Somehow, despite being in the business almost literally forever, and having played live and supported artists such as The Beautiful South, Scouting For Girls, Luka Bloom and Dr and The Medics, MuddiBrooke has bypassed me. Perhaps it’s because of playing with the aforementioned artists.
Anyway: ‘You Don’t Own Me’, written by Philadelphia songwriters John Madara and David White and recorded by Lesley Gore in 1963, has become established as something of a classic, and it’s a good fit for Derby’s all-female alternative rockers, who know how to use a distortion pedal to optimal effect.
It’s a thumping riff-driven blast that explodes in under two and a half minutes and it perfect. To be fair, some songs are pretty much impossible to fail with – you simply can’t go wrong with some songs, and this is one of them. It’s a strong signature of female empowerment, and MuddiBrooke absolutely run with the sentiment and crank the amps up full-tilt to slam the point home in a fuck-you, taking-no-shit fashion that’s on a par with L7, Hole, and The Nymphs. Big lungs, big sass, big guitars… Yes.
Brooke, Anna and Mary may all be in their mid-twenties, but know how to channel that grunge vibe, and how not to take any shit. It may be a cover, but it feels like a manifesto.
‘Into the Glow’ is the second single from Michael Haggerty’s upcoming album, Fire Behind The Paper Trees, and his second official release under his real name having previously recorded as Krebs. Perhaps stepping out and being himself is in some way liberating, but whatever the motivation or rationale, it’s fair to say that the results are thus far positive.
There’s something somewhat uncomfortable when critics speak of ‘craft’ in their critiques. Perhaps it’s because ‘craft’ connotes something one works at, and improves, honing to a point whereby a level of quality can be achieved consistently, day in, day out, up at the crack of dawn and chiselling away until sundown, manufacturing… which there is a certain sense to, and it’s valid to a point, but this is to diminish the flare of creativity, the sparks of emotional channelling, the way in which elements of chance and happenstance all combine to make art. Because music isn’t furniture.
‘Into The Glow’ is probably as close to perfect songwriting as you can get. It is crafted: the dynamic shift between the 80s-style electronic verses and more guitar-driven choruses is precise, and balances subtlety with impact. The tempo change is sweet and shifts from reflective to driven, and the production is vast – also crisp, cold, mechanical. Bleak, brooding, but shining with optimism, ‘Into The Glow’ packs so much range into its concise three-and-a-half minutes, it’s a glorious thing.
Moses – described as a ‘genre-fluid proverbial rollercoaster’ – are impossible to place. Their latest single sound nothing like its predecessors. But they still have a distinctive sound, marked by energy and exuberance. That, and a knack for nagging, stomping basslines.
‘Mad’ has hints of Jane’s Addiction woven into its rambunctious (post) punk infusion, but then there’s a lot going on in this effervescent cocktail, from fast-moving organ work that calls to mind The Stranglers to anything post-millennial indie with some zip, and no, I can’t put my finger on specifics – because as the Jubilee procession on Sunday illustrated, everything post-nineties is simply a cultural blur and no-one knows where much of the last thirty years has gone or what defines any decade.
Moses aren’t set in any time or space – they somehow bring everything together and sound so very now. Dig ‘em? You’d be mad not to!
It shouldn’t be a deal, really, but it is: Glytsh are a rare thing, namely an all-female industrial duo, comprising French singer Jennifer Diehl (aka Luna Blake) and Swiss guitarist Claire Genoud (aka Hella Sin). Like so many ‘rock’ and metal-orientated genres, industrial of all shades, from the electro to the metal end of the spectrum is depressingly the domain of the white male.
In this predictable, recycle-heavy world of white male angst, Glytsh are a breath of fresh air. But Glytsh aren’t a breath of fresh air because they’re women: they’re a breath of fresh air because they’re fucking exciting. While ‘(Hard)core memory’ still works with established tropes, their debut single, a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’ set out their stall and managed to draw a fair bit of positive attention in the process. On the one hand, it was a pretty faithful cover, but also had enough of a slant to it to show that they’ve got game. And now, with the arrival of ‘(Hard)core memory’, Glytsh prove that they’ve got both style and substance, meshing together both electro and metal elements in an explosive three and a half minutes.
From a low, bass-heavy electronic intro, ‘(Hard)core Memory’ starts slow-grinding and sultry before tearing into a lumbering rock riff with screaming metal vocals, a collision between Rage Against The Machine and Marilyn Manson. It’s pretty full-on, and that’s before the Slash-style guitar solo blasts in near the end.
‘(Hard)core Memory’ has got the lot, and yet I somehow suspect that Glytsh have got a lot more to offer yet.
It’s not often I’m on the fence, but here I am, the splynters stabbing into my arse. Opening bars of the new single form Wylderness, taken from second album Big Plans for a Blue World (out 1 June vi Succulent Records) suggest dreamy, chyming shoegaze, but y’know, I’ve heard it a myllion tymes before doing this. And much as I lyke it, much as I dig Slowdive, Ride, Chapterhouse, and later exponents like The Early Years (criminally underrated and sadly failed to really make their mark), I have to admit that so much is wishy-washy, winsome and airy to the point of lacking in enough substance to really prove compelling.
Past the opening bars… layers and aspects reveal themselves. ‘Wet Look’ is still dreamy, wynsome, wystful, but there’s a brooding steeliness infused within it, with hints of Interpol and post-millennium post-punk, and it just nags hard enough to draw you in for a second listen. Something about that reverb, that interplay between the guitars, that spaciousness, that melancholy… sigh.
Was I the only one to misread the band’s name on first seeing it? Probably, and I suspect it says more about me than anything. Ah well. Meanwhile, as much as the quality of the band’s new single speaks for itself, the list of collaborators who’ve contributed remixes to this EP says a fair bit about the Chicago ‘post-punk demolition duo’, notably Stabbing Westward and Dean Garcia of Curve / SPC ECO.
It’s the Stabbing Westward remix that’s up first, and it’s a stonking industrial rock chugger. It has a crisp, bright feel and is driven by an explosive snare, the likes of which you rarely hear now, but was popular in the 80s. Of the different versions, it’s arguably the most radical, yet at the same time is also the one with the broadest commercial appeal, in that it is more overtly industrial and metal-edged.
Structurally, the song’s interesting for the fact it consists of several sections rather than a simple verse / chorus, and as each section rolls around, it develops something of a cyclical feel (I usually tend to feel most songs are a linear listening experience. ‘Confusion’ and ‘confusion’ make for a nice rhyming pair, but it’s the bass that’s as strong a hook as any of the lyrics, and it’s the bass that dominates the band’s own single version, which adds ten seconds to the original, which appeared on the Dead Lights five tracker released last year. Said bass is a shuddering low-frequency grind, and the drum machine tips a nod to ‘Blue Monday’ then goes into overdrive, giving the song a real urgency.
The DG Impulse remix grinds harder and longer, stripping it back to the bare bones of that sonorous bass and a pounding beat, to oppressive effect, while the IScintilla Remix is a full-on rabid aggrotech workout, and pretty nightmarish with it.
In contrast, the Loveless Love take on the track plays to the songs 80s electropop roots, coming on like The Human League remixed by JG Thirlwell or Raymond Watts.
It makes for a varied listening experience, and one that marks a neat evolution from the band’s previous releases to date.
Human Impact may have cancelled the UK leg of their tour citing, among other things, Brexit – which is disappointing, but unsurprising – but the arrival of new music offers some solace, I suppose.
Put simply, the UK’s separation form the EU has completely fucked the arts, especially touring musicians not only within the UK, but those wanting to play here, and not only those coming from the EU. The idea that we’re some kind of powerful supernation with immense international clout for trade and everything else is beyond deluded: we’re a small island with little to boast economically right now. So here I am, sitting by candlelight in an attempt to reduce my energy consumption, while sipping a pint of homebrew because the price of beer is soaring almost as fast as diesel and train fares – which is one reason I’ve not been to a gig all month, and it’s starting to feel like lockdown as actually better than this, meaning the timing of arrival of ‘Imperative’ couldn’t be better.
The band announced a new lineup with the release of their first new material since last year’s EP01 as follows: ‘Human Impact is super excited to announce that our line up for the upcoming European tour will include Jon Syverson (Daughters) on drums and Cooper (Made Out of Babies) on bass. We will miss Phil Puleo and Chris Pravdica, but our evolution as a band continues and Jon and Coop will join us in making these live shows truly unforgettable. Human Impact’s self-titled debut album arrived on the eve of the pandemic back in March 2020, which received much critical acclaim and landed them the front cover of New Noise Magazine France. Human Impact followed up with an eight-song EP, dubbed EP01 a year later in March 2021 which featured a mix of singles and unreleased B-sides that were recorded simultaneously to the debut album. ‘Imperative’ is the first new music from the band since then’.
It’s one hell of a way to herald the new phase of the band. ‘Imperative’ is an absolute beast of a tune, an angry grey mass of anguish and angst that slams and grinds and kicks and churns with the nihilistic fury of the best of Unsane and Daughters. It’s brutal, not in its abrasion, but in its straight-up solid bludgeoning. The guitars are steely, but corroded, the sound of twisted metal against a frenzied bass and rolling drums. Feel the pain.
AA
2022 TOUR DATES
15/06/22 : Sonic Morgue @ Kuppelhalle/Silent Green – Berlin (DE)
Prefacing the deluxe edition of their most recent album, Functional Music, expanded to include tracks from the Hyper-Suburb EP, Russian new wave experimentalists Dvanov have offered up aa video single for ‘Уварово (Uvarovo)’.
The St Petersberg-base band started out as Voda-i-Ryba back in 2013, before changing their name.
And what a time to be a Ukrainian—supporting, anti-war band in Russia, and what a time for Dvanov: ‘Уварово (Uvarovo)’ is the last release with vocalist Vlad Kilin and marks what they call ‘the beginning of a new stage in the Dvanov’s life,’ adding ‘In these songs, the cultural memory of revolutions and childhood memories of anxious summer nights collide with the ghosts of modern capitalism. There are the evening and the ringing of endless fields behind the walls of supermarket, cicadas crackle and there’s nowhere to go. We are releasing this at a tragic time when our country has waged an imperialist war. No war! ‘
‘Уварово (Uvarovo)’ is a crazed, beat-driven frenzy of oddness, a bit noisy, a bit industrial, a bit electro, a lot wtf.
Oh, and all proceeds from the sale of Functional Music are going to a Ukraine crisis support charity – which makes it extra-functional.
Purveyors of aggrotech and dark electro, Against I, take something of a swerve for this new release, a four-track EP led by single ‘You and I’, which features guest vocals (and lyrics) by rising star on the scene, J:dead, who comments that “‘You And I’ is a story about a relationship breaking down, because either person cannot love themselves first. Each person is trying to hold the other up from their own struggles but in turn, is forgetting about themselves and their own needs.”
The cover art is more horror than dark techno, and it’s not entirely representative of the EP’s sonic contents, but you should never judge an EP by its cover of course.
First things first: ‘You and I’ is a richly atmospheric tune, with a so much texture and detail. There are strong leanings towards later Depeche Mode, and I’m most reminded of ‘Little 15’, but there’s a lot going on here, not least of all a thick, chuggy guitar and an insistent bass that’s pure goth vintage. The baritone vocal – rich and crooning – very much invites positive comparisons to Dave Gahan and it broods and cruises the mid-pitch, mid-tempo sonic structures that climb and loom over damaged emotional states. As a single, it’s a sock in the chops.
As an EP, this does feel like a bit of a cobbled-together effort that may have worked better with either the lead track and either the instrumental ‘My Madness’ – a high-octane technoindustrial stomper (a strong contrast) – or the ‘Club’ remix of ‘You And I’ as a B-side. Said remix is pretty decent. I don’t actually know if goth club nights are still a thing, but then this isn’t excessively dancey, and hasn’t been remixed as a dancefloor-packing stormer, but instead accentuates the track’s solid mid-tempo groove.
But then there’s the ‘Mayhem’ remix of ‘OMG’ from the debut EP, courtesy of Guilt Trip, which is so much more overtly metal, and snarls and rages like a rabid beast – save for the mellow Kraftwerkian rip in the mid-section. And if ‘You and I’ was intended to showcase a different aside of ‘Against I’, the inclusion of an older track feels like a slightly awkward fit.
Minor niggles aside, it’s a solid effort led by a cracking single tune.
I was an inch away from typing ‘we can all relate to this situation…’ when I realised that, no, that is absolutely not the case, and in fact, that’s fucking bollocks.
We have Conservative MPs saying that if we can’t make ends meet we need to work more hours of get better jobs, while other still suggesting that it’s possible to make meals for 30p per portion and the main reason people use foodbanks is because they can’t cook and can’t budget. It’s sickening and also maddening to see in such stark relief the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, and just how incapable those with money are of seeing things from the perspective of those without. When you’ve got a prime minister anguishing over the wage cost of a nanny and £840 a roll wallpaper (that’s a month’s wage for many people) when pensioners are spending the day on the bus because they can’t afford to heat their flat, it’s apparent just how fucked-up and how far the division has split in contemporary capitalist society.
So it’s a situation probably about half of us can relate to, when the band detail how their latest single is based on their own experience of “the doldrums of being skint, working your arse off to be able to afford a postage stamp-sized flat, only to have to shave in the kitchen sink because the landlord won’t fix the one in the bathroom. Take that and then put it in lockdown, it felt like the walls were closing in – very claustrophobic. You can’t escape to anywhere apart from your own daydreams. The song is an anthem of escapism in the modern era.”
Your head is really the only safe haven left, the only space where you can spread out, and where you can go without fear of being captured on CCTV surveillance – at least for now. It’s also the only place most of us can actually afford a holiday (I often wonder just how the fuck so many of my ten-year-old daughter’s classmates get to go off on skiing holidays and spend Easter in the Maldives when we have to scrape for three nights self-catering off-grid in Wales… like how do people have so much fucking money?).
What’s not fucking bollocks is this tune, which is absolutely top. Because ‘Holiday in my Head’ is about escapism, it’s not completely bleak – but it’s two and a half minutes of driving indie / post-punk, a collision of Asylums, early Editors, and Radio 4, with a strong serving of Gang of Four on the side. Hooks? Hell yeah, it’s got hooks to tear you apart, the choppy guitar duelling with the big, bold chorus that grabs you by the throat and blows your socks off – simultaneously.
Short, sharp and punchy, it’s an absolute blinder of a single, and quite an evolution from their previous outings. It may be more of an afternoon off and a quick pint in your local than a week on a beach in Greece, but then again, if the week in Greece involves being around other holidaymakers and temperature above 20C, I’d take what The Velvet Hands are offering every time.
Aural Aggravation 