London 22 May 2015 Fortis Green, north London. A place of fertile musical soil. Back at the turn of the Sixties, Fortis Green was the manor of brothers Ray and Dave Davies, whose combination of gifted lyricism, overdriven Vox amplifiers and almost unrivalled songwriting ability saw them take the output […]
David Solomons
121 posts
Crucial Blast This is the record that you put on when you are lying entwined with your loved one, the both of you perhaps shimmering in a post-coital afterglow, the bedroom window open, a warm breeze blowing in the faint sounds of summer. Hang on. Actually, no. Sorry. That’s by […]
Dais Towards the end of his long and picaresque life, Billy Burroughs had become such an in-demand photographic accessory for the rock star du jour that the astounding body of work that had made him so notable in the first place was starting to slip dangerously into the shadow of […]
Corsica Studios, London 3 December 2014 One of the bonuses of the gig being at Corsica Studios is that I can have a wander around inside the Elephant and Castle shopping centre beforehand. It’s a truly gargantuan space, way too large to justify its enormous real estate footprint in these […]
Faber and Faber Back in 1986, some real waves were made by the publication of The Audit of War, a bitter and excoriating account of Britain’s strategic socio-economic decision-making during the first ten years after World War Two. The work was written by revisionist (military) historian Correlli Barnett, who critiqued […]
London 16 September 2014 Listen, For in each tiny sound, In the movement of the air, And in the song of the birds, Shall the voice of God Speak unto you, If only you chose to hear it. Johannes Dieterich, Prorsus Inventa, 1573
Bureau B I confess, I was in two minds about this one. When Freq’s esteemed editor suggested that I review the second album by Camera (their debut Radiate appeared in 2012), my internal braking system engaged almost at once. Reading the accompanying blurb, it was pushing to the hilt, their […]
London 7 August 2014 Probably the best way to imagine this gig is to picture the Newtonian Laws of Motion resolving themselves inside a packed Turkish sauna. If Car A is driving down a road at 100mph, whilst Car B is driving at 100mph in the opposite direction, if they […]
Tompkins Square Right from its first publication in February 1911, the novel Fantômas was a phenomenon. In the words of post-modern New York über-poet John Ashberry it was “a work of fiction whose popularity cut across all social and cultural strata. Countesses and concierges; poets and proletarians; cubists, nascent Dadaists, […]
Gonzo Multimedia F Scott Fitzgerald famously once declared that American lives had no second act. Thankfully, Don van Vliet, throughout his career an exception in so many ways, was one exempted from this rule. For, following the musical big bang of 1976, Beefheart – truculent, dissonant, and decidedly not a […]
Electrowerkz, London 21 June 2014 This was something I never dreamt I would ever see. I stare at the ticket in my hand and still can’t quite believe what the lettering says: “Chrome – doors open 7pm.” I would have been less surprised to have found myself standing atop the […]
Bureau B Berlin loves airports. Or it loved airports. Mm, I think on reflection it probably still does love airports, even if it no longer has quite as many as it used to. From the über-Zentral elegance of the now-decommissioned Tempelhof (once amongst the 20 largest buildings on Earth and […]
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 – […]
Chrysta Bell‘s album This Train has finally been released officially in the UK (with extra tracks too) via QQ5 – read David Solomon‘s original review here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hozNfOuQwIw
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 […]
Mute Approaching this new album by Laibach – their first proper in six or seven years – seems an awesomely intimidating task. I feel like the hominid leader Moonwatcher confronted by the sudden appearance of the Monolith in the opening ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space […]
London 10 December 2013 We leave the pub and head down towards Entrance F. The night is cold and dark, breath highlighted as white wisps against the blackness, lights pinpoint bright like stars. It’s perfect. And now the excitement is building, as the phalanxes of the black-clad, the long-haired and […]
Northern Spy (North America)/ReR (Europe) I was determined not to like this album. I’d signed up to review it in advance of The Necks’ sold out three-night stand at Café OTO in early November – new album review, live gig write-up, . I’ve always like symmetry, me. Yet the album […]
Exotic Pylon There is a television advertisement for Cow and Gate infant food supplement currently doing the rounds (at this juncture it is more or less obligatory to state that “Other baby and toddler nutritional products are available”), which shows a gang of little nippers unleashed in a spacious recording […]
London 21 September 2013 It is a mild, early autumn Saturday night and Upper Street is the very picture of modern urban revelry. Outside the doorways of fashionable bars and clubs, the pavements are clotted with thick knots of drinkers and smokers, the ‘dun-tsch, dun-tsch, dun-tsch’ beat of anonymous dance […]