Brighton four-piece Deaf Surf, having emerged from various punk bands and spent their first year in existence gigging hard, formally announce their arrival with ‘Sofa’, a jagged slab of (post) punk that’s pissed off and angsty and picks at the anguish and (self) -loathing that comes from FOMO. If you associate sofas with comfort, relaxation and the pleasure of binge-watching box sets on Netflix, then brace yourself: Deaf Surf’s sofa is hard and lumpy and full of angst.
The lyrics list everyone’s ‘best lives’ splashed all across social media while singer Manon bitterly reflects on her own vicariously-lived life, ‘another, another, another adventure from my sofa’.
Sonically, Deaf Surf come on with clanging, grungy off-key guitar and a raw, DIY post-punk feel reminiscent in some aspects of Solar Race, in others of Come and Live Skull. The song builds to a raucous crescendo, and it’s all over in a succinct 3:22.
It’s a hell of a debut, and as of this moment, Deaf Surf are my favourite new band.
Ahead of the release of the album Durma, experimental urban found-sound experimentalist Akkor offers up single cuts ‘An’, and ‘Zabt’. The work of Istanbul-based Üstün Lütfi Yildirim, the two tracks showcase the artist’s approach to rendering a broad range of sources into accessible sound-sculptures.
‘An’, released at the end of January, is a brooding slice of ponderous electronica. Woozy bass tones swoop low and ambulate abstractedly to provide a backdrop to airy piano and incidental synth notes. The structured ambience of ‘Ab’ takes a non-linear form, but clocking in at three-and-a-half minutes, it’s tight and avoids indulgence.
In contrast, the six-minute ambient trance workout that is ‘Zabt’ begins with quiet, softly chiming notes which echo into a soft breeze, before an insistent pulsing dance groove enters the mix. It’s low in the mix and murky, creating tension and a dark energy. Gradually, things melt together to coalesce into an expansive headtrip of a tune.
It all augers well for the album if these singles are representative.
It’s a question many of us ask at some time or another – usually in the face of some existential crisis, or moment of isolated reflection. Because really, what’s the point? We’re only born to die, with a short period punctuated by pain and occasional glimmers of joy in a desert of drudge that consists largely of working (if you’re ‘lucky’) and sleeping (again, if you’re ‘lucky’). We’re but specks in an infinite universe and about as useful as cockroaches, only more damaging to the environment.
With this single, Airport Impressions get ponderous against a spacious sonic backdrop, where an understated bass leads the verses, which break into an immense swell of a chorus that’s unquestionably anthemic, even arena-scale, but without pomp or pretence. ‘Why Are We Here?’ has clear commercial appeal but without in any way being dumbed-down or numbingly bland. And that’s surely a winning formula, and at least answers the question of why Airport Impressions are here.
So the name sounds like either a virus or some kind of lozenge or medicine marketed to soothe the symptoms or a kind of virus, and the Birmingham quartet may trade in the kind of blues rock that’s been kicking around the last forty years since Led Zeppelin invented the heavy blues rock genre, but fuck it: ‘Frosty’ kicks ass. It does so by virtue of volume, and by bringing a dirty grunge twist, but first and foremost, it kicks ass because it’s solid.
It gets straight down to business. It’s got a lumbering, spiralling, circular riff that twists around on itself, and the guitar’s cranked up to eleven while the rhythm section thunders along and it’s everything Reef wanted to be, but failed to reach.
Cruel Nature Records / Sapien Music – 6th March 2020
Christopher Nosnibor
This is one of those releases that doesn’t piss about: ‘Mambo’ blasts in with a squall of discordant guitar and shuddering bass that immediately calls to mind Shellac and The Jesus Lizard, and it’s one of those ‘holy shit!’ Moments where you remember why coming into this kind of stuff in the early 90s was such a revelation. It’s the combination of power and unpredictability that was exciting them and still is now, and Tankengine have both in spades, zooming off every which way on the crash of a cymbal.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise: two members of Tankengine were previously in Yourcodenameis: milo, and the disparate elements that defined their work are abundantly in evidence here. And so as not to confuse this, their second EP, with their eponymous debut, they’ve named it twice. Consequently, I no longer quite so strongly feel the urge to form a band and name it Minotaur, with a view to the first tour being labelled the Minotaur Tour, the tour in support of the eponymous album the Minotaur Minotaur Tour, and the tour supporting the stop-gap EP before the second album the Minotaur Minor Tour. I also digress spectacularly.
The point I’m coming to is that Tankegine live up to the connotations of their name from the opening bars of opener ‘Mambo’, which twists and winds its way through a succession of sections that sound like completely different songs smooshed together yet somehow find a flow in some perverse mathtastic way. It’s all topped off with vocals that sound a bit like Jello Biafra, and it’s punk to the max. Hard on its heels, ‘Giant’ is everything all at once, a driving grunge beast with moments that sound like Talking Heads emerge between proggier segments, while there’s more of a John Lydon intonation in the vocals
‘Swagger’ sounds like it’s going to be a ballad, and it maintains a lower tempo, but shifts from being introspective and reflective, into a roaring inferno of anguish and overdriven guitar, and ‘Banshee’ combines post-hardcore aggression and shouting with a heavy goth hue, with a throbbing bass groove and chorus-coated guitars and a baritone croon.
On paper, it portrays as something between an identity crisis and a breakdown, but in the ears, it’s an identity crisis and a breakdown that resolves itself with a strange cohesion, and it’s all manifest in the six-minute closer ‘Flicker’, which begins low-key and strolls along and takes it time with some mellow melodies before finally delivering a squalling crescendo worthy of such a tumultuous, tempestuous EP, climaxing in a deafening roar that can only lead to stunned silence.
I’m both intrigued and vaguely amused by the focus of the press release, which informs us that ‘In anticipation of their upcoming European tour in support of Suffocation, Belphegor and Hate, Italian metallers Necrosy have released a brand-new video for the track “Drown In Perdition” (at 320 bpm)’. But then, in certain circles, presumably including those of Thrash Speed, and Technical Death Metal (the latter being where this Venetian foursome position themselves in genre terms), the pace is of importance.
The album, Perdition, was in fact released back in 2015, and this video single is something of a stop-gap while they piece together album number two and gear up for a significant tur of the European mainland. What no UK dates? Well, no, and it’ probably not necessarily a Brexit thing, but while we’re at it, fuck Brexit and the damage the latest piece of hateful, movement-limiting legislation will do to touring bands and the music industry. Bands and fans and the economy alike will suffer.
On the subject of suffering, ‘Drown Into Perdition (at 320BPM)’ (and yes, the parenthetical element is noted on not only the video’s YouTube post, but also the album’s track list) is pretty fucking punishing, a whiplash blur of frenzied guitars and drumming which provide the backdrop to a guttural howl and while the lyrics are wholly unintelligible, the sound articulates by the medium of sound a fair approximation of the song’s title – a hellish, torturous assault.
The woman in the white dress / sheet who features in the video feels like a bit of a superfluous addition, but provides a nice visual contrast to the hairy, tattooed blokes lunging and prowling while wielding their instruments menacingly. It doesn’t detract from the song though, and of this is any measure, both the live shows and upcoming album should be pretty intense.
AA
Tour dates are as follows:
March 11th – Legend Club – Milan, Italy March 12th – Kufa – Lyss, Switzerland March 13th – Gare De Lion – Wil, Switzerland March 14th – Le Jas Rod – Marseille, France March 15th – BT 59 – Bordeaux, France March 17th – Stage Live – Bilbao, Spain March 18th – Capitol – Santiago, Spain March 19th – Hard Club – Porto, Portugal March 20th – RCA Club – Lisbon, Portugal March 21st – Independance – Madrid, Spain March 22nd – Razzmatazz – Barcelona, Spain March 24th – Grillen – Colmar, France March 25th – Garage – Saarbrucken, Germany March 26th – Helvete – Oberhausen, Germany March 27th – Felsenkeller – Leipzig, Germany
Mayflower Madame step up the promo for Prepared for a Nightmare, the follow-up to 2016’s Observed in a Dream with a second single in the shape of ‘Swallow’. It reveals a mellower side in relation to its predecessor, the bruising ‘Vultures’, and while it’s still very much an example of their trademark sultry psychedelic surf, ‘Swallow’ reveals a previously unheard melodic leaning.
Described as ‘a love song… about the dependence and fragility one might feel in a relationship – involving both a fear of and a desire for submission’, according to front man Trond Fagernes, it’s still not quite pop, and not exactly a ballad, either, and it’s draped in gothy shadows and doomed romanticism.
It’s more or less a fact – and not a happy one – that much of the strongest and most meaningful art comes from dark personal places. And so it is that Mollayanna’s new single, ‘Human Error’ is taken from an album of material, which will shortly be released under the title Archaeology, written last year by front-woman Bernadette, and which charts her experience of surviving abuse and undergoing therapy.
Speaking candidly, she says, ‘One thing I realised in therapy was that I’d spent so long trying to micromanage things, clinging to relationships and behaviours and hadn’t really stopped to assess if any of it was still making me happy. Once I let go and those people and situations fell away, I felt nothing, too. Emptiness. But also relief? And that’s what ‘Human Error’ is about. The frustration at putting all your effort into something only to realise it’s not what you wanted.’
And so ‘Human Error’ is a tidy slice of indie-ish alt-rock with sweetly melodic vocals that’s easy on the ear but harder on the heart. The lilting minor chords of the clean rhythm guitar has hints of Dinosaur Jr, while the remaining musical layers sit somewhere between Paramore and Fleetwood Mac (Bernadette manages moments that really do hint at Stevie Nicks, and also has a decidedly folksy twist to her vocal style) but then again, and the emotional range is closer to The Twilight Sad as Bernadette pours every ounce of soul into a narrative of giving all for limited returns while being trapped in a cycle.
Oh, and there’s a whopping great guitar solo that plays out through to the fade. It’s as indulgent a solo as you’ll get, but doesn’t feel indulgent, somehow, and fades are chronically underused these days. It all adds up to a great single, and a strong pitch for the upcoming album, too.
I met my wife as she now is online back in 2000, before it was the done thing. Online dating didn’t exist, and we got chatting in Holechat, the band’s official online chatroom. We were both there because we had an appreciation of Hole, oddly enough. But Celebrity Skin has always been a point of division, in that it was my point of departure, with single ‘Malibu’ being a significant factor. To my ears, it was, and remains, the sound of selling out, and while pop is by no means is dirty word for me, it represented a slide into lazy, poppy commercial rock. From the band that brought us the snarling, spitting mess of noise that was ‘Teenage Whore’, this was the work of a band who’d completely lost their bite.
This is the personal context for my engagement with Stumbleine’s cover of ‘Malibu’, released as the second taster of the forthcoming album ‘Sink Into The Ether’, which promises ‘a deep submergence within a celestial upper region somewhere beyond the clouds’, and on this outing, ‘a lush ambient electro cover of Hole’s ‘Malibu’ featuring Elizabeth Heaton of Midas Fall on vocals’.
According to Stumbleine, ‘Hole’s ‘Malibu’ is the perfect balance of bittersweetness, a golden soundscape of serene melancholy. Tracks which illustrate that symmetry between light and dark are timeless to me, they mirror life with piercing clarity.’
That’s clearly a different perspective on the song from the one I have, and clearly informs this breathy, slow-unfurling drifter of a tune that bears negligible commonality with the original bar the lyrics. It’s slowed to a dripping mellowness that’s pleasant on the ear, but so prised apart and washed-out it’s bereft of chorus, hooks, or any other memorable moments. And in context, it’s nicely done, but it’s perhaps less of a cover than a reworking that’s 99% Stumbleine and 1% Hole. In this instance, that’s not such a bad thing.
Salvation Jayne have been regular features here for a while, and it’s been an enjoyable journey seeing them evolve. ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ is overtly rock, and continues the trajectory of its predecessors, but the verse nods at a post-punk vintage with its chorused guitar line.
Similarly, while it may lack both the hook-heavy immediacy of ‘Burn in Down’, ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ presents a different aspect of the band, and also showcases what some may call a more ‘mature’ approach to songwriting.
More of than not, ‘mature’ translates as middle-aged and dull, and it may lack the grunge-drive fire of ‘Cortez’, but in the context of ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ I’m talking restraint that precedes explosions, and nicely, because nuance and the measured slow-build intro give an even bigger impact. And let’s be clear here, the chorus still crashes in with some chunky riffage. It’s just more refined. It’s also a fist-pumping song of self-affirmation.
Is now a good time to sit down and discuss punctuation? Probably not, but it matters, and Salvation Jayne’s latest instalment inspires that conversation, however brief. ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ is a comma (and an exclamation mark) away from Lou Reid, and I’m going to assume it’s intentional given that its placement works in context. And for that, I like them even more, because nuance and detail matter, and besides, it’s a cracking single.
