Modularfield A squeal of metal and a wave of drone introduces Piksel‘s Places and throws you headlong into a dramatic situation with no time to prepare. Like the slow movement of enormous creatures, wings beating in subterranean isolation, things grind and shriek, and the oppressive drone pushes everything before it.
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Upset The Rhythm Waiting there patiently for over thirty years, Normil Hawaiians‘ third album Return Of The Ranters finally got the airing it deserved in late 2015, thanks to Upset The Rhythm. An act that kick started a re-issue campaign to get all their recordings back into print, finally re-addressing the group’s bad luck story with a vengeance.
Upset The Rhythm Upset The Rhythm really seems to be cornering the market in literate if slightly eccentric indie pop these days. It takes me back to the halcyon days of C86 in the way that each new band that releases something on the label is bringing their own skewed vision of what passes for post-punk or indie guitar (for want of a better term). Carnage Hall from […]
Cherry Red / MVD Audio / New Ralph Too When we last left our heroes in the early 1980s, they had just staggered bloodied but unbowed from the triumphant disaster that was The Mole Show, an interlinked series of albums and associated live tours that detailed the epic and deranged saga of the conflict between two opposing peoples, the Moles and the Chubbs. It would therefore make sense, would it not, to […]
Blue Tapes Stuart Chalmers has created a lot of interesting soundscapes with minimal means. Live he’s a walkman wizard, dealing out an aesthetically beautiful seance of strange and slippery shapes, tangling up dialogue with wah-scarred short-wave.
London 13 November 2019 Lightning Bolt, once hilariously described to me as “a really talented drummer and bass player showing off” are back in London following the release of their ridiculously enjoyable album Sonic Citadel. Playing two sold out nights in The Underworld, it’s extremely comforting to see upon entering that they’re back where they belong, playing on the floor in a sweaty rock club.
London 14 November 2019 It’s weird being at the Electric Ballroom. Not that it’s a particularly weird venue in and of itself; I mean, it’s actually a good one. No, what’s weird about being at the Electric Ballroom is that we’re here to see New Model Army. In November. .
Slowcraft / KrysaliSound James Murray set up Slowcraft Records back in 2011 to enable him to release his drifting passages of ambience, as well as highlighting other artists with a similar approach. His latest, Embrace Storms, numbered and limited to 150 copies and released in association with KrysaliSound, is a further variation on the theme of distance and dissolution.
DiN There is something about the sound of the modular synth that spells the future to me, more than any other music making device. It is the sound of science fiction, but also science fact, and it is the wonders of the universe rather then the horrors of the universe that they tend to evoke, that limitless space and the sense of endless adventure. Here, in the third […]
Bristol 11 November 2019 “My vagina’s really angry”, goes the walkie-talkie on the table, crackling in flick-knifed distortion and abrupt statics. DJ Ductape has a few people scattered about outside the venue, supplying miscellaneous inputs to her show — one random conservationist, the other drumming railings and yet another going Mozart with random Casio melodies.
Thrill Jockey Ryley Walker has been leading any interested parties a merry dance since his career started in earnest with 2015’s Primrose Green. I was talking to somebody who had taken a friend to see him this year at The Fleece in Bristol, expecting the pretty psych-folk of that album and ending up with the post-jazz extrusions of The Dave Matthews Band, which flies in the face of […]
London 8 November 2019 Berlin-based avant-garde guitarist Caspar Brötzmann is back in London, touring as Caspar Brötzmann Massaker, his cult power-trio featuring bassist Eduardo Delgado-Lopez and drummer Saskia Von Klitzing. Always a favourite of the experimental guitar crowd, he arrives after having supported SunnO))) in Europe and is having a resurgence of interest due to Southern Lord reissuing the majority of his back catalogue.
Figureight After 2017’s EP Recôncavo was re-issued on Phantom Limb, people have obviously been awaiting a full-length album from Louisville-based JR Bohannon and here it is, a rare release on Shazad Ismaily‘s Figureight label. The rich musical history of Louisville in Kentucky, from Appalachian finger-picking to the post-rock vibes of the likes of Slint, are all filtered through in the DNA of JR’s music to create a hybrid that […]
(self-released) A re-visit to one of my favourite Legendary Pink Dots albums, Asylum Relaspe re-shapes the patients’ mood, and propels its themes with new perspectives. Some tracks are obvious nods to Asylum’s original content, but others are more slippery with context, wiggling out of the woodwork, adding to the fun as Patrick Q Wright’s musical nous excites the eleven tracks therein, his fevered violin playing and voice spinning […]
Rocmusic It is great news that the first three R.O.C albums are finally back in print. It has been many years since the listening public received the unexpected assault on the senses that was the first, self-titled album. That juxtaposition of Karen Sheridan‘s angelic, dreamy vocals with Fred Browning‘s more bitter, vitriolic vocal attack, all couched in a series of dramatically diverse musical backdrops that all three band […]
London 28 October 2019 The SunnO))) juggernaut rolls into London for the first time since their triumphant show at The Barbican in 2017. A quick glance at the stage after arriving confirms that Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson — the core members of SunnO))) since forming in 1998 — have not mellowed with age. The now-familiar columns of vintage Sunn Model T, Hi-Watt and Ampeg amplifiers are stacked impressively high […]
Glacial Movements Algida Bellezza is Alessandro Tedeschi‘s seventh album for Glacial Movements and it is another release that fits perfectly into their oeuvre. Over five mistily submerged tracks, a bleak, monochrome landscape is evoked through the slow moving actions of Netherworld‘s electronic drones and mysterious unseen sounds that lurk in the flailing snow storms that envelope the fractured pieces on offer here.
Discus Considering how long and varied the careers of Alex Maguire, Martin Pyne and Mark Hewins have been, this is the first time that the three have played together, and Discus is the perfect home for their meeting of musical minds as MPH. The CVs of the three members include an incredible variety of musical styles that seems to have culminated in a freedom that is quintessentially pastoral, […]