Huta Artzine/Noisen/Zoharum Introduced by the shorter drones and electronic shimmers of “Alpha, “Beta” which rise up in a revenant scrawl of threat and ominous sounds (including some fine rabble-rousing samples which set the mood of the album as one slightly apart from the merely abstract and instrumental) the centrepiece of Ninkyo Dantai rests on the form of the twenty-minutes and more of “Alpha+”. But first comes “Gamma,” whose […]
Album review
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With the annual festival of all things Europop upon the screens of a continent and beyond, Kev Nickells runs through the entries. Eurovision – a cherished institution. Writing this has been a bit of a nightmare, to be honest, because Europe’s a lot bigger than you think it is. Spreads all the way over to Azerbaijan. And for all the tack/awesome stage-setting, it’s a timely reminder that Europe, […]
Constellation A collaboration between David Bryant (of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Set Fire To Flames) and Kevin Doria from Growing, this is an exquisite 10-track drone tone, a weathered and majestic beauty with a slow burn of salted guitar whirring through the ruins. Shortwave Nights‘ woeful currents are superb, reflective, wrapped in the legioned wheeze of the dilapidated, as if written in the dust of some abandoned factory […]
Dekorder Love these guys. Just love them. This is a bubbly, ecstatic mess of an album, in every good way… It’s all over the place; a dig around a wet pit of transcendentalism, an overflowing tub of funny jelly. There’s moments where the Ghost Box almost appears (in fact a few of the melodies resemble the chord progressions and gentle hauntological swotting/swatting of Concretism) but these moments are […]
Zoharum I’m not familiar with Machinefabriek‘s work, but on the strength of this release I think a little extra digging into the man’s back catalogue is required. Dubbeltjes (Dutch for dimes) is a collection of small wonders culled from 7″ and mini CDr rarities recorded and released by Rutger Zuydervelt between 2008 and 2013, the tracks being re-presented here in pairs and trios, reflecting how they originally appeared. […]
Editions Mego The opening number sounds like the closing track; it’s all about endings with Fennesz; endless endings, everything slowing down and finishing off. These are jet trails, not jets. This is the stuff that clings to rock, not rock itself. “Static Kings” opens Bécs like it’s the last album he’s ever going to make (cf. the, in retrospect frankly fraudulent, last track on Orbital 1.0’s Blue Album, […]
Drag City It had to be Detroit. At the turn of the 1970s, local act Rock Fire Funk Express were just one of many small bands performing undistinguished R&B in the front rooms and garages of Michigan. The band had been formed some years previously by three young Afro-Americans – David, Bobby and Dannis Hackney – inspired by witnessing The Beatles’ legendary first appearance on the Ed Sullivan […]
PIAS (Europe)/Ipecac (North America) A full quarter of a century after Twin Peaks, Angelo Badalamenti‘s languid yet sinister lounge-jazz template has permeated music to the extent that it’s almost a genre in itself, as the preponderance of writers lazy enough to fall back on them as a descriptor, such as my good(ish) self, will attest. Think Chrysta Bell, think Guano Padano‘s “Lynch”, think a million and one neo-noir […]
Dekorder A hyper-collectible one-sided ‘hybrid vinyl’ you say? *strokes non-beard* What curious engine is this? *bug-eyed lunatic face / “Soylent Green is people!”* Well, it’s got meaty black vinyl on the audio side and the usual slack-jawed picture-disc vinyl on the other – AKA this is what Leibniz was referring to when he uttered under his wig “Die beste aller möglichen Welten” (“the best of all possible worlds”). […]
Slowfoot One Did has a Max Wall kind of rhythmic comedy about it, as if the instruments have taken a ministry of silly walks pill, a ganglia of legs skipping the hoots and jaggerations. You wouldn’t be surprised to know that former Stump bassist Kev Hopper is behind this gem. After having his fill of abstract, atmospheric electronica he’s back with a vengeance as Prescott, joined by former […]
Harbinger Sound Sleaford Mods, Nottingham’s self-styled purveyors of “electronic munt minimalist punk-hop for the working classes and under,” are back with Divide And Exit, the follow-up to their cult classic compilation Austerity Dogs; so brace for anger, scatology, moshing and swearing. If they were a publication they’d be a cross between Class War and Viz, but they’re not. They’re a band. And they’re fucking excellent. Frontman Jason Williamson […]
Bureau B Walter Dahn (of Die Hornissen) and Tom Dokoupil (of The Wirtschaftswunder) met up for a single weekend back in ’81 and this 36 minute album was the kinetic fruit it bore. It’s a forgotten classic if you relish your post-punk Germanics as much as I do, and being quietly obsessed by anything Wirtschaftswunder related…well… resistance was futile. It sounds retro, but in a good way, a […]
Trendkill/7 Degrees/Shove (LP)/The Path Less Traveled (CD) It begins with “Walls that Breathe.” All that can be heard is the sound of raindrops pattering delicately on hard ground, punctuated occasionally by booming thundercracks that pierce the quiet night sky and reverberate out through the darkness. I cannot resist it. I cannot ignore it. There is something hard-wired deep inside the human brain that responds to an electrical storm, […]
Clouds Hill After the tragic death of their bassist Simon Wring in 2011, Gallon Drunk continued as a trio, releasing The Road Gets Darker From Here, a furious raw document of their stance at the time, almost a tribute to their own live appearances. After that, the band toured with Leo Kurunis on bass, and today the quartet has moved on even more, bringing also with them that […]
Editions Mego Through A Pre-Memory is an embrace of the titans; two behemoths of the dronederground, Mika Vainio of Pan Sonic and Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O)))/Khanate/KTL/Lotus Eaters and head of the Ideologic Organ label. While screeching black metal, doom, glitch, noise and dark ambient may not be the most obvious of bedfellows, they all share an interest in exploring the trans-human, using sundry technologies to evoke images […]
Touch & Go We are living in the era of re. Remakes, reissues, reunions and yes, remasters are becoming the staple of our cultural life. I for one have a tendency to resignedly sigh “oh, really?” when I hear of another bit of creative heritage being given a once over, a new lease of life – the defibrillator paddles being applied to the long cold corpse of something that […]
Sound of Cobra (LP)/Paradigms (CD) No-one would have believed that in the first years of the 21st century that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space… Easterfaust is The Cosmic Dead’s 12” vinyl, two track wig out to spiral galaxies via doses of Krautrock and good old space rock. The vinyl comes in glorious coloured loveliness with some artwork that wouldn’t have been out […]
Peripheral Conserve Absolutely loving this musique concrète mixer: its powertooled psych-o-delia of mis-shapes pleases me no end, quivers a satisfying kraut dot’n’dashes too. The overall sprawl is akin to a modern rework of The Faust Tapes, and well, I wouldn’t expect anything less, as The Wasp Boutique is one part Jean-Hervé Péron after all. This is rousing fare for sure, thrown into the light by Peter Strickland of […]