(self-released) Debut record from a Brighton-based duo doing something oddly nostalgic. In a way that’s possibly not obviously nostalgic. I don’t know how many readers are familiar with that time in “post-rock” when it was more associated with Tortoise and being quietly cerebral than big instrument rockist gestures, but this is fairly close to that. Similar to that time as well there’s a kind of parity and austerity […]
Kev Nickells
224 posts
Broken Tape I’ll apologise for being brusque, but there’s a lot to get through and we haven’t got all day. – What is harsh noise wall? It’s harsh noise, except less happens. Typically fairly long, typically just white noise, typically minimal if not no dynamics. Often abbreviated to HNW. If it’s quieter it’s ambient noise wall (ANW) – Great, so what’s this compilation? It’s called 100 Harsh Noise […]
Death Waltz Originals Gong possessors ANTA, of Bristol legend, sutured to the might of international man of Italo mystery Antoni Maiovvi, who is definitely not from Bemmie before it got poncy. What is the score? Well. I am here for PURE MUSIC. And how pure it is! Pure as the water from the mountains of the Gods. As I understand it, Herr Maiovvi wrote a bunch of tracks […]
Misanthropic Agenda Quite where we are here I’m not entirely sure. I don’t really follow a lot of noise or musique concrète or, like, whatever this is. But that this is a 4CD boxset suggests that either Francisco Meirino‘s of some standing or the label owe him a favour for a hit or something. I certainly hope it is for being of some standing, because this is fine […]
Kindarad Those of you who’ve been following MXLX (he of Fairhorns, Knife Library, very etc) will know he’s a slippery bugger. His earlier days — mostly characterised by the now-defunct Team Brick project — went through a series of phases, sometimes in the same gig, pulling in stimmy noise, klezmer-after-burial, shouting hardcore, Shaggs-esque lop-sided indie — again very etc.
Monzen Nakacho For the uninitiated, Monzen Nakacho is something like the two-step-gone-goth solo project of one Gary Short from sunny Worthing in the UK. And it’s the sort of music that you can only imagine coming from somewhere like that — parts end of the pier glee and lurid flourescence, but lacking the asceptic cleanliness of one of your fancy towns. There’s a raft of touchstones for this […]
Crónica There’s a quality that some music has of being like an old friend. I’ve not listened to any new Francisco López in a decade or more but the ’00s CDs of his I have get a fairly frequent spin. Those CDs tended towards a kind of quietism — usually called Untitled [n] and largely a kind of textural building from exceptionally quiet to pretty blaring. All with […]
Phantom Limb / Dekorder / and forty-two others worldwide Senyawa apparently move in circles that include your Stephen O’Malleys and your Damo Suzukis and your Oren Ambarchis. But let’s not hold that against them. They’re an Indonesian duo that use… well, it’s not clear what of these sounds is orthodoxly “instrument” and what’s sound / processed noise / loops. Synths, junk percussion and vocals seem to be the […]
Ankst In my head, Datblygu are putting out records at a rate of knots, but it’s been five years since Porwr Trallod, so what do I know. Time gets slower over forty-odd years, maybe. For the uninitiated, Datblygu are something of a legend in Welsh-language music, and not enough of a legend in British music. By a lot of estimations they’re something like the originators of singing in […]
99Chants Another day, another re-issue of an overlooked female composer. That might seem glib, but there’s a lot of it doing the rounds at the moment. And let’s be fair, composition is still too frequently male-heavy. Bunita Marcus is (unfortunately) known as one of those adjacent figures — a New York figure known by people in various scenes, with a raft of compositions under her belt and a […]
Play Loud! So here we are in London’s salubrious East End, in a period between the wars and reflecting a very different area to the one we know now. Except kind of not — London’s always been a mix of people, so no great surprise that ’20s London had Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews rubbing shoulders with white working class Londoners, singing songs about Copenhagen or the Netherlands. This […]
Disciples I’d like to imagine there’s some Freudian primary school where aspersions are cast heartily on people’s unconsciousness, though one wonders the effects of Oedipalising on ‘your mum’ jokes. Phew describes this album as “an unconscious sound sketch” and, for all the half-finished-ness that might imply, she’s got a thoroughly glittering musical psyche and intuition.
Mute Despite impressions of the “are they still going?” sort, Erasure records are always worth a bash. Arguably, unlike a lot of their synthpop contemporaries in the ’80s, they’ve consistently respected the format. A bunch of songs, not too long, no faffing about with excessively long instrumentals. Pop discipline, that’s the order of the day.
Editions Mego The panoply writ “disruption” was cursed paratactically; or better, pastiche’s ante-noumen should imperatively be considered hypotactically. That is, without hesitation or compunction — res ipsa loquitur — but also mured qua violence (a tendril disavowed ‘twixt Richard of St Victor / Libidinal Economy).
Bright Shiny Things It might be that “landscape”‘ is as much defined by borders as it is landmass. Jobina Tinnemans‘ music (arguably) has a dual relationship with landscape — when we say the landscape of electronic music, we might mean IDM, electronica, soundscapes, field recordings (etc), each with their own borders. Tinnemans is clearly not beholden to such impermeable notions of border.
Cherry Red This has been out a couple of months by the time you’ll read this. Do we worry about release cycles any more? I’m not too worried. Though there’s a strong chance that the core Fall fan, especially the sort to salivate over studio slurry, probably does worry. Bless his male-pattern CAMRA farts heart. Speaking of salivating over slurry, here’s the latest iteration in “the new normal”. […]
In Real Life Sometimes music appears in front of you and it seems to have come from nowhere. Like, it definitely slaps but you can’t quite plot how it got to be. Meth Math fit that description.
Intravenal Sound Operations St Galás of the plague. Obviously now is the perfect time for a re-issue of this most excruciating of records. Insofar as the general fuckedness of everything is front and centre and needs a soundtrack.