Archive for the ‘Singles and EPs’ Category

Youth Man – Wax EP

Posted: 4 July 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Venn Records – 1st July 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Offering an exhilarating blend of grunge and punk (what’s that then? Gunk? Punge?), Birmingham trio Youth Man have done well for themselves on the live circuit in the past couple of years (they seriously killed I at Live at Leeds in 2014, with Kaila Whyte (Guitar and vocals) proving she’s a strong performer and a force to be reckoned with. Now they look set to consolidate that graft with a new EP in the shape of five-tracker Wax, on which they’ve striven to capture the energy of their live shows. And they succeed, too. This EP serves up a raw, visceral noise, a calamitous racket of guitars played faster than fingers can change frets, jagged shards of choppy treble slamming against frantic basslines and crashing drums. It’s raw and passionate, and as much as this is a raised middle finger in musical form, it’s a record that screams urgency rather than apathy.

Whyte hollers and screams in a way that reminds us just how refreshing Hole and L7 were when they first emerged on the scene. The ‘production,’ such as it is, is in your face, uncompromising – just like the music itself. It’s not pretty, but it’s real.

Youth-Man-Wax-Venn-Records

 

The Kut – Bad Man

Posted: 19 June 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Criminal Records – 1st July 2016

We dig The Kut around here. Personally, I’ve been digging The Kut since the release of their debut single ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anyway’ way, way back in 2009. Since then, they evolved, shedding their post-punk leanings in favour of a more up-front grunge-based rock sound. Last year’s Rock, Scissors, Paper EP was more than convincing and again emphasised the rock, and as we learned from their appearance at Camden Rocks, this very much translates live. So it’s pleasing to see them crash in with a fairly swift follow-up in the shape of a single release from said EP, namely ‘Bad Man,’ described as ‘a gnarly song about revenge’.

It packs a hefty riff based on a classic descending chord sequence, driven by some sturdy drumming. The production emphasises the rawness of the track and gives it the density and intensity it deserves, calling to mind Hole at their best – combining the pop dynamics of Live Through This with the gut-wrenching vitriol of Pretty on the Inside. With a vitriolic raw-throated holler of ‘fuck off!’ this is music with passion rather than engineered for mass-market radio, and that’s precisely why it appeals.

The 30-date tour scheduled for August should be a belter.

 

 

The track has also been synced to this ‘London guy fights for cash’ prank video which is quickly becoming the unofficial video for the track on the net- https://youtu.be/VRGUCSH-P9A – who doesn’t love to see the lines between acting and reality blurred in public?

 

The Kut - Rock

Lord Kesseli and the Drums – Lord Kesseli and the Drums (EP)

Posted: 12 June 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Ikarus Records  – 17th June 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Growing up with musical tastes different from my friend and peers, I found a certain sense of freedom. It wasn’t that I cared more about music than friendships, although maybe that was sometimes the case: music off the beaten track offered something more relatable and opened my eyes – and ears – to new possibilities and ideas. Doing my own thing and finding my own music enabled me to appreciate and celebrate difference. Conformity is so dull. Following trends is mindless.

This eponymous release from Lord Kesseli and the Drums dos not confirm, it does not follow trends, and is strangely out of sync with everything that’s going on not only in the mainstream, but in most other musical circles right now. That’s due in no small part to its stylistic diversity. Dominik Kesseli described as “slowed down electronic club music, or in other words synthetic Science Fiction sound worlds with analogue raging textures.” And I suppose there is that. In collaboration with drummer and producer Michael Gallusser, Kisseli has certainly concocted something rather out of the ordinary.

The first track, ‘Arnold’ is kinda post-rock, but isn’t really completely overtly explicitly post-rock, in that it has dream-pop leanings too, and veers into expansive electro-prog territory – and after the best part of six minutes, I’m not entirely sure why we’re still waiting for Arnold.

‘Siri’ makes nods to Krautrock as it slides into 80s synth pop territory, but maintains a dark undercurrent – as indeed, did much of the music of the day: artists ranging from A-Ha to A Flock of Seagulls via Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones weren’t nearly as jaunty as all that. And it has a bloody great crescendo by way or a climactic finish.

‘Fade’ is a lugubrious monster, half post-punk, half shoegaze, and it bleeds into the skewed gothic country of ‘PureEmotion’. The nine-minute closer, ‘Kid’ is a behemoth of a track which builds – and builds – to a monumental crescendo of phenomena proportions being carried way in its dying seconds on a resonating piano note that glides into the quiet distance.

Because it’s so wide-ranging, one could wonder precisely who the band and album’s audience is. But cliché as it is, any act who make music for themselves first and foremost is on the right track – or at the very least, they’re doing it for the right reason. Musicians should, of course, be fairly paid for their toils, but as Lydia Lunch recently argued, if it’s for money, it’s not art, it’s commerce. If there’s any justice, Lord Kesseli and the Drums will find a broad and substantial audience. But ultimately what matters is that they have produced a distinctive record of quality: a work of art.

 

 

Lord Kesseli Cover Art

 

Lord Kesseli and the Drums Online

Hissing – Hissing

Posted: 5 June 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Southern Lord – 10th June 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Holy fuck. You really need to brace yourself for this. That it’s on Southern Lord and Hissing are described as a Seattle-based blackened/death/ sludge behemoth is a starting point, and the fact the band features a guy called Joe O’Malley, who happens to be the younger brother of Stephen O’Malley gives an indication that it might be heavy… but holy fuck. I’ve (thankfully) never been hit by a truck, but I get the feeling that listening to this is a very similar experience. Yes, it hurts.

My research tells me that the lyrics of the new EP are ‘thematically centred around the effects of the metropolitan environment on the human psyche and explore themes of agoraphobia, urban decay, and incarceration.’ The lyrics aren’t immediately apparent, but the sentiment is conveyed in no uncertain terms, and with unstinting, brutal force.

‘Cairn’ may be an innocuous enough title for a song, connoting a pile of rocks built up by walker to guide others, but there is nothing friendly about this six-minute onslaught. The bass frequencies are everywhere: it’s not a case of the track featuring a hefty bassline but the speakers groaning under the density of the all-consuming bass frequencies which shudder the cones.

‘Husk’ is a similarly terrifying experience, dense, brutal and gnarly. But mere adjectives can’t come close to truly conveying the experience. ‘Dense’ is overused, not least of all by me, to escribe a thick, heavy, impenetrable wall of sound. Hissing create a sound that’s dense to the power of ten, so dense as to almost possess physical presence.

Hissing

 

Hissing on Bandcamp

Satoshi Takeishi – Dew Drops

Posted: 22 May 2016 in Albums, Singles and EPs
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clang records – clang040 – 20th May 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

The formation of this four-track album emerged from something quite spontaneous. As Takeishi explains, ‘it was developed as a live percussion and electronics performance piece in Nov, 2015. The recordings from the actual performance and sound-check run-through were edited together to finalize the first three tracks of this release. I am very much fascinated by real time electronic processing of acoustic sounds. The fact that something simple and small, like a tap on a bell can be turned into a dense and intricate texture excites me with creative inspirations.’

As such, the recordings – at least the first three tracks here – are not only about process rather than composition, but are process, captured in real-time. And while the acoustic instruments are very much in evident, the way they very swiftly morph beyond recognition is, indeed, enthralling, because nothing is as it seems.

‘Primus’ twangs, detuned, retuned, out of tune, the notes bending and overlapping seemingly in a state of disorder, and soon the album’s trajectory reveals itself as fleeting moments of grace emerge from an ever-shifting away of tinkling chimes and funnelling drones. Strings scrape and scratch atop a woozy buzz on the lower frequencies and ominous hums hover and eddy.

The fourth track, ‘Quattour Elementa’ is essentially what the title suggests: four pieces put together to form one extended piece. Each segment offers a different sonic vista, formed as they are using different instruments – and only ever one or two on any one track. Again, it’s an exploratory piece that is concerned with, and captures, the process. Fortunately, rather than sounding like someone’s soundcheck or studio fiddling, or the musical equivalent of someone’s scrappy workings out for a new story or a difficult mathematical calculation, Dew Drops actually holds up as a work in its own right, and something worth listening to.

Dew-Drops-Cover-400px-312x312

 

Satoshi Takeishi – Dew Drops at clang Online

Karhide – Decoy

Posted: 17 April 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Field Records – 17th April 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Karhide is Tim Waterfield, whose biography notes that he’s been programming beats for as long as DJ Shadow, but where Josh Davis came from a background of hip hop culture and breakbeats, Tim’s electronic upbringing in the East Midlands was through the industrial-strength beats of Godflesh and Frontline Assembly.

Formerly of ‘Big Black-but-one-louder’ Nottingham duo Ann Arbor, he throws all his past experience onto a choppy, grindy, angular racket on this two-track single release.

It’s a squalling treble-orientated racket with infinite twists and turns, a gnarly hybrid of Shellac and Truman’s Water and Jacob’s Mouse and Oils Seed |Rate and Arsenal, driven by the piston-pumping relentless thump of drum machine rhythms in the vein of Big Black. It’s abrasive, harsh and sinewy. And yes, it’s awesome.

 

Karhide

Last Harbour – Paler Cities

Posted: 3 April 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Gizeh Records – GZH67 – 1st April 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Last Harbour aren’t exactly renowned for their prolific output. They may have released six albums, but it’s taken the best part of 17 years, and the gap between the last two albums was a full four years. So, for Paler Cities to follow less than a year after their last long player, the immense Caul, feels like a real step-up in terms of momentum. The 7” single is accompanied by a brace of digital-only tracks, and the quality of the material is both consistent and superlative.

They’ve struck a rich seam of gloomy post-punk folk music, and ‘Paler Cities’ indicates a further evolution, showcasing a new-found stripped back approach to the compositions. A tense, chorus-heavy guitar provides a suitably stark backdrop to K Craig’s intonations of mournful longing delivered in his signature cavernous baritone.

Flipside ‘The Curved Road’ is a brooding, introspective effort which goes deep inside while evoking dark late-night imagery and conjuring psychological drama. The stealthy, almost subterranean, wandering bassline really makes it.

The digital tracks are of an equal calibre: ‘A Better Man’ is beautifully lugubrious and understated, dripping with minor-key violin, and with its chiming guitars and sad-sounding string arrangements, the darkly dreamy ‘Witness’, with its sweeping vistas, displays post-rock tendencies (or, more specifically, it echoes I Like Trains at their most melancholy).

There’s an overarching theatricality to the four tracks on offer here, and while they’re downtempo and downbeat, the aching beauty that lies in their shadowy depths is utterly compelling.

 

Last Harbour - Paler

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/244857832&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true

Last Harbour Online

Virginia Wing – Rhonda

Posted: 2 April 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Fire Records – 16th April 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

London-based act Virginia Wing, who supported Hookworms on tour last year, are described as an ‘experimental psych-pop band’. Their latest EP, which follows debut album Measures of Joy, which was lauded by Loud & Quiet and The Guardian, among others, is released on 16th April.

Lead and title track ‘Rhonda’ begins with a tremulous, haunting introduction before hectic electronic drums burst in and drive the track in a very different direction. Over the course of some six and a half minutes, it whips up a duality of tones, with a hard-edged beat and ethereal vocals. Half Cocteau Twins, half Factory Floor, it’s a compelling blend of contrasting tones, simultaneously gentle and abrasive.

If ‘Sisterly Love’ threatens to meander into nothing in its floaty mellowness, the thump and grind which heralds the arrival of ‘Daughter of the Mind’ introduces a new level of darkness and an uncomfortable edge which remain when the beats peter out to be replaced by synth drones that hang in the air for what feels like an age.

With the EP’s three tracks all clocking in beyond the six-minute mark, a radio edit of ‘Rhonda’ offers a window to commercial acceptance, and although it’s very much more 6Music than R1 the hypnotic, piston-pumping rhythm hints at a vast crossover potential.

Virginia_Wing_-_Rhonda_COVER.jpg

 

 

https://virginiawingmusic.bandcamp.com/

The Wharf Street Galaxy Band – The Wharf Street Galaxy Band (EP)

Posted: 8 March 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

Mark E Smith has oft claimed that everyone rips off The Fall. Mark Wynn even has a song about it, which does precisely that, entitled, appropriately, ‘Rip off The Fall’. While Smith’s claims are unquestionably exaggerated, the band’s influence is undeniably vast, and far exceeds the reach of their commercial success. One band who are unashamed in their ripping off of The Fall is Leeds / York-based combo The Wharf Street Galaxy band. But then, they only rip off The Fall inasmuch as they belong to the lineage of Can, Kraftwerk and The Fall, with a hefty dose of Public Image’s angular post-punk underpinned by dense, dubby basslines. Originally released as a three-track cassette (what else?), this expanded reissue features a brace of demos and a rehearsal recording.

A particularly Wobble-esque bass run kicks off the first track, ‘No Puffins for YOU Lad’, which finds northern churl Dave Proctor spilling a semi-abstract narrative that lurches on myriad detours in an increasingly tense and intense style that calls to mind the ranty racket of tracks like The Fall’s ‘Neighbourhood of Infinity’ and the vibe of earlier works like Perverted by Language. Angular and challenging, this is s what it’s all about, and even in 2016, this kind of stuff sounds every bit as antagonistic and uncomfortable as it did 30 years go.

The wandering spaghetti Western vibe of ‘Sergio Leone Comes to Keighly’ is suitably surreal, but grounded by a gritty Yorkshire sensibility, which essentially defines the WSGB. ‘Organised Freedom is Compulsory’ forges a monotonous groove, a long drone sustaining for some eight minutes over murky drumming and a chanted lyrical refrain of ‘Freedom is compulsory’. (I’m reminded of both The Fall and Scumbag Philosopher, another band who both rip off The Fall and have supported them, as well as Bauhaus, by the way in which the guitar serves to provide texture against the bass, instead of any kind of melody).

Of the additional tracks here – a brace of demos and a rehearsal recording – ‘Selfie Stick’ is sonically dark and lyrically savage and marks it as one of the band’s standout tracks.

But The Wharf Street Galaxy Band aren’t really about standout tracks, and as this debut EP demonstrates, they’re all about nagging away, bludgeoning the listener into submission with a blend of ragged guitar, urgent bass and hectic drumming while the vocals hector and harass.

Needless to say, I totally dig their scene. You know what you’re going to get, so go listen or bugger off back to your mundane mainstream shit.

WSGB

The Wharf Street Galaxy Band Online

Cult of Luna / The Old Wind – Råångest EP

Posted: 12 January 2016 in Singles and EPs
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Pelagic Records – 29th January 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Is the vinyl revival all a part of the mass cultural shift toward nostalgia? Were the ‘good old days’ really better, or is it simply that the present is so unbearable that the majority would seemingly wish to regress to the past? Of course, every generation has its old golden age, and it’s inevitable that the first years spent getting into anything new will sparkle the brightest with the passage of time. And so, for many, the late teens and early twenties are synonymous with ‘finding’ music and a sense of individual identity – but also a commonality. The more disaffected the youth, the more powerful the experience is likely to be.

Times have changed. Social relations are a different kind of minefield, and the music scene and industry more broadly are unrecognisable now from 20 years ago. Having recently turned 40, and as someone who spent a good decade from around the time I turned 14 hanging out and working in independent record shops and record airs, travelling to gigs and reading the weekly music inkies, I miss all of that.

This split EP is very much in the spirit of now bygone times, of record stores, of bands touring together with a shared record, and discovering new bands at gigs and bagging a chunk of vinyl (at an affordable price) at the merch stand on the way out to play at home when your ears had stopped ringing.

Whether or not the Internet has made the dissemination of music easier or better for bands isn’t the question here: it’s more about the fact that it’s stripped out all of the mystery. You can find music by any band on-line without having to venture to a toilet venue and take a punt on four bands for three quid, and similarly, you can ‘own’ the music on your iPod at a single click. Instant gratification has its downsides, and the wonder of discovery and the rush of connecting with a new band simply isn’t there in the digital age.

Cult of Luna and The Old Wind – two bands of significant standing, but too obtuse and heavy to ever trouble even the peripheries of the mainstream – evoke the spirit of the old-school on this vinyl release, which very much rewards the patient listener.

Cult of Luna offer ‘Last Will and Testament’, which is a veritable behemoth of a track which, after a delicate intro, slams in with full force. It’s a brutal beast, clocking in at an epic seven minutes – but it’s not all about the length, check the weight.

The first of the two tracks by The Old Wind, ‘Wooden Scythe’ brings a medieval fury through a barrage of guitars that hit like a battering ram, and the second, ‘Daughters of Cleanse’ delivers more of the same fire and brimstone. It’s gnarly, raw, dense and bloody. And very, very good.

Cult of Luna Old Wind Split

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