Drag City (Americas) / Domino (Europe) “My job is just to sit here and sing these songs that have no purpose.” And yet Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, aka Palace Brothers, aka Palace Music, has been singing these songs for more than two decades, and whether his purpose is found still remains only in the hearing of the listener. Oldham’s back catalogue is an intimidating place to […]
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The Arkive Many years ago, I was all about The Bolshoi. Tipped-off by a friend at sixth form college, I borrowed their album Friends from the local tape library (for the benefit of our younger readers, tape libraries used to be a thing back in ancient history. As, of course, did tapes. And libraries.) and instantly fell in love with its marriage of . For a while back […]
Cosmo Rhythmatic It really makes a huge amount of sense for Mika Vainio and Franck Vigroux to have made Peau Froide, Lèger Soleil together, especially considering the latter’s storming Centaure 12″ of a year or so ago. There, Vigroux mashed up the hardest of beats in a welter of analogue electronics that bore easy and justifiable comparison to Vainio’s former outfit Pan Sonic; together they make a heavily […]
Hubro This third release from Møster! shows them in good from, even better than before. On the previous album, Inner Earth, they tried to move closer to prog, but with this album a more confident style is apparent. Although it is , a clear signature of the band flows distinctly throughout the album.
Matador When Savages‘ Silence Yourself burst onto the scene in 2013, with its rock-hard riffs that rocked hard but were never hard rock, it was genuinely refreshing — like a time capsule from the early ’80s that had somehow manage to attract modernism to itself rather than simply aping it, and had somehow managed to get here while entirely missing out grunge and metal. , it was impossible […]
The Alphabet Business Concern Musically, it’s a frantic fairground erupting cosily in your head – an aesthetic matched by the queasiness of Cardiacs‘ badly made-up faces. I remember their video for “R.E.S.” — the turtlenecks, nodding heads and punch’n’judy antics, beamed barmy from the offset. An eensy-weensy bit disturbing too; as your eyes filled with those fixed pearly grins and purple bruises — fffurrrrrrhhh — They were like […]
Hairdryer Excommunication Following up from the no-input field recordings reviewed here, Seth‘s either in a spirit of intrepidly obtuse field recording, or taking the piss (either’s good, frankly). The no-input field recording method, foolhardy though it is to compress it to something so asinine as a method, involves getting a recording, making it record itself, and Christ of the Abyss, my extensive research shows, is a crucifixion portrait […]
Sulatron Live, Electric Moon always hit you right in the third eye and this album recorded in Battenberg on the second of July (my birthday) in 2011 is a good document of everything the band are great at. So grab your stash, flick through some underground comix, get the joss sticks started and clutch your pocket I Ching and off we go.
Black Plague Operating at the intersection between the dingiest of dark ambient, noise and post-industrial electronic gloom, Hell Follows turns out to be a more spacious affair than Aderlating‘s previous delves into the murk and mire. However, Maurice De Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues, Seirom, Cloak of Altering etc) and Eric Eijspaart leave no drone unturned nor mordant exposition too clearly laid out — while there is now a certain […]
Sulatron Let us journey in to the far reaches of space. Let our mind travel through dark matter and push forward the boundaries of human knowledge. What soundtrack should we have for this celestial voyage to the outer regions? Why, Sula Bassana’s new album, of course.
ISO/Sony/Colombia New Bowie album. For years that meant bollocks all. LOCATION <DOESN’T MATTER, REALLY> TIME <xx111994> I remember a mate saying to me back in 1994, on turning up on a Saturday night, “Here’s the new Bowie album”. “NEW Bowie album? It’s the fucking ’90s. That’s not a good selling point. Just play some old ’70s ones, we’ll be cool”. . It was Outside. It blew the top […]
earMusic It was the late Seventies when I discovered Yes via a friend of mine. At first I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. There were all these complex time signatures and chord sequences flying around from my stereo that at times it felt like music from another world. Soaring over all this alien music was the voice of Jon Anderson, high in its register, seeming almost […]
4AD More loveliness from the vaults of 4AD, and the label have pulled out all the stops on this one. A five-disc Lush retrospective housed in a glossy hardback book, surely destined to become an instant collector’s item. Not only are the historical releases Gala, Spooky, Split and Lovelife captured, there’s tons of session tracks, demos and previously unreleased miscellany appended to each disc too – in all […]
London 21 December 2015 Having been unceremoniously shunted from the Shepherd’s Bush Empire (due to what is officially known as “structural weaknesses” but which I personally suspect may be closer to “some bastard wants to make some luxury flats”, Fields Of The Nephilim are tonight gracing The Forum with their presence. The date’s also been changed, which is undoubtedly a right bastard for people who can’t change their […]
Substantia Innominata The latest instalment in Cédric Peyronnet‘s series of cryptically titled releases as Toy.Bizarre manifests as part of Drone Records‘ lovingly assembled Substantia Innominata imprint, arriving wrapped in a delightfully warped 10″ sleeve which not only manages to make brown and sepia look stunning ( a rare trick), but would also make a great poster as a result. The vinyl inside is clear, however, and each side […]
Rocket It’s the shortest day of the year and Hills’ Frid album is bringing some summer warmth on a midwinter’s day — blasting, beautiful, fuzzed-out freak beat psychedelia from Gothenburg’s finest. “Kollektiv” is like a slab of 1969 all rolled up in a glorious joint of mellow psychedelic madness. From its fuzzed out opening to its sitar-laden exit, this is . It so perfectly captures a certain era […]
London 11 December 2015 “And you could be there…” Zoom in. You’re down the front at The Forum. New Model Army are playing up a storm, and Justin Sullivan has put you right in the head of a religious extremist. They started with the never-more-appropriate-than-right-now-when-we’ve-just-started-bombing-in-Syria “Bloodsports”, a song which in itself encapsulates
The Arkive/Beggars Banquet Gary Numan’s Top Of The Pops performance of “Are Friends Electric” was the Bowie “Starman” flashpoint for my generation (those creeping around the 50s age bracket). In school the next day we had many discussions about it, the weird music, the weird look, etc; it was like Kraftwerk but darker and, to be honest, just seemed alien to us. That performance changed lots of people’s […]