Archive for December, 2019

Watch: ‘Do The Rattlerock’ by Snakerattlers

Posted: 7 December 2019 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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For those of you who think of Shed 7 as being the only York band to have ever existed beyond the local scene, think again. Since their formation in 2016, the husband and wife rockabilly duo have released two albums and have been killing it live nationally.

2019 has been a massive year for Snakerattlers. They have established themselves firmly in the UK underground music scene, racking up an impressive 100 shows throughout the year.

The forthcoming video for their track ‘Do The Rattlerock’ (taken from second album All Heads Will Roll) is a testament to their constant touring and insatiable work ethic.

The track itself is about feeling like an outsider and struggling to fit in, before ultimately realising that going your own way is paramount. This is basically the ethos and entire foundation of Snakerattlers.

Filmed across six different London shows, throughout 2019, the dangerous duo from North Yorkshire have been captured at their intimidating and ferocious best, by John Clay and Elliott Louie Afonso.

The video is out now. Check it here:

AA

Listen: ‘November’ by Human Impact

Posted: 6 December 2019 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Human Impact, the New York-based outfit that features members of Cop Shoot Cop, Unsane and Swans are to release their self-titled, debut album on March 13 via Ipecac Recordings.

When news broke of the band’s inaugural live performance (August at NYC’s Union Pool), the New York Times said: “This supergroup’s lineup represents the fulfilment of a noise rock fan’s most fervent wish; the face-melting guitar sound of Chris Spencer (Unsane), coupled with the sampling mastery of Jim Coleman (Cop Shoot Cop), supported by the innovative percussion of Phil Puleo (Cop Shoot Cop, Swans) and strung together with the minimal yet impactful bass rhythms of Chris Pravdica (Swans).”

An early preview of the forthcoming release is available now, with album opener, “November” streaming here:

Team Picture – Another, Always

Posted: 6 December 2019 in Singles and EPs
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Clue Records – 22nd November 2019

Christopher Nosnibor

The thing about Team Picture is that they just don’t fit. Anywhere. Stylistically, they’re a bit of this, a bit of that. A bit indie, a but pop, a bit shoegaze, a bit Krautrock. To see them performing, they don’t even seem to fit together. They’re like a satirical homage to The Village People: despite the uniform, they present as a selection of characters / caricatures with no obvious connection, separate, pulling in different directions.

And yet somehow this most disparate bunch work, and incredibly well. They’re incredibly adept at forging strong songs – which ultimately, is what being a band is about (unless it’s an avant-garde jazz band, where the objective is to make as discordant a racket in as many different tie signatures as possible). Their songs manage to represent their divergent personalities, pulling apart as much as together. And yet they work, and this latest single is no exception.

‘Another Always’ starts with space-age synths before shifting into some new-wave / indie crossover that smooshes together jerky, quirky vocals and chorus-tinged guitar to forge a sound that’s a collision of The Cure and The B52’s with a post-millennial retro sass and a certain yet oddly distinctive Leeds twist.

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Team Picture - Another, Always (artwork)

Listen: ‘Fools Gave Chase’ by Pist

Posted: 5 December 2019 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Riff juggernaut Pist who released new album ‘Hailz’ on 8th November through APF Records (Mastiff, Battalions, BongCauldron, Desert Storm) have shared the lyric video for new single ‘Fools Gave Chase’.

Vocalist Dave Rowlands comments, “’Fools Gave Chase’ is a snapshot of what this record is all about: it’s punky, got black metal influences, good old heavy groove and a mellow bit with a face-melter of a guitar solo. For me this song flows perfectly and is a real indication of where we’re heading as a band. Lyrically it deals with my contempt for current times and the state of the world falling apart around us. It’s about fighting back and carving your own path. Enjoy!”

Watch now:

The Bureau Of Atomic Tourism – Eden

Posted: 4 December 2019 in Albums
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Rat Records/Werkplaats Walter – 29th November 2019

Christopher Nosnibor

All these artists that have seemingly well-established cult fanbases… How do people discover them? Where do they hide out? It would seem that sextet The Bureau Of Atomic Tourism are ‘a considerable force in avant-garde jazz’, and while I’m not exactly 100% on the pulse when it comes to the genre, I do have numerous inroads into the musical milieu. But in a well-populated but spacious and divergent field, it’s perhaps not entirely shocking that The Bureau Of Atomic Tourism have slipped under my radar, especially considering the fact that their last long-player, Hapax Legomena, was four years ago.

If the title suggests a yearning for a return to innocence, the album’s fourteen compositions suggest otherwise, and the chaotic ruckus that heralds the album’s arrival in a discordant blast of horns, wandering bass and arrhythmic drumming lands like a series of slaps around the face.

The forms and structures are loose, to say the least, and it definitely requires a certain kind of musical attenuation to appreciate and enjoy pieces that sound like half a dozen people playing half a dozen tunes in different rooms simultaneously.

‘Two Part Oven in Thin Eleven’ is as abstract in its noise as in its naming, while ‘Passed Present’ is a tempestuous aural affray, a blitzkrieg of toots and trills that assault the cerebellum, and so no with no mercy.

‘Search End When Sharing Starts’ is something of an anomaly, straying into atmospheric post-rock territory with a solid and focussed rhythm section holding it all together with real proficiency. Elsewhere, ‘Video Interlude’ has an almost funk-inspired groove and it roll and strolls comfortably. It’s a contrast to the bulk of the album, which is discordant, disjointed, jarring and decidedly groove free, to the point of being disorientating, difficult, and decidedly messy.

In technical terms, Eden is remarkable, a wild blossoming of ideas. But it’s also an untamed sonic tangle of interweaving twines, matted into a sonic thicket that twists and spreads in all directions.

AAA

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corpse tWitcHer – Bring Your Dead

Posted: 3 December 2019 in Albums
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Cruel Nature Records – 23rd November 2019

No release by a band called corpse tWitcHer was ever going to be pretty. But Bring Your Dead is next level.

The album contains only four tracks, the shortest of which, ‘Opening: The Bird’ is over eight minutes long and pitches some dark atmospherics with low, dank rumblings and mid-range scrapes that twist and taper into a soft fog of ambience with tempered chiming notes ringing out into the mist. It is but an opening, an extended introduction, which paves the way for the speaker-shredding, Sunn O)))-like devastation of ‘Of Bones & Head’ that lands the crushing low drone of guitars like a cement mixer on slow speed, blended with shrieking howl of feedback. This swirling mass of amorphous sound on sound surges and swells for a full eighteen minutes, and while its form is impossible to take a hold of as it shifts and twists, it’s a fully immersive experience. It’s possibly the closest thing to Earth 2 I’ve heard since, well, Earth 2. This is music that packs a suffocating density, and rattles the ribs as well. It vibrates the molecules while crushing the skull. It’s a painful joy, and a joyful pain.

‘A Thorough Necropsy’ grinds out a quarter of an hour of relentlessly heavy, percussion-free sludge that crawls from the speakers and wraps itself around not just your ears or body but your very soul, strangulating and suffocating with its tarry black mass. It’s in the territory whereby guitars melt into a grating morass of noise: struck chords don’t hit but instead billow into a cloud of noise so dense as to choke. There are some anguished, guttural vocals buried beneath it all, I think. It’s the sound of pain beyond words, a charred snarl from the underground. The tempest builds louder and darker around halfway through, and it’s around this point we slip off the face of the planet into another dimension. It’s bleak, but not like death or dying: this is transcendental and bleak and we’re floating in another sphere, buoyed by a sound denser than the Dead Sea.

The final cut, ‘Closing: Sutures’ sews it all up nicely with an expansive rumble of dark ambience that swirls and eddies and billows around in a formless morass of sonic fog. It rumbles around the bowels, the lungs, and the spleen. It sends shivers down the spine and a shudder over the skin. It resonates on a biological, physical level.

Bring Your Dead is heavy, intense, and unsettlingly dark, it doesn’t so much hit the mark as consume it in blackness.

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Watch: ‘Boom Operator’ by Pop. 1280

Posted: 2 December 2019 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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New York industrial punk band POP.1280 who return on 6th December with their new album ‘Way Station’ on Weyrd Son Records have shared an intense new video for latest single ‘Boom Operator’, describing the track as:

“A story of a film technician losing his mind on set. The lyrics explore the terrible punishment we put our bodies and minds through in the world of capitalism. It also explores the topics of human degradation and humiliation, and the violence that erupts from people when they are dehumanized.

Boom Operator was recorded live in one take by Andrew Chugg at Gilded Audio.  When the song was written, it started with the drum pattern and vocals and was built up around that.  After that the throbbing synth was written, the last thing we figured out was the guitar.  It is in the key of B minor and is 130 beats per minute.”

Watch the video here:

Vitauct / Crepuscular Entity – Vitauct / Crepuscular Entity

Posted: 1 December 2019 in Albums
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Basement Corner Emissions – 28th June 2019

Christopher Nosnibor

For those outside Ukraine, and those who aren’t completely immersed in the most underground of underground scenes, few are probably aware of the fact there’s some seriously good noise shit emerging from Ukraine right now. And Portland, Oregon, US, too, on the strength of this release.

This split release between Vitauct and Crepuscular Entity is a monster, and one which demonstrates that there’s contrast and variety within the field.

The first piece is a seven-minute wall of noise courtesy of Crepuscular Entity. There may or may not be distorted vocals screaming low in the mix of a blistering white-noise assault. Noise doesn’t get much harsher than this, and everything is total overload. But there is texture, if you listen closely enough – if you can bear to. It’s not quite Harsh Noise wall, but it is a wall of harsh noise.

Vitauct’s ‘The Abominable Mechanism’ combines squelchy electronics with a thumping mechanical rhythm, the sound of a machine grinding and pumping away. Distortion and decay enter the equation at some point, upping the intensity. In context, however, Vitauct’s contributions are light relief against the relentlessly abrasive shards of pain served up by Crepuscular Entity: ‘Electrical Storm in an Electrical Storm’ is full-treble pain, an amorphous mass of blistering hiss with no discernible form, while Vitauct offers up something more overtly rhythmic. There is nothing accessible, or easy, or comfortable about any of this. It hurts, and it punishes and it fucks with your head. This is exactly what it should do and in the field of power electronics, it’s more sonically articulate than most.

The final track, ‘Madhouse’ is something else altogether: distorted vocals and maniacal laugher against a backdrop of fizzing electrodes and scraping noise. It’s deranged, and it hurts, but this is everything that’s good about it.

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Viatuct

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