Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Millennium Bug – The Red Lion, Alnmouth, 24th July 2026

Posted: 26 July 2026 in Live, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Christopher Nosnibor

In keeping with my (recent) policy of never not writing about a live act I see, I find myself presenting some diaristic notes from my break from reviewing. The plan had been to avoid emails, the Internet, people, and pretty much everything by escaping to Alnmouth for four nights. Historically, I’ve used such holidays as an opportunity to concentrate on some of my fiction or other writing, but instead, I decide to walk and read and decompress for a while. And if this reads more like an extract from my diary than an actual review, that’s because, ultimately, it is. The review element is but a prelude to a ponderance, you might say.

For context, last week marked three and half years since the death of my wife, and some proper time out with our daughter, now 14, and just broken up for the summer holidays, was what was needed. Much as I depend on my routine to an extent – which involves chipping out a review of between 600 and 1,000 words a night, when not out watching bands, it’s certainly work. And you know what they say about work… Well, they say a lot, very little of which is positive. And while we’re here, this isn’t so much a review, as a review as a pretext for an essay of reflection and contemplation.

Alnmouth, while pretty sleepy, is home to no fewer than four pubs / hotels with public bars, and having just last week written about how I’d been missing bands in bars, and having clocked the The Red Lion was hosting a live band on Friday night, decided I should pop down for a last pint or two before the train home on Saturday morning. I expected a naff covers band, and while Millennium Bug are very much a covers band, they weren’t naff. They could certainly play, at least. And their choice of songs was not the obvious.

It must be hard for musicians wanting to play round here. Newcastle has a vibrant scene with an abundance of metal and noise and all sorts, but it’s a different world out here on the coast in a small village that’s a low-key tourist destination, primarily for retirees. You’re not going to get going with a metal band here.

When I set out with Aural Aggravation, the rubric was pretty explicit: music as far from the mainstream as you could possibly get. So why am I now documenting a covers band in a pub? The musical landscape has changed in the last decade, and my focus on the grass roots has developed over this time as things have got more challenging, particularly post-COVID. And I’d contend that you can’t get much further from the mainstream than this.

They’re playing ‘When You Say Nothing At All’ off the bat – as they say. It’s a shit cliché. Most cliché are, though. They forewarn that their set will consist of ‘cheesy nineties and noughties pop songs’, and they’re not kidding. The trio, consisting of acoustic guitar, bass, and minimal drum kit make their way through ‘I Want it That Way’ which I’ve always jokingly said was a song about anal sex, but, on reflection, may be about pegging, and ‘I Miss You’ by Lisa Loeb. They perform a pretty spirited and harmony-laden rendition of ‘Torn’, a passable take on ‘Unwritten’, and a killer version of ‘Genie in a Bottle’ follow. Cher’s ‘Life After Love’ actually sounds better as an acoustic song without the autotune.

20260724_21065520260724_204036

So what’s the thrust here? They’re three forty-something guys playing a local village pub against a barrage of chatter. The applause starts off strong, but diminishes after about three songs as the punters lose interest and the music falls to background. It’s nothing like the volume of talk when I saw BRMC in Leeds last December, but it’s a tough gig. And yet they take it in their stride. No strops, no huffs. It’s simply the gig. And while many musicians aspire to supposedly greater things, they’re clearly enjoying doing this – and when it’s so easy to give up doing anything outside dayjob and family life and whatever, this is certainly better than that.

It’s easy to denigrate this level of the music scene, a level which exists outside of the industry. But I’d put this above tribute acts. They’re not pretending to be another band or cashing in on another name, and in many respects, this kind of live music is foundational. The first gigs I ever saw, when I was probably thirteen or so, were covers bands playing in pubs in Lincoln.

Ultimately, I have no real point, no angle, beyond this being a slice of life, and that it’s good to hear live music in even the most rural of settings.

Amps Kill – Avulse EP

Posted: 25 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

23rd July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

With Amps Kill’s Avulse EP, we’re in dark ambient territory here, with the emphasis on the dark, at least sonically. In terms of intent and narrative arc, it’s a little more nuanced in hue.

As the accompanying notes outline, ‘Without lyrics, Avulse guides the listener through a story. The track titles on the EP provide some context to the emotional inspiration behind the music… Avulse explores the idea of removing aspects of the self or of one’s life that are holding one back from growing and moving forward just as lizards, spiders, and insects need to shed their skin to grow. It’s a process that is often quite painful but always for the better. That pain is the core of Avulse’.

The EP’s title certainly makes sense in this context, the dictionary definition being ‘to pull or tear something away, especially a part of the body as a result of an accident or surgery’. And so it is that Amps Kill delivers something of a performative purging over the course of the EP’s five compositions.

As is the method when it comes to EP releases in recent years, the four of the five tracks on Avulse have been released individually as singles. I’m still not entirely clear on the wisdom of this approach to promotion: there’s building interest through advance singles, and then there’s emptying the tank. But then I spent a long time being accustomed to one or two singles in advance of an album’s release, and one or two more after to maintain its profile and to extend its trailing sales. Now, everything is up-front – a consequence surely being that anticipation for an EP is diminished because there’s less – if any – new material to look forward to. But I’m 50 and came to music in an era of physical releases and singles chart shows on the TV and radio, and I’m clearly get to grasp the benefits of the new way.

The first four tracks, all released as singles do, it has to be said, work better in succession than as standalone pieces. ‘Slough’, landing with a dense, hard, serrated-edged billow of noise that crashes in like a tidal wave, is heavy and oppressive. There are softer sounds beneath, but overall, it forges a thick, oppressive atmosphere, and ‘Chronophage’ plunges deeper. The title references the Corpus Clock, also known as the Grasshopper Clock, outside the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, a clock with no hands or numerals and guarded by a metal grasshopper or locust. Amidst scrapes and hums of feedback, electronic insectoid skitterings create texture on the track, creating a scratchy, uncomfortable tension, and ‘Husk’ brings more heavy, sonorous drones and cracking distortion at the edges of dense surges of sound. It’s not entirely ambient, as there are thick, booming beats which land like detonations, and the atmosphere is tense, akin to the sound of low-flying planes and crashes and splashes like shattering metal rupture all about. It’s pretty intense, and comfortable it is not.

AA

‘Basilisk’ brings more of the same, in essence, but the thunderous beats are brought to the fore, amidst the flutter of flapping, like the sound of a thousand bats fleeing a bottomless cave. And so there is a clear sense of progression here: dark ambience transitions to throbbing industrial – in the more traditional sense, tracing a lineage to Throbbing Gristle, Coil.

Arriving at the last piece, the only one previously unreleased, there is a significant shift in tone. As Amps Kill intimates, “‘Des Pas Sur Les Cendres’ completes the idea of the group and ties all of them together. That track takes all of its musical thematic material from a piano work by Claude Debussy called ‘Des pas sur la neige’ and expands or explores it’. It sure as hell doesn’t sound like Debussy, but it very much does feel like a composition which brings the EP to a fitting close – altogether more subdued, softer, more delicate, it’s five and a half minutes of mellow ambience, albeit with a few serrated edges – which, while dark, hints at some vague sense of hope, and the sense that once the avulsion is complete, there is the potential to grow anew.

AA

cac66c20-f0a6-aedb-5332-831a15a73619

Elektrikill – Küntzpiracy

Posted: 20 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Evol Music Group – 26th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Over on this side of the pond, in the UK, we have plenty to beef about, and more than enough to worry about, too. But while we see endless footage of war in Ukraine, Gaza, and the whole of the Middle East as the US and Iran wrestle their way through the most futile war, we’re in a petty sheltered place, and as much as we may reel in horror over news of the latest high school massacre and laugh at Donald Trump’s daily meltdowns, we do so from a position of relative safety. However hard we continue to lumber into a state of total surveillance, however emboldened the racists become thanks to the rising right, however rapidly our government are eroding our right to protest, favouring perpetrators of genocide over those who speak in opposition to it, there’s still no danger of some masked ICE psycho pulling your car over and demanding your papers before shooting you in the head. Our politicians may nearly all be slippery, deceptive careerists who accept ‘donations’ from individuals and companies with vested interests, but we’re not led by a demented narcissist who’s openly professed to being a wannabe dictator. In short, I don’t think we fully grasp what it’s like to live in America right now.

Elektrikill’s founder, Steve Vil, says of Küntzpiracy – a title that’s both a fairly lame pun and a bit of cliché, but gets a pass because America and an approximation of a Butthole Surfers reference – “Basically it’s my most political album touching on themes of government corruption and half of this country’s loss of humanity while claiming it’s all in the name of Jesus. That pisses me off. I also call out closeted government officials in ‘The Scream’. Look, guys, just be gay instead of crashing Grindr any time you meet in large groups. I do give the listener a break from the political stuff. ‘Vampire Blond’, for example, is about a vampire drag queen.”

There’s a fair bit to unpack here, and he makes a number of valid points. It’s not the whole of America. In fact, it’s a slender majority backing the MAGA madness. Unfortunately, they’ve voted to facilitate an insane power grab, meaning that while there are a fair few who aren’t happy with the direction things have been taking lately, tough shot: you could have seen it coming, so this is on you. And this also involves the most overtly racist, homophobic administration in memory – but as with anything which involves hypermasculinity, what the world outside sees is massive repressed gayness. Yeah, we’re looking at you, Andrew Tate, with your no-bollocks swimming trunks and purple satin blouse, and the culture you espouse. What utterly fucked-up times we live in.

‘Thrum’ makes for a dark, dense start to the album, throbbing bass dominating, the distorted monotone vocals low in the mix as extraneous squalls of electronic noise burst all around, and ‘S(t)imulation’ keeps things dark with some hefty tribal percussion battering away through a murky wall of sound – although the choruses break out with a genuine hook driven by a pumping beat and punchy snare. It’s like leaping from Coil to late 80s Ministry, but it works, and the aforementioned ‘Vampire Blond’ swings into classic electrogoth / technoindustrial territory, and I could chuck a raft of touchstones in here – and that’s no bad thing. they clearly know what they’re doing, and where they’re positioning themselves, and do it well.

‘The Scream’ is again a bit Ministry circa The Land of Rape and Honey, and perhaps a bit KMFDM, and more broadly, a bit Wax Trax! Hardly innovative, but the delivery is top-notch. The beats slam hard.

Landing at the album’s midpoint the piano-led ‘A Chill in the Air’ is both expansive and claustrophobic, and slowing the tempo to explore a more brooding atmospheric, it’s well placed, ahead of full-throttle rager ‘Monoshift’ which brings the industrial aggression pumped to the max. Indeed, the second half of the album is harder, faster, and the altogether synthier ‘My Salvation’ rhymes ‘my salvation’ with ‘masturbation’ in a style reminiscent of early Revolting Cocks.

Stylistically, Electrikill don’t really break any new ground, but Küntzpiracy is intense, angry, and relentless, the aggro and the tempo picking up noticeably in the second half, with ‘Manifesto’ delivering a power finish. With Küntzpiracy, Elektrikill bring the fury and bring the force – and the political ire. This is very much an album of the now, and it hits hard.

AA

a3444969996_10

Emmaleen Tangleweed – The Weaving

Posted: 20 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 3st1 July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

“This album is kind of a collage of all the books I was reading and my impressions of the general emotions swimming in the collective experience, as well as personal stories I’ve picked up along the way.” So says Emmaleen Tangleweed of her new album, The Weaving, which was recorded in September 2025 ‘in a log cabin in Swartvlei (“black lake”), Western Cape, South Africa’. The liner notes describe it as ‘a collection of gothic folk and blues ballads tinged with hypnotic magic realism’.

The first song, ‘The Hours’ is likely, then, to be a direct reference to Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer-winning novel – which in turn was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway. It’s a wonderfully earthy slice of dark, primitive blues, rendered all the more potent by the rich patina of Tangleweed’s voice. In the recent Six of the Best feature for Aural Aggravation, she cited Black Pudding by Mark Lanegan and Duke Garwood as an influence, citing ‘an archetypal timelessness’, and this is what very much comes through here, perhaps with a hint of PJ Harvey in the mix, too. There’s nothing complex – or even innovative – about it, but blues isn’t about complexity or innovation, it’s about feeling, about soul. And this is something The Weaving brings in spades.

‘Silent Killer’ could be a hundred years old, but it could also be an outtake from Rid of Me. Emmaleen sings from her gut, and with guts, too, and plays with a perfect feel for the swing required to bring the songs to life. There’s a bit of fuzz on the low strings which gives a vintage, analogue feel to the production. This is also true of the sepia-toned ‘Strangeling Angel’, which very much replicates the feel of those early twentieth century blues legends and those altogether more obscure.

The introduction of cello on ‘Blind Faith’ is done subtly, but adds depth to the otherwise sparse arrangement, and for the most part, everything hangs on her voice and acoustic guitar. Perhaps because of this, there’s a palpable intimacy and immediacy about The Weaving, capturing as it does the sensation of being in a small room as the songs are performed live. ‘Never Ending History’ is almost a crawl, and she drawls the lyrics low and slow, and something strange happens with time as it slips back. one can almost envisage grainy black and white photographs accompanying it.

Most of the songs are in the five-minute region and she fills the space with a rare tension. ‘Ask the Dust’ is another song which makes a direct reference, this time to John Fante’s 1939 novel set in The Great Depression, and shit, it’s bleak. ‘Is there anyone out there’ she asks against images of ‘the burnt out rust’ and a monotonous, repetitive riff reminiscent of Michael Gira at his most lugubrious. It’s here that is becomes most apparent that it’s possible to be heavy without distortion or volume, and that weight comes from the heart. You can hear her fingers hitting the strings on ‘Ask the Dust’, in a way that has the same feel as striking dry earth with a pick. It’s not entertainment, but labour, and The Weaving finds Tangleweed dredging deep. There’s no showing on the doll where this music touches: it’s somewhere deep inside, subconscious, subliminal. And herein lies its power – it’s something that’s affecting on an almost cellular or biological level, resonating with experiences of past lives or something. You feel it in a way that’s impossible to explain. But feel it, you do.

AA

cover

Soma Crew / How Buildings Fail / Speed Readers – The Golden Ball, York, 17 July 2026

Posted: 18 July 2026 in Live, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s been a while since I went to ‘bands in the bar’ kind of thing. Although the Horsemusic nights are essentially bands in a bar, it’s a large space and they play on a raised area at the far end of a rectangular room, meaning there’s a sense of separation (in addition to the handrail which runs across it). For many years, there would be acoustic soloists and duos – nearly always playing variations on the blues – in the corner of every other bar, and it was kinda fun for a while, but got a bit samey rather fast. Still, the point is that there’s something less formal about the ‘bands in a bar’ setting. The Golden Ball, consistently in the Good Beer Guide, is a community owned and run pub with multiple rooms (some more like nooks or snugs), where they host quizzes, spoken word and open mic nights and the like, plus decent size beer garden.

It might be Soma Crew lite tonight, paired down to minimal gear, with no cymbals and fewer pedals, but it’s still a lot of pedals, and by the time you’ve got a PA, amps and pedals for two guitarists and a bass, plus drum kit and another amp and mountain of electronic equipment for How Buildings Fail, plus a massive – and truly essential – thermostatically-controlled fan, seating, and space in general is very much at a premium. More than twenty people and it’s pretty cosy, to put it mildly.

David Mudie playing a solo Speedreaders set is the closest to truly stripped-back as it gets, with just him and a clean-sounding guitar and a couple of pedals. Played this way, it accentuates the sad, emotional nuisance of the downtempo slowcore songs, and he seems unusually relaxed and even borderline chatty by his standards.

DSC02994

Speedreaders

It sets the tone for the night: the intimacy of the space is a great unifier, and the warmth of the atmosphere isn’t just heatwave and humidity.

Simon – aka How Buildings Fail – seems genuinely quite overwhelmed by the positive response to his performance, each song received with enthusiastic applause. He soaked the small room with low end feedback as he drawled monologues reminiscent of The Fall – the first track in particular seems to lean on ‘Smile’, and the more uptempo (house) pieces rattle along, propelled by a primitive drum machine. Electronica with live guitar, it’s gloriously ramshackle and old-school in every way, from the scratchy guitar to the, we, scratchy electronics. And people are amazed. This is telling: he runs the York EMOM (Electronic Music Open Mic) night – it’s part of a now (inter)national network of events which gives a safe space for all the nerds and oddballs to perform (I say this in the most positive sense as a regular myself), and the York one in particular seems to cultivate a culture of experimentalism, left-field, ambient, noisy, and downright weird shit, and it’s brilliant. But it is a bubble, and maybe not all of the EMOM participants have the same potential beyond the bubble. But How Buildings Fail balances quirky post-punk with just enough catchiness to appeal to a broader audience, and to see how he’s received out in the wild is a joy for me, and clearly, a revelation for those unfamiliar, which is a fair few of those in tonight.

DSC03002DSC03006

How Buildings Fail

Soma Crew might well be the band I’ve seen and covered the most since I started out with Aural Aggravation a decade ago, and I’d seen them a fair few times before that, too. They are, definitively, mainstays of the scene, and have landed some high-profile support slots for visiting bands (notably The Fall at Fibbers in 2016) can be depended on for three things: 1) a different lineup nearly every time 2) drummer Nick wearing his Sin City Rockers T-shirt 3) they’ll always play counterintuitively and start with the most hesitant-sounding, ploddiest song on the setlist. It’s like a test, but also a warm-up as they feel their way towards the groove. It’s only after the drawling crawl that they strike their motorik stride, and once they do, they’re mining gold all the way to the finish. Chugging rhythm guitar, strolling bass, soaring lead and thudding minimal drums all settle in nicely. And then from nowhere, the sound erupts a few songs in. It’s not devastatingly loud, but in this confined space, the sound feels huge. On ‘Westworld’ they hold a single note – not even a chord – for about five minutes. Then the drums kick in and they hold it another eternity. It’s glorious. The band are looking relaxed and right in there, and I find myself completely immersed for a spell.

DSC03033DSC03044DSC03066

Soma Crew

And the thing is, it’s simply nice. It’s also more than that. There is a palpable sense of community here tonight, people stick around and chat afterwards, taking their time over pints purchased at last orders instead of the usual emptying minutes after the music finishes. Soma Crew probably rehearse in a bigger room than this, but it’s not about the numbers, it’s about the music, the vibe, the connection. None of the performers is new or up-and-coming, and won’t be offended by this observation. But there’s a further point here: so many of the up-and-comers find that life – work, mortgages, families – put paid to creative activity post-thirty. That all of tonight’s acts have remained artistically active is testament to a certain commitment to creativity. It may simply be stubbornness, but for that  stubbornness kudos is due, not only for keeping on, but keeping on doing good stuff. Better than good, in fact. Grassroots music events don’t come much more essential than this.

Noir Addiction – Pretty Things Don’t Last

Posted: 16 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

SoulPunx Records – 16th July 2026

Christopher Nosnnibor

Italian industrial rock / alternative act Noir Addiction have wasted no time since the release of their debut album in September, swiftly knocking out three singles in quick succession. Now, they’re gathering these singles together, along with a further three unreleased songs to bring us Pretty Things Don’t Last, which they say is ‘an EP about impermanence, distortion, and the beauty found in what’s unstable, broken, and intense. It moves through chaos, desire, power, disillusionment, and rebellion, tracing a journey where control is questioned and identity is constantly reshaped’.

Opening with ‘Serve Me Some Crime’, the first of the singles, which was released back in March, we arrive in familiar territory (if we’ve been keeping up, that is), and it makes for an instant grab, with its uptempo beat, melded with an insistent bass throb and dirty, driving guitar sound, that crunches away, hard, and the whole thing has got ‘anthem’ and ‘high impact’ stamped all over it.

Starting this strong means they’ve set themselves a real challenge to maintain the standard and the solidity over the course of the remaining five songs. It’s like when you see an amazing band at the start of the evening: the first thought, after ‘woah’, ventures towards ‘I wouldn’t want to follow them’, to the acceptance that the night has likely peaked early.

Not so Noir Addiction. They bring the fire for the EP’s entire duration. The sound and formula is fundamentally set, but how they work within the template is with confidence and consistency, keeping on with back-to-back hard grooves.

Of the previously unreleased songs, ‘Toxic Twins’ is something of a standout, quite boldly leaning into a more overtly hard rock sound, complete with muscular lead guitar work which thrusts its way to the fore over a grinding bass before they go all out on the kind of chorus that would be at home in an arena setting, and has the big-balls swagger of a band like Shotgun Messiah or Zodiac Mindwarp – absorbing all the cliché and throwing it back with a knowingness but also a straight face.

Similarly, ‘Cold Habit’ stomps hard and brings the almost inevitable nods to Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails, while being more ‘rock’ in its delivery, and a chorus that’s brimming with hooks and accessibility. Recent single ‘Money for the Honey’ packs the sleaze in tight and hard, and while there are hints of spandex in the execution, there’s no debate to be had here: this is a solid rock banger.

‘Radio Funeral’ brings a dash of country and grunge to a mid-pace closer to an EP that’s bursting with confidence – and tunes.

AA

AA

Photo_by_Valerio_Fanelli_06

Photo: Valerio Fanelli

Craic Killers – Who Said I Was…

Posted: 15 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

12th July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Anyone who says politics should be kept out of music is talking bollocks. An integral part of musical history is the music of protest, and of music which speaks of the times. While not necessarily protest-based, many dark moments of history are captured within traditional folk songs – long before the 60s gave us a whole new model for folk music as a vehicle for protest. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Cat Stevens are just the first few names which come to mind as artists who picked up an acoustic guitar and used it to voice their anti-war sentiments, and it’s a mantel that’s been carried by many since, perhaps most prominently by Billy Bragg.

The arrival of punk brought a different kind of dissenting voice – one that was angry, nihilistic, and wasn’t so much anti-war as anti-everything, seeking to smash the system and stick it to the man. It shat the establishment up for a while, too, because it was brash, menacing, and felt violent, dangerous. This was Thatcher’s Britain: unemployment was up, there were strikes galore and discontent was more than rife. Of course, the major labels saw pound signs and signed punk bands left right and centre and before long, many acts were defanged by the wheels of capitalism in motion. And so the true punks stuck to, or remained resolutely, DIY, and while punk’s undergone a host of mutations since 1977, it still has both the sound and the vibe – particularly in the DIY scene – that positively yells ‘anti-establishment’. And this is, essentially, Craic Killers in a nutshell. The London-based Irish duo take certain cues from Kneecap, who, while having drawn heat from ‘the establishment’ are widely lauded for being not only outspoken, but sticking to their (metaphorical) guns in the face of litigation and more.

Before we get to the music, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the question of what constitutes ‘the establishment’ these days. Farage will tell you he and Reform and seeking to unsettle the status quo, to challenge the establishment and that they represent the man in the street who is fed up with not being represented by politicians in parliament. Bankrolled by tax-evading millionaires and billionaires whose funds reside off shore and who seek to siphon off even more wealth for their own personal gain, this is patent bullshit, and making those men on the street angry because they’ve been tricked to believe it’s the fault of immigrants that they’re poor and local services are shit is a massive con. The establishment does not exist to serve the regular worker. The establishment’s ethos is built on the foundations of the worst of capitalism, and this is why the establishment – both here in the UK, and particularly across the pond – is so hell-bent on dismissing any ideology that’s even remotely left (by which I mean, they hate welfare of any kind, particularly free healthcare, because ultimately, they don’t believe the poor deserve to live), and why they’re so desperate to crush dissent. It’s not because they believe protesters are terrorists, but because they hate to be exposed, and also can’t stand to see their absolute power and total authority challenged. There is much wrong with all of this, and more.

And Craic Killers are calling it out. All of it. As they tell it, ‘The new work goes in on the Epstein elite, MAGA bootlickers and major government failures such as the PSNI & TFL. Who Said I Was… matches the first EP’s intensity and themes of world collapse with a more refined sound.

It’s hard to argue any of that, really. Released last October, Who TF is Craic Killers? was a full-throttle blast of super-lo fi electropunk fury. Part of its appeal was the lack of production, rendering it the very quintessence of DIY. Cleaning up the sound is by no means selling out, especially when Who Said I Was… still sounds like it was recorded in a 4-track app on a smart phone. They rip into Andrew Tate and the ‘manosphere’, blast ICE, and tackle issues closer to home: certainly, the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) and their actions aren’t widely reported further afield, but as the sole note which accompanied the single release simply stated ‘All Peelers Are Bastards (and pedos)’. Trust in police is at a low eight now, for so many reasons, and the recent appearance of ‘ACAB’ graffitied under the bridge which carries the A64 over the River Ouse near where I live (alongside ‘Fuck Nazis’) is telling of the mood, I feel.

With the exception of ‘GIMMIE’ (released as a single in June), none of the six songs run over three minutes – but all of them are delivered with a ragged, riotous energy. By which I mean these guys are absolutely fucking fearless, and relentless in their intensity. ‘TFL’ may be slower and lower, but it’s dingy and abrasive, the vocals somewhere between hardcore punky shouting and really aggro rapping, while the closer, ‘Public Relations’ is unexpectedly catchy, but still as scuzzy as fuck.

It’s worth spending some time and a few listens to pick out the lyrics, but Who Said I Was… hits like a back-and-forth slap round the chops from the very first bar and keeps it going to the end. This is precisely what punk is about: impact, going in hard, no compromise. They don’t come much more punk than Craic Killers.

AA

Craic Killers Promo image 1

Jana Irmert – Messengers (Original Soundtrack)

Posted: 15 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Superpang – 17th July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Jana Irmert’s catalogue is a body of work defined by ever-shifting focus, and her capacity to do so makes her an ideal choice for soundtrack work. Her bio features credits for receiving the German Documentary Film Music Award in 2019, and in 2021 she was nominated for an Edda Award for her sound design on Jóhann Jóhannsson’s film Last and First Men. She also created the soundtrack to Henrike Meyer’s auto-fictional hybrid documentary To Be an Extra, and this work in turn was respun to make When I Dissolve.

Portals, released last year, was an entirely different kind of soundtrack: produced entirely from field recordings made in the Amazon rainforest, it soundtracked a lived experience and captured the artist in nature, in the purest sense.

Her score for Jeffrey Zablotny’s film Messengers is different again, although does very much draw on elements of the natural world – albeit far removed from the rainforest, with the film being ‘a poetic exploration of three subterranean observatories hidden deep beneath Canada, Japan, and Antarctica’.

Sometimes, I wonder if reviewing a score independent of the film it soundtracks, and without having seen said film, is a good idea. But I would contend that the measure of any score is its ability to stand up without the visuals. And the Messengers soundtrack very much does – so much so that I find myself questioning whether to picture could possibly convey the quiet intensity of Irmirt’s score, which is designed around a vintage Yamaha Electone organ.

There’s depth and detail to the compositions here, with slow-moving analogue drones providing an earthy, organic feel throughout. ‘Dream Cabin’ shifts between atmospheres and brings together elements of light and dark, serenity and tension, playing them against and across one another. ‘Subatomic Collisions’ brings ominous echoes, unseen movements in the dark. Yes: there is something powerfully visual and sensory about this work. In places it’s dank, claustrophobic. I find myself holding my breath in suspense. With nothing to look at to guide or illustrate, the mind fills the spaces in interpreting the sound. And the imagination is always capable of inspiring a deeper fear, a deeper dread, than anything in life. I’m not talking about monsters or skeletons, although the mind will inevitably prey on your own worst fears. And largely, this is why we’re so often scared of the dark. The probability of there being a predator of some sort, or falling into a bottomless chasm are slim compared to, say, stubbing your toe or banging your head. But fumbling in the dark, perhaps along a narrow tunnel with damp walls, no-one fears a bruised toe or scraped skull. Darkness, and isolation, play into our biggest, deepest, most primal fears, because alone, in the dark, we’re at our most vulnerable.

The way Irmirt weaves the details into these pieces is incredibly subtle. There are no horror-like fear chords, no overt sense of impending doom or danger exists within the fabric of these compositions. And yet, with pieces like ‘Something is Listening’ with its reverberating clicks and shuffles and sonar-like droning pulsations, the sounds set you on edge. Note that it’s not someone, but something that’s listening. What is listening? We don’t know, because we can’t see: all we can do is sense it, and feel our paranoia swell.

There’s something almost David Attenborourgh about ‘Ultrapure’, a piece which would feel quite natural as an accompaniment to footage of jellyfish and angler fish and deep aquatic creatures moving in slow suspension – although equally it could be the slow-motion backdrop to scenes from a deep-space telescope with its tranquil images of nebulae drifting millions of light years from here and now – a sensation only accentuated by the slow tones of ‘Sleeping, Listening to the Stars in Darkness.’ Note, listening. Because as much as we think of space as silent, everything has sound. The stars are not static, but in constant flux, until they fizzle and fade or otherwise implode or swallow everything. There is both stillness and movement here: that is to say, listen closely to the stillness, and the movement will reveal itself.

Messengers is evocative, and inspires contemplation, a reflection of the contrasts between confined space and infinite space – and the similarities, in that both are dark and you will find yourself alone in that darkness with nothing but your thoughts and fears. Weaving through infinite passageways of ponderance, Irmert finally brings us to ‘Monuments to Our Questions’, and it feels as if this should offer some form of solidification to all of the abstraction which has preceded it. But like a shadow, like mist, it leaves us feeling that answers are illusory, things we tell ourselves to still the anguish rather than because we have attained conclusive knowledge. Ultimately, we know nothing, and are, and will be, forever fumbling blindly in darkness.

AA

PANG49 front

Colin Webster / Balázs Pándi / Matt Cargill – Chewed Up And Spat Out

Posted: 13 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

Raw Tonk Records – 15th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I’m late to the party with this one. Can I pretend it’s fashionably late, rather than simply tardy? I’m going to say yes, since the event actually took place in 2019 and it’s taken till now to make its way into the world, but let’s focus on the fact that this is, indeed, one hell of a party.

Chewed Up And Spat Out was recorded in a one-off session in London. Hungarian master drummer Balázs Pándi (Merzbow, Thurston Moore, Mats Gustafsson etc.) was in town for a few days and contacted saxophonist Colin Webster (Sex Swing, Dead Neanderthals etc..) who suggested adding Matt Cargill (Sly & The Family Drone) to the session on electronics. And if that lineup isn’t enough, the whole thing was recorded and mixed by Tim Cedar of Part Chimp, who knows a thing or two about noise.

We’re deep in wild jazz experimentalism here, and this is apparent from the groans and honks of saxophone which warp and drone amidst a simmering cacophony of rolling drums – not so much a rhythm as a gathering storm. The electronic elements are subtle at first, a few bleeps and twitters of treble pass here and there while a low drone hums almost subliminally on the first track, ‘To Arise from Sleep’. But the drone mutates into a thick, throbbing pulsation which gargles like a digital didgeridoo on ‘Chewed Up’, while the percussion is more subtle, predominantly manifesting as clattering rim shots initially and the sax is similarly restrained, simmering under until it finally cuts loose. At over eight and a half minutes, counterpart ‘Spat Out’ is something of an endurance test, and works backwards, starting with a crescendo before lurching stop-start blasts of noise which almost approximate a riff give way to a prolonged freeform spasm.

Not only does it have the best title, but ‘Money Shitter’ is peak freak, one of those crazed cacophonous jazz monsters that starts like its ending and ends like its starting and never goes anywhere but at the same time flies in all directions simultaneously. It sounds like unplanned, unco-ordinated chaos – and perhaps it is – but the thing to remember is that it’s supposed to sound like that, and they manage to navigate a succession of explosive crescendos interspersed with subtler, more ponderous passages, and in combination, they interrogate the interplay between the instruments, the tones, the textures, the dynamics. The final piece, ‘Blot’, sees them inspect these sonic relationships in a more granular detail, ponderously pushing through a succession of peaks and troughs for almost twelve minutes. Here, the abrasive intensity is tempered in favour of atmosphere – although the mid-point finds Webster wringing some prolonged bleats over rolling, fluid beats, building to a frenzied extended crescendo and a slow collapse.

There’s a lot of movement on Chewed Up And Spat Out, an album which conveys not only great energy, but a physicality and kineticism – which does, ultimately, leave you feeling as the title tells it. This is the good shit, and by the conclusion, it’s fair to say that from a listening perspective, it does what it says on the proverbial tin.

AA

AA

a3118698241_10

Gintas K – Sugar Noizy

Posted: 13 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

zeromoon – 1st July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Gintas K’s relentless release schedule (Discogs lists a whopping 70 albums credited to him since 1999) continues with his second album of 2026, recorded, again, live, with no overdubs, ‘using computer, midi keyboard & controller.’ And while this album contains a not insubstantial seventeen pieces, there are a fair few which are barely over a minute in duration, meaning that it clocks in at under an hour, making it significantly shorter than Merzmania, released in March, with its seventy-five minute run time.

The title implies either sweet but harsh, or the brain froth of a surfeit of sucrose. This being Gintas K, it’s actually both, simultaneously. Sugar Noizy is by no means a radical departure from the vast majority of his work over the last decade, and that’s all to the good. Arguably, he’s emerging as Lithuania’s bubbly, glitchy answer to Merzbow, in that his sound is by no means as harsh, but he very much has a distinctive sound and style.

If anything, Sugar Noizy is rather more sparse and minimal than many previous releases. ‘geras noise ss’ is constructed around subdued trills of feedback, and it has that low-key, subdued, even vaguely muffled feel of ‘Never Forget Death’ by Whitehouse’ – minus the shrill, mangled vocals – but claustrophobic, quietly intense.

As ever, Gintas K’s work sounds like circuitry collapsing into a foamy, frothy meltdown, and amidst the bubbles and bleeps, a chaotic cacophony of dripping, glooping squelches and squiggles, Sugar Noizy is a hyperactive work that’s essentially intended to overwhelm. And it does. Even when it slows to an infrequent drip, you find yourself on edge, wondering what’s next. And when it comes to ‘letas noiz zem’, the answer is a mangled morass of fractured, stuttering distortion that sounds like your speakers are breaking.

Some of the shorter ‘interlude’ tracks are truly wild: ‘minutinis’ may be a minute long, but it’s fried, a complete frenzy, and there are a lot of moments – often extremely brief – which sound watery, and slow digital darkness drips amidst the freakout of dark, digital violence as the segments and elements intersect.

Like the majority of Gintas K’s works, Sugar Noizy is a discombobulating barrage of wibbles, dribbles, whirs and buzzes, fragmented shards and dying drones, often all at the same time – making for a nice addition to his ever-expanding catalogue.

AA

a2414828424_10

Older Entries
Newer Entries