Màgia Roja/ BFE Unlike the seemingly endless crop of darkwavers with weird keyboard characters for names, Silvia Konstance Costan and her partner in Dame Area, the Catalan underground veteran Victor Hurtado, stab at something less generic
Michael Rodham-Heaps
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London 22 July 2018 With a backdrop of toy robots, Rodney Cromwell were first up to ply their wares. A solid three-piece with a rather special take on synth-led indie, they breeze through their upbeat and groovesome set.
Ici d’Ailleurs Based on one of the final works of Carl Jung where the alchemical informed psychology, Uruk’s second outing is another psychological pleasure for the headphonically inclined.
Bristol 10 July 2018 Opening act Pip Blom shambled on to a very warm response from an already two-thirds full O2 Academy Bristol. One singing guitarist and one drummer share the stage with a fluffy bassist and a manic guitarist looking like a young Jerry Harrison. The rhythm section were taut and focussed, allowing the singing guitarist to throw the sweet but rather ramshackle songs out into the […]
Front And Follow Filled with a Grouper-esque love of shimmered atmospheres, this (for the most part) psychedelically coruscates in gentle vaporous curls attached to simplest of melodics, the odd percussive clank here and there. The first solo track from Jodie Lowther welds this Lynchian sway, a cipher dance replete with a Julee Cruise-like little girl lost
House Of Mythology When asked about this latest collaboration with the Italian band Zu, David Tibet says they “made something very beautiful and very powerful for me to skip into”, and the surrounds certainly hold his words in a perfect tension.
Dais A Thousand Lights In A Darkened Room Nestled between their experiments with acid house and the esoteric Time Machines identity, Black Light District (and ELpH before it) were temporary monikers in which to tinker, delve deeper into what made Coil tick without being overshadowed by the crippling claw of context. An elemental approach that vividly paints possibility, seems to be pawing a significant other.
OhAh This man’s been with me for ages, through the ludicrously brief existence of Rema Rema, the equally short lived Mass (their “F.A.H.T.C.F.” is still my ultimate cup-half-empty song) and then the constant outpourings as the The Wolfgang Press. Five studio albums that poked around in some satisfyingly gloomy, dark melodics and veered towards the dance-friendly, Allen’s vocals always thistling intrigue, inquisitioning the human animal to steely basslines […]
Bristol 17 June 2018 Former Throwing Muses and Belly bass guitarist Fred Abong was first up, and apparently the airport had lost his guitar so Kristin had kindly lent him hers for the night. Not heard any of his solo work, so I was at a disadvantage, but I liked that Pavement-like glimmer he was plying
Prophecy Productions The melancholic charms of The Mystery Of The Bulgarian Voices‘ first 4AD LP, released as Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, still stick with me, as does that murky Cinderella moment of the cover, like some crime scene gone all arty. Thirty years old but essentially timeless, it was very much a solemn soul search of an album, just curvy overlaps of voice to the sparse flickers of instrumentation.
Bureau B Upending your preconceptions, Datashock delve into some mellow Jon Hassell-esque tribalisms after a percussively-tight opener. A vibe that piranhas a Sunburned Hand Of The Man glow in softly furrowed percussion, fluting flux and squawking throats (and maybe the odd squeaky dog toy too).
Esoteric Comus‘s First Utterance is one of those albums that lights your head with its brilliance. Even before you hear any music, the ball-point intensity of Roger Wootton‘s artwork rips into you, its monochromed grimace filling the canvas like some ancient peat man
Upset The Rhythm Zesting the zeitgeist, the Instamatic fun on this baby is a gooning lime balloon that’s crammed with ideas. Emotionally volatile adverts that stick it to the line-towing yawn, cricks its neck over the environment
London 21 April 2018 A rather windswept Mark Pilkington (head honcho of Strange Attractor and one half of the esoteric surfing Téléplasmiste) is up first, treating us to a rare solo performance under guise of The Asterism. Getting jiggy with the interwebs reveals an asterism to be a pattern of stars or an optical starburst in gemstones, a somewhat apt title for the opalescent parade that follows.
Bureau B There’s not enough trumpet in music nowadays, something the brilliance of the opening track firmly re-adjusts. “Le Coeur Léger, Le Sentiment D’un Travail Bien Fait” is a collaborative with FaUSt that gets Jean-Hervé Péron giving it the Reeves and Mortimer pub singer swerve to some trilobiting tendrils of tuneage.
Bank A merry dance of yin and yang that finds Drew McDowall draping the canvas with his trademark shadowplay , slumberous contours for Hiro Kone to throw over her modular light and broken trinkets as both scoop at a secret melodic heart.
Bristol 1 April 2018 Ireland’s David Colohan (of United Bible Studies / Agitated Radio Pilot) and company start things off with a few vocal improvisations. Tales full of ancient ways, chalk and bones, lost histories and weathered stone, crow-picked carrion and curses to the universal robber-time.
Front & Follow Paul Snowden (AKA Time Attendant) and Maybury capture the surreal sensuality of Penny Slinger‘s story in shuttering drone and distempered decay. The merest sense of rhythm lurking in a marginalised menagerie of modular synapse and scissored sizzle.