Terrazoku: an Earth tribe of the future brought into being by the climate apocalypse of the late twenty-first century; a ragbag of survivors for whom life on Earth is a very different experience from those of their predecessors.
Monthly Archives: November 2025
27 posts
...my first time seeing these legends, and with their recent Touch LP figure-heading the proceedings those open-ended adventurers flew fiery from the start. Nevada(ry) soft focus they descend -- all desert twilights and snaky rhythms, the cold black backdrop behind rippling with an ochre glow as John Herndon’s drums held command over the flex.
With four red lights and plenty of dry ice, the group in their sharp suits and nonchalant swagger looked like a dissolute Rat Pack, each member moving in time with the music, already caught up in the atmosphere... Definitely a night to remember, like a snapshot in time reflected into the future.
Rather than shocking new life into a familiar legend, respectable horror nerd Guillermo del Toro pores over Mary Shelley’s seminal science fiction masterpiece with the studious attention of a literature professor. He follows Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 example (not to mention that of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula adaptation of a couple of years earlier) in prioritising fidelity to the source material, although he takes enough liberties to keep it interesting.
An immediate ignition; a series of fluttering electronic sound signals arrival. The where is hard to spot as the constant chirrup of unknown variables the static stutter of distant disturbances. A settled reflection sits atop a burr of metallic brogue that is alive with chatter, the ironic sound of rebellion.
There is undoubtedly no productivity crisis in the broad spheres of nouveau shoegaze and DIY electronica, with complementary manoeuvres and convergence playing out between them to boot. This is certainly apparent in sifting through another review pile on the verge of toppling over, replete with a lot of familiar suspects from some reliable sources.
Swedish composer Joel Danell has been trading under the name of Sven Wunder since 2019's Doğu Çiçekler (Eastern Flowers) and each release seems to refine his romantic take on widescreen instrumental music, touching as it does on soul, jazz, yacht rock and soundtracks.
"Do we need Fall reissues" seems like the wrong question. We're getting them and they're going to be somewhere between glut and porcelain. Though it being the Fall you take the rough with the less rough. It's a wheat from the chuff review.
This dark and contemplative work, inspired by the blazing spike of William Blake's Albion, is a haunting torchlit journey into some imagined underworld, something the opener "The Milk White Path" unloads in plentiful supply. That farm-gate creak, bathed in a slow dronic yearn, pitted in plunging bass.
Truly, Slightly, Overflowing, Whereabout Of Good Will is a darkly foreboding and quite a tough listen, but it's oddly charming throughout. There's a lot of careful weighting to contributions and a good amount of careful listening and pivoting -- so far as musicianship goes it's a grand exemplar of a certain trend in often-quiet texture-based improvisation. Haino is a terrifying vocalist so having a whole set where he can go off vocally is a treat.
This curious mix of circumstances gives the album a sense of sense of statelessness; a sense that things could go in any direction, Liv's playful and ever-elegant piano either shadowed or mobbed by the scattered percussion of August Glännestrand and the warm languid bass of Georgia Wartel Collins.
Songs mutate and evolve, improvised elements sticking and becoming part of the canon. In fact, Swans evolve to such a degree that I reckon given a long enough tour, one of their songs is infinitely more likely to develop sentience than any fucking LLM.
By some miracle the entire thing was generated from a single seven-hour session; the basic quartet of bass, drums, synth and trumpet is augmented by guest vocalists and smatterings of guitar and flute, but the basic line-up gives more than enough texture as it is.
Where the previous album compiled four compositions from each of the three players, here a composition each from Martin, Charlotte and Martin rub shoulders with some long twisting improvisations that drag the listener on a set of expansive adventures that turn away from the previous work and set sale for pastures new... It is wild, florid and fantastic in its scope and yet another shining feather in the Discus cap; a must for all those seeking adventure.
Gala feels very summery to me, the staring at the sun splintering of "Sweetness And Light" -- that over driven roar that just erupts, released on a daisy-chain sparkle, something the sun-kissed cursives of "Sunbathing" heightens, scuttered in stormy subtleties. The bright-eyed bleed and steady kick of "Breeze" dipping gorgon-headed into a saturated sea of effects gorgeousness, tightly wound round some wickedly catchy refrains.
After the best part of fifty years in the game for Colin Newman and over forty for Malka Spigel, you could be forgiven for thinking that they had run out of things to say. But this latest album, from their long-running collaboration Immersion, casts a stark eye over the state of the world. However, where a lot of people may find only darkness and despair, WTF? attempts to see a positive way out and urges the listener to search within for a strength that may pull them through.
When I first moved to London in 1990 at the tender age of eighteen, I was in part drawn by the lure of a city offering plenty of live music. So of course the first thing I did was go to see Fields Of The Nephilim at The Town and Country Club. And now, thirty-five years later, here they are in the same building (though now it’s called The Forum), celebrating their own fortieth anniversary.
When Phew starts it’s a slow hypnosis of slippery sounds, her voice recoiling a merry-go-round full of twisty vapours. This bamboo beat is introduced, whipped in rhythmic rat tails and trapped moth zither. The sounds are rich, roll into each other with stretchy squishability I totally warm to.