Archive for the ‘Recommended Streams and Videos’ Category

Watch: ‘The Others’ by Erei Cross

Posted: 20 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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French experimental rock duo Erei Cross, featuring Adrien Grousset from Hacride and Carpenter Brut have recently revealed a music video for a new track from their forthcoming first full-length album The Widow and The Others, due out on May 5th via Klonosphere/Season of Mist.

Watch ‘The Others’ here:

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The duo was born in 2019, when the two founding members Adrien Grousset (Hacride, Carpenter Brut) and Laetitia Finidori, with a mutual passion for rock and metal music, decided to join forces and work on a new project. Later on Matthieu Guérineau (Microfilm, Myra lee, Captain Parade, etc..) joined them as their live drummer.
In the first year of their existence, Adrien Grousset, composer and guitarist worked on a couple of songs and six of them were recorded and released as an EP titled "The Widow" in 2021. 

Now in 2023, Erei Cross returns with their first full-length album The Widow and The Others, which  sees the band offering an eclectic, dark and engaging sound encompassing a wide variety of styles, that is hard to describe in a single genre or style. Their music floats between heavy rock, goth, electronic and alternative bringing to mind names like Queens Of The Stone Age or Royal Blood, but with a enchanting vocals performance that recalls PJ  Harvey at times.

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Watch: ‘The Dancer’ by Ky

Posted: 19 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Ky is the new ‘solo’ project of Ky Brooks, best known as vocalist and lyricist of noise-punk trio Lungbutter and a slew of other Montréal-based out-music projects, including 8-person queer punk collective Femmaggots and experimental/improv trio Nag. Ky is a long-standing and shining figure of Montréal’s music underground: they co-founded essential Montréal DIY space La Plante a decade ago, and alongside playing and performing in all sorts of projects and contexts ever since, they’re also a recording and front-of-house sound engineer about town (and on the road with acts like Big|Brave).

‘The Dancer’ is one of the album’s standout electro tracks—in this case melded with the ‘band’ configuration that also features sporadically on Power Is The Pharmacy: guitarist Mat Ball (Big|Brave), bassist Joshua Frank (Gong Gong Gong), and drummer Farley Miller (Shining Wizard) join Ky and the album’s core electronics collaborator Nick Schofield on a song anchored by crisp, phased synth arpeggiation and ghostly pads. As the band kicks in with a wicked little whiplash rhythm, Ky walks a fine line between bemused irony and unadorned sincerity (as their abstemious poems-turned-lyrics so often do) while synth ostinatos and sheets of whitenoise guitar add momentum to the inexorable groove.

The video by Ky’s friend Eric Bent features an animated child learning to move and crawl and walk, through dance: an ode to the primordial immanence of moving to music, and a fitting companion piece to the album’s most danceable track and its lyrical literalism.

Listen to ‘The Dancer’ here:

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Ky photo by Stacy Lee

Watch: ‘1000 Hours’ by Oxbow

Posted: 18 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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The inimitable four piece OXBOW are announcing their first new music in six years with the anticipated release of Love’s Holiday, to be released via Ipecac on the 21st July. The album is preceded today by the lead single ‘1000 Hours’ – a song featuring Roger Joseph Manning Jr (Jellyfish, Beck) and with a video directed by John David Levy.

About the track vocalist and lyricist Eugene Robinson comments, “1000 Hours for the OXBOW completist, 100 percent ties in to our other song 1000, thematically in my mind. But filming the video, given that I just had surgery a few days before felt very much like Mann’s Death in Venice to me. You know where waiting to die never felt more beautiful. Which really feels like the essence of love. Or at least one of them.”

Guitarist Niko Wenner adds, "’1000 Hours’ began life with the bright extroverted feel you hear most, but inevitably the darker introspective mood of the coda and intro emerged. Both qualities are essential to Love’s Holiday. Roger (backing vocals), John (video director), and Joe Chiccarelli (co-producer) all did extraordinary work to heighten these emotions."

Watch ‘10000 Hours’ here:

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Photo: Phil Sharp

Watch: ‘Destroy the Family’ by Stewart Home

Posted: 14 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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The track is from the album Stewart Home Comes In Your Face (Sabotage Editions 1998). The song was written in mid-80s and performed live then. It has a cameo in Stewart Home’s first novel Pure Mania (Polygon Books 1989). The first studio recording wasn’t until the late 90s. Pure Mania (which goes for anything from £30-£85 on the secondhand market now) and Stewart Home Comes In Your Face are being reissued in 2023 by Leamington Books and New Reality Records respectively.

This follows on from New Reality Records stepping up to publish Home’s riotously funny and ultra-kinky novel Art School Orgy after no conventional book publisher would release it.

Ahead of the reissue of the album, in true punk style, Stewart’s produced a DIY zero-budget promo video for ‘Destroy the Family’, shot entirely on location in Motherwell, Scotland.

Watch it here:

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Watch: ‘A Ravenous Oblivion’ by Austere

Posted: 13 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Austere are back. The Australians return with their third album – and they are as laconic and without any pretensions as when they went into extended hibernation after the release of their sophomore full-length To Lay like Old Ashes in 2009.  

Entitled Corrosion of Hearts, the new tracks stay true to the path that Austere have carved for themselves out of solid black metal bedrock. The multi-layered and harsh yet often dreamlike guitar tapestries woven by Mitchell Keepin are complemented by the emotive drumming of Tim Yatras, who also contributes keyboard splashes and cinematic soundscapes. Both also contribute vocals that cover the full spectrum of their genre and range from throat-ripping growls via desolate screams to clear voices. In the typical manner of these Australians, their songs are still meandering, flowing streams of musical thought of epic proportions.

The sonic heritage of Austere is apparent. Their inspiration derives from the early Norse black metal scene and its depressive offspring, but also stretches further to the gentler and more emotional approach of blackgaze. Despite or maybe even because of the width of the influences, the Australians have found their own answers to the musical paradox inherent in this style, which is both fast and slow, aggressive and melancholic.

On Corrosion of Hearts, Austere ‘s brand of black metal has evolved into a more mature and defined form of expression, which is hardly surprising as both musicians were active in other bands during their hiatus. The duo also took more time to craft their new songs into exactly what they were supposed to sound like than before. With greater experience comes more determination.

As a taster, they’ve unveiled ‘A Ravenous Oblivion’.

Watch ‘A Ravenous Oblivion’ here:

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Pic by Stefan_Raduta

Watch: ‘Forgotten Sciences’ teaser by Tad Doyle

Posted: 12 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Forgotten Sciences is the seventh solo full-length by the Grunge Grandfather who brought us the bands TAD, the punk aesthetics of HOG MOLLY, and the heavier doom-metal of
BROTHERS OF THE SONIC CLOTH.

In this new release, Doyle flexes his musical prowess yet again with trail-blazing vocal styles in a never-before-utilized way. The result is Forgotten Sciences showcasing his many vocal and multi-instrumental talents. The songwriting and lyrical content delve into the darker side of human existence, yet the underlying message is a positive one. As the song progresses, one’s sense of time is suspended and gives way to tonal fractals of interwoven rhythms, melodies, and motifs.

Doyle states, “This album is a note to self to stay in the moment and clear of the trappings of time. It is an affirmation that everything important happens in the present moment. Everything is an inside job, and there are no solutions to be found outside our indomitable spirit.

Check the teaser here:

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Watch: ‘Blood Quantum’ by Divide and Dissolve

Posted: 11 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Divide and Dissolve’s new and fourth album Systemic examines the systems that intrinsically bind us and calls for a system that facilitates life for everyone. It’s a message that fits with the band’s core intention: to make music that honours their ancestors and Indigenous land, to oppose white supremacy, and to work towards a future of Black and Indigenous liberation.

Saxophonist and guitarist Takiaya Reed comments, “This music is an acknowledgement of the dispossession that occurs due to colonial violence,”  She continues, “The goal of the colonial project is to separate Indigenous people from their culture, their life force, their community and their traditions. The album is in direct opposition to this.”

Like its predecessor Gas Lit, Systemic was produced by Ruban Neilson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra and arrives on all formats through Invada on 30th June and is preceded by the lead single/video ‘Blood Quantum’ which calls into question the violent process of verification of Identity.

Watch the video here:

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Photo: Yatri Niehaus

Watch: ‘Mayhem’ by Godsticks

Posted: 6 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Godsticks announce their return with their new album This Is What A Winner Looks Like out May 26th via Kscope.

Introducing the new era of the band is single ‘Mayhem’. Musically the track flits from pneumatic staccato style riffs to an earworm chorus before an inspired solo slingshots us home to the song’s abrupt end. The track comes as the first taster of what This Is What A Winner Looks Like, an album that capitalises on the band’s near limitless sense of creativity, expert musicianship and effortless song writing to deliver what is surely their finest release to date.

Characterised by a rhythmic groove, the song is a testament to the airtight playing of the band and their unorthodox song writing that has made them one of Kscope’s shining lights. A fantastic initial offering of what is to come from the next chapter in the story of Godsticks.

Revelling in the chaos of the track, Godsticks guitarist Darran Charles, had the following to say:

“I stumbled upon this really ugly dissonant chord that sounded great with distortion, and thought about ways of making it sound even nastier and more chaotic (hence the title). But I was also interested in causing Tom (drummer) physical harm so I devised a bass drum pattern so complex that it will likely cause him a repetitive strain injury in the very near future. This song promises to be immense live and the music video hopefully translates the energy we’re going to bring to the stage when we take this song out on the road.”

Watch here:

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Photo: Eleanor Jane

Listen: ‘Neutralize the Outliers’ by Live Skull

Posted: 5 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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NYC no-wave veterans Live Skull will return with new album Party Zero on May 26th, 2023 on Bronson Recordings. Following on album opener ‘Magic Consciousness’, a modern post-punk protest tune of uncanny subtlety and power, today they share new track ‘Neutralize The Outliers’. Both urgent and catchy, it’s an addictive anthem of otherness perfectly balanced with incredible guitar work and riffs. Recorded at legendary Deepsea in Hoboken NJ by Mark C, this is timely music, essential, impassioned, angry and beautiful. It’s the sound of Live Skull in the 21st Century, a desperate time that needs heroes like these. They are back from the past and still holding the post-punk sceptre.

Live Skull’s Dave Hollinghurst explains: "We watched the chaos unfold live on the computer screen, freaking out, confusion and doubt on our faces. I realized that not only are we the hunted, but we are the hunters – and what are we going to do about it? Strike back with our own brand of chaos and noise – at least we go down in a sonic blaze of glory".

Listen to ‘Neutralize the Outliers’ here:

Insurrections. Global pandemics. The return of fascism. Climate crises. These are some serious times. But if you’ve got angst in your pants and you need to dance, or scream, or play guitar too loud, too close to your amplifier, turn your ear to what Live Skull are doing. The New York noisers, who went on indefinite hiatus just before their kind of smart, gnarly, inventive din became lucrative, rose again in 2016. Their new album ‘Party Zero’, a thrilling work redefining what Live Skull means and what they stand for: no longer a group with a past, but one with a future. 

‘Party Zero’ marks the arrival of guitarist Dave Hollinghurst, an electrifying presence pushing the band in a fresh, new direction. It’s a fiercely political album, in keeping with this politically fierce age. “Desperation inspires us to make art and music,” he says. “There’s a lot of birth and rebirth, looking for pathways of resistance and promoting the good and trying to fight against evil. I once said we had to start Live Skull because Reagan became president. And we had to restart Live Skull because Trump became president.”

‘Party Zero’ is big in sound, brash in dynamics. But the sophistication that was always the group’s calling card remains an essential element, dealing in the kind of pulverising pell-mell that characterised the 80s New York sound, but also radiant with melody, the fusion of noise and unexpected tunefulness delivering a heady, psychedelic effect.

“We’ve been pushed to the edge – how do we claw our way back?” asks Mark. “That’s been a common theme in Live Skull since the beginning, and so it is now. We’re trying to provoke thought.”

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Photo Credit: Jen Jaffe

Listen: ‘Bad Virgo’ by Argonaut

Posted: 3 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Bloody hell, they really are keeping them coming! Argonaut’s work ethic means they’re kicking out tracks like a conveyor-belt, and April’s instalment from the ‘open-ended album’, Songs of the Black Hat is ‘Bad Virgo’ – a slow, moody tune with heaps of chorus all over everything before erupting in a blast of distortion and tremolo.

As a Virgo myself, I spent many years reading and hearing about all of the negative qualities associated with the sign, but eventually came to realise it’s all bollocks, and that there’s nothing wrong with seeking perfectionism, pedantry, and being safe and dependable instead of exciting or whatever.

What isn’t bollocks, however, is this song. Hear it here:

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