Transmutation LTD I must admit, after experiencing Autunna Et Sa Rose and Julie’s Haircut, I have been looking with fresh eyes towards our Italian brethren, and the latest surprise to wash over from those shores for me is Sigillum S. Having started back in the eighties and embracing a multimedia existence, the three main protagonists have released the best part of thirty albums.
Album review
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Om Kult Another unsettling listen from the master of extreme – Rudolf Eb.er, Om Kult Volume I is a cerebral feast that cancers the comfortable with needlepoint clarity. The carrion flies that dart between your hemispheres, those dirt dragging paws. It’s a focused feast that predators a pulse, shadow-plays a closely mic(ed) drama
Gizeh I imagine that Richard Knox, head honcho of the wonderful Gizeh Records, uses A-Sun Amissa as a kind emotional bloodletting, giving himself the opportunity to move in the kind of rarefied places and breathe in those mystical atmospheres that his other musical charges do.
Beggar’s Arkive It’s no exaggeration to say that the late lamented David Bowie cast an immense and glittery shadow over popular music, and it would seem the darkest part of this shadow fell on one Peter Murphy, superfan and Bauhaus lead singer. Bauhaus took the glam aesthetic of the Spiders From Mars, mixed it with the abrasiveness of punk and swapped out the science fiction for horror cinema
Modularfield There is something enigmatic about the idea of a goddess, a sense of mystery and power that is at the same time subtle. Goddess, the duo, give little away in the sterile cover photo of their latest Modularfield release. Faces obscured by flowers, minimal movement. It is as if they are posing for a surrealist still life, but once the cassette starts to roll, then all bets […]
Ipecac Still sporting the best hair in rock, King Buzzo is back with the latest iteration of his wonderful musical monstrosity. Pinkus Abortion Technician is the kind of album title that’s designed to make you go “…wait, what?”
Upset The Rhythm When the lovely clear vinyl copy of this latest Terry album arrived, I have no idea who they were and from where they hailed; but on putting it on the stereo, it could only be Australian. There is something about the sound, about the slightly deadpan voices and tumbling wordplay
PNL Lazy adjective adjective: lazy; comparative adjective: lazier; superlative adjective: laziest unwilling to work or use energy. “he was too lazy to improvise” synonyms: idle, indolent, slothful, work-shy, shiftless, loafing, inactive, inert, sluggish, lethargic, languorous, listless, torpid, enervated, slow-moving, slow, heavy, dull, plodding. *
Self-released God’s Teeth And The Interstellar Tropics are a psychedelic improv threesome hailing from Brighton. Suitably mysterious, extra details are scant, but I’m liking the airy acrobatics on this, their third release, GNASH.
Gizeh After a collaboration between guitarist / sound manipulator Jean DL and film-maker Sandrine Verstraete in 2015, Jean called in Canadian cellist Julia Kent to help provide a soundtrack to Sandrine’s latest video installation The Great Lake Swallows. Over a perfectly succinct twenty-six minutes, split into four subtly different tracks
Fish Of Milk (Australia and New Zealand) / ReR Megacorp (Europe and Japan) / Northern Spy (Americas) This newbie from Australian improv giants The Necks plays a Charlemagne Palestine-like long game (or it appears so) in a snakes and ladders of subtle tone shifts and erosions. A deceptively simple premise that sleekly seduces, seeps in there, tingles in the fragmentary unison of a trickling piano and scattered percussives.
Thrill Jockey I was fortunate enough to catch Glenn Jones playing with Cul de Sac in support of Damo Suzuki many years ago and their freeform repetition was a perfect match for Damo’s mantra-like vocalising. The freedom and experimentation that Cul de Sac embodied is quite a contrast to Glenn’s solo guitar work, and really goes to show how varied and thoughtful he is as a performer.
Hubro Yet another ideas-filled release from Hubro finds Anja Lauvdal and Hans Hulbaekmo from improv monster Skadedyr joining up with double bassist Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson to strip things down a little and see how far they can push the capabilities of a piano / bass / drums trio in the light of how far Norway is pushing jazz. This is not necessarily jazz as we may recognise it, but more three […]
Karlrecords A Philosophy Warping, Little By Little That Way Lies A Quagmire documents the second collaboration between Konstrukt and the Japanese avant-garde / noise icon Keiji Haino. This live manifestation, captured at SalonIKSY back in December last year, (and confusingly carrying the same title as its studio sister) is a meaty two-track beast that makes you envious you missed out on witnessing it in the flesh.
Buried Treasure A book, a CD, a crackle, a cackle. It’s an undialled radio… buzz… Echoes a little of 2000AD’s Zenith… perhaps even the first few episodes of Hellboy… this is England Calling, The Delaware Road… a little graphic play, beautifully illustrated…. A Black Mass…
By Norse Music Tradition’s a funny old concept, isn’t it? For how long and how often does something have to occur before it counts as a tradition? Are some traditions more traditional than others? How does one measure something’s traditionality?
Màgia Roja/ BFE Unlike the seemingly endless crop of darkwavers with weird keyboard characters for names, Silvia Konstance Costan and her partner in Dame Area, the Catalan underground veteran Victor Hurtado, stab at something less generic
Glacial Movements Glacial Movements have one of the most perfect record label names and so far those releases that have arrived here have lived up to the name. Tropic Of Coldness is a duo based in Brussels that work primarily in a soft focus haze of washes and drones, using mainly guitars and synths to produce gentle, drifting soundscapes.