English Heretic English Heretic is an on-going multimedia exploration of various occult threads of British lore — everything from the polished chrome dystopias of JG Ballard to pagan pageantry, all corn rigs and jigs. He draws in tendrils of Crowley‘s 93rd current, mixing with Patrick Keiller‘s situationism and Julian Cope‘s wide-eyed megalith worship. On The Underworld Service, English Heretic unearths the zombified corpse of 1969 into 1970 — […]
Album review
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Acrobat The 1960 tour of Europe of the Miles Davis Quintet is a significant moment in jazz. It stands at a fulcrum for the development of John Coltrane as a musician and as a distinctive voice. The Quintet here is essentially the Sextet featured on Kind of Blue, but with Bill Evans swapped for Wynton Kelly on piano and without Cannonball Adderly. Coltrane had played with Miles Davis […]
PNL Large Unit was born when Paal Nilssen-Love was asked by a festival promoter to put together the band of his dreams. Nilssen-Love found the musicians among long-time friends and collaborators or by looking for young musicians with the extreme qualities he needed to present his musical visions. This all-Norwegian band (apart from one Swede) has no lack of skills and all the abilities to improvise in all […]
Universal Maybe it says something about the staid state of mainstream music fare at the moment but there has been a glut of reissues recently. 20 years after its first release, Underworld’s dubnobasswithmyheadman is the latest album to be remastered and repackaged in search of a new audience. In this case, if for no other reason that you have not heard it before, the re-release is worthwhile. Apparently […]
Disco Gecko The Sound Of Absence “If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings would there be any sound?” – George Berkeley Have you ever wondered what happens when you’re not around? What Somewhere Else might look like? To look through someone else’s eyes? The limits of knowledge is one of the most frustrating things about being alive – the fact […]
RVNG Intl. Ariel Kalma first came to my attention after snagging myself up his 0smose re-issue some years back, a startling re-imagining of ambient music from 1978 centred round the rainforest sounds of Borneo, a strung-out beauty well ahead of its time, and a revelation I was happy to hear more of. Now fast forwarding to 2014, the New York RVNG INTL. label have just unearthed a perfect […]
4AD “One-two, ready-go…” Where do Pixies fit in your musical history? Were you there for Come on Pilgrim, for Surfer Rosa? Was it “Gigantic” that first got you hooked? Or was it Doolittle? Maybe you arrived late to the Pixies party, with that seminal film moment pairing “Where is My Mind” with the final scene of Fight Club. Maybe you’ve only vaguely heard them, despite the five albums, […]
Other Ideas On this beguiling collaboration between Craig Tattersall, of The Boats/Remote Viewer and Thomas Shrubsole (Sub Loam, Jesus On Mars), the pair rouse the question what it means to be free. In doing so, they show us that this freedom is alive and well in the musical underground. For much of music’s recorded history, i.e. the history of western civilization, the tendency has been to further the […]
Clang Frank Benkho takes us on , using a daisy chain of synths and sequencers on this gem from Clang. For the longest time, it seemed like electronic music and improvisation were mutually exclusive. This was the day of the push-button performance, where electronic artists were basically just playing their records off of stored patterns on their machines or DJs concocted carefully constructed breezeblocks, with every transition being […]
Riot Season Right, you know that moment in sword and sorcery films where the hero climbs to the top of a peak to see what’s going on and his jaw drops because in the valley below is an orc army thousands and thousands strong? Well, this album would make a great soundtrack for one of those moments. Two spiralling tracks of unashamed freak out make up Blown Out‘s Drifting […]
Adaadat The Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone show has been running on NTS for around three years now; a platform for the musical outer limits run by artist and musician Graham Dunning. The show is fortnightly and is basically the breakfast show for every other Friday (noise in your cornflakes?). Dunning is a sound artist who is gaining a lot of recognition of late. His exploration of […]
Consouling Sounds Using only bass, guitar and slew of effects, Dorian Williamson and Jim Field‘s second release as Northumbria starts as it intends to finish, declaring at the outset that it is time to soar and glide. It seems to be just about fuzz o’clock as far as the guitar is concerned, and while the bass is set to Northumbrian winter time, its low-end rumbles are equally content […]
Bureau B After the joys of Something Dirty comes this new nugget of curiosity from the Péron/Zappi side of the Faust spilt. Entitled j US t (clever typographic minimalism for Just Us), it’s a twelve-track sketchbook of improvised flavours and some full-bodied wallop that Faust say should be taken, absorbed and remixed into your own musical endeavours. There’s certainly plenty of fertile nooks and crannies to get your […]
Spinefarm Do I believe in witchcraft? What kind of witchcraft? The legendary witch that rides on the imaginary broom? The hex that tortures the thoughts of the victim? The pin stuck in the image that wastes away the mind and the body? The massive maw of pure sludge doom is back. Electric Wizard return with a line-up that won’t go beyond the release of this album to produce […]
Concretism This is an exception to my general rule that music sounds better when it’s slightly wrong. This sounds exactly as it is intended to be. It feels commissioned, considered, skilful. This isn’t normally regarded as a virtue in my world; I’m suspicious of technical brilliance and musicianship seems like a terrible blind alley, redolent of the kind of people who bring those small guitars to parties, ruining […]
Potomak As a commemoration of the first world war, Einstürzende Neubauten could have so easily brewed up a mangled litany of compressed air screams, torn metal and had done with it. The opening track certainly has a good go. Aptly entitled “Kriegsmachinerie,” it’s a track that flash-floods the band’s pyroactive past in the screech of metal against metal. A twisted twilight caught in the whites of Luigi Russolo‘s eyes, […]
Northern Spy Having returned to a simpler production sound for their fourth album, o’death opted to record Out Of Hands We Go’s twelve songs live in the studio with Caleb Mulkerin at the controls. With Greg Jamie’s vocals burning brightly at the band’s heart, o’death bring rock and country instrumentation into close collaboration, mixing in many particular devices of their own devising or finding which they have acquired […]
The Collapse Of Everything Kontakte‘s latest album proves itself to be well worth the two years of concerted effort the duo have put into pushing the envelope of their music. It feels somehow broader, more expansive, even for a band who already knew full well how to bring out the brightly psychedelic edges and sharpen their perceptions on the manoeuvrings of their guitar, bass and electronics. The sense […]