Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

KiKu – Suzhou / It’s All The Rage (feat. Blixa Bargeld & Black Cracker)

Posted: 12 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Everest Records – 25th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

What we effectively have here is a pair of EPs from Swiss avant-garde act KiKu, led by trumpeter and composer Yannick Barman and drummer and percussionist Cyril Regamey, each one a collaboration – but rather than rendering them separate works, what we get is an album of two distinct halves, conceived, we’re told, as a diptych: ‘two distinct bodies of work held together by a shared musical architecture’, where, ‘on one side, Blixa Bargeld moves through language with precision, restraint and abrasion. On the other, Black Cracker turns language into rhythm, pressure and momentum. Between them, KiKu constructs a dense, unstable framework of trumpet, drums, sampler and electronics’. The result is something akin to a split album, on which the two sides of KiKu are as much a defining feature as their collaborators.

The first of the four works with Bargeld, ‘Orlando’s Victory,’ slides in with some retro-vibing electropop which isn’t a million miles away from late-career Leonard Cohen. Simmering synths strike some dramatic shapes and brooding tones atop a slightly shuffling, trip-hop infused beat. ‘The Number of the Millibeast’ is a slice of dark storytelling, a minimal, almost folky instrumental provides the backing for a half-sung, half spoken narrative, delivered with a theatrical flourish, before ‘Suzhou XX XY YX YY’ continues in the same sonic vein, while the lyrics become more abstract. The instrumentation becomes ever sparser and the lyrical cohesion crumbles with each successive piece, culminating in the flickering pulse and gasping weirdness of ‘Nonsense Rock ‘n’ Roll’, which seems to be a moan about some people playing music in the street in the night which rapidly escalates in divergent directions. The atmosphere is that of late-night, downtown, smoke and rough liquor, Bargeld adopting a persona that’s a bit Tom Waits, a bit Charles Bukowski, but which comes across with a hint of grizzled old man, chewed up and ground down by life, veering erratically between raconteur and curmudgeonly malcontent. ‘Do I like the music? No! Nonsense!”

While it’s Regamey’s percussion which sits to the fore on the Bargeld cuts, it’s Barman’s brass which takes the lead on ‘Bull Whip’, the first of four ‘bull’- themed tracks with Black Cracker. ‘So much road rage / so much road kill’, Black Cracker reflects. His delivery here is soulful yet sad, and the trip-hop vibe of ‘Suzhou’ makes a subtle but distinct switch to hip-hop on ‘It’s All The Rage’. ‘Leaping Bull (Chicago)’ is different again, and something deep within the song – the way the mournful trumpet which echoes out over stuttering beats, and Black Cracker’s grizzled, world-weary vocal, vaguely reminiscent in its patina to Mark Lanegan – tugs at half-forgotten emotions and a sense of memories of the past, hazed by time. And then, halfway through, it switches to a dense, droning slab of dark hip-hop, tense and twitching with angst. Coming out of nowhere, it hits hard, but paves the way for ‘The Running of the Bulls’, where bleak instrumentation and soulful but anguished vocals combine to convey a sense of conflict between the interior and the exterior. ‘Sleeping Bull’ notably is subtitled ‘Woke’ in parenthesis, and its lyrical and sonic latticework makes for a compelling combination while reminding us where the term ‘woke’ actually came from. It’s absurd to think that it’s been adopted as a pejorative term, predominantly by white, right-wing wanksacks. It’s high time to reclaim it, and to not only be woke, but woke and proud.

Decidedly more downtempo and downbeat than ‘Suzhou’, ‘It’s All The Rage’ feels less driven by anger or rage than it conveys an aching sadness, the kind that permeates the body to the core, and makes the limbs and the very heart weigh heavy. As a whole, Suzhou / It’s All The Rage is very much an album of two halves, precisely as intended. And as contrasting as the two sides are, they do, most definitely compliment one another, and, perhaps more importantly, they tap different triggers for response. It’s a multifaceted work, and most certainly an album to chew on.

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Everything Decays – Requiem II: We Will Slaughter the Lambs

Posted: 10 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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11th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Numbering a debut album ‘II’ might seem rather odd, but it’s by no means a first: Throbbing Gristle’s debut was The Second Annual Report, after their first two cassette-only releases were entitled The Best of Throbbing Gristle (Vol I and II respectively). However, with Everything Decays, it follows their first EP, Requiem 1: The Serial Killer’s Symphony of Liberation, Deliverance and Relief, and the album, written as a story, continues an ongoing narrative in which each song is a chapter. So far, so conceptual. When it comes to plot, there are certainly no spoilers in the nots which accompany the album, which they describe as ‘A descent into the darkest corners of the human mind, where oppression breeds trauma, trauma ignites rage, and rage demands retribution. The album follows the journey of those who have been stripped of their humanity, rising against their oppressors only to discover that revenge comes at the cost of their own souls. It is a story of pain, resistance, justice, and the thin line between liberation and becoming the very evil they swore to destroy.’

The Dutch deathcore / hardcore quartet threaten ‘crushing riffs, filthy grooves, savage vocals and bone-shattering breakdowns, dragging hardcore aggression into one hostile wall of sound. They describe their music as an overload of quick and loud noise.’

Opener, ‘Miserere mei, Deus’ arrives with an unexpectedly folksy ring and a thick but elastic bass sound which sounds almost synthy, and the whispered vocal is soft but menacing… and over the course of two and a half minutes it builds… and it builds. But then faceripping guitar chords and thunderous drums crash in and the vocals turn rabid, driving into a complex but hard-hitting slab of metalcore rage, which dovetails directly into lead single ‘Crowd Control’ where shit really goes off. We’ve all seen how police and governments implement crowd control – and, at times, somewhat selectively at that – and Everything Decays approach the topic with a suitably extreme suite of imagery, with tendrils, bones, peeled flesh and spilling guts in a frenetic, kinetic, and frankly devastating metal explosion. The final section is a slow trudge that draws as much on the pulverising weight of Swans and Godflesh as anything from the death / hardcore end of the spectrum, but dropping the BPM to that of ‘barely alive’ means that ‘Broken Vessels’, which powers in at a hundred miles an hour has even more impact. And this is something that does stand out about Requiem II: We Will Slaughter the Lambs – the pacing, the switches. Unravelling the narrative may not be an easy task, or one most listeners are even willing to undertake, but the way in which the individual songs move between one segment to the next, and how the songs, in turn, slot together to build the album as a whole… it’s clear there’s been a great deal of thought and technical application gone into this. It certainly isn’t just a bunch of songs cobbled together in a fortuitous sequence.

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It is, however, a crafted sequence of compositions planned and pieced together for maximum impact, and Requiem II: We Will Slaughter the Lambs is both relentless and brutal. The album’s centrepiece – and the longest of the seven tracks – ‘Adrenaline – A Lifetime Filled With Rage’ rips the doors off their hinges as it enters the set. A spindly, serpentine intro tinged with esoteric Eastern flavours swiftly melts into a wall of annihilate anguish which goes straight-up Nu-Metal a couple of minutes in, lumbering low and heavy.

‘Guillotine’ is a rush of snarling, gnarly fury, although the contrasting dual vocals, which pitch a clean delivery sits alongside all the swirling chaos. Hints of accessibility eddy on the peripheries, until finally, we arrive at the exit and ‘Rejoice the Butcher’ with an unexpected but well-timed glimpse at an approximation of pop, or at least melodic metal. Ordinarily, I’d say that a song like this breaks the mood but here, now, the prospect of escape, and time time just to breathe has appeal. Because Requiem II: We Will Slaughter the Lambs is nothing short of breathtaking. Soak it in, and enjoy, while you can.

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Pic: Dave van Hout

Isn’tses – Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole

Posted: 9 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 14th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Working under the Isn’tses moniker, London duo Lisa McKendrick and Tim Drage have spent more than a decade sculpting noise with their own unique slant, evolving not only their own methods and methodologies, but their own circuitry, perhaps most famously the ‘Chernobylizer’, a compact yet devastatingly powerful noise-generating device.

The notes which accompany this, their latest release in a prodigious and ever-expanding body of work, describe Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole as ‘raw and chaotic’, departing from noise alone to deliver a work where ‘a mix of complex beats, textures, unpredictable sounds and frenetic rhythms enter the music, at times with melody and screamy vocals as they push the boundaries of electronic music,’ and finally summarising it as ‘an intense mind-bending spacey journey of wild explosive emotion and sonic textures.’

It contains ten compositions – songs would be a hell of a stretch – the titles of which either seem purposefully incomplete and therefore impenetrable, or otherwise oblique, apart from those which include references to ‘rave’. There is certainly an abundance of heavy-duty pulsating electronic beats and whoops and cheers and yelps crop up with a certain frequency. But if this is to be considered in any way a ‘dance’ album, it’s in the context of late 70s and early 80s electronica – the warped groves and unsettling, detached vocals of Throbbing Gristle circa 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and Chris and Cosey’s Trance. The beats are industrial strength, but shudder and stutter, pulsing through fuzzed-out, distorted synth waves and an endless array of extraneous interjections. Demented shrieks and wailings rise though the thick atmosphere towards the end of the first track, ‘Sol Receiver’, and ‘I Spit on Your Rave’ only amplifies their commitment to melding propulsive beats and throbbing synths and melting them together with a sonic haze and disconcerting sense of psychopathy.

The majority of the pieces evoke a kind of derangement of the senses, repetition and disconcerting discord conjuring a trance-like evocation – but it’s dark and murky, and there’s a thick, squelchy analogue feel which contributes to a sound that feels more like the drug-induced hellish nightmare of a cult than spiritual transcendence. The thumping, clumping stomp or ‘Freekfall’ is nothing short of purgatorial, and you want to escape, but you find your limbs are leaden and limp, and you can’t move as you find yourself staring into a swirling vortex, even when you close your eyes. There is no escape.

‘Undo Fear Biases’ is an unadulterated seething miasma of heavy noise propelled by a palpating myocardial spasm of a beat, while ‘Free The Party’ is centred around an interview or some other monologue about the days of rave culture. In contrast, ‘I’m Not The’ is the soundtrack to the rave where the trip is bad, man. It’s like hearing The Prodigy and some shit shoegaze indie at the same time while your brain is exploding one lobe at a time and the fragments form small vortices as they cascade from your ears. Pleasant, it is not, and the same is true of ‘Do Or Die’, with its sonic allusions to ‘Discipline’ and ‘Whorl of Sound’, and which escalates to something akin to the detonation scenes in Threads. Total sonic annihilation, absolute obliteration. Sitting here with only a beer, my head is beginning to spin and my stomach is slowly starting to churn. This isn’t accidental: Isn’tses understand the impact of frequencies, and the way sounds interact.

Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole is by no means especially harsh as noise goes, but it is relentlessly, unyieldingly hellish in its conception and execution. It’s no criticism when I comment that this is hard work and a difficult album: it’s supposed to be. But why is the churning, shifting, reverberating discord of Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole more challenging than a screeding blast of continuous harsh noise? Everyone’s brain processes things differently, so I can only speak for myself when debating this, but it’s more often than not possible to allow waves of noise to wash over and flow across the mind, to go with the flow, as it were. Dance music is different in many ways, but by the same token, it’s easy to process a steady four-four beat, particularly when it’s the constant, consistent bass thump which defines the majority of dance music – it’s that beat, and that consistent tempo, which makes it music for dancing. You zone out the extranea, and focus on that core element. And that’s the common ground shared by dance and noise when it comes to how we process it – by zooming out and focusing on something within it. This isn’t possible with Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole. Everything about how each piece is assembled is built on continual disruption. There’s nothing to latch on to, there’s nothing consistent. Yes, there are rhythms, but they’re jarring, riven with irregularities, or what the brain will likely perceive as irregularities, and there’s so much else going on, disconnected and disjointed sounds flying in all directions, that any attempt to filter them out and focus is impossible.

Back in the late 70s, much of what Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire were doing was inspired by the tape experiments of William S. Burroughs, and the proposed methods for psychic warfare using sonic weaponry as detailed in Electronic Revolution and The Revised Boy Scout Manual. There’s a palpable sense that with Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole, Isn’tses are returning to the origins of industrial music. And what’s remarkable is that even now, it’s absolutely devastating. Complete sensory overload. A derangement of the senses.

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Cor de Lux – Year of the Horse

Posted: 8 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Ipecac Recordings – 18th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Their bio tells us that ‘Cor de Lux didn’t come out of a content pipeline, a shared folder, or an algorithmic moment. They came out of a rehearsal room,’ and their Bandcamp page describes them as ‘4 friends in a Post Punk-Noise Rock band. Melodic hints and synth tones that trickle into a garage angst progressive fury.’ These two snippets give an insight into what kind of band they are, and how they operate, but don’t really give the measure of Year of the Horse, an album which goes beyond both post-punk and noise-rock or any permutational crossover of the two to render something that’s varied, embraces experimentalism, and at times is quite off the wall.

Single cut ‘The Cringe’ is exemplary, crashing in on a lolloping rhythm and blistering squall of guitar by way of a backing to a dispassionate but nevertheless urgent-sounding dual vocals from Tim Lusk and Dawn Moraga, before suddenly pulling up and following a short but meandering moment of ponderous desert rock, swerves off in a vaguely trippy prog direction, with a swirling synth and strolling synth. In contrast, ‘Ping Pong’ – not a cover of the Stereolab classic – is a slice – and at six minutes long, a very generous one – of quintessential dream-pop. A laid-back, balmy indie song with a hint of C86 whimsy, gently melodic and evocative of dappled sunlight in woodlands in early summer, it’s neither post-punk nor noise-rock, but it’s easy on the ear – until the switch that lands around the four-minute mark when it unexpectedly takes off like a rocket. And it’s here that it becomes apparent why Ipecac would be interested in them. They’re a band unconstrained by genre boundaries: not necessarily weird, but different.

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‘Cannibal’ takes the chiming guitar and driving bass of the UK goth sound circa 1984 and spin them with slightly spiky vocals and a mid-80s indie twist – nothing that’s immediately specific to a band, but then not entirely generic either.

‘The Western’ whips up a choppy frenzy and is perhaps one of the most overtly post-punk-meets-noise-rock songs on the album, and it drives pretty hard, before ‘Bread Bag’ serves up a slice of mathy post-rock… but that’s not quite it. But I can’t think long enough to capture my thread because there’s a sudden explosion over overdrive, and then it’s off somewhere else again. As the album progresses, the harder it becomes to situate it in a way that feels in any way meaningful – but that doesn’t mean that Year of the Horse is in any way incoherent. The more wide-ranging and eclectic the songs are, the more the sound of Cor de Lux is defined.

‘The Deli’ is simultaneously motorik and noodly: Pavement might be an obvious touchstone, but it’s more obscure acts like Moderate Rebels that come to mind, and Rosa Mota, too, and as fast as can process and much faster than I can type, we’re into another post-rock noise burst and then some more breezy, jaunty indie rock. One thing that does stand out is just how un-American they sound, at least to my ear. Year of the Horse is quirky. It’s not a common American trait. It’s nuanced, and wile it’s by no means a flippant, inconsequential work – it’s anything but – it’s threaded with a kind of knowingness, a twinkle in the eye which hints at a certain humour. But more than anything, Year of the Horse is a work of genius, in that it brings together myriad incongruous elements and doesn’t just make them gel, but amalgamates them in a way which feels entirely natural. How do they do it? Magic, alchemy, or something, I guess.

So many acts strive to make hybridity work, and so many fail, because it feels forced, self-conscious, the segments don’t flow or connect up, and it sounds awkward, jarring. Not so with Cor de Lux, and Year of the Horse keeps it succinct with just nine songs and a run time of thirty-eight minutes, the majority of the songs sitting in the three-and-a-bit-minute bracket. It’s a rare beast, this: an album that will blow your mind, but subtly. It’s crazy, but it’s packed with tunes. Truly inspired.

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Photo: Olivia Howe

hubris. – White Shores

Posted: 7 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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10th September 2026

Having never felt compelled to explore Tolkien’s writing – and perhaps consequently even less compelled to watch Peter Jackson’s epic Lord of the Rings trilogy – I feel in some ways unqualified to review White Shores¸ the fifth album by Swiss post-rock band hubris. which follows four albums inspired by Greek mythology.

This is one of those albums which does require some grounding in context, not only in terms of its literary inspiration, but also the personal circumstances which prompted the shift in focus, and so I shall quote from the accompanying notes in order to avoid any misinterpretation.

In Tolkien’s legendarium, elves in spite of their immortality (a trait often coveted by humans) refer to death as the “Gift of Men.” This paradox offers a striking alternative to the Western perception of death as purely tragic. A “gift” implies something desirable, even fortunate. While Tolkien presents multiple perspectives on death throughout his works, the one that resonated most deeply with Jonathan comes from the main protagonist Frodo’s departure at the end of The Lord of the Rings: "the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

In the wake of his grandfather’s passing, this perspective became Jonathan’s emotional and conceptual foundation of White Shores. The album unfolds across five movements, each representing a word in a single sentence: Death. Is. Just. Another. Path.

The sentence is drawn from Gandalf’s words to Pippin in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation. It was spoken in the face of what appears to be their last moments. This phrase serves as both a moment of respite and a thematic conception.

Inevitably, fans of the books and the films – and there are many – will appreciate White Shores in ways I simply cannot, in that they will be able to identify references and revel in the details. This is clearly an album where detail is important. Comprising five movements, the album is designed to reflect Dr. Kübler-Ross’ theory on the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance – although split into six tracks, with none making any obvious reference to this, it’s not readily apparent.

The first piece, ‘death’ is a delicate, rolling work, which is expansive and feels comparatively calm, particularly for the first three minutes. Additional layers of guitar with overdriven, choppy chords arrive at this point, but the same interweaving lead part continues to drift on through, before it all dissipates into a slow-motion ambience to fade near the end. This in turn segues into ‘is’, which is textured, and builds, but does so gently and in a way which remains easy on the ear. It’s pleasant, but there’s very little grab or bite to it, and as such, it’s music that’s easy to let slip into the background.

The nine-and-a-half-minute ‘just’ is the centrepiece in every way, and with its rolling drums, and a crashing snare which cuts through the rippling guitars which lap away for the first four minutes, it’s the first composition that feels like it’s going somewhere, and offers a glimpse of emotional intensity. The same overdriven guitar sound which brought the power chords on ‘death’ crunches in to underpin an arpeggiated lead line. There’s a definite tension which pulls through the weave of this cinematic composition, but while it conjures sweeping vistas and rolling hills, there’s no rugged, mountainous crescendo, nothing which conveys any palpable sense of anguish. As the final minutes taper down through a soft piano segment, there comes a greater sense of tranquillity, and a sense of ill-ease and frustration at the passage of time, but equally a sense of musical restraint placing limitations on what could have been an impactful epic, and what could have been.

The album’s shortest piece, ‘another’ goes a bit Radiohead, before the final movement, ‘path’ arrives. Split into two parts and with an overall run time of nearly twelve minutes, it unquestionably meets the ‘epic’ criteria. Around the four minute mark, they do finally cut loose, at least a bit, but it still feels lacking somehow.

White Shores is a most listenable album, but it’s not an album that makes you want to listen to it. Instead of grappling with the fundamentals which inspired in a way which demands attention, hubris. seem more interested in keeping things safe. The instrumental work is faultless in its execution, and the compositions are considered. The quieter passages are achingly magnificent and evocative… but they sound like they’re holding back, and the peaks don’t peak much: everything sits around the middle, rather than exploring a greater dynamic range which would have so much more impact, sonically and emotionally.

White Shores is pleasant, and near-flawless on a technical level. But perhaps that’s it’s greatest failing: it places technicality and production over dynamism and impact, and while I like it well enough, I simply find myself wanting more.

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PIG – Dirt Box

Posted: 6 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Lately, PIG’s rate of output has been nothing short of phenomenal. Having released the album Hurt People Hurt in May, they’ve just embarked on a substantial, two-month long tour of North America and Canada, and to coincide with that, they’ve not only got a remix EP, but also Dirt Box, which features four new songs paired with a remix of each, making for another album-length release.

There is, to an extent, a sense that if you’ve been following recent PIG releases, you’ll have a reasonable idea of what to expect. Since resurrecting his porcine project in 2016, Raymond Watts has discovered that the swine yields pearls when plundering a seam which places a uniquely gritty spin on glam ground up with industrial and greased with S&M sleaze and a dash of religion for that extra spice. This isn’t to say that PIG albums have fallen to the formulaic, so much as the fact that they’ve found their groove, and the new material over the last ten years hasn’t so much flowed, as been in full spate. It’s working out petty nicely, too. Despite touring as the support for Nine Inch Nails on the seminal Downward Spiral tour and having albums released on Reznor’s label in the mid-90s, PIG remained eternal outsiders, perhaps being just that bit too weird and eclectic for the prevailing tastes at the time. So while NIN were hailed by the press as being groundbreaking, Watts’ work, which tossed in classical samples, strings and all sorts into the grinding industrial mix, taking cues from mentor and collaborator JG Thirlwell, AKA Foetus, the outsider’s outsider – was simply three steps too far. But now… it seems that having tempered the hybridity and experimentalism a shade, the world has finally come around to PIG, with the likes of Classic Rock and Vive Le Rock raving about Hurt People Hurt. I think it was Genesis P-Orridge who made a comment along the lines that if you stick around long enough, you’ll come to be accepted, and whoever it was, this certainly seems true of PIG, who’ve been going nearly forty years now, with the release of debut single ‘Never for Fun’ and album A Poke in the Eye… With a Sharp Stick being released in 1988.

Lead single and EP opener, ‘An American Ideal of Beauty’ starts out sounding like Watts may have jumped the shark – or the wall of Marshall stacks – and gone straight-up spandex hair metal on us, or perhaps even all-out Kiss, but then the quintessential guitar chug of Jim Davies cuts in and grinds hard and we get to breathe a sigh of relief. And here we go: religious-sounding ululations ring out against a bubbling synth bass. ‘Put up, shut up! Do your duty!’ Watts snarls against a backdrop of chugging rhythm guitars and layer upon layer of detail – and the truth is, this is as boldly extravagant in its sonic span as the most revered work among fans, namely the material which featured on Red, Raw and Sore, Sinsation, and Wrecked, which saw Watts colliding insane ambition with some inspired songwriting. Yep, he’s still got it, and any recognition, however belated, is well-deserved. But does this mean that PIG are mainstream now, and beyond the remit of Aural Aggravation? I don’t think so. They’re not about to be played on the Radio 1 breakfast show, I’ve been a fan since the early 90s, and Raymond Watts will forever be one of my favourite interview subjects when we met in York a few years ago.

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After the rabid industrial glam grind of ‘Your Reptilian Overlord Presents’, ‘Infidel’ slows the pace and finds Watts go Bowie circa Outside with a heavy dose of darkwave in the mix. With a strong hook and a poppy undercurrent, it showcases the range and quality of the songwriting that sets PIG apart from many of their peers – not that they really have any at this point. They’ve diverged a long way from the acts that emerged around the same time on Wax Trax! evolving along a very different trajectory from, say, KMFDM (of whom Watts was a member) or Ministry. ‘Butterfly’ is a churning, mutant beast of a tune, and has the makings of a future classic given time to embed.

The remixes… well, they’re remixes. In their favour, they’re very different from the original versions. The Cyanotic remix of ‘Your Reptilian Overlord Presents’ is up first, and it’s a noisy, fucked-up industrial blast reminiscent of JG Thirlwell’s remixes of NIN. Admittedly, it’s nowhere near a extreme as his contributions on Fixed, but they set new precedents when it came to remixes, and the world has never been the same since. The beat calls to mind early 00s Pitch Shifter, and it makes for an intense four and a half minutes. The surprisingly mellow Combichrist remix of ‘Butterfly’ is the other standout: in stripping the song back and going for a more darkwave backing to Watt’s gnarly vocal, it makes for a radical transformation.

What’s remarkable is that in producing an album a year – give or take – plus EPs of offcuts and remixes in between – the standard of PIG releases hasn’t only been consistent, but continues to reach new heights. Instead of running out of ideas, PIG are surging with creativity and riding the crest of a wave.

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Felix Kubin & Asmus Teitchens – Senderkennungen

Posted: 5 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Auf Abwegen – 3rd September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Is Internet radio really radio? There may still be live broadcasts, but they tend to be then saved and made available for streaming for a period of time, or indefinitely. This has certainly changed the way many of us listen to radio – for those who still do – in the same way streaming has completely changed out TV viewing habits. One obvious benefit of this for viewers / listeners is that there’s no cursing that you’re having to miss something because of another engagement or a clash or other external factor, but one thing that’s most definitely been lost is the way in which TV and radio schedules used to provide social and cultural cohesion. Of course, the near-infinite choice now available is also a factor in this, but even when a series captures mass attention, you simply don’t have a quarter of the nation stopping everything to tune into the same show at the same time. Rarely are schools and workplaces abuzz with the ‘did you see so-and-so last night?’ conversation anymore. There are a few things that still appear to have that pull on terrestrial television – the likes of Love Island and Strictly – but they’re increasingly rare. Even when series are released episodically, many viewers prefer to wait until the whole season is available, and ‘binge’ it. Personally, I don’t get how people have the time to watch six hours or so of a single show in just one weekend, but then, I hardly watch any television – live or streaming – because I’m usually reading or writing and / or listening to music.

It’s not simply nostalgia to reflect on the experience of tuning into John Peel on a night with a blank tape in the machine ready to record whoever was in session or anything else that was potentially interesting, not least of all because I don’t miss the days of tapes getting chewed, intros missed or spoken over, failing to catch the name of the artist, etc.. But it did make for a very different relationship with music, and one which made it more valued. Listening out for and also being introduced to new music in this way – or by being passed a compilation tape done by a friend – meant we were perhaps more invested than being fed endless recommendations selected by algorithms.

It’s in this context that we arrive at Senderkennungen, the first collaboration between Felix Kubin & Asmus Teitchens, of which the latter explains a follows:

‘In order to make radio stations acoustically recognizable they need a so called station ID. This audible signal is synonimous to a visible logo. Both logo and station ID create identities. The German word for station ID is „Senderkennung“. For the album Felix Kubin composed a series of unique Senderkennungen – each ca. 5 seconds long – which have been commissioned by various radio stations, who where in need of a station ID or were looking to relaunch their existing acoustic branding. Most of these miniature compositions are tonal but some verge towards an atonal or noisy character. Time and again Kubin and I discussed the possibility of creating pieces out of these ultra compressed and short Senderkennungen. This was realized for the album in applying the rule of keeping Kubin’s original musical material recognizable while at the same time using any form of manipulation, modification, stretching, shortening or expanding in the development of the new pieces. One limitation: Those new pieces should not be longer than three minutes each.’

The resultant double album contains an immense thirty-nine tracks, although the first nineteen, recorded by Kubin alone, are each around half a minute long. On the vinyl, these are all packed onto side A, meaning the remaining three sides are given to the collaborative pieces, which tend to be around the two and a half minute mark.

The nineteen initial station ID pieces are simple synth pieces, with a single motif – either a chord or two or some chiming notes – repeated a couple of times with some space between. Some sound as if they’ve been lifted from an album of sci-fi sound samples from the 60s and 70s, and occasionally – as in the case of ‘Radio Dipol’ and ‘Radio Schneekoppe’ – segues from old TV shows. Often weird, always unpredictable, Kubin seems to have a real thing for heraldic or faux-medieval-sounding motifs, and these microtunes are varied, as well as alien in that they have no place in the world of Internet radio and Spotify.

The newer, longer pieces, do mark something of a stylistic shift. It perhaps goes without saying that the expanded time markers give more room for sonic exploration which extends beyond simple motifs, but more than that, they feel like more fully realised compositions rather than functional sonic stamps. This is no doubt because that’s the fundamental difference: Kubin’s original commissions were created for a specific – and most utilitarian – purpose, rather than for musical entertainment, while the recent collaborative pieces are designed with being listened to, and perhaps even a sense of audience in mind. ‘Freies Danzig’ may be sparse initially, but builds from a multi-voiced synth piece into a layered work of tonal and textural contrast, while ‘Krimikanal’ leans towards dark ambient territory. ‘Paranorm Radio’ is eerie and squelchy, as good a sonic representation as you’re likely to hear, and there’s an abundance of reverberating, woozy weirdness on offer as the work progresses.

Senderkennungen feels less like an album of two halves, or even of one quarter and three quarters, but two quite separate albums, and the two sets of compositions make for very different listening experiences.

AA

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Superføkk – Superføkk!

Posted: 2 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Fysisk – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The line ‘here we are now, entertain us’ from Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is on which has come to resonate with me more powerfully in recent years than it ever did at the time. It’s a sad fact that – and I like to think of it as being through no fault of my own – my attention span isn’t what it was, and I’m no longer quite as patient as I was. I can still listen to a twenty minute instrumental without any issue, but have to be in the frame of mind to do so. But then, as far back as 2018, Forbes reported that 24.14% of songs were skipped within the first five seconds by users of Spotify, some 29% skip in the first ten, and that increases to a 35.05% chance of a skip within the first 30 seconds. I very much doubt that we’ve grown more patient in the last eight years. An article published earlier this year at Mixreflect detailed the reasons listeners skip, and gave practical solutions like ‘How long should a song intro be on Spotify?’ with advice including ‘The practical target is 8 to 12 seconds for pop, hip-hop, and R&B; up to 20 seconds for rock and indie if something is actively developing throughout.’

It’s twenty-six seconds before the vocals start on the single edit of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. The intro to one of my favourite singles of all time, ‘Alice’ by The Sisters of Mercy occupies the first minute of its three and a half minute duration. And how long is the fade-in on ‘India’, the opening track on the eponymous debut album by The Psychedelic Furs? All very different songs, but each a classic in its own right. Are we really in a place where most people would simply skip before things got going? Instant gratification is one thing, but there is so much to be said for a good build-up.

Thankfully, there are musical fields where a slow-build and an unravelling over time is appreciated, and Superføkk – pitched as ‘a bursting new raptus project that shoots off in inexplicable directions’ which is ‘neither background listening nor pop music’ they’re described as having ‘a foot in many camps’ and ‘aim[ing] to break down established genre conventions and create a sound that is distinctly their own…. drawing inspiration from jazz/noiserock, electronica, and no-wave’. And their debit album contains just three tracks, the shortest of which is six minutes long (there is a four-minute radio edit, but I doubt that it’ll get much airplay on the likes of Radio 1 or Kiss FM, or that it’s going to convince the Spotify casuals to stick around, not that the algorithm is likely to insert it amidst a lengthy cycle of Taylor Swift and Charlie XCX or whatever.

And so it is that ‘Grønn’ provides our introduction to Superføkk, and it may be brief (in comparative terms’, but it packs plenty in. It’s jazz in that cacophonic sense, horns blaring and doing so simultaneously in all directions – not smooth or noodly, but an instant riot – before an extended atmospheric post-rock passage in the middle before everything goes off at once, giving us an expansive post-rock surge topped with the most extravagant sax break. The twelve-minute ‘River Igjennom’ is remarkably light and easy going for the most part, but around three minutes in, the levels of tension explode with frenetic drumming and strains of the most demented fretwork colliding with crazed sax chaos, and it culminates on some kind of huge prog-like grand finale which on the one hand seems entirely incongruous, but on the other, perfectly fitting. I can’t say I’m entirely into it. And then there’s ‘Piggeple’, another twelve minute multi-segmented opus.

Around the mid-point, it drops down to a spare bass, squalling synth, and processed-sounding vocals, and it’s only after this that things really seem to kick off, with a locked-in drum beat, throbbing, insistent bass, and some crunky guitar dischord. Finally, the noise-rock element is freed! And they do go all-out in the final minutes.

When they write that ‘Superføkk is neither background listening nor pop music’, but that it’s ‘immediate and danceable, but also unhinged, hard-boiled, improvised, and idiosyncratic’, they’re mostly accurate. There are some deep bass-driven grooves buried in the mix here, but the chances of me actually dancing it any of it are non-existent.

Recent weeks and months have delivered some truly outstanding – not to mention angry, bleak, nihilistic, and highly political – noise rock releases, perhaps most notably from Chat Pile, Kings Sans, and Remote Viewing, and each has hit hard and resonated in a deep and powerful way. Superføkk (which continually reminds me of Superbock, which is great stuff) lands differently. Not only is it largely instrumental, its noise-rock elements are blended – and at times buried low – amidst an array of experimentalism, and an emphasis on the warped jazz leanings of the composition. But, being as hectic as it is, it’s no less tense that the aforementioned noise-rock works. In fact, there are moments which are little short of dizzying, and you wonder if your brain might burst.

AA

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Chat Pile – Who Loves The Sun

Posted: 31 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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The Flenser – 4th September 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Chat Pile have only been around for seven years, but in that time they’ve cemented themselves as among the leading exponents of contemporary noise rock. Timing, when even accidental, counts for so much, though. Their debut EP landed in the spring of 2019, with the follow-up coming towards the end of the year. They were hardly a hit on their local scene, and then there was the pandemic, which did nothing for any band looking to build a fanbase through live shows. They managed to get signed, but it seems that the key element in their favour was the fact that since the pandemic, everything has been utterly fucked. Fucked beyond words, fucked beyond comprehension. And this is why the world has been crying out for horrible, sludgy noise to give a voice or a home to those myriad confused emotions, for a band that speaks both to and for them.

Who Loves The Sun is their third album, and it’s worth stepping back from my review to quote from the bio which accompanies the album, since it provides valuable context and traces the band’s evolution: ‘Whereas their debut album God’s Country depicted a particularly American flavor of dread, and the follow up Cool World showed a cruel planet defined by global systemic violence, Who Loves The Sun now peels back the skin on how a collective indifference for a decaying world defines this new century. Touring off the back of their previous albums in part lent itself a confidence in the universality of their music. Stin comments, “I’ve always felt that Chat Pile is such an American concept thematically, but it seems like that’s not particularly true – people all over the world are resonating with what we have to say.” Spanning imagery of coastlines devouring cities as a result of inaction on climate change, the dread of working dead-end jobs, and the species’ collective submission to data-driven inauthenticity, Who Loves The Sun depicts the common experience of existing in a doom loop which feeds the malaise that permeates all aspects of our lives.’

And yes: these are global issues they tackle here. America might be a bit more fucked than some other places, but ultimately, we’re all fucked (in part because of America, although that’s no fault of these guys).

It’s a murky, rolling drum, bouncing around in a sea of reverb which launches the album, ‘Creature’ lurching in mid-pace with a filthy bass and some sinewy guitar. The atmosphere is tense, the vibe mid-90s gnarly. I’m straight back to Touch ‘n’ Go and underground scuzz, the grainy gritty heft of Tad, Oil Seed Rape, Zoopsia, It’s heavy, alright, but it’s more than that: it’s sweaty, greasy, and it’s intense. The walls move closer, the air becomes denser, and it’s harder to breathe.

Who Loves The Sun isn’t a hooks and choruses album. It’s a thick, treacle-like trudge through a succession of gut-churning riffs. As such, it’s very much the soundtrack to the trawling through doom loops. On the face of things, they don’t sound like a band with massive international appeal, but the same was true of Nirvana and Slipknot. It’s more Bleach than Nervermind, though. The world at large massively underestimates the need to vent complex emotions through difficult, heavy music, and if anything, the last few years have elicited the need for music that’s darker and heavier than ever. It feels like we’re living in the end of times, and we need music that reflects it.

‘Break my face and call me your friend,’ Raygun Busch sings in a cracked, tired voice during a quiet moment on ‘Deep Blue’. Most of the vocals are either screams or otherwise buried amidst the wall of jagged riffery. ‘Same Rules’ starts quiet and dungy, and explodes into a nihilistic roar. Neither are friendly, but both articulate the existence within dark spaces, both internal and external.

AA

Landing mid-album, ‘Shrine’ is a classic quiet / loud composition , and it captures the grunge feel but with additional metal fury, and a harsh hybridization that blends metal with grunge filth. The same could be said of most of Who Loves The Sun. It’s dark, it’s jarring, and is heavy. It’s bleak and does nothing to entice you out to a brighter space. ‘Influence’ simply becomes more claustrophobic over its four-and-a-half-minute duration as it stomps its concentric circles of anger and anguish. ‘Family Funeral’ strays towards Shellac territory as it builds a bludgeoning wall of noise ahead of closer ‘October all the Time’. This is not an accessible or easy album. But it’s the album we need to express all of the angst that’s pouring in all directions right now. It’s also the answer to how we will get through it all. More big riffs. And more again.

AA

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Nonturn – Repeating Town

Posted: 30 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Audiobulb – 22nd August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Every town, every city has its own unique vibe. Some we acclimatise to, others, we find uncomfortable. Others still, scary. Myself, I am not a fan of big cities, but have always felt comfortable in Leeds, but always feel on edge in Manchester. I can’t explain this. apart from the fact it’s rained almost every time I’ve been in Manchester, I’ve never had a bad experience there. In fact, I’ve had many positive experiences there, but still just feel something… it doesn’t sit with me, and I can’t settle. My experience of ‘international’ cities is limited: the only time I visited New York was when I was three, and beyond that, I’ve only been to London and Paris. I’m not sure Nicosia counts, being international in a different sense, and I expect that that’s perhaps another discussion altogether – although, for what it’s worth, while my fellow conference delegates proffered their passports to venture through the military checkpoints to cross the border into the Turkish territory to enjoy a meal, I remained in the pub in the Greek side of the Old Town with a book while I awaited their return. I have no regrets about this seven years on. But I digress. Every city has a feel, and not just a vibe, but a vibration. And big cities are in essence the same as smaller cities when you’re there, since they’re divided into various communities, segments, quarters, districts, whatever.

Nonturn’s Repeating Town is a work which is an assemblage of sound which captures, one way or another, the essence of Koenji, Tokyo. This is quite specific, and only highlights my observation that large cities are generally comprised of zones and areas within, and this is true of Koenji, which – and I make no apologies for turning to Wikipedia for into here –‘was largely unaffected by the 1980s building boom and therefore many of the houses and shops in the area are small and reflect the character of ‘pre-boom’ Japan. Due to its aging retail district and location on a major commuter route, the station area has become a center for small restaurants and ‘Live Houses’ which offer live music.’ It sounds pretty cool on paper.

Precisely how representative Nonturn’s Repeating Town is, I can’t really say. However, as Nozom Yoneda, aka Nonturn explains, ‘Every sound on the album was captured in and around Koenji, Tokyo: traffic signals, footsteps, air conditioners, construction, passing cars and fragments of conversation. These recordings are traces of real places, but they are not presented as documentary evidence or atmosphere. They are cut, repeated, layered and placed on a 96 BPM grid as sampling material.’

He goes on to add, ‘The title points to the method. The everyday city is already full of repetitions: signals return, footsteps pass, machines hum, routes repeat, voices appear and disappear. Nonturn listens to those repetitions not as background, but as a musical condition. Once removed from their original setting, the sounds stop describing where they came from and begin to act as rhythm, texture, accent, resonance and silence.’

Repeating Town contains seven pieces, each around five or six minutes long and each of which pulls together a host of drones and clanking percussion, interwoven with weird electronica. At times is ripples and weaves, at others, it jogs, picking up pace and evolving technoindustrial beats as it does so. Field recordings aren’t particularly apparent at in this hybrid of mixes, and as tone and texture from other sources build, there’s a creeping discomfort which builds. It’s an album which is built on glitches and trilling synth loops, whirring buzzes and the occasional explosive blast which disrupts an otherwise smooth surface. But there are whirring dentist drills and all sorts, all seemingly looped together and otherwise spun into a strange, soporific blend.

AA

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