Faber and Faber tl;dr – you probably need this book if you’re a fan of Can. You probably need it if you’re a fan of well-written things about music.
Kev Nickells
204 posts
American Dollar Bill : Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous To Look At Face On Thrill Jockey So so so… I’ve got probably more Keiji Haino albums than anyone reasonably needs. My heirarchy tends to look like Haino solo > Fushitsusha > anything else. He’s got a pretty intimidating discography — more like the little-and-often of free improv and jazz than magnum opuses of rockism. The right answer […]
Little Miss Echo Recordings This is the debut EP from Johanna Bramli, who is possibly better known for being one half of “motorik electronic pop band Fröst“, but I’ve not actually heard them, while I have seen Bramli a couple of times at live shows around Brighton. And verily she is good.
Mark E Smith may be gone, but not forgotten by Kev Nickells. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to the last order’s half past ten, brevity’s the soul, a fucking time ago innit. By class, vivisection. Applied Shem literally. Where’s the fucking drummer Mark? fucking drummer.
Cherry Red And with the coming of the seasons, lo a new Fall album. As ever, bastards to write about. You’ve probably established some sort of perspective on The Fall and, as I’m in my twentieth year of being a bit unwell about The Fall, I’m fairly sure that perspective is wrong.
Music Information Centre Lithuania This has the descriptive title of Anthology of Lithuanian Art Music in the 21st Century, which could mean a few things, but what we actually have is a load of contemporary compositions from Lithuania.
Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records Metal isn’t a particularly progressive genre, in a lot of ways; for all the fluff that people throw at it, musicologically speaking, it’s rarely divested itself of fairly conventional tonalities, regular 4/4s, flattened out timbres and limited melodies. I appreciate that’s kind of “the thing” that makes metal and as someone who doesn’t really like metal it’s unfair for me to tar it […]
Bureau B I think the first thing that should be mentioned about this record is the press release. Breaking all form and convention, it’s readable, witty, descriptive and — get this — actually tells you some information about the record.
It’s the time of year in Europe when days grow longer, spring blossoms multiply andthe Eurovision Song Contest heaves into view; which also entails Kev Nickells going through each and every entry with a vengeance.
Self-released There’s a handful of genres that, arguably, benefit most from never actually changing. Hardcore (punk), for instance, hasn’t had an idea since the ’80s. Gabber was perfect from the get to. Black Metal operates in some weird space in my head where I sort of assume it hasn’t changed since, like Xasthur or whatever…
Intravenal Sound Operations I wanted to start this out avoiding the clichés that plague writing about Diamanda Galás — “banshee” &c — but there’s a problem. There’s an analogue between how challenging her work is and how challenging writing about it in a non-facile way is. It requires a pretty expansive vocabulary.
Westworld …as I always say, anyone who looks at the Fall track-by-track, rather than the correct way, which is as one discrete body of work – is, no pun intended, a fool. Tobi Blackman, Dictionary Pudding When I was doing my masters, there was a seminar several times a week where the phrase “what is at stake with [x]…”
Every Contact Leaves A Trace It seems like only a few weeks ago that I was reviewing the last batch of ECLAT releases (and that was largely due to my tardiness), yet here we are in 2017 with another pair of releases. I gather that these were released fairly late in the day of 2016 because label-mogul Seth Cooke wanted to get them out that side of the new […]
Karlrecords The classic thing to say about Iannis Xenakis is that he’s fairly close to being sui generis. Oftentimes, that’s the sort of compliment that can feel fairly weak — which is to say that there’s not a musician operating that doesn’t think they’re not sui generis, but the majority of them are wrong.
Nefarious Industries So the main reason I picked up this record for review is because I think that it’s the responsibility of the writer to pick up things for spurious reasons. The reason I will never review, or listen to, Jaga Jazzist is because the name is terrible. Bangladeafy is an awesome name.
Freaksville This comes from a world that feels very familiar to being a teenager listening to indie radio, but also not. There was a lot of this kind of stuff around — retro-ish fetishists for ersatz ’70s string arrangements and Rhodes pianos
Benedict Taylor: dashing young blade of the London (and beyond) free improv scene. He’s a busy man and a fine player and in possession of a veritable encyclopaedia of techniques. The scratchy ones, the frittery ones, the ones that sound a bit like a helicopter in the distance. But not showy, in case you’re worried that it’s going to sound like a viola lesson.
The Hope and Ruin, Brighton 29 November 2016 Imboredofbastards do some gallant opening of tonight’s proceedings — a one-man noise + objects + processing thing that, were it a carpet, would have a most curious weave. There’s an amount of textural stuff interwoven with rhythmic elements and then, every now and then, a swoopy noise that manages to make me feel like there’s swimming pool of ants ostentatiously […]