4AD It’s been a good year for well-placed teasers and stealth advertising. Last week Mark Frost and David Lynch announced the return of Twin Peaks with simultaneous “That gum you like is going to come back in style” tweets, and everyone of course clocked it instantly. But the king of them all in 2014 was when Southern Lord just put out an image of the word “SCOTT O)))”. […]
Justin Farrington
149 posts
Misery Guts Music OK, quick history lesson. A hundred years and a couple of months ago, someone shot Franz Ferdinand (not the band) and the whole world descended into madness (also not the band). What followed was essentially a human meat grinder, millions of young lives fed into one end and coming out the other as the sausages of empire. Such extremity of experience gave birth to some […]
Corsica Studios, London 23 September 2014 So we’re back again for round two — the second night in a row at London‘s tiny but perfectly-formed Corsica Studios, this time to see space-rock reprobates White Hills and One Unique Signal. And there will be volume. Oh yes, there will be volume. Lots and lots of lovely, lovely volume (say this in the voice of Neil Kinnock‘s Spitting Image puppet […]
Corsica Studios, London 22 September 2014 Despite its location, deep in the heart of Elephant and Castle, I really, really like Corsica Studios. It’s essentially a tiny concrete box with a wicked sound system, the combination of which tends . We’re here to see Bardo Pond, of whom more later
Sargent House Boris. Where does one start with Boris? Well, maybe with a water cannon to the face, the floppy-haired posh twat. Oh, not THAT Boris? OK, so which Boris, then? The sludgy stoner rock merchants of Absolutego fame? The spooky doom band behind that Sunn0))) collaboration? The magnificent rock band that gave us Heavy Rocks and Smile? Or the bizarre yet immaculate J-pop metal band behind New […]
Avalanche So I defrosted my fridge yesterday. Inches thick in ice, it was. Had to take a hairdryer to it in the end. Scalding hot air. Huge expanses of frozen water. A lot of wrenching, smashing and cries of frustration. All in all, it was a lot like the new Godflesh EP. Decline And Fall is the first new material from the reactivated Godflesh project in thirteen years, […]
Damnably Shonen Knife tend to massively divide opinion. And, contrary to what you may have been told by the well-meaning, there ARE opinions which are right and opinions which are wrong and worthy of no respect. Some people find their Ramones-drenched girlpop infuriatingly twee- these people have the WRONG opinion, and should be pointed and laughed at in the street. Others think their particular brand of kawaii-core (yeah, […]
London 4 June 2014 “In case of sonic attack,” warned Hawkwind, “follow these rules,” before advocating such crazy measures as “try to get as far from the sonic source as possible.” One assumes, therefore, that the combined onslaught of Loop and Godflesh doesn’t technically count as an “attack,” what with being consensual. More like sonic S/M play, maybe. Because the urge here definitely seems to tend towards getting […]
Versatile For my first few listens of Zombie Zombie‘s soundtrack to Narimane Mari‘s film Loubia Hamra, I very deliberately didn’t make any attempt to find what the film was about, so I could do an experiment with myself and see what images the album brought to mind. Turns out it’s either a stunningly inappropriate soundtrack (which I doubt, somehow) or I’m just stunningly bad at judging films by […]
London 18 May 2014 So the economy’s screwed, the world’s still on the brink of war, and far, far more of the people you admire are dead than alive, while everywhere you look there are more racists, fuckheads and idiots than it would be practical to Freepost shitty bricks to. And, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, the bastards have gone and cancelled Community. But you know […]
Young God (North America)/ Mute (Rest of the world) I always thought there was some kind of law, like a law of physics rather than one drafted for use in courtooms, like the Universal Speed Limit or something, that stated that it was physically impossible for a band to come back from the void of non-existence and still be at the top of their game. You know what I […]
The Black Heart, The Underworld, The Electric Ballroom London 26-27 April 2014 Desertfest is an event that takes place over three venues in three days. It is a sprawling monster that is there to bludgeon the ears of its attendees as much as possible with every conceivable manner of riff to be explored. This was my first experience of the festival, and I have to say it was […]
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 […]
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 […]
London 11 April 2014 There’s probably an argument to be made that talking about Chrysta Bell in terms of David Lynch is lazy, but that’s what I’m going to do, at least at first. The reasons for this are threefold – first, having not only produced her album but co-written it with her, he casts a pretty long bequiffed shadow over the music. Second, at a gig plugged […]
London 29 January 2014 The London post-rock/math-rock (or as I prefer to say, maths rock) scene is a small but devoted one, so when local purveyors of big chiming epics 52 Commercial Road need to pay for the album they’ve just recorded, Communion, with a benefit gig in Dalston’s tiny Power Lunches, it’s hardly any surprise that they’re playing to a full and appreciative house. The entry fee […]
Hank 3 You can’t say Hank Williams III (sometimes Hank III or Hank 3) isn’t prolific. Well, I suppose you could, but it would make you a big ol’ fuckin’ asshole of a liar. Since his first solo album Risin’ Outlaw in 1999, he’s released a colossal, some might say ludicrous, amount of music, giving nary a shit about genre. Aside from the obvious country and western stuff, […]
Avalanche As I write this, Lou Reed is freshly dead and the streets are littered with fallen branches from a storm widely tipped before its appearance to herald the Apocalypse. (Spoiler – it didn’t). What is called for is something elemental, something riddled with loss and sorrow, but also something that fucking kicks ass. What is called for, essentially, is Everyday I Get Closer To The Light From […]