London 2 November 2014 The Black Heart seems to have taken over from The Underworld as London’s main doom venue. It’s a small space, which means it’s quite an intimate venue and if you’re near the back of the room it can be a little difficult to see the bands. However, its smallness is also one of its redeeming features, especially when you are seeing some excellent doom […]
Film 4 His wife mostly hides. I think she knows what he’s going to say, or rather what he’s not going to say. She’s central and peripheral in this tale and that seems about right since so is Nick. He’s in every scene and every scene is about him (or, more properly, for him) but we don’t get anything as ‘startlingly frank’ as you’d imagine. He’s there but […]
Bureau B One of the interesting things which springs first to attention with the opening notes of Adrift is the loping acoustic bass which Tarwater use to underpin their sound. Its liquid tones give a smoothed, if not entirely smooth, basis to the duo’s twelfth album of literate not-exaxtly-jazz, not-entirely-electronica and certainly not-really-post-rock. This absence of conformity to genre is one of Tarwater’s great strengths, and they manage […]
Zoharum Drenched in reverb and flecked with voices from the Eastern aether, Fall of Drums is Robin Storey‘s third or so new Rapoon album in the space of a year, but the first on Zoharum since To West and Blue in 2013 and various re-issues which the label has put out recently. Over four lengthy, stretched-out tracks, the album sets about creating a hallucinogenic landscape of languorous percussion […]
Fire There’s a Dylan Carlson–like Earthiness here, a grungy bristle, the rasping purr of the bass , counter-sunk percussion, all spiralling away on a singe of erosive geometries. “Kali Yuga Blues” is a brilliant thing, something to be savoured, the sensual core of Isobel Sollenberger‘s voice calling from within the thicket, dusted in arterial-sprayed collusion and sliding flute. A sweet promise of the semi-seismic seductions that follow. The […]
Consouling Sounds Recorded live in Berlin in May 2014, with no less than three drummers joining Aidan Baker and Eric Quach (AKA thisquietarmy) as they sweep their guitar drones into places further out than many guitarists are prepared to go, Hypnodrone Ensemble comes across as a band name as much as it is a performance or an album title. With Felipe Salazar (also in Caudal with Baker, and […]
Kranky A sense of place, of space predominates on Ruins, Liz Harris‘s tenth Grouper album (not including the split releases). A music stripped of ostentatious zeal, a bare-boned honesty delving deeper, sure of its uncertainties. A haunting of Sylvia Plath or Woolf maybe, trapped in the gauze of delivery, the patina(ed) reverb of an old upright piano. It’s beautiful soul-searching stuff that works best with no distractions, headphones […]
London 28 October 2014 Wow; it’s packed in here tonight, a testament to all the hard work Purson have done over the last couple years. I’ve been singing the bands praises here on Freq since the first time I reviewed them as support to Comus at this very venue. First up were Ulysses, a foot-stomping four piece with their roots firmly set in the 1970s. Their sound reminded […]
London London Loving the swagger of the guitars here, the knuckled licks swimming the percussive candour, that tasty swoon clinging to every note. That unmistakable Ft. Lake glow about its gills, the momentum itchy-feet switching, a Hendrix fixation swapped for a pantheon of ’70s muscle with dips into the Nice Day EP‘s “Crushed Upon The Corner” jives. If this was an anonymous white label, a question would be […]
Front & Follow Folk (and folk-influenced) art seems to inherently conjure ideas of both memories and a specific place, like the way that American hillbilly music calls up an image of the smoky green mountains of Tennessee, or the Delta blues recalls swamps, alligators, crossroads and dark deeds. Traditional music, whatever its origins, seems attached to earthy, tactile associations as well as personal memories, if one has attachments […]
A Year in the Country In which the affable retronauts of Howlround limber up their trusty reel-to-reel tape recorders and feed in the sound of the built environment in order to make a fearsome and at times gently life-affirming visit to pastures so old and venerable that they are of course back in style. And what a stye it is – lush reverb and rippling scurries of what […]
Neurot Yob are a band I’ve been kind of meaning to check out for years, after reading about them in a metal mag years ago, so when this dropped into my lap it was — well, not quite a dream come true, but at least the fulfilment of a vague longing. It was also a relief to find that they don’t sound anything like Keith Allen (that’s a […]
West Norwood Cassette Library Following his recent albums Four Track Mind and Unfidelity, Ekoplekz has now released a six-track EP on the wonderfully-monikered West Norwood Cassette Library label. Rock La Bibliotek is in a different format and has a totally different vibe. On it he offers up a more minimalist sound, and while the richer radiophonic aspects of the albums has been put to one side, with some […]
Gagarin Commissioned by the Deutscher Musikrat (German Music Council) for their edition elektronik series, Felix Kubin attunes his lateral ears to a subject dear to his heart — and with a title that translates to English as Chromium Dioxide Memory, it’s no surprise that its subject, sound source and (in part) medium is the compact cassette. By contrast with the (allegedly) precise fidelity of digital recordings and the […]
Beta-lactam Ring Records I love this, the way it spins your head in shape-shifting shadows tipsy with gypsy and Spanish flavours, a tangle of acoustic guitar couriers, whittled violins and word-wrought momentum conjuring, curling. divining. A Too Much Divided Heart starts with “Extraordinary Witch,” a Del Toro mystery remodelled in weaves of classical guitars, dust kicked in flamenco rifts, its passionate heart pointed in heel-stuck piano reverbs. A […]
Machine Elf It’s 1967, The Beatles are No 2 in the charts with “Strawberry Fields,” Pink Floyd are playing The UFO Club, The Incredible String Band are discovering layers of the onion and Hapsash are designing posters to blow your mind. Fast forward 20 years and you have the Alice in Wonderland Club, The Dukes of Stratosphere, The Magic Mushroom Band and Freakbeat magazine. Now in 2014, yet […]
4AD It’s been a good year for well-placed teasers and stealth advertising. Last week Mark Frost and David Lynch announced the return of Twin Peaks with simultaneous “That gum you like is going to come back in style” tweets, and everyone of course clocked it instantly. But the king of them all in 2014 was when Southern Lord just put out an image of the word “SCOTT O)))”. […]
Zeitkratzer (CD)/Karl (LP) Right then. First thing to say is that this is an awesome achievement. And one that I’ve been waiting to have a proper listen to for a while. Metal Machine Music (MMM) doesn’t, perhaps, stand up as the finest noise/tape collage records, but it does have a high degree of cultural relevance — at least in terms of being a quite unthinkable gesture from a […]