London 14 November 2014 The Cesarians and The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing together at last! Finally London’s finest purveyors of punked-up big band music are sharing a stage with its premier gang of Victorian anarchists, and it’s a wonder it’s never happened before. Also a wonder that it’s happening at all, Men frontman Andy Heintz having only recently been given the all-clear for throat […]
Adaadat The Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone show has been running on NTS for around three years now; a platform for the musical outer limits run by artist and musician Graham Dunning. The show is fortnightly and is basically the breakfast show for every other Friday (noise in your cornflakes?). Dunning is a sound artist who is gaining a lot of recognition of late. His exploration of […]
Consouling Sounds Using only bass, guitar and slew of effects, Dorian Williamson and Jim Field‘s second release as Northumbria starts as it intends to finish, declaring at the outset that it is time to soar and glide. It seems to be just about fuzz o’clock as far as the guitar is concerned, and while the bass is set to Northumbrian winter time, its low-end rumbles are equally content […]
London 31 October 2014 It’s Halloween and the streets are bustling with people dressed as various horror icons and kids trick or treating on their neighbours. Revelling in the air of spookiness, I’m heading out to the concrete Logan’s Run-looking Barbican Centre to witness a horror icon, the wonderful Fabio Frizzi. The venue is packed with horror film aficionados from what sounds like all over Europe. Most wear […]
Brighton 11 November 2014 In one swift motion I will disperse any notions of latent ’90s cool – I’d never knowingly listened to Trans Am before. I didn’t even know if it’s Tram Am or Trans AM, an automobile or a radio station. Entering the venue I was immediately struck by the very particular nature of the audience – not a one under 30, few over 40 — […]
Elektrowerkz, London 8 November 2014 One can learn a lot about two bands from their inter-set changeover. Here in the black box of Elektrowerkz, surrounded by dressed-down men with beards and a few women too, we are watching AK DK remove a lot of equipment. There are two drum kits in there, a couple of synths with reassuringly wooden sides on tables covered in lots of other associated […]
Öm It may seem ambitious to propose a histoy of techno in only four parts on one 12” single, but if there’s anyone who can do so, it’ll be the two drummers, bassist and one-man soul sonic force of K-X-P — Timo Kaukolampi (of Op:l Bastards), Tomi Lepannen (also of Circle and Pharaoh Overlord, among many others), Tuomo Puranen, also of of Op:l Bastards, and Anssi Nykänen. K-X-P are […]
Bureau B After the joys of Something Dirty comes this new nugget of curiosity from the Péron/Zappi side of the Faust spilt. Entitled j US t (clever typographic minimalism for Just Us), it’s a twelve-track sketchbook of improvised flavours and some full-bodied wallop that Faust say should be taken, absorbed and remixed into your own musical endeavours. There’s certainly plenty of fertile nooks and crannies to get your […]
Spinefarm Do I believe in witchcraft? What kind of witchcraft? The legendary witch that rides on the imaginary broom? The hex that tortures the thoughts of the victim? The pin stuck in the image that wastes away the mind and the body? The massive maw of pure sludge doom is back. Electric Wizard return with a line-up that won’t go beyond the release of this album to produce […]
Concretism This is an exception to my general rule that music sounds better when it’s slightly wrong. This sounds exactly as it is intended to be. It feels commissioned, considered, skilful. This isn’t normally regarded as a virtue in my world; I’m suspicious of technical brilliance and musicianship seems like a terrible blind alley, redolent of the kind of people who bring those small guitars to parties, ruining […]
London 8 November 2014 It’s almost as if they planned it. It’s pissing it down. Absolutely fucking pissing it down. Exactly the sort of weather that makes you want drone doom. Which is just as well, because doom legend Stephen O’Malley‘s playing tonight, and he’s supporting doom jazz maestros Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. The line of bedraggled amplifier worshippers stretches back from the church almost to […]
Potomak As a commemoration of the first world war, Einstürzende Neubauten could have so easily brewed up a mangled litany of compressed air screams, torn metal and had done with it. The opening track certainly has a good go. Aptly entitled “Kriegsmachinerie,” it’s a track that flash-floods the band’s pyroactive past in the screech of metal against metal. A twisted twilight caught in the whites of Luigi Russolo‘s eyes, […]
Northern Spy Having returned to a simpler production sound for their fourth album, o’death opted to record Out Of Hands We Go’s twelve songs live in the studio with Caleb Mulkerin at the controls. With Greg Jamie’s vocals burning brightly at the band’s heart, o’death bring rock and country instrumentation into close collaboration, mixing in many particular devices of their own devising or finding which they have acquired […]
The Collapse Of Everything Kontakte‘s latest album proves itself to be well worth the two years of concerted effort the duo have put into pushing the envelope of their music. It feels somehow broader, more expansive, even for a band who already knew full well how to bring out the brightly psychedelic edges and sharpen their perceptions on the manoeuvrings of their guitar, bass and electronics. The sense […]
Cosmo Rhythmatic With “2024” blasting straight down to business like Pan Sonic at their grittiest and crunchiest, Centaure finds Franck Vigroux a very long way away from his guitar extrapolations and explorations (such as the recently-released Ciment). Instead, he’s got electronic beats to flay and some serious noise to bring on three tracks and a remix which will effectively sandpaper any soundsystem they grace and most likely render […]
Gagarin Recorded live in New York in November 2009, 1:17 is one of those glorious conceptual pieces in which the premise – in this case, the use and re-use of a 0.7 millisecond snippet of sound originating from a Diskono collective concert in 2000, itself transformed gradually over the years into a one minute seventeen second blast of noise – is almost entirely irrelevant to the appreciation of […]
Stone Tapes The Dark Is Rising When it comes to art that is inspired by the horror genre, it can fall into two camps: 1. Art that references horror tropes and classic works of that genre, or. 2. Art that seeks to recreate the sensation of watching, reading, or listening to those works. With Carmilla (Marcilla)/Spectral Visions, from purveyors of classic British doom, Moss, the band goes more […]
Labile Drenched in reverb and hissing in on waves of shimmering, steam-like vapour trails, Desire uncurls itself in sinuous ripples and grain-shifting rhythms. While the music fits generally into the shapes and forms of ambient(ish) electronica, Derrick Stembridge‘s supple approach is at once of its kind and thoroughly modern in its detail. The little flurries of effects which modulate and mould every sound are controlled with a precision which […]