St John at Hackney, London 5 December 2015 It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas: illuminations strung across the lampposts of the capital, sparkling every night like twinkling stars; the inky darkness of the night already setting in by mid afternoon; overflowing trays of “luxury” mince pies everywhere you […]
Michael Rodham-Heaps
441 posts
Young God (North America) / Mute (Rest of the world) Disc 1 — White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity After a disastrous flirtation with a major label on The Burning World, White Light From The Mouth of Infinity was a self-financed regaining of confidence for Michael Gira. The acoustic spirit of […]
Troum and Yen Pox – Mnemonic Induction Transgredient This disc shows the collaborative strengths of the German bliss-mongers Troum coupled with the menacing ambience of America’s Yen Pox, originally released by Malignant Records in 2000 and remastered for this re-release on Transgredient. Mnemonic Induction is a 63 minute journey divided […]
The Spheres Swastikas For Noddy was my favourite of Current 93‘s work until Thunder Perfect Mind stole its glory some years later. It’s very much a family affair, a pulling of disparate threads directed by David Tibet chasing his hallucinogenic vision of a crucified Noddy.
Arrow Films Aleksei German‘s Hard To Be A God is sci-fi in the Tarkovsky tradition, very much a state of mind rather than flashy tech and shiny spaceship CGI. The film is based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky‘s 1964 novel of the same name, and was completed after the director’s […]
Editions Mego If one artist could embody epic, Thighpaulsandra would try to top it. Rumour has it his first solo record was so big he had to spread it across two releases and one of those was a double’s worth. Musically well travelled and mustering a mind-boggling proficiency of styles, […]
Industrial That foetal thump propelling this is cavernous; and at high volume it’s huge. Dynamically churning up the digital silt as collapsing structures fall through in cacophonies of brokenness, shadowy vectors that smoulder in the arch of pulsing ambiguity. Yep, my favourite trio Carter Tutti Void are back with more […]
ICR / United Dairies Loving the way this triptych holds you sensory hostage. One of Nurse With Wound‘s most mellowest outings to date too, documenting three separate live concerts between 2011 and 2012 with the Blind Cave Salamander — a onetime support act that Steve Stapleton invited to be absorbed […]
Bristol 21 August 2015 Loved the way Twin‘s guitars seemed to shimmer in your mind’s eye like a hazy mirage. A spectre of voice weaving through as lush loops were overlaid in trebling ascents. Endlessly changing, channelling, dusted in a candle-lit intimacy of curling chords caught in a Fursaxa-like beguile. […]
Crammed Discs I’m seriously fixated by musique concrète, along with a lot of other musical niches; it’s been a slippery slope ever since hearing Luciano Berio’s Visage at an impressionable age, which set the dominos toppling for other magnetic tape twisters, splicers and slicers. In turn, this spurred an appreciation […]
Lava Thief From the angsty bristles of their debut All Mind in the Cat House comes another Jaggersaw of squabbling quadients with a smidgen more hip-swinging melody sneaking under/over that the despotic word spillage. A danceable zest that happily avoids cliché whilst simultaneously dragging you through a thicket of barbed […]
United Jnana I like to think these were lullabies, bedtime ambience for Steven Stapleton and Diana Rogerson’s daughter Lilith, born in the same year this was first released, the album’s shapes spinning the horsey mobiles as she slipped into the deep nether world of unconsciousness, that wordless sparkle of fertile […]
Bureau B This is part of a continuing series of works that delve in the Conrad Schnitzler sound archive to generate newly inspired works. As the label stresses, this series isn’t intended to be homage or to be taken as a plain remix project, but more as an active experiment […]
Domino (Europe) / Drag City (Americas) There was I thinking Dave Pearce (Flying Saucer Attack‘s main auteur) had retired from the music business entirely, living in some quiet corner of the countryside, content to be the only audience for his personal musings. Then out of the blue comes a whole […]
4AD 4AD have always had a good ear for the creation of compilations — The Birthday Party’s Hits was total cherry-picked greatness for one, then there’s Lonely is an Eyesore, The 13 Year Itch; the list stretches into the horizon. Now this Cocteau Twins ‘best of’ (originally marketed to strike […]
United Dirter Seriously plunderphonic, this baby plays Surrealist ping-pong with ’50s advertising, sped-up exotica, Brat Pack crooners and virtually anything else that fevered mind of Steven Stapleton could chuck in there (it’s little wonder this was three years in the making). I can imagine Stapleton dressed in his crow-black finery […]
The Barbican, London 27 June 2015 88 cymbal beaters, five drummers, four bassists, four guitarists and one EYƎ, an ensemble that literally dwarfed the stage bathed in super-real colours. Right from the start this felt more like a ritual than a show — an invocation even. From its early referential […]
4AD Nobody ever sounded like the Cocteau Twins, a band so startlingly original that they spurred a lot of imitators; they took the jangle of indie to a whole different level, an otherworldly soak that no doubt inspiring the shoegrazery verve that would follow in their wake. By 1985 they […]
RVNG Intl. The slow evolutions of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (AKA Lichens) and Ariel Kalma are curling my head to perfection, all long sustains and modular gurgles mingling gently with the environmental ambience of aviary tweets, bubbling brooks the call of the wild. The saxophonics climbing through most tracks like […]
4AD Punk had vaporised into a new beast by the tail end of the Seventies, ripping out of its tri-chord skin into something altogether sleeker and weirder. Luckily for us pleasure-seekers, a then-unknown inquisitor going by the name of Ivo Watts-Russell was scouting around for talent for his fresh-faced label […]