Bristol 8 October 2013 The Exchange was rammed… Anthroprophh (Big Naturals and Paul Allen) were sprawled in front of the stage, their kit eating away at the room’s capacity. Sounded even better than when I saw them back in February, but tucked into the back corner of the venue, I couldn’t see a blinking thing! After squeezing through the sardined bodies I managed to catch their blistering finale. […]
Michael Rodham-Heaps
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Bristol 27 September 2013 This trio were incredible! The noise flowing from them was full on, bouncing with a rip cord of incentive and bold colour. A lock-horned, tri-cornered combo of gristly riffs going off into wah-wah Hendrix hedonism. Drums becoming bass, guitar chiselling percussion; a bewildering soup of pure energy, blissfully heavy in the repetition department, spurring off into delicious landslides of angles and tempos. Just as […]
London 14 September 2013 Loving this place, that subterranean cellar-like vibe; cobbles, cast iron pillars, oozes a Dickensian charm that no doubt Messers. Thrower and Knight approve of. On arrival, their musical wares are already set up on three tables, a tidy synth and keyboard sandwich a percussive jumble filling, the screen . There’s a long pre-show wait, having cut through London at a surprisingly swift pace. We […]
Spectrum Spools Unicorn Hard-On is a solo project of one Valerie Martino. She’s a great rhythm chaser, tugging those dry arithmetical presets in a piranha splattered synapse of pulsing inputs. Now, I’ve got to admit, I’m not the greatest dance music devotee, but Weird Universe is certainly throwing enough solid hooks and neon-splashed chameleons to satisfy my curiosity.
Bureau B What an arresting cover, that alabaster face seemingly levitating, framed in a burn of auburn hair. I’m convinced that’s a gender messing Thomas Dinger caked in ghostly Clouzot cosmetics. The macabre blue of the lips, and the wing-like Bowie-isms of those scry-worthy eyes throwing everything forward whilst the background simultaneously envelops, giving over an eerie undulating quality to the stillness. Like a Buñuel freeze-frame, eternally tittering […]
Parallax Sounds I’ve seen Acid Mothers Temple numerous times and checked most of their incarnations: those skull-scribbled morays and splintered overlays leaving you blissfully skewed on their satisfaction guarantee; and I’m glad to say this latest offering continues the fun in a erotika of vintage sc-fi and vooming accents, twisting your melon in blurring hooks of vox.
Zoharum This is a classic slice of electro acoustika. A lovingly chaotic fusion of talents from Anthony Donovan, Matt Chilton, Will Connor – and joining forces for this release composer and audio hacker Schuyler Tsuda. The Latin title Sui Generis roughly translates to ‘of its own kind’ and the improvised clatterings and purrings here certainly don’t shy from the fact. The album’s , finger paint your head in […]
Bureau B Serious fun to be had here, sock puppets and all. Der Plan’s slick cabaret of strangeness is all over the place, eerie cinematics jutting up against cheesy trips to the German equivalent of Blackpool amusements. Take an eyeful of that gaudy cover for Die Letzte Rache and you instantly know boredom is gonna be in short supply – that plasticined comicbook aesthetic, the singing eels. Yep, […]
Dirter Promotions This oozes intelligence, and to be honest, there’s always been plenty behind everything Ralf Wehowsky (RLW) puts his hand to, even if it’s often accompanied with lots of head scratching for his listeners. Whether you think he’s poking the fun or stroking its beard with satisfied rigour, he’s there, being significant, a seeker, never fully satisfied, fraying that strait jacket of Western music with an alternative […]
Rocket Girl I’m loving the sustained landscaping on this, those puckerings of melodious highlights and zithery arpeggios seemingly shivering out of a slowly clearing mist. That highly composed filmic vibe that transcends time, as if caught in the yearning crystallisation of the moment. A perpetual dawn with contemplative glints of sensation magnified on accents of piano, cello and some rather unusual if subtle processing. Born completely from a […]
Red Wharf Only listened to this twice so far, but I must say its miles more entertaining than the previous Graham Bowers collaboration Rupture. Gone are the studious symphonics, favourably replaced by liberating wonky oompha chip-chop that scatters the wares more psychsomatically without labouring any fixed point.. “Off to Hell on a Handcart” (seriously loving these track titles) is stereophonically awry, a slippery mess of Michael Jackson moonwalk […]
London 19 May 2013 Stuck in traffic, time was slipping away from us like a buttery thing, a total nightmare as impatient idiots decided to forge an extra lane in front, and I’m behind this person in a huge sports car that was probably twice the price of my house! He’s busy checking the mirrors – for gazes of envy, no doubt – I feel like making silly […]
Rustblade Disc one of Kibako, and “Nigatsu Nijuugonichi”‘s abrasive banquet of blow torch and bruised industry is definitely a room clearer. Lurching around in shifts of attacking energies, fearsome, intense – full of percussive dynamite snipping at squalling hordes. It’s a weird kind of rapture, overwhelming the senses with spiky shards, enforced further by the screaming inferno of the following track “Operation Musashi.” Those clashing hertzological blizzards taking […]
Rustblade As Legendary Pink Dot chemistry lessons go, this latest instalment to the series burns with a slow slip of reality, the simplest backbone of rhythm caught in the tattered net curtains of Edward Ka-Spel’s mind. Absorbing word weaves hooking you in as the trancelike vibes dribble the vowel fall, reflecting everything back panoramically from inside an idea’s skeletal sheen. Love “Immaculate Conception”‘s agoraphobic airs: the slippery backing […]
Invada Loving that crayon lava of the cover, sleek minimal, that infra red chalkiness dwarfed by a sea of matt black, a darkness from which the title track “Landing” seems to howl. An epic opener, that grinding millstone riff all Bolan-esque beef, . An incredibly powerful vibe, made more so by the purposeful drop into a reflective quietness which effectively notches up the tension for the raw-throated re-entry […]
LF This was conceived after a particularly arduous eighteen months whilst a basement flat beneath Seth Cooke‘s Leeds home was being renovated. Building noise, pneumatic drills, shouting, workmen urinating in the garden… you name it, and it was probably suffered. The sheer beauty etched into the metallics of this disc seem testament to how scarring this experience must have been. In fact Seth describes this work as alchemy, […]
The Lamb, Devizes 8 February 2013 Gentleman’s Relish are a wicked combo, a spiky pop duo of tight guitar evolves, countered by neat percussive candy. Those quirky poetics of lyric, comically charged and made further so by the drummer’s Bill Bailey mannerisms. A lot of sweet action indeed: that switch-a-roo guitar slashing in an angelic upstart-esque insistence as the syllables broke across your head in a bank of […]
3 February 2013 The Exchange, Bristol Giant Swan were first up, a duo plying a lush clamour of harsh ear schisms that materialised into gristlised rhythms, a lot of box teased goodness to soak up. These boys certainly knew a thing or two about the art of bending circuitry. Loops and pick-up burrs literally ear danced in textural plugholes of echoed vox, resurrected in scars and sycamore incisions […]