Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Ashley Sagar – M/A/R/R/S tools

Posted: 18 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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3rd February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

This one may have started at the beginning of the year, but is an open-ended project which has been added to over the subsequent months, meaning that there’s more to absorb now than there was previously, and some five months in, it seems like a reasonable point to take stock of the progress so far. Although released under his Sunday name and therefore perhaps not a release that leaps out, Ash Sagar has been operating as Meanwoood Audio for a while, as well as being involved in numerous Leeds / York based collaborative works, notably The Wharf Street Galaxy Band and Neuschlafen, and perhaps notably the one-off experimental improv collective Beep Beep Lettuce, who will one day be hailed as a 21st century Big in Japan or Immaculate Consumptive. Well, we can but hope.

M/A/R/R/S tools is one of those albums that could only ever exist in the digital age, consisting as it does of some fourteen experimental pieces with a running time of around a hundred and eighty-five minutes. Yes, that’s over three hours – even longer than recent sprawling Swans releases.

Sagar’s notes are succinct – or scant, depending on your perspective – summarising M/A/R/R/S tools as ‘Audio recording from tests of building tools in SuperCollider for Meanwood Audio Recording & Research Services {"M/A/R/R/S"}.

My instinct is – because my instinct is dictated by my brain, which is brimming with stupid nonsense and is excessively prone to misfired associations – is to ‘pump up the volume’. But this proves to be rather unwise, as the release contains an endless stream of unsettling discordant rumbling, hovering hums, and fizzing extranea which is just around the tinnitus range.

‘Audio_25_01_20_1’ makes me feel tense: it reminds me of a ‘breather’ in a Teams call – there’s always one freak who positions their unmuted mic right in front of their open, gasping mouth, and the sound is like a gale on a mountain top.

Dripping, dropping, dribbling electronic abstractions dominate, with microtonal bibblings running on and on, sounds like twanging elastic bands and scratches and scrapes, atonal strings and R2D2 malfunctioning. I recall running my nails along an egg-slicer as a child. It’s a memory I had largely forgotten until hearing this remined me. M/A/R/R/S tools offers up an oddball array of sounds, and it feels random in the extreme. Oftentimes, it’s barely there, or it’s nothing more than the rumble of passing traffic or a distant radio. Occasionally, there are stuttering drums. Other times, there is not much at all.

This is a work which has been a long time in development: there are two full live sets, recorded five years apart, with a set recorded in London sitting at the midpoint, and another live set, recorded in Leeds, drawing the curtain on this colossal release. The fifteen-minute London set is a challenging work, which confirms what anyone who has seen Ash live will already know, and that’s that he in unafraid to test an audience with monotonous, woozy oops which are as uneasy on the intestines as they are on the ears. This is reinforced by the thunder-filled, sample riven discomfort of the Leeds set – something that his set in Leeds just this last weekend extended still further. Distorted, heavily reverbed and practically impenetrable vocals spitting out randomly sequenced words cut through the speakers, and it’s almost too much, too disorientation. A derangement of the senses. Both John Cage and Brion Gysin would have been proud. It’s dark and murky, and droning notes quaver in the background.

M/A/R/R/S tools is not an easy listen, not only on account of its duration. Despite its superficial minimalism, there is a lot going on. And none of it is kind, comfortable, or particularly easy on the ear or mind.

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Xqui – Charing Cross Underground

Posted: 18 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Mortality Tables – 16th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Just three weeks after the previous instalment in the extensive LIFEFILES project from Mortality Tables, now in its third season, comes what promises to be the final instalment for now. And all proceeds from this release will be paid to CALM – the Campaign Against Living Miserably. It seems fitting, given that life can often feel relentless, amped-up stress and bewilderment, and the LIFEFILES series has presented, over its duration, works which take the listener into audio representations of calmer environs. I write this as someone who has, in recent years, factored a daily walk into their routine, as much for the mental health benefits as for the physical exercise. A change of scenery, particularly in open spaces and away from crowds, can be a transformative experience.

The premise of the series, for anyone who hasn’t seen any of my previous coverage, is that the artist is given a field recording, captured by Mat Smith, who runs the label, to respond to in any way they feel appropriate. For this release, the accompanying notes record that the two tracks have been constructed using ‘Source recordings made by Mat Smith at Charing Cross Underground Station on 27 November 2021, as part of a Hidden London tour of disused areas of the station and areas not normally accessible by the public.’

In addition, there’s an excerpt from Smith’s journal, from the same date, which reads as follows: “…walked around the old station section of the Jubilee Line that isn’t used any longer, went into a construction tunnel underneath Trafalgar Square which had a bend in it to avoid the foundations of Nelson’s Column, and then finished up in a ventilation shaft above the Northern Line platform…”

Xqui’s treatment of the recording is interesting, taking the form of the ‘classic’ experimental work, the likes of which you’ll find on labels like Editions Mego, with a single longform track occupying each side. The first, ‘Charing Cross Underground’, captures the voice of what may be a tour guide, spun out in reverb and glitching echo, while trans rumble in the distance, before slowly melting into ambient abstraction. It’s like hearing the ghosts of the underground, rising up through the disused tunnels, calling out to the present to remind us of the past beneath our feet. There are flickers of chatter, as if, here in the present, we continue to talk without ever stopping to listen. Voices warp, slow, slur, distort, and it makes for an unsettling fifteen minutes.

‘Reverb Underground’ goes slower, more spacious, more echoey. I had half-expected something resembling a dub version, but instead, Xqui slows and stretches everything beyond recognition, creating a slow-motion blur, a crawling ambient drone. The sound simply hangs, dense, suffocating. Time stalls, and you find yourself floating, in suspense, in a fugue state, as the sound lifts free of context and embraces pure abstraction.

What Xqui manages to convey on this release is a sense of history, of space, of time, and the way we’re so busy rushing about in our daily lives that we never pause to contemplate the echoes of the past which exist, and linger all about us.

AA

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Evidence of a Struggle – Eddy Derecho

Posted: 16 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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The Glue Factory / The Orchard – 2nd May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

For his second album under the Evidence of a Struggle moniker, W P C Simmons V a.k.a. Rev. Billy Simmons has managed to recruit a band lineup with some serious pedigree, with Matt Walker (Smashing Pumpkins, Morrissey, of1000faces, Garbage, Filter) on drums and synths, with bass contributions by Alan Berliant (Chris Connelly, Mavis Staples, Saint Asonia) and Solomon Walker (Liz Phair, Bryan Adams, Morrissey). We’ll forgive Walker and Solmon for Mozz – musicians need to work and get paid, after all.

We aired the title track here on Aural Aggravation a little while ago, and it launches the album with all engines blazing, a full-throttle industrial / grunge beast of a cut in the vein of Filter. And from hereon in, things get darker, heavier, and weirder. ‘The Whale’ adds a psychedelic spin to some dense, sludgy riffage, coming on with some hints of Melvins, Smashing Pumpkins, and Queens of the Stone Age in the blend.

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‘Alma’ takes a skipping detour into rippling, expansive electronics, even alluding to prog as it locks into a looping, metronomic groove and serves up an extended guitar solo towards the end of its sprawling six minutes. But there’s a tough, serrated edge which remains consistent throughout. It’s hard to really pinpoint, but there’s a drawl, a sneer, about the vocal, and something about the treatment – be it compression, reverb – that calls to mind Girls Against Boys. Musically, there’s no similarity: in fact, Eddy Derecho is an album that’s difficult to pin down stylistically. There’s a keen 90s vibe to it, in some rather abstract way. It’s a guitar album, but that in itself isn’t it, not by a long shot. I’m almost reluctant to describe it as ‘heavy’, too: the guitars may be big and overdriven and the drums thunderous, but, well, it’s all relative, is my point. What made grunge exciting in the early 90s was that we got to hear music with aggression, angst, and edge, in a mainstream setting: anyone who was in their mid- to late teens or early twenties in in the early 90s had been raised on crisp, clinically-produced music in the charts, and sure, that production was phenomenal in so many ways – listen to Duran Duran’s Rio and it’s truly remarkable just how clean and yet, at the same time, dynamic it sounds. We also grew up with the studio slickness of Phil Collins and the like, and even ‘rock’ was highly polished. It’s no wonder that grunge was an absolute phenomenon. But was it that heavy? Not really, not in comparison to the likes of, say, Earth, or Swans, or, for that matter, early Melvins. Nine Inch Nails smashed everything with Broken and The Downward Spiral, though. Those releases were truly revolutionary. The reason I’ve taken this diversion is because Eddy Derecho is an album which has all the hallmarks of emerging from this musical milieu. The guitars are bold, but it’s not so heavy that you’d shit your pants. It’s edgy and has aggression, but it’s also fairly accessible, in that it has tunes, with tangible structures. There’s melody.

The sinewy ‘Orchan’ is perhaps one of the hardest-hitting tracks on the album: all of the elements just seem to come together to render a sum greater than the parts, and not only is the drumming mighty, but the mix is such that the snare really cuts through in a way that’s rare on contemporary releases.

Despite my enthusiastic focus on aspects of the production, this is by no means an attempt to milk the engorged udders of nostalgia – although if any ‘new’ bands should get a pass for sounding ‘retro’ it’s these guys, since they were there at the time. Eddy Derecho is an album with tunes – and the slow-burning, seven-and-a-half-minute epic ‘Aethyrs’ is a standout among them, a hefty grunger which spins in some Six-era Mansun vibes.

Eddy Derecho may well sound like a lot which has come before – but that’s true of so much music now, inevitably. But what sets it apart is the quality, and the consistency of that quality, and by sprinkling a dash of cosmic pop dust on the top, Evidence of a Struggle have hit a winning formula here.

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Steve Von Till – Alone in a World of Wounds

Posted: 15 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Neurot Recordings – 16th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Steve Von Till doesn’t really require any introduction or preamble: the chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re already aware of his work, and if not as a solo artist, then as the guitarist / vocalist with Neurosis, active between 1985 and 2019. As much as Neurosis were labelled a post-metal band, they very much forged their own sound, which has, to an extent, become the house style of Neurot Records.

Von Till’s solo works may lean more toward folk and the gentler side of that style, but nevertheless have significant heft, and Alone in a World of Wounds – his seventh solo album, the follow-up to No Wilderness Deep Enough (2020) is no exception (he’s been busy in the intervening years with a trilogy of Harvestman albums, all released in 2024). The heft here comes from a sense of gravitas, rather than volume and distortion, and continues the softer trajectory of its predecessor, an album ‘initially inspired by the harmonic resonance of piano and synths and his long-standing love of ambient music’.

‘The Corpse Road’ sees Von Till croak and croon in a fashion that could me taken for Mark Lanegan in a blind test, against a sparse backdrop of strings which swell and swoon, heavy with sadness and gloom. There is a sense of times past, not just fading memories and bygone days, but a sense of the creak of wood and worn clothing of harder but simpler times. I find myself unexpectedly transported to a walk my daughter and I undertook from Ambleside to Grasmere in the Lake District a year or so back, via the ‘Coffin Route’. It was winding, and wet, and uneven, not to mention long, and it’s billed as a ‘strenuous’ walk, while still suitable for tourists: as the rain battered the hood of my anorak, I found myself contemplating what it must have been like hauling an actual coffin along that four-mile stretch without the benefit of modern hiking gear. Life must have been tough. Von Till taps into the essence of these past times, and a sense of the elemental.

The mood remains lugubrious on ‘Watch Them Fade’, a song redolent with sadness and reflection, weighted down with the reminder that mortality affects us all and is never far. Despite the fact that life’s only certainty is its expiration, we continue to shy away from the topic. While Alone in a World of Wounds does not confront mortality and death head-on, it’s there at every turn. “Keep on diggin’… dig a little deeper” he implores on ‘Horizons Undone’, and while there are psychological connotations here, it’s hard to ignore images of graves.

The eight-minute ‘Calling Down the Darkness’ is a super-sparse piano-led slow-burner, and confounds any expectation for a surging finish by remaining low-key and minimal to the end, ad something about it is so, so achingly sad.

‘The Dawning of the Day (Insomnia)’ is a brief spoken-word interlude with a moody piano accompaniment, while paves the way – or perhaps scatters woodchips – for the arrival of the swirling atmospheric start of ‘Old Bent Pine’, another song which revels in the forces of nature, before the six-minute ‘River of no Return’ flows toward the finish. It has hints of Slowdive about it. Moreover, its superficial ominousness reminds us that rivers only flow in one direction, and as with rivers, so with life: there is no return, no replay, no turning back. there is no undoing mistakes, only not repeating them.

‘Alone in a World of Wounds’ may be a largely acoustic album, but it is still heavy – really heavy – emotionally more than sonically – and consequently not an easy one to process. It would be impossible to deny the album’s quality. But the weight, the sadness…

AA

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Papillon de Nuit – Ma’at

Posted: 15 May 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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13th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Papillon de Nuit, the ever-evolving, ever-shifting musical collective centred around the multi-talented composer, arranger, lyricist – not to mention promoter and musical / creative all-rounder – Stephen Kennedy, presents a sixth single in just a few short months, a run which began in December last year. And, true to form, ‘Ma’at’ is very different from each of the previous offerings.

Once again featuring the grand piano work of Karen Amanda O’Brien and Michalina Rudawska on cello, along with the return of Megan Richardson providing vocals alongside Kennedy’s, ‘Ma’at’ follows its predecessor, ‘Adriane’, as a song built around strong, dominant percussion and brooding strings. Where it departs is that what emerges from the bold, dramatic intro is a pretty straight-up dark pop song that’s not a million miles removed from later March Violets. It’s graceful, melodic – and I’ll even add catchy, comfortably withstanding repeat plays – and naturally, it’s laced with a delicate hue of wistfulness and melancholy.

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Ava Rabiat – Elektro Erotyk

Posted: 14 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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23rd May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

It seems that Ava Rabiat can turn her hand to practically anything: in Gdańsk and based in Berlin, her work spans sound, experimental electronic music, visual arts, production and costume design for film and theatre. Elektro Erotyk stands as her debut album, and is the first instalment of a projected trilogy

We learn from the notes which accompany the release that ‘In her artistic process, fleeting thoughts and inner sensation transform into sonic reality, creating a space for interaction – a communication beyond conventional language.’

‘AVA’s texts oscillate between self-dissolution and physical intensity. She maps the boundaries of the self, explores extreme states and the longing for connection—directly, without detours, in raw immediacy. She deconstructs sound and reshapes it until it resonates with her physical experience.

‘Polish, AVA’s mother tongue, serves as the primary language throughout the album—a deliberate choice to explore her origins and emotional vernacular. The melodic qualities and sonic characteristics of spoken Polish become instruments themselves, with words valued as much for their sound as for their meaning. Breath becomes an instrument connecting inner and outer worlds.

‘True to its title, Elektro Erotyk embraces the erotic dimension of composition—found in the unity of mind and body, in moments of excitement and elation, and in intimate contact with one’s own self. The erotic emerges not merely as a sexual force but as a deep life energy—a creative power that drives artistic expression.’

She breathes and whispers, and speaks in low tones – sometimes her voice tracked multiple times – over a curious conglomeration of sounds of unplaceable origin. Clanks thuds and chimes, ominous hums and subtle, almost subsonic undulations. ‘Toi at Moi’ certainly has a sultry, erotic overtone, not to mention an almost dubby vibe, but there’s an undertone of something dark and hidden, too. A droning organ wavers its way through ‘Cofnij Czas’, accompanied by a simple bassline which wanders about hesitantly. Ava croons, soulful and seductive, over an increasingly tense and eerie oscillation, while elsewhere gloopy synths and backwards tapes stutter and jolt amidst collage-like layers of sound and fractured fragments of vocal. “There is still hope”, she murmurs on ‘Fool’s Fire’. “Hope… hope… hope…” With each repetition, this assertion feels less convincing.

Everything is swathed in cavernous echo, and everything feels vaguely surreal, dream-like, with glitches and flickers behind curtains and withdrawing into dark shadows as if making their presence known but without wanting to be fully seen. As such, an air of mystery hangs over Elektro Erotyk, each scene viewed only through fleeting glimpses, hints, allusions. It’s an intriguing set of pieces. Sometimes unsettling, often strange, Elektro Erotyk is always compelling.

AA

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Beige Palace / Lo Egin – Beige Palace / Lo Egin

Posted: 14 May 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Cruel Nature Records – 30th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

First things first: Beige Palace were ace, and their departure has left a gap in the musical world, especially in Leeds. In a comparatively short timespan, the trio produced a respectably body of work, evolving from their minimal lo-fi beginnings to explore musical territories far and wide, and this final release, split with another Leeds act, Lo Elgin, who, in contrast, have released precious little.

The accompanying notes provide valuable context for the final recordings laid down by Beige Palace, recorded at Wharf Chambers, one of Leeds’ finest DIY venues by Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe (guitar/keys/vocals)… and now helming the mighty Thank.

Taking a step back from the discordant post hardcore of ‘Making Sounds For Andy’ and the freewheeling experimentation of ‘Leg’, Beige Palace’s side largely favours the repetition and extreme dynamic shifts found on their 2016 EP ‘Gravel Time’. The production here also returns to the lo-fi, DIY approach from that EP, eschewing the more polished sound of their two full-length albums. Through returning to their roots, Beige Palace manages to drag their sound to new extremes, with these three tracks bringing to mind artists as disparate as US Maple and Sunn O))).

‘Wellness Retreat’ is dense and discordant, low-end synth drone and bass coalescing to a eardrum-quivering thrum over which scratchy guitars and vocals come in from all sides to forge a magnificently disjointed and angular two minutes and twenty seconds. Too chaotic to really be math-rock, it’s a squirming can of worms, a melting pot where Shellac meets Captain Beefhart at a crossroads with Trumans Water. Or something.

Bringing hints of Silver Jews, the lo-fi crawler ‘Good Shit Fizzy Orange’ does math-rock but with an experimental jazz element, the sparse picked guitar and slow-rolling cymbal work juxtaposed with what sounds like the strumming of an egg slicer before sad strings start to weave their way over it all. The lyrics are, frivolous and stupid, and we wouldn’t want things any other way. Because much as one may value well-crafted, poetical lyrics, sometimes dumb, trashy, meaningless words work just fine. Better than fine, even.

There’s a hint of later Earth about the spartan folksiness of ‘Update Hello Blue Bag Black Bag’ – a song which sounds serious but as the title suggests, isn’t quite so much, but around the midpoint, all the pedals are slammed into overdrive and suddenly there’s a tidal wave of distortion, a speaker-busting cascade of heavy doom-laden drone. And as it tapers to fade, while we mourn the departure of a truly great band, we get to rejoice that during the span of their career, Beige Palace did everything. It’s a solid legacy they’re leaving, and one which may well expand in the years to come. There will be people in five, ten, fifteen years asking ‘remember Beige Palace?’, and other people will be replying ‘Yes! I saw them at CHUNK!’. Well, I will be, anyway. And we still have Thank to be thankful for.

The two pieces which represent Lo Elgin’s contribution mark a sharp contrast to those of Beige Palace. The first, the eleven-minute monster that is ‘Beneath the Clock’, is a thunderous blast of doom-laden rage and anguish. The barking, howling vocals are low in the mix of droning, lurching, lumbering noise, through which strings poke and burst, and as the noise sways and sloshes like a boat tossed hither and thither on waves in a storm as it attempts to guide its way through the entrance to the harbour, the listener finds themselves almost seasick with the unpredictable movement. Around seven minutes in, the tempest abates and the piece meanders into altogether mellower territory, where again I’m reminded of Earth circa Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light. And then, right at the end, there’s a massive jazz segment, backed with crushing guitars. I did not see that coming. And then ‘Abomination’ is different again- a gritty, gnarly, gut-spewing blast of noise that is simply too much…. But too much is never enough as we’re led through a racketacious swamp that starts out Motorhead and toboggans down to a crazed morass of manic jazz.

The two very different sides belong to completely different worlds, at least on the surface. But they are both staunchly strange, keenly experimental, and dedicated to inventive noisemaking, and as such, compliment one another well. And this also perfectly encapsulates the essence of the Leeds scene: diverse, noisy, weird, and wonderful.

AA

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Eville – Get With Me

Posted: 12 May 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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9th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, when a band has forged its sound with the assistance of quality producers, there’s a niggle of concern when they decide to go it alone. Why are they doing this? Why now? Have they become overconfident in their abilities?

Eva Sheldrake explains the decision: “We’ve worked with incredible producers, and we’ve taken so much from every experience, but with Get With Me, it all came together so naturally that we knew Jude had to produce it. We caught lightning in a bottle—the energy is real, it’s raw, and it’s straight from the heart. The song channels something a lot of women go through but don’t always get the space to talk about. Instead of letting it fester, we flipped it on its head and made it ours. It’s fierce, it’s defiant, and it’s exactly what Eville stands for.”

The fact that it was simply something that happened, that felt right, matters, and that’s significant. More significant, though, is the fact that there was simply no cause for concern, as they’ve absolutely mastered the sound they’re after here. The track dives in with the fattest, filthiest bass grind, and then the guitar is a dense wall of distortion, and then Eva’s vocals are sassy but keenly melodic, and there are layers of harmony in the mix and once again, they’ve mined solid gold. Balancing crunching juggernaut grungy / nu-metal riffery – something about both the sound and structure of the musical elements are reminiscent of Filter here – with a pop sensibility which comes through in the vocals, ‘Get With Me’ has got the lot.

And if the title suggests some kind of schmaltzy romantic allure, think again. This is Eville, and they are not to be fucked with. The mid-section brings all the grunt and threatening fists like a menacing bodyguard looming forward, before the full-throttle finish. The message of ‘Get With Me’ is really ‘get real’ – and it’s driven home hard , with brutal force. Yep, Eville have done it again….

AA

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Utterly Fuzzled All-Dayer – York Fulfordgate WMC – 10th May 2025

Posted: 11 May 2025 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

With grassroots venues closing at an alarming – and depressing – rate, there are fewer and fewer places for bands with a smaller draw, and new acts, to play. Meanwhile, particularly since the pandemic, Working Men’s Clubs have also been in decline or otherwise struggling. But as The Brudenell in Leeds and The Crescent in York have demonstrated, WMC make ideal gig venues, with a well-appointed room with a stage which is simply ideal. And so it is that the organisers of previous all-dayers in York at the now-closed Vaults have scoured the city for a new home, unveiling a brand new ‘Utterly Fuzzled’ stage banner to mark simultaneously a fresh start and a rebirth of sorts.

The advertised lineup included a number of acts who are no strangers to the York scene, or to these virtual pages – certainly solid enough to get me and plenty of others to an out-of-town venue before 4:30pm on a broiling hot Saturday afternoon.

Pete Dale, who also happens to be the guitarist in Knitting Circle, got things going with a solo set of Milky Wimpshake songs, with a couple of covers tossed in for good measure, before Fat Spatula stepped things up with the first full-band set of the occasion.

Every time I see Fat Spatula it’s like experiencing a different band, with different facets of their sound seemingly presenting themselves and pushing through to the fore. Going for a set of high-energy roustabout songs, they’re good fun, and some people dance.

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Fat Spatula

Soma Crew start slow with ‘Hey Sister’, and it’s a set that focuses on the mellower, gentler stuff. You never know what you’re going to get with Soma Crew, from lineup to set, but one thing is always assured, and that’s drummer Nick’s T-shirt. About halfway through they finally kick things up a notch with their first Motorik groove, when they come on like Hawkwind playing Sister Ray. It’s not until the last track that they pick up the tempo and let the drone diffing spin out. People don’t dance. It simply wasn’t that kind of set.

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Soma Crew

In these troubling times, Knitting Circle’s commitment to being an issues-driven band is something I find both stirring and in no small way quite moving. It shouldn’t seem like a bold thing to be staunchly anti-war and sing about it, but this is seemingly where we are now, and the fact they have some cracking tunes with two and three-way vocals and choppy Gang of Four style guitars makes seeing them an uplifting experience – and they’re consistently good, too.

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Knitting Circle

The next couple of acts aren’t local, but they are both absolutely outstanding. Glasgow’s Slime City bring energetic punky tunes, matching zipper tops, and a size nine shoe with knobs on that does something to the guitar. They have a few gimmicks, but they’re worked into the set in a way that’s knowing and humorous without being cringey. And they have TUNES. Said tunes are led by some outstanding drumming – tight, crisp, a bit disco in places. ‘Never Stop Giving Up’ goes a bit poppy, a bit Prince, but more oftentimes, they’re rather reminiscent of Future of the Left.

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Slime City

Irked take things to a whole other level: fierce, ferocious, tight, they’re blistering from beginning to end. I didn’t really take any notes during their set. But what’s to say about a band with such a fearsome frontwoman who charges about the room howling a fill-throated roar against a full-throttle twin-guitar attack interspersed with some good-natured between-song banter with a strong North-Eastern twist from the guitarist. The vitriol is real, but so is the fact they have a clear sense of humour.

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Irked

Now, the last time I saw Crumbs was a rather difficult night, when they supported Dream Nails. They were great, although their performance was rather eclipsed by subsequent events. It’s a pleasure to see them under more friendly circumstances: they’re good fun, and worthy headliners. There’s more inter-band crossover, as Jamie Wilson who does guitar / synths / vocals for Knitting Circle is also Crumbs’ bassist, and paired with Gem’s easy drumming style. with minimal kit – bass, floor tom, snare, hi-hat – they play straight-up indie that’s accessible and quite simply great fun.

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Crumbs

And ultimately, fun is what this is all about. The sense of community is heartwarming. A lot of those present are in bands – and not the bands playing – but there are also plenty of faces often seen at local gig, as well as many who aren’t, but hopefully events like this will entice them out more often. And with a decent enough range of bottled beers at £3.70 ago, and good quality sound throughout, Fulfordgate WMC has strong potential to become a more regular venue. Real credit has to go to Jo Dale, bassist with Knitting Circle, for her curation, organisation, and promotion of such an adventurous DIY event. Here’s to much more Fuzzlement in the future.

Kill Your Boyfriend – Disco Kills EP

Posted: 10 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Sister 9 Recordings – 9th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Since showcasing single cut ‘Discretion’ last month, I’ve been totally gripped by this new EP by Italian post-punk electro duo Kill Your Boyfriend.

There’s something about the consistent use of one-word titles that adds punch. The complete catalogue of Foetus albums is a strong case in point: Hole, Nail, Gash Blow… Four letters, forming a single syllable, prove to be powerfully evocative, even when there is no context – or perhaps more so because there is no context.

The titles of the six songs on here are rather less abstract, more descriptive, but still strong and evocative in isolation: ‘Ego’, ‘Obsession’, ‘Apathy’… words with emotional connotations, words which plug straight into the beating heart of the human condition. And, just as ‘Discretion’ threatened, Disco Kills is a full-on sonic kicking that registers blows from every direction.

It’s all about that throbbing, hard-hitting rhythm section, and once again, I feel compelled to sing in praise of the drum machine. Much-maligned and still contentious when used in a ‘rock’ context, the relentless thud and crash of programmed percussion can be so compelling – hypnotic, yes, but also in the way it registers in a purely physical way, the toppy snare explosion sending shockwaves through the nervous system while setting eardrums quivering. From Suicide to Uniform via Metal Urbain, The Sisters of Mercy and Big Black, there’s a rich lineage of bands for whom a drum machine used well – and at an appropriate level in the mix – absolutely defines the sound. It doesn’t work for a lot of rock acts because they’re more about having a certain flexibility, but for absolutely smashing the senses with precision timekeeping, drum machines really come into their own, especially when solid, four-square basslines which follow the beats with equal precision are involved.

And so it is that for all the mesh of treble and distortion, Kill Your Boyfriend structure these songs around a punishing rhythm section. No fancy fills or extravagant bass runs – just hammering, solid grooves, which underscore all the rest. I say ‘all the rest’ as if it’s somehow lesser. It isn’t, not by a long shot. ‘Obsession’ would be dancefloor-friendly – to the point you could imagine people turning and clapping in time with the crispy snap of the vintage Akai snare sound, were it not for its dark, distorted vocal. ‘Apathy’ a bubbling dance banger that’s twisted by some dissonant chord changes and an echo-soaked shouty vocal, the end result sounding like The Prodigy remixing Alien Sex Fiend. Apathetic it is not: a Hi-NRG banger with a dark, serrated edge, it is.

They do trancey / shoegaze / synthwavey lightness on ‘Illusion’, which offers an unexpected – and unexpectedly welcome – pause for breath. But although it pulls back on the breakneck pace and abrasion of the tracks which both precede and succeed it, ‘Illusion’ is still dense, richly textured, and overtly beat-driven, with a thick, churning bass lurking beneath. It just doesn’t drive as hard or as aggressively, with an altogether gentler vocal delivery, and it builds tension with twisty guitars with strong echoes of the sound of 1984. Yes, it’s a bit gothy, and it sits well, and all of this means that the thick, buzzy, echoey electrogoth stomp of ‘Discretion’ hits even harder after the lull, highlighting just what an absolute beast it is. And make no mistake: it’s a pumping, pulverising dark disco monster. It’s brashy, it’s trashy, not so much a car crash as a flaming, petrol-tank-exploding pileup with Sheep on Drugs, Selfish Cunt, KMFDM, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. It’s an instant adrenaline spike, a rush of pure exhilaration.

‘Youth’ begins darkly but offer something more buoyant as a bookend to the EP, like an electro Sex Pistols, it echoes and bounced its way in a rush to the end. It does feel like a rather flimsy add-on, but works in terms of bringing things down again to wrap it up.

Disco Kills is solid and fierce from beginning to end – and while it’s predominantly electronic in its instrumentation, it’s also very much rock, and it’s pure punk all the way.

AA

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