The Sound of White Columns Unlike Star Trek fans, Can enthusiasts never have to choose between the two key vocalists of the Can oeuvre. Partly this is because Damo Suzuki and Malcolm Mooney both found idiosyncratic ways in which to interact with the rest of the band. It is also because Can enthusiasts are not necessarily Star Trek fans. Mooney’s sojourn with The Can initially manifests as one […]
Reviews by Freq
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Spoon/Mute Bringing together musicians who have worked together separately before – Burnt Friedman and Jaki Liebezeit have released several outstanding records of electronic dub together, among numerous other guest spots and collaborations; Irmin Schmidt and Jono Podmore made two albums as Schmidt & Kumo; and of course Schmidt and Liebezeit were Can members together, as well as collaborators since the band’s demise. Add in Podmore’s sterling work on editing The […]
Cold Spring Tanith and the Lion Tree revels in that rich and sumptuous world Edward Ka-Spel has carved for himself, one where the surreal becomes vivid, a vibrant play of words that like Kenneth Anger’s pleasure dome inaugurations, slowly unfold, ensnaring you in simmerings of dark fascinations. Tastes that jump from macabre to tender heart felts, from spite to cheerful jaunts of observation. Nuggets that refuse to give […]
Thrill Jockey I’d waited for an opportunity to listen to this album where I’d have some uninterrupted space and so the epic Megabus journey that started at 03:00 in the morning was the perfect place. I got on the bus, walked to the top of the stairs, plonked my self down at the back and was greeted by a wonderful centred perspective view of empty bus seats and […]
Rocketgirl “Bound for Magic Mountain” is a whopping start. A neonised cascade choked full of bouncy goo and bleeping keylines breezes through your head like a mechanised kiss. The guitar kingpins transmitting a massive joy in kegs of wah-wah and laser, everything tilting to the max, smothered in copious effect shadowing. This has the cool scent of somebody totally enjoying what he does, mingling the past with present. […]
Bureau B Conrad Schnitzler’s late ’70s and early ’80s period is difficult to pigeonhole within his larger body of work. By this point he had moved on from the early expansive drone pieces that featured on his first three releases and begun to amalgamate rhythmic patterns along side more condensed song structures. His Peter Baumann-produced 1978 album Con touched upon pop signatures but also allowed typical Schnitzler areas […]
Rune Grammofon The Swede Mats Gustafsson (The Thing, Fire!, and also appeared with Sonic Youth, Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, etc.) and the Canadian resident Colin Stetson from the US (Arcade Fire, and has also appeared with Laurie Anderson, David Byrne etc.), met for the first time on stage at the Vancouver Jazz Festival in 2011. The performance was recorded, and the result is these four tracks on Stones. […]
Sacred Bones A band who have obvious influences aplenty, Föllakzoid embrace, upgrade and expand upon the sound of motorik percussion and rippling fx-laden guitars. No matter where they draw from; they let loose five long-form tracks on their second LP which may owe substantial debts to places and times a long way removed from twenty-first century Chile, but which are nonetheless presented in a highly engaging manner. […]
Attack Attack 1979. A young snot-nosed punk steps up to a microphone, shouts “GO!” and a national treasure is born. The punk is Justin Sullivan, New Model Army the national treasure, and the “GO!” the unleashing of the hounds which heralds “Christian Militia,” the opening track on their classic mini-album Vengeance. 2013, and Vengeance is back (has been since the end of 2012, in fact) and it’s now […]
Fire Being a late explorer of Pere Ubu, my first encounter with them was The Tenement Year album from 1988, and I was sure I had found a pop band, but with something out of the ordinary still. Going back into their discography – to more experimental releases such as The Modern Dance or Dub Housing, not to mention the boxed set Datapanik in Year Zero, which also […]
Monotype I’ve been struck by this band’s mysterious flavours since hearing them on numerous compilation LPs from the early ’80s, and then much later, on the Tionchor CD back in ’98 which gathered them all up in one (very odd) listening experience. ‘Nouvelle Concrète’ that was, and continues to be, inspired.. inspiring, with this collected umbrella of Passagen as a pathogen no doubt infecting a whole new generation […]
Harry Wheeler of Harmonic Rooms spends a week in November in the company of some of the current greats of the acoustic guitar, and reflects on the enduring legacy of John Fahey and Robbie Basho. Last November, I spent over a week in and out of the recording studio with my trusty video camera and two explorative guitarists, Cam Deas and Steffen Basho-Junghans. Part of the appeal of […]
Turquoise Coal/Pure Pop for Now People An LP put out by both Turquoise Coal and Pure Pop for Now People and due for release on the day of the lovingly-hyped Mayan fauxpocalypse*, Ectogram‘s seventh album finds the band on fine avant-indie form. They’ve always managed the trick of melding their love of melodic songs with the further reaches of the weird and wonderful, but in Ectogram’s case it’s apparent […]
London 7 December 2012 It’s cold outside… but nice and cosy warm in The Forum, where the throng of Numanoids, all wonderfully resplendent in black, have gathered to hear the music from the master. While the intro music plays the anticipation and tension mounts. Crys of “NuuuuuuMaaaaan!” ring out around the venue. Then suddenly the lights go out and a massive roar goes up from the crowd as […]
The Dome, London 1 December 2012 Thirty years ago, thirty years ago to the very day, the original power couple of electro-goth, Nik Fiend and his wife, erm, Mrs Fiend, first unveiled their psychedelic horror show for the first, and for what they admit they believed would also be the last, time. And somehow they’re still here, thirty years on. And it’s time for a party. Onto a […]
Dissolving As synthesized sci-fi goes, this does a really good job, drawing its inspiration from a Philip José Farmer novel of the same name. That Seventies Panther pulp cover of scarred red and Space 1999 data font of the inlay warming you to this homage to those late ’60s/early ’70s explorations into the electronic unknown. A distinct doff of the cap to Tangerine Dream‘s pioneering vision, this is […]
Bureau B I first came across this album in a particularly smelly charity shop in the middlings of the ’90s. Sandwiched between some mouldering ’70s fodder, the massive sans serif Palais Schaumburg red of the slightly worse for wear cover, screaming out 2buy me now, or you’re gonna regret it!” I didn’t know anything about them at the time, my expectations were for some noisy, at the best […]
Unsounds The Ex has been around on the edge of Dutch punk and improv since 1979, veterans in the explorations of sounds and music on the wide outer side of mainstream. So when the modern energetic avant-jazz-improv duo of the US saxplayer Ken Vandermark and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, who has been performing together since the year 2000, meets up with The Ex guitars of Andy Moor and […]