Archive for the ‘Singles and EPs’ Category

Listen: ‘Teeth to Sky’ by Guiltless

Posted: 15 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Born from a love of experimental rock, noise rock, early industrial, sludge, and doom, Guiltless (featuring members of A Storm of Light, Intronaut, Generation of Vipers and Battle of Mice) heralds the coming of a heavy music which looks both inwards and out to convey the encompassing mixture of hope, despair and determination which comes from observing life as we know it today. Guiltless released their debut EP, Thorns, via Neurot Recordings in early 2024. Crushing and cheerless, it seemed to welcome the apocalypse looming on our collective horizon.

On March 7th 2025, Guiltless shall release their debut full-length album Teeth To Sky via Neurot, a record more pulverising, focused and introspective than what came before.

Today they share the bruising title track today, which combines the gnarled sensibilities of The Jesus Lizard, Cherubs and Barn Owl into a rumination on Mother Nature’s revenge. “The title track represents a surrender to nature’s unstoppable force,”  vocalist Josh Graham says. “As climate extremes continue to grow and impact virtually everyone on earth, we are now facing the impact of our forefathers’ actions, and our children will live through a new and unprecedented future.”

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Photo credit: Gulnaz Graves

Watch: ‘Despeñaperros’ by Maude the moth

Posted: 14 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Maud the moth, the solo project of Spanish-born and Scotland-based pianist, singer and songwriter Amaya Lopez-Carromero shares the new track ‘Despeñaperros’, taken from her forthcoming album, The Distaff, to be released via The Larvarium (digital +CD) and La Rubia Producciones (vinyl), with Woodford Halse/Fenny Compton contributing a tape release on 21st February 2025.

Amaya has long used the mantle of Maud the moth as an alter-ego, a séance-like conduit to explore themes of rootlessness, identity and trauma. The Distaff in particular refers to the stick or spindle onto which wool or flax is wound for spinning, and an object which has historically been used across multiple cultures as a symbol wielded by the “virtuous woman”, an authoritarian ideal around which much of the trauma surrounding the feminine coalesces. The album takes the form of a sort of self reflective and surreal autobiography. It was in part inspired by the poem of the same name written by the Greek poet Erinna, as she mourns her friend’s loss of individuality and agency in exchange for marriage – and therefore safety and acceptance in the eyes of society.

Maud the moth shares the video for ‘Despeñaperros’. About the track, Maud the moth says;

"Despeñaperros is one of the cornerstones of The Distaff’s universe. A canyon and natural reserve with dramatic geology and very violent historical background, the Despeñaperros Pass is a gateway into the wilderness. Its name, which can be translated as “where dogs are thrown off the cliff”, has unclear origins and adds to the lore and mystery shrouding this area in the Spanish collective consciousness. Growing up in an environment where hunting and animal cruelty were commonplace and artistic sensitivities often ridiculed, Despeñaperros unfolded in my imagination, transcending its real physical location, and reforming as a quasi-mythical location for the sacrifice of those perceived as weak, different, misunderstood or simply challenging tradition.”

Watch the video here:

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Photo credit: Scott McLean

Watch: ‘Blood Money’ by The Legendary Pink Dots

Posted: 11 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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“Way way back in the early days I used to say a lot about ‘The Terminal Kaleidoscope’, a concept comparing the fragile planet we live on to a drowning human being with life flashing before his or her eyes, the images constantly accelerating. It’s 2024, a little over two decades since the turn of this unbearably turbulent century and the concept appears to have become an unlikely soap opera where we are the cast. Let’s hang in there….”
Edward Ka-Spel – The Legendary Pink Dots

SO LONELY IN HEAVEN – THE CREATION

So Lonely in Heaven is the new album by the Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band The Legendary Pink Dots, who formed in London in 1980 and are still helmed by co-founder and frontman Edward Ka-Spel. Their second full-length effort since the World stopped for a Global Pandemic, group members were still scattered across three countries and two continents as they began writing it, with ideas spun across Cyberspace for months. However, the magic eventually happened collectively in small spaces with the tape running.

SO LONELY IN HEAVEN – THE MESSAGE

The machine is everything we are. It sees everything, hears everything, knows everything and feeds, speeds, drinks us down, spits us out – we lost control of it at the instant of its conception. You may cough, curse and die, but the machine will resurrect you without the flaws, at your peak, smiling from a screen, bidding someone in a lonely room to join you. It’s an invitation from Heaven, where anyone can be anything they want to be, but it’s a Nation of One. You’ll be everything we are. You’ll be a shadow of yourself. You’ll repeat yourself – endlessly. You’ll be desperate for some kind of explanation. You’ll be lonely. So very lonely….

Check ‘Blood Money’ here:

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THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS | photo: Michael McGrath

Unreqvited – Void Essence / Frozen Tears

Posted: 8 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Prophecy Productions

Christopher Nosnibor

Ahead of the release if their seventh full-length album, A Pathway to the Moon, Unreqvited, the Canadian blackgaze solo-project of 鬼 (Ghost), has unveiled a new lyric visualiser for ‘Void Essence / Frozen Tears’. While it’s a timely taster for the album it’s also a reminder that singles are something of a rarity nowadays. I can’t help but feel that this is a significant loss. Perhaps not so much for acts like Unreqvited, whose singles are unlikely to garner radio play or drive the same kind of album-buying traction singles would in the 80s or 90s. The Internet has certainly changed our habits when it comes to music consumption, and while one may reasonably argue that the old industry model was a massive con on so many levels, we not longer appreciate the single as we once did. Singles were an art, and not only the kind pitched to radio play, and not only the standalone release which bridged spaces between albums and perhaps indicated a transition for an artist.

While it’s true that singles far too long for radio have been around since living memory (The Orb’s ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ and ‘Psychonaut’ by Fields of the Nephilim spring to mind, but let’s not forget the songs radio made exceptions for, like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘American Pie’), it’s really only with the advent of the digital stream that ten-minute singles have become commonplace. It is, of course, much easier when terrestrial radio play isn’t on the cards, and fitting a track onto a side of vinyl isn’t something which requires consideration either.

If the demise of the single as we used to know it has one positive, it’s that artists are no longer constrained or limited by these boundaries. You want to release a single track that’s three hours long with no interruptions? No problem. No physical release and probably no audience, but no problem. Anyway. ‘Void Essence / Frozen’ is a single released as a lyric video, as seems to be popular right now. It may not be especial popular with me, but that’s neither here nor there.

According to the press release, ‘UNREQVITED explain: “The final advance track, ‘Void Essence / Frozen’ reveals the causatum of its antecedent, traversing vehemently into the undistinguished”, mastermind 鬼 comments. “Obstreperous yet endowed in euphony, it emblematizes a juncture in the greater odyssey by which it subsists. Redolent of prior opera, it is an ardent offering to the fervent disciple.”’ ‘Explain’ may be a rather generous overstatement, but it’s a bold counteractive stance against the perpetual dumbing down and overt aversion to anything which could feasibly construed as art in mainstream culture in recent years.

Clocking in at nine minutes, ‘Void Essence / Frozen Tears’ is but a brief interlude following ‘The Antimatter’. It’s also something of a contrast to its full-blooded raging guitar assault, with a graceful, chiming guitar. It takes a while for the rapid kick-drumming to hit and propel the guitar, by now soaring high, into the stratosphere.

There is so much detail, so much texture subtly woven into the fabric of this epic, epic composition, and then, around the mid-point, the vocals finally arrive. The screaming anguish is almost submerged in the mix… and then, suddenly, we’re adrift in space, airless. An ambient calm descends for a time, paving the way for the ultimate theatrical climax.

The album is now set for release on February 7, 2025.

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Watch: ‘Chew’ by Noisepicker

Posted: 8 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Noisepicker share the remarkable video for ‘Chew’ ahead of the release of their second record, The Earth Will Swallow The Sun, out 21st March 2025 via Exile on Mainstream.

The band says:

"7/8 groove and a mountain of fat chugs. Splattered with disgust at the human form displayed in the mirrors. ‘Chewed up and spat out’ as the chorus declares. The result of generations of human failure through self interest. ‘So sick and tired of that stupid grin’. The only logical solution: destroy it."

…and further about the video itself: "The two of us live on opposite sides of the country, which makes getting together tricky at times. To the point where we never rehearse. Apart from two songs, we had only played the entire new album together when we entered the studio to record it. And those two tracks were only ever played during soundcheck, an hour before we played them live. Which probably explains a lot! This means we need to be ‘inventive’ when thinking about videos, basically making sure that we are not the main focus of them. We grab footage of each other when we can and store it up in case it’s needed. That’s where the puppet idea came from. I couldn’t get us both in the same room, so I had to improvise. I think it actually makes for a better video! The song is about hating what you’ve become after chasing the expectations of an unfulfilling society, and only realising you’ve been had when it’s far too late. You’ve been played. Like a puppet on a string. Enjoy!"

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Photo credit:  Jerry Deeney

Watch: ‘Church Of Bones’ by Underheaven

Posted: 6 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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‘Church of Bones’ is the first music video released by Underheaven, the Lower Bucks County, PA duo comprised of multi-instrumentalist / producer / songwriter Chris Gelok and songwriter / bassist / vocalist Howard Wuelfing. The video was created by Gelok, an experienced creator of CGI video. The song is a haunting portrait of a human being’s last moments of consciousness. Have a look here:

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Philadelphia-based multi-instrumentalist Chris Gelok has been an active part of the local Metal scene since the early aughts, playing guitar with Chorea from 2005 through 2013, then Disgorgement from 2013 through 2020. Along the way he took time out to participate in Funk-bound side ventures including Bassnectar and Big Pimp Jones. He’s also provided musical settings for a number of television networks.

Howard Wuelfing was active in the original Washington D.C. Punk scene, playing in The Look, Slickee Boys, Nurses, the original version of Underheaven, and finally Half Japanese before relocating to New Jersey.

The first edition of Underheaven was founded by guitarist Don Zientara and Wuelfing who first met when Don recorded several of the groups Howard played in at the first incarnation of Zientara’s now-storied Inner Ear Studios. After the band opened for acts like R.E.M., The Bangles, etc. and recorded an EPs worth of material with Ian MacKaye at the control board the members went their separate ways. Decades later, Zientara and Wuelfing reconvened the group joined by Half Japanese guitarist Mark Jickling on guitar and Dan Buccino on drums. When lockdown thwarted live performing, they recorded a pair of vintage originals, ‘One Mad Answer’ and ‘The Moment I Die’ before calling it quits – some of the last recordings done at Inner Ear before it fell prey to developers; these tracks were released digitally in mid-2023.

Gelok and Wuelfing joined forces soon after the D.C.-based line-up dissolved to record a growing body of original songs, his first new compositions in decades. Since they began working together, their stock of distinctive original material has grown steadily and plans are to release their full length debut.

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Karobela – Afterthought

Posted: 6 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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20th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Here we are on the cusp of the second week of January and still mopping up releases from December. And that’s ok. I don’t get why everyone is so hung up on the end of year / new year thing anyway, and I certainly don’t get why so many end of year lists are published in November. It made sense when we were tied to print media, and monthly magazines went to print a good month in advance, meaning the December editions were being written in October to hit the shelves at the end of November, but in the age of the Internet? Nah. And the sheer volume of music being releases means that things often have a slower diffusion, in contrast to the 80s and 90s when people raced to buy 7” and CD singles on the week of release after a big advance push which was essential for that chart placing, which meant Radio 1 Top 40 airplay on a Sunday afternoon and the possibility of being on Top of the Pops.

So, my somewhat belated coverage of this new single by Kent-based alternative act Karobela is anything but an afterthought. Boom.

The song is, they say, ‘a kick back, in your face retaliation to everyone who thought they could just kick you to the curb’. Many of us have been there: left out forgotten, excluded – not necessarily by design, but because ‘oops’. Well, you can tag along if you like, why don’t you? Out of sight, out of mind as the phrase goes.

The band have clearly put plenty of thought into this tune that’s structured around a low-slung bass groove and builds to climactic, impassioned choruses. It does teeter perilously close to classic rock / indie funk in places, but the energy and raw sincerity carry it through, and they sound like a band who will really grab certain demographics in a live setting, while the relatable content of ‘Afterthought’ is also likely to be a winner.

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Morlocks – Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi

Posted: 3 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 10th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

According to their bio, ‘Morlocks are a Swedish act who combine elements of industrial rock, neo-classical, darkwave and metal with epic production values to create an exciting hybrid sound. Having issued the long-awaited and well received album Praise The Iconoclast in late 2023, they subsequently promoted it with two US tours in 2024, both in support of their friends and occasional collaborators KMFDM.’

Asked about the inspiration behind the song, the band state: “Watch the world from a distance. Get angry at first, but also inspired. Take the darkest parts of it and twist them into something weird, beautiful and batshit insane – something that you could either dance to, brood in the shadows to or scream at the top of your lungs at the moon. Preferably all of the above. Everything can be turned into art, and art must hurt. Situation normal: all fucked up.”

‘Everything can be turned into art, and art must hurt’ is a phrase which stands out here. It may seem somewhat dramatic, but to summarise Buddha’s teaching, ‘all life is suffering’, or ‘life is pain’, and the function or art – true art – is to speak in some way of deep truths of what it is to be human. Art must therefore, reflect life and capture something of the existential anguish of the human condition. If it doesn’t, it isn’t art, it’s mere entertainment. And if the idea that ‘Everything can be turned into art’ may superficially seem somewhat flippant, a diminishment of serious matters, if the work is, indeed art, and not entertainment, then the obverse is true: using the pain of life as source material is the only way to interrogate in appropriate depth those most challenging of issues. In other words, making art from trauma is not reductive or to cheapen the experience – but making entertainment from it very much is.

There’s a snobbery around what constitutes art, even now, despite the breakthroughs made through modernism and postmodernism. It’s as if Duchamps had never pissed on the preconceptions of art for the upper echelons of society who still maintain that art is theatre, is opera, is Shakespeare, that art can only exist in galleries and is broadly of the canon. This is patently bollocks, but what Morlocks do is incorporate these elements of supposed ‘high’ art and toss them into the mix – most adeptly, I would add – with grimy guitars and pounding techno beats. Art and culture and quite different things, and those who are of the opinion that only high culture is art are superior snobs who have no real understanding of art or art history.

The five songs on Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi are therefore very much art, although that doesn’t mean they don’t also entertain. ‘The S.N.A.F.U. Principle v3.0’ arrives in a boldly theatrical sweep of neoclassical strings and grand drama – and then the crunching guitars, thumping mechanised drums and raspy vocals kick in and all hell breaks loose. Combining the hard-edged technoindustrial of KMFDM – which is hardly surprising – with the preposterous orchestral bombast of PIG and Foetus bursting through and ascending to the very heavens, it’s complex and detailed and thrillingly dramatic, orchestral and choral and abrasive all at once.

With tribal drumming and bombastic, widescreen orchestration, ‘March of the Goblins’ has a cinematic quality to it, which sits somewhat at odds with the rather hammy narrative verses. It seems to say ‘yeah, ok, you want strings and huge production and choral backing to think it’s art? Here you go, and we’re going to sing about radioactive dinosaurs like it’s full-on Biblical’. It’s absurd and audacious, and makes for a truly epic seven and a half minutes of theatrical pomp that’s admirable on many levels. Ridiculous, but admirable.

‘The Lake’, split over two parts with a combined running time of over ten minutes explores more atmospheric territory, with graceful, delicate strings, acoustic guitar, and tambourine swirling through swirling mists before breaking through into a surging tower of power, melding crunching metal guitars with progressive extravagance, and medieval folk and martial flourishes.

Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi is remarkably ambitious and unashamedly lavish in every way. Quite how serious are Morlocks? They’re certainly serious about their art. But while delivered straight, one feels there’s an appropriate level of knowingness, self-awareness in their approach to their undertaking. And that is where the art lies: theatre is acting. The stories told are drawn from life, and resonate with emotional truth: but the actors are not the action, and there is a separation between art and artifice. Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi is something special.

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Watch: ‘Curse Breaker’ by Miss FD

Posted: 1 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Dark electronic music producer, MISS FD has just released her latest bewitching cinematic gothic music video for her song, ‘Curse Breaker’.

‘Curse Breaker’ is a liberating dark piano piece with laid bare female vocals that channel raw emotion, empowerment, and mystique.  A spell unbinding transformative song about overcoming and letting go.

The music video, directed by long-time collaborator and friend Tas Limur, was filmed in a Victorian mansion in Historic Old Louisville, KY.

The video follows MISS FD through a curse-breaking séance which releases her from a haunting apparition, symbolizing freeing oneself from the binds and limitations of the past.

Watch it here:

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Stoneburner – New Year Same Fuckin You

Posted: 1 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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COP International – 31st December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The adage that you should never judge a book by its cover is a nonsense, and certainly doesn’t apply to records. I was instantly drawn to Stoneburner’s ‘New Year Same Fuckin You’ for its referencing – by which I mean almost direct lifting – of the artwork for the Foetus All Nude Review ‘Bedrock’ 12”, one of JG Thirlwell’s first forays into the ‘big band’ swing sound back in 1987.

It transpires they’ve got form: previous releases ape the fourth Foetus album, Nail, as well as Big Black’s Atomizer, and no doubt other releases reference things I’m unfamiliar with, as it’s impossible to know everything within another’s sphere of reference, and Stoneburner have released a hell of a lot in a comparatively short time. But I always maintain there’s more honour in being up-front in acknowledging one’s influences than trying to hide them, and have all the admiration for Stoneburner for their unashamed referencing. By now, we all know – or should know – that there’s nothing news, so better to front up and embrace the fact instead of feebly proclaiming artistic innovation.

The solo project of Steven Archer, best known for his work with the electronic rock band Ego Likeness, as well has is abstract electronica project ::Hopeful Machines::, he’s one of those creatives who simply gushes new material.

For ‘New Year Same Fuckin You’, Archer has enlisted Rodney Anonymous, Matt Fanale, and Mark Alan Miller, and it’s something of a departure from the majority of the Stoneburner catalogue, which, while very much given to industrial leanings, also place considerable emphasis on atmosphere and drama (in the way JG Thirlwell and Raymond Watts do, setting Foetus and PIG apart from the majority of the field). There’s no such subtlety here: ‘New Year Same Fuckin You’ is a balls-out blaster.

The track is pitched as ‘a rallying cry for a time when so many feel defeated and powerless. A time when giving up seems easier. But when I think of those who marched across the bridge in Selma, knowing full well what was waiting for them; when I think of the women who sacrificed everything for their autonomy; when I think of every brave soul who stood tall against oppression, I know this: we owe it to them to rise again.’

It’s a strong sentiment delivered at a time when mood and energy feels like it’s at an all-time low. It’s hard to recall a festive season that’s felt less festive, and celebrating extravagantly with gifts and feasts has felt quite wrong while the world is at war and hyperconsumption continues to drive climate change. What are we actually celebrating here? The idea that we’re ‘doing it for the kids’ rings rather hollow when you know that every overpriced piece plastic of tat stuffed in a stocking is another nail in the coffin of the future they’ll inherit.

And this brings us to the gimmick of New Year’s resolutions. How many last past the first fortnight of any given new year? Mostly people seem to resolve to get fitter, and take out gym memberships with good but misguided intent. Gym conglomerates rub their hands as they make half the year’s profits in a week or so, knowing that the regulars won’t be complaining of overcrowding again come February. Most goals set are as pointless as they are unattainable., but how many set themselves the target of being less of a cunt in the coming year, eh? Eh? Yeah – New Year Same Fuckin You.

This is a full-throttle raging technonidustrial banger, and curiously, as much as it’s in the vein of KMFDM and the entirety of the Wax Trax! catalogue with its pounding, hard-edged disco beat and snarling synths and mangled vocals, I can’t help but be reminded of ‘It’s Grim Up North’ by the JAMMs.

As an anti-trend anthem, with it’s ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’ refrain, ‘New Year Same Fuckin You’ is the perfect counterpoint to all of the motivational guff that circulates all year round but becomes particularly prevalent at this time of year as every agency going advertises to appeal to your shame – shame for your indulgence, your weight gain, your slacking, your failure to move forward in your life goals – in an attempt to take your money and convince you that spending with them will make your life better. Yes, fuck you! Get a grip. You want your life better? Start by taking control of your own direction, instead of paying for apps and influencers and life coaches to tell you what you already know. Need reminding that this is the true way forward? Listen to this on repeat for an hour daily.

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