Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band – The New Atomic

Posted: 11 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Trash City Records – 26th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibnor

With over thirty members, there’s nothing imaginary about the bigness of the band led by Fergus Quill, and this, their third album, we’re told, ‘celebrates the full gamut of big band music from the big screen showbiz razzmatazz of yore to Charles Mingus, to John Zorn, to the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra’.

But first, a brief potted musical history of the big band, and the origin of this one, which was established as ‘a celebration of the neglected possibilities of the big band’. ‘Following World War II, big bands, with their large ensembles were considered commercially unviable for most, hence the transition to the smaller groups of the bebop era. They are still more scarce in our own times for the same, economic reasons. As such, an undertaking like this, led by primary composer Fergus Quill, is a true labour of love, of spiritual adventure and big fun, a joyful blast of collective noise’.

The New Atomic was recorded over three days, its forty-minute duration culled from some five hours of recordings – more of a box set than an album – and the result is quite remarkable.

‘J Surfing on the Sun’ kicks things off with a nine-minute journey that one might reasonably call quintessential film score stuff – think movie soundtracks from the 60s and 70s with big action. You could almost play this over the video of ‘Sabotage’ by The Beastie Boys – only it’s got swing, it’s got groove, and it’s got… not necessarily narrative, but changes in tempo and instrumentation which could readily correspond with different scenes and the telling of a story, culminating in a frenetic finale. It packs crazy horns and cadent keys and thrills and spills galore. Sure, it’s jazz, but it’s no ponderous chin-stroking shit – this is lively stuff to get down to.

If ‘Theme from “The New Atomic”’ goes avant-garde and disjointed in places, and space-age ambient in others, their cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Love Sick’ is tight, focused, and marks a complete contrast to the rest of the album – it’s overtly structured, and sedate in pace, but boasts some Pearl and Dean kind of blasts (that’s a reference that’ll only make sense to a certain demographic, but hey), and side two goes all out on the groove with ‘Do the Right Thing’, which again brings sturdy beats and a solid groove. And from hereon in, things only get more rambunctious and bold and expansive and wide-ranging, until we arrive at the final song, ‘ I Shall Not Be Moved’ an arrangement of the traditional song, which I’d always believed was ‘We’ rather than ‘I’. Essentially an acapella ensemble performance to begin, the coming together of voices articulating peaceful protest is intensely moving, and never more pertinent. It’s powerful in its simplicity and directness, and serves as a reminder that resistance is by no means futile: we need more of this, and a lot less lobbing of projectiles and burning of vehicles.

The New Atomic is every bit as explosive as the cover art suggests.

AA

AA

_MG_0066

AA

AD Ozium – In the Style of Dead Sparrows

Posted: 10 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Saccharine Underground – 9th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I like my shit weird and experimental, and so it is that AD Ozium’s In the Style of Dead Sparrows is both weird and experimental, and needless to say I like it – but with the caveat that listening to it is an experience akin to being dragged through an near-endless nightmare, and every time you think you’ve woken up, you discover that you’re simply in another level of this multi-faceted anxiety dream.

The pitch is that ‘In the Style of Dead Sparrows is the latest transmission from the outer edge of instrumental music – a fractured, hallucinatory convergence of freak folk textures and no wave dissonance that dissolves the boundary between sound and psyche. Created by Washington D.C.-based solo musician Jeremy Moore (Zabus, Zero Swann, Bell Barrow) under the name AD Ozium, the album operates at the intersection of freak folk, no wave, avant-garde drone and experimental instrumental music.’

But this barely scratches the lumpy, irregular, alien, fog-covered surface of this album. The first composition, ‘Lifespring’ is exemplary in its exploratory nature. It begins subtly, some desert rock twang in a drift of breeze and warping ambience. With tweets and yawns, it feels as if the tape is stretched in places, and there’s a crackle and hiss reminiscent of that old four-track tape noise and plunging synth rumbles. Discord builds as the sound swells, unsettlingly. It continues in this way for the first six minutes or so, until the nerve-jangling tension and suspense breaks into a brief but thunderous rupture.

The ten-minute ‘Tender Loving Seed’ is swampy, straggly, churny, a mangled mess of broken-sounding country guitar and fractured electronics, not so much a whistle of feedback as the sound of circuitry melting amidst a swell of distortion. It sounds like fucked-up flamenco, it sounds like dialling through radio stations and managing to tune into none of them, it sounds like a cerebral spasm. It’s a slow unwinding of discordant chaos.

I’ll take a stab that ‘Whore of Sound’ is perhaps a reference to ‘Whorle of Sound’ by Throbbing Gristle, which appeared on their First Annual Report, and was subsequently reprised in a radically altered but altogether more brutal form as Walls of Sound on DOA: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle. Certainly, the sonic parallels are apparent: this is seven minutes of gnarly noise which swells to head-shredding intensity with hints of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.

‘Faith is a Hole’ brings new layers of discomfort, the overloading low frequencies creating mic distortion and the most hellish vibrations, making for a long seven and a quarter minutes, before ‘Portents of the Terminal Mind’ ripples and reverberates a whirlpool of the wrongest confusion.

Confusion, contusion… ‘The Nazarene Distortion’ is gentle at first, but again, discord and chaos and blasting lasers reign… and all the while, there is a background rumble, a tape his that never stops. The background noise at times reminds me of Rudimentary Peni’s Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric – not because its similar in musical terms, but that endless, nagging background sound gnaws away at your ears and your brain. It’s not the most abrasive or attacking nine minutes of noise, but it’s a heavy slog of the most difficult atonality. It’s stomach-lurchingly messy. At times, you just want it all to stop.

This is challenging. It’s woozy, head-spinning. It simply sounds wrong. It’s not some Beefheart-style cacophony. It’s darker, the lo-fi leanings and atonality only amplifying the tension. Drones and buzzes, hums and fleeting phases are interspersed with annihilative blasts of noise, and the guitar notes simply echo out into the void.

In the Style of Dead Sparrows isn’t simply weird or experimental – it’s harsh and abrasive, and it will assail your intestines and hollow you out.

AA

a0516470554_10

Light Vortex – Aurora In Georgian Bay

Posted: 5 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Mortality Tables – 8th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

So much music, and only one pair of ears with which to listen to it… and similarly, one pair of hands to write about it. For years, I yearned – albeit half-jokingly – to clone myself, but now realise that doing so would likely only compound my problem, creating a situation where more availability would create more demand, and this would be very much a concession to the commodification of art – in all forms – whereby everything is considered merely ‘content’ and that a conveyor-belt churn of new content is the route to ‘engagement’. And this is absolutely fucking horrible. It’s dehumanising.

Shortly before I quit my dayjob as a complaints auditor for a multinational financial corporation earlier this year, we had been directed to use CoPilot to write our segments of the monthly report we produced to circulate amongst management. The directive was to get AI to write it, and then ‘sense check’ it against out audit results for the month. My colleagues were raring to go, and raced to embrace this: they didn’t enjoy writing up the monthly report on PowerPoint. I can’t say I loved it either, but I have degrees in English and had eight years’ experience in complaint auditing. The report was the one thing in the role where I had scope to not only flex my linguistic skills to pitch the tone of the report, but also to use my brain to analyse and comment on the otherwise fairly tick-box exercise of auditing. This is a circuitous route to my denouncing AI, and the reason why, when doubtless many ‘content creators’ would deploy AI to help crank out reviews at a far faster rate, I steadfastly refuse, and will always write my own reviews – albeit sometimes a bit rushed, a bit rambling, and with more typos than I’m anywhere near comfortable.

Reading the loner notes while listening to Aurora In Georgian Bay by Light Vortex reminds me precisely why this is.

The album’s title ‘was sourced from a 1931 painting by English-Canadian artist J.E.H. MacDonald (1873-1932)’, and we learn that ‘With thick and evocative brushstrokes, MacDonald’s painting depicted a view across Georgian Bay from Pointe au Baril in Ontario. Framed by wavering trees, the focal point of MacDonald’s painting was the phenomenon of fleeting, undulating shapes in the sky above the bay, illuminating the scene with an alien green-blue-grey hue.’

The notes go on to explain, ‘We hear a parallel to this in the eleven pieces of electronic music collated by Chris Moore on this album. Each track feels like it is vividly capturing the same refracted light that caught MacDonald’s attention, where sounds, sequences and subtle rhythms are encouraged to collide inquisitively with each other… Moore’s nuanced and detailed approach to electronic composition mirrors MacDonald’s abstraction of the natural world.’

These are connections of the type which can only be made by the human mind – instinctively, intuitively, by subconscious associations, by joining dots which exist through experience and knowledge. In short, life, in all of its organic richness, strangeness, and diversity.

To my eye, MacDonald’s painting evokes a soundscape that’s loose in structure and borders on ambience. Not so for Chris Moore on the strength of these compositions, which straddle the realms of early synth works in the vein of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and later – but still comparatively old-school in the timeline of music – electronic work from the 1970s, like Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and Oxygene by Jean Michelle Jarre. In short, it’s emblematic of the juncture where wibbling analogue ambience evolves beyond experimentation centred around what the instruments could do. But of course, my response to this is based entirely on my personal experience and musical exposure. My knowledge is incomplete, and spontaneous. But it is my own.

This is also very much true of Moore’s compositions here. The man and the machine. The man manipulating the machine – and not vice versa, or the man replaced by the machine.

I very much get why there was – and remains – a fear of technological evolution, and why, in the 80s and 90s, Thee Musician’s Union were so opposed to drum machines: they felt the machines would render drummers obsolete. They didn’t, just as home taping didn’t kill music. Streaming, on the other hand, just may. And similarly, previous technological advances have been about the artist using the technology to create something new – whereas AI sidelines the artist to plagiarise from the entire history of creative work. To create is human: it’s the very essence of the human condition – to convey something through the process of creation, for fellow humans to respond to on an emotional level, a human level.

Aurora In Georgian Bay is far from emotionally direct: instead, what it conveys, obliquely, is a partially abstract sonic response to a partially abstract painterly work: both are deeply immersed in tone and texture, albeit in widely disparate media. It’s through such creative interaction and intermedia dialogues that we come to make sense of the world around us, and to make sense of ourselves, our thought processes. You simply cannot substitute or recreate that.

For the most part, Aurora In Georgian Bay is gentle, supple, rippling, and ultimately soothing. But it’s rich in nuance and detail and range. And it tells you nothing specific: it’s all there for you to decipher, to interpret, to project, to experience on a unique creative level. The door is open…

AA

AA

a0884084188_10

Oren Ambarchi & Will Guthrie – Cold Shoulder

Posted: 2 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Futura Resistenza – 9th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

23 minutes is, of course, about the most music that it’s possible to fit on one side of vinyl without risking loss of fidelity, but the number 23 is also the locus of the so-called ’23 enigma’ popularised by William S. Burroughs, which suggests that the number 23 appears with unusual frequency in various contexts and may have a larger, hidden significance. Of course it’s likely a coincidence, but the fact that Cold Shoulder contains two pieces, each just over 23 minutes in duration, and thus occupying a side of the LP is undeniably an instance of the recurrence of the number 23. Did they compose the works specifically to the end of fitting as much music onto each side, or were they edited to fit for the vinyl pressing? Perhaps you need to have been at the show to know – for Cold Shoulder is a document of a live performance, recorded live in Berlin in late 2024.

Ambarchi and Guthrie have been collaborating for more than twenty years now (maybe even 23, who knows?), and Cold Shoulder showcases an evolved level of intuition: as their bio summarises, ‘Their musical dialogue, which previously moved through abstraction and volatile electro-acoustic experimentation, now unfolds with relaxed confidence, melding drifting Leslie tones, shimmering percussion, and fluid pulses that emerge and dissolve’, adding ‘It’s a document of experience; music that feels freer, more direct, perhaps quietly fearless’.

Constructed using layers of drones which hover and hum, trilling tones which stretch out over expansive minutes with barely minimal shift, subtly melodic elements gradually reveal themselves. Ambarchi’s guitar doesn’t sound like a guitar for the most part, as he coaxes and teases the subtlest of ambient strains of feedback and quivering sustain from his instrument, and Guthrie’s percussion is restrained beyond restraint, consisting primarily or the most delicate cymbal work, and the most occasional muted punctuatory thuds. Around ten minutes into the first part – ‘This Cold Shoulder’, some misty forms emerge, a vague rhythm, and organ-like drones, an evolving atmosphere that swirls skywards, a melting together of space-rock and ambient jazz. Notes warp and time twists, as the percussion becomes more complex and more prominent, yet still subtle, restrained. Further on, there is a slow, stuttering wind-down, during which the sounds become increasingly fractured and hazy.

The second part, ‘That Cold Shoulder’ finds Ambarchi’s feedback drones splitting into shuddering whines which call to mind Metal Machine Music, but gradually folds into a more gentle interlacing of quavering notes, while the drumming, still muted, gathers pace if not volume. Time simply hangs in suspension at this point… and gradually flakes into pieces, along with any semblance of structure.

It’s a wonderful experience to simply lose oneself in this ever-transitioning, eternally-shifting work, which ultimately comes to drape the listener’s ears with mellow tones, concluding with a segment which evokes something between space and the sounds of a tropical forest at dusk. But none of it explains the bizarre George Michael portrait on the cover…

AA

AA

RESLP043 front

Papillon du Nuit – Musetta

Posted: 30 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

26th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Although they may have seemingly risen out of nowhere a couple of years or so ago, Papillon du Nuit, the ever evolving, ever-expanding musical project revolving around Stephen Kennedy, alongside Mika, Steve, and Karen (who between them cover vocals, cello, grand piano, guitars, keyboards, and percussion) is a coming together of individuals who have been on and around the ‘goth’ and adjacent scene in the north for some considerable time, to form a loose collective. Having debuted in October 2024 with ‘Scarlet’, they’ve built a body of work through a succession of singles – eight in all. Most acts would have simply compiled said singles to assemble an album – but not Papillon du Nuit, and certainly not Stephen Kennedy – because he likes to do things the hard way. The proper way. And because his roots lie in that 80s goth era where bands like The Sisters of Mercy grew their fanbase through a series of ever-evolving single releases but saw the album as a different medium, a means of creating a specific, thematically unified document. As it happens, Musetta sits somewhere between the compilation and standalone document, plucking a selection of those previous singles and placing them amidst the new songs, meaning that of the album’s nine tracks, five have been previously released, although sitting in the context of an album they feel different somehow. And as much as Papillon du Nuit embrace some elements of goth – or perhaps, more accurately, the gothic (think brooding atmosphere, haunting imagery, a sense of drama) – this is a project which goes far beyond genre, with strong leanings towards neoclassical, chamber pop, the theatrical, even the operatic.

As they explain, ‘The album is named after Musetta, one of the major characters in the opera La Boheme, who is enshrined with all the qualities, and all the follies, that make us who we are. Many of the songs here explore a mythical, almost mystical journey, with life displayed more as an inevitably straight path, rather than something circular. The songs are not about death, but many of them lead there’. Some may mock with a ‘pretentious, moi?’, but Musetta is a work which is fully committed to art, and therefore sweeps pretence aside in being the real deal. That Steve Whitfield (The Cure / The Mission) produced, and co-wrote some of the tracks is nothing if not proof of pedigree, as well as their commitment to delivering an album which goes to great lengths to realise strong intent.

Heavy breathing, a panting even. Tension. Suspense. Then comes the panicked whisper: ‘is it dark, or am I blind?’ It has a decidedly Beckettean feel to it. A piano begins to reverberate. This is ‘Jude.’ As a single, it arrived as a stark and curious hybrid of poetry, theatre, and folk with a prog-rock leaning and a sense of the epic. In a revised context as an album opener, it feels very much like an introduction, a passage into a vast musical world. ‘Pilgrim’s Arc’, the most recent single, released in October, is driving, dynamic, tempest of a composition, and makes for a stark contrast arriving immediately after. Immediately, it’s apparent that there’s no small consideration been given to the album’s flow and shifts in mood and pace, and even this early, themes of time and mortality emerge.

AA

The first of the unreleased, album-specific songs, ‘Natalie’, follows, and it’s cinematic, widescreen-even, with its string-soaked chorus, again building to a spectacular finale. It’s no criticism to say it sounds like an album track: it’s magnificently executed, and offers some respite from the experimental intensity of the songs which precede it, and the cello-forward ‘A Sea Within An Ocean’ is the work of a band spreading out and settling, stretching their limbs and simply composing to make music, free from the (self-made) pressure to record a single in a day, or whatever their previous process was. It feels looser, more relaxed, and the result is a rolling, hypnotic wave of a song.

‘Cello Poem’ – at a mere two and three-quarter minutes – feels like more of a narrative bridge than a song in its own right, and the spoken word segue links single cuts ‘Amber’ and ‘Ariadne’ – and does so quite effectively, in truth. It does, however, keep death as its focus. And I suppose this is the core of the matter. As they say, ‘The songs are not about death, but many of them lead there’. How many of the great plays, novels, or poems aren’t about death, at least in some way? Death is, after all, the only certainty in life.

AA

Where Musetta differs from other albums where death is a preoccupation or a focus is that this is an album which carries a weight. It’s in no way frivolous or posturing, it doesn’t take death simply as a motif: it’s a soul-felt meditation on the end of life. No glorification, no stylisation, but a philosophical contemplation. It’s this which makes Musetta so impactful. Not only is youth wasted on the young, but life is wasted on the living, by and large. That is to say, it’s hard to appreciate what you have until it’s gone, or slipping away, and while so much goth – and metal, and so much music of many styles, for that matter – is preoccupied with death in a conceptual way, there comes a point where it comes all to near, all too real, and here it gets scary – rather than a game of lofting skulls and a flamboyant delivery. Shit does get real, and we all have to face the reality of mortality. And at this point, it’s not cool, it’s not dramatic, it simply becomes a heavy reality. We start by losing grandparents, and parents, and often, in between, friends and peers. And when it’s your peers, you start to worry. And if you don’t, you probably should.

Musetta is packed with heavy moments – not so much sonically, but emotionally, philosophically – and it’s woven with a fabric rich in literary allusions and diverse stylistic influences. ‘Visionary’ is a word I’m cautious in applying to anything, particularly anything contemporary – but ambitious and accomplished, wide-ranging, powerful, and moving… Musetta is all of these things, and more.

AA

Album Cover

Argonaut – Interrupted

Posted: 29 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Criminal Records – 12th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s a pretty bold move to open an album with a slow-paced and pretty bleak-sounding song which is more about dolorous atmosphere than chorus or hook. But then, Argonaut’s latest offering is pretty bold – albeit in an understated sort of a way. That likely sounds oxymoronic, so let me unpack it a bit.

After something of a purple patch, with the prolific spate of post-lockdown output which, over the course of a year and a bit and a new song each month saw the development of open-ended album Songs from the Black Hat (which ended up with a total of twenty tracks, with the inclusion of a couple of remixes), Argonaut were forced to make a change of pace. Life has a way of doing that – and events also resulted in a change of focus. The result is Interrupted – an album two years in the making, and by far the darkest and most introspective set of songs they’ve released. It’s not that the London DIY trio have always skirted darkness or introspection, but historically, it’s been balanced by lighter, poppier indie tunes. Now, though, they’ve embraced what one may call the therapeutic benefits of creativity, channelling – and coming to terms with – real-life issues and even trauma through those outlets.

As the accompanying notes lay things out quite plainly, Interrupted offers ‘Ten songs from the past year’s abyss, documenting breakdown, burnout, dementia, depression, memory, hope and healing’. This in itself is bold. Again and again, the conversation is ‘we need to talk about these things’, but the moment we do, there’s a sort of collective wince in society, on social media, among our friends even. We’re still not societally conditioned to deal with the difficult stuff. I can speak from experience here: following the loss of my wife at the age of 44, and finding myself as a single parent, I’ve had enough ‘well, I could be worse’ type responses to articulations of struggle to fill a book. And now, while witnessing the mental and physical decline of one of my parents, I’m finding a similar reluctance among friends to engage on a meaningful level on the subject.

Thankfully, there are always artists who are – not necessarily willing, but perhaps more compelled – to pour all of this into their work, perhaps because those in immediate proximity are found wonting when it comes to conversation, meaning that creative channels are the only channels available. The Twilight Sad’s latest album, The Long Goodbye is perhaps the most harrowing thing I’ve heard in years, but James Graham’s dealing with the loss of his mother to dementia through the songs is powerful beyond belief.

Interrupted, too, confronts real-life anguish. And so, after some digression, we return to that opening track. ‘We’re Not Hungry Anymore’ is a remarkable hybrid of jangly indie and post-grunge – the heavily chorused guitar carrying hints of Soundgarden’s ‘Black Hole Sun’, but mournful strings bring a different shade of melancholy, and Lorna’s vocal somehow manages to be cutesie and scared, giving vibes of Alison Shaw of Cranes. It culminates in a monumental crescendo.

Lead single ‘Leaves’ – which lands towards the end of the album – is similarly bleak, particularly Cure-esque and direct in its addressing emotional distress, here specifically on the topic of dementia. As Lorna writes on the single’s video, “I was thinking about the moon cycle and the new moon and wanted to incorporate that feeling into the music. The lyrics are about somebody who is getting older and their mind is starting to deteriorate. They can remember the past more than the present. I had the image of being lost in the woods and trapped inside their memories. It’s quite a personal song.”

AA

And in the personal lies the universal, the relatable. The last few times I’ve seen my mother, she’s talked mostly about her school days and her job. She’s 79, and has nothing much to talk about, and actually seems to recall very little, from any time since. She gets lost going to the village shop, despite having lived in the same village for a good twenty-five years. So yes, this resonates, and increasingly, friends – or friends of friends – tell of relatives – no longer just grandparents, but parents suffering a painful mental unravelling.

‘Hats Off’ lands in the region of Daisy Chainsaw remixed by The Cure, with a bassline that’s got the vibe of ‘Let’s Go to Bed’ while casting a nod to the niggly guitar bit in Prince’s ‘Kiss’ which fits with the post-punk pop funk vibe which goes some way to break the tension, and ‘I’m Not Getting Up After This’ is the perfect summary of a depressive episode, the encapsulation of both physical and mental exhaustion. ‘Sugarfree’ is one of the songs closest to what we’re familiar with from Argonaut, with Nathan’s gravelly, weary-sounding monotone providing a magnificent contrast to Lorna’s sweet, flighty tones, but something about it feels leaden, weighted – not in a lethargic way, but as if pulled by an emotional drag. ‘This Means Something, This is Important’, released a year ago while the album was still evolving, is another of the more upbeat, fizzy indie moments we’re used to, and ‘Unpredictable’ showcases their irrepressible pop penchant. The final track, ‘Rewind’ is heavy, Siouxsue and The Banshees gone sluge – it makes for a hard-hitting, climactic  finale.

AA

Interrupted is often dark, bleak, intense, and incredibly sad, but still packs its fair share of poppy punk tunes to provide some balance. It’s a difficult album, and rightly so. It’s not meant to be easy listening. It’s taut, its pop moments propelled by a thunking bass and motorik grooves. It’s also an album with many depths. It’s perhaps not an album we’d have expected from Argonaut, and it’s likely not an album they themselves expected, or would have wanted to make. But it’s emotionally honest, and that is bold. It’s also probably their strongest release yet.

AA

Argonaut, Interrupted Album_ Front

The Dwarves – JENKEM

Posted: 27 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Greedy Media – 5th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Fuck me, a new album by The Dwarves? They’ve now been going fully forty years. How? How is Blag Dahlia even still alive? They may have reined things in around the turn of the millennium, but no act this controversial, this wild, this excessive has a right to still be here after all this time. But we should be grateful that they are. The 80s were very different times, and while being perverse, gruesome, antagonistic, and all the rest for its own sake is a good thing – and G.G. Allin style shock for the sake of causing offence, disgust, or revulsion was never big or clever, and that we’ve moved on is a good thing… but. The danger is that we’ve come to a point where challenging artistic expression can be too readily conflated with misogyny or other discriminatory practices. No question, it’s a fine line, but confrontational art, at its best, challenges us to confront not only what’s socially acceptable but also our own boundaries and prejudices. Moreover, right now, is fringe art which is ugly and repulsive any more ugly and repulsive than mainstream discourse in politics or social media?

Unless it’s expounding ideologies of hate, is it perhaps not a function of art to test the boundaries still, as was always the case? The very purpose of punk was to raise a middle finger to the establishment, to be offensive to cultured sensibilities. Punk was rebellion. Somewhere along the way, something’s been lost. In truth, much was lost early on, when many punk acts signed to major labels in ’77 and ’78, but the spirit of punk remained, but underground. Now, much of what passes as punk is pathetically tame. Sure, Green Day gave us American Idiot, and used a major label platform to bring us their social and political critiques, but they were essentially no more than Clash copyists and fairly mild in their expostulations in real terms. The extent to which one can call the work of The Dwarves art is debatable, but it’s unquestionably punk in ethos.

The band which gave us gore, nudity, and an actual dwarf on the cover of their 1990 album Blood, Guts & Pussy (which packed twelve songs into just shy of thirteen minutes), and whose guitarist HeWhoCannotBeNamed performs live wearing a jockstrap at most, do what they’ve always done here: short, fast, abrasive punk songs about drugs and death and drugs and more drugs. The longest of the album’s fourteen songs is two minutes and two seconds long (‘Damned if I Do’, one of the album’s most accessible, catchy, and commercial songs, which packs in verses, choruses and a guitar solo); and the rest sit around the minute and a half mark.

And while PC is still not a concern for Dwarves, opener ‘Confused’ takes a balanced approach to gender confusion, touching on hypermasculinity within its squalling minute and eight seconds. ‘We Are The Scene’ melts together The Dead Kennedys and hardcore with some unexpected melody while flexing muscles.

AA

‘I’m Dead’ (which brings a heavy hint of The Ramones) and ‘I Wish You Were Dead’ seem to offer common thematic ground, albeit from different sides of the fence, and ‘Bad Drugs’ (a poppy tune about prescription drugs like Adderall), ‘Drug Lust’, ‘Too Messed Up’ and ‘Psychosis Tripping’ are all self-explanatory in their focus and frenzy, and much of this hopped-up set sits between The Dead Kennedys and Black Flack. It’s the quintessence of old-school punk, fast and furious, but with melodies packed and stacked, fun takes priority over shock or offence.

AA

12IN_JACKET

BIG|BRAVE – in grief or in hope

Posted: 24 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Thrill Jockey – 12th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

A new release by BIG|BRAVE is a significant event – always. Sure, a new Sunn O))) album will attract way more clamour and excitement overall, since they’re simply so much bigger in terms of fanbase and press attention, but with Sunn O))), it’s fair to say that within certain parameters, you know what you’re going to get. And there’s no question that Sunn O))) continue to push those parameters. But equally, they’re the drone / doom Jane Austin, carving on their two inches of ivory. I love it, but when it comes to sonic exploration, BIG|BRAVE simply spread their range that much wider, and each release sees them venturing into new territory.

It’s hard to credit that they started out as a folk band, who by some chance discovered amps that got all the way to eleven. Their last three albums have not only been progressively heavier, but more experimental, and more emotion ally fraught. A Chaos of Flowers very much raised the question ‘where do they go from here?’ in grief or in hope provides a robust reply – and it’s quite a departure – but at the same, time, sees something of a return to their folk roots. It’s just not folk in the form most would recognise, twisted and bent as it is here.

As they note, longtime touring bassist Liam Andrews (MY DISCO, Aicher) joins guitarist/vocalist Robin Wattie and guitarist Mathieu Ball in the studio for the first time – and the result is a tempestuous, percussion-free work, which melds drone and folk and explosive noise together to powerful effect.

The songs are less overtly structured, and yes, we do miss the drums, which were so integral to the pulverising force of Vital (2021) and nature morte (1993). But in grief or in hope is nothing short of immense, and the droning squall of ‘a shape of shame’ is exemplary. Slow-burning drones are paired with splintering feedback, while Wattie breaks from a measured tone to something akin to a breakdown while stepping into the skin of Siouxsie Sioux. The guitars sculpt walls of dense, shimmering noise which possess the force to melt your face, and the levels of distortion are off the scale, both speaker-trashing and brain-melting. Amidst wails of feedback and a vocal which sounds bereft and sort of abstract, ‘verdure’ incorporates industrial grind and heavy, distorted drone and marks another shift in the trajectory not only of the album, but the band’s sound. It’s a different kind of heavy, and it’s suffocating in its dense intensity, particularly after a couple of minutes.

AA

The production is incredible, capturing the force of amps cranked up hard – the organic nature of the sound, the crackle and hum, the way the frequencies rub and resonate against one another, the integrity of volume to achieving certain sounds, particular and specific resonances. Lately, I’ve had a number of discussions with people who’ve held the position that volume in itself is not a goal. I do understand their perspective, but there are certain sounds, certain frequencies, certain sensations – and not only physical ones – which simply cannot be achieved unless there’s a level of volume which achieves a level of structure-shaking, shivering vibration. in grief or in hope is an album which simply wouldn’t have the impact it does were it not for the amps being dialled up and engineers and producers who appreciate that those frequencies, those moments of distortion, that wall of noise which at times almost submerge the vocals is exactly the objective.

‘skin ripper’ goes full Sunn O))) in its crushing, obliterative drone, each chord hitting like a tsunami, a tectonic tremor. Wattie’s vocal, however, remains composed, melodic, amidst the howling tempest, and the impact and power of the track lie in this contrast.

There’s no denying that in grief or in hope sees BIG|BRAVE explore new musical avenues, but the absence of percussion does nothing to diminish the band’s immense sonic force. In fact, when it comes to that, they seem unstoppable. In exalting the autotune on ‘an uttering of antipathy’, it should, by rights, result in a shrugging departure – but in their hands, the result is a monumental work, with Watties’s vocal wandering amidst a n obliterating blast of feedback and distortion.

The semi-ambient title track offers some relief from the pulverising force of the as album, and become lost in a swamp of flange and feedback.

Everything about this album is obliterative. It may be a very different sound for BIG|BRAVE, but it’s very much the sound of them at their best.

AA

AA

a3846375388_10

Mick Harris & Martyn Bates – Murder Ballads [Incest Songs]

Posted: 21 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Sub Rosa – 15th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Mick Harris may have left Napalm Death some thirty-five years ago, but it’s still for his work with them – and his coining of the term ‘grindcore’ – that he’s largely known. There are, of course, far worse things one could be known for, particularly as this meant that he featured on the band’s seminal debut album, Scum. While having participated in numerous projects in the years since, Scorn will forever be an enduring standout in cult circles, but beyond this, Harris has explored far further-flung corners of the musical spectrum on many occasions with comparatively little recognition, with dark atmospherics having been his primary focus for a good number of years now.

The fact that this is the third instalment of Murder Ballads, recorded in collaboration with Martyn Bates and released on estimable Sub Rosa label in Belgium – which has released albums by William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Test Dept, Oren Ambarchi, David Toop, Bill Laswell, Asian Dub Foundation… the list goes on – is a measure of how Harris has transitioned to what one might call more ‘arty’ territories, which may sound snobby or poncey to some, but let’s focus on the work at hand – at least, in due course.

Although murder ballads are likely most commonly associated with Nick Cave in popular culture, they have a long cultural heritage, with roots in the folk history of Scandinavia, England, and lowland Scotland reaching back as far as the 1750s. The entire premise of murder ballads is bleak and grim, and Harris and Bates remain true to this principle here, on an album which is mercilessly dark and lugubrious.

There’s no avoiding the fact that the subtitle brings an element of discomfort. We’re in a strange place right now, culturally, in that half of the world – or maybe that’s just half of the US and those in the UK who for inexplicable reason who describe themselves as ‘patriots’ while also being fans of Donald Trump – seem to think that paedophilia is just fine, and in many states, marrying cousins is similarly just fine. Similarly, incest porn and step-sibling porn is all the rage. Why? What is wrong with people? But then, history is built on tales of incest, going right back to Greek mythology. This is no more than an observation, and to note that as a species, we’ve been warped for the entirety of our existence. That discussion is an entire thesis in itself, though.

Murder Ballads [Incest Songs] is a long way from Peter Sotos territory. But what it is, is four ominously-shaded longform compositions which are uncomfortable and uneasy. As they pitch it, ‘Incest Songs is the final chapter of the Murder Ballads trilogy, and its most fully realized expression. Where Drift and Passages explored the post-isolationist frame through voice and single instrument, this third volume dispenses with that approach entirely, opening instead onto a more labyrinthine sonic architecture – one built from overlapping, saturating, blurring voices, all of them Martyn Bates’.

Bates does indeed prove to be versatile, and capable of conjuring the most moving vocal evocations. ‘The Bonny Hind’ is essentially a folk song, a shanty, even, at heart, but the lilting vocal, which would work as readily acapella as against conventional instrumentation – flute, or fiddle, for example – takes on a more ominous shade when pitched against groaning, shape-shifting drones. The result is unsettling, and would sit within the soundtrack of a folk horror movie in the way a warped, discordant rendition of a nursery rhyme would in more mainstream projects.

‘Sheaf and Knife’ is notable for its sparse nature. Bates’ voice is practically in your ear – and this ism no small feat of the production. Whispers, echoes, and reverberations echo around, and it’s not immediately apparent that most of this is Bates, the wind and the air, and the dank, low drones which define this album. ‘The Two Brothers’ – a seventeen-minute monster of a composition – drifts into moments of space-age spin, flanged swirl and fractal details turning a textured sonic nebula behind the vulnerable vocals – and the narrative said vocals deliver is chilling, a tale of a stabbing, whereby the narrator washes the blood off and goes about his business. Or something. While the lyrics sometimes trail away in swathes of reverb the auditory experience is gripping in itself. This is the sound of heavy fog, and of silent decomposition. This leads us to the album’s final cut, ‘Edward’, extending beyond seventeen and a half minutes is magnificently haunting. At times so sparse as to be barely there, it’s a trawl into the darkest of spaces, suffocating, claustrophobic. Bates croons and quavers with a detachment which accentuates the sense of disconnection. There’s something in the way he delivers the words, against sparse, eerie, near-ambient backdrops of difficult drones, that is quite chilling: calm, soft, psychopathic. Enjoy, but watch your back.

AA

AA

SRV514 front

Abrasive Trees – Light Remaining

Posted: 20 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

29th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Abrasive Trees’ evolution continues with the arrival of Light Remaining. Over the last seven years, they’ve released a steady stream of EPs, a compilation album gathering material from the early EPs, a live album, and an hour-long drone album recorded by the project’s core member, Matthew Rochford during lockdown. While the lineups have been markedly different, expanding and contracting along the way, there has always been a sense of continuity, a commonality across their catalogue (beyond Rochford himself), and that’s an attention to detail, and a keen awareness of atmosphere, and of balance. Light Remaining, however, is their first full-length studio work conceived as such and recorded as a band.

The single releases, ‘Carved Skull’ and ‘Tao to Earth’ set a certain expectation and tone for the album – dark, tense, layered, and unashamedly arty, even literary in their leanings. And this is very much what Light Remaining gives us – a work that’s sonically immersive, engaging, but also contemplative, cerebral. There’s much to absorb.

With a spoken word introduction delivered over minimal instrumentation, ‘No Solace’ draws the listener in gently – you may even find yourself leaning in, ear cocked to the poetry – before the fireworks begin, an explosive sustained crescendo of rolling drums and soaring, searing guitars, amidst which Rochford maintains a near-monotone delivery amidst the ever-building surge of chaos. It’s difficult to distinguish whether this is a display of serenity or the paralysis of shock. ‘Star Sapphire’ brings contrasting, conflicting tones, textures, and moods, with some pleasant, shoegazey, post-rock chime and jangle paired with some dark, driving distorted chords, perfectly illustrating the attention to detail – and dynamics – mentioned earlier.

There’s something of the feel of Fields of the Nephilim at their most lugubrious and atmospheric to ‘Flickering Flame’ – think ‘Vet for the Insane’, perhaps – before it slowly grows in density and fogginess, and it flows into the rolling swell and surge of ‘Carved Skull’.

If the title suggests something of a slow fade, a diminishing time – and while I may well be overreaching in my interpretation – the very phrase, with its implications of a setting sun feels weighty and weighted, and to carry connotations of an eternal night, the light fading on a dying planet. And this feels like the mood which hangs over the album – a sense of the finite, of impending doom, even. It’s oblique, it’s indirect, but it nags away in the shadows of a work which is certainly darker than it is light. Yes, the light remaining is limited, and the shadows loom ever more darkly.

It’s on the final composition, ‘I Didn’t Mean to Hurt You’ that everything comes together. It’s nearly eleven minutes long, and they make full use of that time to gradually develop the mood, from an understated, picked guitar, rippling in reverb, slowly adding the layers and increasing the volume and density and drums and strings add more and more, picking up pace over time. It’s just shy of the midpoint that it really begins to race forward, and the adrenaline builds in line with the pace and intensity. And finally – finally – the levee breaks, leading out with a slow, deliberate trudging riff topped with a solo from the stars.

Light Remaining feels like the release Abrasive Trees have been building up to since their inception. It’s a sustained work of remarkable detail, nuance, but also density and force. Everything is perfectly realised. It’s huge. Sonically, conceptually, in terms of ambition and execution, the production… this is a peak, a new pinnacle.

AA

AA

a3937139449_10

Older Entries