Archive for February, 2021

Watch: ‘Renaissance’ by BRUIT ≤

Posted: 28 February 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Emerging from the ashes of several pop bands, BRUIT ≤ was born out of the desire of its members to turn their backs on the majors and return to a process of creation without constraints.

Initially the band’s intention was not to perform live but to research and experiment with sound in a studio environment.

At the end of 2016, this research resulted in two live videos filmed in their studio that would enable the band to make its debut on the Toulouse scene. After this experience, Clément Libes (bass, violin), Damien Gouzou (drums) and Théophile Antolinos (guitar) composed together in search of their own sound identity and with the aim to create progressive music that subverts genre and would result in the expansion of stylistic boundaries. Consequently, during this time the band went through several line-up changes until Luc Blanchot (cello) joined in January 2018.

It was only then that BRUIT ≤ truly felt complete and sure of their direction, creating emotively intense and expansive instrumental compositions of a conceptual nature that merge post-rock, ambient electronica and modern classical.

On 19 July, 2018, BRUIT ≤ signed to Elusive Sound who released their first EP titled “Monolith” in the fall of 2018. Afterwards Bruit went on a 20-show tour of France and Belgium sharing the stage with bands like Shy Low, Slift, The Black Heart Rebellion, Silent Whale Becomes A Dream, Jean Jean, Endless Dive, Poly Math, Orbel or A Burial At Sea. The band was invited to play at the Dunk Festival in 2020 but the event was cancelled due to the Covid19 pandemic.

BRUIT ≤ focused on the composition and production of their first full- length album, changing their line-up again with Julien Aouf taking over on drums. ‘The machine is burning and now everyone knows it could happen again’, will be released digitally on the 2nd of April 2021. In the spring the album will be released on vinyl by Elusive Sound.

New single ‘Renaissance’ is the 1st track to be shared from the band’s debut with them commenting,

”The piece evokes a humanity reborn from its ashes and rebuilding itself from nature. On this track Mehdi Thiriot has created a video clip, woven with symbols that illustrate the everlasting conflict between nature and culture.’

Watch the video here:

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VVOLVES – Well-Loved Tales

Posted: 28 February 2021 in Singles and EPs
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28th February 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

VVolves seriously impressed with their debut single, ‘Momentum’, unveiled last June – a heady rush of shoegaze and pop with ethereal vocals and a repetitive groove, it was, well, impressive.

‘Well-Loved Tales’ is an admirable follow-up: rich in atmosphere, but at the same time, a bold electronic pop tune, it’s a magnificently balanced composition. The rolling drums and teetering piano add drama to a guitar soaked in chorus and reverb, and with a rich, luscious production, the sound and the feel and the vibe is every inch the Cure’s Disintegration. And let’s be straight: if you’re going to take your cues from any classic album that has a truly timeless feel, that’s probably a top pick. There’s also a hint of ‘Naked and Savage’ by The Mission in the brooding, hypnotic hues, too.

There isn’t an attention-grabbing hook or an overt immediacy about ‘Well-Loved Tales’ – rather it casts a dreamy sonic spell that draws the listener in with a captivating sense of melody.

The ‘sparse’ version which serves as the B-side lives up to its name: stripped of the drums and the drama, slow-drifting synths provide the main accompaniment to a dreamy vocal that’s almost folksy, and equally, almost part of the instrumentation, and it’s nice. Very nice. As is the mesmerising video which accompanies it.

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Aidan Baker – Stimmt

Posted: 28 February 2021 in Albums
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Cruel Nature Records – 5th March 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Aiden Baker’s releases have become a regular feature here at Aural Aggravation. His prodigious output, not only as a solo artist, but through innumerable collaborations, often released through Gizeh Records, have given us no shortage of material to contemplate and ruminate over. It’s often hard to keep up with his output,

Stimmt was first released digitally back in 2015 on Broken Spine Productions, and has been was remixed and remastered for its first physical format outing via Cruel Nature in a limited edition of 60 cassettes (as well as digitally again).

Baker is to guitar what John Cage and Reinhold Friedl were / are to piano, with the ‘prepared’ guitar being a prominent feature of his musical arsenal, along with an array of other ‘alternative’ methods of playing, across a genre span that incorporates elements of rock, electronic, classical, and jazz, within his broadly ambient / experimental works

Stimmt sits at the more overtly ‘rock’ end of Baker’s stylistic spectrum, launching with the heavy riffology of ‘Dance of the Entartet’ that’s got a prog vibe but comes on with a heavily repetitious throb that owes more to Swans than Pink Floyd or Yes. The percussion crashes away hard but it’s almost buried in the overloading guitar assault that’s cranked up to the max and is straining to feed back constantly throughout, before it wanders off into ‘Atemlos’, where it’s the strolling bass that dominates as the guitars retreat to the background and sampled dialogue echoes through the slightly jazz-flavoured ripples. It’s here that things begin to feel less linear, more meandering, and the chiming post-rock sections feel less like an integral part of a journey and more like detours – pleasant, appropriate detours, but detours nevertheless – and it culminates in a climactic violin-soaked crescendo.

Veering between hazy shoegazey ambience that borders on abstraction, and mellifluous post-rock drifts, Stimmt is varied, and, oftentimes, rich in atmosphere. ‘Mir’ is very much a soporific slow-turner that casts a nod to Slowdive, but with everything slowed and sedated, wafting to an inconclusive finish.

The lumbering ‘Staerken’ stands out as another heavy-duty riffcentric behemoth: it’s low, it’s heavy, and finds Baker exploring the range of distortion effects on his pedal board, stepping from doom sludge to bolstering shred and back, and there’s a deep, crunchy bass that grinds away hard, boring at the bowels and hangs, resonating at the end.

After the full-on overloading ballast of ‘Quer’ that really does go all out on the abrasion, with squalling guitar paired with a nagging bass loop that’s reminiscent of The God Machine (the track as a while, calls to mind ‘Ego’ from their debut Songs From the Second Story), closer ‘Resolut’ is eight minutes of semi-ambient prog.

It’s a lot to digest, and it’s certainly not an easy pigeonhole, but it’s an intriguing album that stands out as being quite different both musically, and in the context of Baker’s output. Unusual but good, and offering much to explore.

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elkyn – something

Posted: 26 February 2021 in Singles and EPs
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17th February 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s completely fitting that ‘something’, the new single from the Leeds-based artist elkyn is accompanied by a truly expansive video that slow-pans an immense landscape – a slow-panning view over a valley in the Lake District which touches me more than I’d have expected. But then, The Lakes is my happy place, a space away from the world and while the swinging pan shot is close to inducing motion sickness, it’s also a perfect accompaniment to this dreamiest of tunes.

The track follows up on last year’s single ‘if only it was alright now’, as well as the debut EP Beech. The song maybe but a mere two minutes and ten seconds of acoustic guitar, simple synths and basic drum machines, backing Joseph Donnelly’s hushed, introverted vocal musings, but it’s a world unto itself. And being drawn into that world is a breathtaking experience, and one that is far, far greater than the music alone.

The vocals are a soft wash that melt into the marshmallow instrumentation, meaning you focus more on the overall tone and atmosphere than the words themselves – words that according to the liner notes contain ‘a heart-felt personal confession of feeling hopeless and desperate.’ That’s certainly a relatable emotion, and, paired with the visuals, combines a certain tension and a sense of claustrophobia and entrapment with magnificent space and freedom.

The sensation is vague, the mood is intangible yet touching, and ultimately, elkyn has – again – delivered ‘something’ special.

Finding Aurora – The Last Call

Posted: 26 February 2021 in Singles and EPs
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19th February 2021

Thinking big is maybe the starting point for bands who want to go places. How many local bands have you seen or heard and thought ‘but these guys could, and should, be huge?’, and yet five years later they’re still plugging away at the pub up the road playing to maybe forty people. Yes, you need material and a decent show, but more than anything, progress takes drive – the drive to play further – and further – afield, and more often, to get some decent PR and do some marketing. Sadly, all the word of mouth in your hometown won’t lead to world dominance, even at a snail’s pace, however good your songs are.

This four-piece garage rock band from Newport, South Wales clearly have some motivation: starting as bedroom project in late 2017, they’ve won themselves a substantial fanbase on the Welsh circuit (playing their debut gig not in their hometown but in Pontypool, and working up to selling out 100+ capacity gigs in both Newport and Cardiff), and as a statement of their intent and ambition, they recorded their debut EP with Jeff Rose (Skindred and Dub War).

It’s ALL about the ENERGY with ‘Last Call’. The intro just powers in all guitars and guns blazing, positively popping and at a hundred miles an hour. The clean vocals keep it accessible to a wider audience, but it’s not a sanitised, cleansed, crisp and commercial cut: here, Finding Aurora prove it’s possible to do melodic and ballsy riffing at the same time. And what’s more they pack it into a tight three-minute burst. With a killer chorus backed by some big guitars, it’s pretty hard to fault, and you’d have to be deaf not to hear the mass potential here.

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Wardruna – Kvitravn

Posted: 25 February 2021 in Albums
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Music For Nations – 22nd January 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Wardruna were recently the focus of a rather unexpected article on ‘the rise of dark Nordic folk’ in The Guardian. It was largely positive, about how a largely obscure underground scene was reaching a wider audience, and emphasised the elementary influences of the distinctly non-metal genre. It was a feature that also doubled as a plug for new album Kvitravn, which, we’re told, is a continuation of the Runaljod trilogy in musical terms, but at the same time marks ‘a distinct evolution in Wardruna’s unique sound’.

And it is indeed a unique sound, and the album begins with haunting acapella vocals and rumbling atmospherics before picked strings and pounding martial drums fill the air with bold patterns. The sense of scale and depth that characterises the album as a whole is brought to the fore from the very start. More than this, it’s a sense of something primeval and non-linguistic that pervades Kvitravn. Like many listeners, I have no comprehension of the words, which are sung in elongated vowelly drones, the voices coming together not so much in harmony but in throng. And there is something immensely powerful about that. I suppose that the voice as an instrument taps into some deeper consciousness and resonates on a level that’s more genetic or spiritual than gnostic.

Tense and mournful violins provide the main accompaniment to the lugubrious vocals on the six-minute title track. It’s the roar of the sea that brings the arrival of the funereal shanty that is ‘Skugge’. The thumping motoric ‘Fylgjutal’ with its brooding bassline and repetitive guttural vocal growling is incredibly Germanic, and referencing Rammstein doesn’t seem entirely inappropriate here in terms of connecting to anyone unfamiliar with Wardruna: the drums pummel and it’s intense in a relentless way, battering away for the majority of its expansive seven and a half minutes before taking a more poet-rock turn to the close. It all drives forward toward the ten-minute ‘Andvevarljod’ or ‘Song of the Spirit-weavers’ which is epic in every sense and encapsulates the album within a single, immense track.

The instrumentation is, by and large, spartan, and if the string arrangements connote more traditional folk, then ethereal droning backdrops and tribal drumming hark back to something more traditional still – that is to say, that what we commonly associate with ‘traditional’ is often fairly modern, and that all too often our sense of history and skewed and myopic.

Kvitravn evokes images of forests, of caves, of barren mountain tops and vast expanses of moorland, and wide open spaces without people… the occasional wolf or bear, maybe, but a preindustrial world, of wildness and wilderness. And while it does have a certain ‘soundtrack’ feel to it, nothing feel forced or artificial. Kvitravn doesn’t feel like an ersatz replica of Nordic dark ages, but as if it was actually created there and has leaked forward through time to the present, untouched. As such, it’s a moving experience.

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Charlie Nieland – Divisions

Posted: 24 February 2021 in Albums
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5th March 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Inspired by a passage in the novel White Teeth by Zadie Smith, NYC’s Charlie Nieland describes the lead single, ‘Land of Accidents’ from his new album as ‘a dark anthem to not-belonging’. Divisions certainly presents an eclectic mix that doesn’t really belong anywhere, and perhaps encapsulates that sentiment of unbelonging most perfectly within its very fabric. Traversing between a host of styles spanning post-rock, neo-prog, folk, indie, and further afield, if any one genre has an overarching influence, it’s 70s prog.

A stuttering, jittering rapidfire drum machine snare jolts like an electric current through the easy strumming clean guitar that leads the instrumentation on ‘Always on Fire’, the first song on the album. He’s gone all out for the grand curtain opener with this expansive, emotive, cinematic effort that lures the listener into a spiralling, psychedelic experience, and it’s effective – there’s a lot going on and a lot to explore. The same is true of the album as a whole, as it reveals more with every track.

A swell of sweeping strings add layers to the rolling drums and mid-pace melancholy of ‘The Falling Man,’ which contrasts with the uptempo punk-tinged indie drive of ‘I Refuse’ which comes on a like a blend of The Wedding Present, The Fall, and Mission of Burmah.

Aforementioned single cut ‘Land of Accidents’ packs it all in, and has the twists and turns and explosive dynamics of Oceansize at their best and builds into a muscular wall of sound, with dense waves of guitar dominating. ‘Tightrope’ is pure REM, only it’s probably a better take on REM than many of the band’s own later years work, and spins into a soaring shoegaze climax that is nothing short of absolute gold. It’s one of those songs you could easily play on repeat for hours – but then that would be to underexpose the broody magnificence of ‘Skin’ which immediately follows. ‘Some Things You Keep to Yourself’ has hints of Mansun but also later Depeche Mode about it with its dark brooding and also its soulful feel, not least of all the backing vocals. Things continue to get darker and starker on the synth-led closer ‘Pawns’ that goes all weirdy as it stretches and twists out of shape.

Neiland sustains the interest and the variety throughout, and there’s no let-up in quality either: there’s not a throwaway or duff song on Divisions, and with thirteen tracks, that’s no small achievement. That Divisions is almost impossible to pigeonhole is no issue: after all there are only two kinds of music – good and bad. And this is most definitely good.

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Charlie Nieland - Divisions (LP cover)

Nouveau Bleach – Nouveau Bleach (EP)

Posted: 23 February 2021 in Singles and EPs
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5th March 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

I’ve spent hours racking my brains to fathom what the opening bars of ‘Nouveau Bleach’ – the first track on the eponymous EP by Nouveau Bleach remind me of, and I still can’t bloody make it out. With a name that’s straight out of Nathan Barley, this south London trio are as postmodern as they are post-punk, and the four tracks of their debut EP sets their stall out plainly, with no pissing about.

There’s are elements of The Fall with the ramshackle, rattling guitar that goes here there and everywhere, and especially the yelping, partially atonal vocal, with the simple repetition of the sloganeering refrain ‘Nouveau bleach / Rinse repeat’, conveying the ennui of tedious repetition so succinctly. The baritone vocal has a hint of Editors’ Tom Smith about it, but then, there’s quite a concoction of elements in the mix., and the production being lo-fi and primitive really suits the sound.

‘Pharmakon’ is amore straight head punk tune, and the band soon reveal a simple but effective formula, based on heavy repetition, and ‘Kondonauts’ exemplary – again, The Fall, Public Image, and comparisons to more recent acts from Scumbag Philosopher to Bilge Pump seem reasonable: a propensity for the motoric, for repetitive, cyclical riffs and unmelody still reveal some lovely moments – but mostly jarring, sharp-edged ones that make sitting back and just listening uncomfortable ‘but does it spark joy?’ they ask. In some way, it sort of does, and you join the dots to Gang of Four and snotty, shouty 90s underground and riot grrrl.

If it sounds like an explosive, incoherent identity crisis, it’s because it probably is: Nouveau Bleach are absolute magpies, and not entirely discriminate, which is actually an asset: everything is material, and they bring it together in a broiling melting pot to create a unique and antagonistic fusion, and it kicks ass.

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Videostore – Superhero Movies

Posted: 23 February 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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26th February 2021

It seems only fitting that lo-fi indie duo Videostore should return to the roots that inspired their vaguely nostalgic moniker and the theme for their debut album Vincent’s Picks for their latest lockdown single release with a song which Nathan says was inspired by ‘sitting around watching superhero movies.’

Certainly, inspiration for a lot of art has been coming from closer to home this last year, and most life has been lived vicariously for many of us. Movies provide a much-needed escape when the limits of your life are just four walls, and this punchy, guitar-driven single is exemplary of Videostore’s resourcefulness. Written and recorded just a week ago, accompanied by self-filed footage (mostly shot at home or in local parks in a single day) and assembled by Dave Meyer, it’s once again a strong sell for the DIY methodology that facilitates not only full artistic control but a greatly reduced time-lag between conception and release, ‘Superhero Movies’ celebrates its uncomplicated evolution – Nathan sitting on the sofa with one of his many guitars, parked in front of a laptop, the pair supping wine.

‘This is not my movie’ Lorna sings, increasingly frenzied, as she spirals and spins around, beshaded, in a park somewhere as the guitars fizz and the bass thumps against an insistent drum machine.

And while this is ostensibly an indie tune, the tumultuous distortion of the buzzsaw guitar and the overall production is actually reminiscent of Big Black – in particular their cover of Wire’s ‘Heartbeat’. It’s not entirely pretty, and it’s better for it: ‘Superhero Movies’ packs all the energy, and delivers it with a raw immediacy that really hits the spot.

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Stuart Chalmers / Distant Animals – Live At Cave 12

Posted: 23 February 2021 in Albums
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Cruel Nature Recordings – 5th March 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Live performances of experimental electronic work, particularly when involving an element of improvisation, can be somewhat hit and miss, and what’s more, sometimes, much of the wonder and appreciation is derived from witnessing the performance itself, as much as the sound.

This album was recorded live at Cave 12 in Geneva in 2019, when Stuart Chalmers and Distant Animals shared a stage is a document of a moment in time, and is one that explores differences and similarities. Each act occupies one side of the limited-edition cassette (of which there are just 45 copies) and naturally, a track each on the digital version, and each track contains a full performance from each artist.

Chalmers’ set is a sparse, minimalist affair. Clanking chiming notes – partially atonal, and entirely arrhythmic plink, plonk, clatter and clink every which way. It is detuned strings? Is it a glockenspiel, xylophone, or similar? Whatever the sonic source, it increases in speed and urgency, but not in musicality, and a flat chord shreds and mangles as though strumming a washboard with relentless frustration. While the performance is brimming with energy, there’s a purposeful tonal flatness to this.

At times a clattering clang, a monotonous chang of deadened notes, and a tension-building thrum that grates away relentlessly, Chalmers’ set is never comfortable, never easy, never really breaking into the realms of melodic. The relentless scrapes and scuffles scratch away for twenty-three troublesome minutes. It’s rhythmic and does build in a certain way, but it’s slow progress that’s uncomfortable. One suspects that this uneasy sensation would only be heightened during the actual performance.

Distant Animals’ set is more overtly ambient, a twenty-minute piece that centres around twisting dronescapes and elongated crawls. The layers ripple and rub against one another to create not a dissonance as such, but a vibration of frequencies.. but suddenly, around the mi-section, the storm breaks and dissipates… there is a calm. Soothing synth waves of something that borders on electroprog crossed with chilled-out electroambient. Its trajectory is very different from Chalmers’ – instead of a single, linear trajectory that works its way to a specific end point, they navigate a series of passages and movements that segue into one another to form a meandering journey, which eventually tapers to a fade that leaves you wondering if it was all a dream, and wishing you had been there.

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