Archive for the ‘Singles and EPs’ Category

The fin. – Deepest Ocean

Posted: 24 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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22nd January 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

Penned in 2018 as a reaction to the effects of constant touring and international travel, and the sense of groundlessness it brought, ‘Deepest Ocean’ is the third single to be lifted from The fin.’s upcoming album. It finds the Japanese duo, consisting of Yuto Uchino and Kaoru Nakazawa in a reflective mood, and immersing themselves in some deep retro synth tones that truckle and weave over a slow grooving bassline.

It’s got a kind of vaguely funky vibe that’s a bit prog, a bit electrop, a bit 80s and a bit lounge. And even a bit disco: the clean guitar that nags away, coupled with the soft-focus production reminds me for some reason I can’t entirely pinpoint of Imagination (specifically ‘Body Talk’) and I really can’t decide if this is a good thing or not.

I mean, it’s certainly got a hook, and a strangely sultry atmosphere that’s not so much sleazy as semi-soporific in a smoky, opiate way, but it’s also a bit soft and wet, a shade limp in its smooth slickness. So where does this leave us? Clean, vibrant synths run ascending and descending runs, and things layer up deep, and fast over a metronomic key stab and backed-off beat.

I suppose it’s a matter of taste, and I’m flapping to and fro like a fish out f water wondering if I’ll get sold or left to rot, caring not one iota if I’m a British fish or not. It’s proficient musically, and on all technical levels from the composition, arrangement., performance and production, ‘Deepest Ocean’ is genuinely impressive, and conveys a sense of fuzziness, of being at all sea. But ultimately I feel the unsettling emptiness of transient entertainment and instant gratification which lies at the heart of the song’s inspiration becomes something of a self-made outcome, and that its success is also its failure: in embodying the sensation it’s intended to convey, it recreates the experience of that emptiness, that sense of hollowness and an absence of soul.

Guy Andrews – Kevin Drumm Transmogrifications

Posted: 23 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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Houndstooth Records – 22nd January 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

‘Transmogrifications’ features a brace of compositions by Guy Andrews reworked, reimagined, decomposed – spin it whichever way – by seminal experimental musician Kevin Drumm, with one from Permanence (which was released in September) and another from his latest, [MT][NT][ET]. Back in the day, this would have been a 12” single, or a CD single / EP. Now, it’s simply a release. Part of me feels that the devolvement – and dissolvement – of the physical format is sad not because of plain nostalgia, but because of the way it’s altered our relationship with music. The release of new music, when it required actually going into town to purchase it, arriving home with a sense of excitement and anticipation to hear something that had required not only the effort of the journey, but the outlay of actual cash, meant that there was an element of deliberation involved in each purchase: you’ve got a tenner (and there was a time not SO long ago when that would likely get you three new 12” singles at £2.99 – £3.50 apiece), and dropping the needle on each was an actual event. The loss of that sense of occasion, that event, is significant, and one that struck me unexpectedly on hearing this. As excited as I was to hear it, the joy was tempered by a certain pang of loss.

Drumm explains the remit he was given, which directed his approach to the project, recounting that “Guy essentially said that he’d rather not hear his own music played back to him…So with that in mind, it freed me up to drastically transform his material…it was a good experience taking something that is quite different than what I usually get up to and turn it into something different than what it is in its original form.” And the title says it all, really: ‘transmogrification’ is defined as the process of complete and usually extreme or grotesque change from one state or form to another.

Each track is an entire album, compressed, condensed, and generally reworked and altered beyond recognition.

And so it is that ‘[MT][NT][ET]’ is seven-and-three-quarter minutes of deep, swirling ambience, a deep mass of sound that eddies and drifts with a drilling metallic edge giving it a slightly uncomfortable sharpness. While it’s a more or less even drone, there are occasional – subtle – dips and twists that add to the understated but quite definite tension. And yet for all that, there is an overall sense of calm, a smoothness, until near the end, when its rich, space-like tranquillity is devasted by a rising blast of extraneous noise.

‘Permanence’ offers a different kind of experience, it’s more deeply textured, and a slower, lower simmering fermentation of sound. It also boils the thirty-two minute album down to eight minutes of overlapping sonic layers. Glistering shards of feedback are worn smooth in a soft wash of pink noise and an undulating amorphous cloud of noise, beneath which a grating sonic wreckage churns at such distance as to be almost subliminal.

And then it stops. Just like that. The abrupt nature of the ending is of note, accentuating the silence that follows immediately, and giving a tangible pause for thought on a release that has a lot more depth than the surface first suggests.

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National Service – Last January

Posted: 20 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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29th January 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

My wife detests The Twilight Sad. I love The Twilight Sad, and am prone to crying at their gigs. I’ve also been called a cunt online for suggesting the intensity of their shows may be akin to witnessing Joy Division at their peak (a suggestion I still stand by: James Graham is capable of conveying a rare emotional intensity in his performances that’s compelling, and at times, borders on the disturbing). They’re a band that are divisive beyond Marmite, but elicit a level of devotion from their fans that’s truly fervent.

When it comes to covering a band that inspire such passion, it’s a big, big challenge, and a huge risk – one of those moves that could be absolute fucking suicide, or inspire career-defining awe.

The last time I wrote about National Service, a four-piece band consisting of Fintan Campbell (vocals/guitar), Daniel Hipkin (bass/vocals), Iain Kelly (guitar/vocals) and Matthew Alston (drums) back in November on the release of ‘Caving’, I actually compared them to The Twilight Sad, so this feels like a much a test of my skills as theirs – and it’s perhaps worth noting that this is the last in a series of cover releases from Fierce Panda, which has also featured Moon Panda, Desperate Journalist, and China |Bears.

Now, you should never mess with perfection, but with their glacial, stripped-back, minimalist take on the song, National Service really capture the wintery melancholy of the original. The dark beauty of the lyrics, which blend sadness with a certain distanced, twisted psychopathy is conveyed with a sincerity that transcends the ethereal atmosphere.

The absence of the soaring finale may come as something of an anticlimax, but this is a well-conceived and magnificently-executed cover, and the distinctive, even slightly unusual vocals delivery, with a certain twang on the higher notes, are well-suited to the song, stamping a unique marker on it while accentuating the multifaceted layers embedded within the song’s dark spirit.

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Single cover

Yur Mum – Black Rainbow

Posted: 18 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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18th January 2021

Yur Mum’s reputation as a hard-gigging and particularly outstanding live act is one that’s been key to their building the fanbase they have. However, the question of how they will continue to deliver live since being reduced to a two-piece is somewhat moot under the present circumstances. That said, on the strength of this outing, being stripped back to a bass / drum combo suits them remarkably well.

The third Monday in January is widely believed to be the most depressing day of the year, and has come to be known as Blue Monday – and it’s for this reason the pair elected to unveil the release today, rather than on Friday, the day that’s come to be established as the ‘standard’ day for releases. Your Mum is rebellious and unconventional like that.

It’s the heavy-duty, gut-punching bass that dominates and drives this mid-tempo goth-tinged hard rock lurcher of a single that comes as a preface to their forthcoming album, Tropical Fuzz. It’s not depressing per se – there’s far too much energy and dynamic action going on here for that – but make no mistake., it is pretty heavy and pretty dark, and certainly a departure from their usual riff-churning grungy bangers, although the trajectory from ‘What Do You Want From Me’ and the rest of the Ellipsis EP is an easy one to chart.

There’s an almost mystical / occult vibe to this dense brooder of a tune, which feels far more expansive and epic than its four-and-a-half-minute running time. More Sabbath than Nirvana, it might not lighten the mood much, but it is the perfect soundtrack by which to channel that bleak angst and the hard, slow emptiness of cold, heavy days without light. It’s no vitamin D booster, but it is exactly what you need right now.

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Watch: ‘Prove It’ by Divide and Dissolve

Posted: 7 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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Multidimensional duo Divide and Dissolve share the video for “Prove It”, originally released as a stand alone single in 2019, and appearing on their forthcoming album Gas Lit (Invada, 29th Jan).

The visual expression of Divide and Dissolve’s message has varied across each of their music videos to date (revisit “We Are Really Worried About You” and “Denial”) but the intention of the music remains unchanged: to undermine and destroy the white supremacist colonial framework and to fight for Indigenous Sovereignty, Black and Indigenous Liberation, Water, Earth, and Indigenous land given back.

About this latest single, Divide and Dissolve explains, “Prove It – calls into question the need to prove you experienced something. If someone wasn’t there to witness it, it still happened and may have caused harm. Colonial power structures, power dynamics, and societal expectations rely on Black, Indigenous, and people of colour being Gas Lit and denying our experiences, because the predominant white supremacist narrative demands us to. When a tree falls in the forest, it has fallen. Prove It is about the acceptance of experiences of pain without expectation.”

Watch ‘Prove It’ here:

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IsoPHeX – Doppelgänger

Posted: 5 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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Cae Gwyn Records – 22nd January 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s dark. It’s winter. We’re in lockdown – again / still. Whatever cheer Christmas and the prospect of new year brought – and let’s face it more than cheer, it was a flicker of false hope, or worse still, a diminutive moment of delusional hope – has faded with the return to work (from home) and (home) schooling and the prospect of socialising, pubs, and gigs but a snuffed candle for the foreseeable, meaning that the jaunty Christmas tunes that assailed us last month can well and truly delete themselves while we get back to reality.

‘Doppelgänger’, the debut single from IsoPHeX, aka 19-year-old Cian Owen from Anglesey, it pitched as ‘brooding electronica of the highest order’, and it fits the bill and no mistake.

If you’re expecting – or wanting – more dark ambient, you’ll likely be disappointed, although ‘Doppelgänger’ brings atmosphere in spades, and one that’s cold and dark.

It may only be three minutes an eighteen seconds in duration, but ‘Doppelgänger’ melds an array of styles, incorporating hip-hop and sparse electro to create something that’s simultaneously bleak and dynamic, as chilly synths wrapped like mist around a hectic beat: uptempo hip-hop or downtempo drum ‘n’ bass? Who cares? Despite the urgent pace of the stammering rhythm, ‘Doppelgänger’ is sparse, minimal, and edgy, a twitchy trip through dark alleyways at night, tense and paranoid. Is there something there? Or is it all in your head? Keep one eye over your shoulder. Keep moving. Trust no-one. Apart from me, of course, when I tell you this is a killer tune.

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Karen Haglof – Devastation Completed

Posted: 4 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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1st January 2021

James Wells

After many years out of music – mostly to pursue medical school and a career as an oncologist, Karen Haglof, former luminary of the New York scene and also a member of Band of Susans among others, made her return just a few years ago, and has seen her release a flurry of new material. Making up for lost time, Haglof looks like an artist rejuvenated and energised, and what we’ve heard to date sounds like it too.

Kicking off the new year with new song, ‘Devastation Competed’ is the first of several tracks she’ll be releasing in 2021, and while featuring a host of musicians and instruments, including CP Roth on bass, piano, Hammond organ and percussion and Mitch Easter on Moog, the end result is stripped-back but solid sounding.

Less is more, for sure.

‘Devastation Completed’ is a reflection on the present, but also a call to unity and hints at optimism. It’s been a hard year / no-one would argue that’, she sings by way of an opening, with a chunky bass cranked up and booming fuzz on a rootsy blues riff. It’s simple, repetitive, and ends with an explosion. Right now I wish it would, but meanwhile, this is a great head-nodder of a tune.

Ben Wood & The Bad Ideas – Soho

Posted: 3 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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31st December 2020

London-based alt-rock quartet Ben Wood & The Bad Ideas have certainly been keeping busy, and ‘Soho’, released on new years’ eve, is their twelfth – and understandably final – single release of 2020.

There have seen various debates as to the sagacity of releasing a single a month over an album with attendant singles, not least of all around the logistics of promotion (with many suggesting it’s easier to promote an ‘event’ like an album release and building up said release and marketing it with singles rather than the singles being the event in themselves, but 2020 has undoubtedly seen a shift in how music is consumed.

Attentions spans are different and while everyone needs something to look forward, the future always seems to be a distant horizon: in this context, a monthly delivery and a more frequent level of engagement feels ‘right’ somehow, fostering a much-needed sense of community and sustained contact.

With Wood and co inviting comparisons from across a broad range of touchstones spanning The Gaslight Anthem and Arctic Monkeys to Elvis Costello & The Attractions and The Associates, ‘Soho’ is a quintessential indie tune with jangling guitars pinned to a tight rhythm section. It’s not just a Smiths meets Wedding Present throwback stylistically, but a song that captures the essence of classic indie rock tunes of yesteryear, merging boy-meets-girl with kitchen sink drama while throwing in appreciative references to Marianne Faithful. It does very much call to mind the time when Morrissey was someone who wrote relatable songs, before he became quite explicitly an embarrassing racist bellend who rendered is entire back-catalogue unlistenable. More than we hate it when our friends become successful, we hate it when our heroes reveal themselves to be vile, obnoxious pricks.

Ben shows no such indications, thankfully, and ‘Soho’ is an accessible, melodic slice of clean indie pop. It’s accompanied by a video that sees Ben wandering the streets of London, and seeing them bereft of people is strange, unreal almost. There is traffic, busses and bicycles, but benches are empty and the Eye is static.

This, of course, is the world in which we find ourselves, and in counterpointing a song which very much centres around the ordinary, the everyday, with the extraordinary times of the now, Ben Wood presents a striking statement that’s very much a summary of 2020.

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Ben Wood _ The Bad Ideas - Soho Cover

Locked In – Not Yet Dead

Posted: 28 December 2020 in Singles and EPs
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Epidemic Records – 25th December 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

The timing couldn’t really be much better for an Italian hardcore act going by the name of Locked In, and it’s not much of a challenge to deduce the inspiration for their return to making music after a seven-year break.

According to their bio, ‘Locked In were quite active between 2007 and 2013 and played Italy and Europe extensively before coming to a full stop. Locked In were quite active between 2007 and 2013 and played Italy and Europe extensively before coming to a full stop.’

Or perhaps it was more of a semi-colon, since this digital five-tracker is scheduled to be followed by another EP some time next year. The prospect of ‘next year’ reminds me that while 2020 has oftentimes felt apocalyptic, like the end of days, the end of time, like a full stop on life, it is, and will be, ultimately, no more than a pause or semi-colon in the grand scheme of things. Meanwhile, there’s plenty to be enraged about, and while the lyrics may be entirely indecipherable, there’s nothing like some fast and furious hardcore punk to purge any pent-up fury and to channel any conflicting, confusing or otherwise unplaced emotions.

With the five tracks on offer here each sitting around the three-minute mark, the whole set is dispatched in around fifteen minutes, and it’s pretty primitive and raw: the guitars are played hard and fast, and while the playing of all the instruments is tight enough, the lack of production and definition on said guitars means they’re blurry enough to mask any blurriness; likewise the drumming give precedence to pace over precision, and that’s all exactly as it should be.

‘Coz I Can’ is essentially a statement of intent by way of an opener: in the face of growing state controls, surveillance, and restrictions that extend far beyond virus control on the part of many governments, we need some ‘fuck you’ punk attitude right now, and it seems Locked In are one a band willing to bring it, and do it in the time-honoured fashion of shouting it loud and cranking everything up to eleven. And yes, the faster the better. The adage that you should live every moment like it could be your last is one that very much applies to hardcore in general, and these guys run with it here, cramming in seven missed years of anger into an explosive package. The title says it all, really: they may be dead tomorrow, but they’re not dead yet and are going to make the absolute fucking most of it.

Lead single ‘Dying City’ is likely self-explanatory on the basis of the title, and likely encapsulates the experience of living in Italy at the peak of the pandemic. Here, our perception of Italy has been coloured by a combination of alarming statistics and footage of people singing from their balconies, presenting a narrative of a nation gripped by a sweeping pandemic but ultimately coming together as a community, an ultimately heartwarming and uplifting representation of unity and human warmth. Over here, in England, if only we could be like Italy, as our government praise our grit and community spirit and our NHS heroes… and so we evoke the spirit of wartime community and support as the nation takes to the street to clap ad band pots and pans to say thank you to our national treasures… and we know it’s all bollocks. This isn’t the war, this isn’t the black death, and this is a nation divided, between people who don’t give a shit and would climb over one another and batter one another with crutches to grab the last packet of pasta in the supermarket. This is the reality, and Locked in deliver the soundtrack.

There’s a moment about twenty seconds from the end of ‘No Faith’ where the bass booms and threatens to engulf everything else in the mix: it’s an incredible moment, a proper sonic punch in the guts of the kind that only comes through chance and a lack of time and polish. No pretence, no pissing about: this is the real deal, and one hell of a Christmas present.

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Various Artists – Dret sampler

Posted: 24 December 2020 in Singles and EPs
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Dret Skivor – 21st December 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

Initially, this review was to open with the line ‘Dave Procter, the man with more musical projects than the devil has names, has been rather quiet of late’ – but the northern noisemonger doesn’t really do quiet, and doesn’t really do fallow periods either. Procter’s full-time relocation to Sweden from Leeds may mean, sadly, that some of the acts he’s involved with – most obviously The Wharf Street Galaxy Band – are on hiatus, but wherever he goes, he makes noise – quite literally, as demonstrated by his ‘noise walks’. Not that ‘hiatus’ really means anything with lockdown putting paid to so much musical activity anyway. It’s a shame, because Dave’s myriad projects tend to be geared to a live setting – improvised, visceral, and loud. On a personal level, I miss his presence on the scene: a man as comfortable in a pig’s head and lab coat as a red boiler suit, it’s his understanding and acceptance of niche I value almost as much as the noise he makes: no audience? No problem. And so with live performances largely off the table, Proctor’s started out establishing his space in Sweden with the set-up of a new label, Dret Skivor, and this early-doors sampler EP gives a taste of what we can expect – which is, for anyone with a priori knowledge – what you’d expect, namely experimental, and noisy.

On offer here are just four acts with a track apiece, but then, as an EP – which would actually work nicely as a 12” with a different running order – it does the job of showcasing exactly what Dret Skivor is about.

Fern’s ‘Low Pressure Wave’ is minimal lo-fi electro, an erratic pulsation and low-thrumming oscillating drone vibrating against one another to build a headache-inducing tension, fading into a simmering wave with scratchy interference. Claus Poulsen brings the noise and then some, with ‘Machines 2 and 4’yelding an absolutely face-melting five minutes of screeding distortion and treble abrasion worthy of Merzbow. It’s a squall of punishing feedback and overload. IJIN also trades in big, abrasive noise, but ‘OH the JOY’ (which I can’t help but read as sarcasm) takes the form of stop/start slabs of noise, with greater emphasis on lower and mid-ranges – although there’s a gum-curling blast f metallic treble that churns relentlessly throughout somewhere lower in the mix. But this track occupies a different territory from the others being showcased here, being a sixteen-minute behemoth that evolves through a series of transitions – yet for the largest part sustains an undulating, howling sustain that drones in an animalistic anguish against a shifting backdrop. It occasionally tapers ad re-emerges, swelling to a thick, nuclear wind of noise that blasts hard against a grinding sonic earthwork of deep, granular noise.

In contrast, Zherbin’s ‘piece for a router, a tape loop and a plastic bag’ feels a little lightweight, disposable, even. But it’s all relative, and in its own context it’s a grainy bit of noise that digs into the cranium with some surprisingly sharp claws.

More Dret, please!

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