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 […]
Michael Rodham-Heaps
448 posts
Lava Thief Clean is a warm acoustic delight, sees known Thought Forms songs stripped back and reconfigured, born anew with fresh titles reflecting this. The slow creeping weave of “Hiding Beneath” invites us in, its spidering vocal spiral chased in recoiling twang and cello, attentively sweeps you off your feet for the words of “Our Ghosts” to vividly burn, buoyantly pull around that sinewed strum, shuffling percussion and […]
Retractor Persistence Is All After putting up with muffled audience recordings of this memorable experience for over twenty-odd years, this recent instalment from Thighpaulsandra’s Coil archive is a total godsend. Considering the strictness of the staff on the night in question, capturing a personal memento of the gig was nigh-on-impossible, so this crystal-clear souvenir of Coil’s second Royal Festival Hall appearance is way beyond expectation. Persistence Is All […]
(self-released) Produced for sale at UnicaZürn’s incredible IKLECTIK performance earlier this year, this thirty-minute CD-R features three live improvisations that are totally in the zone without edits nor overdubs. The slow and deliberate churn of track one, “Ancident”, sets the scene, its scattering fractals spaciously , an Arabian flavour that seems to tattoo the amorphous sands, pencilled in by scarab-chasing harmonics.
Mute This one-shot adventure between Dome’s Bruce Gilbert, Graham Lewis and Mute Records‘ Daniel Miller is a sparse and abstract beauty rubbing up against some glowing new wave edginess, a crooked mix of soundscaping with a smidgen of songwriting. A serious art over commerce venture, that the relentless squishy bounce of “Hill Of Men” typifies. A soft and fleshy techno to muffled distant voices and a subtle hum […]
NEOS What an exciting listen — that creeping tension weaving the fragments is ace — a stretchy saturate for all that delicious atonal action to dance in divergent colour and sparing tuning. The surging symmetry of all those haunting little details jostling for your attention, somewhere a drunken Kurt Schwitters stumbles into a squabbling Punch and Judy, stapled in an uneven measure of ulcerated piano. The , leaking […]
Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil Dais As Coil albums go, Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil is an assault on the senses, as was the first time I saw them live. “Persistence is all” couldn’t have been a better expression of the fact, that skin-shredding noise / strobe fest of a finale still scars me with satisfaction twenty-two years later. One of those gig experiences that has yet to […]
Ramble My favourite Russian – Israeli – UK collective Staraya Derevnya are back with another slice of splintered luminosity influenced by the Saint Petersburg poet and artist Arthur Molev. “Scythian Nest” dives straight into a clink-clanked needling mélange of avant folk — an addictive jiver, hot-coal leaping in falsetto warbles and noisy rubs. An absurdist cabaret jigger-jagging the jovial on wizened limbs as the instrumentation plays a nomadic […]
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 […]
Buried Treasure Recorded entirely within a closed-input / fedback set-up and two antique tape machines, Howlround‘s Trespass And Welfare involves no actual input at all – samples, synths, pedals all abandoned in order to chase the ghosts in the machine. Ghosts that for the opener “Sonicjob Horsfunk” are of the squelchy techno kind. A lovely relentless dry-ended-LFO-scooped headfuck raygunned into the cut-off choked distance.
Sedna Chronicles Sedna Chronicles is a travel guide to the occult, unusual and downright eerie. English Heretic’s Andy Sharp and The Hare & The Moon’s Grey Malkin attempt to channel the weird energies trapped within their favourite Scottish haunts, and to be honestly they do a great job, the accompanying fold-out guide enhancing the experience.
Rocket This re-visit to The Utopia Strong sound-world is a meditative one, full of sketched atmospherics, where splintered notes seem to levitate, shimmer to symbiotically smile. A chemistry lesson whose individual tracks blur into a sensory whole, subtly pulled three ways, but still sparking a hypnotic unity.
Zam Zam What an arresting cover, the naked singer holding up the ace of hearts and the inevitable ace of spades, “the most powerful cards in the deck”, as weathered metaphors for the prismed verve contained therein, compass points for the emotional minefield of first love, first heartbreak and the limbo between.
HomAleph As much as I still enjoy the ‘”ded ded ded” years and esoteric tsunamis of yore, the warm melancholia of this latest offering is melting firmly in there, clawing a cottoned reflective that’s the perfect late night accompaniment to some moonlit Bordeaux. The butterflying bleed of the opening “If A City…”, a sombre sway pinned in stilted piano. Sparse keys striding between David Tibet’s words which weave […]
Metropolis The storyteller returns, sardonically sniping at the last two years, its imagery vultured from the four-walled mirrors of the pandemic and the continuing sorry state of things. 2019’s Angel In The Detail was certainly a high point and this is definitely a continuation of that success, as the poppy enclave of “This Is The Museum” swims in a divine sing-along-ability, its musical backdrop prodding and poking a […]
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 […]
Zam Zam The solo project of Bristol-based artist Christelle Atenstaedt, Orryx’s ethereal pull is undeniable, the guitar-scapes of her earlier EP now enriched with beats and keyboard kinetics, and of course that beguiling voice which glues the package together.
Dais Closely following the success of Coil‘s first volume of Musick To Play In the Dark came this second helping, a thematic continuum that surfed further out there, saw the group collapsing back with the departure of Drew McDowall to a trinity of players, a fact which made for a tighter, more personally focused beast, on a collection where hindsight haunts your every listen.