We know what No Title As Of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead refers to, but we also know that it doesn’t have to. Yes, it’s the response to that, but though there’s always been clear signifiers in Godspeed You! Black Emperor releases (including references to Palestine) and even clearer references in their actions, the music has often taken a less dogmatic approach, swapping 'mere' words for rhythmic sweep and crescendo, finding emotional aggregates and passion in the interleaving of string and guitar.
Loki
107 posts
Drag City The Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, paraphrasing Aristotle (or maybe Aquinas), suggested that “the whole is something else than the sum of its parts” and here we are: two artists that I’ve followed and respected, both of them arch innovators with collaboration in their bones, joining their heads together in a new beast and it’s set me into a flutter in several ways.
You get glimpses of what might have been and also an insight into how good at editing their own ideas Coil were. John Balance might have been canonised as the archetypal wide-eyed soul-in-flames, but here we can see the amount of revision he put into his work. Drugs and drink may have been a part of his stream of consciousness, but there’s more lucidity in here than you’d expect and a lot better editing. He’s more James Joyce than William S Burroughs.
Thrill Jockey This is the disco of slurs, of slurry, of slurrrs. Everything seems wasted, in the sense of my favourite Donna Summer track (yep, “Wasted”). Even the hi-hats sound shattered, like you’ve found yourself at Shoom sometime around 1987, the real turn of the century; still dancing but full of MDMA on the down, starting to feel your calves give out but not wanting the music to […]
Timeless Editions There’s a lot to unpack. Visually, The Universe Is A Haunted House is a beautifully presented book, too big for comfort, like an ancient Bible, waiting for its lectern. Images tumble out and over each other – like Peter Greenaway’s books, Pillow and Prospero. It overwhelms at every turn, each giant page ceding new sight and deepening the spirals. Further down. Furthur. You won’t find out […]
Dais I’m not going to use the C word, because it’s been a long time since they ceased to be and we all have to stop thinking in those tired patterns, even me, who can’t. Agalma is a minor triumph all of it’s own, finding pathways through music that spins off and around what could broadly be called New Age and finds its own corners. This time around, […]
Planet Mµ I got sort of lost at dubstep, or maybe 2step, or ponycore, or chiptune, or skelefunk, or, um, footwork… I never properly learned to differentiate jungle from drum’n’bass, or to understand the point in which that became drill or drizzle or whatever the Hell it became. The continuum became the ‘nuum and everyone blamed each other for continuing, for not innovating, for not finding the right […]
Young God / Mute “New Mind” was the soundtrack to a teenage holiday in Cornwall with a couple of mates. It was that kind of holiday: evil cows, bad beer, psychotic karaoke singers (the best-worst version of “Bohemian Rhapsody”), amyl nitrate dreams. One of the people on the trip also writes for this site. He’s not been the same since. “New Mind” is the opening track on Children Of God […]
Warp I get this as a single stream, which might be protective or perhaps artistically purposeful. If this is intended as a single stream assault on the history of Oneohtrix Point Never, then it’s a jagged, mischievous stream, characterised by one-stop assaults, Windows loading sounds, disrupted sweeps and strings.
Marionette I listened to this this morning and the rabbits came. Bear with me. I was listening on headphones, which seems the most appropriate way to access this and the rabbits started to emerge from the hedgerows as I walked through the field to work. They couldn’t hear, unless they were the psychic rabbits we’ve heard so much about in these parts, but they understood their role in […]
Carpark It’s been thirty years since the last album, but the music of Sonic Boom has remained a constant on my record players since I was sixteen, and this beautifully measured record is a return to the forms; it doesn’t particularly sound like any of his previous records, but it is unmistakably the work of Pete Kember.
Potomak It’s been twelve years since the last, proper, Einstürzende Neubauten album, whatever that means. They’ve been detached from the music industry for a while now, pioneering some kind of multiple fan feedback mechanism, which I guess predated crowd-sourcing and kept them away from the supposed struggles associated with label imperatives and the pressure to relate (to the public, to their fans, to themselves).
Rocket Neologisms are where electronic music finds its music. Autechre’s IDM (the worst of labels) wouldn’t prosper in a world of real words. “Cipater” couldn’t be “Bike Ride”; “Dael” or “Gnit” couldn’t take their asynchronous routes with anything like their blank machine majesty if they were tarred with bad brushes like “Clown Grin” or “Telephone Box”.
Mute Sometimes they come back. Throbbing Gristle were never really away. The albums that came out of the charnel house at Industrial Records threw multiple spanners in the works as the ’70s drew to a close. The world TG inhabited then was as grey as their followers and they made no effort to alleviate the suffering. TG were punk, perhaps, but the music turned away from the stop-start […]
Faber and Faber There’s so much here. This book has almost been written several times, but here we have it; the real deal. If much of this material has been covered in other places, David Stubbs injects everything with a new light and throughout he maintains a sense of reverent shock and awe at the sound itself.
Buried Treasure A book, a CD, a crackle, a cackle. It’s an undialled radio… buzz… Echoes a little of 2000AD’s Zenith… perhaps even the first few episodes of Hellboy… this is England Calling, The Delaware Road… a little graphic play, beautifully illustrated…. A Black Mass…
Mute Chris Carter is a worldly presence amongst electronic pioneers. It’s a shape of music with a number of associated images: the egg-head technician, the scientist, perhaps the hermetic egoist. There’s no doubt this music is cerebral – it seems joined together in a way that in many ways defies easy explanation – but this is an alchemical method
Buried Treasure It’s taken me a while to process this. I’m still processing it. I’ve watched this right the way through three times and jumped around in it (you will go into it, if you bother to go at all) a few more; selecting little movements, trying to find ways to explain what it is.