Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

Eamon the Destroyer – Alternate Piranhas EP

Posted: 29 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , ,
2

Bearsuit Records – 31st May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

There was a time – not so long ago – when I would come home from work and struggle to nudge the front door open with my shoulder for the mountain of CDs that had been dropped through my letterbox, along with the occasional ‘sorry we missed you’ card telling me I had a parcel at the depot awaiting collection or to arrange redelivery, and more often than not it would be some vinyl, and all of it promo material for review. I had a box – which was initially a shoebox, but later replaced with something larger – which was my ‘to-review’ box, after the pile kept falling over once it reached an unsustainable height. It was a storage nightmare, and I still have boxes containing quite literally thousands of promo CDs with press releases folded up with them, in boxes in the walk-in cupboard and the end of my office, which is, in truth, too stuffed with boxes of CDs to squeeze more than a toe into, rather than actually walk in.

Working in an office as I did then – rather than at home – I would take a bundle of CDs in a jiffy in my bag, and sit and listen to them as I worked. It beat enduring the often moronic drone of the people around me, and I’d tap out notes which I’d email home to myself to flesh out into full reviews in the evening.

My working method has changed rather since then, and while still working the dayjob, I’ve barely set foot in an office other than the one in the back bedroom of my house since lockdown. I haven’t received stacks of CDs in the post for a similar length of time, if not longer. For all of practical issues around the stacks of CDs, I do kinda miss it, and this is one of the reasons I always get a thrill at the arrival of a disc in the mail from Dave Hillary, who runs Bearsuit Records. The other, and not insignificant reason I always get a thrill at the arrival of a disc in the mail from Dave is that I’m eager to discover what mad genius work the label’s releasing next. I enjoy slipping the disc in the external CD drive I have attached to my laptop and soaking in the strangeness that spills from my speakers: I’m never disappointed.

I love the fact that I still get CDs in the mail, with promo cards and handwritten notes and so on, from Bearsuit, not just because of the joy of the physicality and the personal touch, but because it’s emblematic of the label as an entity. It does what it does, regardless of whatever else is happening, and it releases music the likes of which you simply won’t find anywhere else.

Eamon the Destroyer is a classic case in point. Another typically enigmatic artist in the Bearsuit tradition, Eamon the Destroyer has enjoyed a great run of releases to date. Debut album A Small Blue Car was a work of fuzzy, minimalist , downtempo brilliance. A sad, introspective work, it was unexpectedly touching for something so overtly odd, and follow-up We’ll Be Piranhas pushed further into forging songs that straddled the dreamlike and the nightmarish, a disorientating, discombobulating work that delved deep into the psyche in a way that felt like invisible fingers creeping inside the cranium and directly massaging the brain.

And now we come to the more or less obligatory counterpart release. Instead of the standard and expected remix EP, Alternative Piranhas gives us outtakes alternative takes of tracks from the album. A cynical voice might ask why they didn’t make the album cut, but there are myriad valid reasons: an album need to cohere and sometimes even the best tunes don’t fit with the flow, and similarly, the mood of one take or mix may in fact be better objectively, but not quite sit with the context.

And so it is with the five tracks here. All five appeared on We’ll Be Piranhas. While exactly the same length as its album counterpart, ‘A Pewter Wolf’ presents a quite different mix: the organ is much more boomy, more ‘churchy’ than on the album version, while the guitar sounds, almost buried on the album blurred and hazed out low in the mix, are more up-front and gritty here.

The version of ‘Rope’ on Alternate Piranhas seems to be in a different key, and is much grainer, murkier and messier than the more polished album take, and it’s more abrasive, more aggressive, with the vocals more up-front, and the result is that I found myself hearing thee song anew and soaking in the anger which permeates it, less obviously on the other version, tempered by the more mellow mix.

Overall, the versions on Alternate Piranhas are rougher, less ‘produced’, and it’s not difficult to discern why the versions chosen for the album were the ones they were. The album worked as a cohesive set, with an even, smoothed-out sound – well, in context – but Alternative Piranhas provides an insight into the process, which is never more apparent than on ‘The Choirmaster’. It’s not radically different… but it is different, while the alternative take of ‘My Stars’ is half the length of thee album and feels like a sketched-out demo. But again, it possesses qualities absent from the album version, just as the album version has elements which are absent here, including another five minutes of sound.

Alternate Piranhas feels more overtly rock than its progenitor, and perhaps it is, but above all, it’s a source of enjoyment to revisit these songs from a different perspective.

AA

a4099667252_10

Yannis Kyriakides – Hypnokaséta

Posted: 28 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Unsounds – 24th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

When it comes to being a music writer, for me, at least, perhaps even more of a buzz than getting advance listens of the most eagerly-anticipated releases is being exposed to music I otherwise wouldn’t have. And the nature of the avant-garde means that you have to be in the know to know. Being introduced to the Unsounds label and the work of Yannis Kyriakides certainly opened my eyes – and more so my ears – to a whole expanse of music I assumed must exist, but would have had no obvious means of locating or accessing while going about my ordinary life before.

Although I’ve only dipped in and out of Yannis Kyriakides’ output, more as one with a casual interest than a fan per se, his work has never ceased to impress with its range and constant questing for something different, something new, both sonically and methodologically and “Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is no exception.

Kyriakides’ introductory notes explain both the concept and the practice behind the recording of the album: “Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is a continuous set of 16 pieces for string quartet, improviser (playing cassettes and any instrument) and live electronics. The source material is based on dreams that I had during the first few months of lockdown, April-June 2020. Accounts of these dreams are encoded in the music that is played by the quartet and also encrypted in the sound textures that surround this.

“The pieces alternate between quartet as the foreground and electronic interludes, where solos or duos underpin the soundscape. The title of the piece (Greek for ‘sleep-cassette’) refers to a theory of dreams proposed by Daniel Dennett, that says that dreams are loaded into consciousness like a cassette tape during the night and played just before waking.”

It’s longtime collaborator Andy Moor who provides the guitar and tape work on these recordings, and together with Kyriakides’ electronics, which move between shuddering skitters and unsettling scratchiness and quite abstract sounds, when juxtaposed with the strings – which span playful to mournful to droning discord.

The sixteen pieces have been mastered as six separate tracks, but they flow as one immense composition in a continuous state of transition. Within each of the six numbered tracks, the individual segued pieces bear titles, with their time markers also noted. The titles present, if not strictly a narrative, then a guide to the theme, the idea, the inspiration.

‘Hypnokaséta I’ comprises ‘The government’s new cultural scheme’, ‘All roads to the airport are blocked’, and ‘Everyone is nervous, everyone is lost’, titles which serve to encapsulate the events and the sensations they engendered within the populace at the strangeness and uncertainty of lockdown.

‘Hypnokaséta III’ is a stunning work of contrasts, containing as it does the gentle, almost light-spirited string-led ‘The reluctant hotel manager’ and the dramatic, jarring ‘She lifts the mountain’, a dark, alien drone brimming with electronic tension that crackles and tweets. The rapid switches in mood and form recall the sudden and wild extremes I experienced myself during this time: it was impossible to keep up with the constant stream of developments in the news, while at the same time entrapped within the confines of the house, where the world outside felt so very far away, while also having to accommodate the changeable and diverse headspaces of friends, family, and colleagues. No-one knew what the fuck was going on, or how to cope.

There was an air of unreality about it all, and at times it became difficult to distinguish between the bewildering nightmarish reality of the wakeful hours and bewildering nightmarish sleep, and in drawing on dreams in the creation of Hypnokaséta (2020-2021), Kyriakides captures the essence of that abstract space forged in the mind where everything blurs. This blurring and abstraction is also reflected in the titles: ‘The concert promoter complains that not much happens in the piece’ sounds like something that could happen in one of those self-reflective semi-anxiety dreams, and ‘Bridges are being dismantled

across the city’ has an apocalyptic sense of separation, while ‘Body swap opera’, ‘Swimming pool synthesis’, and ‘Mutations on an empty grid’ are altogether more surreal in their connotations.

Throughout the album, the lister is jolted from a moment of tranquil reverie by some abrasive thud or rasp, an unexpected spike in volume, and a turn towards an altogether more disquieting atmosphere.

The composition is nuanced, the placing of the switches and transitions perfectly timed to achieve optimal impact, never allowing the listener to truly settle, to relax, to sit back and enjoy, and the moments of tension are indeed tense; but credit must also go to the performers: the strings are played with a keen awareness of the importance of both dynamics and detail, and Moor, in his capacity of ‘improviser’ brings texture and tone delivered with an infallible intuition. The album’s structures may be subtle, almost invisible, but they’re affecting, and as a whole, Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is an experience which permeates the psyche in unexpected ways.

AA

a2874939530_10

Botanist – Paleobotany

Posted: 27 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Prophecy Productions – 17th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

While many progressive metal bands are preoccupied with space or fantasy realms or mythology in some form, with San Francisco’s Botanist, the clue’s in the same, and it’s an obsession with species of plant-life which have provided the lyrical focus over the course of eleven previous albums before Paleobotany, which, they say, ‘take[s] us back more than 70 million years to a time when dinosaurs ruled the planet and early forests began to turn to coal. Before the age of giants ended in flames with the apocalyptic impact of the Chicxulub asteroid, some families of plants that still have descendants today also grew much larger.’ Bet you didn’t know that, did you? But then, the title tells is, really: an album about the botany of the Palaeolithic era.

Sonically, Paleobotany is interesting, and is more progressive than it is overtly metal for the most part, perhaps on account of the less conventional instrumentation used by the band, as outlined in their bio, which details how ‘Their music clearly has its foundation anchored in ‘metal’, but instead of 6-string guitars the Americans use 110-string hammered dulcimers. To the confused horror of traditionalists, BOTANIST fit these percussion-stringed folk instruments with magnetic pickups and distort them through various perverse means that range from amplifiers via analogue tape to digital manipulation.’

Perverse seems to be the operative word here. It’s fair to say that this is a band unswayed by trends or popularity. The overall sound is an amalgam of folk and progressive, and it’s highly melodic, too – and not just in the instrumentation. For the most part, the vocals are clean, soaring, tuneful, apart from the occasional foray into growliness, and they sit comfortably atop sweeping layers of cinematic sound, of which ‘Sigillaria; is perfectly exemplary. The bass runs in the closing bars of ‘Archaeamphora’ are more jazz-influenced than anything, and there are some truly black moments, such as ‘Strychnos Electri’, the verses of which are propelled by double-pedal bass beats and a deep growling vocal – but then they’re off on a tuneful trip about ferns with a tuneful piano rolling along in balladic fashion. When they’re heavy, they hit hard in the guts, but much of the album is given to expansive fields of tunefulness.

Their eschewing of all the conventional tropes is admirable and offers and exciting prospect, and while the concept is novel it is quite remarkable that they’ve managed to eke it out this long. At times, it does feel a shade pretentious – it’s certainly a little serious and lofty, with some of the lyrics sounding more like excerpts from essays in journals. This is by no means to denigrate intellectualism in music or anywhere else for that matter. Musically it’s an incredibly complex and accomplished work. It’s just… maybe it’s just a niche I can’t quite connect with.

AA

a0944583200_10

Crushtrash & Nicholas Langley – Prosthetic Self

Posted: 27 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature – 24th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It seems as if every album of the year has been released on this date, May 24th – and by every album of the year, I mean all of the releases have landed at the same time, but also that this album and the other ‘best album’ contenders have all landed simultaneously, too. It’s meant that I’ve been absolutely swamped, and struggling to listen to everything, let alone formulate thoughts and render them coherent – something I fear I struggle with at the best of times.

Surveying this release, I learned that ‘Prosthetic Self is a collaboration between CRUSHTRASH & NICHOLAS LANGLEY that seamlessly blends the energy of early ‘80s dark industrial synth pop with the mesmerising allure of ’90s electronica. Drawing inspiration from iconic acts like Coil, The Associates, Depeche Mode, Björk, and Portishead, this album is a sonic journey that transcends time and genre boundaries.’

It does feel as if every electronic act with a dark leaning wants to be Depeche Mode, and every electro-based Industrial act is essentially wanting to be Pretty Hate Machine – era Nine Inch Nails – who in turn sounded a fair bit like Depeche Mode if truth be told. That’s no real criticism, as much as an observation of the extent to which those two acts broke ground and created new templates in the 80s. However, the industrial elements of Prosthetic Self hark back to a time before Nine Inch Nails, and presents a more experimental form.

The tile, Prosthetic Self Connotes a sense of falseness, the fake exterior we apply to ourselves in order to deal with people and society. Workplaces – particularly offices – tell us to ‘be ourselves’ at work, while at the same time telling us we need to leave our problems and personal baggage at the door, but at the same time seem incapable of dealing with non-conformity. Well, come on then: what do you want: individuals or clones? Prosthetic Self is an exploratory work which presents a multitude of facets, and it’s a fascinating journey which leads one to the question as to what is real and what is construct, artifice. The cloak, on the cover, with its empty hood feels like a representation, not necessarily for this collaborative project, but the album’s themes, searching for what lies beneath the prosthetic self: is there, indeed, anything at all? Then again, how much here is style, and how much is substance?

There’s certainly a lot of well-studied style on display. ‘Bring Some Change’ is dark but also soulful, and their referencing The Associates hints at the almost operatic stylings of the vocals at times, and against some stark backings prone to some unexpected sonic ruptures and moments of heightened tension and drama, I’m also reminded of Scott Walker.

‘Claustrophobia’ is appropriately-titled. ‘In my dream, something’s wrong, caving in…’ Crushtrash croons with hints of Dave Gahan in his delivery against a slow-moving murky throb. But there’s a really attacking percussive loop that knocks on the top of your skull which makes it tense rather than soothing, and before long, panicked breathing gasps in the darkness, and you’re drawn into the nightmare.

Elsewhere, glitching, knocking beats shuffle and click, and the production really brings these to life in a way that makes you clench your jaw and tense your shoulders. ‘Selective Memory’ has something of a collage structure about the way the sounds are brought together and overlaid, with sampled snippets woven in alongside the bubbling vintage synth sounds.

In places, the kind of retro vibes which permeated 90s trip-hop seep into the shadowy atmospherics, and ‘Subtle Fetish’ comes on like Marc Almond in collaboration with Tricky, spinning lascivious wordplay along the way.

Prosthetic Self creates a lot of atmosphere with minimal arrangements, and they work because of the close attention to detail, the multiple layers of percussion which pulse and snake through spartan synths, more often than not with a simple, repetitive bass overlaid with subtle details, in a fashion which adeptly recreates the sound of the early 80s. In doing so, it recalls a time when so much was new, innovative. Coming at a time when there is so much sameness, and production and mixing has come to be all about the loudness, to hear a set of songs which really concentrate on dynamics and detail, it seems unexpectedly different.

AA

a1438080285_10

Percy – New Phase

Posted: 24 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

10ft Records – 24th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Percy have been going since the mid-90s, but didn’t get to release an album till 2013. They’ve maintained a steady flow since then, particularly since the solidification of their current lineup in 2017 with New Phase being their fifth album in and their fourth in six years.

‘Workmanlike’ isn’t a criticism when it comes to certain bands, when their solid and consistent output and regular gigging is central to their way of working and to their identity, and while it’s not an exclusively northern thing, The Fall and The Wedding Present are bands which immediately spring to mind as acts who deliver albums like it’s a job. Said albums may all share a certain commonality, but push those tight parameters each time, and if Percy can be guaranteed to sound like Percy, then it’s all to the good.

New Phase is an apt title for an album which sees them take a lunge into darker territory, both sonically and lyrically. A fair few of the songs have featured in their live setlist over the last year or two, giving a fair indication of the direction they were heading with the new material, but to hear these songs all together and as full-realised studio recordings has a different kind of impact. On New Phase, they sound invigorated, vivified, but also tense, paranoid, embattled. Colin Howard’s lyrics are less given to social critique and instead present scenes of horror, of personal torment and heightened anxiety. Whatever the fuck’s been going down in his life or neighbourhood, or whatever grim stuff he’s been streaming on Netflix, the resultant art is powerful. The musical accompaniment captures the same uneasy mood of high tension and darkness.

‘Sink Estate Agents Satanic Rites’ is – remarkably – their most Fall-like track to date, a jagged paranoid spasm that’s dragged from the space between Grotesque and Slates. It’s tense, uncomfortable, and there’s something weird about the production that pulls in different directions and renders it even more difficult, and vaguely gothic in the early post-punk sense, too.

‘Blackout’ has hints of early Arctic Monkeys lurking amidst its clanging mess of guitars and panic-filled lyrics which narrate a bleak tale of alcoholic excess ‘there’s bloodstains on the floor / there’s bloodstains on the wall / and someone’s banging on the door… and then it hit me’.

Narrative is a strong feature of the lyrics, as is nowhere more evident than on the nightmarish ‘I Can Hear Orgies’. Are these auditory hallucinations or is weird shit going down round Colin’s way? Or is it a side effects of the meds?

The title track is raw, ragged, angular, more Shellac or Bilge Pump or even Part Chimp than The Fall, bringing a new level of aggression and noise to Percy’s repertoire.

More conventional Percy territory is covered in ‘Thinking of Jacking It In Again’, ‘Do You Think I’m on the Spectrum?’ and ‘Last Train to Selby’, delving back into the world of work and sociopolitical matters and delivered with powerhouse drumming and choppy, clanging Gang of Four guitars – and of course a dash of Fall-like rockabilly, because it’s Percy. ‘Wah-wah-wah-wah’ Howard signs off. ‘Greedy People’ is a classic Percy swipe at an obvious target, but as Colin spits ‘It’s not about the money / it’s about the principle’, there’s a palpable anger, articulated as much though discordant guitar.

New Phase marks a step up for Percy, and in many ways. They sustain the tension across the duration of the album’s ten tracks, with only the six-minute closer, ‘Afterlife’ calming down and taking a more synth-led dimension, but still presenting a bleakness and heavy melancholy that fits with the album as a whole. The production is tight and solid, bringing to life the album’s sonic and lyrical tensions.

New Phase is a magnificently awkward, challenging, angular set, and perhaps Percy’s least commercial, least overtly ‘indie’ album to date. But for my money, it’s also their best-realised, most authentic, and most exhilarating album yet.

AA

a0857077590_10

Lip Critic – Hex Dealer

Posted: 17 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

Partisan – 17th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It feels like no time at all since I was reviewing the cassette release of Lip Critic II, and that their ascent from self-released EPs and cassette-only albums on microlabels has been astoundingly rapid, but time has a way of playing tricks when it comes to perception: Lip Critic II was, in fact, released almost four years ago. And now, signed to Partisan and having gained significant traction playing SXSW, with the NME claiming bragging rights for giving them a cover feature a few months ago, as well as a five-star review last November, they’re certainly breaking through. There’s no question that it’s entirely deserved, either: despite being overtly weird and clearly non-mainstream, they’re a quintessential cult alternative band, the likes of which gain substantial hardcore followings and are revered long after their passing.

With a lineup consisting of two drummers and two synths, Lip Critic are no ordinary band, and they produce no ordinary music, and Hex Dealer is a schizophrenic sonic riot. It’s a bit cleaner, the production rather more polished, but fundamentally, it’s the same deranged percussion-heavy cacophony that Lip Critic have always given us, and it’s still true that most of their songs are short and snappy – around two-and-a-half minutes. Consequently, Hex Dealer is aa succession of short, sharp shocks, like poking a socket with a wet finger. The whole thing is a spasm and a twitch.

‘It’s the Magic’ brings together a smooth croon that has hints of Marc Almond and some shouty rap mashed together with some Nine Inch Nails industrial noise and some woozy hip-hop beats and some aggressive drum ‘n’ bass, all in under four and a half minutes.

Lead single ‘The Heart’ is a standout, for is frenetic, kinetic energy, and its hookiness, but it’s a question of context: it’s a blissed-out pop tune in comparison to the blistering percussive onslaught and distorted dark hip-hop blast of ‘Pork Belly’, a cut that takes me right back to the early 90s, specifically the Judgement Night soundtrack. Single ‘In The Wawa (Convinced I Am God)’ is entirely representative of the album as a whole, compressing all of its warped elements into a noisy, spasmodic, hi-NRG two minutes and nineteen seconds. Crazed, hyperactive, it’s explosive and it’s unique.

It’s a rock album with rap trappings. It’s a rap album with rock trappings. It’s a mess and shouldn’t, doesn’t, work. Only, it does. And with ‘My Wife and the Goblin’, they introduce some gnarly noise which isn’t metal by any stretch, but it certainly gets dark near the end. I say ‘near the end’, but it’s only a minute and forty-one and it’s a real brain-melting mess of noise.

If the beats to grow a little samey over the duration of the album, the counterargument is that the thrashing percussive attacks give the set a vital coherence. Packing twelve tracks into just over thirty minutes, and more ideas per minute than any brain can reasonably be expected to process, Hex Dealer feels like Lip Critic’s definitive statement.

AA

a4093774739_10

Attrition – The Black Maria

Posted: 16 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

22nd March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Everyone has a different way of processing, everyone’s cognition operates differently. It’s all a matter of experience and perception. The broader one’s experience, and also one’s exploration of art – in all media, be it books, music, visual art – the broader the network of intertext and references available. Formative experiences and interactions are also a significant factor in the way we come to shape and comprehend our world. And so it s that the moment I encounter the words ‘Black Maria’, my mind immediately leaps to ‘Afterhours’ by The Sisters of Mercy – my first encounter with the term, long before I would understand that it was a term for a police van. Attrition’s latest release certainly doesn’t elicit images of dark vehicles, but does hint at the seedy backstreet scenes that the Sisters song brings to mind, with its sense of disconnection, of being outside yourself, .the paranoid twitch of sleep deprivation

The album’s brief intro track, ‘The Promise’ is a murky ambient piece with hushed spoken-word vocals which is build a mood, a sense of dark atmosphere and foreboding. This intro track thins has really become a vogue in recent years, to the point that it’s becoming predictable and even frustrating to be presented with an atmospheric opening piece which probably isn’t particularly representative of the album it prefaces.

In the case of The Black Maria, it’s a fair primer for the wildly varied, even cacophonous blend of musicality which follows. ‘The Great Derailer’ brings operatic vocals and some bold technoindustrial grooves, before ‘The Switch’ gives us some techno-heavy goth with strong hints of Twitch-era Ministry woven into the mix. But once again, against the busy backdrop that alludes to the likes of PIG and KMFDM, there are ethereal moans and wails which drape themselves hauntingly. I’ve loosely reminded of some of the contributions Gitane DeMone made to Christian Death around the time of Ashes, or maybe Jarboe on Swans’ Children of God, but this is somehow different, and if anything, more difficult to assimilate.

Attrition bring a vast array of styles to the table for a start. ‘The Pillar II’ is exemplary: a low industrial throb brings a heavy tension, an unsettling uncertainty, which manifests as a discomfiture in the lower regions of the gut. But the wailing wordless vocals evoke tortured souls, wandering in purgatory. There are tense strings swelling and holding a tight grip, you find your chest tightening and it’s hard to swallow for this clench of tension. It evokes physical response: I feel my jaw clench and my breathing growing more laboured as the track builds layers of sound: there’s a hum that tortures the ears, and when it falls away, the sensation is strange, empty.

Music box melancholy prefaces more ultra-tense violins on ‘The Alibi’, which really takes a turn for the disturbing. The dual vocals grate against one another, dark sinister, deranged, almost schizophrenic in their whispers. The layers are busy and there are serpentine instrumental intrusions amidst the strolling piano and skittering strings and the wild cacophony of backing vocals: the effect is absolutely dizzying. The title track draws the album to a close with warping, time-bending synth dissonance and pulsating bass which contrasts with operatic quailing providing the backdrop to a growled, menacing spoken word vocal – and then it goes large near the end, with industrial-strength percussion cutting through the melee.

‘Spooky’ feels like such a weak, tame adjective in the main, but it’s the best I’ve got when it comes to summarising the otherworldly discomfit of the experience that is The Black Maria. But throughout The Black Maria, Attrition channel all of the dissociation and disconnection, and I’d challenge anyone to listen to this and keep their feet completely on the ground.

AA

a0847003042_10

PIG – Red Room

Posted: 14 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Metropolis Records – 17th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

For a good many years, PIG lay dormant, moribund, mute. Gone, but not forgotten, having mingled with the milieu of industrial royalty since emerging in the ranks of KMFDM and retaining that connection and confluence while operating separately under the PIG moniker, Raymond Watts arguably reached his largest audiences in the wake of touring as support to Nine Inch Nails on the Downward Spiral tour. With pig’s heads on stakes at the sides of the stage, it was visual, visceral, and vital.

Things went quiet for a time – a very long time – but since returning in 2016 with The Gospel, the releases have come thick and fast, with Red Room being the sixth album (if you include Pain is God, a compilation of EP cuts) since PIG’s phoenix-like resurrection

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘Watts has co-written much of Red Room with Jim Davies, a longtime member of Pitchshifter but best known for his acidic and acerbic guitar lines on many chart hits by The Prodigy. Several regular cohorts are also present and correct, along with some new additions most majestically heard on ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ as the PIG choir: Emily Kavanaugh (Night Club), Chris Hall (Stabbing Westward), Burton C Bell (Fear Factory, Ascension of the Watchers), I Ya Toyah, Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry), En Esch (KMFDM) and Marc Heal (Cubanate) are among those featured.’

First: it’s a hell of a roll-call of contributors. A veritable who’s-who, an industrial supergroup on a scale that pisses all over recent lineups for RevCo or Pigface. Second: Jim Davies’ presence is notable in terms of defining the sound. There’s a lot of sinewy detail in between the chugging riffs and bulbous sequenced synthy bass notes. Recent releases have seen Watts expose the poppier, glammier aspects of PIG, but these have been cast aside here in favour a sound which is altogether more reminiscent of mid-to-late 90s PIG, only minus the flamboyant orchestral strikes and string flourishes.

Blasting in with ‘Crumbs, Chaos, Lies’ – which deviates from the classic alliterative rule of three – the album gets down to the grind from the off, the track boasting some dirty low-end scuzz, the likes of which would have been quite at home on Sinsation or Wrecked, with overloading guitars that burst from the speakers rent with a serpentine synth line and some discordant piano. Layers? It has many, and the more you listen, the more you hear. Watts has long been a meticulous master of detail in the studio, and while Red Room is darker and noisier than some of its predecessors, it’s a masterclass in attention to the little things.

The title track is a proper PIG prime-cut: anthemic, but dark, bleak, and dirty, while ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ is reminiscent of previous ‘gospel’ flavoured pieces, but equally, I’m reminded of a grimier sweatier, sleazier version of She Wants Revenge. If ‘Does it Hurt Yet’ calls to mind Nine Inch Nails circa Pretty Hate Machine and the more low-key, robotic synth moments of The Downward Spiral, it’s worth bearing in mind that it was Watts who working this field before Trent, before Reznor contributed to Pigface, Watts was recording with KMFDM, and come 1988 (when PHM was released), he released the first PIG LP and worked as a touring member of Foetus.

‘Slave to Pleasure’ mashes a whole lot together, sounding like an industrial version of The Associates, while throwing nods to Depeche Mode and David Bowie. It’s high-energy and a killer tune which would go down well on the radio, if the whip cracks and general themes could pass approval. ‘Six Eye Sand Spider’ is again predominantly electronic but the layers ad textures are exciting, and the guitars, while packed down so, so low, bring both dirt and density the sound. ‘PIG is at Your Window’ is uncomfortable, and brings some bold brass and busy orchestral work atop the big, grinding blasts of guitar, not to mention a dash of .

Red Room captures PIG at their darkest and heaviest, but also marks a return to their eclecticism and experimentalism of the mid-nineties. It’s an unapologetically hefty set with some inspired twists.

AA

a0167926687_10

Maybeshewill – Fair Youth (2024 Mix) – 10th Anniversary Reissue

Posted: 12 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

InsideOut Music – 11th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Maybeshewill rose to prominence on the crest of the instrumental post-rock wave swiftly on their arrival in 2005, and while many of their titles and song structures, with brooding passages splintered by bold crescendos, were quintessentially of the time, what set them apart from their peers was the electronic element of their sound. Between 2008 and 2014, they released four albums, with Fair Youth being the final one. And then they called it a day the following year.

Something happened in the years which followed. Not to the band themselves, but in the culture. As so often happens, their reputation and the appreciation for the band seemed to grow in their absence. There’s inevitably an element of nostalgia involved, but with fashions being ever cyclical, post-rock’s popularity was somewhat diminished by 2014, largely due to oversaturation, no doubt – how many instrumental bands playing seven-minute songs with chiming guitars and crashing crescendos all wanting to be Explosions in the Sky do you need to see on a single evening, and how many such lineups do you need in a week, month, year, lifetime? But as time passed, there emerged a new generation who hadn’t been going to gigs in the mid-noughties, who’d missed out, and thus grew a renewed interest.

Maybeshewill reconvened in 2020, releasing No Feeling Is Final in 2021, an album which, seven years after Fair Youth, further cemented their style and certainly didn’t disappoint.

As 2024 marks the ten-year anniversary of Fair Youth, it seems an appropriate time to review the merits of a definitive album – here, reassessed, remixed, and remastered. Jamie Ward comments of the new mix and master: “With 10 years more mixing experience under my belt I feel a bit better placed to conquer the wall of sound and get a little more separation between the instruments to really bring out the details of those arrangements. In general I’ve tried to make things hit a little harder and be bit a more vibrant and technicolour.”

I haven’t been anal enough to play the two versions side by side or to really focus on those minute details which some fans will likely revel in for hours, and I sincerely hope they do. There is a certain and quite specific pleasure in rediscovering an album you know intimately, finding fresh details and dynamics along thee way, but this is perhaps more the material for fan forums and individuals to immerse themselves in.

For me, it’s been a long time since I’ve listened to this album – not because I don’t rate it, but because of the sheer volume of music in the world vying for my attention.

From the very start, rolling piano and brooding strings pair with chiming guitars, strolling bass, and solid percussion to make mood music that’s not meek or fay, but driven and dynamic, with remarkable texture and depth, and it draws you in instantly. There’s a magical musicality to ‘In Amber’, largely derived from the piano which ripples and rolls its way through the surging guitar.

The title track is one of many which, with vocals, would likely have made an epic academy-size venue-filling anthem, and ‘All Things Transient’ has soundtrack written all over it. The quality of the compositions – and their execution is impossible to fault, as they present back-to-back tunes which are solid, energetic, expansive, imaginative. ‘Sanctuary’ is mellow but at thew same time has drive and energy, pulsating shoegaze with a solid rock spine in its tight rhythm section, which stands in contrast to the rather more mathy, jazzy, folksy ‘Asiatic’.

The album’s eleven songs showcase a real range, and Fair Youth represents not only a high point in the band’s career, but also in the post-rock oeuvre. It’s an album of a rare consistent quality, and holds up as well ten years on as it did at the time – if not, perhaps, better.

AA

a2908336688_10

Mother of All – Global Parasitic Leviathan

Posted: 5 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

12th April 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Having showcased single cut ‘Hypocrisy – Weaponised’, released ahead of the second album by progressive/melodeath act Mother of All, I was keen to get my lugs around the album in full, not least of all to see if I could get a handle on what ‘melodeath’ is. There doesn’t seem to be a week where I don’t stumble on another microgenre. This isn’t something exclusive to metal, although it certainly seems to be the strain which contains the most minutely fragmented forms.

While now a full and proper band, Mother of All is Martin Haumann’s concept. As the bio informs us, ‘With a background in The Royal Danish Conservatory and extensive training in different musical disciplines, Martin draws on varied and unusual influences to create a unique vision for Mother of All, but his prime inspiration comes from the deep cauldron of metal. Continuing to explore the art form with Mother of All, Martin creates songs that are diverse and eclectic in nature by incorporating melodic and progressive elements into death metal.’

On the evidence of Global Parasitic Leviathan, that means some crunching riffs played fast and furious and driven by rapidfire drumming, but with a lot of fast, flamboyant licks which are big on harmonics and fretwork tapestry. While the contrast is nicely separated and the detail adds layers to the thunderous assault, I can’t help but feel it falls into that self-made trap of showcasing technical skills to the extent that it undermines the overall power of a song at times.

Again, it’s a trait common across the board, but particularly in metal that there seems to be a compulsion to overcompensate, but overshowing the technical competence. It happens a lot in writing, too, though, particularly among newer writers who feel the need to demonstrate their writing skills by overwriting, packing in superfluous adjectives and paragraph upon paragraph of detail because look! I can do this! Well done. But how about you actually tell us a story? Or, in this context, play us a song?

Mother of All have some songs, and they’re burning with incendiary rage, and when they knuckle down and let the fury flow, they absolutely kill it.

The sentiments are solid, and the song titles speak for themselves: ‘Corporate Warfare Leviathan’, ‘Debt Crush’, ‘Merchants of Self-Loathing’ all rage antagonistically against the machines of capitalism and corporate domination, and when they trim the flamboyant fretwork and focus on delivering brute force, as on ‘The Stars Already Faded’, they really hit hard, Haumann’s raw, raging vocal a magnificent articulation of tortured anguish. ‘Debt Crush’, too, is five minutes of full-throttle fury, and although ‘Merchants of Self-Loathing’ gets a bit rap-metal, it’s in the Judgment Night vein and so deserves a pass. ‘Pillars’ seems to lean on Neil Young during the intro, before going all-out raging metal. Keep on rockin’ in the free world, indeed. The sentiment extends beyond genre, of course.

Global Parasitic Leviathan isn’t short on ideas and positively froths and overspills with technical ability, as they’re keen to show us, over and over. But, and this a lesson that takes time – less is more. Global Parasitic Leviathan is good, and it’s consistent in style and tone, but I can’t help but feel that tempering the fretwork would hit harder, because when they really riff out they’re utterly pulverising.

AA

064385

Older Entries
Newer Entries