Sulatron A wonderful new release from Sulatron Records has arrived on my home world, so here I go with trying to interpret the incoming data… Sula Bassana‘s Live at Roadburn 2014 starts with the synthesizer cosmic wind of “Rainstorm” that works up into a thudding big riff as bass and drums roll around under some expressive guitar playing. This is pure freak-out music, the kind that Sula’s band […]
Reviews by Freq
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Jazz Village (Before we go any further, a word about the title: you saw the caron on the s, didn’t you? Yes, of course you did. And that immediately suggested to you that Šlag Tanz is pronounced Schlag Tanz and you didn’t have a silly schoolboy [or girl] moment, did you? Good, and furthermore you get the Germanic sense of the word that indicates something like Shock Dance, […]
Heaven, London 15 February 2015 So tonight CarterTutti bid a fond farewell to their iteration as Chris & Cosey, and as expected the place is rammed to the rafters, as nobody wants to miss the end of this particular era. Prior to the gig my Facebook feed was a constant stream of updates telling me that one person or another on my friends list was going, and judging […]
Phase! The fold-out sleeve holding this baby together is a delight for the eyes. Its over-printed black imagery singing from beneath a golden glow of textured stock inkling at the album’s corroded essence. The struggling definition of the half-buried vocals, that healthy scouring of frustration eating into the machined percussives. Tastes forged in Dead Gum’s “lost decade” and a myriad of other releases, a mood finely-focused and now […]
Formlessness Press Remember the ’90s? Well, I only vaguely do. But ignore all that Britpop/Cool Britannia shit, as nationally embarrassing in the cold light of day as Diana’s funeral, and think in a more esoteric direction. Think of Coil‘s classic album Love’s Secret Domain, and the fucked-up techno they were doing back then. Do you remember? Protection certainly do, being a synth duo one half of which has […]
Crucial Blast This is the record that you put on when you are lying entwined with your loved one, the both of you perhaps shimmering in a post-coital afterglow, the bedroom window open, a warm breeze blowing in the faint sounds of summer. Hang on. Actually, no. Sorry. That’s by The Isley Brothers. Rather, this is the record that you put on when a small selection of your […]
empreintes DIGITALes Music to write science fiction to. L’Envol is the first solo album release from American-born, Brussels-based composer Elizabeth Anderson. She is a prolific artist and teacher, and when I hear the opening of L’envol, I feel somewhat like I am at the beginning of a lecture on electronic music. The sounds are perhaps what you might have expected from the title of the record, (L’envol is […]
On-U Sound/Tectonic One of the genre’s key figures joins forces on Late Night Endless with a genuine wizard of the mixing desk to put the dub back into dubstep (something which it has probably needed for a long time
Sulatron The Night is a CD reissue of Sula Bassana‘s 2009 LP and finds him playing some of his finest space rock on what could be seen as almost a concept album, all wrapped around by Frank Lewecke’s luscious cosmic sleeve design. “In Space” opens the album and has more than a nod to ’50s sci-fi in its lush groove — the feel is more like The Tornados […]
Futurismo When I heard that I was to review this album, I had to re-visit some of my old Devo records, blow the dust off and give them a new, fresh listen. Some call them punks, post-punks, new wave or even artrock, but they certainly have their own signature no matter what. The recordings from the late ’70s especially have some of the same quirkiness and dark moods […]
Sacred Bones John Carpenter has had quite a career. After writing, directing and scoring some of the greatest horror films of the ’80s, he has since somewhat fallen off the metaphorical wagon, mustering a less than congenial reception to the majority of his output of the last two decades. The exception to this rule however, is his soundtrack work, from which a whole new generation of composers have […]
Hiatus The first in the Sound X Sound series of 7″ singles which will each explore just one instrument, Music for 8 Recorders finds Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard‘s compositions tackling the alto and soprano varieties on each side of the record. On the evidence of the first disc, the rest of the Sound X Sound series should be well worth following, not least to discover how much Løkkegaard can […]
London 30 January 2015 The day didn’t start well. A blocked drain, forgetting the keys to work and having to go back and fetch them and then a slip on rainy plastic, a mid-air semi-cartwheel (“semi-cartwheeled headfirst in the rain,” as Edward Ka-Spel would say) into the side of a skip and a resultant injury resembling nothing so much as the remnants of a failed scalping all combined […]
Suezan Studio The last thing I was expecting when listening to these recently-unearthed rarities was Gospel. But that’s what hits your ears first, hallelujahs, hand claps and all, roasted on some mad Blackpool-type organ and acoustic hints of blue grassy glinting holy — a bedazzle for the senses indeed. Thomas Dinger‘s only other released work, Für Mich, lightly dusted you with its composed turquoise, as its strange inclinations […]
Ici d’ailleurs/Mind Travels Important Aidan Baker has made an art of being really, really boring. Having released several thousand albums to date – with almost all of them revolving around a guitar and a couple of pedals – you’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘boring’ was in some way a pointed derision aimed squarely at the man’s omnipotence, his unwavering dedication to a singular minimalist aesthetic, but Baker […]
Staubgold Collected from two years’ worth of home two-track tape recordings made between 1982-1983 by Liquid Liquid‘s percussionist, Reel To Real gathers together Dennis Young‘s sketches of sometimes engagingly naïve acoustic songs alongside frenetic percussion workouts and occasional synth frenzies which prefigure the arrival of drum and bass in their clattery pace. The demo-like quality of most of the material makes for an occasionally intimate and sometimes plain […]
Beta-lactam Ring This has got to be Edward Ka-Spel‘s most introspective album to date; some would say business as usual, another party political broadcast from the inside of Edward’s head. Words held in tea-stained sepia and dust-choked webs, hints of jaded melody creeping out of the inky gloom, like threadbare playthings that have seen better days. Yep — definitely business as usual, and I wouldn’t want it any other […]
The Helen Scarsdale Agency Ever needed to block out the world beyond the ears with the application of sound, to soak and bleach away the intrusive noises of other human beings, their transport, the built environment, the elements themselves? Try Scarlet then, up loud and/or on headphones, and let Jim Haynes reorganise the sound world in rawer form. Tired of melody, bored to tears by tunes and than […]