Bureau B ESB’s album lands on my doorstep at the same time as the first pictures of Pluto filter through the cosmos and are shown for the first time for all humanity to see. Somehow the music created by the trio of Yann Tiersen, Lionel Laquerrière and Thomas Poli is fitting as its soundtrack. “Market” is the album opener, and it’s full of glistening synths that seem to […]
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Sofa Sometimes, you just want to write a review made up of ephemera and snatches of observations rather than, y’know, syntactically cogent sentences. I would say “poetic”, but what I really mean is that I find my own notes hilarious and disingenuous and the idea of having a series of shit kōans in place of a record idea is amusing.
London 9 October 2015 October is the month of Samhain where the boundaries between other worlds and our own is at its thinnest. It is the time of ancient occult rituals to the ancestors and a sign that year is slowly crawling to its end. While the autumnal sun shine hangs in the air the creeping nights have more than a hint of chill to them. It is […]
New River Studios, London 1 October 2015 Graham Dunning is a name that seems to be popping up all over the place. This isn’t a surprise as he is busy performing, exhibiting, and now, curating; tirelessly working away and putting others to shame with his prolific energy. Performances of late have been as an improv duo with Colin Webster, where they team up on turntable (Dunning) and sax […]
Night School (Europe) / Sacred Bones (Americas) Today we’re here to talk about the idea of perfect pop music, and in the ’80s, that decade where pop ruled the world, there was no band more perfect than Strawberry Switchblade, who burned ridiculously brightly for one lone album and then dissolved in acrimony.
The Spheres Swastikas For Noddy was my favourite of Current 93‘s work until Thunder Perfect Mind stole its glory some years later. It’s very much a family affair, a pulling of disparate threads directed by David Tibet chasing his hallucinogenic vision of a crucified Noddy.
London 3 October 2015 Anyone who’s seen London stalwarts Now play live will know that they are always different, yet always reliable (as in they will always deliver). They’ve been existing in different formations for over a decade and a half now (Now!), and have collaborated with the likes of Damo Suzuki, who is basically Krautrock royalty, for those of you unfamiliar with his name.
Tin Angel It’s harvest time and the nights draw in and we prepare for the long winter ahead. In a few weeks the warmth of long summer days will be a distant memory and we will count the days down to the sun’s warm return.
Arrow Films Aleksei German‘s Hard To Be A God is sci-fi in the Tarkovsky tradition, very much a state of mind rather than flashy tech and shiny spaceship CGI. The film is based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky‘s 1964 novel of the same name, and was completed after the director’s death by his son Aleksei German Jr. The back story is that a group of earth scientists (although […]
Sulatron Krautzone have to be one of my favourite new bands of the last couple of years. Not only are the covers of the albums (by Komet Lulu) so beautifully designed, but the music is powerful, hypnotic, trance-like and just plain out there. Here, we are treated over two CDs to the complete recorded works of the band, plus one never-before released bonus track that gives you enough […]
Avalanche At first listen, Justin Broadrick‘s latest outburst of noisemongering — here incarnate as JK Flesh in industrial electronic style — might just be a assumed to be a bit too content to stick to the tried and tested formula of harsh beats, dubby echo effects and the sound of a machine drum stomping on the human corpus forever (or at least for around an hour or so).
Editions Mego If one artist could embody epic, Thighpaulsandra would try to top it. Rumour has it his first solo record was so big he had to spread it across two releases and one of those was a double’s worth. Musically well travelled and mustering a mind-boggling proficiency of styles, he happily hopscotches from classical to avant electronic, proggy free jazz to full-on kraut and a whole of […]
London 16 September 2015 Out on the margins of London’s more fashionable postcodes, things are brewing and ticking over quietly to themselves once again. One such night of music and more takes place in the calmer reaches of Manor House in the unhurried Bohemian environs of New River Studios’ performance space, filled for the evening with Reuben Sutherland‘s engrossing video projections. As the audience begins to trickle in, […]
S Object/Folk Wisdom Inspired by Chris Marker’s fragmentary post-apocalyptic time travel film La Jetée and purporting to involve a mysterious black box dating from the Anthropocene era, AirEffect seems at once an imaginary soundtrack and the illusory object of its own investigations. Stanislao Lesnoj‘s haunting saxophone circles SmZ‘s shuffling drums and other percussion while Christian Fennesz‘s guitar and electronics scrape and shimmer. All the time and environmental sounds […]
Arrow Films If you were to look for a definition of the term “cult movie”, you might find the huge stone face of Zardoz staring back at you from the page, bellowing “the gun is good, the penis is bad”. Because it is for this and dozens of other images of batshit unheimlich that Zardoz has earned its cult status.
Bureau B A companion to the album he and Hans-Joachim Roedelius recorded together, released as Selective Studies Volume One in 2013, 1D takes sketches and solo parts that Lloyd Cole created as part of the process, but that were ultimately unused for the record as a duo. Composed entirely using a modular synthesizer, and instrument that Cole was learning to use as he went along, the eleven tracks […]
London 10 September 2015 Sold out, The Barfly is pretty rammed tonight with the by-now-traditional rabble of goths, rockers and punks both steam and… erm… the other kind. For tonight is the launch of The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing‘s third and latest album, Not Your Typical Victorians.
Tigertrap The live-wire pairing of drummer Thomas Fuglesang and electronic sound-mangler Jussi Brightmore have come on leaps and bounds, deservedly gathering admirers as they have done so, since their debut album, Silent Cenotaph. First released in 2011 , it’s now finally been blessed with a Tigertrap vinyl edition, wrapped up in as suitably bizarre a gatefold cover as its music deserves and Brightmore could devise. The duo push […]