Phantom Code Sulphur – Tarot – Garden I was lucky to catch the premier of this back in August 2012. The band captured the eerie grace and peculiar atmosphere of Derek Jarman‘s super 8s so completely, I was falling over myself to grab one of these CDr documents they were merch(ing) at the time. A nicely packaged item that have enjoyed listening to ever since. Now in the […]
Earbook Alan Courtis (of Reynols fame) and Aaron Moore (of Volcano the Bear) are at it again… colluding; colliding… hot on the heels of Brokebox Juke and a live document comes this new collaboration, a two track, 42 minute journey of differing tastes/textures and expanding ripples between the album’s epicentres of Buenos Aires and Brooklyn. “King Pancreas” starts in mournful blowholes riding cymbal sheens, leaking dischords thrown unexpectedly […]
Paris 8 March 2014 Le Trabendo lurks next to a not-quite completed concrete behemoth which squats at the side of the Périphérique ring road around Paris, part of the ever-expanding Parc de la Villette with its promenades and exhibition centres, its music and (almost) out-of-town cultural activities for a city always in search of entertainment. It’s reached down a winding path through the woods and into a multi-level […]
Zoharum Hybryds are one of those Eighties/Nineties tape culture outfits (in this case from Belgium) whose early material is getting a welcome series of re-releases nearly three decades later. Zoharum have pulled out all the stops for this double CD package of their debut 1992 CD Music For Rituals which is complemented by a bonus disc, Rarities and Unreleased. Recorded to four-track cassette and cleaned up for the […]
Constellation It’s hard for record labels. I got the MP3 promos of this ages ago and listened a few times and… nothing. I’d slightly lost touch with Thee Silver Mt. Zion Variations over the last couple of albums – this is seven – but I was broadly a fan, had loved finally seeing them at the Dirty Three ATP in Butlins; had many of their albums, had appreciated […]
Zoharum On the evidence presented by Tether, Echoes of Yul would seem to like to serve their acid-fried variety of rock deeply strange, with a side order of frazzled. When the opening chords of “Rosids” have subsided into a string-dripping delayscape, and samples mutter about “Triggered echoes of flashbacks” it’s evident that there’s some serious stoner rock about to kick in, and hard. Which it does, as “Guess” […]
More Than Human Straight society often views conceptual or avant-garde art with a suspicion bordering on hatred. “Art for art’s sake,” a dirty phrase, meant to imply these artists contribute nothing to society, only existing to inflate their own egos and justifying their existence with pretentious-sounding theories that the everyman can not understand. Look at the way various totalitarian regimes have treated music, which seems to suggest that […]
El Paraiso Papir like to glide; Papir like to groove, sliding the strings of their sonorous guitars like they have all year to take the trip far far away from the ground and the cares of the world. Drums unfurl at first with lazy intent, performing that neat instrumental rock trick of making it seem like the rhythm’s loose and flexible while underneath it all, Christoffer Brøchmanns is […]
Bureau B Ok, apologies for the absurd delay in this – these two Asmus Tietchens albums were re-issued in November of 2013 and a whole festive period and all the excessive faff that that entails has gone and left me only writing this far too late in the day. It’s relevant to this review because I tend to prefer giving a record a go in a way that’s […]
Portland, OR 2 March 2014 Rise Of The Mutants I had the strongest sensation of living in the future, as I bussed past the emerald green glass towers of the Oregon Convention Center on my way to the Wonder Ballroom on a drizzly Sunday evening, the trancey binaural beat construction of Thug Entrancer‘s Death After Life lulling me into a theta wave slo burn. The RTD bus seemed […]
Planet Mu Ekoplekz is almost a priori; you could conceive of him from your armchair. Or at least you’d think you could. He’s come up thick and fast (he’s got a release schedule that shames us all) and I doubt whether his methodology has changed much since he first plugged that Eko organ into a analogue delay way back in the pre-flood (pre-Flood? There’s a thought) years. For […]
Bourgoin-Jallieu 1 March 2014 Tonight’s show at les Abattoirs provides a chance for Michael Gira to share a stage with Ulan Bator, a band he worked with on the Ego:Echo album in 2000. The venue is an unusual one, sat on the corner of a roundabout on the outskirts of a small town on the road to Grenoble from Lyon. Taking place on one of the busy weekends […]
Lava Thief This is an extraordinary piece of work, a wordless communion in caustic colours and sterling guitar playing. Its diverting textures are best appreciated through headphones, where they funnel-web your consciousness, cut through your head, jet between the ears in sweet diffusion; adventures you can taste, savour. Both participants are highly accomplished in their own right: Bill Horist seems to have collaborated with a whole host of […]
London 29 January 2014 The London post-rock/math-rock (or as I prefer to say, maths rock) scene is a small but devoted one, so when local purveyors of big chiming epics 52 Commercial Road need to pay for the album they’ve just recorded, Communion, with a benefit gig in Dalston’s tiny Power Lunches, it’s hardly any surprise that they’re playing to a full and appreciative house. The entry fee […]
The Island, Bristol 21 February 2014 Second time round, The Island seemed less foreboding, with its seats, circular bar and rather cosy with a choice of off-kilter ambience leaking through the speakers from Bizaare Rituals. H, AKA Heloise of the excellent ZamZam label, kicked off the proceedings in contacted cymbal loop-caught metal overlaid in temples of spinning pennies, cross-stitched, pollinated in drifting drones, cross-cut with mythological teeth and […]
Mute Approaching this new album by Laibach – their first proper in six or seven years – seems an awesomely intimidating task. I feel like the hominid leader Moonwatcher confronted by the sudden appearance of the Monolith in the opening ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – approaching it nervously, touching it briefly and then scurrying away quickly to a safe distance in […]
Rural Isolation Project One of the great things about writing for Freq sometimes is that you get to hear some artists or albums you may not have stumbled across before. Quttinirpaaq is one of those artists. This LP comes on beautiful limited-edition coloured vinyl and is housed in a remarkable witch house-looking sleeve with an insert that hints of industrial music of old. It’s a feast for the […]