Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

Nicholas Langley – One Square Centimetre Of Light

Posted: 27 July 2025 in Reviews, Albums
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Cruel Nature Records – 1st August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Nicholas Langley outlines his latest offering with the explanation that “One Square Centimetre Of Light is a continuation of the ideas and techniques I used to compose Thinky Space and especially Cymru Cynhyrchiol. Recorded in spring and summer 2024, this album was an outlet for a lot of thoughts and emotions regarding the involuntary loss of time and memory.’

There are gaps in the narrative here – gaps which I don’t feel it’s necessarily appropriate to probe or plug, particularly when, in his extensive explanation of the album’s final, thirteen-minute piece, ‘Missing Day’ – of which he writes: “‘Missing Day’ can refer either to the mourning feeling of losing whole days to bad health, or to the actual calendar day of mourning, Missing Day, on February 20th. For this piece, as well as layers of tracks 3, 4 and 5, I returned to the generative music techniques I started in 2016. This time around I spent many days getting to grips with programming multiple pieces until I eventually programmed a piece which exactly conveyed my feelings of mourning and hope.”

Memory loss can be a source of panic, anxiety, and while it appears to be a focus, or inspiration of sorts for this album, it feels inappropriate to probe here. But listening to the soft, soporific ambience of One Square Centimetre Of Light, I find myself wondering – where will it go next?

It doesn’t really need to ‘go’ anywhere: the instrumental works which make this album are subtle, sublime. ‘Welsh Summits’ is a beautiful, resonant ambient exploration, while ‘The Weather on the Seafronts’ is magical, mystical, ambient, while ‘Old Age’ quivers and chimes abstractedly, with layers of resonance and depth.

And so we arrive at ‘Missing Day’: fully forty minuses of melodic instrumental exploration, serene, calm, expansive. It’s soft and as much as One Square Centimetre Of Light soothing, the vast sonic expanse of ‘Missing Day’ encapsulates the album’s conflicting and conflicted nature.

One Square Centimetre Of Light is overtly serene and beguiling, but hints at an undisclosed turmoil beneath the surface, a work which is a sonic balm, the result of a process to calm inner strife. As lights at the end of the tunnel go a mere on centimetre is barely there – but there it is. And it is hope. keep the focus on that.

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Various Artists – an endless sky

Posted: 25 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Sinners Music – 28th February 2025

Christopher Nonibor

I’m a little behind with things. Life has a habit of running away at pace. There’s no small element of truth in the observation that Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans – often attributed to John Lennon, but which first appeared in the mid-1950s, in an article in the Stockton Record of Stockton, California.

The latest release helmed by Iain J. Cole and released on his Sinners Music label is something of a departure. Although bearing the ‘various artists’ label, it is, in fact, a set of collaborations recorded with a number of different authors, whose works are narrated by other speakers. Conceived , curated, and the stories edited by David Martin, Iain J. Cole provides the musical accompaniment for the five – or seven – pieces which make up this monumental release.

Each track is a true longform work: all bar two are around – or substantially over – twenty minutes in duration.

Martin’s own contribution, ‘Relic’ evokes aspects of both The Man Who Fell to Earth and The War of the Worlds, as well as various other sci-fi tropes and no small dash of Lovecraft. Cole’s accompaniment is absolutely perfect: largely ambient, it’s composed with the most acute attention to detail, adding drama at precisely the right points, but without feeling in any way contrived or over-egged.

‘What Rupert Don’t Know’ – an exclusive short story written by Glen James Brown and narrated by Alexander King sees Cole linger in the background with a soundtrack that hangs at a respectful distance in the background, and takes the form of some minimal techno.

Gareth E Reese’s ‘We Are the Disease’, read by Daniel Wilmot, has a very different sound and feel. The vocals have a scratchy, treble-loaded reverby sound, somewhere between a radio just off-tune and Mark E Smith. It’s a bleak tale, an eco-horror delivered as a series of scientific reports, and with Cole’s ominous sonic backdrop, which has all the qualities of a BBC Radiophonic Workshop piece, the tension is compelling.

Claire Dean’s ‘The Unwish’, narrated by Helen Lewis marks a necessary shift in the middle of the album – a female voice is welcome, for a start, and so is the change in narrative voice. Women writers observe and relay differently, and the details are integral to the literary experience. Add to that a Northern intonation, and we find ourselves in another world

As a collection of speculative and environmental sci-fci, an endless sky is noteworthy for its quality. The bonus cuts – a brace of ‘soundtrack’ instrumentals showcase Cole’s capacity to create immersive slow techno works which draw heavily on dub. ‘The Rupert Zombie Soundtrack’ is a sedate, echo-heavy slow-bopping trudge, and then there’s the twenty-minute ‘The Blind Queen Soundtrack’, which is more atmospheric, more piano, less overtly techno.

Over the course of some two-and-a-bit hours, an endless sky gives us a lot to process. So much, in fact, that I’m not even sure it’s possible in a single sitting. What does it even all mean when taken together?

an endless sky is delicate, graceful, detailed. Beyond the narratives – which in themselves offer depth and detail – there is something uniquely compelling about an endless sky. Keep Watching…

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DuChamp – The Wild Joy

Posted: 20 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Torto Editions / Ramble Records / Atena Records – 25th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

DuChamp (certainly not to be confused with the seminal avant-gardist Marcel Duchamp) is a Berlin-based artist, and for this release, is the product of ‘a journey of development, research, and refinement of a deeply personal voice’, their chosen selection of instruments is listed as ‘baritone guitar, voice, organ, synths, bouzuki, electronics, incredible stubbornness.’

The baritone guitar is not a common instrument, but oner which sounds quite unlike any other guitar in terms of its tonality. Its application here is in providing the core to elongated sonorous drones on the five compositions on The Wild Joy. It’s a title I take to be somewhat ironic, for despite the resplendent flora which graces the album’s cover, the title of the first piece, ‘Sine proprio’ translates, depending on your choice of reference source, as ‘without property’, ‘without possession’, or ‘poverty’. Whether or not this is a reference to a physical or spiritual poverty isn’t apparent, but what this nine-and-a-half minute dronescape does possess is a wealth of texture as the layers build and vibrate against one another.

‘The Shape of Time’ is very much constructed around contrasts; a whining, scraping drone nags the conscious level of listening, while a low, rumbling bassy resonance lingers way below, and it’s something you feel as much as hear. In the space between, incidentals drift in and out. In the distance, gongs chime and fade slowly, and the disparity between their timing and that of the pulsating throb which has begun to build is disorientating, unsettling.

‘Epithalamion’ marks a dramatic shift – in every way, starting with the change of instrumentation, and by no means ending with the change of approach, with a wild, undisciplined key-bashing crescendo occupying the first couple of minutes, before giving way to a wheezing sound like an organ on the brink of expiry. With its origins in the classical age, an epithalamium is a poem written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber. This, however, sounds more like a piano being pushed down six flights of stairs, before a ghastly gasp sputters along interminably for the remainder of the duration. I pity the bride this was penned for.

Things are different again on ‘Fulaxos’: there, the baritone guitar comes into its own and to the fore, played conventionally, a picked, rolling motif that’s brooding, even doomy provides the starting point for a piece which gradually unfurls toward a place of light and optimism. The final track, which is also the title track, brings us almost full-circle, but there’s a levity to this extended, delicate dronescape, and the soaring vocal only accentuates this sense of elevation.

The joy may be somewhat subdued overall, but it’s there, on what is, ultimately, an accomplished, multi-faceted work.

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Schkeuditzer Kreuz – Swan Grinder

Posted: 19 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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30th August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Just when you think every genre hybrid has been done, and are feeling worn and jaded by everything, someone chucks you something unexpected. You’re not even sure if you like it, at least not at first, because, well, the different elements are all good independently of one another, but in combination..?

It’s taken until their third album for me to discover Australian ‘Industrial Synth Crust’ outfit Schkeuditzer Kreuz, the brainchild of Kieren Hills, and ‘better late than never’ is one angle to take with it – although another is ‘would I have been ready for it before? Would I ever be ready?’

Swan Grinder is as ugly and intense and industrial as its title suggests. Spasmodic drum machines sputter and blast all over, underpinning pulsating electronic basslines and ear-shredding blasts of noise and distortion. And all of this provides the backdrop to raw, rasping vocals. In some ways, I’m reminded of really early Pitch Shifter – but with the wall of guitars replaced by abrasive squalls of electronic noise.

To think, there was really nothing like this before the 90s. While the 80s are the subject of great affection, and there’s a broad consensus that this was the decade of innovation, with the exception of grunge, the 90s are largely portrayed as a retrograde decade, with a return to ‘rock’, guitar-orientated music, and, in particular, the Britpop era, something born out of a nostalgia for the pre-punk era and a golden age which never really was. And now this period is revered with what one might even call a double-nostalgia; folks in their forties getting dewy-eyed over their teenage years listening to music that was nostalgic for the music of their parents’ generation. There’s something inherently sad about that, really.

But the alternative scene of the 90s was something else again. It was here that all kinds of metal migrogenres were birthed, while rap and rock came together and industrial metal emerged, melding crushing guitars with electronic elements. And there was also just so much weird shit percolating through various channels, and it wasn’t just something you had to tune in to John Peel late at night in the middle of the week for: with the major labels getting in on the action, you could catch the likes of Ministry and Butthole Surfers on MTV.

Anyway. There’s nothing sad about Swan Grinder. Angry, perhaps. Deranged, almost certainly. But sad? Nah. While there are elements of the construction which share common ground with , say, KMFDM, or PIG, the overall sound is altogether dirtier, gritter, rawer – and then there are the vocals, which are pure metal. As such, the result is a different kind of hybrid – hard, abrasive, and as nasty as the image the title conjures.

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Belonging – Hollow Cells

Posted: 17 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Dipterid Records – 18th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

That artists can have complete control over their creative output, artwork, and every other aspect of their releases, including the schedule, is often hailed as one of the great virtues of the age of the Internet, especially Bandcamp and Spotify. It’s also oft-said that quality will reach its audience regardless. But thanks to algorithms and the fact that most creatives aren’t best at (self)-promotion and have no budget to pay anyone else to do the job, it simply doesn’t happen that way. And so it is that Hollow Cells, the debut album from Portland-based sludge / stoner metal band, Belonging, self-released in May, is now receiving a vinyl release courtesy of Dipterid Records, which comes with proper distribution and PR – which is why we’re here now.

Social media is aclog with music fans dismissing the role of critics and music reviews, scoffing about how they’re worthless and their opinions not worth shit. But the fact is that unless you have a mate with their ear to the ground, or the algorithm delivers particularly favourable results – unlikely for a minor band who’ve taken the self-release route – the industry mechanisms of labels, PR, press, and radio can make all the difference. Back in the 90s, pre-Internet, I relied on print media and late-night radio to discover new music that wasn’t top-40 chart stuff, and would be as likely to seek out an album based on a negative review as a positive one. Because criticism goes both ways, and critical reading, while perhaps a dying skill, was essential in order to read between the lines. In short, a negative review isn’t – or at least wasn’t – necessarily a bad thing.

I’ve digressed. And I’m not giving Hollow Cells a negative review – because it’s a belting album.

There’s space and separation between the instruments, and the drums – which bring us into the first track, ‘Lady Vanishes’ – have that ‘live’ feel – as, indeed, do the rest of the instruments. This is a recording that captures speaker-quivering volume. The overdriven guitar is thick, driving, the bass hangs low and heavy. The songs are structured, but primarily constructed around the riff, and the riffs are epic. But there’s detail, too, which emerges from the monolithic sludgefest. The stop / start shouty aggro racket of ‘Ceiling’ starts out a bit Therapy? but then swerves to a place that’s more Fugazi, and it’s precisely this range that shows that Belonging have something more to offer than template stoner / sludge: the energy of Hollow Cells is exhilarating from beginning to end.

The six-minute ‘Birdwatcher’ ventures into more post-punk territory, with Bryce August adopting a growlier, baritone vocal style that, when paired with steely grey guitars, invites comparisons to Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, before the song veers in a very different direction that’s more anthemic indie than anything, but with guitars which are absolutely huge.

As it progresses, Hollow Cells becomes increasingly difficult to place, and all the better for it. It’s heavy, but melodic, grungy but not so much angsty. It’s more obscure 90s acts like The God Machine and 8-Storey Window which come to mind during the second half of the album, and with each song, I come to realise how short any genre-based pitch is doomed to fall. ‘Longhaul’ is classic 90s grunge, but works on account of being more Nirvana than Bush, while chucking in a dash of Shellac. The bassline is killer

Hollow Cells is bursting with emotional depth, an ache. But then there are blasting punk songs like ‘Bonehead’ which are more in the vein of …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. And this is why Hollow Cells is so good: it never fails to confound expectation, and never fails to exceed expectation, either. It’s quality from beginning to end – a rare thing indeed. I don’t do stars, but if I did, this would be a 9.5.

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The Spectral Light – Obliteration – Album review and EXCLUSIVE VIDEO STREAM

Posted: 16 July 2025 in Albums, Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Cruel Nature Records – 1st August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

If ever an album was appropriately titled, this is it. Obliteration is from the Sunn O))) / Earth end of the slow and heavy spectrum, with everything low and grinding and dense and seeping along at a snail’s pace – but it’s also so very different. The eleven-and-a-half-minute ‘Teeth’. which raises the curtain on this colossal work, trudges along, thick and murky, the guitars like sludge, overlaid with the most haunting, ethereal vocals, like spirits ascending to the heavens – or perhaps more accurately, fleeing the molten torment of the volcanic pits of hell. The quieter passages ripple gently, but there’s something off-key and off-kilter that proves unsettling, a discordance which isn’t quite right.

The album is described as ‘a visceral, atmospheric journey shaped by improvisation, deep literary roots, and a shared affinity for both crushing heaviness and ghostly ambience’, with the notes going on to add that ‘vocalist and instrumentalist Amanda Votta draws lyrical inspiration from classic rock icons and poets alike – Led Zeppelin, Stevie Nicks, Carl Sandburg’s poems ‘Alone’ and ‘The Great Hunt’, along with Sylvia Plath.’

If none of the influences are immediately apparent, it’s likely because influence can be subtle, more a process of osmosis and assimilation rather than being about emulation. Drawing influence from Led Zep doesn’t have to equate to epic solos and using ‘baby’ a thousand times. And so it is that The Spectral Light suck all of those influences into a swirling vortex.

The churning ‘Branch’ is wild: ZZ Top on acid, Led Zep in the midst of a breakdown, riffs played at a thousand decibels through shredded speakers and melting amps. But it also spins into cracked post-rock territory over the course of its disorientating nine minutes.

Make no mistake: this is a monster: ‘Moonsinger’ warps and bends and it’s emotionally gutting in ways that are difficult to articulate. It touches the core of the very soul. The title track is defined by a dense, metallic churn… and yet there is still a delicacy about it. It’s dark, disturbing, ugly, and yet… beautiful. There is nothing else quite like this. And the dark, airless trudge of Obliteration feels like a black hole… and I find myself being dragged into its eternal depths.

Ahead of the album’s release, we’re privileged to be able to offer a video exclusive for the album’s final track and choice of lead single, ‘Whisper Surgery’. You might want to pour a big drink for this one.

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Ba’al – The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here

Posted: 14 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Road To Masochist – 18th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Perhaps I’m simply more aware, but it feels as if black metal and adjacent subgenres are experiencing a significant moment. Sign of the times? Perhaps. There’s a new wave of all strains of metal, and it’s not simply loner misfit teenage boys and middle-aged blokes who still live at home, working entry-level jobs and playing Dungeons and Dragons on a weekend. In fact, it’s anything but, and the old stereotype no longer holds water here in 2025. Metal offers a number of things: catharsis through anger and abrasive noise is perhaps the most obvious. In case you hadn’t noticed, the world is a dark and dismal place. It’s also terrifying, and run by cunts. And people seem to be losing the plot. Social and moral boundaries aren’t so much collapsing and being torn apart from the top down. Metal offers an outlet that’s safe and harmless, by way of an alternative to embarking on killing sprees. Connected to this, there’s also a certain escapism offered in the domains of metal, which operates on a number of levels. Finally, there’s a sense of community within metal circles: something I’ve touched on a number of occasions is just how safe and accommodating metal gigs always feel. A room full of misfits together is some kind of utopia.

Of the current crop, Sheffield post-black metal quintet Ba’al stand out, and this, their second album, is billed as ‘their most ambitious work to date’. Of course: bands, labels, and PR always say that. But a thirteen-minute opener is nothing if not a clear statement of ambition. It begins with gentle piano, delicate, emotive, atmospheric, evoking the sound of 2004 post-rock, of Her Name Is Calla – and when the guitars crash in, it’s sweeping, cinematic, as much And So I Watch You From Afar as anything overtly metal. It’s not until over three minutes in that storm clouds gather – and blow in fast. In an instant, there is a flurry of blackness, frenzied fretwork blurring into a dense backdrop for scorched, demonic vocals. But after the tempest and turmoil die down, there’s a further segment that could almost be a song in its own right that combines elements of neofolk and shoegaze. It’s softer, more melodic, but somehow ragged… and then they deliver a monumental sustained climax that it nothing short of obliterative.

I’ve seen a few comments on social media dismissing reviews for not being objective, as if we respond to music based on its technical merits rather than on an emotional level. Those making such comments are clearly cretins, because Oasis are shite whichever way you slice it, but if you want objectivity, Ba’al deliver emotional heft with eye-popping technical prowess. Within these first thirteen minutes, they bring texture, tone, dynamics, detail. Where can they possibly go from here?

It transpires that they’re only just getting going. ‘Waxwork Gordon’ opens delicately on a drift of chiming guitar. Rolling drums join, and there’s an evocation of trees and dappled shade – for a moment, before the gates of hell open and molten lava flows forth. But again, there are passages which border on the edge of folk and prog here. Instead of diminishing the power of the black, chugging riffs, they enhance their potency. The eleven-minute ‘Well of Sorrows’ is, indeed, riven with melancholy, but also rays of hope beam through in the form of some deft playing, clean sounds and bright tones, which intersect with sustained thunderous blasts, while the album’s penultimate track, ‘The Ocean that Fills a Wound’ weighing in at thirteen and a half minutes is the very definition of epic. For the most part, it’s rolling, mellow, again more neofolk than metal. But when they slam on the distortion and go for the riffs, they go hard. Closer ‘Legasov’ arrives in a squall of feedback and forges a molten course to the album’s conclusion.

The band’s willingness – nay, urge – to embrace more than metal tropes, and to offer a remarkably broad sonic palette is integral to their appeal. These are songs which expand the parameters of metal in myriad directions. There’s a lot to assimilate here. Joe Stamps’ versatility as a vocalist is a real asset, but collectively, Ba’al’s capacity to swing seamlessly between forms is remarkable.

There will be some for whom their range is simply too much. That’s their loss. The simple fact is that The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here is an incredibly bold, and wide-ranging work, that defies narrow categorisation. It’s a hell of a lot more than metal, that’s for sure. It’s immense. It will open your eyes. And it will probably blow you away.

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Stephen O’Malley – But remember what you have had

Posted: 12 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Portraits – 27th June 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Stephen O’Maley will be forever synonymous with Sunn O))). However fervently fans revere Khanate, whatever the reputation of Burning Witch or KTL, however many solo albums he releases, and regardless of the outstanding work Ideologic Organ presets to the world, none of it will ever come close to the success of Sunn O))), which will eclipse anything and everything else he is involved ion for all eternity. It’s not difficult to grasp the reasons for this. It likely quite frustrating, but that band have elevated a niche not-really-a-genre to stratospheric levels, and have achieved more with a single, sustained chord than most could ever dream of.

When I saw him perform solo some years ago, he appeared quite comfortable with this, playing – just off stage – through a backline that was so immense it wouldn’t quite fit onto the stage of the 450-capacity Brudenell in Leeds. Better to have a reputation to play up to than not, and since bowel-churning guitar drone played at eardrum-shredding volume is what people want, delivering it seems like a fair trade.

The blurb for his latest solo release suggests, however, something a shift, but by no means a departure, writing that ‘With But remember what you have had, Stephen O’Malley continues and expands his musical approach by transposing it to multiphonic electroacoustic writing and acousmatic listening. Drawing not only on his extensive experience as a composer and live instrumentalist, but also on the countless studio production and mixing sessions he has taken part in the course of his many projects (in solo, with SUNN O))) or KTL, to name but a few), Stephen O’Malley’s work on this new piece is ambitious, engaging in an inspired research that delves into the deep intricacies between polyphony, intonation and timbrality, enhanced by melodic motifs. To do this, O’Malley summons up his own very personal sound universe, constellated with amplified textures, instrumental sustained tones and raw energy, in order to diffract them into wavefronts, waves and blows that weave a complex, rich and fascinating matter. But remember what you have had stands out as an important work in Stephen O’Malley’s repertoire: it brings together the multiplicity of his musical approach in an exemplary way, while laying the foundations and promises for the future of an already extraordinary journey.’

But remember what you have had is a single, continuous piece, just over thirty minutes in duration. It begins with a parping drone that sounds somewhat like a didgeridoo. It lingers, resurging, cyclical hums and layers of sound and texture build atop of one another… and then what the fuck’s this? Bagpipes? It sounds like bagpipes. But then, it also sounds like guitar feedback and a single chord being struck and resonating for an eternity. And then another chord crashes like a giant Wave breaking over rocks at high tide with a stormy wind behind it.

Whereas the overall pitch and tone of the Sunn O))) sound is low and growling, But remember what you have had altogether more keenly favours the mid and upper ranges, and howls of feedback while whining engines fill the air as it heats up. There’s more discord as the sounds bounce off one another. It’s an exploration of the interaction between notes and frequencies, conducted in a way which can only happen at volume,

By the midpoint, the feedbacks are interweaving in such a way to form a huge reverberating howling drone, which in some respects shares common ground with Metal Machine Music, and it would be difficult – and inappropriate – to completely sidestep Earth 2 here, too. By twenty-minutes, O’Malley conjures an immense collision of sound, jousting and jostling amidst a sonic tempest, before gradually diminishing to a point of tranquillity which is more reminiscent of a string quartet than experimental wave of noise. It makes for an unexpectedly soothing finish, but once again shows the range of O’Malley’s musicianship, as well the breadth of his sonic interests, which extend far beyond all-out weight and sheer volume.

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Wevie Stonder – Sure Beats Living

Posted: 10 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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25th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

2025 continues to be the year of the comeback. My remark earlier in the week, in context of the release of the new Curse Mackey album, that ‘three years is a long time’ pales rather when considering that just a few days before I’d covered the first Red Lorry Yello Lorry album since 1992, and reviewed The March Violets touring only their second album proper since their formation in 1981. And that’s before we consider the unexpected return of the Jesus Lizard… But somehow it’s been fifteen years since the last new material from the progenitors – and likely sole purveyors of – cack pop, Wevie Stonder.

2017 compilation The Beast of Wevie provided a potted history of their exercises in perversely calculated naffness, and since then… tumbleweeds.

Sure Beats Living is every bit as bizarre as anything they’ve done previously, and successfully nudges beyond… and then accelerates over the horizon. It’s not so much cack as demented. Instrumentally, it’s a wide-ranging work, sometimes expansive, bold, ambitious, even cinematic – as the epic, widescreen ‘Piccolo’s Travels’ illustrates. But mostly, it’s a collection of lo-fi electronic dicking about with irreverent babbling in lieu of serious or meaningful lyrical content. So it’s a step up from previous outings…

It’s a sparse electro backdrop which frames the first track, ‘That’s Magic’, and no doubt fans will like it – but not a lot – as is immediately ventures into the domains of the strange, a Scots brogue narrating the steps for performing a magic trick which culminates in setting the cards alight, vacuuming the ashes and moulding polystyrene. What makes it all the stranger is that the delivery isn’t so different from that of a self-help tutorial, and reminds me of the guided relaxation CD I got given when I attended CBT some years ago.

‘Carpet Squares’ pitches the old-skool groove of Mr Oizo against crunching industrial beats… while providing detached directions for carpet-laying amidst a looping reverb-heavy collage of commentary on carpet. But then the urgent wibbly wobbly ping-pong bloopery of ‘Vanja and Slavcho’ takes things to another level. There’s storytelling, there’s cheesy Japanese-influenced pop and a whole lot more, and it’s quite bewildering – but then, so is the stomping glam beat of ‘Tiktaalik’, which kicks in hard and with all apparent intention of bringing something serious… As if these guys have a serious bone in their collective bodies.

In fairness, quirky humour and an overt lack of seriousness should never be seen as corresponding with a lack of ability to be serious. It’s often reported that comedians are in fact depressives who use humous as a way of deflecting their inner sadness, and clowns are often masking. And something in the title carries hints of a clowning subterfuge: you can almost picture a downbeat character in a US sitcom turning to the camera, breaking the third wall, with an exaggerated shrug, and declaring, ‘Well, it sure beats living’. And so it may just be my own state of mind which colours my perception of this, or maybe there really is something darker beneath the surface. ‘Push It’ inches towards funk, but ends up elsewhere completely, and in seemingly taking some of its lyrical inspiration from the game ‘Bop It’, it’s the epitome of irreverence. ‘Customer Services’ is a perfect pastiche of corporate phone line hold hell, down to the frustrated ‘shut up’ and tossing aside of the phone. Because beneath humour usually lies truth.

However you look at Sure Beats Living, this is a different kind of nuts. The core of the album is constructed around bleepy, shuffling electronica and spoken word… spoken word what? They’re not diatribes, they’re not really narratives, either. They’re words, often detached from meaning, or otherwise, where not abstract, designed to be daft, and Wevie explore words because they can.

Sure Beats Living is perverse, it’s stupid, and it know it is, because that’s what it sets out to be. And in these dark, depressing times, we need the wild irreverence of Wevie more than ever. Welcome back, you barmy buggers.

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Norman Westberg – Milan

Posted: 10 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 – 18th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Norman Westberg seems to be a man of few words. Through all of his years with Swans, I can only recall interviews with Gira and Jarboe, although I have for many a decade now admired Westberg’s stoic approach to playing: no showmanship, no seeking of attention, instead channelling the sound, often with infinite patience, screeding feedback and a single chord for an eternity. His solo material is considerably softer than Swans in tone, but no less brimming with tension and atmosphere, and this is nowhere more apparent than in his solo live sets, as I recall in particular from seeing him open for Swans in Leeds two years ago. Onstage, he was unassuming: in contrast, the sound he made, was powerful.

And so it is that the words which accompany Milan are not those of the artist, but Room40 label head Lawrence English, who recounts:

In 2016, I invited Norman Westberg to Australia for his first solo tour.

He’d been in Australia a few years before that, touring The Seer with Swans, and it was during this tour that I’d had the fortune to meet him. Since that time Norman and I have worked on a number of projects together. He very kindly played some of the central themes on my Cruel Optimism album and I had the pleasure to produced his After Vacation album.

Last year Norman shared a multichannel live recording with me from a tour where he was supporting Swans. The recording instantly transported me back to the first time I heard Norman perform.

Whilst many people know his more dynamic and tectonic playing associated with his band practice, Norman’s solo work is far more fluid. Often, when I hear him live, I imagine a vast ocean moving with a shimmer, as wind and light play across its surface.

Norman’s concerts are expeditions into just such a place. They are porous, but connected, a kind of living organism that is him, his instrument and his effects. He finds ways to create moments of connection which are at times surprising, and at others slippery, but always rewarding.

There’s a deeply performative way to his approach of live performance. There’s a core of the song that guides the way, a map of sound, but there’s also an extended sense of curiosity that allows unexpected discoveries to emerge.

Milan, which I had the pleasure to work on for Norman, captures this sense perfectly. It is a record that exists in its own right, but is of course tethered to his other works. It’s an expansive lens which reveals new perspectives on familiar vistas.

This almost perfectly encapsulates my own personal experience of witnessing Westberg performing. And Milan replicates that same experience magnificently. Admittedly, despite having listened to – and written about – a number of his solo releases, including After Vacation, I was unable to identify any of the individual pieces during or after the set. Such is the nature of ambient work, generally. Compositions delineate, merge, and while the composer will likely have given effects settings and so on, which are essential to their rendering, to most ears, it’s simply about the overall effect, the experience, the way movements – even if separable – transition from one to another.

This forty-minute set is dark, disturbing, immersive, somewhat suffocating in its density, from the very offset with disorientating oscillations of ‘An Introduction’. It flows into the next piece, ‘A Particular Tuesday’, where tinkling, cascading guitar notes begin to trickle down over that woozy undulation which rumbles and bubbles on from the previous track. And over time, it grows more warped, more distorted. Something about it is reminiscent of the instrumental passages between tracks on Swans’ Love of Life and White Light from the Mouth of Infinity, and for all the swirling abstraction, there are trilling trickles of optimism which filter through here.

Amidst a swell of bass-booming, whorling sound on sound, gentle, picked notes just – just – ring clear and give form to an amorphous sonic mass, but this too gradually achingly, passes to the next phase, and then the next again. ‘Once Before the Next’ is the sound of a struggle, like trying to land a small wooden rowing boat in a gale. And it’s in context of this realisation that there are many depths and layers to Milian, but none which make for an easy route in, and there is no easy ‘check this snippet’ segment. Instead, it’s the soundtrack which prefaced the ugly one w know is coming.

While Milan is obviously a live set – and at times, the overloading boom of the lower frequencies hit that level of distortion which only ever happens in a live setting, and the sheer warts-and-all, unedited, unmixed approach to this release is as remarkable as it is incredible in listening terms. This isn’t a tidied-up ‘studiofied’ reworking of a live show. Milan is a document of what happened, as it happened. You can feel the volume. The density and intensity are only amplified by the volume, and you really do feel as if you’re in the room. Let it carry you away.

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