With cosmic horror having made something of a sly comeback in recent years (as the malign influence of HP Lovecraft has given way to the Thomas Ligottis and Laird Barrons of this world), there’s never been a better time to immerse yourself in the secrets of this strange, physics-and-architecture-defying house and its wonderful gallery of grotesques for a unique slice of surrealist horror.
reviews
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...an acute observation of a time in this country when things seemed remarkably bleak; but it doesn't jeer or harass, just observes and reports. It just so happens that the musical making is a delight and the singer has lived to tell the tale.
... a solid slice of guitar / synth graze, psychologically skewered on Adi’s impassioned delivery ...White Souls In Black Suits is a welcome Clock DVA reissue with the promise of more classics to re-released in the near future.
Paul Horlick has long been one of the of the most influential people on the Bristol gig scene. As well as co-owning Invada Records and running the sadly missed Swarf Finger, he has been a Teenager In Trouble, been part of Black Sheep and exhaustively and enthusiastically promoted shows in the city for longer than I can remember. So to hear that another label was up and running and there was to be a showcase for Black Mound Sound Lab in the cellar of The Exchange with five acts, entrance for a fiver and lots of merch available
Noah Baumbach invokes the self-reflexive spirits of all the great directors who’ve made movies about making movies with this great-looking but languorous and elementally compromised comedy-drama that follows a movie star (George Clooney, by the look of it playing himself) and his forbearing agent (Adam Sandler) on a tour of Europe that soon ripens into a journey around the interior of his own navel.
To be fair, you can see why this film would have been annoying / perplexing to reviewers back in 1981, and many of those issues remain. It is genre-(and gender-)bending in every way. Is it a monster movie? A psychological thriller? A spy film, even, with heavily codified Cold War chic?
...really does come with a wave of enthusiasm as he and the band welcome you again into their dream-like world; the soft focus of the production, the ethereal keening voices, it all draws you in with open arms. It might be a little jaded, but there is always hope.
... after a snaky Sebadoh-infused instrumental prologue to usher us in (“Theme”), we’re firmly thrust into a series of tune-stuffed songs, with Josie’s magnetic vocals pulling things into sharp yet warm focus for the majority of proceedings.
Keith's voice is from that landscape, and his love of the outdoors comes through in the warm northern English tones; but the esoteric nature of the words, describing ancient geology, are secure in their place within this wilderness.
...they conjure up a momentous whirling sound that travels across borders seemingly at will, struggling up steep inhospitable inclines and streaming across open plains, as if something were in hot pursuit. But through it all they are reacting to one another's playing in a way that showers the portentous percussion with streams of fiery frustrated strings.
There’s a falling spaceman on screen and you feel the helplessness in the sonic tumble of those sharpened melodics rush on over you. A life-affirming experience that ends on an updated version of "The Hacker" that mauls supernova, stuttering in harshly beaten majesty, rough-cut keys and an urgent thrust of images that pile upon your retina in stark black'n'white.
Multi-instrumentalist Jan Todd's fourth album has Frostlake has her once again teaming up with Terry Todd to provide bass tones; but the addition of Andy Peake on piano has imbued the pieces here with a timeless air and a real sense of the soft hush of a dreamworld.
Having recalibrated themselves somewhat with 2021’s towering epic Burials, Cambridge’s Fuzzy Lights return belatedly with the logical extension that is Fen Creatures. With Rachel Watkins retaining sole lead vocal and lyric-writing duties, alongside her role on violin, Xavier Watkins (guitar), Chris Rogers (guitar), Daniel Carney (bass) and Mark Blay (drums) continue to turn up both the turbulence and atmospherics, the folk-psych-rock melding appears even weightier and wider in its reach.
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.
...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.