Black Horizons/Self-released Un Festín Sagital‘s Deimos has just four tracks over its twenty-three minutes and appears both as a cassette on Black Horizons as well as digitally, but makes its presence felt forcefully via whatever medium. There’s more than a slight affinity for the murky avant-garde sounds of a previous cassette era, with “La Ofrenda Danzante del Cuerpo Enamorado” emerging and folding into electronic static while scrawls scuttle malevolently […]
Exotic Pylon Antimacassar, the debut LP from Dolly Dolly (the alter-ego of David Yates) explores the three -realisms of the 20th Century – surrealism, irrealism and magickal realism – with a combination of spoken word, sci-fi electronics, sound collage and avant-classicism. The result is punker than punk, heavier than heavy metal and manages to creep-out, illuminate and inspire; and thus subvert normalcy. Antimacassar also features some of the […]
London 8 February 2014 Macgillivary started proceedings with some rather spooky vocals, multiple choirs caught in the looper’s long corridors, trapped trajectories, cloister curving, quickly followed by a souped-up electric zither accompaniment, as her sorrowful voice continued to work its magic through the vastness of the chapel. She pulled out some nice feedback too, and those ‘white horse’ piano tides were superb, reminded me so much of Galás‘ […]
Southern Lord On Terrestrials, drone metal pioneers SunnO))) join with black metal genrefuckers Ulver. Here, SunnO)))’s signature basalt bass sculptures are adorned with electronic flourishes and orchestral elegance to create a sprawling desert landscape. Ra’s priests worship the sun with burnished brass, while poor benighted pilgrims wander through blighted, mosquito-ridden swamps. Terrestrials picks up where 2009’s Monoliths & Dimensions track “Alice” left off, drawing previously unheard connections between […]
Bam Balam Acid Mothers Temple supremo Kawabata Makoto, arch dude of the stratospheric guitar, harbours his more reflective side on most of these discs for French label Bam Balam, transmissions from the mellower drone-loving universe that we occasional glimpse between projects. Kawabata Makoto – We’re one-sided lovers each other First up, We’re one-sided lovers each other captures Makoto at his LaMonte Young best. A two-tracker, with the title […]
Island Space is the place, and this is where The Orb seemed to come from 25 years ago when the first single hit the racks in 1989; it was like a message from the nether regions of deep space. “A Huge Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre of the Ultraworld” mixed Tangerine Dream kosmische with Eno’s ambience but still with a hint of the dancefloor at […]
Woe To The Septic Heart Just in time for a mordant shot at the Easter Number 1, here comes Shackleton again; his last album was a work of necessarily flawed genius, drifting across lines, missing beats and breaks, losing itself in the mystery of moments. It ought to have been everyone’s favourite album of the year but often got a little missed, as if it was just too […]
Zoharum To West And Blue is the 50th (!!!) album by Rapoon, and it trades in dark ambient’s typical deep space cosmic horror for mudflats and marshlands, making for a superb movie of the mind. The album was inspired, in part, by a part of Britain where Robin Storey, here known as Rapoon and also co-founder of influential industrial terrorists :zoviet-france:, grew up.
Bureau B Silber When most people were glam(ming) it up in the mid seventies Mr. Conrad was studio tinkering with possible futures. Messing with the building blocks of rhythm, harmony and melody to bleed a snakey elixir that formed this sixty minute noir-riddled masterwork, suitably blighted in whir kittens and sci-fi weevils.
Premier Sang Osaka Fortune is a fiery four-way fusion. <\\….. Jojo Hiroshige of the legendary Hijokaidan chewing up his guitar’s frets… Lasse Marhaug siphoning the buzzing veins of electric chairs…. Afrirampo‘s Pika dynamo smacking the skins and yelling like Annabella’s bow wow phantom daughter whilst Paal Nilssen-Love throws his percussive toys down the stairs, up the walls, face plants them into the concrete ….//> As you could imagine, […]
Boyznoize On Self Therapy, the debut LP from 20 year old German producer SCNTST, Bryan Müller smashes the fourth wall, managing to span the dark space between representation and the real thing. SCNTST’s productions are a love song: a love song to video games and machines, as well as real life, real romance. On one hand, SCNTST’s music is the most badass menu music you’ve ever heard in […]
Mute Originally released a couple of years back as a single CD, Laibach‘s astonishing soundtrack to the cult crowd-funded Nazis-on-the-moon fantasy Iron Sky returns as a double album (available on vinyl too, in a luxurious gatefold package), extended, remixed and altogether managing the difficult feat of being yet more epic than before. The soundtrack is packed with the sort of low end orchestral rumble which cinema still does […]
More Than Human With a name which immediately evokes time travel (or the expectation thereof) and hence perhaps stepping metaphorically and metaphysically out of the linear and quotidian, Paul Snowdon sends the listener on a trip across distances and the aeons. Lifting off with the fluttery electronica of “Iridium Watcher,” side one soon gives way to more radiophonic sounds of “Voiders Delight.” If the Time Attendant persona were […]
We Can Elude Control Film-maker and and sound artist Rose Kallal and Mark Pilkington (The Asterism, Raagnagrok, Stëllä Märïs Drönë Örchësträ, etc.) collaborated on the soundtrack to Kallal’s Implicate Explicate installation for three 16mm projectors in Glasgow in 2012, and this EP results from the music they produced together. In its original mix, Kallal and Pilkington manipulate the heavy drones and reverbs to shudder the speakers and mush […]
Lado ABC (CD)/Gagarin (LP) Ambitious as can be, mercurial music manipulator Felix Kubin joins Mitch & Mitch to generate ten tracks of modern big band electronic library music. Firmly placing tongue in cheek and putting on their stern faces, the mischievous collaborators offer up glockenspiel-friendly, brass-bound bacchanalia to jive the hepcats off their seats and into a swirl of ra-ra randomisers and stereophonic soundtrack swing, hopping and skipping gleefully […]
Dekorder With a title which perhaps both echoes and references The Faust Tapes, Luke Fowler‘s second edition of electronic murmurings sets out a distinct palette of scrawls synthesis which skitters and frolics with a studied playfulness. Despite the title, this is actually Fowler’s début album, edited down from many hours of recordings – and occasionally added to – by friend and collaborator Richard Youngs (see Lurists‘ Red & Blue, […]
Portland, Oregon 16 January 2014 It was a misty night in Portland. A thick gray pea soup clung to the street lights, obscuring any signs of modernity, anything outside of a three-foot nimbus. This Thursday evening had a particularly timeless feel – . The faithful have always gathered at night, apart from the common sense and rationality of the day-walkers. Whether it be antlered druids gathered at stone […]
Safety Meeting Inspired by Sabbath, Acid Mothers Temple & Space Paranoid seem to do black better than Black Sabbath ever imagined. That stoner bass-line on the opening title track giving out a deep seriously trough-like muscle. A rippling crypt-like foundation for Kawabata Makoto to riff-witch all over, his frets carving out super-bright highways. Veering into the uncharted with breathtaking ease, as if you could see Hendrix grinning in […]