Archive for June, 2016

Heads. / Mums / Irk / Pijn – Gullivers, Manchester 28th June 2016

Posted: 30 June 2016 in Live
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Christopher Nosnibor

With an evening to fill in Manchester, the offer of four bands, including one I already know to be good, at a venue five minutes from my hotel was always going to be a winner. Unsurprisingly, it proved to be the right decision: Gullivers is in fact a decent pub, with five hand-pumps offering a selection of local brewery, JW Lees’ brews, and an upstairs room which is a perfect small gig venue: rectangular, dark, with a high stage and a well-proportioned PA installed.

First band up, Pijn (seemingly pronounced ‘pine’ although variant pronunciations emerge through the evening, mostly sounding like ‘pigeon’, and the band don’t seem too fussed) are a local three-piece. And they’re good. Very good: Immense rolling drumming holds the sound down. There are some hoarse-throated vocals, but their material is largely instrumental and defined by a textured guitar sound. Samples drift and drummer switches to synths, and later does vocals to. With monumental crescendos but also chugging riffs galore, there are hints of Maybeshewill but heavier, calling to mind Pelican and Neurosis. It’s a strong performance from a band with a dynamic sound and an accomplished set, and who stand out in a populous field.

Pijn

Pijn

Leeds trio Irk (a configuration of drums / bass / vocals) have chunked up and tightened up a fair bit since I last saw them. They still sound like Blacklisters (and that’s by no means a ba thing), but lay down some hefty grooves with assurance. They land a brace of new ones early on, the second of which, ‘Insect Worship’, is built around an elastic funk groove over which echoed vocals wash before it busts into a jagged, jolting, hollering finale. People start moving and getting into it properly around halfway through the set, and it’s gratifying to see them so well-received away from their local scene. I always maintain that the test of any band’s quality is their ability to convince an impartial audience Too many bands seem content to build themselves up to being big on their local scenes and play to their mates who’ll always turn up and tell them their great, but band with ambition have to take the risk of stepping outside the scene. Some nights, they’ll tank, however good they are. But with their frenetic hybrid of Shellac, Nirvana and The Jesus Lizard, filtered through the warped prism of Blacklisters, they manage to more than convince this respectable Manchester crowd, and deservedly so.

Irk

Irk

Widnes trio Mums offer a different permutation of the three-piece: they have two guitars but no bass and sound a fair bit like Melvins. Having seen Melvins only a couple of weeks back, it’s not entirely surprising that they’re not quite as magic as their mighty forebears but then, few acts can truly touch Buzzo and co. Still, Mums are young and infuse their megalithic riffery with a finely-tuned pop edge. The slowed-down sludge of ‘Can of Worms’ which crashed in about a third of the way into the set is stonking. Guitarist Roanne Wood is slight in build and looks girlie in paisley a minidress: her Marshall JCM 800 amp and 4×12” stack is bigger than her and the riffs grinding forth from it are similarly huge.

Mums 1Mums 2

Mums

With stereotypical German efficiency, Heads. pull back a 20-minute overrun on stage times to start only five minutes later than scheduled. With enhanced lighting and an immense, dense but crisp sound, their textured and very heavy riff-centric material is given optimal conveyance. It’s the bass that leads. Low down, twisting, grinding, it’s melded to thunderous percussion. Guitarist Ed Fraser sweats like rain after just three songs: this is a band that really gives everything to their performance I can’t be sure if Fraser’s guitar’s signal is split through two amps: if it is, it may explain the depth and richness of the sound. It may simply be that these guys are sonic wizards, the magical triangle of the pow trio amplifying the input of each player threefold to produce a sonic summit.

Heads

Heads.

On the one hand, it feels criminal that bands this good should be playing in venues upstairs from pubs with a capacity of maybe 100. On the other, this is where the real buzz lies: seeing bands of this calibre for six quid, up-close-and-personal, while supping a decent pint that cost £3.50, from a proper glass, while people up the road are watching Lionel Ritchie from a vantage that suggests they’d have fared better watching it on telly while having forked out a fortune for the ‘pleasure’ feels like a real win.

Asschapel – Total Destruction: 1999-2006

Posted: 26 June 2016 in Albums
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Southern Lord – 15th July 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

With a name like Asschapel, they were never going to trouble the mainstream, although stranger things have of course happened. And producing the ferocious din that they did, regardless of their name, Asschapel were still never going to bother the mainstream. But during their lifespan, Asschapel made an impact, and are equally noteworthy for the fact that following their demise, various members moved on to the likes of Pelican, The Swan King, Tijuana Goat Ride, Hans Condor, amongst others, enhancing the band’s legacy retrospectively.

This legacy was given a boost last year with the reissue of their cassette-only Chapel of Ass demo cassette, and now Southern Lord (who else?) are putting out a mammoth compendium containing their entire catalogue. So here it is: a release (double vinyl and digital) containing a mighty 31 tracks of full-throttle, screaming, raging nihilism, on which the bulk of the song clocks in at under two minutes.

Hailing from Nashville, the output of the five guys who were Asschapel couldn’t have been less country in their leanings: as Total Destruction documents, they were prime purveyors of high-octane, uptempo thrash riffery, underpinned by brutal bass and ballistic drums. Their bio reads like a legend, recounting how ‘over the course of seven years [they] played all over the Western world, leaving in their wake crippled vans with wheels flying off, shattered heels, broken noses, torn out nipple rings, maxed out credit cards, on-stage arguments, collapsed house show ceilings, everyone’s clothes falling off at the show, and more, while impressively avoiding search and arrest from the authorities.’ Small wonder they imploded after seven years.

Still, they managed to release an album and three EPs during their career, and into each release distilled a violent, venomous fury paired with a kinetic energy that still sounds fierce over a decade later. The song titles give an indication of what Asschapel are about: ‘Carcass Bloody Carcass’; ‘The Sledgehammer Assault’; ‘Mutilated Black Carcass’; ‘Burn the Eyes’; ‘Let’s Kill’; Dismember the Memory’; ‘Rotting the Body’. Gore-fixated, violent and dark, the music is the perfect reflection of such bloody, brutal obsessions, and this is indeed gnarly. Primitive, uncompromising and brutal as fuck, Total Destruction reminds what thrash can be at its most uncompromising, undiluted and antagonistic best.

 

Asschapel-Total-Destruction-artwork

Cristian Vogel – Classics Remastered: 1993-1998

Posted: 25 June 2016 in Albums
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Sub Rosa – SR388

Christopher Nosnibor

As significant as the fact Cristian Vogel has worked with the likes of Radiohead, Maxïmo Park, Chicks on Speed, Thom Yorke, Jamie Lidell, Neil Landstrumm and Dave Tarrida is the fact that the CD and vinyl versions of this release have completely different track-listings, with only two tracks featured on both. That’ probably quite an expensive pain in the arse for hardcore fans, especially as the versions here are remastered, and the CD release features a previously unreleased version of ‘Around’.

So, as the title suggests, this compilation picks the best cuts from Vogel’s 90s output, and presents them, remastered in 2015 by the artist himself (indeed, he’s been systematically remastering the majority of his early work, offering tweaked versions of his extensive back catalogue through BandCamp).

In terms of sequencing, the CD (the focus of this review) makes more sense than the vinyl. With the exception of the very last track, the material is sequenced chronologically, with Disc One spanning 1993 to 1995, with tracks culled from Beginning to Understand and Absolute Time, and Disc Two spanning 1996 to 1998, from All Music Has Come to And End and culminating in Busca Invisibles. It may be an obvious point, but it’s significant, in that it does mark a clear linear evolution of Vogel’s music.

Repetition lies at the heart of the compositions, with looping motifs running end-on-end with shifting layers of instrumentation on top, and with explorations of tonal shifts providing the focus and points of interest over progression or changes of key or tempo. ‘Machine’ combines techno robotix and Krautrock with drifting ambient currents, while ‘Beginning to Understand’ contrasts echo-heavy metallic, treble tones with thumping bass frequencies. Minimalist beats and stark bass grooves define many of the tracks, particularly on Disc One.

The tracks from Absolute Time showcase denser sound, the dominant beats making for a harder feel, more driving and propulsive. On tracks like ‘In’ and ‘Absolute’, it’s all about the frequencies; the bottom-end tones sit in the frequency range that really batters the eardrum, while the higher frequencies are cosseted in dense aural cushions while stomping 4/4 beats bump and grind hard.

The output from the years ‘96-‘98 are given less extensive coverage, with, for example, only two tracks apiece from Specific Momentific, Bodymapping, and Busca Invisibles featured (in contrast to the six cuts from Absolute Time and five tracks culled from All Music Has Come to an End . Nevertheless, it more than gives a flavour of Vogel’s output, and Disc Two begins with ‘Absence of Fear’ which marks a rather different approach from the earlier works. With a much looser, less claustrophobic sound, it’s built around contrast and juxtaposition, and with complex rhythm patterns criss-crossing one another to quite disorientating effect. In many respects the twelve tracks on this second disc are the more interesting, in that they show Vogel’s experimentalism pushing to the fore. While firmly positioned within the parameters of techno, these recordings document a desire to expand the territory of the genre, and it’s not difficult to hear in these nuanced pieces why Cristian Vogel is so respected, both within is field and far beyond.

Vogel

 

Cristian Vogel on Bandcamp

Cristian Vogel – Classics at Sub Rosa (with audio)

Watch: ‘Sunny Day’ by Loco Ono

Posted: 24 June 2016 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Anyone who says that there’s no exciting new music any more is talking bollocks and simpy isn’t looking in the right places. And that’s precisely why Aural Aggravtion exists.

Bringing together contemporary dream pop vocals, fuzzy 90s-influenced guitars, and an infectious live energy, Loco Ono is an electric ukulele and guitar-driven powerhouse, based in London. Fronted by Texas-born Grace Zacarias and South African-born Pieter Stone, the two-piece combines addictive pop melodies with heavy garage rock intensity. Drawing influence from artists like Best Coast, Wolf Alice, and Pixies, Loco Ono delivers a unique sound laced with modern apathy and teenage rebellion.

This exactly what we like here at camp AA. Loco Ono look great and sound geat, and ‘Sunny Day’ is a killer tune. Check the video here:

 

Listen: ‘Samadhi (So Far Away)’ by Racing Glaciers

Posted: 23 June 2016 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Racing Glaciers return with a stellar new single ‘Samadhi (So Far Away)’, out this June, and ahead of their debut album release through Killing Moon this August.

With well over 2million Soundcloud plays on just their first four tracks, their track ‘First Light’ featured on the Transformers 4: Age of Extinction movie and won the band support from BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6Music DJ’s including Annie Mac, Huw Stephens, Greg James, Fearne Cotton and Steve Lamacq.

The band have also performed at the BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend, Liverpool Sound City, The Great Escape Festival, Secret Garden Party, London Calling in Amsterdam, Berlin Music Week, Y Not Festival, Wakestock and Beacons, as well as a 35-date UK tour late last year.

Racing Glaciers will release this new single ‘Samadhi (So Far Away)’ this June, the first exciting glimmer of what is to come from their debut album release ‘Caught In The Strange’ this August, and a track that pulls together all that is great about the 5-piece from Macclesfield, as gloriously cinematic, inventive and essential as we need right now.

Racing Glaciers release their debut album ‘Caught In The Strange’ on August 5th 2016 through Killing Moon.

 

Get your lugs round he psychdelic-tinged shoegaze belter that  is ‘Samadhi (So Far Away)’ here:

 

無 (MU) – STEREO

Posted: 21 June 2016 in Albums
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Entertaining Violence

Christopher Nosnibor

I am often drawn to duality of interpretation or meaning, particularly when that interpretation hinges merely on emphasis. As such, I think ‘Entertaining Violence’ is a great name for a publisher / label, and looking over their small but select catalogue to date suggests it’s highly appropriate. Essentially, Entertaining Violence is concerned with art, and the principle functions of art should be both to entertain and to educate, or, perhaps more accurately, to provoke thought. Art and entertainment are by no means mutually exclusive, and nor should it be considered untenable for art to both entertain and provoke. Their latest release achieves this, although it does very much depend on one’s perspective as to just how much entertainment it provides.

To provide some context from the press info: in the summer of 2015, Sergio Calderón – founding member of London-based avant-garde band 無 (MU) – was invited to participate in the exhibition Not a State, But an Artists’ Colony at Intelligentsia Gallery 智先画廊, Beijing. Sergio conceived STEREO as a transcendental and meditative experience compromising a Two Channel-Video and Sound Installation. As such, STEREO is a soundtrack piece, which was recorded as a live improvisational work of guitar sound and texture recorded at Entertaining Violence Gallery, London the 15th August 2015.

It is not a work which builds at any point: there are no crescendos or bursts of sound, but there are infinite textures. STEREO is a work which explores tonality, in the subtlest of ways. The track drifts on, concentrating on the ebb and flow, the wash and drift as notes struck rise and fall, decay and reverberate in the space in which they’re created. It doesn’t ‘go’ anywhere: that is not its purpose or aim.

What this 47-minute piece really conveys is the tonal range of the electric guitar, when played minimally and given room to breathe. Some may call this drone, ambient; and certainly, the notes and chords stuck are left to hang in the air for an eternity. The tones, the sounds are in themselves muddy, hazy, murky; this is no crisp digital replication of a guitar’s sound, but a fading analogue sound, fuzzed and degraded by environment, by space, by recording technology. It reminds that the listener is never truly ‘in the moment’ when listening to a recording, they are not ‘present’ and the recording is just that; a captured version of events; a recording is not the event itself. A recording may accurately convey the sound, or at least he sonic experience, but it can never fully convey the environment in which the recording was made, it can never capture and convey the experience of being present in the moment the audio was captured. It will never incorporate the experience of whatever may be going on around simultaneously, it can never capture the emotion or the mental processes contemporaneous to and triggered by, the moment.

For all of this, however great the listener’s separation from the moment, a work like STEREO, or, indeed, specifically STEREO affords almost infinite space for the listener to lose, and find, themselves.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/165013545?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0

STEREO — 無 (Excerpt) from Sergio Calderon on Vimeo.

 

mu01_stereo1

MU at Entertaining Violence Online

The Kut – Bad Man

Posted: 19 June 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Criminal Records – 1st July 2016

We dig The Kut around here. Personally, I’ve been digging The Kut since the release of their debut single ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anyway’ way, way back in 2009. Since then, they evolved, shedding their post-punk leanings in favour of a more up-front grunge-based rock sound. Last year’s Rock, Scissors, Paper EP was more than convincing and again emphasised the rock, and as we learned from their appearance at Camden Rocks, this very much translates live. So it’s pleasing to see them crash in with a fairly swift follow-up in the shape of a single release from said EP, namely ‘Bad Man,’ described as ‘a gnarly song about revenge’.

It packs a hefty riff based on a classic descending chord sequence, driven by some sturdy drumming. The production emphasises the rawness of the track and gives it the density and intensity it deserves, calling to mind Hole at their best – combining the pop dynamics of Live Through This with the gut-wrenching vitriol of Pretty on the Inside. With a vitriolic raw-throated holler of ‘fuck off!’ this is music with passion rather than engineered for mass-market radio, and that’s precisely why it appeals.

The 30-date tour scheduled for August should be a belter.

 

 

The track has also been synced to this ‘London guy fights for cash’ prank video which is quickly becoming the unofficial video for the track on the net- https://youtu.be/VRGUCSH-P9A – who doesn’t love to see the lines between acting and reality blurred in public?

 

The Kut - Rock

drcarlsonalbion – Falling with a Thousand Stars and Other Wonders From The House of Albion

Posted: 18 June 2016 in Albums
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Self-release – 24th June 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

I’ve pretty much lost count of the number of versions I’ve heard of ‘She Moved Through the Fair’. As is the way with traditional folk songs and blues standards, no-one owns them, they simply exist. And from the interpretation ranging from Van Morrison to All About Eve and including Sinéad O’Connor and Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Arbouretum, none sound like Dylan Carlson’s sprawling eight-minute instrumental rendition. But then, that’ because Carlson’s version sounds like recent Earth albums, which in turn place a unique spin on traditional and ancient folk music.

This is clearly become something of an obsession for Carlson in recent years, and his explanation of the concept behind Falling with a Thousand Stars and Other Wonders From The House of Albion evidences this. Describing the album as his ‘interpretations of Scotch-English folk ballads about human/supernatural interaction, specifically those “spiritual creatures” known as “fayres/fairies/etc.”’, he places it within the realm of misty mysticism and a landscape of verdant forests as old as time itself.

Carlson is clear to separate his appreciation of ‘fairies’ from ‘the tiny winged ones of Victorian nursery stories and decor, but the beings of folklore and the historical records (mostly trial dittays from witch trials).’ Applying the hypnotic drone that had long been his signature to slowly-unfurling guitar motifs characterised by fuzzy-edged analogue tonality, Carlson has a unique way of evoking a combination of mysticism and nature, fantastical worlds intersecting in ancient forests as old as the Major Oak and the Fortingall Yew. Combining mysticism and nature,

While the ten-minute ‘Tamlane’ is not only the album’s centrepiece but a definitive standout, the seven tracks on Falling with a Thousand Stars and Other Wonders From The House of Albion individually and collectively tap into a dormant resonant subconscious. Carlson’s spindly guitar pickings twist like the fronds of creeping ivy around the immense trunks of ancient trees, which manifest as heavy-timbered droning notes which point back to the dark ages. The oucome is a musical experience shrouded in mystery and unknowable and yet somehow strangely affecting.

 

a2_coleman_grey_cover_front 1_edit (2)

Your Favorite Enemies – Between Illness and Migration – Deluxe: Tokyo Sessions

Posted: 17 June 2016 in Albums
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Graphite Records – 17th June 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

They may be Your Favourite Enemies, but I have to confess I hadn’t heard of them until the promo for this plopped into my inbox. There shouldn’t be too much shame in that: they’re hardly a household name, and while I’m pretty good at spreading my musical feelers far and wide, I can’t possibly have heard, or heard of, ever band ever. But then, as Wikipedia helpfully reports, on its Canadian release in 2014, fourth album Between Illness and Migration peaked at #2 in the iTunes chart on the day of its release, between Coldplay and The Black Keys. Ok, so they may not be a household name in the UK, but they’ve evidently got quite a fanbase in their native Canada.

The blurb that accompanies the album is an intriguing as the references: a band collectively drawing influence from take influence from artists such as Sonic Youth, Fugazi, My Bloody Valentine and Mars Volta, and who view themselves as ‘a communion of high level noise, post-punk, psych, shoegaze and prog rock,’, Your Favourite Enemies are described as ‘six chaotic individuals who collectively let go of their own self-depraved illusionary make-believes to surrender to the inner noises of moments they communally turned into songs, thus giving birth to a musical journey defined by an assumed incarnation of epiphanic catastrophes, raging contemplation and transfiguring uplift.’

The album’s subtitle originates from the fact that the band performed the album in full n Tokyo, and subsequently felt compelled to return the studio to rework the material with a view to capturing the intensity of that intimate show.

The album’s first track, ‘Satsuki Yami – My Heartbeat’ is representative of the sound and style: atmospheric, dynamic, spoken word verses are accompanied by meandering, chorus, echo-soaked guitar, building to an evocative, motive chorus. ‘Empire of Sorrows’ not only sustains but builds the tension, transitioning from a strange hybrid of post-rock and neo-prog, but with a choppy edge . Alex Foster’s spoken vocal delivery reminds me of King Missile’s Ed Hall, without the overt quirkiness or smart-arsery.

Elements of contemporary prog inform the segmented compositions, the vast depth of the sound and the expansive running times, with the majority of the album’s track’s running comfortably past the five-minute mark. But equally, they display a keen ear for melody, and a number of the songs slot in comfortably with the contemporary rock sound. ‘1-2-3 One Step Away’ is a cracking pop song, with a surging chorus, instant hook, nagging guitars and energy, all without sacrificing texture or detail.

‘A View From Within’ was an obvious single choice, showcasing a more commercial rock sound, with a distinct chorus, and a slick production. In contrast, ‘Underneath a Blooming Skyline’ crashes in with scorching guitars atop a thunderous bassline and tumultuous drumming: Miss Isabel’s blank, monotone vocals create a sense of dislocation and discomfort.

The guitars on ‘Just Want You to Know’ are pure Bug era Dinosaur Jr, but the vocals are more straight ahead alt-rock, melodic, tinged with angst, and if ‘Anyone’ gets a bit 30 Seconds to Mars in its stadium emoting, it’s got enough guts to give it a credibility, and besides, ‘Obsession is a Gun’ whips up a magnificent maelstrom of bursting tension. As a whole, Between Illness and Migration balances accessibility and melody with a focused viscerality and grand sense of scale.

The bonus tracks which make up the ‘deluxe’ edition are the radio versions to ‘I Just Want You To Know’, ‘Where Did We Lose Each Oher’, ‘1-2-3 Step Away’ and ‘A View From Within’. They don’t make the album, but if you’re a completest you won’t be too disappointed, or if you haven’t purchased it previously, you can’t go too far wrong here. They’re certainly my favourite enemies now, too.

 

 

Your Favourite Enemies - Tokyo

Norman Westberg – The All Most Quiet

Posted: 16 June 2016 in Albums
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Hallow Ground – HG1605 – 1st June 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

While MRI, released by Room40 in February, was a reissue of a 2012 album, The All Most Quiet contains new material in the shape of two long-form tracks. Like its predecessor, The All Most Quiet is radically different from his contributions to Swans. The fact he’s actually found the time to compose and record new material is impressive in itself: the latest Swans album, The Glowing Man was released on 10 June, and the two-hour colossus of a sonic experience was developed and recorded off the back of a full year spent touring its predecessor, To Be Kind. Given the duration and intensity of a Swans live show, it’s remarkable that Norman Westberg’s had time to piss and still has the energy to stand, let along record a new album. But then, perhaps his solo work has therapeutic benefits, and affords him the opportunity to decompress after long days spent in the Swans pressure-cooker.

The All Most Quiet is, as the title suggests, not a loud album. It is also a gentle album. But that doesn’t mean it lacks dynamic tension, and while it is calming, it’s also not completely undemanding.

The title track starts its long, meandering journey as a mid-range drone which pulsates subtly. The tonal changes which emerge are gradual. It’s easy to let it simply drift by, and it’s pleasant enough to appreciate in this way, but attentive listening brings its rewards. The introduction of new layers, textures and tones, shifts in the scale and pace of oscillations change the mood, subtly, inconspicuously, but no less definitely. And while The All Most Quiet bears no obvious resemblance to Swans, it is possible to hear a certain correlation in the way Westberg builds on slow-burning transitions to hypnotic effect. There are hints of ominousness and darkness, but the sense of scale and grandeur seeps through the very fabric of the sound. The second track, ‘Sound 2’ maintains the atmosphere, and the absence of any clear highs or lows builds a tension beneath the calm surface.

The All Most Quiet once again highlights the trait I most admire in Norman Westberg’s approach to guitar laying: patience. No heroics. No sense of the ego common to guitar layers. His playing is focused on achieving texture and an overall listening experience. Whether he’s peeling off shards of noise, as on early Swans’ releases or creating more sculpted sound, as on their later releases, and in his solo recordings, at no point dos one ever find oneself thinking ‘what fretwork! What guitar wizardry!’ In fact, much of the time, Westberg’s guitar doesn’t sound like a guitar, particularly on The All Most Quiet. And for the most part, the sound is too immersive for one to really think at all.

 

Norman Westberg - The All Most Quiet

 

Norman Westberg Online

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