Bureau B I was overjoyed to hear that Peter Baumann was stepping back behind the keyboards to record a new album after so many years. Most people know Baumann for being part of the classic line-up that produced huge galactic-sounding Tangerine Dream albums such as Phaedra and Rubycon during the mid Seventies. And its seems that the death of Tangs founder member Edgar Froese in January 2015 was […]
album review
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Black Mass Rising Canadian composer Mort Garson stands among the likes of Jean-Jacques Perrey and Wendy Carlos as one of the more interesting innovators who explored the weirder extremes of popular music with the aid of the Moog synthesizer from the late 1960s on into the next decade and more.
Play Loud! Oozing an off-kilter chemistry, Guru Guru were full of escape plans and wormholing excess filled with a real “let’s see what these toys can do” verve. The first three tracks of their début album UFO (re-released at last on both black and turquoise vinyl by Play Loud!) hold court to a certain rock joie de vivre, a freeform adventure that surges at you both explosive and mesmerizing, […]
TRI This is the first 46,000 Fibres release in eleven years and it’s been well worth the wait. I first experienced The Fibres back in 1995, snapping up their début offering Emanates at a local record shop that has long since disappeared back into the anodyne dullness of town. A strange brew that exacted a curious pull – a joy of glinting directions and vascular honeycombs. Now, years later, […]
Sulatron (CD) / Pancromatic (vinyl) In the TV series Cosmos, Carl Sagan travelled the universe and beyond in his spaceship of the mind to transport the humble viewer at home to worlds beyond our imagination, taking us into the deep realms of space. While he sat there at the controls of his craft, Sagan would offer thoughts on humanity and how small we really are among the vast […]
Bureau B Some lovely head-spheres to had here; Bureau B have a penchant for headphoned fayre and this gem of new production that gathers together three renowned Berlin guitarists certainly hits the mark. A tirade of Neubauten‘s Jochen Arbeit, Ziguri‘s Günter Schickert and Schneider TM‘s Dirk Dresselhaus that literally dissolves into one cohesive whole, their usual weapons of choice circuit bent into a necropolis of simmering silica in […]
Spinefarm/Machine Elf Purson’s second album seems to have been a long time coming for their growing army of fans. With the stop gap EP In The Meantime giving us a glimpse into the direction the band would head towards next, it can now be seen as only a prelude to this multi-coloured psychedelic concept piece that will probably have people deciphering its meaning for the next twenty years.
Rocket On the back of last year’s Infinity Machines double comes this dinky three tracker, the traumatic jazz of yore siphoned into some gloriously sculpted discord – 36 minutes that are seriously pissed off. A notion that gathers momentum on the slinky low-slung beginnings of the opener – a Jah Wobble dub, all languid and wanting. “There’s too many faces in the mirror!”, exclaims Paddy. “I can’t decide […]
Thrill Jockey Using unconventional tunings for both guitar and banjo, Glenn Jones‘ latest exploration of the texture and tone he can wring from five, six strings and more cements his deserved reputation as one of the singular exponent of both instruments.
Qilin Recorded in the Gothic church of Saint-Étienne in Cully, Switzerland by the duo of Tobias Preisig and Stefan Rusconi on violin and organ respectively, Levitation sets out to do just what its title suggests, albeit subtly and in a reflexive mood. Thanks to the close miking, the sounds the pair extract from their instruments are examined and extracted in peculiar detail, and their respective tones and timbres […]
Ici D’Ailleurs It’s great to hear Semtex again and what a fizzing refresher of fortitude “Sleep” still is – a bastardised drum foray tied to a ugly slurry of overdriven noise. Yeahhhh, as first tracks go, this is a tight shiny driven thing, a dervishing centrifuge storming the brain in raw energy.
(Self-released) Aphelion unfolds with the chirruping scratchiness of a host of slothful machines awakening and dozing, dreaming fitfully or snoozing comfortably in the electro-acoustic bath that Ipek Gorgun has prepared for them. Listened to in a state of semi-willing wakefulness in the imminent expectation of the arrival of hypnotised, tired-out dozing that movement through a landscape can engender, Aphelion matches those moods and the state of hovering just between […]
Essence Originally composed for two festivals in Berlin and taking its title from the SI unit of measurement of ionising radiation dosage in human tissue, Sv (or Sievert in full) is both immediately recognisable as Nadja and quite the departure for Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff. While the duo’s love of all things droney and epically skyscraping is present and correct, so too is an incipient percussive trickle […]
On-U Sound Nisennenmondai have turned their exploration of the extremes of guitar, bass and drum repetition into something of an artform, as well as seeming to find new and ever-inventive ways to continuously revisit and repurpose the same basic sound and tracks which first appeared on their now-classic N LP in 2013. With the superb live in the Clouds Hill studio version of N (and more) bringing the […]
earMUSIC OMG BEST ALBUM EVER. Yeah, probably should write more than that. Precarious, is how you might describe it. Prior to this release, there was a couple of songs floating around, notably “Road of Resistance”, which features Dragon Force, or DragonForce (I’ve no intention of dignifying them with finding out how their name’s spelt). They’re alright, if you’re in a shred kind of a mood
Robustfellow Prods. Psychedelic trio Был замечен (transliterated and truncated to B-Z for short) bring the heavy noise from Kharkiv, dealt out with a steadfast determination to fry the listener’s brains while shaking the rafters that’s entirely admirable. Their second album стало ещё только хуже (It Just Got Worse) sets out on a mission to befuddle, bamboozle and all-out confuse over five tracks on two sides of compact cassette […]
Sumerian The Black comes across as the perfect comeback album for Asking Alexandria, one of the plethora of incredible bands that have emerged from what My Chemical Romance dubbed Generation Nothing. Beginning with a confusing mass of seemingly incomprehensible voices timed with a warbling guitar, “Let It Sleep” gets your heart racing as it builds into an irresistible chant before running off and taking you on a breakneck […]
Instrumentarium Creative Listening is the second album from the South London-based trio, released on lovely vinyl. According to the credits on the back it say it was written and recorded “in strict adherence to the manifesto”, which sounds like something you would see on the back of a Throbbing Gristle or Psychic TV album many years ago. Instead, the manifesto seems to be about the use of electronics […]