Archive for November, 2018

Chlorine – Loser Herds

Posted: 9 November 2018 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Panurus Productions – 19th November 2018

The title connotes very little that’s immediately apparent. A mass of zombies in The Walking Dead? The blank faces milling around in Asda on a Saturday afternoon? More than anything, I’m inclined towards abstraction, which is precisely what dominates this unusual assemblage. It’s pithed as ‘an 8 track dreamlike journey through electronics, looped field recordings and sampled textures’. It’s a fair summary, although it fails to convey the subtlety and nuance that define Loser Herds, which explores some highly detailed sonic canvases and probes the corners of those spaces.

“This is a test. 1, 2, 3, 4, Error.” It’s a striking start. The voice is close to the mic, and it’s a dry sound, somehow amateur-sounding… It’s at odds with the soft interweaving chimes that slowly rise up in the mix and gradually form supple rhythms that ebb and flow organically. The tracks segue together, shimmering with delicate, subtle ripples cascading multifaceted sonic tapestries. The higher frequencies shine opalescent refractions of light, spinning radiant atmospheres. Welcome to the world of Chlorine, the musical vehicle of northeastern visual artist and musician, Graeme Hopper. Citing Susumu Yokota or Tim Hecker as reference points, Loser Herds is an immersive, layered collection of compositions – although it’s perhaps more accurate to describe it as a single piece in eight parts.

The album takes a strange and ugly turn halfway through, when following the soft glissandos of ‘A Westerly Wind’ and ‘Buskers Night’, a screed of gnarly electronic grinding more reminiscent of Merzbow or Whitehouse clanks in under the guide of ‘Spotify Are Bunch Of Fucking Criminals Who Need To Be Crushed’. It might not be speaker-shredding torture, but it’s likely to be pretty unpalatable to most, especially those seeking the comfort of semi-ambient sonic drifts, the likes of which occupy the rest of the album’s space.

In combining samples with electronics, acoustic instruments feature quite prominently at times, although not always in the most conventional ways. Bewildering and intersecting time signatures paired with warping notes abound on ‘The Distant Breach’, before the epic finale, ‘Forever is Not Long Enough’ draws together all of the aspects of the album to create an immense sound collage that begins gently, but builds incrementally with burrs of distortion and increasing density. Cracking, fizzing overload, woozy cyclical grooves and grating, churning extraneous noise congeal behind an obfuscating gauze of soft-focus fuzziness. It concludes an immersive experience with greater immersion, rounding of a wonderfully wide-ranging work.

AA

Loser Herds

Irk – Recipes from the Bible

Posted: 7 November 2018 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

7th December 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

Irk have been tearing it up on the Leeds scene for a little while now, and are a band at the epicentre of the DIY scene surrounding the CHUNK studio / rehearsal room space, tucked away in a rough and dilapidated industrial estate a good half-hour hike out of the city centre. It’s an apposite location for the thriving creative community of metal / sludge / noise bands.

The band describe themselves as ‘three polite wee rascals…. who make ugly, angular, noise-fused, math rock, consisting of drums, bass, and vocals’, and as such, belong to the city’s now well-established post-millennium tradition for producing seriously noisy bands who are bloody good. Many have fallen by the wayside, but a lineage of acts that includes Blacklisters, Hawk Eyes, That Fucking Tank, Holy State, Hora Douse, and yes, we’ll throw in Pulled Apart by Horses here, because they’re hardy quiet or genteel, speaks for itself.

I’ve caught them live a few times in the last couple of years, and have even performed on the same bill, exchanging books with front man Jack (I think Life Pervert is ace; I’ve no idea what he makes of The Rage Monologues). I’ve never once been disappointed by their performances, and it’s a reasonable expectation that Recipes from the Bible should sound like the work of a band who’ve been honing their material live for some time.

But by Christ, Irk really give it some here, and forge the title: this is a sonic concoction that cooks up the most unholy racket going. ‘I Bleed Horses’ begins with a howl and a barrage of frenetic drums and a mass of guitar racket. While you’re picking your jaw off the floor, check that tight, compressed, springy bass sound and the churning throb it produces that just about holds the whole squalling mess of discord together. Less that two and a half minutes in duration, the bled horses bleed out into ‘Life Changing Porno’, another unintelligible blizzard of noise that’s so chaotic it’s not always entirely clear if they’re all playing the same song: the tempo lurches unpredictably and whole racket collides in a spectacularly ugly explosion.

The seven-minute ‘The Observatory’ built around a choppy, cyclical riff reminiscent of Bleach era Nirvana, and again, it’s the menacing bass that dominates as they forge a suffocatingly claustrophobic density. It’s about as close to respite as it gets: with the only other exception being the verses of the lumbering ‘The Healer’, Recipes from the Bible is relentless in its screaming mania and brutal angles. The wild sax action on ‘You’re My Germ’ could be free jazz in another context, but here, it just adds another level of crazed hysteria to the mix.

Taking obvious cues from Shellac and Blacklisters, it’s a set of sharp-cornered, serrated brutality that stops, starts, shudders, judders, jolts and jerks – but unlike Shellac, Jack’s raving, gibbering, rabid vocals break free from the tight limits of the coiled tension of math-rock tropes and instead cut loose and careen into the wild noise of The Jesus Lizard. Snarling, howling, drawling and slavering, there’s something cracked, even psychotic. In combination, it’s a tense, intense set that sound deranged, dangerous: at times, its really quite uncomfortable. That’s a clear measure of success.

Chances are, reviews will tout this as being ‘uncompromising’, not least of all on account of it’s being self-produced by the band (of course). But Recipes from the Bible goes beyond that. Way beyond. It harnesses the full force of the band: so often, bands draft in producers only for the sound to be polished, slickened, rendered overtly ‘studio’. By keeping things in-house, they’ve retained the rawness, and the sheer velocity and unbridled power that defined them, and the sonic vision remains unadulterated. And beneath all of distortion and dirt, the ragged, jagged edges and the feel of a style of playing that’s loose and uncontained, there’s a remarkable and deceptive degree of precision.

It’s hard to find fault with Recipes from the Bible: there isn’t a weak track or an ounce of fat. There’s no filler, and no slack. There’s not a moment of tameness or timidity, and instead, they bring top-level ferocity and relentless fury, and the chances are you’ll be hard-pushed to find a better noise-rock album this year.

AA

Irk - Recipes

Watch: ‘Mandrel Cantus’ by Jo Quail

Posted: 7 November 2018 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Internationally acclaimed composer and virtuoso cellist Jo Quail, who released new album Exsolve last week has unveiled her new music video for track ‘Mandrel Cantus’. Jo comments,

Mandrel Cantus is the second track on ‘Exsolve’ and the performance footage was filmed by Simon Kallas whilst creating the four excerpt videos for the rest of the album. Mike Fletcher is in Dunsborough, WA, and I work with Mike on many projects, both my own videos and soundtracks for his work as a landscape videographer and filmmaker. Mike blended his unique imagery to Simon’s footage,  not only complementing the existing four visuals of ‘Exsolve’ but also conjoining the look and feel from previous album videos too. Much of what I do is inspired by landscape, and the internal or psychological mirror of this too, our own personal ‘map’ if you like, and this video encapsulates that completely.

Watch the video for ‘Mandrel Cantus’ here:

Having recently completed a European tour with Mono and A Storm of Light, Jo Quail will be heading out again with Myrkur in December.

European tour w/ Myrkur

03 Dec: SE Stockholm, Vasateatern04/12 – NO Oslo, John Dee

05 Dec: SE Gothenburg, Pustervik

07 Dec: DK Aarhus, Voxhall

08 Dec: DK Copenhagen, Pumpehuset

10 Dec: PL Poznan, U Bazyla

11 Dec: PL Krakow, Kwadrat

13 Dec: HU Budapest, Durer Kert

14 Dec: AT Vienna, Arena

16 Dec: NL Tilburg, 013 KZ

18 Dec UK London, The Dome

19 Dec: UK Bristol, The Fleece

20 Dec: UK Nottingham, Rescue Rooms

21 Dec UK Glasgow, The Great Eastern

22 Dec: – UK Manchester, Gorilla

jq pr © Simon Kallas-2

FOUDRE! – KAMI 神

Posted: 3 November 2018 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Gizeh Records – 23rd November 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

In their biography, FOUDRE! are described as ‘a telluric drone quartet composed of Frédéric D. Oberland (Oiseaux-Tempête, Le Réveil des Tropiques, The Rustle Of The Stars, FareWell Poetry), Romain Barbot (Saåad), Grégory Buffier (Saåad, Autrenoir) and Paul Régimbeau (Mondkopf, Autrenoir, Extreme Precautions) who meet punctually for sessions of ritual improvisation where they invoke noise and drone and the deities of chaos.’

I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced by the punctual meetings given my years of experience dealing with musicians, but no matter: KAMI 神, the collective’s fourth album, was improvised and recorded live at Le Rex de Toulouse while supporting French doom metal band Monarch! at their tenth anniversary show.

The five compositions which comprise the forty-five minute set are expansive, as much is sonic breadth and depth as duration, and as such, extend in all directions as the players audibly feed off one another intuitively to create immense aural vistas which are every bit as enigmatic as the titles, all of which reference Shinto gods.

Opening with a twelve-minute epic that evolves from dark, low rumblings and sparse down-tuned scraping string-like drones, tremulous, haunting, and hesitant, to a simmering ripple of waves that forge a subtle but sustained crescendo, ‘Raijin’ very much evokes images and sensations worthy of a god of lightning, thunder, and storms. ‘Raijin’ indeed.

Disembodied voices rise wordlessly, ghostly and demonic, against a heartbeat-pulsing beat. It’s all about the atmosphere, and it’s all about the slow burn. And because the shifts are so gradual, so slight, the listener’s attention becomes focused on the detail, attenuated to the tonality and texture of the individual sounds.

‘Ame-no-Uzume’ inches toward a pulsating hybrid of ambience and chillwave, with the eerie motifs of ‘Tubular Bells’ twisting into a funnel of extraneous noise against a stammering beat, and the pieces all segue seamlessly into one another, with an elongated organ drone rising up on ‘Fujin’ (the Japanese god of the wind) before the final piece, ‘Hachiman’, opens with a heavy, head-crushing crescendo of discord. All hell breaks lose amidst feedback and screeds of extraneous noise as the volume intensifies and things get ugly. Unintelligible screams and barks, distorted and inhuman, tear the air across a clattering industrial beat and blistering electronics forging a whorl of sound in a brutal blast reminiscent of Prurient.

If ever the opening and conclusion of a set emerged leagues apart, KAMI 神 carves a most extreme trajectory, taking the full duration of the set to build from a whisper to a terrifying scream. And it’s this arc that makes KAMI神 so accomplished and so exciting.

More often than not, live recordings leave the impression that something is missing, and that being distant from the actual event is to subtract from the experience. KAMI 神 is different, in that the hi-fidelity recording means it doesn’t sound like a live album, and sitting back while the sound in all its detail emanates from the speakers affords the opportunity to take in those details, the layers, the textures, and to reflect in a way that the in-the-moment experience simply cannot allow. This highlights the differences of the way we as an audience receive and experience different media and modes of delivery; the in-the-moment intensity may offer catharsis, instant gratification, and a sense of immediate impact, but when there is this much to absorb, the distance and benefit of time to reflect and repeat is invaluable. And KAMI 神 is a work to digest at leisure.

AA

FOUDRE! – KAMI 神

Watch: ‘My Body, My Choice’ by Pussyliquor

Posted: 3 November 2018 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Brighton punk/riot grrrl group Pussyliquor like a good 7”, it seems. Diameter, not length: we’re talking records. Following up their debut, ‘Pussyliquor’s 7inch Wonder’, with the 3-track ‘What Of It’ EP, which is released on Revulva Records on the 14th of December 2018, they’ve made a promo video for the only song with a title fit for radio by way of a taster.

Tucked in between ‘Lady Wank’ and ‘C.U.N.T.’ sits ‘My Body, My Choice’, the band’s stab at a feminist anthem of sorts. With an eye firmly set on the mainstream, they’ve stuck some nude arses in for good measure. Check the video here:

Holygram – Modern Cults

Posted: 2 November 2018 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cleopatra Records – 9th November 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

Pitched as for vans of \the KVB, The Sisters of Mercy, and My Bloody Valentine amongst others, Holygram caught my attention with the second single from Modern Cults, ‘A Faction’. The album’s focus are the themes of big cities, alienation, anonymity, hope and memories, love and identity. It’s in keeping with the band’s post-punk leanings that there’s a darker hue cast over even the lighter themes – you’re more likely to get the anguish of heartbreak and the pull of distance than the bliss of perfection in the musings on love here.

There’s something solid and traditional in an album containing ten tracks – by which I mean it takes me back to me back to my 80s childhood, and if ever a contemporary album had ‘80s vintage’ written all over it, it’s Modern Cults. It begins with dark industrial rumbling, heavy atmospherics, and an insistent bass drumbeat low in the mix, before the title track breaks the levee with a thunder of sequenced tom rolls, churning, distorted bass and heavily chorused guitars. The vocals are half-lost in a wash of reverb and the spiralling guitars and stammering c.84 mechanoid drums.

It’s that drum sound – the massive splash that takes an eternity to decay as it thumps along in a cavern of echo, along with the reverberating vocals and everything else that swirls into a rippling sonic bath – that defines the album. But then, there’s a dense gauze of overt ‘production’ that covers every inch of Modern Cults that may be anything but modern, but is executed with such precision it’s hardly a point of contention.

Modern Cults is loud, deep, resonant, pitched into a swirling vortex void of noise that channels pain and anguish and the banging of one’s head against a wall. ‘Dead Channel Skies’ presents a full-tilt wall of shimmering noise, pure shoegaze but with everything post-punk circa 83 thrown in. then again, other 80s tropes are thrown into the mix: ‘She’s Like the Sun’ comes on like a shoegaze Gary Numan and there’s a deep sense of the retro that permeates every inch of this release. And yet somehow, it rises above the parts to yield a greater sum, arguably despite itself.

AA

Holygram - Modern

Black Bear Catapult – The Laughing House

Posted: 2 November 2018 in Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , ,
1

Bearsuit Records – 1st November 2018

James Wells

This one seemingly pinged in from nowhere finds BBC (that’s Black Bear Catapult, which consists of Ippu Mitsui and Jimmy Finlayson) deliver a slice of strangeness that combines hyperactive electropop backing of spacey synths which wibble and warp against a drum machine which flitters and stutters frenetically as if its programmer is on a rush of sugar and caffeine, bursting into double-time seemingly on a whim. Jittery, jumpy, overenergised, this release positively twitches with a stroboscopic kineticism.

There’s a nice strolling bassline that emerges here and there during ‘Leopold Checks In At The Laughing House’, and while the overall tone is playful and a little bit daft, it’s something you can groove to. And I’m down with that!

AA

BBC - Laughing

Newer Entries