Myrkur gives a stripped-down performance of four tracks from the new album with herself on vocals, accompanied by a seated guitar player adding a darker metal edge to her drones and piano playing.
live review
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A police car’s blue lights flows through the venues windows from outside. A random moment that dances the back wall to Phew's sleek slivers. Blurring fragments that compass a faint fœtal heart’s beat that’s reverbed to boom outwards, as subtle injections of Japanese leak on through pinched-in reversed glints.
Now, a lot of dance music leaves me a bit nonplussed, but Buried Treasure always seem to deliver, and by midnight, label honcho Alan Gubby smashed it straight into the fun zone with some roster rainbows.
Modern opera is thriving at the moment with new pieces being commissioned regularly and finding homes in small theatres, such as The Arcola next to Café OTO in Dalston and various other venues. Small production companies have been springing up for a few years now, bringing not only reworking of the classics but also brand new operas that are a mixture of the instantly recognisable in structure and also more challenging work that keeps modern opera vibrant.
And then it's time for Oxbow, and as soon as they kick in I'm kicking myself for missing out on them for so long. Eugene may not actually fight anyone, but he's definitely taken some lessons from The Gospel According to Iggy (and we all know the text) -- he knows in his bones that a good frontman needs to be a bit scary, a lot charismatic and be able to carry a tune. And also -- and this is key -- to get his kit off whenever possible.
...tonight they're playing at the Troxy off the back of their latest criticially-acclaimed release The Beggar. Well, technically off the back of their last two albums, a whole shitload of dates for Leaving Meaning having been cancelled during Covid. Which was something of a double-edged sword for Swans fans, as being unable to tour for one album meant Gira found himself writing material for another one.
Ueda’s metal prayer paddles aloft in rattling baptism, added to by seashells and firefly frets, her voice soaring on through, hands outstretched, as the keys and guitars jiver-jade a proggy reverie, her face clearly smiling from within the ricocheting richness of it all.
Roedelius is now eighty-eight years old and has had a fifty-four-year career in music, starting with the formation of Kluster in 1969 (who later changed their name to Cluster). He then ventured in to the more soporific tones of slightly more ambient sounds with Harmonia, which then lead him to recording three albums with Brian Eno in the mid-seventies. Since then, he has released dozens of solo albums and many collaborations, including one with former Japan keyboard player Richard Barbieri.
YOU WANTED THE BEST (I was fifteen in 1980 and Kiss were one of the first bands I ever saw live), YOU GOT THE BEST (that show has stayed with me all these years making me a fan), THE HOTTEST BAND IN THE WORLD (here I am forty-three years later to bid a fond farewell to….) KISS!
Pram’s musical elves were on fine form, injecting this fine summer’s evening with their own special brand of skewered cuteness. Everyone here loves it, each track resulting in massive applause.
Bristol 29 November 2022 Stereocilia plied an exquisite soundscape of guitar-generated ambience. A beaming iridescence of infinite frets blooming in circling sand, layered up and waspy, later sipping some sweet subterranean gloom splattered in shivering petroleums and graining howl. The back of the guitar’s neck sending thundery quakes on through, slowly airbrushed away on curving twilights as one track blends into another, cuts back into a cascading corrosion […]
London 5 November 2022 The UK 2022: it’s Saturday and it’s raining; not in a Blade Runner kind of way, with neon lights and futuristic vistas, but in a drab way that only the UK knows how to do with aplomb.
London 16 July 2022 Journey’s End is one of those rare “are we really in London” type of venues. A leafy relaxed, creatively crafted affair at odds with the industrialised ugliness of its surrounds, the gig itself taking place in what looked like a reclaimed school hall. UnicaZürn are first up, taking the lead from their new CDR (available on the night, and instantly acquired of course) the […]
Bristol 16 June 2022 Unfortunately got to the venue a little late, but luckily managed to pick up Stereocilia’s set somewhere at the midway point. Fresh from his support slot for William Basinski at St George’s, that guitar of his was ace, caught in a filigree of looped frets, melodically across a series of brooding landscapes. A textually torn building up of layers full of dramatic swings and […]
Bristol 30 April 2022 There is a definite aura of devotion around The Trinity this evening. The old church is hosting a band that boasts a devoted following, some attendees having trekked around after them since their first appearance in the UK back in 1994. While undertaking their world tour, Low have chosen to invite friends and young firebrands Divide And Dissolve as support, which is a homecoming […]
Brighton 28 April 2022 It’s difficult not to use words like “hushed reverence” for a band like Low, and you wonder if someone isn’t very much testing that by hosting them in a lovely church. I’m not sure if we’re “post-“Covid, but certainly being out and about, at a gig with lights and everything, is unnerving. I’m pretty sure everyone’s forgotten how to act in public and the […]
London 8 April 2022 Waiting for The Eggs to show, I notice singer / guitarist Holly Ross‘s Selmer Treble and Bass valve amp, on top of a double-miked cab. This, along with David Blackwell’s extensive drum set on the other side of the stage, all looks very serious indeed. Unfortunately, I cant quite see Holly’s pedals. Since I am ignorant of The Lovely Eggs prior to the show, […]