Archive for November, 2021

Philippe Petit – Modulisme Session 051 2nd Year BD

Posted: 30 November 2021 in Albums
Tags: , , , , ,
0

4th September 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s small wonder that there is a huge affection for modular synths, because quite simply nothing else creates the same range of sounds. French label Modulisme is devoted to all things modular, to the exploration of modular synthesis. It’s operated by a small team consisting of Philippe Petit (A&R), Yan Proefrock (Founder, administrator & artistic director), Guillaume Amen, Cédric Languin, and Bas Mantel, and elements of the contents of their website are telling: the header for the links section suggests that ‘To keep our virus spreading Modulisme is relayed thru the following alleys’. William Burroughs references aren’t the only literary and theoretical allusions, and there’s an interesting formal styling to the titles of the label’s releases, which document artist sessions for the label, which is clinical and library-like. Subtitled ‘the birthday session,’ Modulisme Session 051 2nd Year BD commemorates the second anniversary of the label’s existence.

Petit explains that for this release, he elected to ‘« compose » a session instead of improvising’, and explains how he ‘followed the idea of drift as a privileged practice of opening up to the new, the one defined by Debord’… and ‘Following the spirit of situationist irreverence and creativity I hope to stimulate a dérive towards a closer listen…’

In doing so, Petit explores the full range of his modular gear on this outing for an even ten pieces, which include four behemoth workouts spanning in excess of seven minutes, including the monumental seventeen-minute ‘Une villégiature Cosmétique’ which spirals in as the second track.

There’s a lot of bibbling bubbling, frothy, squelchy synth sound on offer here, and much of it is quite palatable; but then, in exploring that range, Petit lands on the grinding unease of ‘Driftin’ to EcsTazy’ which strays into metallic discombobulation and discomfort as it serves up eleven minutes of metallic scrapes, buzzes and agitated drones, but-ups, samples, loops and overlays. It’s neither pleasant nor comfortable, and if on the one hand it’s a thrown-together random work of frivolousness and near-flippancy, it’s equally a reminder that endless ruptures can be difficult to navigate, and ‘drift’ ultimately translates as entirely non-linear and consequently at times difficult to digest and difficult to process.

The two ‘Psychographical Pivotal Point’ pieces may be but brief interludes, but they both pack in an abundance of warping rhythms and general abstract weirdness. No, it is not all in your mind.

Listening to Modulisme Session 051 2nd Year BD is like swallowing a lot of food without chewing, and some if it is hard to swallow. That’s by no means a criticism. Art is supposed to be challenging. And this is most definitely art.

AA

a1561580880_10

Watch: ‘Religious Soldier’ by SINthetik Messiah

Posted: 29 November 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Industrial bass act SINthetik Messiah has just unveiled their new single, ‘Religious Soldier’.

‘Religious Soldier’ is about exposing religious leaders for brainwashing, abusing their followers and specifically, how they want their flock to be ‘good soldiers’ in their own twisted version of what it means to serve God. Setting the tone of the new single, SINthetik Messiah’s ‘Religious Soldier’ features a recording of a fake priest performing a fake exorcism on a brainwashed woman.

The sonic hammer of sound behind ‘Religious Soldier’ draws musical inspiration from the hardcore drum and bass, power noise, EBM, and old school industrial music scenes. The main vocalist, Bug Gigabyte takes his vocals from a punk rock type scream to a full on male choir. Lyrically, he begs the audience to wake up and not fall into a cult.

This two-track EP precedes a full length album due out in 2022.

Check it here:

AA

AA

6db4827f-99a0-8ee5-2030-a983681eae1f

Edward Sol – Almost Sugar

Posted: 29 November 2021 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Despot – 3rd November 2021

Christiopher Nosnibor

Ukraine continues to reveal itself as having a throbbing underground scene, producing some really high-quality nuggets of experimental and exploratory music. ‘Almost Sugar’ is one of those short albums, occupied with a single longform composition on each side of a cassette or 12” record – and with the wait times and increasingly prohibitive cost of producing short runs of vinyl die to myriad factors including but not exhausted by the pandemic, the cassette is becoming ever more the format of choice.

The cassette is something of an unexpected format to experience a renaissance, largely on account of some hipsterish nostalgia for a format that formed an integral part of the formative years for so many of us. It’s very much a rose-tinted hue: memes about pencils (I always used a Bic biro myself) fail to convey the anguish of a chewed tape that had spooled out, and never mind the hassle of endless hours rewinding and fast forwarding to locate specific tracks, and so on. Much of the cassette experience was centred around frustration, and it was simply something we accepted because that was the format we had, and the only recordable (and re-recordable) one at that. Still, it would be wrong to downplay the joy of the compilation (we didn’t all call them mixtapes back then). But also, there are now practical reasons for the return to the cassette as the physical format of choice, and that’s largely down to cost and availability.

However, as Neill Jameson recently wrote in Decibel Magazine, supply chain issues may soon prove to dent the demand for the cassette again, and while on a practical level, I can’t say I’m too disappointed, on a principal level, I very much am: the two sidedness of the format is closest to replicating the vinyl experience, and the limitations of length have a close relationship to duration of recordings. Format does matter; physical mediums to matter. Necessity isn’t only the mother of invention it’s also the driver of discipline. Two fifteen to twenty-minute sides require considerably more focus than a continuous seventy-two minute expanse.

Title track ‘Almost Sugar’ is fifteen minutes of bubbling analogue exportation, with a whole lot of hissing static and polytonal drones and hums combining to for a slow-twisting, heavily atmospheric work. It’s a high concept piece, constructed around the way in which the sugar crystal ‘changes its structure under any impact’. Consider this fact next time you’re stirring your tea or coffee, or tossing a couple of spoonfuls over your morning cereal, or maybe whipping up a cake batter.

‘Superdry People’, the piece which occupies side two, is darker, murkier, the sound of a slumbering beast awakening, an ominous dungeon rumble emanating from the some subterranean chamber or even the bowels of the earth. According to the accompanying notes, ‘Superdry People’ is ‘a play about «superdry people», who are heading to the pool, apparently to «soak off». Splashes of some substances, mechanisms, fragments of secular talks’, but the title simply makes me think of tossers in trendy expensive coats, and as a London-based brand feigning the exoticism of being from Japan with it’s ‘Superdry JPN’ logos and shit, it’s one that inspires ire that extends to the people who purchase their gear. I hope that this yawning sonic abyss is the conduit which will suck all the real Superdry people into its vortex, never to return. We can but hope.

But while we’re waiting for the tossers to evaporate, this is a perfect album to immerse yourself in.

AA

a0739924440_10

Third Lung – Dialogues Of The Fatal Few

Posted: 28 November 2021 in Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , ,
1

26th November 2021

James Wells

Following on from the single releases of ‘Climb’, ‘I A Fire’, ‘Hold the Line’, and ‘What is a Life?’, Reading four-piece Third Lung have delivered their much-anticipated new EP, Dialogues Of The Fatal Few.

Three of those aforementioned tracks are featured here, and while it would have been obvious and easy to have released a five-track EP featuring all four with the new song on offer here, that they’ve gone for a more succinct release means that Dialogues Of The Fatal Few is a much more focused and cohesive release, and not a complete rehash and compilation.

Opening with ‘I A Fire’ sets the stall out nicely, and while it’s mid-tempo, it’s bold and anthemic, and recalls the spirit of circa 2004 when Keane broke through with ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ and the single releases from Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head were all over the radio. Bear with me. In context, these weren’t bad tunes which hinted at considerably more than the tedium that would follow from both bands. ‘Hold the Line’ is perhaps the strongest song in the set, balancing brooding and dark with a blossoming sunburst chorus

Piano ballad ‘The Art of Stealing’ reveals a different facet of the band, and while it’s clearly not a single track, illustrates the benefits of EPs and longer form releases. It also provides a well-placed change in form in context of the EP, bringing things down a notch or two between the monster tunes.

There’s more to Third Lung than straight-up anthems: lyrically, they’ve got some depth and are worth listening to, although I suspect that’ll likely be secondary to their career trajectory, and with such a knack for big tunes, it’s surely only time before they’re big, too.

AA

Artwork

Distant Animals – The Frequency Of The Heart At Rest

Posted: 27 November 2021 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

Cruel Nature Records – 3rd December 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

This is one of those albums where the approach to its creation is based around process and technical elements, and the title is not an abstract concept, but precisely the theme around which those technical aspects are centred. Specifically, as the accompanying notes explain, the album uses ‘a custom tuning system’ ‘based upon multiplications of the frequency of the human heart whilst sleeping’.

Or, indeed, not sleeping, as we learn of the composer’s own battles with ‘extreme sleep loss – waking as often as every 15 minutes throughout the night for a period of almost 3 years’ and how ‘the work encapsulates the haze of the perpetual tired’.

It’s relatable, as a near-lifelong insomniac myself, with my sleeping difficulties beginning at the age of five. And not sleeping is both traumatic and debilitating, and sleep deprivation can do awful things to the mind. The paranoia and hallucinations are real. ‘The Cats are Hiding and So Am I’ is a title that hints at this disconnection from the world that goes beyond the mind.

And so The Frequency Of The Heart At Rest is a curious compilation of sounds and sources, fleeting flickers of extranea in the mix beside powerful strings and dramatic drones, at times bordering on neoclassical, others something more industrial, others still folksy, and yet others still approaching ambience. In drawing on an array of sources, and then adapting and mutating them by means of overlays, adjustments of tape speed, this is very much a collage work, and the meticulous attention to detail – the way the sounds interact with one another, the slowing and the reverberations that contrive to create a rare and unique depth and density – is clearly the work of an artist who’s at once focused to the point of obsession, but also has found that point of detachment whereby the creation of such art becomes possible.

The result is incredibly powerful, in that it speaks to those who have occupied this space, where sleep and waking merge into a continuously blurry, bleary, fugue-like state. At times wistful, melancholic, or reflective in a more uplifting way, and yet at others bleak, The Frequency Of The Heart At Rest feels very much like an exploration, a work which strives to navigate this semi-real, half-lives, partially-cognisant existence.

‘6am, The Bathroom, Screaming’ is dark, ominous, heavy beats echo thunderously and captures the essence of the album, and the experience perfectly. No explanation as to why, what, if any story there is behind it, and it may be that the reason is unknown, but the piece transitions from bleak claustrophobia through a spell of ambient tranquillity before blossoming into a passage of soaring, string-led post rock with conventional percussion. The head is not so much a shed, as a cavern of chaos. The whiplash static storm of ‘The Hallways at Home’ is a synapse-blitzing crackle of electricity and fizz of pink noise over which gusts of nuclear wind drift with a desert emptiness. ‘Mealtimes at the Madhouse’ is Chris and Cosey in collision with Nine Inch Nails, a disorientating and hypnotic sketch built around a pulsing synth bass and thudding beat, while the final track, ‘Psalm of the Sleepless Child’ is an extended composition of dark shuffling and rumblings: it’s bleak, and feels very much like the soundtrack to being lost in an anxiety dream from which you can’t wake up, before veering into very different and positively Krautrock territory.

The Frequency Of The Heart At Rest is by no means restful, but is a work of rare intensity, one that prompts palpitations through its woozy, off-kilter other-worldly disorientations. It’s a restless jumble of tension and fatigue, where nothing makes sense, and it’s truly wonderful.

AA

a0578214927_10

Watch: ‘I of Tiger’ by Tigercide

Posted: 25 November 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Beneath the bright lights, and beyond the velvet ropes of Hollywood lies a different Southern California: a desolate land filled with darkness, punctuated by unrealized dreams, and broken down with anguished hearts. TIGERCIDE, formed half a decade ago in LA, gives musical form to this landscape with the ethereal, melancholic vocals of Shexist and the sparse, shadowy, and balanced beats of Saint Brendan.

The post-punk of bands like Joy Division and The Fall embodied a de-industrializing Manchester. The Bristol sound of Massive Attack and Portishead gave voice to the multicultural grittiness of their city. So too does the darkwave trip-hop of TIGERCIDE capture the ethos of Angelenos anxious about their future. In a city characterized by soaring rents, temperatures, and population, can there be any more California dreaming?

Watch the video here:

AA

f4f4cd55-d4ee-124a-c744-229065ba3ea9

Watch: ‘Listless’ by Chew Magna

Posted: 24 November 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Teasing their forthcoming self-titled debut album, Manchester’s most uplifting cacophonous craftsmen Chew Magna, are serving up their own alt-rock antidote to lifelessness in the modern age with the ironically titled new single ‘Listless’ – complete with an unsettling self-made David Lynch inspired video.

“Listless is mostly about wasting an abundance of potential,” guitarist and vocalist Laurie says, alluding to the track’s thundering chorus as it sharpshoots, “I’d kill for what you’ve got” to a motoring Krautrock groove. Recorded at Salford’s The White Hotel with SWAYS producer Martin Hurley, it is a restless and incendiary re-introduction to a band who have been busy cranking up the dial on their unyielding attack of guitar squall. “For this track we melded two songs together; you can hear the jam the main part came from,” Laurie reveals.

‘Listless’, the first track to be unleashed (and the last to be written) from the four-piece’s upcoming debut album, is unrelenting in its anthemic riff, symphonic vocal, guitar and bass flirtations, crashing drums and overall wall of enduring sound.

The accompanying ‘Listless’ video was created and filmed by the band in a single day, in a cleared-out spare bedroom on zero budget. Each Magna members’ eyes covered as their senses are heightened, slide projections and shadows dance across their turtlenecks and barefoot stance which culminates in the strangest but most addictive of calisthenics style dance routines since ‘Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)’.

“The end result is delightfully odd,” says guitarist Simon who, alongside partner Annie, took the directorial lead. “The angles are quite Lynchian, driven by us using lighting in unusual ways to enhance the confines of the small space. It was a case of setting each scene with the things we had in the house and the dance adds a surreal, claustrophobic feel to the song’s already uncanny theme.”

A further foray into Chew Magna’s poetic and philosophical world, ‘Listless’ is the first earful of the band’s eagerly-anticipated debut album arriving Spring 2022 – a record they say, sees them “emerging from Covid’s sleep.” An onslaught of decibel-destroying fuzz and rising tension, Chew Magna explores the angst felt of wasting one’s potential, freedom’s plight, apocalyptic cautionary tales, inverse worlds, the passing of youth, conspiracy theories and life’s countless frustrations.

Watch the video here:

AA

Chew

Dawn After Dark – New Dawn Rising

Posted: 23 November 2021 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

Chapter 22 Records – 4th of December 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Dawn After Dark first emerged in the second wave of goth in the late 80s, at the point where goth intersected with indie and straight-ahead rock to create something altogether more digestible for the masses than the dark, shadowy stylings of the like of The Sisters of Mercy and The March Violets (and this isn’t the time for the goth / not goth debate here, and no-one needs to hear my position on it: I’m going for the short cuts to provide context, nothing more).

The Birmingham-based act were pretty active during this time, playing in the region of 150 UK shows as headliners and support to acts including Balaam And The Angel, Wolfsbane, Fields Of The Nephilim, and Living Colour, and releasing 3 12” singles on Chapter 22 (the label that also launched The Mission in ’86 and released their first two singles, ‘Serpent’s Kiss’ and ‘Garden of Delight’) before calling it a day in 1991. 30 years on, they’ve finally delivered their debut album, and as the title suggests, its emergence is something like a phoenix from the ashes, since they’ve lain dormant all this time save for a one-off show in their hometown in September 2019.

Those three singles – ‘Maximum Overdrive’, ‘Crystal High’, and ‘The Groove’ are all featured here, albeit rerecorded using post-millennium technology and mastering, slotting in nicely alongside seven previously unreleased songs. It’s ‘Maximum Overdrive; that kick-starts the 11-track collection and is pure Cult, which is no shock given the original as performed by a band who sported long hair, leather jackets and bandanas back in the day. This version is much more polished and much more dense than the original, and you get a sense that this was how they always wanted it to sound. It’s less manic, smoother, but it still basks in rock ‘n’ roll excess and wild solos flame all over.

I’ve always filed DAD alongside the likes of Rose of Avalanche, although it’s fair to say they’ve always had a rather harder edge, and this is pressed to the fore on their long-delayed debut album, to the point that on reflection they’re more ones to file alongside The Cult and Zodiac Mindwarp now (only without the preposterous excess of the Bradford hard rockers).

‘The Day the World and I Parted Company’ brings more gritty riffery, and sounds like Sonic Temple era Cult with a hint of The Mission thanks to the twisting guitar lines and all the hammer-on descending runs. It’s enhanced by some overloading chug in the rhythm department, although there’s an expansive psychedelic workout in the mid-section.

Apart from slower, more anthemic stabs like ‘When Will You Come Home to Me’, they focus on the bold rock riffing, and you can’t exactly criticise a late 80s rock band for sounding like a late 80s rock band – and yes, that is the sound of New Dawn Rising, a title that perfectly captures their history and belatedness of their debut. It’s like they’ve never been away, apart from the fact that they’re back sounding crisp, and dense and more 2021, in terms of production if not songs.

It’s a solid, ballsy, gut kicking debut that packs in back-to-back slabs of the kind of rock they supposedly don’t make any more… only, of course, they very much do.

AA

Dawn After Dark artwork 1

Weekend Recovery announce 2 EP launch party shows

Posted: 22 November 2021 in Previews and Editorial
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Having recently unveiled the video to the killer lead song from their forthcoming EP, No Guts All the Glory, Weekend Recovery have announced they’re celebrating an EP launch in two of their favourite cities, namely  London and Leeds, at The Grace and Headrow House respectively, in early February of 2022.

Weekend Recovery recently debuted a new lineup as a three-piece, and a new sound that harder, rockier, and more direct, and these dates will provide an opportunity tom witness the emerging next stage of the band’s evolution, and they’ve got some cracking supports lined up, too.

Dates are:

Leeds, 3rd Feb with support from Salvation Jayne & Helle @ Headrow House. Tickets: www.weekendrecoveryofficial.bandcamp.com/merch/leeds-ep-launch

London 4th Feb with support from Dirty Orange @ The Grace. Tickets: www.ticketweb.uk/event/weekend-recovery-ep-launch-show-the-grace-tickets/11537935

‘No Guts’ is a corker and it’s already been getting early radio play, a sign that this is a band continuing their upward trajectory. Chances are they won’t be playing venues this size much longer. Exciting times.

See you down the front!

AA

257444014_4551127164923901_308912582594997544_n257940756_4551127148257236_4265160933946605075_n

Sozna and Young Tribe – Ephemeral

Posted: 21 November 2021 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

Panarus Productions – 3rd December 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s a challenge faced by many artists, and many try but fail to capture the fleeting moments that pass before we even see them. They’re sometimes visual, sometimes auditory, sometimes emotional, and sometimes a combination of all three, like an instant where the lighting is so rare or perfect and you feel a fleeting pang of something inside that you can’t even pinpoint… there is a soundtrack to that somewhere, but it’s so fleeting, intangible, there is simply no way you can grasp it, no way to capture it.

This is where we convene with Sozna and Young Tribe, whose biographical details are sparse but likely irrelevant. Because as the title intimates, nothing is fixed, and details are not important; what matters is chasing the mood of the moment, which is like catching air in a fishing net. It’s a common notion within the spheres of ambience, and more often than not manifests as gentle, ethereal works, with mellifluous trails of vapour drifting softly in attempts to convey the wistfulness of fleeting intangibility.

Where Ephemeral stands out is not only in its heavy use of field recordings and material lifted from various sources – snippets of voices, building work, street sounds – to create a layered collage that quite literally captures and combines fleeting moments and assembles them in a kind of patchwork, bit its darkness and weight. Everything overlaps to crowd the mind, as construction work and idle chatter overlap.

‘Subincision’ is a swampy murk of swirling dark ambient electronica withy rumbling, thunderous grumbles and ominous overtones. Following that, ‘Gods From Saturn’ is particularly dense; part space-age abstraction with hints of Krautrock, [art dark ambient, it’s not a sigh of reminiscence about that brief moment of ecstasy, but the gut-pulling nag of anguish that comes from recalling that social wrong step, that embarrassing misspeak, the sinking feeling of that wrong choice or bad decision. These emotions too are fleeting and ephemeral, and in many ways a more common kind of ephemera. The title track is dark and punishing, a gloomy chant and thud from the depths of a cavernous cave; it’s oppressive and somewhat scary, with monasterial moans and elongated shadows droning and rising. It’s eerie, creepy, and other-worldly. You may feel a pang of fear, but it, like everything else, passes in no time. There is no permanence; everything happens, and exists, in but a moment.

Every moment is just that; a moment, and it’s gone before you realise it. The highs may often prove more memorable and feel more protracted in comparison to the highs and the alrights, but in terms of the period of their existence, all is equal. Sozna and Young Tribe explore this space, and delve courageously into the lows, the throughs, the darker spaces, the moments of discomfort, shame, and embarrassment which are but fleeting which often haunt us forever. Ephemeral grips the corners of fleeting discomfort, the lower reaches of the intestine, and pokes the points of nagging discomfort from fleeting moments which linger there. In doing so, they inch closer to creating art that reflects life.

AA

cover

Older Entries