Posts Tagged ‘Album Review’

Percy – New Phase

Posted: 24 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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10ft Records – 24th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Percy have been going since the mid-90s, but didn’t get to release an album till 2013. They’ve maintained a steady flow since then, particularly since the solidification of their current lineup in 2017 with New Phase being their fifth album in and their fourth in six years.

‘Workmanlike’ isn’t a criticism when it comes to certain bands, when their solid and consistent output and regular gigging is central to their way of working and to their identity, and while it’s not an exclusively northern thing, The Fall and The Wedding Present are bands which immediately spring to mind as acts who deliver albums like it’s a job. Said albums may all share a certain commonality, but push those tight parameters each time, and if Percy can be guaranteed to sound like Percy, then it’s all to the good.

New Phase is an apt title for an album which sees them take a lunge into darker territory, both sonically and lyrically. A fair few of the songs have featured in their live setlist over the last year or two, giving a fair indication of the direction they were heading with the new material, but to hear these songs all together and as full-realised studio recordings has a different kind of impact. On New Phase, they sound invigorated, vivified, but also tense, paranoid, embattled. Colin Howard’s lyrics are less given to social critique and instead present scenes of horror, of personal torment and heightened anxiety. Whatever the fuck’s been going down in his life or neighbourhood, or whatever grim stuff he’s been streaming on Netflix, the resultant art is powerful. The musical accompaniment captures the same uneasy mood of high tension and darkness.

‘Sink Estate Agents Satanic Rites’ is – remarkably – their most Fall-like track to date, a jagged paranoid spasm that’s dragged from the space between Grotesque and Slates. It’s tense, uncomfortable, and there’s something weird about the production that pulls in different directions and renders it even more difficult, and vaguely gothic in the early post-punk sense, too.

‘Blackout’ has hints of early Arctic Monkeys lurking amidst its clanging mess of guitars and panic-filled lyrics which narrate a bleak tale of alcoholic excess ‘there’s bloodstains on the floor / there’s bloodstains on the wall / and someone’s banging on the door… and then it hit me’.

Narrative is a strong feature of the lyrics, as is nowhere more evident than on the nightmarish ‘I Can Hear Orgies’. Are these auditory hallucinations or is weird shit going down round Colin’s way? Or is it a side effects of the meds?

The title track is raw, ragged, angular, more Shellac or Bilge Pump or even Part Chimp than The Fall, bringing a new level of aggression and noise to Percy’s repertoire.

More conventional Percy territory is covered in ‘Thinking of Jacking It In Again’, ‘Do You Think I’m on the Spectrum?’ and ‘Last Train to Selby’, delving back into the world of work and sociopolitical matters and delivered with powerhouse drumming and choppy, clanging Gang of Four guitars – and of course a dash of Fall-like rockabilly, because it’s Percy. ‘Wah-wah-wah-wah’ Howard signs off. ‘Greedy People’ is a classic Percy swipe at an obvious target, but as Colin spits ‘It’s not about the money / it’s about the principle’, there’s a palpable anger, articulated as much though discordant guitar.

New Phase marks a step up for Percy, and in many ways. They sustain the tension across the duration of the album’s ten tracks, with only the six-minute closer, ‘Afterlife’ calming down and taking a more synth-led dimension, but still presenting a bleakness and heavy melancholy that fits with the album as a whole. The production is tight and solid, bringing to life the album’s sonic and lyrical tensions.

New Phase is a magnificently awkward, challenging, angular set, and perhaps Percy’s least commercial, least overtly ‘indie’ album to date. But for my money, it’s also their best-realised, most authentic, and most exhilarating album yet.

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Lip Critic – Hex Dealer

Posted: 17 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Partisan – 17th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It feels like no time at all since I was reviewing the cassette release of Lip Critic II, and that their ascent from self-released EPs and cassette-only albums on microlabels has been astoundingly rapid, but time has a way of playing tricks when it comes to perception: Lip Critic II was, in fact, released almost four years ago. And now, signed to Partisan and having gained significant traction playing SXSW, with the NME claiming bragging rights for giving them a cover feature a few months ago, as well as a five-star review last November, they’re certainly breaking through. There’s no question that it’s entirely deserved, either: despite being overtly weird and clearly non-mainstream, they’re a quintessential cult alternative band, the likes of which gain substantial hardcore followings and are revered long after their passing.

With a lineup consisting of two drummers and two synths, Lip Critic are no ordinary band, and they produce no ordinary music, and Hex Dealer is a schizophrenic sonic riot. It’s a bit cleaner, the production rather more polished, but fundamentally, it’s the same deranged percussion-heavy cacophony that Lip Critic have always given us, and it’s still true that most of their songs are short and snappy – around two-and-a-half minutes. Consequently, Hex Dealer is aa succession of short, sharp shocks, like poking a socket with a wet finger. The whole thing is a spasm and a twitch.

‘It’s the Magic’ brings together a smooth croon that has hints of Marc Almond and some shouty rap mashed together with some Nine Inch Nails industrial noise and some woozy hip-hop beats and some aggressive drum ‘n’ bass, all in under four and a half minutes.

Lead single ‘The Heart’ is a standout, for is frenetic, kinetic energy, and its hookiness, but it’s a question of context: it’s a blissed-out pop tune in comparison to the blistering percussive onslaught and distorted dark hip-hop blast of ‘Pork Belly’, a cut that takes me right back to the early 90s, specifically the Judgement Night soundtrack. Single ‘In The Wawa (Convinced I Am God)’ is entirely representative of the album as a whole, compressing all of its warped elements into a noisy, spasmodic, hi-NRG two minutes and nineteen seconds. Crazed, hyperactive, it’s explosive and it’s unique.

It’s a rock album with rap trappings. It’s a rap album with rock trappings. It’s a mess and shouldn’t, doesn’t, work. Only, it does. And with ‘My Wife and the Goblin’, they introduce some gnarly noise which isn’t metal by any stretch, but it certainly gets dark near the end. I say ‘near the end’, but it’s only a minute and forty-one and it’s a real brain-melting mess of noise.

If the beats to grow a little samey over the duration of the album, the counterargument is that the thrashing percussive attacks give the set a vital coherence. Packing twelve tracks into just over thirty minutes, and more ideas per minute than any brain can reasonably be expected to process, Hex Dealer feels like Lip Critic’s definitive statement.

AA

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Attrition – The Black Maria

Posted: 16 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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22nd March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Everyone has a different way of processing, everyone’s cognition operates differently. It’s all a matter of experience and perception. The broader one’s experience, and also one’s exploration of art – in all media, be it books, music, visual art – the broader the network of intertext and references available. Formative experiences and interactions are also a significant factor in the way we come to shape and comprehend our world. And so it s that the moment I encounter the words ‘Black Maria’, my mind immediately leaps to ‘Afterhours’ by The Sisters of Mercy – my first encounter with the term, long before I would understand that it was a term for a police van. Attrition’s latest release certainly doesn’t elicit images of dark vehicles, but does hint at the seedy backstreet scenes that the Sisters song brings to mind, with its sense of disconnection, of being outside yourself, .the paranoid twitch of sleep deprivation

The album’s brief intro track, ‘The Promise’ is a murky ambient piece with hushed spoken-word vocals which is build a mood, a sense of dark atmosphere and foreboding. This intro track thins has really become a vogue in recent years, to the point that it’s becoming predictable and even frustrating to be presented with an atmospheric opening piece which probably isn’t particularly representative of the album it prefaces.

In the case of The Black Maria, it’s a fair primer for the wildly varied, even cacophonous blend of musicality which follows. ‘The Great Derailer’ brings operatic vocals and some bold technoindustrial grooves, before ‘The Switch’ gives us some techno-heavy goth with strong hints of Twitch-era Ministry woven into the mix. But once again, against the busy backdrop that alludes to the likes of PIG and KMFDM, there are ethereal moans and wails which drape themselves hauntingly. I’ve loosely reminded of some of the contributions Gitane DeMone made to Christian Death around the time of Ashes, or maybe Jarboe on Swans’ Children of God, but this is somehow different, and if anything, more difficult to assimilate.

Attrition bring a vast array of styles to the table for a start. ‘The Pillar II’ is exemplary: a low industrial throb brings a heavy tension, an unsettling uncertainty, which manifests as a discomfiture in the lower regions of the gut. But the wailing wordless vocals evoke tortured souls, wandering in purgatory. There are tense strings swelling and holding a tight grip, you find your chest tightening and it’s hard to swallow for this clench of tension. It evokes physical response: I feel my jaw clench and my breathing growing more laboured as the track builds layers of sound: there’s a hum that tortures the ears, and when it falls away, the sensation is strange, empty.

Music box melancholy prefaces more ultra-tense violins on ‘The Alibi’, which really takes a turn for the disturbing. The dual vocals grate against one another, dark sinister, deranged, almost schizophrenic in their whispers. The layers are busy and there are serpentine instrumental intrusions amidst the strolling piano and skittering strings and the wild cacophony of backing vocals: the effect is absolutely dizzying. The title track draws the album to a close with warping, time-bending synth dissonance and pulsating bass which contrasts with operatic quailing providing the backdrop to a growled, menacing spoken word vocal – and then it goes large near the end, with industrial-strength percussion cutting through the melee.

‘Spooky’ feels like such a weak, tame adjective in the main, but it’s the best I’ve got when it comes to summarising the otherworldly discomfit of the experience that is The Black Maria. But throughout The Black Maria, Attrition channel all of the dissociation and disconnection, and I’d challenge anyone to listen to this and keep their feet completely on the ground.

AA

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PIG – Red Room

Posted: 14 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Metropolis Records – 17th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

For a good many years, PIG lay dormant, moribund, mute. Gone, but not forgotten, having mingled with the milieu of industrial royalty since emerging in the ranks of KMFDM and retaining that connection and confluence while operating separately under the PIG moniker, Raymond Watts arguably reached his largest audiences in the wake of touring as support to Nine Inch Nails on the Downward Spiral tour. With pig’s heads on stakes at the sides of the stage, it was visual, visceral, and vital.

Things went quiet for a time – a very long time – but since returning in 2016 with The Gospel, the releases have come thick and fast, with Red Room being the sixth album (if you include Pain is God, a compilation of EP cuts) since PIG’s phoenix-like resurrection

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘Watts has co-written much of Red Room with Jim Davies, a longtime member of Pitchshifter but best known for his acidic and acerbic guitar lines on many chart hits by The Prodigy. Several regular cohorts are also present and correct, along with some new additions most majestically heard on ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ as the PIG choir: Emily Kavanaugh (Night Club), Chris Hall (Stabbing Westward), Burton C Bell (Fear Factory, Ascension of the Watchers), I Ya Toyah, Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry), En Esch (KMFDM) and Marc Heal (Cubanate) are among those featured.’

First: it’s a hell of a roll-call of contributors. A veritable who’s-who, an industrial supergroup on a scale that pisses all over recent lineups for RevCo or Pigface. Second: Jim Davies’ presence is notable in terms of defining the sound. There’s a lot of sinewy detail in between the chugging riffs and bulbous sequenced synthy bass notes. Recent releases have seen Watts expose the poppier, glammier aspects of PIG, but these have been cast aside here in favour a sound which is altogether more reminiscent of mid-to-late 90s PIG, only minus the flamboyant orchestral strikes and string flourishes.

Blasting in with ‘Crumbs, Chaos, Lies’ – which deviates from the classic alliterative rule of three – the album gets down to the grind from the off, the track boasting some dirty low-end scuzz, the likes of which would have been quite at home on Sinsation or Wrecked, with overloading guitars that burst from the speakers rent with a serpentine synth line and some discordant piano. Layers? It has many, and the more you listen, the more you hear. Watts has long been a meticulous master of detail in the studio, and while Red Room is darker and noisier than some of its predecessors, it’s a masterclass in attention to the little things.

The title track is a proper PIG prime-cut: anthemic, but dark, bleak, and dirty, while ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ is reminiscent of previous ‘gospel’ flavoured pieces, but equally, I’m reminded of a grimier sweatier, sleazier version of She Wants Revenge. If ‘Does it Hurt Yet’ calls to mind Nine Inch Nails circa Pretty Hate Machine and the more low-key, robotic synth moments of The Downward Spiral, it’s worth bearing in mind that it was Watts who working this field before Trent, before Reznor contributed to Pigface, Watts was recording with KMFDM, and come 1988 (when PHM was released), he released the first PIG LP and worked as a touring member of Foetus.

‘Slave to Pleasure’ mashes a whole lot together, sounding like an industrial version of The Associates, while throwing nods to Depeche Mode and David Bowie. It’s high-energy and a killer tune which would go down well on the radio, if the whip cracks and general themes could pass approval. ‘Six Eye Sand Spider’ is again predominantly electronic but the layers ad textures are exciting, and the guitars, while packed down so, so low, bring both dirt and density the sound. ‘PIG is at Your Window’ is uncomfortable, and brings some bold brass and busy orchestral work atop the big, grinding blasts of guitar, not to mention a dash of .

Red Room captures PIG at their darkest and heaviest, but also marks a return to their eclecticism and experimentalism of the mid-nineties. It’s an unapologetically hefty set with some inspired twists.

AA

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Maybeshewill – Fair Youth (2024 Mix) – 10th Anniversary Reissue

Posted: 12 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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InsideOut Music – 11th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Maybeshewill rose to prominence on the crest of the instrumental post-rock wave swiftly on their arrival in 2005, and while many of their titles and song structures, with brooding passages splintered by bold crescendos, were quintessentially of the time, what set them apart from their peers was the electronic element of their sound. Between 2008 and 2014, they released four albums, with Fair Youth being the final one. And then they called it a day the following year.

Something happened in the years which followed. Not to the band themselves, but in the culture. As so often happens, their reputation and the appreciation for the band seemed to grow in their absence. There’s inevitably an element of nostalgia involved, but with fashions being ever cyclical, post-rock’s popularity was somewhat diminished by 2014, largely due to oversaturation, no doubt – how many instrumental bands playing seven-minute songs with chiming guitars and crashing crescendos all wanting to be Explosions in the Sky do you need to see on a single evening, and how many such lineups do you need in a week, month, year, lifetime? But as time passed, there emerged a new generation who hadn’t been going to gigs in the mid-noughties, who’d missed out, and thus grew a renewed interest.

Maybeshewill reconvened in 2020, releasing No Feeling Is Final in 2021, an album which, seven years after Fair Youth, further cemented their style and certainly didn’t disappoint.

As 2024 marks the ten-year anniversary of Fair Youth, it seems an appropriate time to review the merits of a definitive album – here, reassessed, remixed, and remastered. Jamie Ward comments of the new mix and master: “With 10 years more mixing experience under my belt I feel a bit better placed to conquer the wall of sound and get a little more separation between the instruments to really bring out the details of those arrangements. In general I’ve tried to make things hit a little harder and be bit a more vibrant and technicolour.”

I haven’t been anal enough to play the two versions side by side or to really focus on those minute details which some fans will likely revel in for hours, and I sincerely hope they do. There is a certain and quite specific pleasure in rediscovering an album you know intimately, finding fresh details and dynamics along thee way, but this is perhaps more the material for fan forums and individuals to immerse themselves in.

For me, it’s been a long time since I’ve listened to this album – not because I don’t rate it, but because of the sheer volume of music in the world vying for my attention.

From the very start, rolling piano and brooding strings pair with chiming guitars, strolling bass, and solid percussion to make mood music that’s not meek or fay, but driven and dynamic, with remarkable texture and depth, and it draws you in instantly. There’s a magical musicality to ‘In Amber’, largely derived from the piano which ripples and rolls its way through the surging guitar.

The title track is one of many which, with vocals, would likely have made an epic academy-size venue-filling anthem, and ‘All Things Transient’ has soundtrack written all over it. The quality of the compositions – and their execution is impossible to fault, as they present back-to-back tunes which are solid, energetic, expansive, imaginative. ‘Sanctuary’ is mellow but at thew same time has drive and energy, pulsating shoegaze with a solid rock spine in its tight rhythm section, which stands in contrast to the rather more mathy, jazzy, folksy ‘Asiatic’.

The album’s eleven songs showcase a real range, and Fair Youth represents not only a high point in the band’s career, but also in the post-rock oeuvre. It’s an album of a rare consistent quality, and holds up as well ten years on as it did at the time – if not, perhaps, better.

AA

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Mother of All – Global Parasitic Leviathan

Posted: 5 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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12th April 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Having showcased single cut ‘Hypocrisy – Weaponised’, released ahead of the second album by progressive/melodeath act Mother of All, I was keen to get my lugs around the album in full, not least of all to see if I could get a handle on what ‘melodeath’ is. There doesn’t seem to be a week where I don’t stumble on another microgenre. This isn’t something exclusive to metal, although it certainly seems to be the strain which contains the most minutely fragmented forms.

While now a full and proper band, Mother of All is Martin Haumann’s concept. As the bio informs us, ‘With a background in The Royal Danish Conservatory and extensive training in different musical disciplines, Martin draws on varied and unusual influences to create a unique vision for Mother of All, but his prime inspiration comes from the deep cauldron of metal. Continuing to explore the art form with Mother of All, Martin creates songs that are diverse and eclectic in nature by incorporating melodic and progressive elements into death metal.’

On the evidence of Global Parasitic Leviathan, that means some crunching riffs played fast and furious and driven by rapidfire drumming, but with a lot of fast, flamboyant licks which are big on harmonics and fretwork tapestry. While the contrast is nicely separated and the detail adds layers to the thunderous assault, I can’t help but feel it falls into that self-made trap of showcasing technical skills to the extent that it undermines the overall power of a song at times.

Again, it’s a trait common across the board, but particularly in metal that there seems to be a compulsion to overcompensate, but overshowing the technical competence. It happens a lot in writing, too, though, particularly among newer writers who feel the need to demonstrate their writing skills by overwriting, packing in superfluous adjectives and paragraph upon paragraph of detail because look! I can do this! Well done. But how about you actually tell us a story? Or, in this context, play us a song?

Mother of All have some songs, and they’re burning with incendiary rage, and when they knuckle down and let the fury flow, they absolutely kill it.

The sentiments are solid, and the song titles speak for themselves: ‘Corporate Warfare Leviathan’, ‘Debt Crush’, ‘Merchants of Self-Loathing’ all rage antagonistically against the machines of capitalism and corporate domination, and when they trim the flamboyant fretwork and focus on delivering brute force, as on ‘The Stars Already Faded’, they really hit hard, Haumann’s raw, raging vocal a magnificent articulation of tortured anguish. ‘Debt Crush’, too, is five minutes of full-throttle fury, and although ‘Merchants of Self-Loathing’ gets a bit rap-metal, it’s in the Judgment Night vein and so deserves a pass. ‘Pillars’ seems to lean on Neil Young during the intro, before going all-out raging metal. Keep on rockin’ in the free world, indeed. The sentiment extends beyond genre, of course.

Global Parasitic Leviathan isn’t short on ideas and positively froths and overspills with technical ability, as they’re keen to show us, over and over. But, and this a lesson that takes time – less is more. Global Parasitic Leviathan is good, and it’s consistent in style and tone, but I can’t help but feel that tempering the fretwork would hit harder, because when they really riff out they’re utterly pulverising.

AA

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boycalledcrow – Kullu

Posted: 4 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Mortality Tables – 3rd May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

As much as this is an album it’s an historical document, and one they’ve had to blow the dust off ahead of its release. Kullu was recorded by Carl M Knott, aka Boycalledcrow, as a series of field recordings as he traversed India in 2005 and 2006.

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘The album is an audio travelogue of Knott’s travels through India in 2005 and 2006, just after he’d graduated. That journey was part of Knott’s concerted efforts to overcome the intense feelings of stress and anxiety that had gnawed away at him throughout his adolescence. Along the way, he documented his travels in a blog and accumulated countless memory cards of photos and videos.’

Life has a habit of delaying projects, of getting in the way (I have a number of book-length projects which I embarked upon circa 2010 which are languishing, incomplete, on my hard drive, and have every sympathy). When a project has lain so long, has been placed on a backburner, or whatever else, how viable is it after eighteen years? Is it really worth resurrecting? Yes. Always, and especially if / when it’s personal.

You read and hear often talk of ‘closure’, and usually it’s in relation to a bereavement or a specific trauma. But life is trauma: a path strewn with rocks of trauma to trip you unexpectedly.

Kullu is a road trip, a narrative, and also an exorcism, a sequence of processing, a coming to terms.

More than anything – and any critic’s outlook is limited to their experience – I’m struck by the range of sounds and the way in which Kullu is an album that expands over so much ground. At the outset, the beats are to the fore and Joujouka come to mind initially, as percussion thunders loud and hard, but before long, things start to melt and dissolve into entirely less form-shaped compositions. Twisting between ambience and various shades of dissonance and slow-shifting pulsations, Kullu grates and scrapes its way through a twisted journey of difference, of fresh terrains, ranging from ominous vocal and semi-orchestral compositions like ‘Kanashi’, to clanging, clattering, altered and warping. There’s a lot going on and I sometimes wonder if I’m equipped to cover this. But ultimately there is always room

Kullu presents all the moods, all the vibes, all the breadth of experience. It’s often discordant and difficult, and that’s as it should be.

AA

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Klôvhôvve – Live at JT Soar, Nottingham 18.04.24

Posted: 3 May 2024 in Albums
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Dret Skivor – 3rd May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Dret Skivor seem to have managed to sync their release schedule to Bandcamp Fridays pretty neatly. Meanwhile, the man behind the label, Dave Procter, has enough different musical projects to fill the entire label’s roster single-handedly.

Not content with pumping out harsh noise as Legion of Swine and ambient drone with mathematical divination as Fibonacci Drone Organ, and spoken word ramblings backed with dark noise as Trowser Carrier, or collaborating with countless other artists, notably Claus Poulsen with whom he (ir)regularly convenes for a release, and a brief excursion as twAt clAxon, Procter has also been operating as Klôvhôvve, a vehicle for ambient / glitch weirdness.

Following on from Is it? It is, an album containing two longform tracks which offered their own call and response, released in March, Live at JT Soar feels on one hand like a bit of a stop-gap, but on the other, a reasonable consolidation. More than reasonable, in fact, considering that Procter devotes a considerable amount of time to performing live – and is perhaps the only artist I can think of who will book a tour and not play under the same guise more than a couple of times, or for two consecutive shows. It is, undoubtedly, easier to get bookings if you have a broad range of styles to offer promoters, even if that range does sit under the wider umbrella of obscure electronic weirdy shit.

Before we ger to the obscure electronic weirdy shit of the recording, it’s worth a brief acknowledgement of the cover art, which is truly classic Procter (the photographs which grace the covers of his two collections of poetry / rants as Dale Prudent are strong cases in point). Gritty, unpretty, urban, and a bit off kilter, snapshots of the everyday strange. Here was have a shot of the outside of the venue, still with its signage for JT Soar, Wholesale Fruit and Potato Merchants, from which it takes its name. Unassuming is an understatement for this building, with graffiti on one door, and a piece of street art depicting Nottingham’s best-known polemicists, Sleaford Mods, replicating the artwork for their most recent and widely-acclaimed album, UK Grim on the garage door. The shot is some real-life documentary, its relevance heightened because the vocally socialist Procter departed the UK for Sweden post-Brexit because… well, Brexit.

Klôvhôvve’s set, which lasts twenty-four minutes, is mellow and mellifluous to begin with, but soon swerves into a melting together of soft tones with scratched, warping drones, the glitching eating into the surface of the looping tapes affected at first. Vocal snippets, fractured, fragmented, distorted, cut in and out, as the music ebbs in and out unpredictably.

There is a sense of nostalgia about this, but the overarching sensation is more that of a post-apocalyptic narrative, a bleak dystopia of degradation, of societal collapse whereby only damaged recordings and fragments of past technologies remain, twisted, rusted, malfunctioning. The set does have distinct segments, although they do flow together to form a continuous set, and as such, it makes sense that it’s released here as one single track. It’s not as if anyone is going to be skipping to hear the hit or their favourite song of the set, and it’s structured around transitions between evermore haunting atmospheres. It’s pretty unsettling stuff, dank and grumbling with thunderous rumblings away off in the background while a continuous slow of babbling and sharp scrapes cut into the foreground. But then there’s something resembling a trilling, twisted rendition of ‘Silent Night’ which crackles and stutters through static, and it warps and crackles its way to a slow fade.

There is some strong tonal separation here, and the interjections which appear unexpectedly are almost enough to make you jump But for the most part, it makes your skin crawl – slowly, in a state of curiosity and ponderous hesitation – as you winder where it may be heading.

Procter understands the importance of music which makes you feel uncomfortable, which tests your limits, and this release captures a live set which really teases at the tenterhooks.

AA

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Kee Avil – Spine

Posted: 1 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Constellation – 3rd May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Ah, that difficult second album. Kee Avil set the bar high for herself with her debut, Crease, two years ago. Crease was a highly experimental, boundary-pushing collection of compositions, which was as challenging as it was entertaining. But the trouble with setting out one’s stall in such a fashion is that you can’t retread the same ground, you can’t do the same thing twice, you can’t repeat the same experiments and expect different results. Not to suggest that Crease was in any way a ‘novelty’ record, but experimentation and avant-gardism has to be ever new, fresh, and novel. Pushing the boundaries requires an artist to continue to push them further, to expand the parameters, or otherwise risk being confined withing the limits set initially, at which point, it becomes prescriptive, a template. Small wonder, then, that Avil found the process for Spine to be quite different from Crease. But, unlike many artists who struggle to regain the creative spark in the wake of their debut, whereby some languish for years in a creative trough only to return with some second-rate slop (there are many articles devoted to examples of the ‘sophomore slump’, and I feel neither need nor inclination to recap on them here), Kee Avil seemingly found herself fizzing with ideas, as her bio details:

‘Spine was written in Kee Avil’s home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months—a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: “This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch.” In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts.’

Touring does seem to have a habit of affecting the creative flow. It seems almost as if the industry model with its cycle of release – tour – write – repeat – serves to doom artists to dealing with unnecessary pressure to deliver, and it’s entirely self-defeating since inspiration simply cannot be forced – it’s something that happens. And it happened for Kee Avil, for sure.

Spine is brimming with discord and dissonance, angularity and oddness. ‘Felt’ fucks things up from the very off with warped, wrangling, jangling guitar that twists and mangles across flickering, stammering beats and extraneous noise that gets in your ears like a hatched moth fluttering against your eardrum. It’s a cringy, unsettling sensation, and it’s not really all that pleasant, and Avil breathes and croaks her way over it.

‘the iris is dry’ is magnificently weird, a close, breathy semi-spoken word muttering about lamps and eyes and angels, and it’s tense and claustrophobic and claws its way into your cranium. ‘It makes no sense,’ she croaks by way of a closing refrain, and it’s hard not to agree.

‘remember me’ continues the form of minimally-arranged alternative / eerie indie with a dark folk vibe crossed with a vocal style that sits in the realm of spoken word with a performance art delivery: Avil doesn’t sing, but whispers and breaths the words in a fashion that creates a palpable tension.

‘Gelatin’, released ahead of the album is entirely representative: taut, glitchy, the vocals mixed in a way as to be in your ear and at the same time detached: it’s awkward, uncomfortable. This is true of Spine as a whole.

The only real difficulty in Kee Avil’s second album is for the listener: with its shuddering percussion and harsh frequencies, as well as the up-front vocals, this is a challenging work. And this is a good thing: art should be challenging, and the quality is outstanding.

AA

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Djiin – Mirrors

Posted: 28 April 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , ,
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Klonosphere Records – 3rd May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

If there’s one thing you need to learn about Djiin, it’s that they don’t bend or bow to conformity, and they come from a quite different angle in comparison to the majority of bands pedalling riffs and noise.

Their bio describes them as ‘a psychedelic stoner-rock band whose name is inspired by a psychedelic stoner-rock band whose name is inspired by spirits and other beasts of the Semitic beliefs and traditions. Influenced by 70’s progressive rock and krautrock bands, doom scene and heavy rock from the glory days of the early Sabbath era, as well as other modern references based on the diversity between western and traditional eastern sounds, Djiin develops a personal, atypical and captivating universe. Spirits and other beasts of the Semitic beliefs and traditions. Influenced by 70’s progressive rock and krautrock bands, doom scene and heavy rock from the glory days of the early Sabbath era, as well as other modern references based on the diversity between western and traditional eastern sounds, Djiin develops a personal, atypical and captivating universe.’

You may need a moment to step back and digest the depth of this. Djiin are not your average metal act.

‘Blind’ blew us away as a single cut ahead off the album’s release, and while it’s in some ways representative, it’s also the soft end of the band’s sharp wedge.

The title track twiddles and widdles in a way that Bill and Ted would probably flail over, and it’s a textured, detailed post-rock epic reminiscent of the hectic fretwork that dominated the sound of 2004-2006, but doesn’t sound in any way dated – not least of all because this is a pummelling blast of noodlesome guitar noise which transcends the confines of time or genre, lunging and lurching against a host off walls which confine genres within narrow, predetermined confined.

‘In the Aura of My Own Sadness’ is a glorious sprawl of post-rock exploration which ventures into a host of territories which are hard to unpack, not least of all because of some of the way if delves into detailed noodly territory, breaking into hefty tribal tones of the pulverising slow doom of the closer, ‘Iron Monsters’.

Mirrors may only contain five tracks, but in terms of depth and quality of content it offers a considerable amount more via its layered, if brutal, soundscape, which carves deep. It’s heavy album, and that’s for sure, and one which doesn’t conform to the distinctions of genre. But genre distinctions count for nothing: what counts is a that his is a raging apocalyptic blast – and it’s good.

AA

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