Polyvinyl/ATP The release of Deerhoof vs Evil means that San Francisco-based Deerhoof have been putting out their genre-hopping ditty-bopping noisy beautiful schizophrenic pop for about 16 years now – for the record, that’s 60% longer than the Beatles were around. Deerhoof haven’t sold nearly as many records as the Beatles […]
Anton Allen
10 posts
Kranky I have to admit I’d never heard of Disappears before this record landed in my lap, so I looked them up online. (Research, see? Professionalism and that. That’s what seperates us real professional music writer types from the blogroll masses.) A noisy Chicago four-piece, refugees from the sad decline […]
Load The centrepiece of the recent All Tomorrow’s Parties documentary is a clip from a Lightning Bolt set at the festival back in 2006. The band, true to form, is set up on the floor of the venue and the crowd is jostling around Brian Chippendale‘s drumkit in a claustrophobic […]
Riot Season In which New Zealand polymath Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, [post=”love-destroy-world-hate-numbers” text=”Our Love Will Destroy the World”], Lugosi, Sunship, etc etc etc) sets about recreating the thunder, chaos and crushing despair of one of World War I’s bloodiest battlefields, using sub-bass guitar drones with occasional percussion and samples. […]
Holy Mountain Restraint is not a word you usually associate with psychedelia. “Excessive”, yes, “silly”, perhaps, but “restrained”? Nonetheless Dos, Wooden Shjips’ follow-up to their 2007 self-titled album, is for the most part a very restrained psych record. On each of the album’s five expansive tracks the bass and drums […]
Crystal Antlers – Crystal Antlers EP Touch and Go From the Comets on Fire school of sunshine-and-reverb-addicted, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink meltingpot psych come Crystal Antlers, the band with possibly the most unjustly off-putting name of the year. If you’re interested, the contest for the band with the most deservedly off-putting name of […]
Monotonix – Body Language EP Drag City Israeli rock bands – I’ll bet’cha can’t name two. I’ve got a theory that countries with compulsory military service always have rubbish music scenes, because there just aren’t enough bored kids hanging around to start bands and go to gigs and buy records […]
Concrete And Glass Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London 2 October 2008 When you go to a show by a shirtless, rabble-rousing mob like O’Death, you really expect to see the band set up on the floor, separated from their sweaty audience by little more than a few blobs of spit […]
Label: City Slang (Europe)/ Ernest Jenning Record Co (USA) Format: CD O‘Death’s stated intention with Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin was to capture the energy of their live sets on record, and anyone who has seen one of O’Death’s riotous shows will know that this is a hell of a tall order. […]
The Underworld, London 15 July 2008 The first time I came across Part Chimp, a few years back, they were tipped as The Loudest Band in London, but now that the reanimated corpse of My Bloody Valentine has reclaimed that title with its rotting, maggoty fingers, Part Chimp have mellowed […]