out of Chicago. But they give it a neat twist by being a duo and playing around one another in a way […]
Retractor Persistence Is All After putting up with muffled audience recordings of this memorable experience for over twenty-odd years, this recent instalment from Thighpaulsandra’s Coil archive is a total godsend. Considering the strictness of the staff on the night in question, capturing a personal memento of the gig was nigh-on-impossible, so this crystal-clear souvenir of Coil’s second Royal Festival Hall appearance is way beyond expectation. Persistence Is All […]