Hubro The title and track names for Exoterm‘s first album read like stage directions or parts of a screenplay, and the atmospheres that they produce over the course of the six tracks on Exits Into A Corridor are dark and foreboding but suffused with a giddy mania.
Album review
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Sub Rosa Premiering seven compositions, this Noise of Art CD by the Opening Performance Orchestra, a Czech avant-garde and noise group from Prague who milk their “no melody, no rhythm, no harmony” ethos completely, documents the long-lost sound of Futurism
First Terrace The first side of FTS003 is a gentle amalgam of mechanical whirs and snipping conjunctives. One of Pierre Bastien’s robotic creations — a specially adapted Casio that conducts a huge sound sculpture, a Mechanical Orchestra invented by Cabo San Roque in Barcelona. The hiccuping apparatus is ever-present, delicately puckering a slow pulsing organ backdrop as this trumpet sauces its sinews.
UMC I first bought a copy of Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks when it came out in 1983 on vinyl and a copy has remained in my collection ever sincem as its one of my all-time favourite Brian Eno albums. The early 1980s were as many artists began to explore this area and records were beginning to sell rather well.
Upset The Rhythm Unlike the pebble-dash that passes for indie these days, this lot show how it’s done, sabotaging the commercialism for the (un)common good, deliberately submerging their lyrics, knifing the flow with a juxtaposed jab to fearlessly craft something unique and as changeable as the British weather.
Infrequent Seams There’s often something worth listening to when you get a not-entirely-composer working in a relatively (or entirely) “classical” setting. And here we have Elliot Sharp composing for an orchestra, a choir and (arguably something more typically Sharp-ian, if that’s not an oxymoron), electronics / bass clarinet.
Constellation What on earth could Lungbutter be? It sounds most unappealing. It kind of sounds oozy and uncomfortable, and I am not sure that describes this Montreal trio all that well — but on the other hand, there are elements that are oozy and some of Ky Brooks‘ rambling doesn’t sit comfortably in the musical uproar that Joni Sadler and Kaity Zozula produce. It is a unique sound
Peaceville It’s become something of a cliché to say “I like their early stuff”, but in Darkthrone‘s case I don’t actually know a great deal of their recent stuff. I loved the first few albums, especially once they really hit their stride with Under A Funeral Moon
Bureau B Martin Rev‘s renown in the history of electronic music from the early ’70s onwards is generally as one half of avant-doo-wop street synth rebels Suicide, but as well as constructing the beats and sounds for the duo, Martin also had a sporadic solo career, the second and third albums of which Bureau B are giving a well-earned re-issue.
Mute / BMG It was Voltaire who perhaps put it best when he reviewed the first Suicide album on its original appearance in 1977: “If Suicide did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them”. A punk band before the term existed, a rock band without guitars, a duo who could cow an entire room of people, like the platypus, in nature. Yet exist they most certainly […]
Discus Martin Archer‘s Discus label continues its sonic adventures with the latest release from Belgian bassist Guy Segers’s improv project the Eclectic Maybe Band. An improbable bevy of some of the finest improv musicians, the project finds group-constructed freeform pieces sitting side by side with Guy’s speciality, which is taking improv recordings from different sessions and then stitching them together in the studio over a bass-line written especially […]
Judi Gee Attention revellers. What with summer finally here, Europe cooking in a heatwave, and you and yours sprawled out languidly on the grass, eating picnics, drinking wine (spo-dee-o-dee), or otherwise trying to stay cool in the pool, you’re going to need a soundtrack, right? Something fitting for that golden end-of-afternoon sunlight. Something to give the end of a perfect day that slightest hint of a bittersweet aftertaste. […]
Constellation For Siskiyou‘s fourth album for Constellation, they appear to have returned to their roots with that lo-fi home-recorded sound that echoes the kind of direction in which Mark Linkous originally headed. On Not Somewhere, Colin Huebert has taken on the majority of instruments and constructed frayed but hopeful vignettes
Disciples The wind-caught piano on the first track on His Name Is Alive’s All The Mirrors In The House daggers a smooth spectral draw that dissipates into “Lliadin”’s sustained shimmer. Its autumnal flow pin-heads multi-tracked murmurs, eating into the unaccompanied fret repeats
Rune Grammofon For Fire! Orchestra‘s fourth album for Rune Grammofon, the core group has once again reduced the numbers, this time to a far more manageable fourteen. The introduction of a string quartet (three violins and one cello) still has reed players outnumbering strings, but it doesn’t make for a top-heavy sound at all.
Motto Motto Incredibly, the band Now have been plying their charming trade for the last twenty years or so, and yet every release sounds so fresh and imbued with the joy of a band that have just started playing together.
Bronson Martin Bisi‘s famed BC Studios in Brooklyn is renowned for bringing the noise to New York, and in celebration of it reaching the grand old age of thirty-five, they decided to throw a party in January of 2016, invite a load of old friends and record the ensuing fun for release. A first volume was released back in 2018 and now the response has demanded a second […]
Drone For the seventh outing in Drone Records‘ long-running Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone series of vinyl compilations, Specimens, Skeldos, Mytrip and Opening Performance Orchestra get not only a track on the LP, but for the first time in the collection, the latter also have the chance to offer up the full seventy-minute version of their contribution on an accompanying CD.