Bureau B Remember that brief, optimistic period in the late ’90s when it seemed that every style of music could be bettered by adding electronics? Like William Orbit‘s Pieces In A Modern Style or Tortoise‘s dub-infused exotica, we were hell bent on improving the past and stitching it to the present. That mission has been re-instated on Tiden, the second collaboration from legendary future classicist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, best […]
Album review
2442 posts
LM Dupli-cation Bahriye Ciftetellisi is the fourth release on Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost(AKA A Hawk and a Hacksaw)’s new label LM Duplication, which is proving to be prolific considering it only gave birth to its first release a year ago. From the moment the percussion kicks in on the first track after Cüneyt Sepetçi’s clarinet solo “Bahriye Cif Ciftetellisi” proves to be an aggressive assault to the […]
Rocket Bloody hell lads. Bloody hell. So I’ve seen Teeth of the Sea a few times. First time a good four years ago when they were playing with Gnod and Thought Forms at a time when Gnod were, with due deference, about the best band in the country. So my memory of that night is a bit tinted in Gnod’s colours. TotS live, as I recall (this is […]
Bureau B I have to say I was ignorant of Asmus Tietchens until he played recently in Brighton at Spirit of Gravity (an experimental electronica night that’s very much worth your time if you’re in the area). A load of my mates who were of age in the ’80s speak in hushed, reverent tones of the man Tietchens. I have to confess, I’m often a bit sceptical of […]
Dekorder On The Falling Rocket, sound sculptor Stephan Mathieu weaves a deft tapestry of astral drones, using a rather rudimentary array of Farfisa organ, mechanical gramophone and radio waves, all punched into a MAX/MSP patch and slurred up nicely. . So what is a drone? In music, it is a note or tone sustained continuously throughout a piece, and drone music is a minimalist musical style that emphasizes […]
Disco Gecko The moon is a strange mistress. She is the one object in the universe that controls more of what happens here on Earth than any other celestial body. She controls the tides on our planet and has been worshipped by many in the past and even still today. The remix of Toby Marks’ last album sings hymns to the lunar where the original album joyously chanted […]
Normal Cookie A brushstroke painting of a cherry blossom landscape/ dance floor abandon = = > “i need a christmas tree” Will Long and Rie Mitsutake create a slice-of-life synth folk sound collage on their own label, Normal Cookie. With Oh, Yoko the pair were interested in exploring the openness of creativity in captured moments of a simple home and city life. Towards this goal, Long and Mitsutake […]
Touch If you have ever scanned the technical credits of television programmes as they glide slowly past in the wake of the action, chances are you will have seen the names of either Ken Morse or Chris Watson, or both. Morse is sometimes reckoned to be the most credited cameraman in history, so often have his rostrum camera skills contributed to the jewels that fall from the small […]
G-Wave/Cleopatra (North America) After reviewing the Hinotori single earlier this year I’ve been looking forward to the album release as the tracks on the EP blew me away. So it was with trepidation that I placed the CD into the player and pressed play. I certainly didn’t expect to be instantly transported to another galaxy. The album begins with an extended version of “Hinotori,” and from the opening […]
Sireena Surround Sound Evolution finds Mythos making music the size of planetariums, and this is an album filled with massive synths that take you on a tour of the universe. Following on from 2008’s Surround Sound Offensive, opening track “Surround Sound Passion” builds its layers of synths into a strong melody as electronic glitches add percussion beneath. The track feels like the opening titles of a sci-fi movie and […]
Spectrum Spools Unicorn Hard-On is a solo project of one Valerie Martino. She’s a great rhythm chaser, tugging those dry arithmetical presets in a piranha splattered synapse of pulsing inputs. Now, I’ve got to admit, I’m not the greatest dance music devotee, but Weird Universe is certainly throwing enough solid hooks and neon-splashed chameleons to satisfy my curiosity.
Thrones & Dominions tl;dr – the sort of prog album that’ll tickle prog-fanciers silly, and the sort of album that . ANTA, née Snakes on a Plane, which I’m sure they’ll appreciate being reminded of. Second album, but they’re all been around Bristol and Bath for something like a thousand years in something like a million bands, many of which were brilliant but under-recognised (Loxondonta anyone? Thought not) I’m […]
Exotic Pylon/Zoharum These are separated by time and space (never separable, never suited) but are nevertheless kin – in Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color they would be pigs and people, skin-bonded, worm-tailed, consciousness-sharing. I guess they are both broadly branches of that jagged, never truly existing, tree called ‘dark ambient’ (a tree that confounds at every twist, that seemingly can’t die because it has roots in the infinite itself) […]
Bureau B What an arresting cover, that alabaster face seemingly levitating, framed in a burn of auburn hair. I’m convinced that’s a gender messing Thomas Dinger caked in ghostly Clouzot cosmetics. The macabre blue of the lips, and the wing-like Bowie-isms of those scry-worthy eyes throwing everything forward whilst the background simultaneously envelops, giving over an eerie undulating quality to the stillness. Like a Buñuel freeze-frame, eternally tittering […]
Metropolis It’s hard to write about The Legendary Pink Dots. It’s hard on one level because they make music which tends to bypass the analytical centres of the brain and go straight for the bits that experience stuff. It’s hard in the same way that describing your dreams is hard, or trying to build a model of St Paul’s Cathedral from soup. But I’ll give it a shot, […]
Rural Isolation Project Quttinirpaaq‘s Matt Turner is condcucting a seance to summon the ’70s in a cement dirigible hangar. Coming from a long line of damaged Texan noise-punks like Roky Erickson, The Butthole Surfers and Pain Teens, Quttinirpaaq uses bad acid and bad horror movies as a gateway to a Dhalgren-limbo paradise, where Mario Bava‘s Demons dance the night away next to burning cars while Wolf Eyes and […]
Exotic Pylon 8-bit razor blade. Bedsit basement dwellers. Darkness on the edge of town. Hoofus makes music from the Animal Collective unconscious, slimy grimy retroactive electronic improvisations from the wilds of rural Norfolk. Here’s a snappy soundbyte from the press release: Hoofus performs and records electronic improvisations from the undergrowth of rural Norfolk, using fuzzy analogue aesthetics and FM synthesized unease to create visceral ritual rhythms, smeared with […]
Raster-Noton The mechanics of funk On this newest offering from Raster-Noton head Frank Bretschneider, the man behind Komet, sets aside amorphous drones and textures to explore the basic principles of dance music: rhythm. Super.trigger is essentially a collection of studio improvisations made between 2012-2013, then edited and re-configured into nine tracks of taut, sparse machine rhythms. This is the sound of an artist at work, struggling to get […]