Awesome Tapes From Africa Oh, liner notes! I get that some people just want the music to speak for itself, but, frankly, that’s nonsense. I want someone to put it in a context, which is what Awesome Tapes From Africa have done here; thanks, ATFA. We learn that SK Kakraba comes from a line of gyil players, and we learn that the distorted buzzes on the slats is […]
Album review
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Important Composition’s kind of ridiculous to write about in that you have to write about (broadly) two things — the composition and the delivery — and differences between various recordings can be relatively minimal. Usually, the appeal of composition from about the ’40s onward is that it falls into one of two categories — shit, therefore over-recorded (Phillip Glass, most Americans) or amazing, therefore under-recorded (usually by Europeans). […]
Bureau B ESB’s album lands on my doorstep at the same time as the first pictures of Pluto filter through the cosmos and are shown for the first time for all humanity to see. Somehow the music created by the trio of Yann Tiersen, Lionel Laquerrière and Thomas Poli is fitting as its soundtrack. “Market” is the album opener, and it’s full of glistening synths that seem to […]
Sofa Sometimes, you just want to write a review made up of ephemera and snatches of observations rather than, y’know, syntactically cogent sentences. I would say “poetic”, but what I really mean is that I find my own notes hilarious and disingenuous and the idea of having a series of shit kōans in place of a record idea is amusing.
Night School (Europe) / Sacred Bones (Americas) Today we’re here to talk about the idea of perfect pop music, and in the ’80s, that decade where pop ruled the world, there was no band more perfect than Strawberry Switchblade, who burned ridiculously brightly for one lone album and then dissolved in acrimony.
The Spheres Swastikas For Noddy was my favourite of Current 93‘s work until Thunder Perfect Mind stole its glory some years later. It’s very much a family affair, a pulling of disparate threads directed by David Tibet chasing his hallucinogenic vision of a crucified Noddy.
Tin Angel It’s harvest time and the nights draw in and we prepare for the long winter ahead. In a few weeks the warmth of long summer days will be a distant memory and we will count the days down to the sun’s warm return.
Sulatron Krautzone have to be one of my favourite new bands of the last couple of years. Not only are the covers of the albums (by Komet Lulu) so beautifully designed, but the music is powerful, hypnotic, trance-like and just plain out there. Here, we are treated over two CDs to the complete recorded works of the band, plus one never-before released bonus track that gives you enough […]
Avalanche At first listen, Justin Broadrick‘s latest outburst of noisemongering — here incarnate as JK Flesh in industrial electronic style — might just be a assumed to be a bit too content to stick to the tried and tested formula of harsh beats, dubby echo effects and the sound of a machine drum stomping on the human corpus forever (or at least for around an hour or so).
Editions Mego If one artist could embody epic, Thighpaulsandra would try to top it. Rumour has it his first solo record was so big he had to spread it across two releases and one of those was a double’s worth. Musically well travelled and mustering a mind-boggling proficiency of styles, he happily hopscotches from classical to avant electronic, proggy free jazz to full-on kraut and a whole of […]
S Object/Folk Wisdom Inspired by Chris Marker’s fragmentary post-apocalyptic time travel film La Jetée and purporting to involve a mysterious black box dating from the Anthropocene era, AirEffect seems at once an imaginary soundtrack and the illusory object of its own investigations. Stanislao Lesnoj‘s haunting saxophone circles SmZ‘s shuffling drums and other percussion while Christian Fennesz‘s guitar and electronics scrape and shimmer. All the time and environmental sounds […]
Bureau B A companion to the album he and Hans-Joachim Roedelius recorded together, released as Selective Studies Volume One in 2013, 1D takes sketches and solo parts that Lloyd Cole created as part of the process, but that were ultimately unused for the record as a duo. Composed entirely using a modular synthesizer, and instrument that Cole was learning to use as he went along, the eleven tracks […]
London 10 September 2015 Sold out, The Barfly is pretty rammed tonight with the by-now-traditional rabble of goths, rockers and punks both steam and… erm… the other kind. For tonight is the launch of The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing‘s third and latest album, Not Your Typical Victorians.
Tigertrap The live-wire pairing of drummer Thomas Fuglesang and electronic sound-mangler Jussi Brightmore have come on leaps and bounds, deservedly gathering admirers as they have done so, since their debut album, Silent Cenotaph. First released in 2011 , it’s now finally been blessed with a Tigertrap vinyl edition, wrapped up in as suitably bizarre a gatefold cover as its music deserves and Brightmore could devise. The duo push […]
Industrial That foetal thump propelling this is cavernous; and at high volume it’s huge. Dynamically churning up the digital silt as collapsing structures fall through in cacophonies of brokenness, shadowy vectors that smoulder in the arch of pulsing ambiguity. Yep, my favourite trio Carter Tutti Void are back with more post-industrial mutations to be savoured. The splintered majesty that started with Transverse (and I still can’t believe that […]
Not Your Average Type /Genepool The Cesarians are back, which is great news for all lovers of the dark and depraved, as well as punks and lovers of stuff that rocks hard who have become bored with endless guitar solos. Although they’ve long since broken their own self-imposed “no guitars” rule, that hasn’t stopped them continuing to resolutely plough their own brass-driven furrow to the end of the […]
ICR / United Dairies Loving the way this triptych holds you sensory hostage. One of Nurse With Wound‘s most mellowest outings to date too, documenting three separate live concerts between 2011 and 2012 with the Blind Cave Salamander — a onetime support act that Steve Stapleton invited to be absorbed into the NWW sound world. On paper this was meant to be a live rendition of Soliloquy for […]
Front & Follow The inscription inside the cover of Laura Cannell’s beautifully packaged CD reads “Beneath swooping talons we choose to be brave, or else to edge the shadows of open spaces, Silent wings come upon us in a strobe of feathers, we choose to be free, or else let the unknown control us.” There is a pleasing sparseness to these single-take recordings, , played on fiddle, overbow […]