Les Passagers du Zinc, Avignon 6 October 2012 Zombie Zombie are touring their latest album, Rituels d’un Nouveau Monde, and their stop at the well-hidden Passagers du Zinc – it lives in a strip mall outside the walls of the old city, next to a Norma discount supermarket, far away the tourist quarters of town, psychologically if not geographically – is a welcome breath of excitement in a […]
Richard Fontenoy
102 posts
Mute With London’s Olympic opening ceremony still reverberating freshly, it’s time to consider the next logical step in the bombast and nationalistic celebration: Laibach and their art host entity NSK conducting the premier global televisual propaganda occasion should Slovenia ever host the Games. Handily, it seems that if budgets are tight in straitened financial times to come, then An Introduction To Laibach/Reproduction Prohibited (not actually their greatest hits album […]
Ideologic Organ Originally self-released as a CDr by Sir Richard Bishop in 2011, Intermezzo now gets a vinyl outing courtesy of Stephen O’Malley‘s estimably eclectic Ideologic Organ imprint. Maybe surprisingly for a record with such a limited first release, this is one of those œuvre-spanning albums which provides a snapshot of Bishop’s range and versatility, as each instrumental piece on here pretty much fits into a different genre […]
Monotype The pairing of Eugene S Robinson‘s voice and Phillipe Petit‘s sound manipulations draws on the film noir rule of human nature red in tooth in claw as much as on Thomas Pynchon for this six-part tale of inhumanity and death (of which this is the first of a planned three instalments). Atmospheric and brooding, the conversational delivery of Robinson is laconic, with an underlying menace present throughout, […]
Mute If someone had the bright idea of making a low-budget, crowdsourced skiffy film about Nazis found on the dark side of the moon, which artists should be asked to provide the soundtrack? Laibach, of course – who could be better suited to orchestrate the sound of fucked-up futurist fascism, the SS in space, of the ultimate Nazi holdout story – and so much the better if it’s […]
Important Most bands when releasing a collection of otherwise placeless split vinyl album tracks and remixes end up with a selection of shorter pieces compiled into what often ends up as some sort of a grab-bag of odds and ends. Not so with Nadja, who fit just four tracks on each CD of this two-disc set of recordings from 2007-08, and who also manage to make a coherent […]
L-13 Recordings A split 10″ EP (and/or mini-album, perhaps – but anyway, its hand-stamped sleeve covers up a hefty chunk of vinyl, and the Gestetner-printed notes add an extra frisson of retro-cool to the packaging) from two of the ever-prolific Pete Bennett‘s bands is one of those things which only comes along once in a while. Sure, there are downloads (offered to buyers of this disc too, as […]
Blast First Petite Appearing as part of a series of DVDs from Blast First Petite unearthing performances on legendary German TV music show Rockpalast (see also Kevin Coyne in 1978]) comes a rare broadcast featuring John Fahey from March 1978. Remastered from the original video tapes, this is a rare opportunity to see footage of Fahey on stage, and the results are captivating. Fahey arrives in front of […]
Tourette To celebrate 20 years of Dead Voices On Air, Mark Spybey is in the process of releasing a series of 7″ singles in cahoots with a variety of friends and accomplices. The first appears under the name MzMz LalaLa, and consists of Spybey and Simon Fisher Turner. Together, the two sides of the 7″ offer , so (seemingly) brief is their span – seemingly, as the A-side […]
Nostalgia Blackrain From the opening chimes of “Garten,” it’s apparent that Corrupted have taken on what could almost be considered a upbeat and cheery atmosphere in their music making – if only by the very heavy sludge standards they have helped define, of course. For almost anyone else this track would seem crushingly powerful, especially once the bass guitar kicks in and the cymbals crash; but no, there’s […]
Rockstore, Montpellier 19 October 2011 In the great parade of dark-suited, wild-whiskered and drink-crazed (allegedly) rock’n’roll frontmen with a penchant for country tunes and Southern gentlemanly manners, in whose songs God breathes hellfire as often as not
London 16 June 2011 Returning to the London stage after testing the waters at Hellfest, Roadburn and the redoubtable Supersonic festivals (the latter of course taking place on their home ground in Birmingham), GC Green and Justin Broadrick make an admirable choice to not overdo their stage dressing at The Forum tonight. One modestly-large amp stack each, and a screen for projections, plus some smoke. Actually, a lot […]
The Lexington, London 22 June 2011 What can be said about The Cesarians that hasn’t already been described, outlined, put into the public sphere? That Charlie Finke is one of the great cavorting besuited frontmen of the century? That Justine Armatage arranges tunes to set the heart pounding and the pulses racing while being cool and intellectual too? That the ever-evolving band can multitask like no-one’s business, swapping […]
Esoteric Armaggedon (sic) have an interesting place in the fecund story of German music in the late Sixties and early Seventies. as guitarist Frank Diez tells it in the sleeve notes for this re-release, he was recruited over the phone and flown from Berlin to Munich to record the album over the space of six days with a bunch of musicians he’d never met before for the small […]
Dingwall’s, London 27 April 2011 Though this gig is billed occasionally as a [post=”wovenhand-ten-stones” text=”Woven Hand”] performance, it’s decidedly David Eugene Edwards‘ show from the moment he steps onstage to a rapturous welcome. Accompanied by Woven Hand man Jeff Linsenmeir on various forms of percussion and keyboard, Edwards dispenses with onstage banter, instead launching into a set which covers his back catalogue including a goodly selection of 16 […]
The Purple Turtle, London 19 April 2011 It’s Sunday, it’s sunny, so a 6.30pm start time for a gig seems terribly early, especially when you have the choice between a sweaty venue or a cool pub beer garden, oh well….. Also putting on four support acts before a main band on a Sunday when public transport is hardly at its greatest (even Lori S from Acid King pointed […]
Drifting Falling Kontakte are one of those bands whose music is determined to make all the angst and cares of the world slip away into the place buried far, far away from the territory which they map out with bright-eyed enthusiasm, a landscape participated in through endless journeys and defined by bright colours sharply-defined in broad, dynamic strokes. This is not to deny the hint of melancholia, but […]
The Nest, London 9 November 2010 The Nest is the old Barden’s Boudoir with a bit of a face lift. Rather than the stage being in the centre of the room, as it once was, it’s now tucked away nicely into a corner. As the venue is quite long (and there is a handy pillar right next to the stage) the further you stand back the less chance […]