Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

New Skeletal Faces – Until The Night

Posted: 31 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Peaceville – 1st November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The claim that ‘New Skeletal Faces cast their own black light onto the long dormant corpse of Death Rock, shattering the mirror of modern Heavy Metal into fragments that reflect back a fresh new take on this form of music with an energised & outlandish conviction’ is a bold one. Ominous, menacing, perhaps, or deluded and deranged?

California may be known for its sun and sand, but it has a long history or dark currents which run contra to its popular image, perhaps most notably Charles Manson’s Family being based in The Golden State – which in turn drew Trent Reznor for the recording of The Downward Spiral. In between, Christian Death spawned the proto-goth / nascent death rock sound which, while evolving in parallel to the scene in the north of England, was unique and distinct, and the early eighties saw California home to a thriving hardcore punk scene. I suppose that wherever there is affluence and clean-cut TV slickness, there is bound to be rebellion, a counterculture which stands at odds with it all. No doubt some of these factors drew New Skeletal Faces to California for the recording of Until The Night, the follow-up to 2019’s Celestial Disease.

They proffer an ‘effortless blending of the spirits of old; with the seductive & spellbinding gothic prowess of bands such as Christian Death fused with the raw unbridled energy of early Swedish black metal legend, Bathory to create a bold new statement of intent, in stark contrast to the often overly-refined polish of contemporary metal. Until the Night is, as a result, something more akin to listening to the 1980’s Sunset Strip in an alternate universe from hell.’ For good measure, and to really clarify their position, there’s a cover of Bathory’s ‘Raise The Dead’.

In all, it’s apparent this is destined to be dark from the outset. Across the album’s eight tracks, they paint everything darker shades of black with densely-woven layers of sound. The guitars, while overdriven, are reverby, and quite smooth, and while the riffs take their cues from black metal, there are some overtly gothy licks, and the atmosphere is very much reminiscent of Only Theatre of Pain but with the dial cranked a few notches further over into the ‘metal’ domain for the most part. Then again, the title track, with its thunderous tribal percussion, spindly guitar laced with flange and chorus, and thumping bassline, encapsulates the sound of goth circa 1985, only with shouty vocals which belong more to the hardcore sound of the same time.

Titles such as ‘Ossuary Lust’, ‘Wombs’, and ‘Pagan War’ are fully invested in the trappings of gnarly metal and its themes, but ‘Zeitgeist Suicide’ reflects a self-awareness which may not be immediately obvious.

As I touched on in my recent review of Vessel’s cover of ‘Body and Soul’ by The Sisters of Mercy, while there is a clear interface between goth and metal – even if it does tend to be primarily a one-way street, which finds metal fans embracing goth bands, in particular The Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim – its rare to encounter a particularly successful merging of the genres. In the main, goth-metal is cliché and cack. Despite appearances, Until The Night is neither, and is perhaps the most potently-realised stylistic synergy since The End of Mirrors by Alaric in 2016.

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Chiming guitars swirl around relentless, barrelling beats on ‘Wombs’, before ‘Zeitgeist Suicide’ leads with a weaving bassline and some fizzy, treble-dominated guitar, and they go at it hard and fast. ‘Enchantment of my Inner Coldness’ brings together vintage goth with a vocal performance that evokes the spirit of Public Image Limited, and in doing so, succeeds in sounding – and feeling – both expansive and claustrophobic at the same time.

Until The Night scratches and drives its way – all the way – to the Bathory cover which drawn the curtain down on this dark, fiery, and furious album. It may well alienate goths, metalheads, and post-punk fans alike, but it feels very much like their loss, being an album strong on songs and confident in its own identity in the way it positions itself uniquely across the genres.

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Vessel – The Somnifer

Posted: 25 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Majestic Mountain Records – 1st November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It was the single release of their cover of The Sisters of Mercy’s ‘Body and Soul’ which brought me to this album. I’ll not retread the ground I covered in my review of aforementioned cover, other than to note that I was uncommonly impressed by the band’s spin on the track, and shall instead pick up on the point that I was intrigued as to precisely how a cover would fit into the art of a concept album.

In a sense, I find myself back in the 80s, when – before it was possible to stream an album online or otherwise hear it without owning it, unless a mate passed you a tape recorded from their copy – one purchased an album on the strength of a single heard on the radio. It was not all that uncommon that the single was absolutely in no way representative, and you’d feel somewhat duped. Imagine buying Faith by The Cure in the basis of ‘Primary’, for example. You may not necessarily feel duped, but you’d probably struggle to reconcile the single and album experiences, assuming you could lift yourself off the floor to do anything at all by the end of the album. But then, oftentimes – because you probably only bought an album a month, on vinyl or cassette, you’d play it enough times to come to appreciate it anyway. This simply doesn’t happen anymore, and what’s more, the art of the album is one which is criminally undervalued. That isn’t to say I feel in any way duped by The Somnifer: it’s simply that the single, while obviously the most accessible and attention-grabbing track, is not entirely representative.

Taking pause for a moment, there’s that term – ‘concept album’ – which creates immediate obstacles; it can be perceived as self-indulgent, overblown, conceited, arty in the way that implies a superiority, or even just plain wanky. You can largely blame prog for that, but there have been plenty of excessive concept albums in other genres, particularly metal. But I’m not here to prejudge: I am genuinely curious, especially as the single showed considerable promise. So, first things first: what is the concept?

As they set it out, ‘The album captures the different mental stages one can pass through, from feelings of self-empowerment to existential dread. The Somnifer takes listeners on a journey that blends the drama of classic doom (Candlemass, Cathedral), cosmic psych explorations (All Them Witches, King Buffalo), and the aggression of hardcore and crossover scenes, with the timeless instrumental journey of classic heavy metal.’

The title track certainly builds atmosphere, and it’s the kind of brooding, heavy-timbred tones which call to mind Neurosis, interlaced with a hint of the gothic, which draws the listener into the album. The guitar sound is clean, but rich, and earthy, gradually shifting towards a thicker, overdriven sound, but there’s lots of space and separation. This paves the way for the haunting ‘Draining the Labyrinth’, which takes some time before really going all-out on the riffery before ploughing into ‘Rapid Eye Movement’, the first track to really feature vocals prominently. With ethereal backing vocals floating in to balance the almost speechified spoken-word delivery atop a Sabbathesque riff, it’s an interesting blend of elements.

‘Eat The Day’ comes on like Melvins aping Sabbath with an overloading blast of thick, mid-rangey guitar, before the rippling instrumental ‘Delta Waves’ brings softness and respite, starting out a bit Pink Floyd before growing gradually more intense in its playing. ‘Recurring Nightmare’ slams in out of nowhere, snarling, downtuned doom riffing, churning power chords and darkness, replete with dramatic, theatrical vocals and searing lead guitar work. One of the album’s heaviest pieces, is brings the intensity of the sense of being trapped in a nightmare, the repetitive guitar motif recreating that terrifying sense of déjà vu.

In terms of concept, it works well: instead of pursuing some artificially-imposed narrative arc, The Somnifer explores the way in which moods and emotional responses can manifest as rapid and unexpected transitions, which aren’t always provoked by obvious triggers.

‘Image Rehearsal Reaction’ is a towering monolith of a track, a colossal ten-minute stoner/doom exploration that suddenly hits turbo at the mid-point, blasting fierily forward while the guitar solo runs wild. This is where they’re at their most ‘trad 70s metal’ of anywhere on the album, which is impressively diverse, something which the ‘concept’ allows for.

The album in fact closes with ‘Body and Soul’. It’s incongruous in many ways, but it oddly works to conclude a varied and yet consistent and quality album.

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Album Review and EXCLUSIVE Video Stream: Empty Cut – Allens Cross

Posted: 24 October 2024 in Albums, Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 25th October 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

In the debate of nature versus nurture, it’s noteworthy how many artists find themselves influenced in no small way not only by their formative years, but also the place or places where they grew up. There’s an entire thesis to be made from this, but here I make the observation because on Allens Cross, Empty Cut – a duo consisting of Douglas Fielding-Smith and Robert Bollard – have forged a work ‘Inspired by their childhood growing up in Birmingham they blend together all their experience and inspirations to create a noise that holds a heavy solid groove mixed with harsh noise and fuzzed out reverbed bass, topped with psychedelic synths, and chopped and screwed vocals.’

Birmingham, the city which gave us Black Sabbath and UB40, the second largest in England, with a population of over two and a quarter million, and has long been renowned for its diversity, and is a truly multicultural melting-pot. It’s perhaps unsurprising that cities like this – in contrast to so many predominantly white, often middle-class towns – are the source of musical innovation: throw in an element of social deprivation, the frisson of frustration driven by class and cultural disparity, and inevitably, this backdrop will fuel the fires of those with a creative bent.

Allens Cross is exemplary: as the blurbage summarises, ‘mixing together drums, bass, samples, effects and vocals they have created a sound that incorporates punk, hardcore, electronica, jazz, drum’n’bass, experimental-industrial and shoegaze.’ It’s one of those that on paper probably shouldn’t work, but thanks to the dexterity if its creators, works far beyond imagination.

It grinds in on a sample looped and echoed across a dirty bass and slow-building beat… and then everything slides into a doomy, sludgy sonic murk. ‘Bloodline; makes for a dank and difficult opening, five minutes of feedback and dinginess sprawling and lunging this way and that, culminating in a manic howl driven by frantic percussion and driving bass.

‘Fidget’ whips up a howl of feedback against a juddering stop/start bass, and with shouty vocals low in the mix, it brings a quintessential 90s Amphetamine Reptile vibe with a hint of Fudge Tunnel… until things take a detour into dub territory in the mid-section. When the noise blast returns, it hits even harder.

With none of the album’s eight tracks running for less than five minutes and the majority straying beyond six, it feels like there’s an element of slog, of punishment, inbuilt. ‘The Well Beneath’ certainly mines that dark seem of metal that plunges underground, but with the contrast of jazz drumming and some quite nifty bass work, at least until they hit the ‘overload’ pedal and everything blows out with booming distortion.

If ‘Fluff’, by its title sounds cuddly, like a kitten, or a bit throwaway, like that which you’d sweep up from the corner or the room, the reality is quite the opposite: a six-minute seething industrial sprawl, it’s slow-burning, dark and menacing, and a clear choice of lead tune… Not, but then again, with an echo of Eastern promise and a certain ambience, and the strains of feedback a way in the distance, it perhaps is the most accessible cut on the album.

We’re proud to share a video exclusive of ‘Fluff’ here:

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Elsewhere, ‘Hymn to Then’ pitches cold synths and rolls of thunder to conjure dark images, a stormy backdrop to an eye-opening hybrid of prog rock, industrial, and krautrock: the result isn’t only epic, but conjures images of Dracula and unseen horrors with its icy atmospherics, while the last track, the eight-minute ‘Shatter’ begins with an eerie take on Celtic folk

Allens Cross is a highly imaginative work, an album that draws together a broad range of styles in a cohesive form. Its impact lands by stealth, building as it does across a range of styles, often creeping under the skin, unexpectedly, to register its effect. Sparse synths laser-cut across distorted, arrhythmic percussive blasts, as a low-level crackle and hum of distortion hovers around the level of the ground. Fractured vocals add to the disorientation, and the experience is uncomfortable. You cower, and will for release, not because it’s bad, but because it’s intentionally claustrophobic, torturous, and so well executed.

This is perhaps a fair summary of Allens Cross as a whole. It is not, by any means, an easy listen. Enjoyable would be a stretch. But it is utterly compelling.

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Ran Slavin – New Dawns

Posted: 23 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Nocturnal Rainbow Recordings – 4th October 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Where does the time go? It’s a question one hears people ask often, and I often ask myself the same. Time, it seems, evaporates when you’re busy simply existing, keeping going from one day to the next, working, paying bills, shopping, eating, sleeping. All the things you want to do, but simply never get around to, for one reason or another.

Where does the time go? All too often, I’ll receive an album well in advance of release, and, because of life, and an endless inflow of upcoming releases and other diversions and distractions, I will take a long breath of relief on calculating that I have ages, weeks, before the release date, to listen, process, and digest the work, to write and refine my review, and still be ahead of time. The next thing I know, I’ve reordered my review schedule numerous times, perhaps drafted a few preliminary notes, and the album’s been out for almost a month.

It was only a little over six months ago that I covered Slavin’s seventeenth album, Oolong: Ambient Works.

New Dawns, we’re told ‘exemplifies Slavin’s nonconformity, commitment and expansion to his cultural roots of exploratory music, through early clicks and cuts electronica and instrumental ambient, highlighting an immediacy and necessity for musical independence, through which he hopes to reach attentive new audiences… The album is more than a collection of tracks. a cohesive blending of diverse influences and sounds into a unified experience. A beginning of a journey. As with his previous projects, New Dawns invites listeners to immerse in a unique and tropic sonic world, where the boundaries between acoustic traditional instruments, post leftfield electronica, east and west, are blurred.’

New Dawns comprises sixteen tracks, titled ‘Dawn 1’ to ‘Dawn 16’, each representing, I suppose a new dawn. Each composition is distinctive, and distinct: there is separation, rather than segue, and this very much determines how this feels as an album – in that it feels like an album rather than a single composition sliced into tracks. And as such, there is a sense that each piece, appropriately, starts afresh. And while the overall experience is mellow and broadly ambient, there are solid features which mark the territory, and actual, distinct instruments, too, which punctuate, and, indeed, provide form and structure to the wispy ambient soundscapes: strolling, jazzy double bass, haunting, twangy guitars, piano, irregular beats, and splashing cymbals all feature… to say they feature prominently may be something of an overstatement, but their presence is clear, and in context, powerful.

Just as the sun rises in the east, so the twang and drone of sitars colour some of Slavin’s dawns, and across the span of the sixteen pieces, the sense of mood changes every bit as the sense of geography. Oftentimes, the dawning is gradual, a slow emerging of gentle light, but then, for example, the more percussive ‘dawn 7’ arrives abruptly and unexpectedly, and simultaneously brings with it more overtly electronic vibes which bring together Krautrock and minimal techno. ‘dawn 8’ brings swaggering avant-jazz wrapped in a cloak of prog rock leanings, shrouded in a murky fog of obscurity. ‘dawn 11’ has the kind of murky robotic minimalism of late 70s industrial, hinting at the point where Chris and Cosey would go on to spawn trance.

Its total running time may be under seventy minutes, but New Dawns is an immersive work, and I find myself drawn deeper into the details as it progresses. And those details are abundant. There’s simply too much going on for this to be considered a truly ‘background’ work: zone out for a second, and something else will prod its way to the fore, nagging and needling for attention, before sinking below the surface, to be replaced by something else. Having found myself drawn into the scrapes and drones, the subtle – and not to subtle – details, the album slips by, and so does an hour and a bit. And that, I come to realise, is where the time goes.

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Lush Worker – Sear

Posted: 19 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 25th October 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Mike Vest’s output continues to be nothing short of staggering. He’s played with a host of bands – great bands at that – Bong, 11Paranoias, Drunk In Hell, Blown Out – to name but four, and Discogs records a total of one hundred and sixty credits, with a hundred and nineteen of them being for instruments and performance.

Sear is the latest album from Vest’s ongoing solo project, Lush Worker. The accompanying notes promise a work ‘Blending smouldering guitar explorations with old-school noise psychedelia,’, and an album which ‘showcases Vest’s signature maximalist guitar sound mixed with heavy riffs and drone-rock atmospherics. A blissful yet intense listening experience.’

With stoner doom merchants Bong, Vest explored, in detail, droning riffs over longform formats: 2018’s Thought And Existence contained just two tracks, each just shy of twenty minutes in duration. Around the same time, Vest released Cruise as Lush Worker, a half-hour long behemoth, and he’s continued to pursue epic soundscapes.

Sear is perhaps the most epic yet.

Momentarily, on noting the title, I thought of the Swans album, which spans a full two hours, and its monumental title track. But a single letter makes all the difference. While a ‘seer’ is one who sees, a visionary, with all of the connotations of spirituality and mysticism, ‘sear’ is to scorch, burn, or to fry meat at a high heat. And over the course of thirty-eight monumental minutes, Vest spins forth guitar work which blisters and peels, the sonic equivalent of white-hot sheet metal. At first, drums thump away, almost submerged as if engulfed by a flow of molten lava. The squalling wall of noise heaves and howls, while sibilant sounds like whispering voices of the dead burst like pockets of has rupturing from the seething sonic miasma.

Long, meandering lead work emerges over time, the most spaced-out trippy solo seeping out over a thick, grainy backdrop of droning overdrive, from which strains of feedback break through, before everything gradually sinks into a swirling soup of feedback and distortion, the rhythm having collapsed.

The experience is somewhat akin to listening to Metal Machine Music and Earth 2 simultaneously, but that’s only an approximation of everything that’s going on here. While there’s no overt structure to Sear, there is a strong sense of ebb and flow, and each time the immense sound tapers off for a time, it gradually rebuilds to a point that seems even denser and more intense than before. Around the twenty minute mark, the percussion is back, and there is later upon layer of yawning drone which swirls into an eternal vortex. And the fact that it does go on for what feels like forever is essential to the fullness of the experience. A burst of this may give a flavour, but ultimately, Sear is designed as a fully immersive work, and indeed, it is.

For all the detail here – there are so, so many layers and textures to this – it’s the immense drone that sucks you in and leaves you staring into space. It’s like the cyclical growing hum of ten thousand didgeridoos, amplified and reverbed, and over time, the sounds seems to bend and twist, and it feels as if your very perception is warping as it slowly melts out of shape.

After half an hour, the drums once again stop, and an eight-minute wind-down begins. It’s another lifetime of slow-shifting blurring shades as darkness gradually descends and silence finally follows.

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Sly and the Family Drone – Moon is Doom Backwards

Posted: 18 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Human Worth – 15th November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

They’ve been around for a while now, but as yet, there hasn’t been another act quite like Sly and The Family Drone. They’re one of those acts that straddle so many different boundaries and function on so many different levels, they’re impossible to pigeonhole and impossible to pin down. They make serious art delivered with a quirky, tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, and their live performances are celebrations of community and whacky while simultaneously being genius performance art improvisations. I’m by no means being superior when I suggest that a lot of people simply won’t ‘get’ them, and it’s obvious as to why they’re very much a cult thing. But that they’ve managed to sustain a career operating on a DIY basis, booking their own tours, etc., for well over a decade is testament to both the appreciation there is for them on a cult level, and to their sheer persistence and insanity. And their last release was a lathe-cut album containing a single twenty-minute jazz odyssey released via The Quietus.

Moon is Doom Backwards – a wheeze of a title which is factually inaccurate, and of course they know it – is a classic example of the absurd humour which is integral to their being, and it’s a joy to see that they’ve come together with Human Worth, a label I’ve filled many a virtual column inch praising, for this release. And because it’s on Human Worth, a portion of the proceeds from this release are going to charity.

The album, we learn, was recorded ‘exactly three years ago at Larkins Farm’. That’s quite a lag, but this does often seem to be the case when it comes to homing works of avant-jazz noise-drone. They describe it as ‘a patient, stalking, lurking thing. A properly noir thing, as notable for its long stretches of quiet atmosphere as it is for its pummeling skronk. Sly’s is a strange sort of quietude, though. A “drums heard through the wall”, “disquieting electrical hum” kind of quiet. An “eavesdropping PI”, “solo sax on rooftop” sort of quiet. An attention-grabbing kind of quiet so engrossing that, when our fave neo-jazz wrecking crew actually gets to wrecking – and they still wreck real good – we’re caught off guard, wrong-footed, defenseless. We get run the hell over by The Family Drone’s quintet of bulldozers.’

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who’s been acquainted with them for any period of time. Because whatever one expects from Sly and the Family Drone, they’ll probably deliver, but simply not in the way one expects it.

Containing seven pieces, mostly around the three-to-five-minute mark, Moon is Doom Backwards is more conventionally ‘albumy’ – whatever conventional means when it comes to any format now. And there is, indeed, a lot of quiet on this album, much hush. There are many segments where not a lot happens, or simply a solo sax rings out into a slow-blowing wind of reverb.

‘Glistening Benevolence’ is underpinned by a mesmeric, tribal beat and crooning sax and wiffle of woodwind, at least until the percussion rises into storm-like crashes and the percussion surges around the mid-point, before it tapers, and then splashes to a halt. And then there is quiet, for quite some time, until the drums blast back and there is a sound like an elephant braying in pain. So far, so Sly. It’s pummelling percussion and frenzied honks and toots, parping and tooting in all directions which blast from the speakers on single cut and shortest track ‘Going In’, after which darkness descends. The inexplicably-titled ‘Cuban Funeral Sandwich’ has too much percussion and it too overtly jazzy to be ambient, but it’s a low-key, meandering piece that feels far too improvised to qualify as a composition and it certainly brings the atmosphere – a dark, oppressive one, which gradually builds and horns hoot like ship’s horns and clattering cans rattle with increasing urgency – before another abrupt halt.

If ‘Joyless Austere Post-war Biscuits’ may seemingly allude to some kind of Hovis-like cobbled-street and open-fire nostalgia, the actuality is altogether darker, as more sax flies into the sky on an upward spiral of infinite echo and the drums – building, building, to a crazed frenzy, but at a distance – create a palpitation-inducing tension, before ‘The Relentless Veneration of Bees’ – something which really should be a thing, along with the outlawing of pesticides – wanders absent-mindedly into an arena or ambient jazz, where the drums hang around in the distance somewhere.

There are shooting stars and percussive breakdowns amidst truly tempestuously frenzies jazz experimentation, and ‘Guilty Splinters’ is the perfect soundtrack to this. The closer, ‘Ankle Length Gloves’ is perhaps the most unstructured and uncomfortable of all here: amidst wheezes and drones, it’s the sound of creaking floors and subdued wailing utterances… and nothing but a buffeting breeze.

Moon is Doom Backwards is certainly their sparsest, most atmospheric, and least percussion-heavy album to date, but it really explores in detail and depth the relationship of dynamics, and pushes out into new territories. And while it’s still jazz, it’s jazz exploded, fragmented, dissected, and reimagined.

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Shrimp – Brine Shrimp

Posted: 15 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Panurus Productions – 24th August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

I take heart from discovering that Panurus Productions are as far behind on their PR as I am on my emails and messages. Even if it weren’t for the relentless flow of submissions – I’m looking at an inundation of around fifty a day, via email, messenger, and all the rest, even drops of CDs through the letterbox – there’s still that matter of… life. It consumes all of your time, and it wears you down. It’s an endurance test. Just living is a full-time job. No, it’s more than that. It’s exhausting, draining, it saps your very soul. On a personal level, just the day to day is too much at times for reading emails and listening to submissions. Throw in a dayjob, life and a single parent, and bereavement on top, and simply opening all the email submissions become too much. So arriving at the most recent Shrimp album around two months after its release, I feel ok about that – and by ok, I mean pleasantly calm, which is a rare sensation in the main.

Fucking hell. It’s a monster. It packs four tracks, the shortest of which clocks in at just under twenty five minutes. It’s more than a monster. It’s a skull-crushing leviathan. It will leave feeling week and so drained. It makes predecessor Mantis Shrimp sound like Barry Manilow.

They promise ‘a sprawling mass of free-form guitar, vocals (an associated miscellanea), effects and percussion’, whereby ‘the listener is thrown about the room with the sound, as the initial dirge collapses into a frantic scramble of activity, glitch and movement as the various pincers and claws dart out from the sonic mass. The sound field shifts as elements are isolated or the entire band is channelled through the snare, sometimes in line with the music and others completely of its own accord. Not even the platform you are listening from is stable.

‘Hidden Life’, with a running time of forty-one and a half minutes is an album in its own right. And it’s dropping tempo mood-slumping jazz with stutter percussion, at least at first. Before long, a slow-driving riff grinds in, and shortly after, it slumps into a drone and a feedback wail, while snarling, gnarling, teeth-gnashing, demented vocals rave dementedly amidst a tempestuous cacophony of… of what, precisely? Cacophonous noise. Everything is a collision, a mess, every second is pulled and pummelled, and it’s like The Necks on acid, only with chronic roar and an endless raging blast bursting every whichway, amidst howls of feedback.

Then you realise that this is only the first track and you’re already physically and mentally exhausted. You are absolutely on your knees here, battered, bruised, ruined by the noise, and still the frenzied furore continues.

There’s mellow, trippy, almost jazz vibe which lifts the curtain on ‘Leaf-like Appendages’, another epic track – but then they’re all epic, all challenging. ‘Maximum Sanity’ brings maximum pain and derangement, as howls and sputters from the very bowels of the very depths squall in anguish. James Watts has a rare talent for creating the most chthonic tones

Brine Shrimp trills and shrills, quills and spins in so many directions. It’s not only a mess of chaos, but a truly wild, and at times hellish, mess of chaos. It’s heavy, and it hurts. It’s Shrimp erupting like the Godzilla of the crustacean world: a monster in every way.

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LiVES – Let Them Eat Cake

Posted: 13 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Roulette Records – 25th October 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

As the album’s title suggests, this is a political record. Then again, the single ‘Cancelled’, released a few months back as a lead-up, certainly gave enough of a hint that this was going to be a rage against contemporary society, and the themes of the social media ‘shitshow shower’ and the culture wars and flame-throwing, division and disinformation that has taken over so much of the Internet – a space where we seems spend more time living virtual lives than we do on real life – dominate the lyrics.

The opening lines of ‘What a Way’ neatly encapsulate the band’s angle:

He’s a little nazi with a pop-gun,

Spilling all of his hate onto the forum,

Overcompensating for the fact that,

It’s lonely life

And so it is that these seven sharp cuts (plus a radio edit of ‘Cancelled’) really pick apart just what it is about modern life that s so rubbish. That’s perhaps rather flippant, not to mention reductive of what Let Them Eat Cake is about. It explores numerous aspects of how the world on-line has eroded so much in culture, and how it’s riven with contradictions. On the one hand, the interconnected world of the ‘global village’ Marshall McLuhan first wrote of in Understanding the Media in 1964 has truly come to pass. The world is switched on and connected 24/7, and it’s possible to conduct conversations and business with the other side of the world in real time. News is instantaneous and everywhere. All music – well, hypothetically, and moreover perhaps depending on your tastes – and media are there, instantly, and for free. But on the other hand, as much as there’s a sense of sameness and conformity – same music, same news, same memes, same opinions – and an ever-blander homogeneity, the inhabitants of the global village hate one another’s guts and seem to even derive pleasure from rage, throwing bricks through their neighbours’ windows, keying their cars and burning their houses.

Everyone is shouting louder than the next, ‘look at me, look at me!’ while posting the same generic shit, the same Instagrammable coffee and cake (let them eat it, sure, diabetes is a small price to pay for millions of followers and true ‘influencer’ status, right?), and what’s more there’s simply too much of it. Anxiety, depression, and therapy have become normalised topics as people spill their guts into the world (and the subject of ‘Come Together’), and while yes, it’s good that they’re no longer taboo or shameful, what’s not good is that we’re in this position where these are everyday realities for so many.

Let Them Eat Cake is a snapshot and a critique of all of this.

‘Cancelled’ certainly gets the album off to a fiery, riff-driven start, but it soon becomes clear that LiVES have some considerable capacity for stylistic range. Of course they do: to rail about cultural sameness while doing the same thing on every song would be hypocritical.

The title track has more of a 90s indie vibe, and even goes a bit Manics, a bit Mansun, and a little bit glammy, and ‘Come Together’ has more of an indie vibe, too, but also a theatricality which calls to mind The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, but then ‘What a Way’ cranks up the guitars and hits like a punch in the guts. ‘Already Dead’ and ‘Is This What You Want?’ bring a big stoner-meets Led Zep rock swagger, which contrasts again with the country twang of ‘Hope and Freedom’.

The span of styles makes for an album that never falls to formula or gets predictable, but the lyrical focus ensure it retains that vital cohesion. What really comes across through every song is that this is an album from the heart, born of frustration, disappointment, despondency, irritation, antagonism, that whole gamut of emotions stirred by that feeling of inflammation that everything is so very, very wrong. For all that frustration, disappointment, despondency, irritation, antagonism, Let Them Eat Cake is an album packed with passion, not to mention some corking tunes.

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LPJ1200S

Berries – Berries

Posted: 12 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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XTra Mile Recordings – 18th October 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Berries have been on our radar since 2017, and now, just over two years on from How We Function, they return with they eponymous second long-player. They’ve done a good job of building the anticipation with a run of well-spaced singles, starting back in the summer with ‘Watching Wax’, before revealing an altogether previously unseen side with the acoustic-led ‘Balance’. So which Berries will we see come to the fore here?

It’s more than a pleasure to report that it’s the very best Berries which manifest across all of the album’s ten cuts, all of them sharp. Ten tracks is in itself significant: it’s the classic album format of old, and all killer, no filler, and no faffing with interludes or lengthy meanderings. The whole album’s run-time is around half an hour: it’s tight, it’s succinct, the songwriting is punchy and disciplined, and has the feel of an album as was in the late 70s and through the 80s, planned and sequenced for optimal effect. But they also manage to expand their template within within these confines: there’s some mathy tension in the lead guitar work, and there are flourishes which are noodly without being wanky, and they serve more as detail rather than dominating the sound.

‘Barricade’ kicks in on all cylinders, uptempo, energetic, post-punk with punk energy amped to the max. By turns reminiscent of early Interpol and Skeletal Family, with some nagging guitar work scribbling its way across a thumping rhythm section, it’s a corking way to open an album by any standard. ‘Blurry Shapes’ is a crafted amalgamation of mathy loops in the verses and crunchy chords in the choruses, all delivered with an indie-pop vibe which is particularly keen in the melodic – but not twee or flimsy vocals. and Berries just packs in back-to-back bangers.

‘Watching Wax’ lands as the third track, a magnificent coming together of solid riffing, chunky bass, and sassy vocals. ‘Balance’ provides a change of pace and style immediately after, and it’s well-placed, wrapping up side one.

‘Jagged Routine’ starts off the second half with a choppy cut that brings in elements of poppy post-punk, math-rock and circa 1987 goth alternative rock. I’m reminded rather of The Kut, but then equally The Mission in the final bars, while ‘This Space’ steps things up with a dash of Gang of Four and a mid-00s technical post-rock flavour compressed into a driving rock tune that clocks in at just shy of three and a half minutes.

On Berries, Berries sound perhaps a little less frantic and frenzied, and maybe less confrontational and driven by antagonism than on their debut, but as a trade-off, they sound more focused and more evolved. The introspective introversion of the form creates an intensity that suits them well.

The guitar riff in the verse of ‘Narrow Tracks’ is so, so close to a lift of ‘When You Don’t See Me’ by The Sisters of Mercy that it makes me feel nostalgic for 1990, but finally gives me cause to rejoice in 2024, as they’ve incorporated it into a layered tune that has many elements and just works. Having waded through endless hours of bands doing contemporary ‘goth’ by making some synth-led approximation of a complete mishearing of anything released between 1979 and 1984 by the bands that would be branded goth by the press, it’s a source of joy to hear an album that captures the essence of that period without a single mention of the G-word.

Berries is a fantastic album. It gets to the point. It has power it has energy in spades – and attitude. They also bring in so many elements, but not in a way that lacks focus. In fact, they sound more focused than I would have ever imagined. This album deserves to see Berries go huge, and it’s got to be one of my albums of the year simply by virtue of being absolutely flawless and 100% brilliant.

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-IoeYM00

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Berries

Isik Kural – Moon in Gemini

Posted: 11 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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6th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Isik Kural’s Moon in Gemini is described as ‘a luminous scrapbook of slow-flowing narratives couched in intuitive and symbolic storytelling. Awash in woodwinds and strings, lullaby-inflected lyrics and tender imagery, Isik’s voice moves closer to the listener’s ear on his third album, intoning states of being in which the wonder filled sound of everyday life can be heard and felt. Moon in Gemini is a space for wide daydreaming, where the invisible steps forward and dauntless ghosts play under a hazy lunar light.’

This is a charming proposition, and the actuality proves to be even more so. Moon in Gemini contains fourteen compositions, the majority of which are fleeting, ephemeral pieces of but perhaps a couple of minutes in length: a handful extend beyond three minutes, but none beyond four.

The overall effect, then, is soothing, but the fragmentary nature of the assemblage means the flow is broken, and often the smooth, calming flow is disrupted as compositions end – I won’t say prematurely, because who am I to say when a composition should end, how long it should be? These things are purely artistic choices, and my feeling that pieces here sometimes feel incomplete or abridged is simply a that, a feeling, as much from my desire for more than any clear or objective assessment.

The first piece, ‘Body of Water’ is typical in its soothing, tranquil ways. Delicately picked guitar and mellow woodwind drift and trill with a delicate drip-drop sound, and it’s beautifully relaxing, the sonic recreation of the experience of sitting by a still lake in warm – but not hot – sun while a gentle breeze ripples the surface. I close my eyes and find myself on the edge of a tarn in the Lake District: a happy place, a place of tranquillity, of escape. It’s a place I could spend long hours, and in my heart I believe those hours could extend for days. But it fades out, far too soon – after a mere minute and fifty seconds, the moment’s passed. But this is in many ways just how it is to be sitting by a lake, and sensing a moment of true perfection: just as you begin to bask in it, the wind picks up and a cloud drifts over the sun, the temperature drops and you realise that that perfect moment was simply that – a moment. Moments pass before you can grasp a hold on them. They exist in a momentary flicker, the blink of an eye, and so often, they’ve passed before you even realise they’ve arrived.

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‘Prelude’ is a dainty, sugary, music box tune which exists out of time but is, at the same time, steeped in an ambiguous nostalgia. Precisely what it’s a prelude to, I’m not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters, while ‘Almost a Ghost’ is haunting, gentle, introspective and flitting with fluttering sounds of nature alongside its rippling pianos and low-key, almost spoken-word vocals. Each piece is shimmery beguiling, the supple and subtle layers rippling over one another while on the pieces where there are vocals – and much of Moon in Gemini is instrumental – it’s true that Isik’s voice is quite special, and an instrument in its own right, and also more about the enunciation and, often breathy, bedroomy, about its contribution to the overall atmosphere. ‘Mistaken for a Snow Silent’ is beautiful, and as much on account off its sparse simplicity than anything else.

We hear ambience and chatter around and even through the songs, and these incidentals work well, in context.

‘Gül Sokağı’ is low and slow and possesses a quality that difficult to define The soft woodwind on ‘Birds of the Evening’ is light and airy and mellifluous. The experience is uplifting, and as a whole, Moon in Gemini is sedate and arresting.

To bemoan that an album doesn’t provide everything that I would like is not a legitimate criticism: it’s not a failing on the artist’s part, and I cannot seriously claim a loss of expectation: with Moon in Gemini, provides everything promised, and more. This is a truly beautiful album, and one which has a rare warmth and softness.

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