I know next to nothing about this release. Here’s a moment of transparency: music reviewers receive absolutely shedloads of stuff to review. Press releases are handy, not just as a shortcut when it comes to research, but also for locating inroads into a work. But even with a press release to hand, details surrounding Wealth are sketchy.
Consisting of Michael Lahner (synths) and Manuel Riegler (drums, synths), Wealth draw on a range of different forms of electronic music to create what they consider to be a ‘highly organic mix’. Sonically, there’s very much a preoccupation with soft-edged pulsations: the beats are largely rounded, bulbous, and when more angular rhythms do emerge, as on ‘Plate LXXVI (Diagram for Lilies), they’re countered by altogether less aggressive synth tones with hazy outlines.
Subtle, stealthy, glitchy ambience with backed-off beats are on offer with Primer. Sonic washes and rippling, elongated, undulating bleeps eddy around agitated, juddering rhythms so backed off in the mix as to be barely subliminal. ‘Floor’ lays a deep groove; not so much one to get down to as to lie down and allow total immersion.
Primer is a delicate, balanced work, with considerable range beneath its more subtle, subdued surfaces.
SikTh have shared a brand new video for the track ‘Cracks of Light’ taken from their recent album The Future in Whose Eyes?. This is also the first ever SikTh track to feature a guest vocalist in the form of Periphery singer Spencer Sotelo.
Watch the video here:
SikTh play summer festivals in August in the UK & Czech Republic – details below:
We’ve been digging both Salvation Jayne and Chess Smith’s solo work here at Aural Aggro for a while now. With live dates in the offing to support the release of their new EP, Moves That Make The Record Skip, Christopher Nosnibor welcomed the opportunity to have a virtual chat.
AA: Ok, let’s get the lame, predictable, off-the-peg questions out of the way first: why Salvation Jayne?
SJ: No depth to it really. We were once in a cafe in Camden, and there was a sign on the wall that said ‘Previously called Salvation Jane’. We thought it sounded cool, so we just added the Y.
Would you care to introduce yourselves? Who does what?
Chess (pronounced like the board game) is the vocalist, Holly plays guitar and does backing vocals, Tor plays drums, and Dan plays bass/does backing vocals and also records and mixes our stuff.
Chess, you’ve been in music forever and things started happening when you were 17, back in 2008. Having been in electro act Mooli, and then working as a solo artist, what made you want to be in a band again?
I’d always loved being in bands, and had recently tried starting an all-female band of my own which didn’t really work out. Initially I’d agreed to just stand in for SJ, but it really worked and so I decided to stay.
Your bio describes you as ‘a young, female driven alt-rock band with a distinctive dirty sound which combines elements of rock, nu wave and blues’. How do these elements combine to create something that uniquely defines Salvation Jayne?
We have the big fuzzy single note riffs of bands such as Royal Blood, and QOTSA, but often mixed which dark lyrical themes/chord changes and a chorus effect on the guitar/bass! There’s some big brooding sections not unlike Sisters of Mercy!
Anything that’s got big brooding sections that tip a nod to the Sisters gets my vote. Hit me: influences?
It’s really varied for all of us. In our sound you’ll find elements of Wolf Alice, Kill It Kid, Girls Against Boys, QOTSA and even some hip hop influences in terms of the cadances!
These guys get cooler by the second. In the three-and-a-bit years you’ve been in existence, you’ve accumulated some name-droppable fans, including AC/DC drummer Chris Slade, and The Clash drummer Topper Headon. How did that come about?
Slade is actually a customer of Dan’s. Dan records his other band and played him our stuff. Both he (Slade) and his partner have come to see the band live and really enjoy our stuff. Topper is an old friend of Tor’s Dad, and he has known Tor for years too. Tor often hangs out with him and he was keen to hear the EP, which he loved. He then came to see us live and was totally into it!
You recently released a new EP, Moves That Make The Record Skip. Would you like to talk us through the songs on there?
‘Burn It Down’ is the most recent, and the only one that was actually written with the lineup as it is now. That track nicely combines the elements of our sound described earlier. ‘The Jailer’ is probably the most blues influenced. Featuring slide guitar, although very heavy. That one is actually written about a serial killer, really gloomy in terms of the lyrics! ‘Thrillride’ was inspired by the film Natural Born Killers. It’s about a hedonistic couple indulging in a night of sin. Has a cool kind of ‘desert’ feel to it. ‘Whorehouse Down On The SE’ is another one with dirty slide guitar and even dirtier lyrical theme – it’s about the activities inside a Whorehouse!
There are a lot of people under the age of, I dunno, 30, who have never experienced the skipping of a record. Are you fans of vinyl? And what moves have you got?
Everyone loves vinyl right? Holly can moonwalk, that’s about all we’ve got.
You have a handful of live shows coming up: given the live rep you’ve managed to build, I’m guessing you quite enjoy playing live?
Yeah we love it, get to relieve ourselves of the stress of everyday life! Haha. We always put lots of energy into our performances.
How do you fit playing further afield with non-music commitments, and are you planning more live shows to promote the EP?
We’re pretty fortunate as we all work for ourselves. So taking time off is easy, something we’re thankful for. And yeah, you will catch us all over the UK in the forseeable future!
Final, superfluous and utterly frivolous question, which I’m asking for a friend: what are your favourite crisps?
We had a massive discussion about crisps on the way to a show once. Tell your friend it’s a closely guarded secret.
Moves That Make The Record Skip is out now. Tour dates are listed below.
Hot on the heels of their 23rd full-length album release, Dear (Sargent House), Japanese power trio Boris are this week embarking on a European tour, also to commemorate their 25th anniversary as a band. To mark the occasion, we’re sharing a live version of new album track ‘The Power’, capturing Boris in their element.
You can watch it here, with full dates below…
BORIS 25 ANNIVERSARY/DEAR TOUR DATES
03/08 – Moscow, Volta – RU 04/08 – St. Petersburg, ClubZal – RU 05/08 – Vienna, Szene – AT 06/08 – Katowice, OFF Festival – PL 07/08 – Leipzig, Naumans – DE 08/08 – Berlin, Lido – DE 09/08 – Jaromer, Brutal Assault – CZ 10/08 – Munich, Backstage – DE 11/08 – Frankfurt, Das Bett – DE 12/08 – Lausanne, Rock Altitude – CH 13/08 – Ieper, Ieperfest – BE 15/08 – Cologne, Underground – DE 16/08 – Hamburg, Hafenklang – DE 17/08 – Bielefeld, Forum – DE 18/08 – Amstelveen, P60 – NL 19/08 – Bristol, Arctangent Festival – UK 20/08 – Dublin, Whelans – IE 21/08 – Cork, Cyprus Avenue – IE
Another one lifted from the epic and eternal backlog, Pan-Scan Ensemble’s Air and Light and Time and Space is a document of the first live improvisation by this Scandinavian collective centred around the ever-active free jazz drumming luminary Paal Nilssen-Love. Perhaps as one would predict, the nine players, with two drummers, three trumpets, a piano, a whole slew of saxophones and a flute, contrive to create quite a dizzying racket.
There are just two pieces on the album: ‘Air and Light’ and ‘Time and Space’. The former is a punchy twelve minutes in duration, and after a calm beginning, with just sporadic clatters of soft percussion to punctuate the aural vista, all free jazz hell breaks loose around five minutes in. Discordant piano and wild brass fly in all directions simultaneously, different keys and time signatures clash. It’s not music that will help soothe a headache, that’s for certain.
On ‘Time and Space’, things begin in a calmer place, and the incidental rolls and rumbles are slow but jarring. It all seems quite restrained. However, by the six-minute mark, it’s a frenzied mayhem of horns and arrhythmic drums crashing and…. It’s a dizzying cacophony, and after a while, when they finally bring things back down a couple of notches, it’s quite a relief.
The second extended crescendo is slower, more deliberate, weightier, but no less dramatic. Finally, some twenty-five minutes in, something recognisable as a tune emerges. Dolorous piano rolls over a steady, insistent beat. The horns still run wild all over the place, but they’re held in check by the solid rhythm. It builds and builds to an immense climax.
I know that this type of free jazz improv is supposed to be ‘difficult’, and some works are more difficult than others. In the main – and this is purely my personal taste rather than a comment on its musical or artistic merit – I find it all too much. Air and Light and Time and Space is a bewildering tumult of chaos, busy, uncoordinated and in some respects wilfully unmusical. None of those things are bad in themselves, but I struggle to grasp the purpose beyond self-entertainment for the musicians in the room. Apart from the last seven minutes or so, when a certain sense of structure coalesces from out of the chaos, it’s not fun. Nevertheless, the passion of the players is unmistakable, and the way they do bounce off one another to evolve the ebbs and flows and monstrous crescendos is impressive.
Fractal, stripped back strumming and spacious strings define the compositions Skeletikon. Having misplaced the press release, I know next to nothing about Fjellstrom’s purpose or intention with Skeletikon.
‘Born out of shattered dreams and an obscured vision of the future, Skeletikon is a delirious yet lucid exploration of the farthest and most conflicted reaches of the heart, teeming with confusion, passion, and ghostly shadows. Being no conventional composer in any way, Marcus stumbles further down his musical domain of detuned orchestral (re-)arrangements and pain-inducing synth passages, arriving at a most unique and personal result.’ So says the blurb accompanying the album.
Across the album’s ten compositions, Fjellstrom explores all of the essential elements, namely texture and tone, atmospherics and dynamics.
‘Aunchron’ is a light, lilting folksy composition that in some respects invites comparisons to early 90s Swans in the way it builds. But it’s a magnificently multifaceted piece, which shifts and glides supply though a series of transitions which head in various directions over the course of its six-minute duration, by turns cascading gently over rippling chimes and rolling through delicate thunder.
‘Skeleton Dance 2’ is dark, tense and atmospheric in a brooding, difficult way: it gives way to the lilting yet urgent acoustic strumming of ‘Modulus’. Dark clouds rumble as they gather under tremulous strings on ‘Arboretum’: less a sonic representation of the breeze through the leaves on the trees in Spring, and more of a haunted forest with growling, marauding hunters lurking in the undergrowth.
Skeletikon is one of those albums which never stays still, which slowly trickles around a succession of haunting sonic spaces and does so incredibly deftly. As such, its impact is subtle to the point of being barely perceptible for the most part. Skeletikon is sparse, and reaches in by stealth.
The album closer ‘Boy With Wound’ is a haunting, creepy composition, and while it employs myriad classic tropes common to music which is designed to instil certain sense of dread, of trepidation, it’s also a musical journey through a series of tense moods and nerve-jangling tension.
Skeletikon is not an album to enjoy, per se, but one to experience at leisure and to slowly absorb. It’s an album with the capacity to affect the listener, and to effect the psychological axis upon which they ordinarily exist.
Ooh. This is actually quite nice. Heavy hints of Amplifier colour the album’s opener, ‘Salt in Our Veins’, but I’m equally reminded of subtly psych-tinged 90s alt rock merchants 8 Storey Window. Their sole album, produced by Terry Bickers of House of Love, stands as something of a lost classic.
It seems odd to be writing about 8 Storey Window and House of Love – both very much 90s bands – given that Nasher is the current musical project of Brian Nash, formerly of 80s giants Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
‘432-1 Open the Vein’ certainly pegs back the abrasion and aggression of Brian’s forebears. In fact, Nash’s provocative past is cast aside here, with the songs on Open the Vein ditching synths and dancefloor-friendly beats in favour of what one might describe as a more alt-rock / indie sound which is very much guitar-orientated.
There are so many easy but emotive melodies stashed away in the layers of ‘Open the Vein’, with the soft, supple acoustic-led ‘Whole’ calls to mind Oceansize’s softer moments, with its processed harmonies and subtle sense of the expansive.
‘Where Will the Kids Live’ is dark, claustrophobic and uncomfortable despite its melodic accessibility. ‘Prostitutes and Cocaine’ slips into Doves-y pop orientated territory, and ‘Just Sounds Like Noise’ is an accessible piece of 80s prog-pop that strums along easily in its acoustic-led way, with heavily processed, smoothed-out and massively layered vocals. It sounds less like noise than some lame, overproduced bollocks, but given that the majority of the album is strong and dynamic, I’ll let it pass.
Aural Aggravation 