Bristol 10 December 2017 I wake to blizzard conditions, and a transport system buckling under a four-inch surprise of snow and ice. The UK has the worst coping strategies when it comes to sudden changes in weather, it really does; so I decide against my usual journey down the M4 for a cramped train journey
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Out For me, Ut were the unsung heroes of that Noise New York scene and to see their essential work being re-issued can only be a good thing. Crawling from the same scene that spawned Swans, Sonic Youth, James Chance and Richard Hell, what made the band special was not that they were all women; this was a scene that had strong women like Kim Gordon, Lydia Lunch, Ann […]
London 30 November 2017 By the time I get to Heaven, Aluk Todolo are already on stage, kicking out a fine racket. I have no idea what to expect from them, but as I enter the venue I’m thinking “Neurosis”. And for the next few minutes, yes, they do sound a bit like Neurosis.
Consouling Sounds Thighpaulsandra and Massimo Pupillo (of Zu) have conjured a lovely bit of ambience here as Uruk, heavy fruit rotten with cankerous rainbows. I Leave A Silver Trail Through Blackness is a dark joy best suited to making merry with the other side of the witching hour. Crank that dial to the right and sink into its dronic pleasures, a thirty-eight minute journey lit in tubular shackles and […]
Svart Finland’s instrumental hypno fourpiece Siinai are back with a standalone follow-up to 2014’s musing on consumerism Supermarket, and what a satisfying burst of cyclical, looping repetition it is.
London 21 November 2017 Over the last couple of years, Blues Pills have toured tirelessly and worked hard to become a big crowd-pulling concert act filling out large venues across Europe. So it was a bit of a surprise when they announced a rather intimate show at the small Jazz Café in London, but no surprise when the show sold out.
Whip Angels The title sets you up. Death is Coming, cumming… come in; the water’s lovely. La petite mort, sex and death, and rebirth. This is an audio slice of an audio-visual feast, best savoured whole. It is music and it stands alone and proud, but it’s also part of a wider project
Bristol 1 December 2017 Tucked in to the stage edges, Modulus III were a threesome of dual synthesizer drums and the rub of a cello, they cruised through some lovely motorik hypnotics. Musically siphoning their inspiration from a multitude of ports, but safely jutting out of entrapment, they notched up plenty of fireworks.
English Heretic This has a stately grace, which seems full of ghosts. A fifty year de-celebration of The Summer of Love and a fugue for a darkening isle (that book seems closer to reality than any of us would like). It reimagines and repurposes, taking obscure psychedelic tracks from that lost year, 1967
Svart Jess And The Ancient Ones are a enigma; their first album and EP were labelled under the occult rock genre alongside such bands as Jex Thoth and Blood Ceremony. This may have largely been due to the press releases saying that the songs were all about the band’s experiences with magick. Then came the second album, The Aquarius Tapes, which seemed to discuss the occult influence during […]
London 23 November 2017 “Dunkel. Dunkel ist die Nacht“.i It is most certainly dark tonight, the evenings now well and truly drawn. The winter solstice approaches. And, as is customary for such astronomical phenomena, we are gathering together tonight to celebrate by watching the rise of the strange, intense sun that is Laibach.
Rock Fuel Media / Cleopatra / MVD Visual Hard to believe Ritual De Lo Habitual is a quarter of a century old, but a quarter of a century old it is, and has taken its rightful place in the pantheon of classic albums. A high point for alternative rock music in the 1990s, which began so optimistically with Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against The Machine and Nirvana and […]
Bristol 23 November 2017 Drastically redefining notions of jazz, Bristol-based Calcine Quartet were a textural pleasure. Dominic Lash‘s double bass shovelling, Matthew Grigg‘s crumbled fret skutters sending the speakers into spasms. A gravelly diesel chug, breaking ranks in a ping of overspilling metal melded to the rusty hinged squeal from Rebecca Sneddon‘s sax.
Riot Season The fifth album (as the title indicates) from Perhaps credits no fewer than eleven members of the group, comes wrapped up in a mind-altering sleeve — all jagged reds and blues with a eyeball-in-hand motif that shrieks LSD ahoy — and consists of two parts of vinyl to its one track, the intriguingly titled “Mood-Stabilizer”.
Sumerian Palaye Royale have been climbing their way into our ears for a few years now, building a fiercely loyal fan base and quite a name for themselves, working with greats like Andy Black and Kellin Quinn of Sleeping With Sirens, all this without releasing an album.
Relapse During the 1980s, synthesizer soundtracks for horror and science fiction films were ubiquitous; most low-budget, straight to video movies had them. But during the nineties they began to fall out of favour. Fast forward a few years and a new breed of artists began to fall in love with the sound of old analogue synths and decided to try and make music that conjured up the same […]
Avalanche (LP, CD, digital) / Hospital Productions (cassette) From the opening blasts and drum machine hurl of Post Self, it’s clear that Godflesh are in a very different musical space to 2014’s A World Lit Only by Fire. It’s not that the ire and scorn for seemingly pretty much everything humans do to themselves, each other and their home planet has dissipated — far, far from it
Transgredient Stretching from the Maeror Tri cassette years to the present day Troum incarnation, Drone Records founder Baraka[H] and Glit[S]ch have created some of the best drone work on the planet. First experienced their taste for the infinite through the excellent Tjukurrpa trilogy and have been partial to their wares ever since. Here dark ambienteers Raison D’etre have joined forces with the German duo for their follow up to […]