Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

Trowser Carrier + Fern – Helping Old Ladies Cross The Road

Posted: 1 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Dret Skivor – 1st May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Trowser Carrier – formerly of Leeds and now of Värmland, Sweden – is a genre unto himself, being, to my knowledge the sole exponent of polite harsh noise on the planet. And if that seems like an oxymoron, that’s entirely the point: 2013’s A Flower for My Hoonoo (reissued in expanded form in 2023) offered up musings on cups of tea and tablecloths and all manner of English manners against backdrops of raw, skull-shattering abrasive noise.

For this release (I won’t suggest, as music journos so often do, that it’s long-awaited, as I doubt more than five people have noticed the time between Trowser Carrier releases), TC has paired up with fellow Värmland resident Fern (whose error was released by Dret Skivor a couple of years ago).

The compositions are considerably longer than on the previous releases by either artist, with Helping Old Ladies Cross The Road containing four new compositions, each four to nine minutes in length, plus a thirteen-minute remix courtesy of horse funeral.

It’s the title track which lifts the curtain on this characteristically quirky set, and it seems that Fern’s input has tempered the harsh noise of Trowser Carrier, replacing blanket distortion and abrasion with muffled, exploratory, experimental electronica, which swims casually between space-age weirdness, semi-ambient Krautrock, and sci-fi drones reminiscent of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. TC’s vocals are low in the mix and masked and mangled by distortion and a host of other effects, barely discernible and wholly indecipherable amidst layers of reverb and tremolo. It all sound quite polite and considerate in the delivery, though.

‘Lovely show pillows’ is a work of dank, dark ambience which is unnerving, unsettling. The lyrics are completely beyond unravelling, the voice serving more as another instrument in the slow swirl of sound, but the title speaks for itself, as is also the case on ‘Nearly clean? No really clean!’ a slow drift of cloudlike ambience with submerged vocals which likely references a TV advert from the 80s or perhaps early 90s, the specifics of which elude me. It sounds like a disjointed message beaming in via satellite from a space mission circa 1970, crackling through space and time against a backdrop of whale song. Maybe I need to clean my ears: perhaps they’re only nearly clean. But then a barrage of noise like a thunder storm breaking hits with the arrival of ‘The smell of a lawn at dawn’. This is, of course, peak absurdism, and precisely what one would expect from the label, and in particular Trowser Carrier, whose objective is essentially to take the piss out of harsh noise and power electronics and industrial ambient and all the rest, while exploiting the form with a commendable aptitude.

Horse funeral’s remix of ‘TC + Fern’ appears to meld down the album in its entirety to a single seething morass of undifferentiated slow-moving sonic gloop. Here, any vocals are boiled down and simmered to mere bubbles in a broiling broth, and the track eventually evaporates to nothing.

What to make of this? Well, it’s not designed to meet conventional musical standards. Quite the opposite, in fact. But Helping Old Ladies Cross The Road sees Trowser Carrier + Fern belongs to a territory all of its own, dismantling the tropes and forms of the genres to which the album belongs. It would be commercial suicide if commercial potential was an issue. As it is, it’s simply a magnificent example of obstinate perversity – and good noise.

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Celer – Capri (Remastered Deluxe Edition)

Posted: 30 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Two Acorns – 15th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Remastered reissues can be more than simply an event for collectors, and aren’t always an act of exploitation on the part of the label or the band. In some instances, such as this, they afford the opportunity for a work to be released as was initially conceived, or otherwise tweaked to iron out imperfections which have rankled for years. And they also provide an opportunity to reflect and reassess – for both the artist and the listener. This is also true in this instance, particularly for me in my capacity as listener. As such, it’s worth sharing from the accompanying note:

‘Originally released in 2009, Capri is a concept album composed of fragmented vignettes, lost minutes and scenes from an idyllic imagining. A collection of brief moments, suspended shimmers, and frail settings, Capri was never meant to be more than its own thin veneer; a naked and subtle wash of saturated and semi-transparent colors, rolling as gently as ocean waves against rocky beaches, of fading afternoon sunlight, of momentary experience. Peaceful yet isolated, quiet yet collapsing, they are fading moments without definite borders, directions, or conclusion.

‘Remastered by Stephan Mathieu from the original tapes, and expanded to include the complete recordings excluded from the 2009 CD edition, this collection is finally present in its complete form in the deluxe edition as a black vinyl 3xLP, and 2CD. All music by Danielle Baquet and Will Long, 2007-2008.’

Presumably for reasons of length, the original release featured truncated versions of the tracks. Given the fleeting, fragmentary nature of the compositions, a piece cut here and there was likely deemed reasonable and barely noticeable, a fair trade for keeping the album down to a single CD (released in a limited edition of 400) back in 2009. It was one of the first Celer albums to be released on a label, after all, after Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long (who would leave a short while later) had spent the first years of their career doing everything the DIY way and producing physical releases by hand. So this is the restoration the album as intended some seventeen years ago.

My first encounter with Celer was in 2014, and at the time, the minimal nature of their ambient forms only had limited appeal, and my reviews, while positive, were brief, partly because I was knocking out up to half a dozen short reviews a day, and partly because I didn’t find there was much to say about albums which contained, to my ear as it was, not a lot of sound. And this, then, is the re-evaluation, the reflection, the reassessment – and the admission that not only has my palette expanded over the years, and I’ve become more accommodating, more amenable to different forms, but that I was perhaps not capable of listening so closely, not as attenuated to nuance and detail twenty-two years ago as I am now. That doesn’t mean my hearing’s improved (because that’s highly unlikely) or my attention is greater (it really isn’t: lockdown and worsening anxiety in the subsequent years have had a substantially detrimental impact there), but perhaps because of these things, in addition to an evolving appreciation through exposure, I’ve found that concentrating on musical works of a sparser nature can be quite therapeutic.

‘Falling in Trickles’, one of the longer pieces on the new edition, at three and three quarter minutes, was omitted from the original release, as were ‘Red Elements’ (5:40) and ‘I Slow for Love’ (2:50). And it’s here that it becomes apparent just how cropped down the 2009 release of Capri really was, with twenty-nine track, compared to the thirty-six of the new edition.

Given the nature of the material, the question of precisely how much impact the cuts made to the overall listening experience is debatable: as with so many Celer releases, Capri is abstract and nebulous, more about the overall experience than specifics. There’s no ‘hey, here comes a good bit’ nudge moment. The fact is, there are no ‘moments’ to be found here, just a succession of vaporous drifts, textures and tones which resonate against one another to create subtle shifts in atmosphere. ‘Bracelets Passed To Spanish Hands’ brings piano to the fore, but the sound is still in soft-focus, and at a minute and a half long, it feels more like a dream, fleeting, ephemeral, than anything – and this is in many ways a fair summary of the album as a whole. On the original edit, only ‘Lint White’ (at an expansive, ponderous seven and a half minutes) surpassed the four-and-a-half minute mark, with most pieces rising up and fading away after just a couple of minutes, and the fact that each piece is distinct and separate instead of one drifting or melting into the next creates more of a sense of a sketchbook – in this case, a huge portfolio of sketches, incomplete, in progress… but then, so often the finished work polishes away the essence of that sketch. Nothing about Celer suggests an immediacy which might be diminished through the expansion of the ideas presented, and yet… and yet. Listening to the drifting fragments, many of which are barely two minutes in length, there’s a sense of… something incomplete, like a dream or a thought that slips from your mind in an instant.

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The Family Men – Co/de/termination

Posted: 29 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Welfare Sounds & Records – 8th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The Family Men sound like a bunch of nice, respectable, friendly fellows who espouse upstanding, moral values… in name, that is. Musically, they describe what they do as ‘Total Harmful Sound’, and following the release of their debut No Sound Forever in 2024, their bio records that ‘the band have toured extensively across Sweden and beyond, steadily building a reputation as one of the most intense and uncompromising live acts on the circuit. That relentless momentum feeds directly into Co/de/termination, a natural yet sharper continuation of their sonic evolution.’

They go on to add, ‘Pushing both intensity and precision to new extremes, the album refines the band’s sound into something tighter, heavier, and more deliberate than before. Urgent yet controlled, abrasive yet purposeful, Co/de/termination stands as a focused and uncompromising statement’. It’s certainly a bit more accessible, a bit cleaner, than its predecessor, but then, most records are.

‘Calamity’ arrives in a swirl of noise, the repetitive motifs of grunge – but also in some respects reminiscent of Pitchshifter after the change from being Pitch Shifter – with metallic guitars set to stun, and percussion pumping hard – while the raw, ragged vocals are more rooted in hardcore. And it all blasts in amidst a noise-rock tumult that bucks and blisters, acid house bleeps suddenly submerged in a tidal wave of guitar and driving bass. ‘Scanner’ and ‘Luxury’, too, belong in part to the Nu-metal revival, while clearly retaining roots in industrial and noise rock, and it makes for a pretty potent (and angry-sounding) cocktail.

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In places – ‘AOR’, and ‘Solving the Light Issue’ for example – they invite comparisons to early Revolting Cocks, colliding electro and industrial strength guitar atop some infectious – and really quite danceable – bass grooves and shouty vocals. The latter of these, in particular, boasts a particularly phat, distorted bass sound and pounding beat, and for all of the gnarliness and aggression of the sound – and Co/de/termination is an album that’s fully in-yer-face – it’s apparent that The Family Men know how to render a certain swing and introduce a level of catchiness.

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That said, elsewhere, they just go all out on the attack: ‘Heaven’ hits as a brawling scuzzfest, laden with feedback reminiscent of the most ferocious cuts on Daughters’ You Won’t Get What You Want (an album sadly sullied by subsequent revelations regarding their front man). Elsewhere still, the hypnotic, spacious ‘New Clear’ ventures towards shoegaze territory. Rather than seeming incongruous, it’s welcome, proving that it’s possible to create an album that’s focused while still having range.

It’s high-energy, high-octane stuff, and it’s certainly not tame or timid.

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Russell Haswell – Let it Go

Posted: 28 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Editions Mego – 1st May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

With absolutely no referencing of that animated Disney movie, the textual contextualisation for Russell Haswell’s latest sonic assault echoes what I’ve been saying – and writing – for some time now. I feel a small sense of elation… but equally a certain tiredness. I’m 50. And while no doubt global history is essentially a tale of innovation and destruction in equal measure, the last quarter of a century has felt truly hellish, as if the exponential pace of progress has run in parallel with an ever-accelerating desire to wipe ourselves as a species from the face of the planet.

It has been twenty-five years since the seismic events of 2001—when twin towers collapsed under terrorist attack and Coventry’s sonic insurgent Russell Haswell launched his inaugural salvo on the original Mego label with Live Salvage 1997–2000. The intervening era has delivered unrelenting turbulence: protracted wars, institutional corruption, a global pandemic, the resurgence of fascist currents, rampant media distortion, and omnipresent surveillance. For Haswell, a lifelong admirer of 1970s and 1980s dystopian cinema, the verdict is unequivocal: “Science Fiction is now!”

It’s hard to argue that the moment in which we find ourselves has all the hallmarks of every dystopian fiction ever imagined rolled into one unimaginable fusion, and that we are inching closer by the second to the end of days.

Haswell has long used sound to articulate the horrors of the 21st century, both as a solo artist and in collaboration, notably bringing additional layers of abrasion to Consumer Electronics, and while the accompanying notes detail quite extensively the equipment used, the influences, and the creative aims of Let it Go, my focus here is more on what it actually sounds like and the listening experience.

The first few seconds of the first track, ‘Exit Downwards’ are innocuous enough: a drone, nondescript, smooth – but within seconds its rent with shuddering glitches, squelches, and discordant clanks, not to mention the stammering thud of a particularly sharp kick drum. And over the course of seven minutes, it pumps and pounds blasts and bleeps like a circuit in meltdown. It’s pretty tense stuff, and descents, tension, and anxiety are recurrent themes not only in the titles, but in the formations of the compositions themselves.

‘Fall 3’ and ‘Fall 2’ follow the theme of descent, and manifest as wibbly collage works, while ‘The anxieties of our time’ is fairly straightforward in its implications and manifests as a head-swimming, dizzying panic attack, a meltdown in musical form, the crackling industrial glitch monster that is ‘Stress Testing’ functions on numerous levels. As much as the phrase relates specifically to financial, economic, and societal systems, there is also the stress test as it relates to the effects of physical activity on the heart, and, by association, it feels like an implicit hint of the stress we as individuals find ourselves subject to on a daily basis: how far can we – individually, and collectively – be pushed under the late capitalist model? At this moment in time, it seems like we’re close to finding out. And through swooshing sweeps and rippling fractures in sonic fabrics which twist and flare, Russell Haswell renders an aural replication of the overwhelming experience of life right now.

In comparison to some of Haswell’s releases, Let it Go is not particularly noisy or abrasive, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less intense. Even the ambient hums of ‘Curated narrative’ bring a hovering tension which is difficult to step away from.

Christmas is a difficult time for many, and while there’s no indication of what inspired ‘Thu 25 Dec 2025’, it buzzes and throbs for a relentless six and three quarter minutes like an angry hornet, trapped in a greenhouse which is slowly collapsing in on itself. The final track, the thirteen-minute ‘There’s always a bit of light somewhere’ seems to offer a thin ray of hope in its title, but the fine metallic scrapes and glistening edges which intertwine ominously and with no discernible form are far from comforting, and you find yourself on edge, sensing darkness visible and encroaching from all sides. Yes, There’s always a bit of light somewhere, but that somewhere isn’t here.

Let it Go is varied, exploratorily, and an artistic success, but it’s by no means the easiest listen. And for that, I say ‘good’. Embrace the challenge.

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Picking / Gnarled Fingers – Picking / Gnarled Fingers

Posted: 25 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 27th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

This one’s been out for a bit, but was too good to let go without comment. Some will likely thank me for this: others may be less grateful as they sit, hands over their ears, wondering why they should ever pay heed to a word I write. It’s niche and it’s noisy – as the notes which accompany the release on Bandcamp make clear from the outset:

Gnarled Fingers and Picking are two artists drawn together by a shared love of bleak, crushing, low-end oblivion.

Picking is a new raw doom / noise / drone project from Charlie Butler inspired by lifelong incessant excessive picking of nails.

Gnarled Fingers is an experimental, ambient drone project, relentless wall of fuzz and atmosphere, no escape, created after growing up in Somerset Levels with stories of witchcraft and pagan superstition.

The Picking track, ‘Toenail’ sits in the droney doom bracket dominated by Sunn O))), but there’s something magnificently lo-fi about this, which adds a layer of filthy muck and treble distortion that conveys a performance which is of a volume just beyond the capacity of the equipment used to record it. It’s fourteen minutes of raw, howling guitar noise, and because of the way in which they seem to be struggling to contain the feedback while ploughing relentlessly at a loose semblance of a riff, the result is something along the lines of Earth 2 crossed with Metal Machine Music. ‘Uncompromising’ is a word that music journalists and bands alike chuck about, but this is the absolute epitome – although something about this recording is possessed of a primitivism that suggests they don’t know how to do it any other way. Is it uncompromising if that’s the case? Feel free to make that question a topic for debate next time you’re down the pub with your coolly opinionated music-loving mates, but whatever side of the fence you find yourself on, Picking make a gnarly noise, and if your toenails ever bear visual comparison to this, I would strongly recommend consulting a podiatrist, and sooner rather than later, before your entire foot rots off the end of your leg.

Gnarled Fingers showcase a more polished form and a sound which sits closer to the Sunn O))) template of ribcage-rattling density, whereby a chord struck every twenty seconds conjures an atomic detonation that hangs heavy in the air. Downtuned and distorted to the max, their track ‘Echoes from Futures Past’ is a wall of crushing devastation. Sixteen and a half minutes of guitar noise so weighty it feels like how one might imagine being trapped under rubble after a nuclear bomb. Feedback scrapes so abrasively that it strips the skin, and all the while you’re slowly suffocating. It’s brutal.

While some split releases benefit from contrast, this is one where similarity is strength. This type of music is most effective when subjected to prolonged periods of exposure, ideally at high, even extreme volume. The desired effect is complete immersion, to reach the point where your body feels detached, as if its floating. This is some heavy-duty drone shit, and it sure hits the spot.

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TSR2 – Transmission

Posted: 20 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Wormhole World – 20th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Given the diminishing number of grassroots venue and the changing nature of live music consumption – whereby the masses flock to £60+ arena shows, and are happy to pay £20 or more to see a third-rate tribute act while swilling £8 pints and yammering away loudly to their mates for the entire evening, with barely one ear on the music, it’s small wonder acts who are new and / or more niche struggle to get bookings. And without taking your music to a new audience through live shows, if you can’t afford PR to plug your music to radio stations and the like, how are artists ever to break through the algorithmic recommendations and reach people? This is even more of a challenge for experimental electronic acts, as most small venues are more likely to showcase ‘bands’ or guitar-based music in the main, unless they’re doing something that’s promotable as ‘electropop’ or similar.

It’s thanks to the EMOM (Electronic Music Open Mic) network, and, in particular, the EMOM nights in York, hosted by North Facing Garden at The Fulford Arms – one if the most accommodating venues there is, who don’t only welcome weird and experimental shit, but have sound engineers who are up to the job of facilitating the kind of noise the acts who play such events are striving for, that I’ve caught TSR2 live on numerous occasions. These nights don’t only host bedroom explorers just starting out, but acts with respectable recording careers who simply can’t get a foothold on the regular gig circuit. And TSR2 certainly have quite a recording career already.

A yin / yang / pro / con of the EMOM format is that each performer gets just fifteen minutes, which is great by way of a showcase, a taster, and also great if you’re not digging it as no act is on long enough for it to get boring, but of you are digging it, or the music itself requires a more expansive set…

Transmission is TSR2 serving a more expansive set, with ten tracks and a running time in the region of an hour. It’s their second release on Lancashire label Wormhole World, following Birdstrike! in 2024, and it brings full-spectrum bleeps, churn, and imaginative abstraction, and the first composition – which is also the title track – brings all of this simultaneously, with space-age heavy drone given structure by some industrial strength beats which hit hard.

There’s ambient abstraction and swirling spaciness in abundance, all the oscillations and layers bouncing back and forth off one another, skittering and surging, with moments which elicit the essence of R2D2, others which are more like wading through long grass while struggling to find the path.

Muffled samples merge with the delirious digital meltdown that is ‘Modern Life’ and while it does have me briefly contemplating ‘Darker Avenues’, samples float and echo around the darker ambient spaces of ‘The Salt Marsh’. The ten-minute ‘Sewer Lawyer Logic’ is a dark, detailed exploration which ventures into dank sonic territories, and ‘Some Of You Had Better Go Home’ wanders between the terrains of Krautrock and Industrial – specifically at the point where Chris and Cosey make their departure to spawn techno.

Transmission evokes the atmosphere of space travel – but more in the sense we imagine than of the latest vanity loop around the moon – and laser-squirting sci-fi explorations. It’s a varied album, which presents shades of both light and darkness and ever-shifting moods.

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.SYS Machine – Parts Unknown

Posted: 16 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Glitchmode Recordings – 10th April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

.SYS Machine’s third album is the first to be released through the Glitchmode Recordings imprint, home to Dave McAnally’s main project, Derision Cult, among notable names. And on Parts Unknown, .SYS Machine continue to expand their sonic palette, while still maintaining close connections with influences like Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails, but also Peter Gabriel and Porcupine Tree.

One thing which is key to .SYS Machine’s work is its proximity to the present: McAnally draws on his environment and events in real-time, and while previous album Graceful Isolation was the ‘lockdown’ album, Parts Unknown is, as they put it, a work which ‘reflects on navigating an age of uncertainty—both spiritually and technologically—touching on themes of recovery, loss, and the uneasy process of entering new phases of life.’ And once again, ‘the album also features guest vocal contributions from Kimberly Kornmeier of Bow Ever Down on two tracks, adding a dynamic that recalls the atmospheric interplay heard in artists like Garbage and Portishead’.

These are unquestionably daunting times: the world is at war – not all fighting the same war, but the point stands – and while many are joyfully embracing AI as an assistant, a creator of amusing artwork, a companion, or a therapist, just as many are fearful for their livelihoods. The future has never looked so uncertain, our places in the world as individuals so precarious.

‘Everyday just feels like the gravity’s gone’, is the refrain on the album’s first song, ‘Gravity’ – and it’s not about being serious. There is a sense of being cut loose from the planet, spinning free from all that is known.

Single release ‘Fading’, one of the Kimberly Kornmeier vocal leads, is altogether slower and more overtly reflective in tone – almost a trip-hop ballad, whereby the standard electronic backing, with its twitchy beats, is augmented with guitar. ‘Are you lost in yourself / I think you’re fading away’, she sings, sounding lost in herself, too. And perhaps the message really is that we’re all lost, but many don’t even realise – or have the time or headspace to reflect long enough to realise. It’s perhaps fitting that at a time when the world seems to be spinning at a faster pace, and waking each morning brings with it a combination relief at still being alive and the anxiety over what may have happened overnight and what the coming day may hold, that Parts Unknown manifests as a slower, sparser-sounding work, which steps back and creates space and time for contemplation. ‘Home’, the second Kornmeier cut is, in contrast, quite possibly the album’s poppiest, and more than justifies the Garbage references.

‘Resonance’ touches on the contradictions of life in the present: ‘I can see the future it’s not certain everything’s just fine / Maybe if we wait just longer everything will be alright’. We tell ourselves, perhaps even convince ourselves everything’s fine, but ultimately, it’s just a hope, wishful thinking that it will be. Because without hope, what have we actually got?

The expansive ‘Collapse’ is, contrary to its title, the expansive sound of hope as sweeping, cinematic synths soar over a delicate acoustic guitar, while the final track, ‘Closure’, leaves us in a more ponderous place, mining a strong seam of Depeche Mode / NIN electro-led instrumentation which blossoms into a powerful, uplifting finale. But is it the sound of true hope, or simply a desire to convince that hope still exists? And where does the line lie between hope and delusion? These are questions to mull while absorbing the details of Parts Unknown. Unknown and unknowable, none of us knows what’s around the corner. With Parts Unknown, .SYS Machine prompt contemplation with some well crafted soundscapes and neatly-tempered beats.

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Abigail Snail – Rad Berms

Posted: 15 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Romac Puncture Repairs – 17th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

While Rad Berms is Abigail Snail’s debut release, the musicians behind the name have a notable pedigree, and between them, drummer Will Glaser and guitarist Stef Kett (aka Stef Ketteringham) have numerous credits on record – and for Rad Berms, they’ve joined by ‘master reed player’ James Allsopp, who gets pretty much everywhere. And for this debut release, Abigail Snail’s promise ‘avant-rock, improv, and experimental soul groove into an adventurous collection of tender, boundary-pushing songs’.

After the gentlest of intros, the first track, ‘Show Breaking to Waves’ slowly derails before the arrival of the vocals. The vibe is rather Crooked Rain Crooked Rain era Pavement, only wonkier and significantly jazzier, particularly in the percussion. The instrumentation is sparse, the feel a shade folky… then ‘Soul Berm’, the first of the ‘Berms’ crashes in, wonky, scratchy, discordant. Counterpart ‘Space Berm’ sounds like a noisy tuning up / tuning down outtake, a chaotic interlude of jarring noise rock propelled by a jazz percussion break.

I remember reading a review of Trumans Water in the early 90s describing them as ‘the real Pavement’. Well, I think it was Trumans Water and not Archers of Loaf. AoL were kinda tame indie: Trumans Water were demented and truly off-kilter, taking the lo-fi slacker thing to a level that incorporated the weirdness of Captain Beefheart, down to the sounding like they were playing different songs in different keys and tempos, but all at the same time. This is a circuitous detour to arrive at the conclusion that Abigail Snail call to mind – well, my kind, which is a vault of disorganised musical files and recollections – Trumans Water, only even further out and significantly jazzier.

I appreciate that with every sentence, I’m probably alienating another ten per cent of potential listeners here. It’s probably for the best. Rad Berms is as niche as it is crazy, and it’s better to shed the ones who won’t dig it early on and save everyone the hassle of rubbing the wrong way.

A deranged howl of ‘Goooooood grief / That’s one batshit brief / Good Lord / How much shit can one chick hoard?’ delivered atop clanging, angular guitar that’s pure Shellac announces the arrival of single cut ‘Good Grief’, a raw, riotous blast of jazz and math-rock melded together. They explore a host of genre forms across Rad Berms, but manage to incorporate some jazziness into most of them.

‘Attach Bayonets’ lands in the middle of the album and brings with it a mellow psychedelic / desert rock feel, like a slacker retake of America’s ‘Horse with No Name’, only with bongos and woodwind – and no obvious hook. But you get the idea. Hopefully. It’s kinda trippy, primarily acoustic, and at times quite discordant. Laden with melody and harmonies, ‘Stay Rad’ is mellow, too, a quintessential slice of slacker indie with a dash of 60s psychedelia. There’s daftness in abundance here, and at times it does seem as if they’re just testing us as listeners while they dick about showing off their technical prowess and simply demonstrating their capacity to make music that doesn’t conform to any convention, and the fact they’re too cool for choruses, or even structure anyone can follow. ‘Yikes Bikes’ and ‘Bitchin’ Chords’ in particular feel indulgent, albeit in quite different ways. But why not? There was a time when bands would say in interviews that they made music for themselves, and it was a bonus if anyone else liked it. It became a cliché, and of course most of them were lying. But now? Who makes music to get rich and famous? Some, for sure, but the majority appreciate now that it’s not going to happen, so they may as well make music to please themselves – which is precisely what Abigail Snail are doing here. There’s no way you could accuse these guys of being predictable or lacking range.

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King Midas – Blanco

Posted: 13 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Fysisk Format – 17th April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

King Midas’ seventh studio album is the follow-up to their 2013 Norwegian Grammy-winning album Rosso. Thirteen years is quite the gap, although such spans between albums seem rather less unusual now than in times past. In the 90s, the five-year gap between The Stone Roses eponymous debut and The Second Coming was painted by the press as being longer than an eternity, but the last few years have seen acts return after absences of a quarter century or more. The fact is that many artists find themselves mired in life and in dayjobs, because it’s hard to make a living from music alone, and regular work and raising families aren’t compatible with creative work, and especially not with touring. And so it is that Blanco arrives more than thirty years after their first EP, From the Pipeline, in 1994, and notably, they report that the band ‘still consists of founding members Ando Woltmann and Per Vigmostad who share production credit for Blanco’.

According to the duo, ‘Blanco is an album about emptiness, partly inspired by Belgian cold wave music from the early 1980s, by the noise cancellation in BMW models from 2023/24, by New Age as a concept, by the novel Lanzarote by French author Michel Houellebecq, by Rod Stewart on his way home from a party in the wee hours and by yuppie Scandinavian businessmen in all forms’.

This seems like a curious array of inspirations, and I can only comment with any real knowledge on Michel Houellebecq’s typically bleak and anticlimactic novel and Rod Stewart, whose 80s work haunts me on account of childhood memories if my mother dancing to awful, awful songs ‘Baby Jane’ and Atlantic Crossing still got played far more often than was healthy. But then, I was also exposed to dangerous levels of Phil Collins and Tina Turner, which probably indirectly explains my immersing myself in writers like Houellebecq, who I arrived at on the publication of Whatever, which was described by Tibor Fischer as ‘L’Etranger for the info generation’.

According to their bio, ‘Blanco marks a brand new start for King Midas – a tabula rasa, a blank slate – where all methodology, instrumentation, composition and production are untried ground, and all paths have been trodden anew’.

‘Sunrise’ is a drifting sprawl of muiltitracked autotuned vocals which quiver and warble over some expansive, semi-ambient synths. It’s novel and vaguely entertaining, but you hope to dog that the album gets better, and mercifully, it does, conjuring expanses of quite claustrophobic, beat-driven electronica.

As an exploration of emptiness, it works well: the vocals are largely sampled and / or looped, creating an atmosphere of detachment, human sounds without the human presence, while the instrumentation is minimal in its arrangement. There’s no comfort to be found here, no human warmth, just stark monotony, beats that thud on, and on, and on… I never really took to dance music because it felt… impersonal, is perhaps the word which summarises the experience. And that’s despite being a fan of late 80s and early 90s electronic industrial music. Anyway. Blanco seems to take those elements and turn a mirror on them. It is repetitive, impersonal, monotonous… and that’s the comment. And there are flickers where there’s a near-silent acknowledgement. ‘Look’ brings a strongly eighties feel, and things fall into place around the BMW comments with ‘Blaupunkt’. A friend of mine bought an 80s BMW in the early 90s and thought he was flash as hell with his aircon and bangin’ stereo, although we’d be freezing our tits off while he burned fuel at an alarming rate with the aircon on and the stereo sounded shit. I’ve digressed again, but this is what happens with albums which are largely instrumental, and ‘Blaupunkt’ sounds like Kraftwerk nabbing bits of Ennio Morricone and chucking in a bit of New Order circa Movement. It’s pretty cool, and also hypnotic, but also intense.

The eight-and-a-half-minute closer, ‘Infinite Sadeness’ is slow, deliberate, expansive, the pulsating beats which define the album as a whole replaced by altogether sparser, more minimal, and subtler percussion, and with the introduction of flute it adds a new dimension to the sound.

Blanco is varied, and takes some time to come around to. The indefinable absence is affecting, and reverberates around these taut compositions, which emanate a sense of emptiness, assimilating all aspects of its dominant theme. But patience is the key. It’s as a whole that Blanco works.

AA

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Zero Swann – Ones Who Love

Posted: 12 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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8th April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Six months on from Benefactor, and Washington D.C. improvisational psychedelic outfit Zero Swann are back again with Ones Who Love. This marks quite a step up in output following a two-year gap after 2023’s Amon Zonaris.

Once again, it’s a set built around theatrical, gothic vocals, drones and cacophonous percussion, feedback, and more drones, all wrapped in layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of reverb.

On first hearing the album’s first song, ‘Chrisom’, I had to hit the pause button a few times to check there wasn’t some other music playing on one of my open browsers. There wasn’t. One might reasonably draw parallels to Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, which to my ear (an ear which has been exposed to one hell of a lot of strange experimental shit) sounds like people playing different tunes in different rooms of the house, with the doors all open while you’re standing in the hallway. But the experience is truly more akin to MySpace circa 2007, when every post and profile would be playing music and you’d spend an age trying to figure what you needed to mute while slowly going mad. The drums don’t seem to be in time with themselves, let alone the abstract instrumentation, and the vocals float around in that sea of reverb as if in another dimension entirely. It’s not only disorientating, but quite quease-inducing.

This is – as anyone familiar with Zero Swann will know – the template for the album. The hectic, multi-layered percussion on ‘White Lips’ splashes around in a swirl of treble, reverb, and phase or flange, while amidst a stuttering bass throb and chaotic mess of noise. This is lo-fi to the max: black metal production values applied to Batcave-era goth with a heavily experimental edge.

It’s all going on with ‘Shrine Slavery’: drum ‘n’ bass beats put through the mangle and a thousand effects are paired with haunting, howling layers of shoegaze guitars, while Jeremy Moore comes on like Michael Gira in his messianic mode circa Children of God, calling the end of days while all burns around him. The title track is a towering, hypnotic monster of sound on sound, and it feels huge, not to mention apocalyptic and terrifying.

The derangement continues on the murky ‘Pig Scalder’ with echo-soaked guitars to the fore – the quintessential US ‘death rock’ sound (something that very much separates the UK and US interpretation of ‘goth’) – but with swirling chaos behind it all. With so much going on, and in all directions all at once, it’s virtually impossible to concentrate on or otherwise pick out the lyrical content, and while this may be detrimental in some respects, the fact of the matter is that this is Zero Swann’s sound – messy, multiplicitous, discontiguous. And it’s best approached by simply letting it all happen, immersing oneself in the mayhem. It’s impossible to pick apart the separate elements – and equally impossible to piece them together.

‘Tidal Skull’ again brings a dingy, doomy, gloomy gothy morass which is hard to penetrate and even harder to decipher and unravel, and ‘Storage Organ’ is a riot of sludgy, sepulchral darkness. Ones Who Love is hard going. And I actually dig it – but it’s one seriously challenging listening experience. The last song, ‘What You Never Wanted’ lurches and lumbers its way through five and a half minutes of sludge that stands practically waist-deep, and you slosh and crawl and trudge your way to the end. There are no short cuts, no easy routes, no alternative directions.

Whichever way you look at it, there’s no other act around which sounds like Zero Swann. On Ones Who Love, Moore goes deep and goes dark. Spectral structures emerge from thick fogs of noise and reverb, very like ruins looming through gloom. Gloom and ruins essentially summarise what Ones Who Love gives us. As was the case with its predecessor, Ones Who Love is not an easy or accessible album – to the extent that it often feels like a test, a challenge: enjoyment and appreciation are not the same thing.

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