London 14 September 2013 Loving this place, that subterranean cellar-like vibe; cobbles, cast iron pillars, oozes a Dickensian charm that no doubt Messers. Thrower and Knight approve of. On arrival, their musical wares are already set up on three tables, a tidy synth and keyboard sandwich a percussive jumble filling, the screen . There’s a long pre-show wait, having cut through London at a surprisingly swift pace. We […]
Normal Cookie A brushstroke painting of a cherry blossom landscape/ dance floor abandon = = > “i need a christmas tree” Will Long and Rie Mitsutake create a slice-of-life synth folk sound collage on their own label, Normal Cookie. With Oh, Yoko the pair were interested in exploring the openness of creativity in captured moments of a simple home and city life. Towards this goal, Long and Mitsutake […]
Touch If you have ever scanned the technical credits of television programmes as they glide slowly past in the wake of the action, chances are you will have seen the names of either Ken Morse or Chris Watson, or both. Morse is sometimes reckoned to be the most credited cameraman in history, so often have his rostrum camera skills contributed to the jewels that fall from the small […]
G-Wave/Cleopatra (North America) After reviewing the Hinotori single earlier this year I’ve been looking forward to the album release as the tracks on the EP blew me away. So it was with trepidation that I placed the CD into the player and pressed play. I certainly didn’t expect to be instantly transported to another galaxy. The album begins with an extended version of “Hinotori,” and from the opening […]
Sireena Surround Sound Evolution finds Mythos making music the size of planetariums, and this is an album filled with massive synths that take you on a tour of the universe. Following on from 2008’s Surround Sound Offensive, opening track “Surround Sound Passion” builds its layers of synths into a strong melody as electronic glitches add percussion beneath. The track feels like the opening titles of a sci-fi movie and […]
Spectrum Spools Unicorn Hard-On is a solo project of one Valerie Martino. She’s a great rhythm chaser, tugging those dry arithmetical presets in a piranha splattered synapse of pulsing inputs. Now, I’ve got to admit, I’m not the greatest dance music devotee, but Weird Universe is certainly throwing enough solid hooks and neon-splashed chameleons to satisfy my curiosity.
Roseland Theater Portland, Oregon 6 September 2013 The double-billing of noise guitar legends Gate, the solo project of Michael Morley of The Dead C, and the newly rejuvenated Godspeed You! Black Emperor on a Friday night at one of the United States’ largest music festivals was an act of bold and challenging programming that should further Musicfest NW‘s reputation not only as a world class music festival, but […]
Thrones & Dominions tl;dr – the sort of prog album that’ll tickle prog-fanciers silly, and the sort of album that . ANTA, née Snakes on a Plane, which I’m sure they’ll appreciate being reminded of. Second album, but they’re all been around Bristol and Bath for something like a thousand years in something like a million bands, many of which were brilliant but under-recognised (Loxondonta anyone? Thought not) I’m […]
Exotic Pylon/Zoharum These are separated by time and space (never separable, never suited) but are nevertheless kin – in Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color they would be pigs and people, skin-bonded, worm-tailed, consciousness-sharing. I guess they are both broadly branches of that jagged, never truly existing, tree called ‘dark ambient’ (a tree that confounds at every twist, that seemingly can’t die because it has roots in the infinite itself) […]
London 5 September 2013 In the lead up to the first London gig in thirteen years from Manuel Göttsching we have been treated to a certain amount of media nonsense situating him as a godfather of minimal techno.
Bureau B What an arresting cover, that alabaster face seemingly levitating, framed in a burn of auburn hair. I’m convinced that’s a gender messing Thomas Dinger caked in ghostly Clouzot cosmetics. The macabre blue of the lips, and the wing-like Bowie-isms of those scry-worthy eyes throwing everything forward whilst the background simultaneously envelops, giving over an eerie undulating quality to the stillness. Like a Buñuel freeze-frame, eternally tittering […]
Metropolis It’s hard to write about The Legendary Pink Dots. It’s hard on one level because they make music which tends to bypass the analytical centres of the brain and go straight for the bits that experience stuff. It’s hard in the same way that describing your dreams is hard, or trying to build a model of St Paul’s Cathedral from soup. But I’ll give it a shot, […]
Dublin 15 August 2013 There is a story. “It’s all made of stories, you know”. There is a story that back in 1980 David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) read an article in the music press about a band from England who were rewriting all the rules, who had discovered the new sound. Impressed by what he read, and based on the description of the music not the […]
Rural Isolation Project Quttinirpaaq‘s Matt Turner is condcucting a seance to summon the ’70s in a cement dirigible hangar. Coming from a long line of damaged Texan noise-punks like Roky Erickson, The Butthole Surfers and Pain Teens, Quttinirpaaq uses bad acid and bad horror movies as a gateway to a Dhalgren-limbo paradise, where Mario Bava‘s Demons dance the night away next to burning cars while Wolf Eyes and […]
25 August 2013 en-coun-ter (en-koun-ter): To come upon or meet with. (Origin: 1250–1300; Middle English encountren < Anglo-French enco ( u ) ntrer; Old French < Vulgar Latin *incontrāre, equivalent to in- in-1 + –contrāre, derivative of contrā against) Hynekian System of Classification: ‘Close encounter of the third kind’ – sighting of an animated being. ________________ On the August Bank Holiday 2013, the animated beings that comprise the […]
Exotic Pylon 8-bit razor blade. Bedsit basement dwellers. Darkness on the edge of town. Hoofus makes music from the Animal Collective unconscious, slimy grimy retroactive electronic improvisations from the wilds of rural Norfolk. Here’s a snappy soundbyte from the press release: Hoofus performs and records electronic improvisations from the undergrowth of rural Norfolk, using fuzzy analogue aesthetics and FM synthesized unease to create visceral ritual rhythms, smeared with […]
Raster-Noton The mechanics of funk On this newest offering from Raster-Noton head Frank Bretschneider, the man behind Komet, sets aside amorphous drones and textures to explore the basic principles of dance music: rhythm. Super.trigger is essentially a collection of studio improvisations made between 2012-2013, then edited and re-configured into nine tracks of taut, sparse machine rhythms. This is the sound of an artist at work, struggling to get […]
Recollection GRM De Natura Sonorum seems an impossibly private affair. It feels a little like spying on an old guy as his mind is going and he’s trying to make sense of his belongings, looking at them with old-new eyes, touching them and trying to match the creases, smiling faintly because maybe that person in that clipping might be someone he once new, had a muscle memory of, […]