On record there are over a hundred guitar tracks on each track -- live, where I see them at The Troxy, there are just two hooded men, standing in front of a veritable Stonehenge of amps, all labouring and straining under the force of the sound. Which is where the true music comes from.
Dave Pettit
76 posts
...it’s time to commence one of the best weekends in London for lovers of all that’s loud and heavy, as Desertfest celebrates fifteen years of taking over Camden venues and turning them into temples to The Riff
...an agricultural dystopia with drones derived from snoring livestock and battered tractors to create an otherworldly sonic texture suggesting sleeping horrors to be awakened.
...scenes of desolate forest, urban strip malls, industrial zones, police brutality, stock market tickers and images of technical blueprints
Songs mutate and evolve, improvised elements sticking and becoming part of the canon. In fact, Swans evolve to such a degree that I reckon given a long enough tour, one of their songs is infinitely more likely to develop sentience than any fucking LLM.
When I first moved to London in 1990 at the tender age of eighteen, I was in part drawn by the lure of a city offering plenty of live music. So of course the first thing I did was go to see Fields Of The Nephilim at The Town and Country Club. And now, thirty-five years later, here they are in the same building (though now it’s called The Forum), celebrating their own fortieth anniversary.
... the reason it works, always has worked, and just keeps working is that Guitar Wolf, like Motörhead, don’t fuck with the formula. And, like Motörhead, they take rock’n’roll, strip it back to its basics, and do it faster, louder and, most importantly, COOLER than anyone else.
...it’s also Desertfest weekend, so I’m off to sunny Camden Town to see the world’s finest collection of Orange amps and hear some of the finest crushingly loud music available.
Instrumentation is almost entirely based on traditional folk instrumentation of the early mediæval period, some of which has been recreated based solely on visual and textual descriptions. Think of it as a kind of proto-folk combined with experimental archaeology. The vocals are almost entirely sung in Old Norse, but thankfully a translation of the lyrics is included. Birna is their sixth full album release.
I’ll admit that before this album crossed my desk I hadn’t heard of Bridget Hayden before, but I’m always willing to take a listen to anything new on the folk scene, particularly as that scene is currently experiencing something of a purple patch. Having said that, anyone who has heard of Bridget before will know that she is usually more associated with lo-fi noisy drones, reverb-heavy blues and feverish waves of doom-laden sound, so this album of traditional folk appears to be going off on something of a tangent.
London 24 October 2024 It was rather a dull day to traipse halfway across London for a gig, but I had high hopes that Goat were going to bring some life and spectacle to the evening. First though, a few words on the venue, the East End’s Troxy in Limehouse. This is the second time I’d been here after last year’s Swans gig and it’s clear that this […]
After what seems like an interminable winter, summer finally seems to have arrived in glorious sunshine, heralded somewhat weirdly by the Northern Lights appearing across London the previous night. If that isn’t a sign of the north marching south, I don’t know what is, so what could be better than New Model Army live at the Roundhouse?
Founder member Changchang, with new drummer / vocalist and bassist Aoi Hama and Tetsuji Toyoda respectively, once again sought the experienced hands of Acid Mothers Temple’s Kawabata Makoto in the production chair, as they did with 2019’s excellent Turn on, Tune In, Freak Out. He also adds a bit of his signature acid-fried guitar to the album.
London 8 November 2023 Last time I saw Laibach, it was here in this very theatre, and after a set comprising both the entirety of The Sound Of Music (as previously performed in North Korea) and a slew of “greatest hits”, they’d confounded everyone by having Milan Fras come on in a big white cowboy hat (worn ON TOP of the iconic hat with earflaps that makes him […]
After Boris invited them to join them on stage for a rendition of "Akuma No Uta", a certain chemistry emerged that led to ideas for an album collaboration. Following twelve months of preparation, they went into the studio and this is the result, nine tracks of Boris’s trademark proto- and doom metal merged with Uniform’s own brand of aggressive noise.
And of course we've got Andrew Eldritch, and while his voice may not be what it was, the stage presence is still there in fucking spades. I mean, back in their heyday he hugged the mic stand and didn't really do a great deal. These days he's a much more active presence, stalking and prowling the stage like a meth-head feline.
And then it's time for Oxbow, and as soon as they kick in I'm kicking myself for missing out on them for so long. Eugene may not actually fight anyone, but he's definitely taken some lessons from The Gospel According to Iggy (and we all know the text) -- he knows in his bones that a good frontman needs to be a bit scary, a lot charismatic and be able to carry a tune. And also -- and this is key -- to get his kit off whenever possible.
Boris have been ploughing a wide and varied furrow through the field of guitar-based music for more than quarter of a century. Dave Pettit has taken on the task of listening to all of their studio albums - here is part one of a series of reports as to what he found within them.