Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Smag På Dig Selv – This Is Why We Lost

Posted: 17 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Stunt Records – 6th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Well, this is a conundrum. This Is Why We Lost is the second album by Danish trio Smag På Dig Selv is pitched as a work which ‘shatter[s] the boundaries of electronic music’, and was made with the ambition ‘to create music that can exist within a trance or club-oriented setting, while still carrying a strong melodic and narrative arc’. Only, the band lineup consists of two saxophonists and one drummer, while single cut ‘Vik’s Rawcore’ features vibraphonist Viktoria Søndergaard. No arguing that it’s an intriguing, even exciting proposition, but can it really ‘shatter the boundaries of electronic music’? Or does it instead take acoustic music into new territories?

I’ll admit that I’m not mad keen on conventional ‘club’ music – no doubt a revelation which will come as a shock to many – but then perhaps I’ve never been to any decent clubs. It may seem perverse that I like noise and drone but find bangin’ choonz insufferable. This Is Why We Lost is built on techno / electronic tropes with insistent beats and some throbbing basslines – the second half of the album’s first track, ‘Like A Word I Never Knew’ goes full drum ‘n’ bass… and sax. For atop the frenetic fills and frenzied rhythm, not to mention the pulsating bass – whatever instrument is responsible for that – there are some strong jazz currents.

‘Let’s Go!’ is a slab of lively Europop / EDM, while ‘Vik’s Rawcore’ is full-on HI-NRG stomper – albeit with a mellow breakdown in the mid-section which prefaces the inevitable build before the beat drops again.

There’s no question that this is technically (or techno-ichally, if I’m up for deploying a shit pun) accomplished and innovative, and while AI is insidiously creeping its way and hollowing out the arts at a devastating rate, it’s refreshing to find an act which turns the tables, instead using acoustic instruments to create sounds associated with electronic music. The fact musicians and artists in all fields are embracing AI is bewildering. Why? Just why? The creative process is what makes the work of creativity, learning new techniques and ways to articulate the contents of the mind via any given medium. When I write, as much as delving for words and scouring a Thesaurus may at times be painstaking, this is precisely what it’s all about. The fundamental purpose of art is to convey the complexities of the human condition. To remove the human element from the art is to remove its very heart and any sense of feeling. AI is not art, it’s entertainment plagiarised from all preceding art. Fuck that.

Smag På Dig Selv aren’t the only ones using conventional, acoustic instrumentation in unconventional ways: Jo Quail is very much striking forth in new territories in forging immensely powerful ‘(post-)rock’ music with solo cello (aided by effects and a loop pedal), but what they’re doing is rather different.

‘Ya Tal3een’, featuring Luna Ersahin is altogether different, a stirring, primal folk composition led by an immensely powerful vocal performance, is more reminiscent of the earthy works of Wardruna, evoking vast expanses of woodland and rugged mountains. Elsewhere, the title track manifests as a thick, textured drone, an ambient piece which forms shapes as it evolves, but sounds more like strings, organ, synths, than any of the instruments listed. There’s a fleeting moment of melody which reminds me of something else, too, but it eludes me. ‘Fitness Bro’ amuses with its hyperkinetic energy, the pulsating groove – topped with big sax action – evokes fast treadmills and rapid reps, pumping biceps and perspiration. It also call to mind that brief moment in the early 80s when post-punk acts embraced saxophone, extending the initiative of The Psychedelic Furs and Theatre of Hate.

‘Jeg Ved Ikke Hvad Jed Siger’ swings into dark hip-hop territory, and it’s cool, unlike the happy hardcore of ‘Hits 4 Kids Vol. 3000’, complete with whistles and samples. Just no. It may not be quite as bad as Scooter, but there really is no need for this.

And perhaps THIS is why we lost. The album has some strong moments – many, in fact and they’re solid, too, showcasing a rare creativity, and an approach to composition that’s postmodernism turned up eleven… or thereabouts. I’m personally very much on the fence with this one, since it’s 50% mind-blowing and 50% Europop mediocrity. It certainly has its moments, and will likely to appeal to most, at least at some time.

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Abrasive Trees – Carved Skull

Posted: 16 February 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Argonauta Records – 13th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

A little over two years on from the short film, Mill Session, Abrasive Trees have made another leap in pairing with Argonauta Records, a label which specialises in stoner, doom, sludge, and post-metal, and have unveiled ‘Carved Skull’ as a taster for upcoming album Light Remaining.

At first glance, having been variously described as Post-Punk/Post-Rock/Post-Folk, Abrasive Trees are a strange fit for the label, but with this seven-and-a-half-minute epic, it makes sense.

The intro is a slow-build, with echoes of latter-day Swans in the insistent percussion, repetitive jangling guitar and wordless droning vocals which pave the way for a spectacular sustained crescendo which introduces the riff which provides the track’s recurrent motif, and it’s almost two minutes before we arrive at the lyrics, in which Matthew Rochford reflects on the times in which we find ourselves and yearns for something better – a return to, if not necessarily simpler times, then honesty and humanity.

Can we write a eulogy, for this current age?

And leave the lies behind

Our fears are carved upon our skull

Our pain marked on our skin

The undercurrents reach back into dark folk imagery, and this is mirrored in the sound, too. Sonically, it’s rich and layered, simultaneously weighty but uplifting – which is perhaps a foreshadwing of the album’s thematics as alluded to in the title Light Remaining, which implies looming darkness, and yet., still some light – light synonymous with hope. These are dark times. But we must have hope. Without hope, what do we have?

With ‘Carved Skull’, Abrasive Trees have conjured a big sound, as is befitting of a big tune, which is bold and impactful, and likely an indication of what’s to come.

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Lung – Fog

Posted: 16 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Yellow Bike Records – 24th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

There’s quite a unique pleasure in learning of a new release by a band you assumed had called it a day long ago – and perhaps did. It’s even sweeter when it’s a band you really dig. And so it is that New Zealand noisemongers Lung have a new album out. It’s taken a while to percolate through to me – which isn’t entirely surprising given that they’re little-known even domestically, let alone on the opposite side of the world.

For context on a personal level, I first encountered Lung in 1992, playing in the upstairs room at The Duke of Wellington in Lincoln. This was before the city had a university or any dedicated venues, meaning proper gigs, were fairly rare. I’d have been sixteen. They were supporting some goth act – possibly Children of a Lesser Groove. Their drummer had experienced visa troubles or something, so they had a stand-in – and they blew me away. I recall them not only being pretty heavy and intense, but also devastatingly loud. When my dad came to pick me up, I had him bring money (I’d spent what little I’d taken on vodka, because it was still possible to get served without ID if you looked like you might be 18), and legged it back into the venue to raid the merch stall, taking home debut album Cactii on CD and the 7” single, ‘Swing’.

A year or so later, I practically creamed my pants on finding 3 Heads on a Plate on vinyl in Track Records in York: I simply had no idea of its existence. This was a long way pre-Internet, and they weren’t the kind of band who would be getting acres of coverage in Melody Maker or NME. I still have all three of these releases, and they still get played, too. These albums have a raw, visceral quality, and a seething darkness pervades them.

Consequently, I was beyond excited to learn about Fog (and during the course of my research for this review to learn of two more albums, released in 2022 and 2024)

Described by founder and frontman, Dave White, as their “most raw, fucked up, brutal, honest work to date”, and “possibly the most punk we’ve become”, Fog was recorded over just two days at The Surgery in Newtown, Wellington, with producer Lee Prebble at the helm, and explores more overtly the underlying punk roots of the band’s core influences.

White isn’t wrong, but it hits like a body slam with opener ‘Isolated Gun’, a thick, sludgy and seriously radical reworking of ‘She’s Got a Gun’ from Cactii where the squally, spindly lead guitar of the original is replaced by a full-on face-melting wall of noise that’s nothing short of devastating. It sets the tone for the album’s twelve tracks, too – and reminds me of that show back in ’92 when they were absolutely pulverising in volume and density. The production here conveys that volume, that grainy, gnarly, low-slung guitar filth. On Fog, not only have Lung lost none of their intensity, but they seem to have channelled years of pent-up rage into a most furious document of everything they were ever about.

The raucous laughter at the end of ‘eXtra Spank’ shows they’ve lost none of their warped humour, but then the album immediately rips into ‘Blue Ai’, a savage roar of noise, which in turn sounds tame besides the raging blitzkrieg of ‘Recycle Man’, and the snarling, gnarly ‘Panda’ is not pretty. ‘Firestarter’ is not a cover, but it is overloading, distorted, riffy and incendiary, with a skin-shredding bass ripping through the bone-breaking climax.

‘TR-UNT’ finds them venturing into the crossover territory of squalling industrial and black metal territory – and gritty noise, the drums being straight up attack, evoking the spirit of Fudge Tunnel, and after the delicate interlude of ‘No Idea Yet’, they conclude the album with the rackatacius ‘Deaf in Both Ears’. It’s nothing short of a guitar-driven blitzkrieg, and Lung at their best.

AA

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Blair Bitch Project / A Void / Static Lives / Eddy’s Mistake – The Fulford Arms, York, 14th February 2026

Posted: 15 February 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

How is this even possible? Four bands – including one from London and one from Sheffield – for SIX QUID, in a venue where decent beer is £5.50 a pint and served in a glass? This is the grassroots venue experience, people. and The Blair Bitch Project are a classic grassroots story, having started out here, at The Fulford Arms, nervous as hell but full of potential, to strutting with confidence and not only launching their debut album, but a new phase in their career. We’ll come back to all of this after the absolutely mind-blowingly stacked supports.

Admittedly, my expectations for Eddy’s Mistake were low to lower. According to the gig preview, the York pop-punk outfit kindly invite you to feast on faeces then immediately perish. Yeah, you too, edgy mofos. My views on punk pop are no secret. But although they’re overtly US influenced in their styling, with vocals that flip from bubblegummy pop to something more abrasive, they’re more 70% punk and only 30% pop. The guitars are up in the mix and dirty-sounding, they’re fresh and fiery, with some harsh burns in the lyrics. ‘Fuckboy’ (if it’s called that – I didn’t spot a setlist and their online presence is clearly in its developmental stages) is a raging punk tune. They are so together and kick ass to the extent that I actually feel guilty for harbouring doubts. They’re straight onto the ‘ones to watch’ list.

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Eddy’s Mistake

Static Lives last played York five months ago, again alongside Blair Bitch Project and supporting Wench! – another Northern raucous female-powered punk-orientated band. Are you seeing a pattern here? In case not, now is a boom time for women in rock. I should perhaps reframe that: the world is finally starting to appreciate the fact that women don’t only rock, but oftentimes, with the need to prove themselves in the male-dominated culture in which we find ourselves, they feel a compulsion to rock harder. And rock they do, with two guitars giving some grit across some phenomenally urgent drumming. It has a swing to it, but also pace and some outstanding cymbal work. They are quite poppy, but nevertheless, they drive hard.

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Static Lives

Single cut ‘Modest’ is an early set standout. ‘Boom Boom’ (I think – the setlist, which features numerous word substitutions, shows ‘Boom-Cum’, which it’s not) brings a funky element to the set, and they finish with hooky early single ‘Social Anxiety’ before Lori hotfoots it back to Sheffield to do a DJ set. Nothing like keeping busy.

A Void have been on my to-see list since lockdown, meaning I was particularly hyped for this. They’re very much a London act, presumably because the economics of touring aren’t all that favourable and there are enough places in the capital to keep them busy, making this their first time in York. As they’re currently auditioning for a new drummer (again), the in-limbo core duo of Camille Alexander and Aaron Hartmann are playing an acoustic set, Hartmann swapping bass for guitar. But for an acoustic set, it rocks pretty hard: being a quintessential grunge band, the potency of simple chord structures paired with (more audible than usual) lyrics of angst has a palpable impact, in the kind of way Nirvana unplugged or Alice in Chains’ Jar of Flies demonstrated that behind the overdriven guitars and all the rest, there are strong songs – with vocals stretching to full-blooded Courtney Love-like screams. Recent single ‘Fish in Your Pocket’ is the second song of the set, in which ‘Newspapers’ stands out, before they close with ‘Stepping on Snails’. And Camille simply can’t stay on a stool for the entire set – she’s simply too much wild energy for that, and cuts lose, thrashing madly, legs flailing towards the end.

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A Void

Camille is effervescent and effusively chatty between songs, with a gush of positive messaging and a determination to use her platform to speak up on issues. And rightly so: anyone who says politics should be kept out of music is simply wrong. Life is political. Art is political. Politics shape our daily lives, and to deny this is sheer ignorance or delusional.

She’s also right that Blair Bitch Project is one of the best band names. So it’s a blow when at the end of their set, they announce that the film studio is forcing them to desist with its use. This feels like another example of big money crushing minor-league artists, but they’re not defeated. The album they’re launching tonight – which isn’t out for about a month, making this more of a prelude than a launch – will be released under the new name off Bitchcraft, which is a second strike of sheer punning genius.

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Blair Bitch Project

Tonight’s set shows they’ve a hell of a lot more about them than wordplay. Before starting, they line the front of the stage with (battery operated) candles which set the mood, and then plough into a blistering set which is half dark Sabbath-influenced heavy metal riffs and half hefty grunge power. They sound immense and rock so fucking hard. They’ve come a long way in a short time, and now sound so powerful and looks so assured. Drummer Lilly and singer / guitarist Amelie Sangster swap places for the raging grunge roar of ‘Rotten’, followed by ‘Superstitious’, and they’re both equally strong in both positions. Towards the end of the set, they chuck in a couple of covers – making interesting choices, with ‘My Cat’ by Jack Off Jill and ‘Jumpers’ by Sleater Kinney, and it’s clear they’re in their element, and not just because they’re in the home straight in what will stand as a pivotal performance in their career to date, ahead of venturing further afield, hitting Leeds for the first time soon. Closing with ‘Banshee’, driven by a solid grunge riff and concluding with a wild primal scream, it’s a triumphant set which draws the curtain on The Blair Bitch Project and prefaces a spectacular rebirth. Bring on the Bitchcraft!

Utterly Fuzzled 5.5: The Unit Ama / Knitting Circle / Flat Light – Fulfordgate WMC, 13 February 2026

Posted: 14 February 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

People are unpredictable. The world is unpredictable. And just when we think we’ve seen it all, a couple of days ago, US Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Judiciary committee, making for TV the likes of which few of us have ever witnessed. We’ll return to this in due course, as it’s relevant beyond the fact that gig-going tends to provide respite and time out from all the madness.

And so it is that it’s hard to predict gig attendance, particularly when ticket availability is being touted to the thirteenth hour. But with a last-minute surge in attendance – seemingly because Flat Light (is that a pun?), playing their debut show, had managed to coax everyone they’d ever met out to see them – the place was packed early doors, which was unexpected for a cold dark night on Valentine’s weekend during the wettest and most depressing February in history.

Flat Light are up first. They’re five white office-type guys playing pedestrian indie. They were together enough, went down well, but apart from the last song – where they upped the tempo and came to life a bit, and in fairness, sounded really good – it was a pretty tepid, inauspicious start.

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Flat Light

Suffering from the lack of a soundcheck, Knitting Circle spend the first couple of songs working on their levels, and even then, the sound is a bit muffled – specifically the vocals and guitar. But given that guitarist Pete is also the sound engineer, the fact that they pull it together is beyond admirable, and closer to heroic. Since whittling down to a three-piece, they’ve really focussed their sound, and following a spell of pretty intense gigging, they’re well-honed, and as always, an absolute joy to watch. As is often the case when Knitting Circle play a hometown show, there’s a new song: this time, it’s ‘Witch Folk’ which speaks of the thousands of women persecuted for witchcraft, forgotten by history. It boasts a particularly angular guitar jangle. They close with a quickfire ‘Losing My Eggs’, and while fluffing the false ending / intersection, recover with grace and good humour. Mistakes happen: it’s how an act deals them which counts, and Knitting Circle very much rose above and came out on top of all of the challenges presented to them tonight, proving that DIY is not a synonym for amateur.

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Knitting Circle

The Unit Ama clearly spent some time on their soundcheck: they sound absolutely fantastic from the first note. On their last visit to York in the summer of 2024, they played a short set around the middle of a bill which also featured The Bricks and Teleost, as well as Objections and Cowtown (I clock a couple of Objections T-shirts tonight). Here, with room for a more expansive set, they seem simultaneously relaxed and energised. Their set is tight, but in disguise as something loose, improvised. It’s apparent, thought, that as much as there’s a keen intuition between the three of them, they’ve put some rehearsal time in.

Jason Etherington’s basslines are hypnotically cyclical, and paired with Christian Alderson busy jazz drumming, played with frayed drumsticks (and, at one point, a bow applied to cymbals), when they break out of the stuttery meandering segments to hit a groove, it’s blissful.

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The Unit Ama

They’re by no means a band who do chat or bantz, instead conjuring epic expanses of quiet improv while tuning up and reconfiguring – in such a way that the actual songs seemingly emerge from nowhere, rising out of swampy expanses of discord and drift, of clattering cymbals and a general sense of slow-swirling chaos. But before playing the penultimate song of the set, a new one called ‘In Your Shoes’ being aired for the first time, Steve Malley pauses things to rant about the insanity of Bondi’s testimony: he was visibly shaken by what he’d witnessed, and I felt it in my chest. He blurted rage about Bondi’s ‘blatant fucking cunting lies’, before apologising for his choice of language, amending it to ‘blatant fucking cunting mistruths’. He’s absolutely spot on, and this leads the charge into a full-throttle blast that’s punk rock – Unit Ama style (perhaps with a heavy hint of Shellac by way of a touchstone – and very much a departure. It’s ace, too.

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They’d planned to leave it there, but the audience convince them to give us an encore, which topped things off nicely. It seems that one thing you can predict is that a Fuzzled event at the Fulfordgate is guaranteed to be a good night.

Coaxial – Redux Media

Posted: 12 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 6th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It may be a ‘me’ issue that when an artist suddenly hits the world with a blunderbuss blast of output, I feel somewhat overwhelmed. There are some acts I know I like which I’ve simply avoided because of not knowing where to start. Overfaced is the word: a term I discovered perhaps in my early teens when presented with a large roast dinner. The sheer amount of food in front of me instantly killed my appetite, to the point that I felt queasy and, not knowing where to start, felt incapable of starting, meaning that I would fold before I’d barely consumed a forkful.

While I did manage to ease myself into The Fall after dipping a toe, I very much feel this way about the likes of Merzbow, among others, and, to a lesser extent, the Melvins – and the specific reason I come to them is because of their early 00s trilogy, when they cranked out The Maggot, The Crybaby, and The Bootlicker on top of one another. Ben Heal, aka Coaxial has truly splurged with his output this year, as Redux Trilogy is not even the total. My head swam. The prospect of listening to, and reviewing, three albums in one session, for one piece… No. Just no.

Having stepped back and broken things down to more bitesize chunks, I have come to Redux Media, which is in fact the second of the trilogy, first. This feels reasonable, since this is set of releases is sold as ‘a triptych of cassette releases conceived as a recombinatory system rather than linear statement’. I will return to the other releases in due course, but for now and content to dabble.

The seven tracks on Redux Media are soft, squelchy, electronic and experimental. ‘Onyaxial’ lifts the lid on the set with a bibbling, bubbling stroll that sits in the space between minimal techno and the pulsating grooves of Kraftwerk. It bends and warps a bit, and there’s some weird shit going on near the end as it battles with its own identity, but this is the very essence of this release – it’s about the exploratory, about swimming out of the lanes and venturing wherever the mood takes.

‘Tryxxial’ is mellow, an 80s drum machine sound plodding along while keyboard sounds trill along, mixing all shades of electronic action with no suggestion of a conclusion, and rightly, with the wonky babbling of ‘Peswyx’. ‘Pymediax’ wanders into eighties electropop, but without vocals, and it’s more DAF than Depeche Mode.

In the main, it’s entertaining, and despite the overarching connotations of seriousness, it’s quite good fun. Redux Media finds Ben Heal venturing every which way and drilling deep into different dimensions.

AA

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Stephen O’Malley – Spheres Collapser

Posted: 12 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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XKatedral / La Becque Editions – 27th February 2027

Christopher Nosnibor

Not content with the completion of the first new Sunn O))) album since 2014, set for release in the spring on Sub Pop, co-founder Stephen O’Malley has been busy working on a new solo album, which will appear as a rather more low-key (if not necessarily low-frequency) release a couple of months before. Historically, one might have expected this release to have been put out through Ideologic Organ, but then again, when it comes to his solo and collaborative releases, O’Malley operates very much with within the milieu of the experimental artists and labels based in mainland Europe, as his collaboration with François J Bonnet, released in 2021 on Editions Mego evidences.

And while this is billed as an O’Malley solo album, this too is a collaborative work, featuring as it does ‘two long-form compositions for pipe organ by Stephen O’Malley, which he performs alongside the celebrated organist Kali Malone and Frederikke Hoffmeier (Puce Mary)’.

There is something grand and powerful about the pipe organ, the sound of which is capable of stirring something – if not primal, then deep-seated in the emotional psyche. Creating a vast, reverberating sound, it’s capable of triggering something beyond verbal articulation. And for this release, O’Malley found some remarkable organs, and around Christmas 2021 recorded some immense drones on Les Grandes Orgues (Scherrer (1777), Walker (1867), Kuhn (1995)) at Église Saint-François, Lausanne, Switzerland. It seems that this album emerged as a detour from another project, but why not make the most of a recording opportunity?

And so it is that Spheres Collapser consists of two longform pieces, each around twenty-five minutes in length, whereby little happens beyond textural and tonal shifts. It drags heavy, an does so without apology. Rightly do: why should there be any concession here?

There are sounds which are immediately identifiable as emanating from a pipe organ, and then again there are others, which are not always immediately apparent on Spheres Collapser: instead, there is simply the sound of low, swelling, drone. The organ-led nature of the recording only becomes apparent to the ear midway through ‘Phase I Organ’, when the trilling, tremulous tones come to the fore. Twenty minutes in, there are treblesome quiverings which begin to trouble the earsdrums as the sound narrows and becomes more niggling in its nature. But the exploratory nature of this album is what it’s all about, and O’Malley is truly a master when it comes to drawing different kinds of drone from instruments.

‘Phase II Organ’ presents twenty-two minutes of continuous drone, which commences low, resonant, with a comparatively pacey undulation, before a bassier note enters the mix. But still that low drone continues on… and on… and on… Some may pin this as Sunn O))) but on organ, and that summary wouldn’t be entirely wide of the mark. What else would you expect, really? And then the track simply drones out to the end.

What to say of this release? Drones are what they are: immersive, the sound of freedom, in a sense. The sound of escapism, of freedom, of breaking free of the constraints of the now. Spheres Collapser is heavy, dense, suffocating. You feel the air seep front your lungs as the notes merge in a thick, penetrating polyphony, ultimately tapering to a single sustain which feels like an eternity. Somehow, it’s strangely draining, but exhilarating at the same time.

AA

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A-Sun Amissa & Lauren Mason – Water Scores

Posted: 11 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Gizeh Records – 27th February 2026

Both A-Sun Amissa and Gizeh Records have sustained their existences while hovering just below the radar, and while it may not be the ideal position in terms of financials, in terms of creative freedom, it undoubtedly has its benefits. Home to the myriad projects centred around label founder Richard Knox, in its early days, Gizeh released the first mini-album by Her Name is Calla. Ever since its inception, the label has devoted itself to quality, and a focus on acts it has close artistic ties with. Featuring both Richard Knox and Claie Knox, A-Sun Amissa meets both criteria.

A-Sun Amissa’s meeting with Lauren Mason – maker of ‘dark and experimental poetics’ is a perfect coming together of sound and word – although as the former bassist and lyricist with the much-missed Torpor, Mason is in her element here, weaving poetry with some dense, dark sounds. Mason’s input ‘explores the curses of corporate extraction and pollution on our planet’s water, and listens in, as water speaks back. Mason is best known as bassist with now-defunct existential sludge band Torpor, where she often wove her spoken word pieces through heavy soundscapes. She has been developing her poetic practice for many years and published her first book Rust Canyon in 2025’.

A-Sun Amissa may not bring the same pulverising weight of Torpor by way of musical accompaniment, but they do create a dark, suffocatingly dense, swirling drone that reverberates around the body in a way which is as physical as it is mental or psychological.

Water Scores takes the form of a single, continuous piece, almost forty minutes in length. It begins with sparse, low, rumblings, subsonic, tectonic drones, and Mason’s words are placed prominent, above this accompaniment. Her tone is even, her delivery clear: the scenes she depicts laying bare the ecological crisis which defines our times.

Her calmness and poise is admirable: in recent years, I’ve personally struggled to maintain a level head in the face of this. In fact, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to articulate. The world is simply overwhelming, and as AI trends of action figures and caricatures, nudifications on X swamp social media, the rivers and lakes are being drained in order to facilitate this – the most insidious datamining operation vaguely disguised as the most puerile, facile shit to have ever swept the globe like a plague. Instead of whooping ‘hell yeah, this is fun’, more people should be screaming ‘this is destroying the planet!’. It’s also diminishing the collective mental capacity at an alarming rate.

Mason skips gently through evolution, celebrates the salmon and the plankton, the things we take for granted on so many levels.

By the eighteen-minute mark, her words are being buffeted amidst a swell of extraneous noise and surging feedback: the ambient drift which lifted the curtain on the album has evolved to a vast blast of sound which is nothing short of an immersive assault on the senses… and it builds, steely walls of sound, sonorous scrapes and howling feedback combining to affect a cranial compression, and as Mason’s words are increasingly submerged beneath this squalling tidal wave of devastating noise, you feel yourself carried away.

From the half-hour mark, the vocals rise again to the fore, being battling against a thunderous cacophony of noise, wails of feedback and a relentless churn which registers in the gut, and registers in the ribs. It’s not pleasant or easy: this is difficult, grey noise. But the detail… the detail makes it. Water Scores is rich in detail, and some may find the level of this difficult to process. But spend some time… this is an album which takes time.

AA

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Ergocaust – Souls In Pain At Work

Posted: 9 February 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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27th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The context for this, the debut release from Ergocaust, is in some ways an uplifting tale, whereby something positive emerges from a bad situation. They explain that the track was ‘Composed the day I got fired and refined until I made peace with reality, this song was forged out of blood, sweat, tears, hunger, and misery.’

The wheels of capitalism drive our lives, and we have simply no choice in the matter. Hate your job? Tough shit. Suck it up. You’re expendable, and easily replaced. Labour is cheap, and so is life, and not just to the highest echelons of society, but even to lower-level management. They’re only interested in the stats, and will do anything to save their own arses when under scrutiny by the next level up… and so it goes on up the hierarchy. The bottom line is about profit, and survival, and the person above you does not give a fuck about how you pay the rent or feed your family. It’s about how they pay their rent and feed their family, and how they can make cuts to boost their own bonus.

As Ergocaust writes, this ‘encapsulates the idea very neatly just by the title’. It’s fairly direct, and puts an emotive, anguish-laden spin on the notion that under capitalism, workers are confronted with the contradiction of producing and reproducing the conditions of their own alienation. Never mind religion: work is the opium of the masses, whereby the workers are too busy earning a crust and too exhausted from doing so to rebel. The reason everyone is trapped on the hamster wheel is that as much as you hate your job, you need to work to survive. You want out of the hellish job, but to be released from the hellish job is to wonder how you will survive. There are no options.

Ergocaust channels a host of conflicting emotions by the medium of a song with a complex, detailed structure, which draws together a range of musical styles, spanning black, thrash, and industrial metal to forge a compelling hybrid. The fact that its instrumental is perhaps an asset. Articulating complicated and conflicting emotions is something which, all too often, words fail to achieve: in such instances, the language of sound and the power of music serves the purpose more effectively.

It may clock in under three minutes, but ‘Souls In Pain At Work’ is dense and it speaks – by which I mean, it howls anguish, rage, pain. But therein lies beauty and joy, in that  from trauma emerges great art.

Harry Christelis – Preserving Fictions

Posted: 8 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Clonmell Jazz Social – 13th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

1984 has never felt more relevant. In the early chapters, Winston is shown rewriting history, in the form of news articles – something which has become a defining feature of the Trump Administration of late. The quotation ‘The Party told you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command’ has been all over social media in recent weeks. Because we live in a time when a woman in her car calmly saying ‘I’m not mad’, or a medic shielding a woman from assault, can be murdered by the state, the event filmed and broadcast from many angles, and reported as being ‘domestic terrorists’. When news reportage becomes outlandish fiction, there’s a problem of unspeakable proportion. And so it’s become the objective of the media wings of governments – those of America, if Israel, of ours here in England – to preserve fictions and mask facts for their own propagandist, gaslighting ends.

Harry Christelis – whose latest offering features Christos Stylianides (trumpet/effects), Andrea Di Biase (bass/synth) and Dave Storey (drums) – is not seeking to propagate propaganda here, but simply to explore sonic territories, with a album of ‘post-jazz, ambient and folk-inflected improv’, which ‘captures a deep collective instinct – reflective, spontaneous, and richly atmospheric…’ Christelis explains that “in the creative process — as in life — there is never true certainty, never a ‘right way.’ These are simply fictions we hold onto. This realisation inspired the title Preserving Fictions: a reminder to stay present with whatever comes, grateful for each lesson, knowing that something new may be just around the corner, waiting to turn that on its head.”

The album launches with the longest track, the nine-minute ‘Blues of the Birds’, which is, at heart, an ebb-and-flow ambient composition… but then there’s clattering percussion and waves and wisps flittering skywards, before, around the mid-point, it settles into a smooth, strolling, settled feel. Nice. And all that.

The spontaneous nature of the way this album was created is perhaps one of the reasons behind the broad spectrum of the pieces which it comprises, and it’s worth noting that Miles Davis and Talk Talk are cited as central influences, in that they become more apparent once you’re aware of this fact, which roots what is, on first hearing, a nebulous, meandering work. Not that it isn’t nebulous or meandering, or that these are bad things, but there is a solid contextual framework in which these pieces sit.

The title of ‘A Sense of Parrot’ is laced with absurdity, but the sonic actuality is a composition which drifts serenely, underpinned by a strolling bass and some nicely loose-wristed percussion, while ‘Wood Dalling’ (named after the Norfolk village in which it was

composed) has something of a post-rock feel, a sepia-tinted nostalgia augmented with gentle woodwind. The percussion-led ‘Djembe’ is fundamentally self-explanatory, and one of the album’s most explicitly jazz pieces.

‘How old are you?’ is a phrase I’ve often used to disparage people – usually in the workplace – over petty or otherwise juvenile or irritating behaviour. Christelis’ piece by the same title doesn’t convey anywhere near the same sense of frustration at human behaviour, but with bowed low notes scraping beneath ambient undulations, while chirps and chatters of wildlife are just audible in the background behind ringing guitar notes and vast reverberations.

The compositions on Preserving Fictions are sedate, and take their time in unfurling, and it’s a welcome alternative to much of the wilder, more frenetic jazz-leaning releases which have come my way of late. It’s not that I dislike them – far from it – but in stressful times, something gentler and somewhat transportive is most welcome. Preserving Fictions fits the bill nicely.

AA

Press pic 2

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