Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

History of Guns – Drug Castle / Survive the Night – short film

Posted: 5 September 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

It was in my early teens that I discovered goth, and Mick Mercer’s Gothic Rock Black Book was something of an early bible for me. Mercer has built a career on being a huge authority on the genre, and things in the post-punk sphere. So the fact that the latest release from History of Guns – a ‘maverick’ industrial act from Hertfordshire leads with a quote from Mercer, describing them as “by far, the most inventive UK band to have got their hands caught in the Industrial threshing machine,” is quite a strong sell. The strongest sell, of course, are the wares themselves, and highlighting just how unfettered by convention History of Guns are is the fact that Drug Castle isn’t just another video single, another lyric video, another ‘vizualizer’ (thank fuck). No, this is, they explain, ‘a short film for one of the more experimental parts of their latest album, Half Light, in which they take their instruments to the beach, and experiment with different audio and emotional frequencies, in an effort to contact beings from another world.’

If this sounds utterly deranged, the context counts for a lot, and to provide this, I shall quote at length:

‘Drug Castle was the nickname given to a facility in England where they used to conduct experimental, often unethical psychological procedures during the 60s and 70s. No one’s quite sure of its exact location, other than it was near the sea, and some of the sessions happened out on the beach. Different psychologists and psychiatrists could effectively book it out, and then take patients or unwitting volunteers down there for however long, and do whatever they liked. There are stories from people who received really helpful, life-changing treatment there, but it’s probably more famous for the awful horror stories and reports of extreme abuse and deaths. Apparently, there was very liberal use of experimental drugs and techniques, hence the nickname. One of the experimental treatments was called Frequency Therapy which involved using sonic frequencies to match or harmonise with emotional frequencies, which would cause a third frequency to be created which caused some quite profound healing and bizarre experiences. One survivor of a group of a group reported making contact with alien creatures.’

Sourcing information about ‘Drug Castle’ is virtually impossible, but then, that’s hardly surprising given the nature of the operation. We know that the CIA’s operation MK Ultra ran from 1953 well into the 1970s – but there’s also a lot we don’t know. This is how conspiracy theories are born – though the known existence of government conspiracies. While most of the documents relating to MK Ultra were destroyed, those which survived and were declassified, despite heavy redactions, contained staggering and truly terrifying revelations.

‘Staggering and truly terrifying’ happen to be fitting descriptors for this dark, challenging audiovisual excursion. Scaping, droning, groaning, tectonic-plate-shifting heavy industrial churns and grinding metallic noise and dissonance provide the sonic backdrop to a menacing spoken-word piece. The vocals layer upon on another and the experience grows increasingly uncomfortable. Strings swirl and build, but what may, done differently, be a soothing experience, creates nothing but tension.

The guys looks like they’re participating on some ritual as they sit, cross-legged, on a beach. That beach becomes the location of a washed-up emptiness further on, and then transition to acoustic-led neofolk-tinged darkness in the later parts of thee tune a dramatically alters the trajectory of this work. The pleasantry of the surroundings transition to unsettling territory.

It’s quite apparent that History of Guns have gone way, way deep into their excavations in shaping dark domains of Drug Castle. Dark and uncomfortable, this is remarkable art.

You can see it all here:

AA

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Rip Space – Thank These People EP

Posted: 2 September 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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28th June 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

There are many reasons I’ve long been drawn to the obscure, the underground, the DIY – and many of those same reasons are why I try, wherever possible, to use my platform to champion those acts who fall within these broad brackets. And another thing I endeavour to use my platform for is the broader topics which relate to the releases – because during my life, I’ve become acutely aware of just how personal a thing music is, both to artist and listeners.

I suppose I first really tuned into this when I was around the age of fifteen: I’d started getting into goth and alternative stuff when I was twelve or thirteen – back when the weekly singles charts and Top of the Pops rules, and the likes of Killing Joke and The Sisters of Mercy and The Mission would make incursions into these realms – and was getting into live music. None of my mates were into the same stuff, so my choices were, go on my own, or don’t go. I decided I didn’t need my mates, but I did need to see the bands. This essentially set the template for my life, taking a position of a willing outsider.

Not everyone gets to be so willing in the place they find themselves, and while Rip Space’s biographical info is sparse, there’s a clear sense that they’re here as much out of compulsion as choice, describing themselves as an ‘anonymous autistic Scottish multi instrumentalist’. They outline how ‘Thank These People is an EP inspired by the catharsis of overcoming otherisation, public humiliation and otherwise targeted acts of evil that resulted ultimately, in official diagnosis in 2021… So this EP is called Thank These People. We make lemonade from the lemons life gives us. And in ways, we can decide to be thankful for the lemons.’

It’s hard not to find this apparent level of positivity and optimism quite staggering and more than a little overwhelming, as I fight the personal urge not to frame my own experiences as, rather than ‘thank these people’, but ‘fuck these cunts’. Ripspace has already demonstrated that they’re a better, less bitter human being than I before I’ve even heard a note… And then I heard a note, and I love Ripspace all the more. Amidst a roaring blast of lurching, distorted black metal guitars and crashing percussion there’s that anguished vocal howl. This… this is the sound of rage, of fury. Thanks? Yeah, right. This is a throbbing middle finger. This is what you’re thinking, what you want to say but muzzle because you don’t want to rile your boss. Because your boss is a twat.

Thank These People contains just three songs, and has a running time of under ten minutes – meaning it would fit comfortably on a 7” in old currency (when a 7” cost a couple of quid, although I’m not about to embark on a nostalgia trip, not now of all times, when nostalgia for the time of £1 pints costs £350 a ticket).

‘The Green Ripper’ really captures the vibe of Touch & Go and Am Rep in the 90s, but with a keenly Scottish lilt, and transitions from spoken word to full metal fury in a blink. And you feel the fury as it seethes and rages and roars, a pure, splenetic outpouring. ‘Welcome to Mother Earth’ is a noise-rock math-mash thrash-frenzy, Metallica in a three-way high-speed collision with Shellac and And So I Watch You From Afar. Thank These People spits, roars, foams, burns. And I have to agree when they add that ‘also, the music video is really good.’

AA

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WALL – Brick by Brick

Posted: 1 September 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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APF Records – 30th August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Perhaps it’s because I listen to and write about a pretty broad range of music, perhaps it’s something else entirely, but sometimes, I just get buzzed by the prospect of some monster riffage. And that’s what’s promised here with WALL’s debut, Brick by Brick.

Their press write-up got me in half a sentence, describing them as ‘An instrumental 2-piece heavy fucking riff machine, built brick by brick & riff by riff by twin brothers and Desert Storm members Ryan & Elliot Cole’ and the news that ‘debut album Brick by Brick is overflowing with unashamed Iommi-worshipping, instrumental, sludge/doom metal.’

There’s some flamboyant fretwork which adds detail – and a hint of extravagance – to the tunes, but in the main, they keep things tight, with pounding percussion and pulverising, full-weight riffery dominating the album from beginning to end.

Some may balk at the absence of vocals, and listening to the big, overdriven guitar heft of the album’s thirteen tracks, most of which pish their way past four minutes, which makes for quite a long album, I did occasionally thing that some throat-ripping larynx work would be of benefit. But then, how many great albums, even great bands, have disappointed with the vocals, for whatever reason? The number of times weak vocals have let down a strong instrumental sound for me is beyond my counting, so on balance, they’re wise to stick with the instrumental duo setup instead of risk diminishing the material.

The band – and album – are appropriately-named. This is just short of an hour’s worth of relentless riffery, and it’s solid. Like, well, a wall, and heavy, like, er, bricks. These may not sound like revelatory statements, but the point is that so many bands promise the world and barely deliver more than few pebbles. WALL hammer our hard riffs, back-to-back.

‘Legion’ is almost buoyant and the intro at least offers a picked guitar line that sits with the turn of the millennium metal sound before big, thick power chords crash in, evoking the spirit of the 70s and then some. ‘Avalanche’ brings with it some busy fingerwork, something which veers toward excess on ‘The Tusk’, but is kept in check for much of the album, thankfully.

There’s not really anything that’s new on Brick by Brick, but this kind of consistent riffology is comforting in a way, and moreover, they don’t disappoint.

There are some nice, atmospheric and pleasantly musical passages to be found along the way, and they clearly understand the power of the dynamic as well as of volume. When they take things down, it reels you in, before slamming on all the pedals and blasting you away with big, big chords. A few tracks feel a bit like filler, but then again, they provide some contrast, which is never a bad thing when an album is very much centred around one specific thing, namely headbanging instrumental riffs.

There are a couple of covers, and one night question the necessity of their inclusion, particularly closing with a Black Sabbath cover (‘Electric Funeral’): the may have been wiser to cut it on the penultimate track, the massive slugger that is ‘Filthy Doner Kebabs on a Gut Full of Lager’, but maybe they just don’t know when they’ve had enough, eh? But for that, this definitely feels like an eight out of ten in terms of delivering what it sets out to.

AA

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Don’t Try – The Bible Study Group Massacre

Posted: 31 August 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Buzzhowl Records – 27th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Once again, following the release of a four-way split showcasing local talent a few months ago, Stoke proves the be the spawning ground of more off-kilter noisy noise, this time from no-wave duo Don’t Try with their second EP. As an additional point of note, and also something of a recommendation / hype point, the EP’s artwork is courtesy of Dan Holloway, of USA Nails/Eurosuite/Dead Arms fame, who worked with the band previously on their 2018 single ‘JWAFJ’. To accompany the release, Dan has also realised a video in his own inimitable style.

Like ‘JWAFJ’, their first EP, Elvis Is Dead was released in 2018, meaning it’s been a full six years since they last released anything, suggesting that on the output stakes at least, they’ve been living up to the band’s name.

Lead track ‘my grazed knee’ with its gritty yet poppy synths and urgent, determined beats isn’t actually a million miles from the sound of The Eurosuite. It reminds us of the proximity of new wave to punk, and the reasons why new wave and post-punk are essentially interchangeable terms. And while punk did, undoubtedly, spawn some great tunes (I’d perhaps contend less great bands, in that many punk acts, with a few notable exceptions like The Ruts and Adverts, produced only one or two outstanding or even memorable sings, and were unable to deliver the entirety of a solid album, let alone a career), it was post-punk where things got interesting, after things had evolved from three-chord stomps. If punk was predominantly pissed-off, railing against boredom and just off the rails, what followed explored a greater emotional range, and was more articulate, both musically and lyrically. For all its rebellion and antagonism toward conventions and norms, punk very quickly established its own conventions and norms: post-punk broke down those definitions to explore in myriad different directions, fragmenting and evolving into countless new genres.

It’s been a long time since the advent of both punk and new wave now, and in theory, any contemporary exponent of either is liable to tie themselves to certain tropes. But contemporary punk bands, more often than not, seem to be so limited in their scope, whereas many current acts who align themselves with post punk / new wave offer a broader range – even the ones who have been lazily lumped into the bracket of Joy Division imitators. I mention this as I discovered both Interpol and Editors because they were constantly being compared to Joy Division, and while I came to like both bands very much, my first reaction was dismay laced with disappointment over how unlike Joy Division either act sounded.

And so, circuitously, we arrive back with Don’t Try. ‘my grazed knee,’ as I was starting to say before I embarked on my obligatory and epic detour, is a fuzzy, low-fi keyboard-driven cut that boasts a monstrous throbber of a grindy synth bass groove that lands between Suicide and Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Nag Nag Nag.’ But it’s a lot harder, harsher, noiser, more aggressive, more antagonised. Punkier? I suppose it’s representative of the point at which that nascent industrial sound began to evolve, but there’s also a manic hardcore edge to it, which is more apparent on the harsh assault of ‘climax in the imax’. Here, everything is ratcheted up in its volume and intensity, there’s a clattering metallic snare sound that crashes like a bin lid through the song’s duration, and about two-thirds in, it sounds like someone’s started up a drill and it all suddenly goes slower and heavier and you start to feel like things are getting dark and tense. This is very much a positive, in case you’re wondering.

There’s a clear trajectory to this EP, a sonic evolution which moved forward with each track, and things turn full-on industrial on the third track, ‘ritual’, which manifests are a monstrous, relentless rhythmic pounding reminiscent of mid-80s SWANS and the heavy grind of Godflesh. The crazed, anguished vocals are howled, yelped, drawled, hinting at the manic howl of the Jesus Lizard (and so, equally, Blacklisters). After hitting what feels like a locked groove around the mid-point, everything explodes and the track – and EP – climaxes in a slamming wall of ear-blasting noise. None of it’s pretty. All of it’s good.

AA

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Beige Palace – LIVE For The Very Last Time (2016-2024)

Posted: 28 August 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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27th August 2024

Christopher Nisnibor

Just read that bio, and reflect for a moment:

Beige Palace was a band from 2016 to 2024. During that time we released two albums, an EP, a split 7" and some other miscellaneous bits. We toured the UK a bunch, we managed to play shows in France and Belgium, and we opened for some of our favourite bands like Shellac, Mclusky and Dawn of Midi. It has been lovely!

These are no small achievements. But for all of them, Leeds’ leading exponents of low-key lo-fi have been humble and kept it DIY throughout their eight-year career. Fans inevitably feel a sense of loss at the demise of any band, but as someone who was present at their first ever show and having followed their progress through the years, this feels like a particularly sad moment. It shouldn’t: the members have moved on to become Solderer, with the addition of Theo Gowans, a Leeds luminary, gig promoter, purveyor of mad noise as Territorial Gobbing, and one-time member of Thank, another of Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe’s vehicles, and of course, they’ve all received coverage here along the way.

So we shouldn’t feel sad. Instead, we should celebrate the achievements of a band who seemingly set out with no ambitions other than to make music for themselves. But still… I was in attendance at their first show, and as I documented at the time, and as I’ve mentioned in subsequent reviews, they were ace. Unassuming, a shade awkward, perhaps, but warm, human, and appealing in the way they presented their set of sparse, minimal tunes, Young Marble Giants were my first-choice reference point.

How YMG, a band whose album was released on Rough Trade and who have been the subject of a number of articles, not to mention being referenced and covered by the likes of Hole, remain obscure, I will never comprehend. But no matter: Beige Palace picked up their baton and, er, hid it under the settee.

In contrast to the wildly flamboyant dayglo-sporting Thank, Beige Palace were always the introspective, introverted musical counterpart who hung back, heads down as they looked at their shoes. Beige Palace’s successes happened almost in spite of the band themselves. That’s no criticism. They were a great live band, and they released some great music, too. I’m reminded of one of the other great DIY Leeds – via Bradford – bands, That Fucking Tank, who bookended their career with recordings of their first and last shows. Without the documents, the events would be but myths and legends.

This looks like being the first of two retrospective releases, and as a recording of their last live show – which neatly bookends my experience of the band, having attended their first – makes my case about the quality of their performances.

LIVE For The Very Last Time (2016-2024) presents a career-spanning set, with opener ‘Mum, Tell Him’, ‘Dr Thingy’, and ‘Illegal Backflip’ representing their 2019 debut album, Leg, and a fair few cuts from Making Sounds for Andy packing out a varied set, which culminates in single ‘Waterloo Sublet’.

But there are a handful of unreleased songs here, too: like Thank, Beige Palace were always focused on the next project, the next release, and as the very naming of ‘Waterloo Sublet’ illustrates, irreverence was their thing. ‘Local Sandwich’ is a perfect illustration of their quirky irreverence, as Vinehill-Cliffe rants about, yes, a local sandwich shop.

LIVE For The Very Last Time (2016-2024) captures everything that was great about this trio. Awkward, honest, slightly disconnected between-song chat is integral to the experience, and there’s plenty of that – including comments on someone’s wind – on this warts-and-all, as-it-happened recording, captured in Leeds in the intimate but awesome grassroots venue, Wharf Chambers, where the sound is always good – and loud – the audiences are friendly, and the beer is cheap.

There are no overdubs, there’s no polish or pretence, and LIVE For The Very Last Time (2016-2024) is all the better for the fact. The mix isn’t always balanced – the vocals are half-buried and times and the guitars are way loud at times, but what you get is a feel for being in the room.

The music is gloriously wonky, skewed, angular math-rock with some valiant forays into noise. The vocals and guitar both veer wide of melody; it’s the lumbering, loping, rhythm section that keeps everything together: without them, it would be a complete disaster. But this is how some bands work, and Beight Palace always sounded like a band on the brink of falling apart, in the same way Trumans Water always sounded like they may or may not make it to the end of the song as they jerk and jolt their way through waves of chaos.

‘Update Hello Blue Bag Black Bag’ which lands mid-set making its debut and final appearance is unexpectedly evocative, and the eleven-and-a-half-minute ‘Dinner Practice’, also unreleased, hints at the trajectory they might have taken on their next album.

Beige Palace were never going to be huge: they were cut out for cult fandom, and comfortable with that, being one of those bands who made music for fun first and foremost. It’s the sense of fun that come across here. Even in the most downtempo songs, what comes across is that they’re enjoying playing. They will be missed, but we look forward to their next incarnation.

AA

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Los Saints – Certified

Posted: 27 August 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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ENCI Records

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s taken me a while to get around to this one. It happens, and happens often: I’m simply overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of new – and exciting – releases that land with me on a daily basis. Of all the things to be overwhelmed by (and I will confess that I often find myself overwhelmed by many other things, too, from parenting challenges to DIY, budgeting and the prospect of driving to the supermarket), I do realise that I’m extremely fortunate. But there’s a specific reason I’ve selected this album to post a review of today. Why today? For those who live in a vacuum – and at this moment, I truly envy you – today is the day Oasis announced their reunion and a fourteen-date UK tour. ‘The news the world has been waiting for’, people frothed on FaceBook. Fuck me: judging by the reaction and the blanket press coverage, you’d think world peace and a handout of million quid for every person on the planet had just been announced simultaneously. But no. Just a couple of gobshites have decided that for a few hundred million quid they can bare to be in one another’s presence for a bit. It’s not even looking like it’s the full or original band reuniting.

For many, Oasis were, and remain, the best band on the planet in the whole of history. For anyone with ears, they were purveyors of lumpen, lifeless, plodding, derivative pub rock. A great many of the people who are going absolutely fucking apeshit at the news are broadly in my demographic, who were in their twenties in the nineties, and who, on hitting thirty, found their cultural clock stalled, and they’ve spent the last twenty years or so bemoaning the fact that there’s no been any decent new music since the 90s and how they miss Chris Evans and TFI Friday.

Just as age tends to have a correspondence with increasing political conservatism, so the same is true of musical tastes. It’s why parents of every generation gripe about the music their kids listen to and dismiss it as being shite, without appreciating that they’re not supposed to like or even understand it, because they’re not the target audience. Do I get K-Pop? No, no more than Skibidi Toilet makes any sense or provides any amusement to me. It would be weird if I was down with the kids at the age of 48, and my daughter would likely find me even more embarrassing if I was than being the dinosaur she perceives me as. BUT – and it’s a massive but, a but so massive Sir Mix-A-Lot would die for, that doesn’t mean that there’s no new music of interest any more.

Certified, the debut album by San Diego-based Los Saints, is a perfect illustration of this fact. They describe themselves as an alternative rock band. Various other sources, in their coverage, have referred to them as showcasing a ‘bold indie rock sound’, ‘indie’, and even ‘Chula Vista’s version of Cage the Elephant’, alongside numerous comparisons to The Strokes. I’m not a fan of either The Strokes or Cage the Elephant, but that’s beside the point: both of these acts have produced music far more exciting than anything Oasis mustered during their career spent serving up half-baked bollocks and right now, in the present, amidst the endless wanking over the announcement that after fifteen years a couple of overrated has-beens are going to reheat their tedious, tepid stodge in the name of nostalgia and the interest of payola, we have Los Saints giving us Certified.

There are rib-rattling basslines aplenty, which give the songs – which tend to be on the shorter side, with only a couple of the album’s ten tracks running over three and a half minutes – a really beefy sound and a certain dynamism, an urgency (the likes of which you’ll hardly ever find in an Oasis song). Lead single ‘Faded’, which kick-starts the album with a lively two-minute stomp not only gets things off to a cracking start, but sets the tone, too – dreamy, slightly fuzzy, psychedelic vocals and mellow guitars contrast with the stonking rhythm section, and if anything, ‘Where We Goin’, which follows it is even better, and then again, the punky, poppy, melodic guitar driven indie of ‘Hard’, which lands perfectly between Asylums and Pixies. Even if the rest of the album was shit, after this opening run, you wouldn’t grumble. But no, they keep on delivering joyous tunes with the grungy pop nouse of DZ Deathrays crossed with the driving tones of Darklands era Jesus and Mary Chain and a dash of A Place to Bury Strangers. The title track pairs a nagging guitar with another chunky-as-anything bass before blasting into a breezy but sturdy chorus, and there simply isn’t a dud here.

The production isn’t overly polished, giving the album a live-sounding energy, and this only enhances its appeal, because you feel the band are really in the music, feeling the playing of the songs. Yes, some of the touchstones may be from some mythical golden era – as identified by people of a certain age – but Los Saints show that they can write songs – rather than rip them off – and deliver them with a contagious vibrance.

Bollocks to nostalgia: Certified is proof that not only is there some great new music around, but that a lot of stuff that’s held up as being ‘classic’ is objectively underwhelming and its status is tied to a period in time – and popularity is no measure of anything other than popularity itself – or, more probably, good marketing.

AA

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Dallas Kent – Ghost Highway

Posted: 26 August 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Slaughterback – 22nd August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Dallas Kent might sound like a fictional cowboy, or possibly a made-up American town in a made-up state, but it’s actually the name bestowed upon the collaboration between London-based composer/producer Ian Williams (originally from Canterbury, Kent) and singer Crystal Brown (from Dallas, Texas). In that context, the moniker makes sense, of course.

As their bio explains, ‘It started in the late 2010s when Williams was looking for a singer to work with on some of his dark electronic pop songs, with Brown happening to live one street away from his studio in Hackney, East London… They swiftly recorded a considerable amount of material, but had to shelve the project when Brown relocated to the USA. The duo continued to discuss their options until finally, with Crystal settled in San Francisco and the pandemic giving everyone time to pause their normal lives, they decided to complete what they had begun so many years before.’

There’s no question that the pandemic changed a lot, if not, in some ways, everything. While many suffered with extreme alienation and the traumas of isolation and separation, it also forced a realisation of what was achievable, creatively, despite separation, and proved that the idea that ‘distance is no object’, which had long been embedded within the channels opened by The Internet was not merely a concept, but something which was more than simply a conceptual matter.

I suppose I realised this around the turn of the millennium, when I experienced something akin to a lockdown situation of sorts, albeit for very different reasons. I had relocated to Glasgow around Easter 2000 under difficult personal circumstances. I didn’t really know anyone. I was yet to make friends in my new job there. And I was so fucking broke I could barely afford to eat – a situation not particularly conducive to socialising and building new friendships. A friend I had known in York, who had subsequently moved to Sheffield, introduced me to Hole’s chatroom, and, stuck at home and unable to sleep, I found myself spending my nights online chatting to people from around the world at all hours, at least until, with dial-up Internet costing a penning a minute, I racked up a phone bill I couldn’t pay, and had my phone cut off. Then along came MySpace, and again, the possibilities for communication and collaboration across continents were immediately apparent. People who missed the age of the chatroom and MySpace were perhaps less predisposed to these potentialities, and consequently, the pandemic lockdowns hit them harder: they had to learn these things anew.

Anyway. This single entitled ‘Ghost Highway’, which, their bio tells us, ‘is redolent of Massive Attack and Ennio Morricone’ is the first fruits of their collaboration, ahead of ‘a full album that promises to be a mash-up of cinematic downtempo sounds, Americana, French disco and anything else they can throw into the mix.’

‘Ghost Higheway’ is very much a spacious trip-hop-influenced piece, with haunting vocals and a thick, dubby bass rolling low under a slow, deliberate, nod-along beat. Its magnificence lies in its sparse simplicity, and the fact it’s over almost as soon as it begins, and you find yourself yearning to delve deeper, to keep moving into this atmospheric world they’re presenting… it’s like the opening pages of mysterious, mystical novel, drawing you in and then…

The accompanying video is similarly compelling but without resolution: they describe it as ‘David Lynch-ian’ and explain how it was ‘filmed by Brown on her phone before being edited as psychedelically as possible by Williams.’

That they’ve kept this all in -house and simple and delivered something so compelling, so strong, is testament to their imagination and capacity for innovation, proving just how much can be achieved with minimal tech and over distance, given the drive and determination.

AA

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DALLAS KENT | Crystal Brown (photo by Ian Williams) & Ian Williams (photo by Damien de Blinkk)

PIG – Sinsation (Remastered)

Posted: 24 August 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Metropolis Records – 23rd August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Even at their commercial peak, PIG releases weren’t all that easy to come by, at least here in the UK, despite some of them being on big labels with big distribution. PIG – the project of London-born Raymond Watts – is an act which can legitimately claim to be big in Japan while largely unknown at home.

My own first encounter was seeing them support Nine Inch Nails on The Downward Spiral Tour in Wolverhampton in 1994. I was in the middle of my A-level exams, but no way was I going to miss NIN. I didn’t even know who the support were, but witnessing the heavy grind of PIG, with pigs’ heads on poles at the sides of the stage, as their lanky singer writhed his way through a gritty set was an absolute revelation. The set’s opening song stuck with me, but it was some years before I would actually source a copy of Red Raw and Sore, on this new site called eBay. The debut album, A Poke in the Eye…. With a Sharp Stick and the ‘Sick City’ 12” were fairly easy to find at record fairs around 1994, as Wax Trax! vinyl was available in abundance, and often cheaply, too, but anything else? Pretty much impossible to find. And so it was that PIG felt like a near-mythical act, and despite having played these big shows with NIN, still no-one was really aware of them.

Sinsation was released first in Japan in 1995, and a year later in the US, and on learning of its existence, I got my local record shop to order it in, but had to wait literally months for it to arrive on import. Oh, but it was worth the wait. It delivered all of the theatrical pomp that defined A Stroll in the Pork, but cranked up the dirty industrial guitars and found Raymond Watts in top form with his extravagant wordplay. In short, it reset the bar, not just for PIG, but for what ‘industrial’ music could be. This wasn’t just hard and heavy, but also playful, witty, intelligent, and still dark, seething.

The cover alone is striking. Watts’ image is a standard feature on all PIG releases, but whereas more often than not he is depicted looking buff or brooding, the sickly green hue is unsettling – and slamming in with a series of orchestral strikes and a low, grumbling bass before hitting full-on industrial anthem mode on the first track, the six-minute ‘Serial Killer Thriller’ (the chorus of which provides the album’s title), it’s immediately apparent that Sinsation is something special (and not something sad…).

Admittedly, despite this being an album I’ve played to death over the last thirty years, apart from a few tracks being a few seconds different in their duration, I can’t discern any huge differences between this remastered version and the original: there are, perhaps, more details revealed in the mix, but then, the production on the original was impressive, and again, I’ll come back to that word, ‘detail’. There’s a lot happening; samples, snippets of bits and bobs, strings, multi-layered vocals… A touring member of Foetus early in his career, with JG Thirlwell involved in the early singles and debut album, Watts clearly learned much from Thirlwell, as well as his early involvement with KMFDM. Sinsation felt like the point at which he brought these two aspects together in perfect balance while simultaneously realising his own unique sonic vision. The result was a set of hefty, driving songs, exploding with ideas and noise, and so many layers, so much going off all over the place. It was bold, audacious, and while it’s easy enough to say that it’s a bit Foetus, a bit KMFDM, it goers so far beyond these points that comparisons are a diminishment of Watt’s achievements here.

Sinsation is certainly the first PIG album to showcase the full range of styles and compositional aspects Watts has in his locker, and as such, represents something of a creative peak.

While nominal single ‘Painiac’ (an early version of which was the lead track on a Japanese-only EP, and a video for which got a few spins on MTV on the album’s release) is a throbbing industrial beast of a tune, ‘Golgotha’ is a dark, semi-ambient interlude which sits between the driving snarl of ‘Hamstring on the Highway’ and the swaggering industrial-strength glam-tinged gospel-infused dark pop of ‘The Sick’, which would provide the blueprint for the PIG renaissance which started with The Gospel in 2016. ‘Analgesia’ is a magnificently atmospheric piano-led instrumental which incorporates elements of ambient and electronica and extraneous noise ‘Volcano’ is serpentine and sleazy, with some audacious orchestral work in the mid-section which take the bombast of Foetus’ Nail to another level, while ‘Hot Hole’ drives hard and heavy with pulsating electronics colliding with hefty chugging guitars and ferocious beats.

For the many who likely missed this the first time, this re-release provides the opportunity to make acquaintance with one of the definitive PIG albums, and for those already familiar, it’s a timely reminder of the incredible journey that has been PIG’s career to date, while offering the first chance to get it on vinyl. Almost thirty years on from its first release, Sinsation still sounds phenomenal – insanely ambitious, utterly deranged, and in a league of its own, quite unlike anything else before or since, even within the PIG catalogue.

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Eville – Blood

Posted: 23 August 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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23rd August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

I’ve been enthusing over Eville for a while now. This is no small thing: in the main, I’m not really big into Nu-Metal. Back in the late 90s, the emergence of Limp Bizkit and KORN didn’t so much leave me cold as cause me to wilt inside, and as time progressed, the emergence of more, ever lamer and more cliché exponents of the genre pushed me deeper into the realms of despondency. Anyone who’s read anything I’ve written over the last decade will know that I’m not one of those middle-aged sad-sacks who bemoans the fact that there hasn’t been any new music worth listening to released since I turned 30. I’m not frozen in time, and I don’t believe that any genre is completely and irredeemably shit. Even Nu-Metal.

Eville are a case in point. One reason Nu-Metal was shit back in the day is because it was so overtly the domain of white blokes. So the prospect of a female-fronted Nu-Metal band changes things for a start, and having seen this ad recently, I have witnessed first-hand their capacity to whip up a frenzy.

And ‘Blood’ sure whips up a frenzy alright. It captures Eville at their absolute best: massive, slugging guitar riffs that punish, and hard, on every level, paired with poppy autotuned vocals and keen, earworm melodies. ‘Blood’ strikes the perfect balance between gut-punching riffage and strong melodic tunage. It does not get better than this, and you really need Eville in your life.

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Zimoun – Dust Resonance

Posted: 23 August 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 – 6th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

For an album that’s based solely on the sounds of the guitar, Dust Resonance sounds distinctly unlike a guitar album. As the title, Dust Resonance, suggests, this is a work of extended, drifting drones, a set that’s predominantly ambient in nature.

But as Norman Westberg’s recent solo releases – also released on ROOM40 – have demonstrated, it is quite possible to take the guitar into this territory, and to create expansive, subterranean drones with just six strings and some distortion pedals, and perhaps some reverb thrown in.

As Zimoun himself explains, he was interested in the guitar as a sound source for some time and have explored it on previous editions including Guitar Studies I-III. “On this work,” he says, “I’ve experimented with different methods and materials, specifically a Magnatone tube amplifier from the 1960s, and various speaker membranes covered with dust, soil, or small stones. The friction of these materials on the vibrating speaker membranes produced slight distortions and irregularities in the sounds, alongside the warm tube tones of the vintage amp.”

As such, the dust is rather more literal than metaphorical here, but the title and the substance of the sound presents a work that functions on multiple levels, with the connotations of dust settling as time elapses and the idea of dust and drones hazing together working alongside the physical interference of organic material with the mechanics of the recording process.

Zimoun’s approach, then, like Westberg’s, is similarly simple and sparse, but at the same time, adds an edge of experimentalism which is quite unique. The addition of materials to create friction and alter the texture of his guitar may take its cues from the ‘prepared piano’ pioneered by John Cage and taken forward as a career choice by Reinhold Friedl. I can’t think of so many examples of the guitar being twisted and mangled in such a way, or an artist taking such an organic, earthy approach to breaking down the fundamentals of the sound of their instrument of choice. It does, however, create the context for an album which features nine dronescapes which creep into one another to forge a continuous hum, scratching, scraping, quite literal earthworks. The thought of earthworks draws me to a place where I find myself reflecting on hut circles, tumuli, and the landscape of the iron age, something I was fascinated by in my early teens and have once again become drawn to having resumed, after a lengthy period, walking moorlands and studying the details of OS maps. And so it’s purple-hued heather-covered moors and outdoor expanses which occupy my mind as I listen to this, a work which evokes similarly vast and barren spaces.

The album contains nine numbered pieces, which hover low and heavy and segue into one another to create one single, monolithic work, and one of immense density. The colossal ‘DR Part 2’, which grinds on for almost nine minutes is exemplary.

I recently wrote on the experience of listening to the instrumental ambient release Ambient Short Stories by Bistro Boy, which slotted firmly into the ‘background’ ambient slot: soft, gentle, undemanding. This is most definitely not background: the dense, buzzing tones and uncomfortable frequencies of Dust Resonance place it firmly in the foreground. It’s impossible to settle back and let this drift over as you yawn and slowly relax into a space of tranquillity. Dust Resonance makes you squirm, sends tension down your spine. Throughout, there is a sense of unease, discomfort, of wrong, which rumbles in the guts.

Dust Resonance is a work which, beneath its smooth surface ambience, is grinding, rough-hewn, slow, and dragging, with billows of cloud accompanying the low-level churn. Something about this, paired with the slow-building spin, starts to feel a shade disorienting. You might sleep, but you may not sleep comfortably.

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