Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

DuChamp – The Wild Joy

Posted: 20 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Torto Editions / Ramble Records / Atena Records – 25th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

DuChamp (certainly not to be confused with the seminal avant-gardist Marcel Duchamp) is a Berlin-based artist, and for this release, is the product of ‘a journey of development, research, and refinement of a deeply personal voice’, their chosen selection of instruments is listed as ‘baritone guitar, voice, organ, synths, bouzuki, electronics, incredible stubbornness.’

The baritone guitar is not a common instrument, but oner which sounds quite unlike any other guitar in terms of its tonality. Its application here is in providing the core to elongated sonorous drones on the five compositions on The Wild Joy. It’s a title I take to be somewhat ironic, for despite the resplendent flora which graces the album’s cover, the title of the first piece, ‘Sine proprio’ translates, depending on your choice of reference source, as ‘without property’, ‘without possession’, or ‘poverty’. Whether or not this is a reference to a physical or spiritual poverty isn’t apparent, but what this nine-and-a-half minute dronescape does possess is a wealth of texture as the layers build and vibrate against one another.

‘The Shape of Time’ is very much constructed around contrasts; a whining, scraping drone nags the conscious level of listening, while a low, rumbling bassy resonance lingers way below, and it’s something you feel as much as hear. In the space between, incidentals drift in and out. In the distance, gongs chime and fade slowly, and the disparity between their timing and that of the pulsating throb which has begun to build is disorientating, unsettling.

‘Epithalamion’ marks a dramatic shift – in every way, starting with the change of instrumentation, and by no means ending with the change of approach, with a wild, undisciplined key-bashing crescendo occupying the first couple of minutes, before giving way to a wheezing sound like an organ on the brink of expiry. With its origins in the classical age, an epithalamium is a poem written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber. This, however, sounds more like a piano being pushed down six flights of stairs, before a ghastly gasp sputters along interminably for the remainder of the duration. I pity the bride this was penned for.

Things are different again on ‘Fulaxos’: there, the baritone guitar comes into its own and to the fore, played conventionally, a picked, rolling motif that’s brooding, even doomy provides the starting point for a piece which gradually unfurls toward a place of light and optimism. The final track, which is also the title track, brings us almost full-circle, but there’s a levity to this extended, delicate dronescape, and the soaring vocal only accentuates this sense of elevation.

The joy may be somewhat subdued overall, but it’s there, on what is, ultimately, an accomplished, multi-faceted work.

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Needlework / Divorce Finance / Speedreaders – The Crescent, York, 18th July 2025

Posted: 19 July 2025 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

There was a time when there wasn’t really much doing in York, which was particularly disappointing for a city with two universities. But, despite grass roots venue disappearing at an alarming rate, right now, the city is offering up some exciting stuff on the grassroots scene. Tonight, there are three quality live music events on, and had I mastered cloning, I would have gone to all three. The Fulford Arms was serving up a night of top-notch goth and post-punk, while there was experimental and ambient work on offer at The Basement under the City Screen cinema. But I feel I made the right choice plumping for Needlework at The Crescent, not least of all because it transpired that this was to be their last show.

Needlework have only been around a couple of years, and only played a handful of shows, but they’ve made a serious impression, as tonight’s crowd shows. Sure, they’ve got plenty of their sixth-form / college mates down, but this is a band who had built a keen following in their own right. In a previous time, John Peel would have been all over them and they’d have achieved national cult status. Instead, because it’s 2025, they’re bowing out with only an EP (released today, but without mention) and a few shows to mark their existence. But I guess this is how it goes.

First up, it’s Speedreaders. They’re nothing if not consistent., and tonight’s set brings all of the things I’ve highlighted in my previous coverage. They’re tight, but slow and mellow. And this evening they’re slower than ever. After imparting his opinion on Fleetwood Mac being shite in a rare bit of between-song banter, singer David Mudie spent longer tuning his guitar for the next song than it actually took to play it. That’ll teach him to engage in conversation with the audience. My mate went to the bar and returned with two pints before he was done tuning. Still, when they’re back on track, they’re sounding good. It’s the harmonies which stand out in tonight’s clean, crisp set, with clear balanced sound.

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Speedreaders

Divorce Finance sound pretty much the same as they look…. meaning I can’t remember the last time I so wanted to punch a whole band. Actually, I lie: Sleuth Gang, who I witnessed in the same venue a few months ago emanated wankerdom from every pore. It must be something about bands who take their style cues from The Village People.

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Divorce Finance

It’s sort of tongue-in-cheek but not really rockabilly country hoedown hillbilly bollocks. There are people down the front getting down with some boisterous line-dancing moves, and there are plenty who are digging it, but I just can’t get on board with this is corny, gimmicky shit, and the fact they play it well doesn’t get them a pass. All the whooping and whelping is high-energy and perfectly executed, but… It’s just so much cheesy turd-polishing, and the singer’s smug, grinning, cheeky chappie, eye rolling delivery only makes everything so much worse. I found myself feeling not irritated, or annoyed, but – most unexpectedly – angry.

Needlework are simply something else, and what that something is is not easy to pin down. Their entire existence is constructed around a mass of contradictions and paradoxical premises, none of which are reconcilable or make any obvious sense – but this is precisely why they work, and why they exist in a league of their own. They’re really tight and together, but create the illusion of being lose, even a shade shambolic; front man Reuben Pugh is simultaneously intense and aloof. Each member of the band brings something different, stylistically, and in terms of personality – that goes for both their musical contributions and stage presence. Jagged, scratchy guitar work slices across rolling basslines, jittery drumming finds a counterpoint with soft, trilling woodwind and synths interwoven through the scenes as they unravel.

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Needlwork

They’re not really a ‘songs’ band in terms of conventional verse / chorus structures, either, instead exploring routes which take obtuse twists and turns, and they’re unafraid to do slow, wonky, spoken wordy, abstract narrative. They understand dynamics, and the power of jarring angularity. It’s post-punk, it’s jazz, it’s experimental, and it’s utterly spellbinding. Needlework are one of those rare bands that seem to suck you into a parallel universe while they play. Time hangs in suspension and you find yourself on another plane, utterly gripped while wondering what they’ll do next. During the time they’re on stage, something transformative takes place: it’s more than simply five people on stage making music. Needlework conjure aural pure alchemy.

Pugh takes his shirt off to substantial applause, and a big fella in the front row responds by whipping his T-shirt off and lobbing it on stage after helicoptering it above his head a few times. He asks for it back a song or two later, and the band duly oblige.

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Needlework

The set builds to a perfect climax, a monumental whirl of sonic chaos which is electric. And then, that’s it. Finished. Done. They leave us stunned, dazed by the magic we’ve witnessed. They certainly concluded on a high, and one suspects that this is a band which will be remembered, and talked about, for years to come.

Schkeuditzer Kreuz – Swan Grinder

Posted: 19 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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30th August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Just when you think every genre hybrid has been done, and are feeling worn and jaded by everything, someone chucks you something unexpected. You’re not even sure if you like it, at least not at first, because, well, the different elements are all good independently of one another, but in combination..?

It’s taken until their third album for me to discover Australian ‘Industrial Synth Crust’ outfit Schkeuditzer Kreuz, the brainchild of Kieren Hills, and ‘better late than never’ is one angle to take with it – although another is ‘would I have been ready for it before? Would I ever be ready?’

Swan Grinder is as ugly and intense and industrial as its title suggests. Spasmodic drum machines sputter and blast all over, underpinning pulsating electronic basslines and ear-shredding blasts of noise and distortion. And all of this provides the backdrop to raw, rasping vocals. In some ways, I’m reminded of really early Pitch Shifter – but with the wall of guitars replaced by abrasive squalls of electronic noise.

To think, there was really nothing like this before the 90s. While the 80s are the subject of great affection, and there’s a broad consensus that this was the decade of innovation, with the exception of grunge, the 90s are largely portrayed as a retrograde decade, with a return to ‘rock’, guitar-orientated music, and, in particular, the Britpop era, something born out of a nostalgia for the pre-punk era and a golden age which never really was. And now this period is revered with what one might even call a double-nostalgia; folks in their forties getting dewy-eyed over their teenage years listening to music that was nostalgic for the music of their parents’ generation. There’s something inherently sad about that, really.

But the alternative scene of the 90s was something else again. It was here that all kinds of metal migrogenres were birthed, while rap and rock came together and industrial metal emerged, melding crushing guitars with electronic elements. And there was also just so much weird shit percolating through various channels, and it wasn’t just something you had to tune in to John Peel late at night in the middle of the week for: with the major labels getting in on the action, you could catch the likes of Ministry and Butthole Surfers on MTV.

Anyway. There’s nothing sad about Swan Grinder. Angry, perhaps. Deranged, almost certainly. But sad? Nah. While there are elements of the construction which share common ground with , say, KMFDM, or PIG, the overall sound is altogether dirtier, gritter, rawer – and then there are the vocals, which are pure metal. As such, the result is a different kind of hybrid – hard, abrasive, and as nasty as the image the title conjures.

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Watch: ‘Golden House (Official Video) feat Massenhysterie & Konstantina Buhalis’ by ESA

Posted: 18 July 2025 in Reviews
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British artist J. Blacker, mastermind of ESA, has released a powerful music video for ‘Golden House’. The song is taken from the artist’s new album Sounds for Your Happiness, released on July 5th via Negative Gain Productions.

The new single and music video for ‘Golden House’ is an erotically charged, Roman tragedy inspired slab of pumping dancefloor power. Featuring Jo Hysteria from Massenhysterie on vocals, the video for ‘Golden House’ is a cynical POV on the infamous Roman rulers; Nero & Caligula (played by Jo Hysteria and Jamie Blacker respectively). As we witness their hedonistic and power hungry daily affairs (which include a servants wrestling match and body builders performance) before accompanying Nero and Caligula as they travel into modern times and seek to satisfy their hunger for pleasure.

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Inspired heavily by the pomp of the 1979 film Caligula, the video features competition winning body builders Jeannie Ellam and Vikki Varley alongside Jenova Rain and Stephan Sutor as the video Finale’s Insurgents, looking to swipe the ‘throne’ from the naive and arrogant Nero & Caligula.

The context that inspired this piece is the realisation that even after 1548 years since the demise of the infamous Roman Empire, the elected powers in place will still conduct themselves in the same way..and that abuse of power pays no real attention to time periods.

The single for this club edit of the track and music video is available from today (July 18). Whilst the original version of this track (which includes a historic re-telling of these two Emperors by Konstantia Buhalis) is featured on ESA’s album Sounds for Your Happiness, released on July 5th.

Sounds for Your Happiness is yet another milestone in the creative universe of ESA. Striking and thought provoking visuals, enormous electronics and powerful messages is always expected from an ESA release..Sounds for Your Happiness does not disappoint with any of these ingredients.

With this album, J Blacker paints ESA as a sinister technology company, with the musical structures from the album, utilised to create an emotional response from its listeners, which is transferred as energy to run the simulation we all live in. Its a nod to shows and films such as Severance and Soylent Green.

Musically, Sounds for Your Happiness is a bleak and furious slab of electronic meat. A journey of EBM / Industrial / Black Metal / Dark Ambient / Power Noise / Punk / Techno and Goa, the album is as ambitious as it is exhilarating and genres merge seamlessly into an energetic free-fall of sonic chaos.

Get plugged in and let the happiness wash over you.

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Belonging – Hollow Cells

Posted: 17 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Dipterid Records – 18th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

That artists can have complete control over their creative output, artwork, and every other aspect of their releases, including the schedule, is often hailed as one of the great virtues of the age of the Internet, especially Bandcamp and Spotify. It’s also oft-said that quality will reach its audience regardless. But thanks to algorithms and the fact that most creatives aren’t best at (self)-promotion and have no budget to pay anyone else to do the job, it simply doesn’t happen that way. And so it is that Hollow Cells, the debut album from Portland-based sludge / stoner metal band, Belonging, self-released in May, is now receiving a vinyl release courtesy of Dipterid Records, which comes with proper distribution and PR – which is why we’re here now.

Social media is aclog with music fans dismissing the role of critics and music reviews, scoffing about how they’re worthless and their opinions not worth shit. But the fact is that unless you have a mate with their ear to the ground, or the algorithm delivers particularly favourable results – unlikely for a minor band who’ve taken the self-release route – the industry mechanisms of labels, PR, press, and radio can make all the difference. Back in the 90s, pre-Internet, I relied on print media and late-night radio to discover new music that wasn’t top-40 chart stuff, and would be as likely to seek out an album based on a negative review as a positive one. Because criticism goes both ways, and critical reading, while perhaps a dying skill, was essential in order to read between the lines. In short, a negative review isn’t – or at least wasn’t – necessarily a bad thing.

I’ve digressed. And I’m not giving Hollow Cells a negative review – because it’s a belting album.

There’s space and separation between the instruments, and the drums – which bring us into the first track, ‘Lady Vanishes’ – have that ‘live’ feel – as, indeed, do the rest of the instruments. This is a recording that captures speaker-quivering volume. The overdriven guitar is thick, driving, the bass hangs low and heavy. The songs are structured, but primarily constructed around the riff, and the riffs are epic. But there’s detail, too, which emerges from the monolithic sludgefest. The stop / start shouty aggro racket of ‘Ceiling’ starts out a bit Therapy? but then swerves to a place that’s more Fugazi, and it’s precisely this range that shows that Belonging have something more to offer than template stoner / sludge: the energy of Hollow Cells is exhilarating from beginning to end.

The six-minute ‘Birdwatcher’ ventures into more post-punk territory, with Bryce August adopting a growlier, baritone vocal style that, when paired with steely grey guitars, invites comparisons to Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, before the song veers in a very different direction that’s more anthemic indie than anything, but with guitars which are absolutely huge.

As it progresses, Hollow Cells becomes increasingly difficult to place, and all the better for it. It’s heavy, but melodic, grungy but not so much angsty. It’s more obscure 90s acts like The God Machine and 8-Storey Window which come to mind during the second half of the album, and with each song, I come to realise how short any genre-based pitch is doomed to fall. ‘Longhaul’ is classic 90s grunge, but works on account of being more Nirvana than Bush, while chucking in a dash of Shellac. The bassline is killer

Hollow Cells is bursting with emotional depth, an ache. But then there are blasting punk songs like ‘Bonehead’ which are more in the vein of …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. And this is why Hollow Cells is so good: it never fails to confound expectation, and never fails to exceed expectation, either. It’s quality from beginning to end – a rare thing indeed. I don’t do stars, but if I did, this would be a 9.5.

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The Spectral Light – Obliteration – Album review and EXCLUSIVE VIDEO STREAM

Posted: 16 July 2025 in Albums, Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Cruel Nature Records – 1st August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

If ever an album was appropriately titled, this is it. Obliteration is from the Sunn O))) / Earth end of the slow and heavy spectrum, with everything low and grinding and dense and seeping along at a snail’s pace – but it’s also so very different. The eleven-and-a-half-minute ‘Teeth’. which raises the curtain on this colossal work, trudges along, thick and murky, the guitars like sludge, overlaid with the most haunting, ethereal vocals, like spirits ascending to the heavens – or perhaps more accurately, fleeing the molten torment of the volcanic pits of hell. The quieter passages ripple gently, but there’s something off-key and off-kilter that proves unsettling, a discordance which isn’t quite right.

The album is described as ‘a visceral, atmospheric journey shaped by improvisation, deep literary roots, and a shared affinity for both crushing heaviness and ghostly ambience’, with the notes going on to add that ‘vocalist and instrumentalist Amanda Votta draws lyrical inspiration from classic rock icons and poets alike – Led Zeppelin, Stevie Nicks, Carl Sandburg’s poems ‘Alone’ and ‘The Great Hunt’, along with Sylvia Plath.’

If none of the influences are immediately apparent, it’s likely because influence can be subtle, more a process of osmosis and assimilation rather than being about emulation. Drawing influence from Led Zep doesn’t have to equate to epic solos and using ‘baby’ a thousand times. And so it is that The Spectral Light suck all of those influences into a swirling vortex.

The churning ‘Branch’ is wild: ZZ Top on acid, Led Zep in the midst of a breakdown, riffs played at a thousand decibels through shredded speakers and melting amps. But it also spins into cracked post-rock territory over the course of its disorientating nine minutes.

Make no mistake: this is a monster: ‘Moonsinger’ warps and bends and it’s emotionally gutting in ways that are difficult to articulate. It touches the core of the very soul. The title track is defined by a dense, metallic churn… and yet there is still a delicacy about it. It’s dark, disturbing, ugly, and yet… beautiful. There is nothing else quite like this. And the dark, airless trudge of Obliteration feels like a black hole… and I find myself being dragged into its eternal depths.

Ahead of the album’s release, we’re privileged to be able to offer a video exclusive for the album’s final track and choice of lead single, ‘Whisper Surgery’. You might want to pour a big drink for this one.

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Ba’al – The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here

Posted: 14 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Road To Masochist – 18th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Perhaps I’m simply more aware, but it feels as if black metal and adjacent subgenres are experiencing a significant moment. Sign of the times? Perhaps. There’s a new wave of all strains of metal, and it’s not simply loner misfit teenage boys and middle-aged blokes who still live at home, working entry-level jobs and playing Dungeons and Dragons on a weekend. In fact, it’s anything but, and the old stereotype no longer holds water here in 2025. Metal offers a number of things: catharsis through anger and abrasive noise is perhaps the most obvious. In case you hadn’t noticed, the world is a dark and dismal place. It’s also terrifying, and run by cunts. And people seem to be losing the plot. Social and moral boundaries aren’t so much collapsing and being torn apart from the top down. Metal offers an outlet that’s safe and harmless, by way of an alternative to embarking on killing sprees. Connected to this, there’s also a certain escapism offered in the domains of metal, which operates on a number of levels. Finally, there’s a sense of community within metal circles: something I’ve touched on a number of occasions is just how safe and accommodating metal gigs always feel. A room full of misfits together is some kind of utopia.

Of the current crop, Sheffield post-black metal quintet Ba’al stand out, and this, their second album, is billed as ‘their most ambitious work to date’. Of course: bands, labels, and PR always say that. But a thirteen-minute opener is nothing if not a clear statement of ambition. It begins with gentle piano, delicate, emotive, atmospheric, evoking the sound of 2004 post-rock, of Her Name Is Calla – and when the guitars crash in, it’s sweeping, cinematic, as much And So I Watch You From Afar as anything overtly metal. It’s not until over three minutes in that storm clouds gather – and blow in fast. In an instant, there is a flurry of blackness, frenzied fretwork blurring into a dense backdrop for scorched, demonic vocals. But after the tempest and turmoil die down, there’s a further segment that could almost be a song in its own right that combines elements of neofolk and shoegaze. It’s softer, more melodic, but somehow ragged… and then they deliver a monumental sustained climax that it nothing short of obliterative.

I’ve seen a few comments on social media dismissing reviews for not being objective, as if we respond to music based on its technical merits rather than on an emotional level. Those making such comments are clearly cretins, because Oasis are shite whichever way you slice it, but if you want objectivity, Ba’al deliver emotional heft with eye-popping technical prowess. Within these first thirteen minutes, they bring texture, tone, dynamics, detail. Where can they possibly go from here?

It transpires that they’re only just getting going. ‘Waxwork Gordon’ opens delicately on a drift of chiming guitar. Rolling drums join, and there’s an evocation of trees and dappled shade – for a moment, before the gates of hell open and molten lava flows forth. But again, there are passages which border on the edge of folk and prog here. Instead of diminishing the power of the black, chugging riffs, they enhance their potency. The eleven-minute ‘Well of Sorrows’ is, indeed, riven with melancholy, but also rays of hope beam through in the form of some deft playing, clean sounds and bright tones, which intersect with sustained thunderous blasts, while the album’s penultimate track, ‘The Ocean that Fills a Wound’ weighing in at thirteen and a half minutes is the very definition of epic. For the most part, it’s rolling, mellow, again more neofolk than metal. But when they slam on the distortion and go for the riffs, they go hard. Closer ‘Legasov’ arrives in a squall of feedback and forges a molten course to the album’s conclusion.

The band’s willingness – nay, urge – to embrace more than metal tropes, and to offer a remarkably broad sonic palette is integral to their appeal. These are songs which expand the parameters of metal in myriad directions. There’s a lot to assimilate here. Joe Stamps’ versatility as a vocalist is a real asset, but collectively, Ba’al’s capacity to swing seamlessly between forms is remarkable.

There will be some for whom their range is simply too much. That’s their loss. The simple fact is that The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here is an incredibly bold, and wide-ranging work, that defies narrow categorisation. It’s a hell of a lot more than metal, that’s for sure. It’s immense. It will open your eyes. And it will probably blow you away.

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Simon Fisher Turner – Closing the Circle

Posted: 13 July 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Mortality Tables – 11th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

And so it is that the third season of Mortality Tables LIFEFILES series – and, indeed, LIFEFILES as a project, closes as it began just over two years ago, with its thirtieth instalment coming courtesy of Simon Fisher Turner. As such, this release is appropriately titled.

The premise of the series, which we’ve covered quite extensively here over the course of its running, is that curator and Mortality Tables label owner, Mat Smith, furnishes an artist with a field recording for them to more or less do as they please. Some of the reworkings and manipulations have been quite radical; others, less so. But what each has offered is a snapshot of a particular place at a specific time, reimagined and retold at distance by a third party. If this sounds rather absurd, it’s worth considering that this is essentially how history is formed – by the interpretation and re-presentation of primary source material to create a linear narrative. But how much can we trust the narrator? Even that primary source recording is just that – a recording. It is not the actual event. Therefore, with each revision, there is a move further away from the actual event. There evolves a certain historical layering, not so much akin to the degradation of a photocopy of a photocopy, but a drawing of a drawing, subject to ever-increasing distortions, deviations, corruptions.

As the accompanying notes inform us – quite factually – ‘The LIFEFILES series commenced in March 2023 with a piece by Simon Fisher Turner made using sounds recorded at an exhibition of works by the Memphis collective at Milton Keynes Gallery. The series concludes with a final piece from Fisher Turner, again using sounds recorded at Milton Keynes Gallery, this time at an Andy Warhol exhibition.’

This piece is only a little over eleven minutes long: a single or EP rather than an album – but Simon Fisher Turner packs a lot into that time. It begins with the slow-echoing of voices, a low mutter, the sound of voices, perhaps, chattering in a gallery – slowed and distorted, there’s a sense of discomfort, of the unheimlich, before a mid-range chimes in and hovers. So far, so ambient – but then some crushing percussion batters in and from nowhere things go a bit Test Dept. Trudging industrial beats slog away relentlessly, and they’re multi-layered and multitracked and hammer away from all angles in surround sound. There are some lulls, some drops in pitch and volume, occasional rests in tempo, even – but this is first and foremost a full-on beat assault. The speakers crunch and crackle and the beats thump and stomp.

Glitching, grinding bass enters the fray around the mid-point, albeit briefly, before swiftly vanishing, replaced instead by a subsonic sonar – and then things really get ugly. There’s a violence to this beat-driven blast, which even during the moments where it’s taken down a notch or three, there’s a sense of menace, something underlying that’s uncomfortable. The delicate chiming of a singing bowl or somesuch in the last couple of minutes, even when it yields to a quiet, low rumble, does little to dissipate the tension which has built – and built. But in the end, as is always the case, the ultimate end is silence. And so it is that the circle finally closes.

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Stephen O’Malley – But remember what you have had

Posted: 12 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Portraits – 27th June 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Stephen O’Maley will be forever synonymous with Sunn O))). However fervently fans revere Khanate, whatever the reputation of Burning Witch or KTL, however many solo albums he releases, and regardless of the outstanding work Ideologic Organ presets to the world, none of it will ever come close to the success of Sunn O))), which will eclipse anything and everything else he is involved ion for all eternity. It’s not difficult to grasp the reasons for this. It likely quite frustrating, but that band have elevated a niche not-really-a-genre to stratospheric levels, and have achieved more with a single, sustained chord than most could ever dream of.

When I saw him perform solo some years ago, he appeared quite comfortable with this, playing – just off stage – through a backline that was so immense it wouldn’t quite fit onto the stage of the 450-capacity Brudenell in Leeds. Better to have a reputation to play up to than not, and since bowel-churning guitar drone played at eardrum-shredding volume is what people want, delivering it seems like a fair trade.

The blurb for his latest solo release suggests, however, something a shift, but by no means a departure, writing that ‘With But remember what you have had, Stephen O’Malley continues and expands his musical approach by transposing it to multiphonic electroacoustic writing and acousmatic listening. Drawing not only on his extensive experience as a composer and live instrumentalist, but also on the countless studio production and mixing sessions he has taken part in the course of his many projects (in solo, with SUNN O))) or KTL, to name but a few), Stephen O’Malley’s work on this new piece is ambitious, engaging in an inspired research that delves into the deep intricacies between polyphony, intonation and timbrality, enhanced by melodic motifs. To do this, O’Malley summons up his own very personal sound universe, constellated with amplified textures, instrumental sustained tones and raw energy, in order to diffract them into wavefronts, waves and blows that weave a complex, rich and fascinating matter. But remember what you have had stands out as an important work in Stephen O’Malley’s repertoire: it brings together the multiplicity of his musical approach in an exemplary way, while laying the foundations and promises for the future of an already extraordinary journey.’

But remember what you have had is a single, continuous piece, just over thirty minutes in duration. It begins with a parping drone that sounds somewhat like a didgeridoo. It lingers, resurging, cyclical hums and layers of sound and texture build atop of one another… and then what the fuck’s this? Bagpipes? It sounds like bagpipes. But then, it also sounds like guitar feedback and a single chord being struck and resonating for an eternity. And then another chord crashes like a giant Wave breaking over rocks at high tide with a stormy wind behind it.

Whereas the overall pitch and tone of the Sunn O))) sound is low and growling, But remember what you have had altogether more keenly favours the mid and upper ranges, and howls of feedback while whining engines fill the air as it heats up. There’s more discord as the sounds bounce off one another. It’s an exploration of the interaction between notes and frequencies, conducted in a way which can only happen at volume,

By the midpoint, the feedbacks are interweaving in such a way to form a huge reverberating howling drone, which in some respects shares common ground with Metal Machine Music, and it would be difficult – and inappropriate – to completely sidestep Earth 2 here, too. By twenty-minutes, O’Malley conjures an immense collision of sound, jousting and jostling amidst a sonic tempest, before gradually diminishing to a point of tranquillity which is more reminiscent of a string quartet than experimental wave of noise. It makes for an unexpectedly soothing finish, but once again shows the range of O’Malley’s musicianship, as well the breadth of his sonic interests, which extend far beyond all-out weight and sheer volume.

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Wevie Stonder – Sure Beats Living

Posted: 10 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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25th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

2025 continues to be the year of the comeback. My remark earlier in the week, in context of the release of the new Curse Mackey album, that ‘three years is a long time’ pales rather when considering that just a few days before I’d covered the first Red Lorry Yello Lorry album since 1992, and reviewed The March Violets touring only their second album proper since their formation in 1981. And that’s before we consider the unexpected return of the Jesus Lizard… But somehow it’s been fifteen years since the last new material from the progenitors – and likely sole purveyors of – cack pop, Wevie Stonder.

2017 compilation The Beast of Wevie provided a potted history of their exercises in perversely calculated naffness, and since then… tumbleweeds.

Sure Beats Living is every bit as bizarre as anything they’ve done previously, and successfully nudges beyond… and then accelerates over the horizon. It’s not so much cack as demented. Instrumentally, it’s a wide-ranging work, sometimes expansive, bold, ambitious, even cinematic – as the epic, widescreen ‘Piccolo’s Travels’ illustrates. But mostly, it’s a collection of lo-fi electronic dicking about with irreverent babbling in lieu of serious or meaningful lyrical content. So it’s a step up from previous outings…

It’s a sparse electro backdrop which frames the first track, ‘That’s Magic’, and no doubt fans will like it – but not a lot – as is immediately ventures into the domains of the strange, a Scots brogue narrating the steps for performing a magic trick which culminates in setting the cards alight, vacuuming the ashes and moulding polystyrene. What makes it all the stranger is that the delivery isn’t so different from that of a self-help tutorial, and reminds me of the guided relaxation CD I got given when I attended CBT some years ago.

‘Carpet Squares’ pitches the old-skool groove of Mr Oizo against crunching industrial beats… while providing detached directions for carpet-laying amidst a looping reverb-heavy collage of commentary on carpet. But then the urgent wibbly wobbly ping-pong bloopery of ‘Vanja and Slavcho’ takes things to another level. There’s storytelling, there’s cheesy Japanese-influenced pop and a whole lot more, and it’s quite bewildering – but then, so is the stomping glam beat of ‘Tiktaalik’, which kicks in hard and with all apparent intention of bringing something serious… As if these guys have a serious bone in their collective bodies.

In fairness, quirky humour and an overt lack of seriousness should never be seen as corresponding with a lack of ability to be serious. It’s often reported that comedians are in fact depressives who use humous as a way of deflecting their inner sadness, and clowns are often masking. And something in the title carries hints of a clowning subterfuge: you can almost picture a downbeat character in a US sitcom turning to the camera, breaking the third wall, with an exaggerated shrug, and declaring, ‘Well, it sure beats living’. And so it may just be my own state of mind which colours my perception of this, or maybe there really is something darker beneath the surface. ‘Push It’ inches towards funk, but ends up elsewhere completely, and in seemingly taking some of its lyrical inspiration from the game ‘Bop It’, it’s the epitome of irreverence. ‘Customer Services’ is a perfect pastiche of corporate phone line hold hell, down to the frustrated ‘shut up’ and tossing aside of the phone. Because beneath humour usually lies truth.

However you look at Sure Beats Living, this is a different kind of nuts. The core of the album is constructed around bleepy, shuffling electronica and spoken word… spoken word what? They’re not diatribes, they’re not really narratives, either. They’re words, often detached from meaning, or otherwise, where not abstract, designed to be daft, and Wevie explore words because they can.

Sure Beats Living is perverse, it’s stupid, and it know it is, because that’s what it sets out to be. And in these dark, depressing times, we need the wild irreverence of Wevie more than ever. Welcome back, you barmy buggers.

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