Bureau B Ok, as most of the people reading this will know Faust were one of the most important bands of the 1970s Krautrock movement and have an incredible important body of work behind them. Also at this moment in time there appears to be two Fausts, so this is Jean Hervé Péron and Zappi W Diermaier’s Faust aided and abetted by Gallon Drunk‘s James Johnston and Bender’s […]
Monthly Archives: January 2011
9 posts
MiG/Captain Trip After spending the last few years playing live with Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard, Klaus Schulze thought it was time to get back to playing some ‘pure’ Schulze live and this is exactly what this double disc delivers. Schulze had not played in Japan since 2003 and these shows were set up by a fan of the man. It seems as if Klaus took this on […]
The Lexington, London 19 January 2011
It's a red-light night tonight at The Lexington, north London's finest whiskey bar and excellent venue to boot. Red décor and red lights make for a surreally-flattened visual experience, as if watching tonight's bands during one of the more blood-soaked sections of Suspiria. But there's no gothic horror show from Eat Lights, Become Lights - their take on psychedelic immersion is far more in the Düsseldorf tradition, as befits what is effectively Klub Motorik's house band.
Polyvinyl/ATP The release of Deerhoof vs Evil means that San Francisco-based Deerhoof have been putting out their genre-hopping ditty-bopping noisy beautiful schizophrenic pop for about 16 years now – for the record, that’s 60% longer than the Beatles were around. Deerhoof haven’t sold nearly as many records as the Beatles though. Even in France, where the Beatles have apparently sold less records than astigmatic Greek charity-shop stalwart Nana […]
Triple Bath The title Soundscape Study is immediately misleading – while ostensibly sourced from the sonic ambience of dreary and audibly sodden holidays (in Scotland’s Isle of Barra and France’s Fitou respectively), this disc lacks the arid mic-fetishising of a great many soundscape pieces. Daniel Hignell has come to this work with a peculiar ear for the ambient sounds of thunderstorms and tidal crashes, holistically stitching and interlacing […]
Dekorder The latest offering from Campbell Kneale (late of the recently-disbanded ambient/drone outfit Birchville Cat Motel and also responsible for the immensely heavy [post=”black-boned-angel-verdun-2″ text=”Black Boned Angel”] doom project) finds him tackling the wonky end of electronics (de)composition in what comes over as part demonic exercise in digital bricolage, part attempt to submerge the listener in so many sounds that . Dissonance in expansion is the order of […]
Topplers Topplers Records are an old-style independent label based in Scotland who specialise in limited runs of beautifully presented eccentric pop gems. Depending on your point of view (or age), it’s a sign of either the label’s willful obscurity or unquestionable genius that a high proportion of these releases are by ex-members or associates of Swell Maps. To someone whose formative years were soundtracked by the likes of […]
ROIR
Like many of the best things in life, the Legendary Pink Dots are a mystery. At least, it's a mystery how come they're still so criminally obscure, when not only have they been releasing awesome music for a good thirty years now, they also have tunes and a fanbase who tend to verge on the obsessively evangelical side of things. They straddle genres like a post-modernist doing the MC Hammer dance over an ADD sufferer's iPod, with everything from industrial to pop, from jazz to space rock, from folk to dub being dragged into Edward Ka-Spel and co's music factory, later to emerge from the crystal chimneys as beautifully majestic music.
Staubgold As the slipstream of punk washed its way through the record industry in the late 70s and early 80s it seemed to many of us that commercial music might be changed forever to become permanently open to imaginative, offbeat constructions and general weirdness. That was, of course, the kind of naïve illusion that makes youth bearable. What really happened was that the genuine musical revolution happening at […]