Norwegian psych/stoner rockers Dune Sea have recently shared a new song off their third album Orbital Distortion, which is set for release on November 11th via All Good Clean Records.
Titled ‘Hubro’, this song is the first taster of what’s to expect from Orbital Distortion and sees the Norwegian trio delving further into space rock, taking off for a grand musical journey into outer space. Check it out here:
Since their self-titled debut album in 2019, Dune Sea have establish themselves as a solid part of the Norwegian psych-scene. Their psych-space rock universe has expanded for every release and with their upcoming 3rd album “Orbital Distortion” it seems like they have left the Earth for good cruising though the cosmos.
Devotional is the new collaborative release from The Lord (Greg Anderson of Sunn O))), Goatsnake and Engine Kid) with vocalist and violinist Petra Haden. The album is a rapturous and heady offering of wordless vocalizations, droning guitars, and heaviness explored in unexpected and intoxicating ways. On Devotional, through a haze of incense, flowing robes, and secret mantras, Petra Haden’s voice rings out over constant drones in ecstatic chants throughout this musical investigation into the myriad of ways in which worship can lure and intoxicate. This is a journey that Haden and Anderson go on together, the guitar and vocals combined like the call and response of a guru and its congregation.
Petra Haden first worked with Greg Anderson during his time in Goatsnake, as well as on the second SUNN O))) studio album, ØØ Void. Now, two decades later, the duo reunite for Devotional. Anderson comments, “It had been about 20 years since we had recorded together and Petra is as she was then: a master improviser and otherworldly vocalist.” Haden continues, “It was so much fun getting to play and sing on SUNN O)))’s album ØØ Void. 20 years later, I’m on stage with them at The Mayan Theater in Los Angeles singing and playing on the encore. I was in heaven! After the show, Greg and I talked about working on more music together. When I heard his ideas, I already had melodies in my head. I recorded some ideas at home and it developed from there. Greg is a really deep listener and he’s so much fun to work with. Getting to collaborate with Greg reminds me why I love to sing and improvise. I feel free and happy. That’s what music is all about."
Poland’s pioneering and leading progressive rock band Riverside finally return with a new studio album entitled ID.Entity, to be released via longtime international partners InsideOutMusic on January 20th, 2023.
The band have also revealed first single ‘I’m Done With You’ which you can check out here:
Hot on the heels of ‘No Chains’ in the summer, Sleep Kicks follow up with ‘Neptune’ as we fade into autumn. And there’s something of an autumnal feel to the reflective feel of ‘Neptune’.
‘Was it an act of spite / Or was it the unrelenting time / That pulled you away that night?’ Terje Kleven questions contemplatively at the beginning of the song against a warm, rolling bass and rhythmic blend of piano and chilly synths. The vibe here is distinctly early Interpol, and it suits the band, and the song, well.
Kleven’s moderate baritone rides some deftly chiming guitar that breaks into a strong chorus where the synths come to the fore and sweep upwards to forge something uplifting while still tinged with a taint of melancholy.
Yet again, Sleep Kicks have dropped a killer tune that balances darkness and light, depth and immediacy, in an example of outstanding songwriting craftsmanship. Or, put simply, ‘Neptune’ is another great tune from a consistently great band.
Ever spend time scratching your head wondering what a song or band remind you of, and drawing eternal blanks? Yeah, I get it a lot: I put it down to exposure. Too much music to process.
This is by no means my first introduction to Arcade Fortress: we’ve featured three of their previous singles here on these pages, and I personally described ‘Sabotage’ as ‘a fully-realised anthemic beast of a tune’. And I stand by that, too.
Younique the album finds them powering into the title track by way of an opener, there are samples seeping from the corners as they thrust away at a punk / rock / pop hybrid sound with incendiary energy.
Younique may not be unique by any stretch, but then nor is it derivative, and my ponderance for comparisons is a frustrating distraction but simply a habit of mine. I can’t help but try to place references, lifts, nods. It’s perhaps because there’s so much going on and Younique is such a melting pot of all things from 90s grunge to post-millennial punk-pop that placing any of it specifically is nigh on impossible, and as a result, what you’re faced with is the vibe, and it’s deep retro.
They encourage us, the listener, to sit back, relax and enjoy a rollercoaster of a ride over 12 anthemic rock tracks, but it’s not as easy as all that. The slow-burning Sabotage’ sits four tracks in and there’s no questioning its anthemic enormity, and I can’t help but think of a grungier take on the sound of Depeche Mode circa Ultra, perhaps, when they were grittier and more guitar-driven.
But there’s a lot happening here. It’s not all absolutely killer: ‘Alan Bell’ gets a bit emo and lightweight, and elsewhere, and ‘Killing Time’ sits between Weezer and 80s hair rock, while ‘Tangible’ throws an area-friendly curveball. In contrast, the driving ‘Uppercut’ is more reminiscent of Therapy? circa Troublegum and its tense, taut, and totally kicks arse, as does the riff-driven ‘Strontium Dog’. ‘Dark Seeds’ is more of a punky / hard rock crossover.
It’s not always easy to make a casting vote, and it’s not always fair to get off the fence when it comes to weighing up maters of opinion and taste. Ultimately, Younique finds Arcade Fortress packing some solid tunes, and that’s hard to argue, regardless of taste.
That I’m a huge, huge fan of Human Worth is probably quite apparent by now, or really ought to be. As a label, they’re the absolute model of the cottage industry DIY label with a social conscience that’s matched by the quality of the music they release. How many labels can you name where absolutely every single release in their catalogue is an absolute fucking banger? And now, it gets even better, as the community spirit can be seen to be an integral aspect embraced by the acts on their roster, as the assemblage of the appropriately-named Fucking Lovely indicates.
Well, it probably depends on your taste, of course: it’s not lovely in the lilting, floral, melodic sense – more in the ironic or sarcastic sense, as this EP is every inch the gnarly barrage of noise you’d expect from the Human Worth alumni who feature in the lineup, which the bio describes as ‘an evolving noise project brought into being by Joel Harries from 72%. Featuring Luc Hess (Coilguns / Closet Disco Queen) on drums and Thomas Lacey (Cower / Yards / The Ghost of a Thousand) on vocals.’
They go on to detail how this record ‘came together through shared connections with Human Worth and brief meetings playing gigs in 2019’; and that ‘the music grew steadily from the initial guitar and drum machine tracks into the frantic and unnerving songs of “Catalogue Of Errors”’ which were ‘recorded remotely between the UK & Switzerland’. It seems like this is the way collaborations will happen from now on. This is probably a (rare) post-pandemic positive: distance and scheduling are no object when it’s possible record at any time and from any distance.
This feels like there is absolutely no distance: it’s the sound of a band playing at ten thousand decibels and right in your face, so harsh and full on that your eyes pop out of their sockets.
It’s brief and intense. Four tracks of jarring, jolting, stuttering riffs and shouting pitched against one another at obtuse angles and colliding against one another in the most awkward and ungainly fashion, for maximum ugly impact and packed into less than ten minutes. Oh yes, it’s fucking lovely alright. It makes your skin crawl and your hair stand on end, it makes you clench and quiver , makes your shoulders tense and your neck stuff. ‘Billy Boy’ is gnarly and full-tilt Jesus Lizard psycho, all dirty guitars, gritty bass and twisted manic vocals. ‘Maximum Exhaustion’ is a soundtrack of relatability, relaying the staggering, stumbling, lurching delirium of fatigue beyond fatigue – also known as life.
The full-on earth-shattering hardcore of ‘Bricked’ draws the EP to a close with samples echoing around low in the mix and the words inaudible, and while angry, sludgy acts are disparate but numerous, I’m reminded of Blacklisters here.
It’s a gloriously demented racket, and it hurts. And it most definitely is absolutely fucking lovely.
Delivering a resolute punch with an acerbic sting in its tale, new single ‘Stamp You Out’ sees the Manchester band return to the spotlight with commanding form and typically uncompromising style.
From its blistering post/punk guitar lines to its punishing percussives, ‘Stamp You Out’ creates an impending atmosphere of anxiety throughout. With Adam Houghton’s trademark baritone vocal booming with all the force of an omnipotent autocrat at the lectern of a police state; it makes for a powerful statement of intent that instantly envelops listeners back into the shadow-strewn world of IST IST. Speaking about ‘Stamp You Out’, Houghton says:
“[Stamp You Out] tips its hat to the previous IST IST where the modus operandi was to try and make an impact in the most forceful way; pounding drums and bass and repetitive lyrics. I remember watching a news report where a politician, whose name I forget, just kept saying: ‘we need to stamp this out’. I was thinking ‘we need to stamp you out’, so I wrote an aggressive fight song and a call to arms about it.”
The single is accompanied by an official video that sees the band deliver a voltaic performance of the track against a flurry of incandescent lights. Watch it here:
AA
Of the video Keating adds: “We felt like the track is a straightforward rock song which required a straightforward video and we didn’t want to over-embellish the visual aspect. For existing IST IST fans, it re-affirms what we’re all about, and for anyone new it tells you everything you need to know.”
The new single is also accompanied by the announcement of IST IST’s third studio album Protagonists, out 31 March 2022 via Kind Violence Records. After securing their status as one of Manchester’s most exciting acts with their 2020 debut Architecture, and then consolidating the title with its 2021 follow-up The Art of Lying; new album Protagonists arrives as something of a new dawn for the four-piece. As Andy Keating says:
“This was our first straightforward album, which sounds strange given it’s the third one. Our first album was a little bit of a back catalogue, and the rest was written in the same vein to have a coherent record. The second album was a stab in the dark and written and recorded during lockdown restrictions, but it broke us into the top 100. ‘Protagonists’ feels like the first album where there’s no pressure.”
An album all about new beginnings, with a nod to the trials and tribulations of love, tricky family relationships and the feeling of being trapped by the past, ‘Protagonists’ arrives as an attestation to a band sure of their own identity. With the time and space to experiment in order to solidify their own sound, Keating adds:
“We originally started just exploring sounds and textures which appealed to us, and it evolved into fully-fledged songwriting. There are some elements which hark back to our ballsy days of a heavy sound, but we feel like this is a band expressing themselves how they want to.”
Owing its title to songwriter Adam Houghton’s magpie-like method of writing, Protagonists finds the frontman taking prominent characters that have caught his imagination, whether fictional or non-fictional, and transplanting them into dystopian worlds with new and uncertain outcomes. As Hougton explains: “My process has always been taking inspiration from everything around me including but not limited to TV, Books, Movies, Newspaper, Articles on Wikipedia, Crime Documentaries etc. I then use these sources to craft fictitious stories around an imagined persona. The title ‘Protagonists” seemed to work with this method.”
Blurring the lines between fact and fiction and traversing a broad spectrum of genres, tracks like “Nothing More Nothing Less” — a “simple love song written from a woman’s perspective” — take on a gauzy and ethereal pop-tinted quality, while slightly more menacing moments like “Fool’s Paradise” and “Trapdoors” find closer alignment with the band’s brooding, brazen rock roots.
From future favourites like “Something Has To Give”, a jittering guitar track about “a stick or twist situation”, to fully fitted-out classics like the anthemic “Emily” (a live fixture from the band’s earliest days, which has finally found its place on this record), ‘Protagonists’ will provide plenty to pore over for fans new and old.
Recorded and mixed by Michael Whalley and IST IST at Milkshed Studios, the album was mastered by the legendary Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone at Sterling Sound (The National, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol). A compulsive, character-driven record from a band hitting their creative zenith, IST IST will release ‘Protagonists’ in Spring of 2023.
To mark the release, IST IST will be playing a special hometown launch show for the new record at the Manchester Ritz in March next year – details below. There will also be a small preview tour before the end of 2022, with dates in London, Birmingham and Hebden Bridge. Standby for further UK live dates soon.
IST IST UK LIVE SHOWS
NOVEMBER 2022
3/11 O2 Academy 2, Islington, 4/11 The Rainbow, Birmingham, 25/11 Trades Club, Hebden Bridge (Sold out)
Composer and experimental filmmaker Christina Vantzou has shared "Kimona I", set to powerful and heart-breaking footage from Lizzie Borden’s 1983 feminist film, Born in Flames.
"Kimona I" is a sparse track with only a piano and one vocal present, echoed and distant as though the song is being performed at the end of a cathedral. Quietly melancholic, the track is somewhat at odds with the footage of smiling women, which makes the ending all the more impactful. Christina Vantzou speaks to the inclusion of the Born In Flames footage;
"Filmed in the early 80’s, mainly in the East Village, largely with friends, non-actors and activists, Born in Flames is a film about work, class & race divisions, and organized revolt. Meanwhile on No. 5, ‘Kimona 1 & Kimona II’ were written for workers, specifically low-wage employees at giant institutions."
About her collaboration with Christina Vantzou Lizzie Borden says;
"I was honored when Christina Vantzou approached me with her beautiful piece of music “Kimona I,” accompanied by scenes from my film Born In Flames. As we collaborated, I was stunned to see familiar images take on new meaning when set against her haunting, elegiac music. Thank you for your exquisite work, Christina."
It’s been a while. It’s been a while since the last Wonkystuff. Like, six months or something. It’s been a while since Deluxe Hugs debuted at a previous Wonkystuff, and just as long since they last played. It’s been a while since legion of Swine last played in the UK, and even longer since the porcine prince brought his brand of harsh electronica to York – like about four years. Time flies when there’s a pandemic and everyone gets so screwed by lockdown conditions that they’re trepidatious about going back out and find their urge to create, to get out, to perform, has gradually leached out of them to the point that any event is a herculean effort to perform or attend.
The great thing about Wonkystuff nights, as I’ve perhaps mentioned previously, is that they’re not only brilliantly-curated melting pots for musical hybrids from the fringes on all fronts of electronica and beyond, but they’re also wonderfully warm and welcoming occurrences with a real sense of community. And so we’re all here being socially awkward and comfortable and accommodating of that awkwardness, acknowledging the fact none of us get out as much lately, while being pleased to see friendly faces. And you know what? This isn’t just ‘nice’. These are the fine threads that keep people together – not just in a community sense, but individually, knowing that for all the isolation, we’re not alone.
The Wonkystuff House Band who played at Wonkystuff #19 mutated into Deluxe Hugs on a night it seems I failed to document for some reason. Anyway, their debut was fun, a stab at entertainment and some kind of alt-disco thing, and tonight… well, tonight it’s apparent that they’ve not spent much time together since last time. But with big, squelchy bass, disco grooves, and atonal vocals, through the chaos, the songs shine through, as does the chemistry between the three. ‘People in charge/they know what they’re doing…’ drones Simon, and the layers of irony are impossible to ignore. It’s a bit punk and it’s a lot of semi improv fun.
Deluxe Hugs
Up next, Spore, a duo from Hull, bring big, dank, murky modular noise. They churn outa mass of swirling dark ambience that slides into power electronics and old-school industrial. The emergence of a thumping drum beat part way through made for a change of texture. Their set is hypnotic, but also sounds like a noise gig with a club night in the next room. I feel I should collaborate with these guys – because they’re ace, and Nosnispore has a definite ring to it.
Spore
Glider Theory are a Leeds-based guitar and drum machine duo. They bring soaring, drifting, post-rock post-punk hybrid instrumentals… Guitars that sound like synths. Guitars that sound like woodwind… Ambient contrails. It’s nice.
Glider Theory
But if you want more nice, you don’t want Legion of Swine. Me, I don’t want anymore nice: I want to feel uncomfortable and I want my ears to hurt, and my chest too vibrate, which is the main treason I came down to see legion of swine on the first date of their UK tour on a visit from Sweden. And I got what I wanted.
Legion of Swine
The set, in near darkness bar a deep red light, begins with static drone. The distorted hum continues, buzzing, grating, sawing. It tense and uneasy, in a way that’s reminiscent of 90s Whitehouse It’s surprisingly quiet, and, I reflect, kinda like listening to a hair dryer. Then it stops, and there’s a rumble, a breeze. It’s more ominous than abrasive… Until suddenly it isn’t. A harsh noise wall erupts. And keeps on building. Fuck. It hurts. It’s an immense sonic force. And then… then it stops. Proctor does his signatory trotter pose at the end of the set. It’s a welcome return for one of the north’s greatest masters of din, topping off a top night.
What a week to drop a new single. Especially if you’re a politically-charged British band. And particularly if you’re Benefits. Their meteoric ascendancy continues unabated: still without label, management, or PR, they’ve had the video for their new single premiered on none other than Rolling Stone Magazine’s website. They are most certainly not your typical Rolling Stone act. Yes, the magazine may historically have been an outlet for Hunter S. Thomson’s writing and been both political and cutting edge, more recently, it’s been very much more establishment. But it’s reach is huge, and if this suggests by any means that Benefits have gone establishment, you’re either nuts, or you’ve not heard of Benefits before.
For a band like this to be given such a platform isn’t simply a big deal – it’s practically the sounding horn of revolution. And as the British government collapses around our ears faster than 24/7 scrolling news can update their marquees, the timing could not be better.
Against a grinding, undulating, distorted mechanical throb, Kingsley Hall delivers another lacerating dissection of Real Life, carving his way through anxiety and dayjob drudgery, corporate and political doublespeak, endless bullshit filtered and amplified through the echo chambers of social media, ‘failure masked as victory’.
Two-thirds in, a hefty industrial beat kicks in and gives a solidity to the squalling blast of thick, thick noise, and the roaring rage yields to a crisp, clinical spoken word monologue that in many ways hits even harder than that savage raw-throated primal scream, and there’s glimmer of home as he intimates ‘we can win this’… and then, abruptly, nothing. It’s the most unexpected ending to a sing since Dinosaur Jr’s cover of The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’.
It’s also Benefits’ most uncompromisingly brutal and heavyweight release yet, as well as their most fully realised.
The world is changing fast. We may be quite literally drowning in shit on the coasts of this brown and deeply unpleasant pleasant land, but Benefits are doing their bit to make it a better place, not by bringing sunshine, but telling it like it is.
Aural Aggravation 