The Helen Scarsdale Agency So Long is an often subtle work of suggestively imaginative electronics which offers to transport the listener to places where they are equally welcome to apply their own meaning as to take those proposed by both the music and its naming. Drifting along without a seeming care in the world, Stilluppsteypa‘s Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson seems unconcerned how long his journey will take, if a […]
Reviews by Freq
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London-based duo Kontakte‘s 2014 release These Machines brought a blissfully blistering end to their silence of two years between albums. Here, Ian Griffiths and Stuart Low give a detailed breakdown of how and why each of the album’s tracks came into being. * “Shut Your Eyes And You’ll Burst Into Flames” These Machines – Limited Edition CD by KONTAKTE Stuart: This track was birthed over a number of […]
King of Spades It seems like it’s been an æon since the last Chrome album. But with Feel It Like A Scientist, Helios Creed and band returns with some of his wildest proto-punk, space rock craziness in years. “Nephilims (Help Me)” jumps straight in there with a and is a great opener for the album. Zappa-esque nonsense-style jazzing introduces “Prophecy” and within a few moments we are already […]
Staubgold Not so much glitching as rippling on a bed of deftly, deliberately placed samples organised by Timo Reuber and Staubgold label head Markus Detmer, Transit is also blessed with the production skills of Joseph Suchy, ensuring that everything unfolds with a suitably spacious, widescreen feel. A constant sense of motion, of change and unfolding, of new vistas opening up as the album progresses, matches its title perfectly […]
Sulatron A beautiful-looking release from Sulatron Records, this cosmic slab has three massive planet-sized tracks on it. The album is a collaboration between Electric Moon members Sula Bassana and Komet Lulu and Zone Six members Modulfix and Rainer Neef. These improvisations from Krautzone are pure kosmische soundtracks to outer space travelling. “Liebe” starts off with some moody synth playing and a very laid-back vibe that lets you drift away […]
Consouling Sounds Two tracks; fifteen minutes of fearsome post-hardcore grunt, groan, riff and thrash from Eleanora splashes out of the speakers as if the very devil was grinding out the best tunes behind them, goading the band into producing yet more screamed crescendos. Tight as the screws which surely must be holding down the drummer’s kit in case it should get beaten off the stage, “Mammon” shifts gears […]
Dekorder Two companion LPs from Janek Schaefer find this most mercurial of composers expanding upon some of his more exploratory audio ideas across four sides of vinyl (or nine tracks in digital form). “White Lights of Divine Darkness” is a suitably spiritual opener to Unfolding Luxury Beyond the City of Dreams, a piece recorded for Sir John Tavener on the day he died, and the mood of reflective […]
Important Recorded live with no rehearsal, as is Damo Suzuki‘s way — he makes a habit of not meeting or playing with the group who will act as his ‘sound carriers’ before the night of the gig — Start From Zero does just that. Mugstar demonstrate their proficiency as space rockers extraordinaire in from the get-go. While there’s a certain inevitable lurch into the sort of free-form jam […]
three:four Helena Espvall (of Espers) and David Maranha of Osso Exótico‘s first joint album finds the duo pushing and prodding at the boundaries of what their amplification of cello, violin and electric organ can achieve in the field of drone music. It hardly needs to be emphasised that as much volume as the reproducing equipment can offer clearly — and the listener(s) can stand — will give the […]
Dais Towards the end of his long and picaresque life, Billy Burroughs had become such an in-demand photographic accessory for the rock star du jour that the astounding body of work that had made him so notable in the first place was starting to slip dangerously into the shadow of his alternative celebrity status. , all lined, grim-set visage, grey felt hat and optional firearm (him, not them). […]
Substantia Innominata Lovingly presented as two clear 10” vinyl records wrapped up in Mars Wellink‘s artwork which graces the gatefold sleeve in suitably transcendantly minimal style, Amid Zero Echo swells up and into four sides of the most immensely practised drones imaginable. On this occasion, Thomas Dimuzio uses ultimately unrecognisable guitar-derived sounds as the base source material through which to seemingly condense the entirety of the cosmos into […]
Zoharum Originally appearing in 2006 as a limited CDR, Vintermusik finds Machinefabriek‘s alter ego Rutger Zuydervelt collaborating at a distance with Dag Rosenqvist (sometimes AKA Jasper TX) over seven tracks (plus bonus “Feberdröm / Koortsdroom”, which appeared on a 3” CDR in the same era). As the title indicates, this is music with a cold exterior, but which still allows for a warmth to reside at its heart(h), […]
Splendour When I first saw the track titles for this album I was instantly reminded of Galactic Supermarket by The Cosmic Jokers. Spinning the CD I then found that that wasn’t too far off the mark, for this Finnish quartet has more than a touch of the Krautrock about them. “En-Trance” kicks off things with majestic-sounding synths that are very Klaus Schulze in nature; they have . “Shopping […]
El Paraiso Jakob Skøtt‘s vision is a lively one, high on momentum, low on predictability, careering off on scatter-cake rolls, real percussive wakes that glint aplenty between bevy(ed) electronics and whir-rooting diverts. Melodies that knot up, scramble with harmonies that bounce around in a gigantic pinball machine full of shifting criss crosses, zapped u-bends, choked arpeggios. Pulsating fruits with kosmische kookaburras stinging the aperture. A slight Kraftwerkian jive […]
Crammed Discs A new year, another chance to get preponderous about whatever it is that makes us like a thing. Jozef van Wissem‘s Stations of the Cross is about seven years old now, a record I got and thoroughly enjoyed and always intended to follow up but entirely failed to. That was quite a shock at the time — just about minimal enough to sit somewhere near to […]
Magic + Dreams Of Human Bondage; salvation through restriction. An intriguing premise, where all the artists in the series were given not just the limitation of time per se but the ultra-specific requirement of actual track times (0:06, 0:23, 1:11, 2:37, 3:03, 3:14, 4:20 and 6:06) to conform to. It doesn’t matter if the actual mathematics is wrong, that it’s 60 seconds over. The extra minute seems necessary. […]
London 18 December 14 We are heading towards the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, and this will be my last gig of a fairly packed year. In a strange way it’s comforting to know that as I head out into a cold winter night that I already know I’m going to have a great evening hearing some wonderful songs that have swum around in my […]
Freaks R Us See, I managed to miss The Pop Group, though this is kind of forgiveable given that I would have been like eight years old or something at the time. Slightly less forgiveable is the fact that I managed to continue missing them for the next thirty years. Which is weird, because not only was I a big fan of bands who had been influenced by […]