Constellation Godspeed You! Black Emperor are a very self-contradictory band. They draw you in and push you away at the same time. The arcane press releases, the obtuse packaging, all designed to confuse as much as entertain or educate. That exclamation mark in that unwieldy name. Everything about them says “difficult”. But then you bung them on and and they couldn’t be any easier to actually listen to.
Album review
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À Tant Rêver du Roi Kong‘s sole album has taken thirteen years to finally be issued on vinyl, and its muscular insistence and discomfiting tension is great to have back in circulation. I can’t remember who suggested that the trio was the ultimate expression of the rock format, but these three certainly brought noise as well as the mania and the telepathic interconnection. It seems extraordinary that Snake […]
Cinema Paradiso WARNING – Contains filmic spoilers, conspiracy theories, adult themes, and chimpanzees. ADVICE – If you need a spoiler warning, that can only mean that you haven’t seen The Parallax View. Well, what the Sam Hell are you waiting for? It’s a masterpiece of the second golden age of Hollywood. Go and see it. Immediately. You can thank me later.
Archaeological / Dio Drone The latest collaboration from these two denizens of the underground is quite a change from their previous release due to its live format and it being the only current recording of them performing together. When the Archaeological folk requested their appearance at the eighth Dio Drone Festival, people were perhaps expecting them to tackle pieces from Darkening Ligne Claire, but instead a wildly unexpected […]
(self-released) Debut record from a Brighton-based duo doing something oddly nostalgic. In a way that’s possibly not obviously nostalgic. I don’t know how many readers are familiar with that time in “post-rock” when it was more associated with Tortoise and being quietly cerebral than big instrument rockist gestures, but this is fairly close to that. Similar to that time as well there’s a kind of parity and austerity […]
Upset The Rhythm For me, Upset The Rhythm are turning into a kind of post-modern 4AD or Too Pure, the sort of labels on which you could take a punt and pretty much guarantee that what you had purchased would be good. So far, UTR have had an excellent hit rate, always managing to find the kind of interesting, whimsical and unique acts that make the listener sit […]
Lava Thief Born from a Richard Brautigan poem of the same name, The Silver Stairs Of Ketchikan is a solo outlet of Thought Forms ringleader Charlie Romijn Barr. It’s always been an intimate, profoundly personal quest, often wrought in the improvised moment. Anybody that’s been lucky enough to see her live will testify to the witchy atmospheres she conjures, the abstracted emotions laid bare in looped violin, cello […]
Crammed Discs That most dashing of European labels, Crammed Discs, is celebrating forty years in the industry, and in keeping with this are engineering a series of reissues, of which the first volume of their Made To Measure albums is at the front. Made To Measure served as an adjunct to the main label, releasing albums that were slightly out of the ordinary, often affiliated with other forms […]
KrysaliSound Benjamin Finger is a rather prolific electronic artist based in Oslo and one who has spilt his largesse across numerous labels in the last ten or so years. KrysaliSound is the latest recipient and Auditory Colors is a miasma of drifting tones, mystery vocals and snatched, hallucinatory moments. There are many instruments at play here as well as field recordings, and “alien objects” that move the pieces from […]
Akkajee The candle-lit whispering of Lastenkerääjä‘s title track invites you into Akkajee’s folk senabilites, fills the space like a spidery Egon Schiele sketch waiting to be coloured in. Its plucked spine and conversational flow maybe tip-toeing round the baby collector it sings about, an old codger that throws naughty children into his sack, a scary prospect that the duo then decide to crayon over in a bright Midsommar […]
Foolproof Projects It is always great to have Map 71 back in the fold and once again they are pushing the envelope of what can be achieved with voice, synth and drums. This four-track EP seems to have its feet in the dub camp, with Lisa Jayne‘s vocals covered with swathes of echo, whereas Andy Pyne‘s drums patters tend in a more tribal direction, making for an intriguing […]
A Tant Rêver Du Roi (EU) / Buzzhowl (UK) / Learning Curve (USA) Blacklisters (styled as Blklstrs on the sleeve)’ latest is only their third in about ten years, but their formidable live reputation certainly translates well to the recorded performance. With the likes of Idles and Shame making it big, there is clearly still an appetite for the sort of brutal, minimalist action that we find here […]
blindblindblind Wooo, this two-track live album from French instrumental duo Cantenac Dagar is straight off the bone, with no overdubs or studio trickery marring its sizzling sincerity. The crank-handled smack of those beats rupture a refreshing rawness on “Saique”, all dirty’n’distorted stepping into this abrasive banjo shadow. A gnarly screechy beast bowed by Stéphane Barascud taking a coarse grain sandpaper
KrysaliSound The harpsichord is one of the most evocative instruments; its sound immediately transporting you back four or five hundred years to the time of royal courts and bewigged composers. On Voluta, Francesco Maria Narcisi takes fragments of the instrument being played and introduces them to a modern setting that puts it right onto the back foot.
Spheric Music Robert Schroeder began making albums in 1979, being one of the artists on Klaus Schulze’s Innovative Communication label. He produced six wonderful albums for IC, including the mesmeric Galaxie Cygnus-A. He has produced a large body of electronic music over the last forty-two years, always pushing boundaries using a wide array of sounds from his various synthesizer set-ups, including some older analogue instruments that give him […]
Audio Obscura Neil Stringfellow‘s Audio Obscura has followed up 2020’s Love In The Time Of The Anthropocene with another expansive and hugely diverse litany of the destruction that has been caused since the time that our species has been on the earth. It is an affecting and far-reaching suite of pieces that make great use of the spoken word, set against the backdrop of expansive electronica that is […]
Broken Tape I’ll apologise for being brusque, but there’s a lot to get through and we haven’t got all day. – What is harsh noise wall? It’s harsh noise, except less happens. Typically fairly long, typically just white noise, typically minimal if not no dynamics. Often abbreviated to HNW. If it’s quieter it’s ambient noise wall (ANW) – Great, so what’s this compilation? It’s called 100 Harsh Noise […]
Injazero There is something kind of fitting about the title to Mike Lazarev‘s latest mini opus. It is a work of real compositional thought and love, but although it comprises ten tracks, it clocks in at a little over twenty minutes. You may think that it would only constitute sketches or fragments, but each of these short piano-led pieces is perfect in its integrity and the moods captured […]