London 12 December 2019 Stepping onto the stage at The Lexington for the final date of their European tour, Holly Golightly and her band look tired but ready to go. Holly welcomes the audience and notes that, as there is an election party scheduled to follow their gig – which […]
Richard Fontenoy
102 posts
Cavaillon 28 November 2018 Theatrical ensemble BOT have been presenting their Ramkoers (Collision Course) production around Europe for the last few years, frequently performing in disused factories and other spaces that allow them to bring their post-industrial cabaret to venues appropriate to their subject matter.
Drag City (Americas) / Domino (Europe) Will Oldham is the player behind the part that is Bonnie “Prince” Billy and the musical entity that was Palace (Music / Songs / Brothers etc). Using these identities, Oldham has carved out a niche as the altest of alternative musicians, country or otherwise, and […]
Avignon 9 February 2018 As is only to be expected, a screening of selected scenes and scores from Studio Ghibli‘s extensive catalogue of films turns out to have attracted a suitably cosmopolitan audience of all ages and subcultural inclinations to this latest ciné-concert at the hiply bohemian Pandora Cinema.
Thrill Jockey Of all the so-called post-rock bands of the 1990s, Trans Am are one which can be relied upon to remain intriguing and interesting some quarter-century or so later. Completed in the week after the 2016 US presidential election, California Hotel (named in honour of the late Glen Frey of […]
Zeitkratzer Productions / Karlrecords Continuing their long-running series of interpretations of avantgarde and electronic music through the ages, Reinhold Friedl‘s exploratory ensemble celebrate their twentieth birthday (and Karlrecords‘ tenth anniversary) with the first round of a selection of pieces
Confront It’s a truism that free jazz and all manner of improv is best appreciate live, rather than on record, as it is when in front of an audience that a quartet such as Akode really come into their own. North And South therefore comes from that other great tradition of […]
Hiatus Having released the first three 7″ singles in the Sound X Sound series over the space of just over a year, Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has progressed to delivering the last four discs in the set at the same time, nearly two full years after the first appeared. Following the well-established […]
Tonefloat The final instalment in Dirk Serries‘ long-running series of releases, Resolution Heart sets a fittingly uplifting mood for the end of a process that started with the first Microphonics CD in 2008.
Nîmes 2 November 2016 Utilising a 12-string guitar, an array of keyboards and driving, cursive songs belted out like both Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil gone epically, darkly coldwave, Anna von Hausswolff and her band combine big, beating drums with a desert swing and a huge bass swell charged with […]
Turquoise Coal Spectralate‘s second LP finds Annie Pye and Alan Holmes (Ectogram, Parking Non-Stop, Fflaps, The Groceries, etc) embarking on a musical journey around Ynys Môn (also known as Anglesey to Anglophones), and it’s interesting to ponder briefly if the All Terrain Badgers of the title refers to beasts they encountered en route […]
Black Mass Rising Canadian composer Mort Garson stands among the likes of Jean-Jacques Perrey and Wendy Carlos as one of the more interesting innovators who explored the weirder extremes of popular music with the aid of the Moog synthesizer from the late 1960s on into the next decade and more.
Thrill Jockey Using unconventional tunings for both guitar and banjo, Glenn Jones‘ latest exploration of the texture and tone he can wring from five, six strings and more cements his deserved reputation as one of the singular exponent of both instruments.
Öm Announcing its arrival in a trill of shimmering digital FX and a pounding rhythm, the second instalment of K-X-P‘s third album heaves into audibility with all the bombast and finely-tuned ear for a hook which the band have perfected over their last few releases.
Hiatus The second in Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard‘s Sound X Sound series of 7″ singles, Music For 30 Chromatic Tuners follows on from Music For 8 Recorders in similarly trilling style. Where eight recorders together made for a sometimes gritty listen, Løkkegaard’s choice of not-quite instruments here leads him down somewhat […]
London 16 September 2015 Out on the margins of London’s more fashionable postcodes, things are brewing and ticking over quietly to themselves once again. One such night of music and more takes place in the calmer reaches of Manor House in the unhurried Bohemian environs of New River Studios’ performance […]
DDS While probably best known for making the earth tremble beneath heavyweight drones from the likes of SunnO))), KTL and Gravetemple while also rocking hard in both Thorr’s Hammer and Goatsnake, Stephen O’Malley is also the guiding hand behind the Ideologic Organ imprint of Editions Mego, releasing a treasure trove […]
Hôpital Caroline, Marseille 5 July 2015 Festival MIMI has been bringing all kinds of innovative, avant, experimental or just plain far-out music to Marseille for thirty editions to date, and for the last fifteen years its annual home has been in the splendid isolation of the ruins of the Hôpital […]
Software Recorded over the space of ten years up until the early part of the current century, The Baltika Years gathers together a selection of recordings that Ben Zimmerman made almost entirely from samples he manipulated using software running on the now long-defunct Tandy DeskMate computer operating system. Working around […]
London 21 May 2015 – The Conscious Pause – It is daunting to write about a show that was attended by so many Freq contributors because I know they’ll all read this and I am sure they will all have things to add (or deny). But what does that matter? […]