Label: Studio Philo/Music Video Distributors Format: DVD When Genesis P-Orridge returned to London in 1999 after nearly a decade of tabloid media-inspired witchhunt and subsequent exile to America, there was no doubt that the reappearance of Psychic TV on stage would be an event. That GPO’s manifestation resulted in broadsheet The Guardian running an extensive feature on his welcoming into the very heart of the arts establishment was […]
Reviews by Freq
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Label: Mute Format: 2CD “Still with Mute Records, the sadly neglected Fad Gadget looks like he could give The Human League a run for their money in the smart electronic pop stakes. His third excellent single in a row previews two tracks for his forthcoming album and features more of his clever, black humour lyrics and nifty tunes. “Fireside Favourites” pointedly combines the home fire, the atom bomb […]
Grönland/EMI Electrola/Astralwerks NEU! Guitar arches out like twilit sunshadows and the omnipresent beat is there, new dawn, new dawn. Synthesizer languidly moves backwards and forth, the Sunday eveningmorning that holds in rapt attention at the creation of something new. Six crepuscular tracks? Wcka wcka wcka. Wow wow wow. And so on. Then on to the swelling and pitching of the flanged cymbals, split side by side, side-to-side, riding […]
Label: Thrill Jockey Format: CD,LP Welcome to the end of the world. With civilization on the brink of destruction, and all those Biblical prophecies starting to look not quite so funny, the inimitable Bobby Conn bounds back onto the scene, perversely enough eschewing the eschatological apocalypses of Rise Up! and giving us an album of (among many other things), good time sleazy RAWK’n’RAWL!!! Yeah! Coming on like a […]
London 12 October 2001 Given that this appearance by Faust marks both their 100th live performance since the group’s reformation in 1993 and possibly their final show, it’s somehow appropriate that the emergency services soon became involved once again.
Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool 11 October 2001 Whatever combinations of players you find Keith Tippett in there is always an element of the spiritual, in a broad sense, in his playing. He says he plays to ‘move people’ and ‘remove them from chronological time’ and often that’s just what he does. On this occasion, as part of Liverpool’s Frakture Festival, he was in the company of drummer Peter […]
The Klinker The Sussex, London 20 September 2001 Well, The Klinker was its normal inchoate self: the irrepressible Hugh Metcalfe yelling “We start in ten minutes” as a half dozen apparently unrelated machine operators tinker with toy tape recorders, laptops, bits of wiring, large wineglasses, violin bows and Super 8 projectors. I concieve a momentary connexion between autism and the avant-garde – the unconnectedness, the lack of affect, […]
Label: Matador Format: CDS,12″ Taking as its sample base the sounds of plastic surgery operations, “California Rhinoplasty” does precisely what the title describes; only funkily. Not for Matmos the obvious route of ambinece as the bones rasp and the noses are broken with a hammer. Instead, every sound becomes grist(le) to their sampler’s mill to make a groovy shuffle of sprightly plops, squeaks and chugging bass. Part of […]
Label: Matador Format: CD,LP In their latest album Matmos use the bone crunching noises of plastic surgery for their samples. So if you’ve had a nose job be warned, Matmos might have transformed the noise of your nose being broken into a snare. Well, here it is … A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure is a collage of sound recorded in clinics and operating theatres. […]
Tufnell Park Dome, London 2 September 2001 A history lesson… Everything you think you know is wrong. The last ten years never happened. Mrs. Thatcher’s still in power, The Dome‘s still standing (Tufnell Park that is… not the Big Tent), and Conflict are still gigging. We are ruled by a bunch of corporate whores who’d sell out their own party for some cash from Ronald McDonald. Hang on […]
Label: Brombron Format: CD Edited down from a week’s recording in and around Extrapool studio in Nijmegen, Holland by Antenna Farm and Main in the summer of 2000, AF_M is the first in the Brombron series of collaborations initiated by Staalplaat and Extrapool. Using laptops, guitars, environmental and close-miked recordings and the studio itself, the five untitled tracks were improvised then later whittled down in strict order of […]
Label: One Little Indian Format: CD If, at any point in the last six or seven years, you had only taken the time to ask, then I would have told you, dear reader, that Björk Gudmundsdottir was THE Great Pop star of the 1990’s, what Bowie was to the 70’s, and, I would contend, Prince to the 1980’s. I use the term great not in the term of […]
Label: United Dairies Format: CD One of Nurse With Wound‘s most assuredly out there recordings in a career constructed from such moments, Santoor Lena Bicyle takes many of the elements of rhythm and groove Steven Stapleton and collaborators have been working on over the last few releases, condenses them, mashes them up again and throws half away to produce a further chapter of derangement. With Aranos on board, […]
Label: Ralph (America)/EuroRalph (Europe) Format: DVD, CD (soundtrack only) There have been plenty of strange and powerful musicians and groups out there for many a long year. Captain Beefheart, Coil, Wesley Willis, Ken Nordine and so forth, each extending the realms of taste and disrupting the boundaries of what exactly constitues music and art . Then there are The Residents. Through thirty years of wilful obscurity and cutting-edge […]
Barfly At The Monarch, Camden, London 9th August 2001 OK, so it’s a promotional gig for (the once-proud, now suckers of corporate cock) Xfm. OK, so the other bands are yer average guitar malarkey. Fair enough. But if 2nd Gen’s on, then why the fuck is no-one dancing? Huh? Answer me that and win a prize. (Of fuck all, incidentally, in case you were wondering.) 2nd Gen is […]
The Kosmische Club Upstairs At The Garage, London 28 July 2001 For the Kosmische Club’s fifth birthday, the party hats, balloons and banners have been brought out to celebrate half a decade of putting on one of the best clubs in London, if not the country and possibly the world. A touch of hyperbole, perhaps, but the nice thing about this club, despite the almost unbearable heat in […]
93 Feet East, London 9 July 2001 “Bosses, They’re all cunts, pricks wankers and shits – does anyone here like their boss?” Well, those were similar words to the ones I muttered when Simon Breed nearly trampled me in his stampede to the bar pre-showtime. He was allegedly referring to his boss, or bosses in general. The same song also proclaimed him to sound like Bruce Springsteen, make […]
The Junction, Cambridge 9 July 2001 For whatever bizarre reason, this gig couldn’t be advertised. Having found out about it, having already missed Tricky’s appearance at Robert Wyatt’s South Bank Meltdown, and noting that his only other UK appearances this tour were at the V2001 festival and Penrith (remember Withnail spitting this town’s name out in a phone box? – yes, that Penrith), I had to check it […]