London 10 September 2015 Café Oto, a place that seems to be shorthand for Bobos to some people. However, tonight there were far more middle-aged music nerds than craft-ale and pulled pork enthusiasts (as there seems to be every time I’m at the venue, yet it has this reputation as being wall to wall, errr, the ‘H’ word). First up was a duo featuring the mighty Colin Potter. […]
reviews
3644 posts
Industrial That foetal thump propelling this is cavernous; and at high volume it’s huge. Dynamically churning up the digital silt as collapsing structures fall through in cacophonies of brokenness, shadowy vectors that smoulder in the arch of pulsing ambiguity. Yep, my favourite trio Carter Tutti Void are back with more post-industrial mutations to be savoured. The splintered majesty that started with Transverse (and I still can’t believe that […]
The Lexington, London 9 September 2015 There is something about Wednesdays, something odd that doesn’t quite fit right. Wednesday is the square peg in the round hole. It seems to bring out a strangeness in the universe, as if all those planets and solar systems and galaxies out there somehow know that that it’s Wednesday.
Not Your Average Type /Genepool The Cesarians are back, which is great news for all lovers of the dark and depraved, as well as punks and lovers of stuff that rocks hard who have become bored with endless guitar solos. Although they’ve long since broken their own self-imposed “no guitars” rule, that hasn’t stopped them continuing to resolutely plough their own brass-driven furrow to the end of the […]
London 3 September 2015 I cling unto the burning Æthyr like Lucifer that fell through the Abyss, and by the fury of his flight kindled the air. Aleister Crowley It had been raining for days. Every morning for the last week I awoke to the sound of water beating against the window. All it needed was the tolling of an iron bell and the first massive chord of […]
ICR / United Dairies Loving the way this triptych holds you sensory hostage. One of Nurse With Wound‘s most mellowest outings to date too, documenting three separate live concerts between 2011 and 2012 with the Blind Cave Salamander — a onetime support act that Steve Stapleton invited to be absorbed into the NWW sound world. On paper this was meant to be a live rendition of Soliloquy for […]
Second Sight Films Penelope Spheeris‘s epic three-part documentary series about the shifting scene in music in LA in the ’80s and ’90s makes even more interesting viewing now than it did before. Well, I’m mostly talking about the first two movies, as until now I’ve never seen the third. The documentary form, as well as Spheeris’s hands-off style (of which more later) mean that instead of becoming dated, […]
Front & Follow The inscription inside the cover of Laura Cannell’s beautifully packaged CD reads “Beneath swooping talons we choose to be brave, or else to edge the shadows of open spaces, Silent wings come upon us in a strobe of feathers, we choose to be free, or else let the unknown control us.” There is a pleasing sparseness to these single-take recordings, , played on fiddle, overbow […]
4AD It’s been nearly a decade since teenage wunderkid Zach Condon released The Gulag Orkestar, Beirut’s bells-and-whistles, everything-including-the-kitchen-sink-and-Granddad’s-accordion, Eastern-European- influenced debut album. Whist both The Gulag Orkestar and its follow-up, 2007’s The Flying Club Cup packed in a lot, Beruit’s third album, 2011’s The Rip Tide, suggested a shift in tone, moving away from the large brass and strings sections found on previous albums towards a lighter, more […]
Bristol 21 August 2015 Loved the way Twin‘s guitars seemed to shimmer in your mind’s eye like a hazy mirage. A spectre of voice weaving through as lush loops were overlaid in trebling ascents. Endlessly changing, channelling, dusted in a candle-lit intimacy of curling chords caught in a Fursaxa-like beguile. A sound that . A delicate and dreamy apparition that exploded in applause. https://soundcloud.com/twin-music-2/asteria Next were angular tantrums […]
The Royal Festival Hall, London 18 August 2015 Throat-singing. It’s the new rock and roll. Or the OLD rock and roll, if you subscribe to the theory espoused by the likes of luminaries such as Patti Smith, Julian Cope and me that a rock concert is essentially the modern variant on religious worship. Phurpa bridge this gap across time and space by playing ancient devotional Bön music (from […]
One Little Indian It is more difficult to write about The Sugarcubes‘ Life’s Too Good than I had anticipated. Although I know the record well, played it endlessly throughout my mid-teens and still find it to be a really good listen, it is hard to say any more about it than has been said elsewhere. It is a great album, a great first album and a record that […]
London 7 August 2015 It’s a balmy Friday night in old London Town, and the Mothership has just landed on Camden’s Electric Ballroom, bringing its message of light, love and lavatory humour in the form of George Clinton and Funkadelic. And godDAMN if he still isn’t the best pilot it could ever wish for.
Crammed Discs I’m seriously fixated by musique concrète, along with a lot of other musical niches; it’s been a slippery slope ever since hearing Luciano Berio’s Visage at an impressionable age, which set the dominos toppling for other magnetic tape twisters, splicers and slicers. In turn, this spurred an appreciation of more tonally spread hues, that floating gasp to our everyday stripped of recognition, the petri dish of […]
The Dome, London 3 July 2015 Okay, so here’s a thing. I don’t really remember ever seeing Acid Mothers Temple. I’ve seen them on various occasions, and I don’t really remember any of them. Now, I don’t make a conscious effort to indulge any more before an Acid Mothers Temple gig than I do before a show by anyone else, but somehow after the fact they always elude […]
Lava Thief From the angsty bristles of their debut All Mind in the Cat House comes another Jaggersaw of squabbling quadients with a smidgen more hip-swinging melody sneaking under/over that the despotic word spillage. A danceable zest that happily avoids cliché whilst simultaneously dragging you through a thicket of barbed carnivores and bullying percussions. This is so good — every song a radiant splinter, siphoning the spirit of […]
The Barbican, London 18 July 2015 “My name’s Terry Riley, I’ll be here all week”. It would be nice to think that at some stage over the previous weekend, America’s great composer actually expressed his forthcoming residency in exactly this way. For in order to celebrate his eightieth birthday, El Tel (as doubtless everyone calls him), has spent the last seven days encamped here as part of the […]
United Jnana I like to think these were lullabies, bedtime ambience for Steven Stapleton and Diana Rogerson’s daughter Lilith, born in the same year this was first released, the album’s shapes spinning the horsey mobiles as she slipped into the deep nether world of unconsciousness, that wordless sparkle of fertile imaginings. This, remains for me, one of Nurse With Wound’s best, born out of some studio electrical fault, […]