Archive for March, 2019

BeWider – Full Panorama

Posted: 5 March 2019 in Albums
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Folk Wisdom – FW008 1st February 2019

James Wells https://auralaggravation.com/2019/03/05/bewider-full-panorama/

BeWider, aka Piernicola Di Muro, says of his latest offering, ‘Full Panorama is perhaps the most intimate, irrational and emotional work I’ve done. Not only because I freely followed what I really felt close to musically speaking, but also because it is an album that comes from a very important moment of my life: a moment of creative change, of transformation. I wanted to make an album that started strongly from elements that are closest to my heart, which are cinema and imagery. I thought about what cinematically represented me the most. I imagined what the soundtrack I wanted to accomplish would sound like, and these 12 tracks were born. These are more than 12 tracks in themselves, they represent a complete and unitary work, as a whole. It is a journey, a path, that evolves throughout the entire span of the album, and that touches several musical stages of my life.’

It’s perhaps not unfair to say that the context doesn’t entirely convey in the end product, which is a cinematic electronic album driven by subtle but solid beats. It’s pleasant, danceable, even, but the emotional resonance is well buried in the full production and accessible, laid-back dance forms which follow well-established tropes.

The first piece, ‘Panorama’ is built on rippling, gloopy synths and a slow-building feedback that yields to a hypnotically chilled groove which locks in and pulses its way into the distance. It sets the tone for the album as a whole, with broad, semi-abstract washes of sound and undulating synths.

‘Last One Night’ is about soft ambient pulsations and backed-off beats as it evolves into a kaleidoscopic trance, and so it continues through ‘Retina’ and ‘Sartorius’, which slowly drift into one another in a hazy mellifluousness.

It’s nice, its gentle, and it’s largely background: Full Panorama is relaxed and enjoyable, but not an album you really listen to or engage with. It just sort of happens, just kinda drifts. I want to feel the emotional pull, the depth, the range, but I just don’t. But… it’s pretty cool to listen to.

AA

BeWilder

Watch: ‘Silent Truth’ by Herod

Posted: 3 March 2019 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Swiss progressive sludge outfit Herod who released new album Sombre Dessein last week through Pelagic Records have shared a new video for the crushing track ‘Silent Truth’. 

Herod have arisen from the ever- prosperous Swiss music scene. Throughout their young 4 years of presence, they have already shared the stage with such acts as Gojira, Crowbar, The Ocean, Carcass, Obituary, Napalm Death and Voivod – Attesting their repute as the bus boy’s of King Herod, serving up whole sides of rare riffs, disposition, beauty and authority.

The band comment,

“’Silent Truth’ is the last video clip from Sombre Dessein to be released and it is the first “lyric video” for the band. We decided to make a lyric video for ‘Silent Truth’ because it summarizes the concept of Sombre Dessein. Our Judaeo-Christian and thermo-industrial civilisation will eventually come to end and be replaced by another civilisation – It has always been on the cards. 
Our civilization has values no more.

Civilisations have always been founded/established by the power and assistance of war. We live in a critical moment in history where only a few humans ready to die for their beliefs can put a powerful nation on their knees. Who would die today for a smartphone or a couch?! We are exhausted and immersed in our own inertia; we have nihilism but no fervour anymore.”

Watch it here:

Herod will also be touring Europe in March + April with The Ocean:

13/03 – DE, Stuttgart – Im Wizemann

14/03 – CH, Geneva – PTR/ L’Usine

15/03 – FR, Lyon – CCO

16/03 – FR, Toulouse – Rex

17/03 – FR, Marseilles – Les Pennes Mirabeau

18/03 – FR, Colmar – Le Grillen

19/03 – FR, Bethune – Le Poche

20/03 – UK, Birmingham – Mama Roux

21/03 – IR, Limerick – Dolan’s Warehouse

22/03 – IR, Dublin – Voodoo Lounge

23/03 – UK, Glasgow – Audio

24/03 – UK, Leeds – Brudenell Social Club

25/03 – BE, Antwerp – Trix

26/03 – NL, Den Haag – Paard

27/03 – DE, Cologne – Club Volta

28/03 – DE, Leipzig – Werk 2

29/03 – PL, Poznan – U Bazyla

30/03 – DE, Bremen – Tower

31/03 – DE, Hamburg – Logo

02/04 – SE, Stockholm – Fryhuset, Klubben

03/04 – SE, Gothenburg – Tradgarn

06/04 – NO, Stavangar – Folken

07/04 – NO, Hamar – Gregers

08/04 – DK, Copenhagen – Vega

…and we’ll be down the front in Leeds!

Piiiisssss – Alan & His Parents

Posted: 2 March 2019 in Albums
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28th February 2019

Christopher Nosnibor

Piiiisssss’ third LP appeared by stealth, after a two-year hiatus, seemingly taking even its creator, the ever-prolific and unpredictable Dan Buckley, who has more projects, bands and pseudonyms than probably he can remember, by surprise, launching it via Facebook with the announcement ‘Lol I guess we have 3 albums now’. And as if to illustrate the point, that now stands at four just three days later, with the arrival of Enthusiast_ on 2nd March.

This five-tracker is a showcase of Buckley’s comparatively recent move into circuit-making, and if some of his kit doesn’t look especially pretty, then the sounds it makes are even more challenging at times. It’s front-loaded with the epics: ‘1’ is the first of the seemingly randomly-numbered / titled tracks, and is twelve-and-a-half minutes of oscillating loops.

‘II’, which clocks in at eleven-and-a-half minutes ventures into dark ambient territory, whispering and rumbling ominously and quietly, the distant whispers and moans creeping over a mid-range hum resembling a far-off herd of zombies in The Walking Dead. It’s unsettling, creepy… and then echoes of synth hum buzz louder, reverberating into the dead atmosphere. The drone rises to the fore and ultimately dominates everything, creating its own rhythm as the frequencies collide in a slow tidal wash. Sliding down the octaves, it transforms into a fear-chord organ throb that oozes unsettling vibes while a voice, roboticised and barely audible, winds down slowly in the background.

The third track is entitled ‘00000011’, and goes for the out-and-out eerie, with gloopy synths and bleeps and shooting star effects echoing into blackness to conjure an atmosphere that’s pure space-age horror. And if that genre doesn’t exist, then someone needs to make a movie to fit with this soundtrack.

‘Five’ is gnarly, loud, the fucked-up and desperate robotix vocal submerged in a woozy, warping wave of drone, rent with glitches, before it descends into a mess of scratching noise on the circuit-melting closer, ‘Confirmed Sixhavers’.

Piiiisssss marks quite a departure from many of Buckley’s myriad other musical outlet, not least of all his prolonged foray into playing covers revamped as bangin’ donk choons, or the industrial-disco grind of Petrol Hoers, and Alan & His Parents functions well as a standalone piece which showcases one of the many facets of a remarkably diffuse artist.

AA

Piiiisssss

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