Archive for the ‘Albums’ Category

Neuro… No Neuro – Positive*

Posted: 2 December 2023 in Albums
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Mille Plateaux – 1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s always exciting to hear what electronic experimentalism Neuro… No Neuro have cooked up, and Positive* is the second album this year, following on from the collection of glitchy snippets which comprised Compartments back in January. Just as Compartments was a very different project from its predecessor, Faces & Fragments, so Positive* explores very different territory from the ‘Kawaii-Glitch’ of Compartments.

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘Positive* by Neuro… No Neuro is based upon thin slices of memory, and the disintegration of their existence. The day-to-day, with its ‘ups and downs’, all while operating/existing above and to the right of the body. When the day ends, and the separated is reunited; how does one collect what is no longer there? …Separating consciousness from the corporeal… Memory and thought are being swept out to sea in granules that are imperceptible to those around you. Short term is riddled with inconsistencies…Say “so long” to the granules.’

It’s all about focus, and the focus of Positive* is very different from any previous projects. And when it comes to projects like this, details are important. In context, it’s ok to focus on those details, and to do so isn’t obsessive or excessively picky, but to engage with a creative work on the basis of its design, its intent. I preface my assessment this way because the first thing I’m drawn to, before hearing a single note, is the asterisk in the title. Such a mark denotes a footnote, an aside, a necessary commentary on the subject.

But there is not one appended to the accompanying notes. What can it mean? Is this an accidental omission? It seems unlikely, and as such, one can only conclude that it’s for the reader to decipher the nature of the discourse. In my own experience of academic writing, it’s often the case that the real commentary and the grain of the research lies in the notes, and so it is the case here.

‘This Time for Sure’ brings some stuttering ambient drum ‘n’ bass which arrives in a drift of Japanese-inspired scales, bit there are some subtle details and textures to be found low down in the mix. It certainly sets the tone for this comparatively delicate collection of pieces, most of which are fairly fleeting, sitting around the two-and-a-half-minute mark on average.

Each of the titles pins a positive slant on neutral or even potentially negative scenarios – ‘Even I can See this Now’, ‘When You Actually Want to Wake Up’, ‘Drier days Ahead’ – all feel like phrases uttered the kind of pep talks you might give yourself in times of struggle. C’mon, you can do this! Sometimes, try as you might, it still feels empty and futile, and as oft as you repeat it, you struggle to believe it.

‘When You Actually Want to Wake Up’ perhaps represents this struggle most keenly, a loping glitch like the back and forth internal monologue you struggle to overcome: yes… no… yes… no… just get up… but…’

‘Of Course You Know it All’ has an implied snarky, snideness to its title, but it’s still positive, right? Its glitchy, picky, chiming mellowness float beneath some pinging arcs, while the sweeping ambience of ‘Almost Through’ arrives with a sense of sagging fatigue, the kind of positivity many feel in the last half hour of the working week – fagged out and clinging to that point of release.

The world is dark and life is a grind, and it’s often difficult to see the light, the positive aspects among it all – and they are few and far between. Platitudes like ‘at least I have a job’ or ‘at least I have my health’ don’t really carry much conviction. Sure, there’s always someone worse off, but it’s hardly saying much. It’s ok to be negative, to be discontent.

And perhaps it’s here we finally come to understand and appreciate the asterisk. Positive* is, overall, melodic, and feels quite uplifting, being gentle, the urgent beats tempered by ambience and melodicism. It’s actually – dare I say it – quite nice. But finding those uptempo, upbeat aspects, maintaining balance, is hard as you juggle and struggle to keep things together, a day at a time. And perhaps this is how we can best appreciate Positive*. Just as memory drifts and floats, so does our capacity to continue onwards and to stay afloat. All you can do is hang in there.

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Palmer ++ Procter – what does the fjord say and what do we say in reply?

Posted: 1 December 2023 in Albums
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Dret Skivor – 1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Yes, that’s fjord, not fox, meaning you won’t find these collaborating sound artists bouncing around the woods dressed as furry animals, making daft, random sounds. Well, you won’t find them bouncing around the woods dressed as furry animals, anyway, although Dave Procter did spend many years performing while wearing a latex pig’s head, but he put a stop to that after David Cameron started turning up at his shows.

This latest collaboration between Martin Palmer and Dave Procter is, in fact, inspired by the site of previous experimental audio tests in 2019, namely the sculpture “what does the fjord say?” in Trondheim harbour. As they tell it in the accompanying notes, ‘Armed with percussive sticks, contact microphones, audio recorders and the occasional toy and synth, they set about a full exploration of the sculpture and their own sonic ideas in and around the sculpture, using created and environmental sounds to answer the question posed by the sculpture. These recordings are Palmer and Procter’s replies.’

The first reply ‘støyende arbeider’ is more of a lecture than a simple reply, with a running time of twenty-one minutes. Consisting of random clatters, crashes, squidges, squelches and shifting hums which ebb and flow amongst an array of incidental intrusions, it’s more of a non-linear rambling explication, and exploration of the rarely-explored recesses of the mind than a cogent conclusion. But then, why should a reply necessarily be an answer. This, then, is a dialogue, a discussion, not an interview constructed around a Q&A format. It’s nothing so formal, and all the more interesting for its being open-ended, evolving organically. There are points at which the thuds, clanks and scrapes grow in their intensity, creating a sense of frustration, as if attempting to unravel a most complex conundrum and finding oneself stuck and annoyed by the fact that there is something just out of reach, something you can’t quite recall. And at times, this is also the listener’s experience. The way to approach this is by giving up on the expectation or hope of coherence, or anything resembling a tune, and yield to the spirit of experimentalism.

‘Moose Cavalry’ and ‘Mock Paloma’ are both significantly shorter pieces, the former being atmospheric and evocative, the animalistic calls conjuring images of beats roaming moorlands in the mist. Plaintive, droning moans and lows transmogrify into warped, pained cries and needling drones. The latter is different again: dark, tense, shrill tones scratch and scrape, flit and fly, reverberating from all directions. It’s unsettling, uncomfortable.

These three compositions are so different from one another, it superficially makes for a somewhat disjointed set, but on deeper reflection, what Palmer and Procter have forged a work which demonstrates how it’s possible, and even desirable, to approach a subject from multiple angles and perspectives. I still don’t know what the fjord says, but I do know that Palmer and Procter have posed some interesting musings in response.

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Jim Haynes – Inauspicious

Posted: 30 November 2023 in Albums
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The Helen Scarsdale Agency – 8th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s often difficult to keep up with artists’ outputs, especially the super-prolific ones. Jim Haynes not quite make the super-prolific category, but having first written on his work with a review of The Decline Effect back in 2011, I’ve covered three albums between 2017 and 2021 alone. I tend to take a particular interest in albums released through The Helen Scarsdale Agency, which despite sounding rather prim and literary, is a label which has a particular knack for platforming music of an experimental and often difficult and noisy nature.

Haynes’ work has become progressively harsh over time, and the press release for Inauspicious notes that this has been particularly true post-pandemic, while acknowledging the cliché that the pandemic marked a pivotal point for many musicians. Crucially, it notes that ‘The tools for Haynes’ work remain limited: motors, electronics, shortwave radio, found objects, all applied with considerable pressure. Compositionally, Inauspicious is a very rough moire pattern from overlapping elliptical structures that can negate and obfuscate just as easily as they can compound and aggregate. The album surges and collapses upon the two twenty minute chunks of controlled noise that follow an internal logic that snakes from brooding power drones, spectral radio transmission, and an aktionist demolition cast upon metal, glass, and unfortunate wooden objects. Rupture and release. Purge and pulse.’

As such, while the output, and the dynamic may be different, Haynes’ fundamentals remain unchanged, and this matters, in that it demonstrates that more often than not, the end product is not so much dependent on the input and the raw materials, but their application and the process.

Inauspicious features just two compositions, ‘Variant, Number Fourteen’ and ‘Variant, Number Fifteen’, which each run to precisely twenty minutes apiece. It’s a work that’s seemingly designed for a vinyl release, with each piece occupying a side of the LP, and I daresay that the dank ambient rumblings have their greatest impact when rolling from the grooves of a thick chunk of vinyl. Still, it works digitally when played through some decent speakers which afford air to the album’s slow, granular churnings. It’s not that fat into ‘Variant, Number Fourteen’ that it’s built to a brain-shredding blast of drilling noise. Beneath the ear-destroying mesh of treble and shredding abrasion, there are swells and surges of lower-end noise. It’s easy to overlook the slight details in the face of such a wall of abrasion, but it matters. While Haynes is bringing a relentless assault, it’s important to pause by the details, and Inauspicious is abrim with them, although ‘Variant, Number Fourteen’ spins into a restless ancient howl in its final minutes and tapers into a dank rumbling that brings a heavy tension.

‘Variant, Number Fifteen’ brings more of the same: heavy drone, grainy texture, harsh noise, spluttering and droning,  a deep sense of ominous foreboding, only with lower, deeper, more resonant bass, the tone of which drags on the lower abdomen among the swishes and swirls. And then grating mid-range abrasion. It’s hard to know how to react to this truly painful grind. By turns, I feel as if I need to defecate and vomit, although in the end I do neither as I simply clench my stomach during passages of this dark mess.

This is an album that brings noise and it brings pain. It’s a relentless grind and growl, and not for the first time, Jim Haynes has tapped into a sense of awkwardness which really grates and grinds.

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Tote Kinder – No Gene Will Save Us Now

Posted: 25 November 2023 in Albums
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21st November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s now an established fact that many, if not most listeners make judgements on a song within seconds – to the extent that back in 2014, it was revealed a quarter of Spotify tracks get skipped within the first five seconds. And only thirty seconds or more counts as a stream. I suspect that figure may be even higher now, as attention spans have hardly increased in the last few years. I only speak for myself when I think of the jittery hours where scrolling and skipping has become more of a nervous twitch than social media engagement – although I still refuse to use Spotify, meaning any review request containing only a Spotify link is an instant rejection. It’s one way to filter the fifty-plus daily submissions.

But while I’m likely to give a track more than five seconds, I am prone to making pretty snap decisions when it comes to new music. The chances are the squalling mess of noise that crashlands ‘Overfed’, the opening track on No Gene Will Save Us Now by Greek ‘machine-driven noise rick duo’ Tote Kinder will repel 95% of potential listeners in less then five seconds, because its skronking scrape of slanting, skewed guitar is an instant headache – and the very reason I love it immediately. It’s a shouty, angular mess of – well, everything, and probably the first time I’ve heard anything overtly mathy and a bit Truman’s Water using quite such a barrage of drums right up front. It’s like The Young Gods in collision with Daughters and slams hard between the eyes, and the crunchy bass-led ‘Permanent Damage’ is equally hard-hitting. Taking its guitar cues from Gang of Four, it’s noisy and difficult, despite its leaning towards a groove.

‘Hard to Swallow’ really is, arriving in a shrill blast of power electronics with overloading noise before plunging into darkness and with distorted bass and thudding relentless drums. It’s a hybrid of DAF and PIL, and it’s strong. It doesn’t stop. ‘Die Letzte Weste’ is all thumping beats and grinding bas, again reminiscent of DAF – at least until the blasting guitar noise crunches in, and thereafter, it’s Foetus and KMFDM who spring to mind, but there are others, too. This is some full-spectrum noise.

Tote Kinder are taut tight, poised, in their delivery of churning industrial noise. ‘The Falling Man’ is a sneering, snarling, industrial chug worthy of Filth Pig era ministry, a workout that froths with nihilism. The last couple of tracks don’t exactly offer a mellow finish – and nor should they.

No Gene Will Save Us Now may only contain seven tracks, but they’re all strong and incredibly hard-hitting. – and fittingly reminds us that we are all fucked. Why will people not accept or otherwise recognise this? They just continue as normal, booking their overseas holidays. We are so over. And this album will so break your head.

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Binary Order – The Future Belongs To The Mad

Posted: 21 November 2023 in Albums
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28th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Following on from the interim Thrown Away EP release, which boldly, and perhaps somewhat unexpectedly – pitched a Papa Roach cover front and foremost, and taster single release in the shape of ‘Slow Blade’, Binary Order drop the new album The Future Belongs To The Mad. In doing so, Benjamin Blank’s techno / industrial / metal vehicle reveal just how much has evolved since previous album, Messages from the Deep.

So many acts in this musical sphere seem to exist in a sort of genre-specific bubble, grinding out endless psychodramas centred around dark sexuality and degradation, having taken the first couple of Nine Inch Nails albums as templates for their musical existence. Fair enough. It’s easy enough to become embroiled and fixated on the relentless turbulence of your angst and relationship disconnects and how they fuck with your head. At least when you’re a fucked-up hormone-explosion, which is pretty much anyone’s teens and probably twenties.

This could perhaps explain in part the difference in focus of The Future Belongs To The Mad. Blank has been operating as Binary Order since 2008 – the same year I got serious about reviewing music – and it’s been a ling and tempestuous fifteen years. Older, wiser… and more bewildered by the world.  Blank’s statement which accompanies the album is stark, bold, bleak, and honest – but at the same time suitably vague, and I shall quote in full in order to provide context:

“It’s never easy to be honest about these kind of things, but I feel it’s important with this release to be so. The Future Belongs To The Mad was written during possibly the most difficult period I’ve ever had to get through – a period I’m not actually done dealing with – and one from which I now fear I shall never depart.

This album is an expression of my own inability to find meaning or purpose in life. And the utter disdain and emotional distraught that comes from the accumulation of living like that year, after year, after year. With this album I’ve managed to turn something that is for all intents and purposes destroying me, and created what is without any doubt in my mind, the greatest accomplishment of my life.

I don’t know if there is going to be anymore Binary Order after this. Finishing this album felt like an impossibility at one point, and now it’s done I feel like I am too. I hope anyone who listens to this can find something of value for within it. If not then I just appreciate having this platform to express myself in this way because it has kept me alive.”

Whether so much of this existential trauma was triggered by lockdown or other personal circumstances, we don’t know, but the fact that Blank is British and subject to the daily hell of living in a country in turmoil and seemingly hell-bent on utterly fucking itself and its citizens is worth highlighting, in that this seems to reflect the mood of many people I know. It feels as though the mad have already taken over and are stealing the futures of the rest of us, and our children. From this vantage, you look in, you look out, and you feel hollow and broken.

The Future Belongs To The Mad is harsh, abrasive, and rages hard from the offset, with the blistering hot guitar inferno of ‘Consternation’, which judders and stutters, halts and race, blasts of noise slamming in your face in the first bars. The vocals alternate between snarling, impenetrable metal roars in the verses and cleanly melodic choruses abrim with bombast.

Elsewhere, ‘Perfect World’ builds to a truly magnificently anthemic climax, while ‘Feel Again’ brings some crisp dark electropop that calls to mind mid/late 80s Depeche Mode with its layered synths and backed-off but crunchy guitars, over which Blank wrestles with his entire soul over darker feelings. There are dank instrumental interludes to be found during the course of the album. ‘Hope is a Mistake’ is every bit as bleak and life-sapping as the title suggests. ‘Skin’ is tense and claustrophobic electro, but again, there are segments which are smooth and soulful. ‘Face Beneath The Waves’ is a black blast of aggrotech metal / glichy electro / industrial / emo which takes your face off then soothes your raw flesh with some nicely melodic passages.

If nu-metal at its best / worst battled with stylistic duality, Binary Order carry this through to a Jekyll and Hyde manifestation of internal struggle on The Future Belongs To The Mad, which incorporates elements of numerous genres. These contrasts serve the album well in terms of it being a dynamic, energised offering, but such schizophrenic sonic stylings make for an album that’s almost pitched at two or more different markets. But more than anything, it feels as if these stylistic conflicts are the manifestation of Blank’s internal conflicts – and with this interpretation, The Future Belongs To The Mad works well. Blank hauls the listener through his difficult experiences, one at a time, and you bear witness to his self-torment a song at a time.

The Future Belongs To The Mad is not an easy album, but it is one that carries much weight and is well-realised. I won’t be alone in hoping it isn’t the last of Binary Order – but if it is, it’s a grand final statement.

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ZAHN – Adria

Posted: 19 November 2023 in Albums
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Crazysane Records – 24th Nov 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The press release describes Zahn as a ‘German post–modern noise rock ensemble’, while their bandcamp bio offers ‘A bold escape from your daily life through technicolor transmissions of post–rock, krautrock, dark jazz, noise–rock, post–punk and electronic music. Influenced by the likes of TRANS AM, THE JESUS LIZARD, METZ, THE MELVINS and TORTOISE’, adding that ‘Adria is a compelling soundtrack to a 1980’s anti–utopian road movie!’

As a prospect, it’s head-spinning, sounding like an everything-all-at-once hybrid, and the actuality isn’t much different. There are plenty of driving grooves, largely propelled by solid bass and insistent drumming, but there are also some angular riffs and big splashes of noise.

The first track, ‘Zebra,’ boasts a bulbous bass with some big low-end and some easy, noodly synths which wibble and wander agreeably and mellifluously… and then towards the end it builds and distorts and things get altogether more twisted and less pleasant. And this is a feature characteristic of the compositions on show here. They don’t mash everything into every second simultaneously, and there’s none of that jazz / Beefheart kind of stuff that sounds like each band member is playing a different tune in a different key and time signature all at the same time. There are times where that kind of avant-gardism most definitely has its place, and works, but this isn’t what Zahn are doing here. In keeping with the road movie concept, the pieces are constructed around transition.

The ten-minute ‘Schmuck’ is a magnificent example of their ability to do mellow, with clean sounds and even a tinge of a country twang, it swings along breezily and evokes sunshine and expansive vistas. Then, near the seven-minute mark, the bass steps up to a crunching grind and things get a whole lot noisier, from where it builds into a big, driven riff which crackles with energy. ‘Yuccatan 3E’ is another colossus of a cut, running to almost nine and a half minutes and manages to take it time in pushing outwards and working a single passage for a fair while, but equally packs in at least three or four songs’ worth of ideas.

The changes feel organic, and sometimes emerge gradually, and at others there will be a sudden and unexpected swerve, and there’s so much happening that the absence of vocals barely registers.

Because the mood, tone, and tempo differs so radically between songs – and between sections – Adria very much does feel like a journey, through space and time. ‘Apricot’ is a sparse synth work with crispy vintage drum machine snare cutting through quavering analogue synth sounds – then, without changing the instrumentation or the simple repetitive motif, it goes massive. A post-rock Depeche Mode chronically undersells it, but it’s as close as I can get, at least off the top of my head. The final minute is an extravagant climax, and truly magnificent.

The majority of the album’s eleven tracks run past five minutes, with the majority sitting more around the seven-minute mark, but the eleven-and-a-half-minute ‘Faser’ is the album’s megalithic centrepiece. It blasts hard with a fuzzy, scuzzy repetitive riff cycle with stoner rock tendencies, and it’s dynamic and exhilarating. Dropping down to bubbling synths in the breakdown around six minutes in, the threat of a re-emergence of the heavy lingers suspensefully. When it does land, it does so with a vengeance, before transitioning once more into something altogether different again, skittering its way into Krautrock territory.

The power blast of ‘Tabak’ hits square between the eyes and feels unexpected however expected it actually is. These guys are absolute masters of the unpredictable and varied structure, and conjure some highly evocative and atmospheric passages, and while the playing is technical, it’s not technical for its own sake: there’s nothing showy or extravagant, and the focus is very much on the compositions, the structures, and the impact. ‘Amaranth’ piledrives a full-on doom riff, slogging away at it for what feel like an eternity. It’s a heavy trudge, and really hits the spot – again, when you least expect it.

Adria straddles many, many genres, and does so in a way that’s incredibly imaginative. The key to its success is its execution, which balances precision with passion.

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we be echo – Do Not Switch On

Posted: 18 November 2023 in Albums
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23rd November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Dark post punk and music of a gothy persuasion appears to be enjoying – if enjoyment is an accurate description – of late. Dark times call for dark music, and the echoes of the 80s which resonate in the presents are deep. As financial turmoil continues to bite hard – and hardest on those who struggle the most – and war rages around the world, the new state of cold war which hovers has been relegated to a mere shadow in the background, bur remains very real. Add climate change and constant surveillance, massive inflation, and a global political shift to the right to the mix, and we have the perfect cocktail for an explosion of music which channels dissent and frustration.

But what goes around comes around, and it’s a truism that if you stick with what you’re doing long enough, it will inevitably come back into fashion at some point. And so here we are presented with Do Not Switch On, the latest offering from we be echo.

Canadian Kevin Thorne has been doing what he does for a long time. As he set out in his bio, ‘I formed Third Door From The Left with Raye Coluori in 1979. I left to form we be echo in 1981, and released Ceza Evi on cassette and contributed to several compilations. I’m still recording now, some 40 plus years later. And what do you know? The world has come back around and caught up with his mode of musical output once more.

Do Not Switch On is straight in with bass that snakes and crunches: ‘Cold Rain Gun’ is dark, dank, weighty and throbs away as Thorne paints a word-portrait of a bleak and dangerous world. Depressingly, any depiction of near-future dystopias are more or less the reality in which we find ourselves.

Instrumentally, ‘At You, Because’ sounds like a cut from The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Honey’s Dead, with a driving bass and shuffling beats locking down a solid groove. The same is largely rue of the pulsating psychedelic throb of ‘Sometimes’, which calls to mind the cyclical stylings of Pink Turns Blue, only with more bass – much more bass – and more noise – much more noise.

‘Grey, Grey’ is a blistering riff-driven tune, and it’s swampy, dark, dense, with a tinge of not only psychedelia but of swampy surf. For all that, The Black Angels stand as the closest comparisons, at least on this absolute stomper, and hot on its heels, ‘Die For You’ follows the same hypnotic template, a motoric beat thudding away through various explosions of sound while Thorne croaks and croons a monotone amidst the swirling tension, and ‘Sepia’ locks into a groove that feels longer than it is, in a good way. If ‘Shallow Hallow’ leans rather heavily on Bauhaus and ‘R.U.N.’ takes a bit much from both The Black Angels and the Sisters of Mercy simultaneously, it works.

Do Not Switch On is a solid album, and that’s a fact. Most of the tracks run past the five-minute mark and drive away at a single repetitive riff for the duration. But within what may appear to be limited confines, Thorne really wrings a lot out of what is, in real terms, a minimal setup.

This stuff never ceases to excite, either live or recorded. Do Not Switch On is solid, and nags and gnaws unexpectedly.

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Sun Color Sound – Ritual One (Climbing the Fire into the Sky)

Posted: 17 November 2023 in Albums
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Mind Altering Records – 13th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Back at the start of 2021, I penned a pretty positive review of the solarminds album Her Spirit Cracked the Sky. The combination of ambience and extreme weight was a thrilling proposition. And it was – and still is – monumentally epic. It feels a long time ago already, and much has happened in the interim. If emerging from the pandemic was trailed for a long time by the release of myriad ‘lockdown’ projects, we’ve subsequently trickled into a ‘world’s turned to shit’ phase, and like the pandemic, it feels like there’s no end in sight. Trump may be out of office, but he still looms large and continues to pose a threat in the arena of world politics, and it’s a world at war, and a world where alternately wild fires and floods decimate swathes of land. Slowly but surely, the planet is becoming less inhabitable. And yet, still, people jet off on skiing holidays and bemoan the lack of snow despite being the cause of the lack of snow, and whenever it rains, people take to their cars to make five-minute journeys to avoid getting wet, thus ensuring it will rain an awful lot more in the time to come.

And since the release of Her Spirit Cracked the Sky, after more than a decade, Chris Miner has put the project to bed. But, like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, he now returns with Sun Colour Sound, and the first in a projected trilogy of releases. On the evidence of this first one, it will be something special.

Ritual One (Climbing the Fire into the Sky) consists of a single piece, which runs just short of half an hour, and it shares many elements with solarminds – namely a fair bit of noise, some hefty guitars and punishing percussion, at least in the first two thirds, and it’s heavy, harsh, noisy, and it crashes straight in with some grating, heavy drone, twisting feedback and thudding drums.

This is one of those tracks which stars like the end of many sets, and it feels like it’s winding down from the offing. This is by no means a criticism, simply an observation that what in the context of many works is a climactic, tempestuous crescendo finale, is simply the start of a ferocious sonic storm. It does very much call to mind Sunn O))) and the epic, swirling instrumental passages of contemporary Swans, although the guitars are very much geared towards generating howling feedback rather than crushing, clashing chords that sound like buildings being demolished. Therte’s something of a psychedelic twist in the spacey delivery, too. As whining, whistling notes ring out, the percussion builds from the occasional roll to a relentless thunder. The combination is immensely powerful, and assails the senses with a real physicality. Buy around the thirteen-minute mark, it’s reached wall-of-sound levels, a dense, shimmering sonic force which shimmers and ripples while coming on like a bulldozer, at the same time as hand drums fly at a frantic pace and evoking something spiritual in the midst of a hypnotic frenzy. And still, it goes on, surging forwards.

The shift in the final third occurs subtly: the percussion continues to clatter away, but the guitar abrasion tapers away, to be replaced by altogether softer strings.

Ritual One (Climbing the Fire into the Sky) is more than just a really long piece of music: it’s an ambitious piece in every way, and its scope and scale are immense. There is so much depth and detail here, and it takes repeated listens to really appreciate just how much is happening, especially given that the first reaction is simply to bow to its sheer sonic force.

But the last ten minutes belong to a different world from the first portion. Hypnotic, soothing, graceful, the tension dissipates and Eastern vibes radiate through the gauze-like layers which drift and float over the busy but altogether more subdued percussion.

So while it is an ambitious work, it also delvers far above any expectations, and it’s both unique and special.

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Ex Everything – Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart

Posted: 16 November 2023 in Albums
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Neurot Recordings – 10th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s practically impossible to overstate just how grim things have got lately. It’s not just any one thing, either. The climate is fucked, the economy is fucked, the world is at war. This isn’t about local pockets of fuckedness. It’s all fucked. Ex Everything very much appreciate this, as set out in the notes which accompany Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart: ‘Our world has been gradually falling apart. This may seem like a bleak point of view, but the collapse we’re all witnessing inspired post-mathcore outfit Ex Everything as they created their eruptive debut Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart… “Everything around us–politically, socially, environmentally–seems to be stretching and breaking,” says guitarist Jon Howell. “Our record sits in that terrifying place where you’ve been watching it happen.”

A fair few people I know – my age bracket in particular – have said they’ve stopped watching or reading news because it’s detrimental to their mental health. No doubt it is, but the bliss of ignorance can’t last forever and ignoring everything that’s going on is the ultimate compliance. British politicians in particular repeatedly begin sentences with ‘let me be clear’ – before rolling out an endless ream of obfuscations. So let me be clear. Everything is fucked, and things are only going to get worse.

As their bio summarises, ‘The Bay Area quartet boasts current and former members of Kowloon Walled City, Early Graves, Mercy Ties, Blowupnihilist, Less Art and others, but listeners shouldn’t mistake this for a short-term project or side band. This is a priority, every member focused and committed, and it only takes a few minutes with the album to understand how serious they are. “This band is completely its own thing,” says Howell. “It addresses the part of us that wants to write fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music.”’

Fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music is precisely what these chaotic, knotty, messy times call for. It feels as if the world was waiting for the pandemic to end to go absolutely all out to annihilate one another. There has, throughout history, always been a war somewhere, but now, there’s pretty much a war everywhere, and in less violent, bloody battles, governments wage war on the poor in the interest of ‘the economy’ and fuck over society’s most vulnerable, from the unemployed to the disabled, not to mention the homeless, the wounded, mostly in the interests of capitalism.

Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart packs eight hard-hitting, heavy tracks which rage and rage and rage and hit so hard, in a furious frenzy. The guitars are often busy and brittle and mathy, but the rhythm section is welded together and blast the hardest sonic attack. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart is the sum of its parts, and that’s a positive here: it brings together the best elements of the contributors and fuses them into something tight, taut, uncomfortable. Single cut ‘Exiting the Vampire Castle’ is exemplary: full-throttle noise rock with dominated by shuddering bass and thunderous drums, with guitars which are both grimy but also reverby clanging over the top, while the vocals and raw and nihilistic. This is some full-on angst: ‘A Sermon in Praise of Corruption’ is a full-on, blistering rager, and there really isn’t much let-up in terms of ferocity. This is an unashamedly political album, as titles such as ‘Slow cancellation of the Future’, ‘The Last Global Slaughter’ and ‘Plunder, Cultivate, Fabricate’ suggest. These are highly political times, so it’s only right that Ex Everything tackle the issues.

There is detail, there are moments where they pull back on the pace and the blunt force, but they’re brief, and serve ultimately to accentuate the immense and intense power of the rest of the album when they put their collective foot hard on the pedal And drive forward hard.

In the face of everything, rational contemplation and collected consideration are difficult. The real urge is to give in to the temptation to simply give up, give in, and to scream at the world to fuck off. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart comes close, but better than that, it noisily articulates the nihilistic rage which sprays in all directions. There’s no one thing that’s shit or fucked up: it’s everything. And sometimes the only way to deal is to let it all out. Ex Everything do that, channelling every last drop of fury into this bleak and hefty beast of an album.

AA

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Flesh Field – Voice of the Echo Chamber

Posted: 6 November 2023 in Albums
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Metropolis Records – 3rd November 2023 (Digital) / 17th November 2023 (CD)

Christopher Nosnibor

Ian Ross’ electro-industrial project Flesh Field emerges, quite unexpectedly, from almost two decades of dormancy, twenty years in mute, to deliver ‘A concept work with each of its ten tracks representing stages of political radicalisation and violence, Ross states in the CD booklet that “believing falsehoods because those falsehoods reinforce our preferred narratives is not harmless. Promoting falsehoods to benefit your faction is not harmless, particularly in a well-armed society. If we remain locked in our own echo chambers, inevitably there will a voice of the echo chamber that speaks in the language of mass murder, believing it justified. This album describes that tragic inevitability.”

It’s not hard to ascertain ‘why now?’ While I’ve long become weary of the endless and continuing stream of ‘lockdown projects’ emerging, it’s a fair assessment that the pandemic did change everything. Confined, pressurised, and subjected to a relentless bombardment of news media, government ‘information’ and directives, and often with only social media for company beyond the four walls of home imprisonment, people struggled to separate fact from misinformation and conspiracy, reality from fiction and imagination.

I first really noticed the echo chamber some time before, in 2016, with the Brexit referendum in June, swiftly followed by the election of Donald Trump as US president in November. Both results seemed not only implausible, but nigh on impossible. No-one I knew or spoke to supported either as far as I knew – why would anyone vote for either of these outcomes? But against a backdrop of simmering tensions and social divisions and a general melee of things being pretty fucked, these seemingly unimaginable things came to pass. I would subsequently learn that relatives had voted in favour of Brexit ‘to see what would happen’. Fucking Boomers who won’t be around to live through the worst of the fallout. And this is how it goes when you have ageing populations and a swing towards the right in uncertain times. People seek to protect their own interests rather than the greater good. It doesn’t necessarily mean that echo chambers perpetuate falsehoods, but they do most certainly create confirmation bias, foster complacency, and distort reality by creating a bubble. And now… there is no way Ross could have predicted the dark turn that would assail the Middle East just a few short weeks ago. The divisions surrounding this conflict reverberate around the globe. And we watch. And we watch. It’s simply more TV, more unreality to many.

During Flesh Field’s protracted period of inactivity, their work continues to spread, like a fungus, or to perhaps use an analogy more akin to their own spheres of reference, like a virus, numerous tracks from their catalogue were placed in the soundtracks of films including the just released The Mill, TV shows such as True Blood and video games like Project Gotham Racing. Sometimes, being away is the best promotion.

But there couldn’t be a more appropriate time for Flesh Field to return, and Voice of the Echo Chamber is a powerful document reflecting these difficult times. The opening track, ‘

Crescendo’ stars strong, with a cacophony of babbling voices, before thunderous percussion and bold orchestral strikes build big drama. Not since Red Raw and Sore by PIG have I been struck by such a grand intro to an album, and this melds driving metallic guitars, industrial-strength techno beats and seething bombast. It’s a strong cocktail and one that hits the listener right between the eyes, paving the way for a set of ten insistent tracks all driven by loping sequenced synths and thudding hefty beats pushed to the fore and pumping, pulsating hypnotically. The are choral bursts woven into the dense fabric of the compositions, as well as strings and piano and incidental noise: ‘Catalyst’ crunches in with a harsh mechanised grind which gives way to a filly cinematic string segment before the pounding beat slams in and things get dark, like an industrial reimagining of Holst’s ‘Planets’ suite. The vocals are low in the mix and low in the throat. The delivery means the lyrics aren’t always especially audible, but the sentiment and energy is relentlessly loud and clear amidst the grunt, grind, and crackle.

‘Arsenal’ goes big, a gritty anthemic chorus paired with a crunchy industrial verse that draws together elements of NIN, KMFDM, and PIG, to big, big effect, being both attacking and cinematic at the same time. There’s plenty of attack here, but equally, Voice of the Echo Chamber is big on bold, widescreen, cinematic segments. ‘Manifesto’ is a monster, with all the guitars, all the orchestral work, and a relentless beat that hits hard and heavy and it all comes together to create a big, big sound. The pounding ‘Soldier’ is really big on impact, and contrasts well with the brooding, slow-crawling ambience and piano atmospherics of the unexpectedly gentle introduction to ‘Rampage’.

There’s a certain sense of uplifting empowerment to be found in the chorus of the last track, ‘Reset’. Ewe need this glummer of optimism in the face of so much relentless bleakness and gut-crushing darkness, which ends with more crowds, more shouting. You flinch and stall, because it’s too close, too real.

In places harsh and stark despite its enormity, Voice of the Echo Chamber is a strong, relentless, unyielding blast. I feel that this is a time to sit back, let things repercuss in their own time, and step back while Ian Ross blasts distortion, vitriol, and amplifies self-loathing with brutal force. Feel it.

AAAA

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