Posts Tagged ‘Album Review’

CEL – Five minutes to self-destruct

Posted: 15 December 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Gagarin Records – 6th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

You might be hard-pressed to call CEL a supergroup, but Felix Kubin has been creating sound here, there, and everywhere for a long time now, and Five minutes to self-destruct is definitely a coming together of established creative forces, containing as it does five recordings of live tracks performed by longstanding Kubin and longstanding collaborator Hubert Zemler, remixed by Warsaw sound engineer Jan Wroński.

And the thing about creative collaborations is that they often rely on spontaneity, immediacy, the frisson between the individuals in proximity, feeding off one another in the moment. And so it is here, as the accompanying notes set out: ‘The expressiveness of these recordings is evident not only in their unbridled live energy, which can hardly be reproduced in the studio, but also in a musical nervousness that sets itself apart from the current wellness folklore of the modular community. The pieces gather in their DNA the paranoid plasma of cultural unease, chaos and upheaval.’

To make a small sidestep, we hear endless decrees that employees need to return to the office in order to foster the spirit of collaboration and all the rest. We know that this is bollocks, and is simply about working the instruments of control. Collaboration and the coalescence of energy for creative ends is not something which cannot be forced, and it happens, regardless of distance, time, and space, given the right connection and chemistry. Hearing the performances on Five minutes to self-destruct, it’s immediately apparent that this is not something that could ever be created by desire or will alone.

As the accompanying bio notes, ‘The expressiveness of these recordings is evident not only in their unbridled live energy, which can hardly be reproduced in the studio, but also in a musical nervousness that sets itself apart from the current wellness folklore of the modular community. The pieces gather in their DNA the paranoid plasma of cultural unease, chaos and upheaval.’

The title track ‘Five minutes to self-destruct’ is a quote from Michael Crichton’s sci-fi classic The Andromeda Strain, which describes a research team’s fight for survival against an accidentally triggered self-destruct mechanism, underpinned by trigger impulses and increasing panic.

My own experience of the modular community may not be on quite the same scale or the same higher circles as theirs, but it does feel primarily the domain of the middle-class, middle-aged white male these days, and there’s a certain air of ease and the satisfaction of hobbyism about it. Needless to say, not so here. There’s a tension that runs throughout the entirety of the release. ‘Krakenwaltz’ cartwheels and loops in jittery circles, head-spinning rhythmic cycles with no small degree of attack, with some sharp, aggressive snare sounds and a frenetic, frantic undercurrent which grows increasingly disorientating over its near-six-minute duration.

‘Eskalacja’ is dominated by hectic percussion and a whirl of fairground bleeps and toots running in ever-tighter concentric circles. It some respects, it calls to mind the frenzied looping and wild, vaguely manic excesses of early Foetus 12” singles, seeing just how far they can push the concept, and themselves in the creation of hyperactive sound.

The seven-minute ‘Blauer Dunst’ which sits as the album’s centrepiece marks a distinct shift in tone and texture, a rumbling dark ambient piece that invites comparisons to some of the more abstract works of Throbbing Gristle. It predates the rest of the set by almost four years, having been recorded in October 2020.

It’s back to more upbeat, stomping percussion-led synth work on the DAF-like ‘Neustart Generation’ – but don’t mistake upbeat for uplifting: it clatters and bangs with a clipped, regimented, Germanic feel, and the grooves are taut and tense, and it’s simmering tension which crackles beneath the lumping, shuffling, organic rhythms which underpin the sparse, tetchy title track. A couple of minutes in, a loping percussive cycle breaks out and the repetition of this and the dominant synth motif, amidst a swell of extraneous sounds – samples, sirens – makes this one of those tracks where you can feel your blood pressure increasing as it progresses and the pace quickens to a blur. It ends before reaching the point of inducing an aneurysm, and the assurance to the applauding audience, “We’re still alive, it’s ok,” at the fae injects some unexpected humour to proceedings.

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Codespeaker – Scavenger

Posted: 9 December 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Ripcord Records – 8th November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Codespeaker are a post-metal band from Edinburgh, which their press release describes as ‘Scotland’s sombre capital’. Of all things, I’d never really considered it to be a sombre place, and I’ve been a fair few times – then again, having lived in Glasgow for four years, I am aware of just how bleak the long Scottish winters are. Further north by latitude than Moscow and separated from the Arctic Ocean by only more water, things can be pretty grim and the nights can feel like weeks.

They promise an ‘atmospheric, dark, and heavy post-metal sound’ with ‘thunderous drums and colossal guitars reminiscent of titanic bands like Neurosis and Cult of Luna’, on an album which ‘marks a new chapter for Codespeaker… [a] massive-sounding record [which] offers a towering and immersive experience, ebbing and flowing between hypnotic, mammoth-sized riffs and intense vocals, while also embracing atmospheric and contemplative moments.’

Having had no television for three months after a storm took down the aerial during my time in Glasgow, again, this does seem to represent the bleakness of those long, long nights which seem to stretch from 2pm to 9:30am, as well as articulating the state of the world right now. It’s at war. It’s on fire. It’s fucked up. It’s scary. Scavenger picks it way through the fragments and scraps, the mess of confusion and roars to the sky, an unbridled utterance of raw anguish.

They’re straight in with the thunder on the first song, the six-minute ‘Usud’ and the weight only grows on the roaring blast that is ‘Signum’. The drums are half-submerged by the thick wall of overdriven guitar when they’re in full-on riff mode, and the force is something else, a sonic tsunami. When they break it down to quieter passages, it feels like a lull in a storm, but more than that, they reveal an altogether more reflective aspect, and while they do so, they brood hard and their knack for introspective atmospherics is matched by their technical skills – both the musicianship and composition is deft. And they prove themselves to be masters of the build-up, too: to continue with the storm analogy, the mid-section of ‘Recission’ is exemplary, as if the winds gradually begin to build before suddenly, bam! You’re hit by a torrential downpour driven by a ninety-mile-per-hour gust. The beginning of ‘Karst’ again shows that they’re capable of moments of magnificent poise and calm, before gradually building… and building… it’s a while before they let fly with all the riffs, all the pedals, all the volume, and the impact is devastating.

Instrumentally, ‘Hetacomb’ calls to mind segments of Amenra’s Mass VI, the soft picking giving way to a bone-crunching chug, while ‘Samsa’, the album’s shortest track, coming n at under four minutes, is also perhaps the most brutal. ‘Enso’ sprawls over almost seven minutes of blistering savagery, an exorcism of pain and a tempest of catharsis. They’ve got yet more up their collective sleeves: the final track, ‘Verte’ is a work of magnificent, alternating dreamy shoegaze segments, with volcanic metal eruptions which hit with a bowel-quaking force.

All told, Scavenger is pretty special – equally emotive and high impact, this is intelligent, articulate, and monumentally heavy. I suppose you might say it’s the perfect equilibrium between deft and heft.

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Killer Couture – Everything Is Normal

Posted: 5 December 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Transylvanian Recordings – 31st October 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The title is, sadly, true. Somehow, recent years have ‘normalised’ everything, but not least the worst and most cuntish behaviour. Men being sleazy shits is just so normal that ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ is an election-winning slogan, and a majority – however slim – in the US is ok with electing a convicted felon to the most powerful political position in the world. Somehow, billionaires have been normalised. Genocide has been normalised. These things have just become the backdrop to the every day. Many of us simply reel at this realisation.

But instead of reeling, we need to react. And if we ourselves find ourselves unable, it’s at least something to find there are other out there who are able to articulate on our behalfs. Enter Killer Couture, with their third album.

Gothface celebrate Everything Is Normal as being ‘Not overproduced; just back-to-basics angry, editorial of society style late 80’s/early-90’s music; the kind of stuff you could expect from Skinny Puppy’s and Ministry’s DGAF approach in the 80’s’. The band themselves describe it as ‘a 40-minute violent outburst of pent-up energy, challenging the concept that there ever was a status quo to begin with, the people who feel the need to try and uphold the illusion, and exploring the psychic maelstrom of living in the true chaotic reality beneath the mask.’

From a muffled cacophony of discord and a patchwork of samples emerges the first pulsating beat and blasting riff, from which ruptures forth squalling guitar and the intensity builds as the collage of snippety bits layers up to an unbearable level… and then ‘Terrible Purpose’ barrels in, the guitars thick and fat and dirty, overloading but with that digitally crisp edge, and as much as Ministry and Skinny Puppy so come to mind, while the speaker cone-shredding distortion hits like a two-footed flying kick to the chest, I’m thrown into recollections of early Pitch Shifter, of the searing industrial metal abrasion of Godflesh. The bass snarls, the percussion is simply devastating, and this is proper, full-tilt. If you need more comparisons, and more contemporary ones, I’d be placing this alongside Uniform for its uncompromising, full-on raw industrial attack.

Hot on its heels, the title track is a relentless percussive blast which propels a mess of noise, guitars set to stun, vocals set to rabid punk rage.

The guitars on ‘Teeth’ come on like a wall of sheet metal. If the refrain ‘I’d like to break your teeth’ lack subtlety, it achieves the desired impact. Everything Is Normal is not about subtlety or nuance: it’s about expunging that raw, brutal rage, it’s about catharsis, it’s about venting the fury, and Killer Couture are simply splitting their skins and breaking open their craniums with it.

‘KCMF’ brings another level of overload, the bass crunching and guitars churning and squalling against a relentless mechanised beat, and this is some furious, high-octane adrenalized noise shit. ‘Bastards’ speaks – or rather hollers – for itself, and ‘Composite Opposite’ is as gnarly as hell.

Everything Is Normal is one of the few self-professed ‘industrial’ albums I’ve heard of late which isn’t some Pretty Hate Machine lift, and isn’t essentially an electropop album with a dash of distortion. Killer Couture deliver on their promises with an album that’s brutal and uncompromising, heavy, and properly noisy.

‘Bad Waves’ brings things to a close, combining a certain shoegaze element with the hypnotic throb of suicide, and calls to mind The Sisters of |Mercy’s legendary live renditions of ‘Ghostrider’ circa 1984, often segued into ‘Sister Ray’ and / or ‘Louie Louie’ with the same relentless beat. And yes, my only complaint is that at 4’59”, it simply isn’t long enough by half. But then, the best songs always leave you wanting more, and despite Everything Is Normal being truly punishing album, a little more wouldn’t hurt that much… probably.

It’s important – and now sadly necessary – to distinguish between the red-faced outrage of those perpetuating hate and raging against all things supposedly ‘woke’ and those who are calling out the injustices, who are willing to stand up and point out that we need to be woke, that if you have an issue with antifa, you’re pro-fa, and you’re the problem.

Killer Couture are the voice of anger, the conduit of rage, and Everything Is Normal is precisely the album we need right now.

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Nomad Tree – I: Awakening The Ancestors

Posted: 4 December 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 29th November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Creativity can have immensely therapeutic effects. The psychology behind it is likely complex, if it’s even fully understood, but immersing oneself in something creative, be it music, writing, or visual arts seems to uncoil the mind in ways nothing else can quite manage.

With I: Awakening The Ancestors, described as ‘a profound journey through sound, blending experimental folk, noise, and shamanic practices’, Stuart Chalmers, under the moniker of Nomad Tree, presents ‘the culmination of an 18-month exploration from burn-out and self-doubt to discovering a new voice. Using feedback techniques, contact mics on frame/bass drums, amplified dulcimers, gongs, and percussion made from natural materials, the album creates a dark, hypnotic soundscape. Recorded in unique locations like Cathedral Cave and Luds Church, the tracks evoke a sense of ancient connection to the land and spiritual practice. It’s a cathartic release aimed at healing and altered states of consciousness’.

And so it is in Chalmers’ case, perhaps, that the creative process, paired with reconnecting in some way with nature, and with places which inspire a sense of ancient history, a time before religion as it now exists, before civilisation as we know it, even, has provided a sense of escape from the all-pervasive shit of the now.

I: Awakening The Ancestors consists of three longform pieces, each over ten minutes long, and these are compositions laden with dense atmosphere. ‘On Sorcerous Wings Take Flight’ is so dense as to be oppressive: heavy, thunderous percussion rings out across barren moorland and reverberates around thick forests. Winds blow and the very earth moans and mumbles. Darkness creeps ever closer, growing ever heavier. There is a sense of a presence, but, at the same time, the absence of anything which feels overtly human is conspicuous. Although the track’s evocation is ancient mists, my mind takes me to a most contemporary on-line discussion around the hypothetical question ‘If you were alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a bear or a man?’ It’s a talking point around women’s safety, but in the last year I have taken to going on ever-longer walks in a quest to be in nature, but away from people. As Brion Gysin said, ‘man is a bad animal’, and as unnerving as the unknown and the unseeable may be, the prospect of encountering other people is considerably scarier.

‘Seeking Through Deepest Fears’ careens into dark space with droning, melancholic string sounds, wheezing, rumbling, polytonal tension and low, slow-building layers, to which primitive percussion eventually joins. There’s an oddly psychedelic sheen to this piece as it settles into a hypnotic groove overlayed with what sounds like scrawling, scraping walls of feedback, and it lands somewhere between Black Angels and latter-day Swans in terms of the listening experience: intense, almost overwhelming, but also uplifting on account of the complete immersion it engenders.

If the liner notes imply a sense of progression, a narrative arc, or any sort of linearity, the actuality of I: Awakening The Ancestors confounds that expectation in its merciless gloom. With tribal beats bashing away, hard, ‘Amongst Forest Spirits Or Wild Beasts’ conjures a sense of tapping into something elemental. It eventually tapers away to silence amidst a clamour of chimes, leaving a sense of emptiness, and much to reflect on.

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Spineless – Dysphonia

Posted: 3 December 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Submersion Records – 1st November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Once again, I’m playing catch-up. There isn’t only new music released faster than I can even read my emails, but great new music at that. It’s important to stress this. There’s so much grumbling about how there’s nothing new or interesting being released anymore, and the media is bursting with articles on how bands are dying a death because the charts are solid with solo artists and it’s impossible to finance a tour as a band in the current climate, and that’s if there are any venues given that grassroots venues are closing at such an alarming rate, and it’s true, bands are simply not a feature of the commercial charts anymore, the music industry is messed up, streaming platforms like Spotify exist to deliver the precise opposite of trickle-down economics by funnelling revenue from streams for probably 90 per cent of acts up to the major league acts, and venues are in crisis. But anyone who visits these pages with any kind of frequency will be aware that there is an immense wealth of new music being released every single week – it’s just not easy to know where to find it.

When I embarked on my journey from the Top 40 to the underground, in the late 80s and early 90s, there was Melody Maker, Sounds, The NME (to an extent), and John Peel. Annie Nightingale’s request show would air all kinds of non-mainstream stuff directly after the top 40 singles chart on Radio 1 in the late 80s. Hell, even the overenthusiastic snivelling sycophant Zane Lowe would play some interesting stuff. Now, 6Music is pretty much it, and it is not the same. This is the scenic route to why I’m a month behind on covering new releases.

Dysphonia by Spineless is… powerful.

‘Justice’ arrives on a thick, monotonous bass blast and shuddering guitars, at first calling to mind Swans but then swerving into a space that’s both more metal and more atmospheric.

Cited influences which range from Godflesh to Chelsea Wolfe are clearly apparent, as powerful vocals, often ethereal, but at times demonic, top punishing industrial trudges dominated by sparse riffs, just a couple of chords hammered with skull-crushing brutality. ‘Disease’ is exemplary, bringing together a commanding vocal which positively soars, and a punishing, relentless riff adorned with squalls of feedback, with everything pinned together with a snare drum that simply takes the top off your head.

Single cut ‘Me’, showcased here not so long ago, is altogether more atmospheric, emotive, moving, but there are surging currents of noise running throughout, and the piano-based ‘You’ offers a counterpart piece which sees Spineless venture toward the realms of anthemic balladry. It’s quite a departure from the majority of the album, and seems to be mastered differently, too, which makes it a standout for a range of reasons. ‘To the Core’ plunges back to guitar-driven darkness, epic post-metal par excellence.

In another time, despite its weight, its, at times, brutal heft, the popper moments of Dysphonia would have likely won it mainstream airplay, and would have seen Spineless pitched alongside the likes of Evanescence and Linkin Park – not that they’re nu-metal or gothic metal, but because the songwriting is of a standard, and because they have TUNES as well as bold riffs. ‘Where Am I’ brings some stuttering beats and brooding piano, and there’s so much depth to absorb with Dysphonia. ‘Your Drama’ is soulful and industrial, detailed and delicate… and then it ends heavy. And I mean heavy.

‘NOZZ’ is nothing short of a sonic explosion, and it not remotely commercial, and all the better for it. It’s an absolute beast, a raging tempest of overload. Time was you’d buy an album based on the singles, only to find the singles completely unrepresentative. It’s true that the singles from Dysphonia showcase the more accessible end of things, but as a whole, it’s a magnificent set of songs, which really do cross boundaries and explore different spaces.

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Rupert Lally – Interzones

Posted: 30 November 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Mortality Tables – 29th November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Because life experience creates linguistic associations, for me, it’s impossible to see or hear the word ‘interzone’ without immediately thinking of William S. Burroughs. The title of a collection of short stories and ‘routines’ penned in the mid-1950s, Interzone was the working title of the seminal breakthrough novel Naked Lunch (1959), and the collection, published in 1990 consists of segments which failed to make the final cut. The pieces were written while Burroughs was living in Tangier, something of a haven for expat writers, including, perhaps most notably, Paul Bowles, but also polyartist and true inventor of the cut-up method, Brion Gyson. Burroughs described the city as an ‘interzone’, and it was indeed both an ‘international zone’, as the portmanteau implies, and a space between zones, outside of any single culture or jurisdiction, its administration divided between the US, French, Spanish, and English sectors, where ‘nothing is true, everything is permitted’. Of course, there are numerous other connotations, but this is what I’m bringing in terms of prececeptional baggage to this.

The accompanying notes certainly indicate that the album’s content holds up to these parallel positions: ‘Like its name implies, these are place of transiency. Intermediate places. In-between locations. Melting pots of different people and different ideas, constantly evolving as one thing collides with another, and another, and another.’

The album was initially recorded in 2022 as a solo work, but subsequently scrapped and rerecorded with a different collaborator on each composition. Collaborations do tend to bring out different aspects of an artist, and it should therefore be of no surprise that this suite of nine pieces, recorded between 2022 and 2024 in Switzerland, England, Luxembourg, France and Zimbabwe, is eclectic in its take on electronica.

As the bookending pieces, ‘Entry Visa’ and ‘Exit Visa’ indicate, travel, movement, and transition, are the key themes here. But this is not some pan-cultural pick ‘n’ mix grab-bag, and instead creates an experience which replicates the disorientation of travel. It’s difficult to articulate just how this sonic patchwork works, or quite how the experience feels. It’s not as if it lurches from techno to grunge, to opera, to thrash, and in this respect Lally’s works represent his ‘two inches of ivory’, so to speak. But within the realm of electronica, Interzones covers substantial ground.

‘Play Position’, featuring Salford Electronics, is a sample-packed exploratory work with a prominent beat, which contrasts considerably with the near-ambience of ‘A Stealth Approach’, featuring Scanner; contrasting further, Simon Fisher Turner brings a sort of drawling space-age country aspect to ‘Calmer’, before things take a spin toward out-and-out trance on the title track, and Karen Vogt’s airy, soft vocals on ‘Running Circles’ pull the album gently into hypnotic shoegaze territory. The album continues on this trajectory, sliding deeper into dark, gothy electropop with ‘Ripples’.

The insistent beat and overtly dance style of ‘Exit Visa’ makes for an unexpected change in direction – despite the fact that, by this point, nothing should be truly unexpected. The effect, however, is disorientating, and you find yourself wondering how you came from A to B over the duration of the album. It’s testament to both Lally’s compositional skills and his selection of contributors – as well as the album’s sequencing – that somehow, it flows and the transitions themselves are seamless, which only heightens the sense of moving between spaces with no real sense of how it came to pass. Vitally, Interzones is a subtly detailed work, with hidden depths and moments of genuine beauty.

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HORSEBASTARD – HORSEBASTARD

Posted: 28 November 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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26th November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s eight and a half years since HORSEBASTARD last made the virtual pages of Aural Aggravation, when I witnessed their explosive set at the now sadly-gone CHUNK in Leeds in May 2016, with fellow equestrian favourers Palehorse (playing their last Leeds show), and the debut performance from future legends Beige Palace, who are also sadly missed). They’ve been going for donkeys, but despite a slew of EPs and split releases, this is their first long-player. Well, the track-list is long, at least, with twenty-eight tracks – but still only with a running time of seventeen minutes.

With the exception of the final track, ‘CORYBANTIC IDIOGLOSSIA’, the songs – or projective noise-vomits – are all around the half-minute mark, and with all of the titles set out in block capitals, it’s almost as hard on the eyes as on the ears. Almost. With titles spanning poor wordplay (‘CHAIRWOLF’, ‘FLIGHT OF THE ALLIGATOR’, ‘OLD TESTAMENTALITY’, ‘IRRELEPHANT’), the nihilistic (‘ANHEDONIA’, ‘MEANS TO A DEAD END’), and the straight-up daft (‘NOT ONCE. NOT TWICE. BUT THRONCE’, ‘INDEED RESUME COMMENCING’), it’s got everything you’d expect from a grindcore album, being a genre that recognises and revels in its absurdity, and while it can be serious, often pretends to be serious instead.

With a high-tuned snare cutting through the barrage of noise that bursts forth at two hundred miles an hour, while the vocals – as much given to screams as guttural growls – set them apart from many other acts. This means that ‘CRACK WASP’ sounds exactly how you’d expect it to, a twenty-nine second of squalling agony which assails the listener from all angles.

Guitars stop, start, stutter and lurch, and everything’s so hard and fast it’s almost impossible to distinguish between a chord change and the next song: they’re packed in with absolutely no gaps in between, resulting in the album being a continuous blur of brutal noise. There are details in the guitar playing, but they all pass so quickly it’s impossible to really register them. There’s something of a formula, in that songs tend to start with a rapid-fire drum fill before all the noise piles in on the back of it. With absolutely no let-up from beginning to end, HORSEBASTARD is a frenetic slab of face-melting ferocity.

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Tomoyoshi Date – Piano Trilogy

Posted: 25 November 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Tsuyukusa Records Tsuyu— 8th November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Tomoyoshi Date’s biography makes for an interesting read: he’s described as ‘a physician and musician known for his releases on prominent ambient labels such as 12K (US), LAAPS (France), and QuietDetails (UK)’. There’s much to be said for having a creative outlet which is completely separate from one’s day-job, especially when that day-job carries a degree of responsibility and likely brings with it no small level of stress.

Tomoyoshi Date has gone a step further, though. You couldn’t really call being a musician releasing ambient works on avant-garde microlabels a ‘side-hustle’ – which seems to be all the rage of late, and seems to be something people are proud of and the media love as much as they used to love contestants on Big Brother after they’d left the house, rather than acknowledging that this is a symptom of how capitalist structures are failing so many working-class people: this is more of a parallel career, and presumably Tomoyoshi Date’s ‘professional’ occupation affords the time and space to pursue the ‘other’ career.

Having recently written on how the four-CD box by Dolium, and the near hour-long single track album Leaves never fall in vain by Fear of the Object require a certain time commitment, I’m here in the face of not one, but three albums. Because Piano Trilogy is not a set of three compositions, but three separate works, recorded between 2021 and 2024, which collectively form a trilogy, released as a cassette package in an edition of 150 copies. It’s niche, alright, and as I said, there’s no way this would pay the rent as a primary occupation – which is a shame, but it’s the crappy capitalist world we live in, unfortunately. Were things different, I could write about music all day long and put food on the table.

This trilogy is formed of ‘ 438Hz, As it is, As you are, released by LAAPS and selected as one of Bandcamp’s Best Ambient albums in January 2023; Tata, composed for Silver Gelatin’s exhibit at Tata in Koenji, Tokyo; and Requiem, a piece dedicated in memory of a close friend who passed away too soon’ and ‘All three albums are packaged in special jackets featuring found photographs curated by Silverわ Gelatin and are being released simultaneously.’

An album trilogy released simultaneously is a lot to assimilate, and few, if any, listeners are ever going to listen to these three albums back-to-back, not even Tomoyoshi Date’s biggest fans. But for review purposes, that’s precisely the task I have set myself.

Date is clearly a gifted composer and musician, and it’s certainly no criticism to observe that the music drifts by, lightly and effortlessly. Amidst the piano notes which ripple serenely are stutters and glitches which deviate from the more classically-orientated template and explore more electronic, experimental territories. But Date does so subtly, delicately.

438Hz, As it is, As you are is a most soothing work, consisting of four compositions spanning around half an hour. Drones and slow-turning ambient tones, and birdsong occupy much of the space between piano notes, and the effect is relaxing, like a walk in nature. It’s the shortest of the three, with Tata and Requiem both stretching well beyond forty minutes I duration.

Tata is more ‘pure’ piano, and runs for almost forty-five minutes, while Requiem is sparse and melancholy, and stands apart: a pure piano work, it comprises six pieces, all over five minutes and up to more than eight and a half minutes in length, and rich in low-key melancholy.

These are clearly separate and distinct works, but they’re very much complimentary, and work together as a suite.

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Hungry Ghosts – Segaki

Posted: 23 November 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Nakama Records – 29th November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Is there such a thig as music-listening burnout? Probably not, but reviewing a new album on a more or less daily basis is knackering. There’s listening to music, and then there’s listening to music: one is passive, while the other is very much an active pursuit. But engaging – and fully engaging – with different forms of music can be strong and vigorous exercise for the mind, and when presented with music which is overtly challenging, there is a sensory workout involved, too. And Segaki, the second album by the Norwegian-Malaysian trio Hungry Ghosts, consisting of Malaysian tenor saxophonist Yong Yandsen ‘accompanied by the Norwegian powerhouse duo of Christian Meaas Svendsen on double bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums’ is most certainly challenging.

As their biography attests, ‘their debut record has been described as an album with an ‘unstoppable energy’ and like actual hungry ghosts (my italics) — the unfortunate souls who are reborn as pitiful creatures into their own miserable realm, punished for their mortal vices — the trio has an insatiable appetite for more… This appetite was temporarily quenched during their European tour in 2022. As part of this tour they played in a small Austrian town by the name of St. Johann in Tirol. That concert was recorded, and that recording became the raw ingredients for this release. Now, after having gone through a rather extensive two year long digestive system of listening, mixing, listening, mastering and listening again, the trio has brought us their second dish of hard hitting improv.’

The digestive system must be in quite a state if the album’s first track is anything to go by: ‘In search of filth like vomit and faeces to eat’ is sixteen sprawling minutes of frantic percussion and discordant sax frenzy. The title conjures an array of disturbing scenarios, from the dog, driven by stress, boredom, or anxiety to eat bodily waste, to something altogether more depraved and disturbed. The music itself provides no answers, only a crazed sprawl of rabid jazz which wanders and lurches in all directions, but amidst the mania, the phrase ‘shit-eating grin’ pops into my head uninvited. Of course it did. Some swear by various narcotics to open the mind, but for my money, music is the most powerful gateway to making unexpected associations and triggering recollections and reminiscences from almost out of nowhere. It’s not a grin I’m wearing by the end of this wild excursion, though, but a grimace, white knuckles gripping the sides of my chair as I exhale slowly. My head’s swimming, and I’m dizzy from the rollercoaster ride, and it’s the phrase ‘eat shit and die’ which bubbles up into my mind from my churning innards.

The viscerally continues on the altogether shorter ‘Small bits of pus and blood’ which completes side one. It’s sparser, atmospheric, uncomfortable. The percussion is altogether more restrained, yet dominates the minimal arrangement, and rhythms fleetingly emerge from the erratic clomps and clods before petering out to a lone trilling whistle.

Flip to side two and ‘Mountain valley bowels full of grime’ starts quietly but soon builds to a sustained crescendo, and keeps on crashing and braying away with a cranium-splitting intensity for almost twenty-two minutes. The drums explode in a perpetual roll, the double bass runs… run and run beneath sax mania that sounds like a jet engine.

‘A great decomposing odour’ delivers the final blow: at a minute and fifty-three seconds long, it feels like a jazzed-out sucker punch which takes unfair advantage of the dizzy, bewildered state one finds oneself in having seemingly, unknowingly, fallen down the mountainside into the valley and into the grime head-first.

The titles feel as if they belong to a gritty, grimy, sludgy metal album, but what Hungry Ghosts evidence on Segaki is that darkness, weight, intensity, and befouled viscerality are not exclusive to the metal domain, and that it’s possible to articulate sensations with a rare physicality without the need for distortion or snarling vocals – or, indeed, any vocals at all. With Segaki, Hungry Ghosts achieve a level of intensity and a power which is intensified by just how unexpected it is.

AA

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Dolium – The Products Of Our Own Demands And Commands

Posted: 19 November 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Sister 9 Recordings – 22nd November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Anniversary editions and reissues have become a massive part of the music industry in recent years, in keeping with the ever-growing tendency to milk all things nostalgic. Many are shameless cash-ins, designed to compel dewy-eyed fans to purchase an album from their your again at eye-watering expense in order to hear it in a new ‘improved’ remastered form, accompanied by several discs of demos, outtakes, acoustic and alternative versions, and contemporaneous live recordings that no-one ever plays more than once if at all, while cherishing a deluxe booklet of photos and whatnot and reflecting on just how fucking old they are and wondering where the decades have gone.

That doesn’t mean there’s no merit to marking anniversaries, and this release is rather different, being a part of the commemorations of twenty years of Sister 9 Recordings with a comprehensive retrospective of cult Sheffield act Dolium, who first broke onto the city scene around the turn of the millennium, before coming to the attention of John Peel in 2004. The band went on indefinite hiatus in 2010, but during their years of activity, amassed a substantial body of work, including two full-length albums, Kisses Fractures (2005), and Hellhounds On The Prowl (2008). A third album, Brother Transistor, was recorded but never saw the light of day… until now. Add all of their singles and other bits and bobs, including their shelved debut single – which made it to test pressing but no further due to lack of funds – and this four-CD set provides instant access to their complete discography, and more. As such, it’s a boon for fans and an ideal introduction for anyone unfamiliar with an act described by KERRANG! as ‘a less depressing Joy Division mixed with the black horror of Bauhaus and the melodic dynamics of the Pixies’.

I’m not entirely convinced there’s much ‘black horror’ to be found in Bauhaus’ catalogue, but it does capture the punky / goth stylings of a band who espoused the indie / DIY ethic and injected every moment with pure adrenaline. They started out with a drum machine, but progressed to live drums when Simon Himsworth joined. Being a small world, it would appear that this is the same Simon Himsworth who would later play guitar in brief but legendary York band We Could Be Astronauts alongside former Seahorse Stu Fletcher.

There’s an obvious chronology about the first two discs, which contain Kisses Fractures and Hellhounds On The Prowl respectively, with contemporaneous EPs and singles by way of bonuses. As titles like ‘She’s The Pill That Makes Me Want To Stay’, ‘Drug City’, and ‘Whore Whore’, all from Kisses Fractures indicate, this is a band who are fully committed to the trash aesthetic of sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll – with a heap of death and suicide on top – and Kisses Fractures is a low-fi blast of post-punk drama. With hints of The Jesus and Mary Chain and The March Violets in the mix, likening the sound to any specific bands is difficult and rather too specific: what they bring is an assimilation of an era and an aesthetic, and the sound is more that off the mid-80s than the mid-00s. It’s exciting: there’s no let-up, no mid-album lighter-waving anthem, just back-to-back overdriven explosions of raw energy that are every bit as punk as anything released in ’77 or ’78. ‘Driving With The Deathettes’ B-side ‘Daddy’s Swinging in the Attic’ cranks up the sleaze true-crime dirt, against some repetitive lo-fi riffage.

The same themes are present on Hellhounds On The Prowl, which delivers another batch of tightly-packed squalor-filled shock, horror, and filth with titles like ‘“Suicide” Was My First Word’, ‘Coughin’ In The Coffin’, and ‘Junkie Howlin’’, the latter being a swampy, hipshaking fucked-up rockabilly boogie which pretty much sets the level for the album, which does feel more evolved, if not necessarily more mature. ‘We Want Your Blood’ is a lurch into straight-up B-movie horrorcore, and the thunderous ‘She Can’t Steak My Heart’ continues to place the vampire fixation, while ‘Gü the Destroyer’ melds the high-octane explosivity of Dead Kennedys with an Industrial edge. It works, and they get away with it because there’s clearly a dash of pastiche and self-awareness infused with the relentlessly rambunctious rock ‘n’ roll.

As much as they’re about drawing on, and revelling in, cliché, and the work of their precursors, there’s clear common ground with contemporaries like Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. I say ‘like’, but it’s a very short list, to say the least. Then again, the scuzzy garage blitzkrieg of tracks like ‘Godspeed Your Love To Me’ sits comfortably alongside garage revival acts like The Strokes and The Hives. Only this evidences that Dolium were better. As is so often the case, it’s not always the good bands who make it, and perhaps Dolium were just too intense, too wild, too primitive. Among an endless list of contemporaneous vampire-themed ragers, including ‘Holy Water’, ‘Oh Lord, I See No Reflection’, ‘These Fans Have Fucking Fangs!’, ‘You’ve Got Holes!’ comes on like Queens of the Stone Age, and if nothing else, showcases the band’s eclecticism.

I’m sure forums and fans have debated the ins and out of why they decided to call it a day before putting out album number three, but there’s little out in the world on the topic, and hearing the material on its belated arrival gives no clue: it presents the band in ferocious form, evolved to another level, bursting with gritty guitars and showcasing a newfound level of songwriting ability – there are hooks galore, and the production is meaty. It may be more accessible than its predecessors, but it’s by no means mainstream. ‘Get Off on My Machine’ brings the riotous grunge blitzkrieg of Pulled Apart By Horses; ‘(There Goes My) Jellies Girl’ offers unexpected melody and could almost qualify as ‘anthemic’. The gritty uptempo chuggernaut of ‘The Future In Hands’ seems to take not-so-subtle cues from ‘My Sherona’. It’s so tempting to contemplate what might have been… but to do so is futile. The past is past, and Dolium’s peak is certainly past, but Brother Transistor is a belter and that’s an ineffable fact.

AA

The fourth and final disc, which brings together everything else not included on the other discs, namely the first four-track demos and a bunch of offcuts and rarities from the span of their career, is, as one would anticipate, something of a mixed bag, and often raw, rough, and barely ready. The demos provide an insight into the early evolution of the band and their early material, again sounding more like they were recorded in 1983.

With seventy-six tracks, this is not only a monster, but a truly definitive collection which presents the good, band, and the ugly – but mostly it’s either good or ugly. One thing is clear: Dolium were a band out of time: sounding like 1984, they’d likely have gone down a storm now or as part of either the goth revival of the late 90s or a few years ago. They just weren’t the sound of the post-rock dominated mid-noughties. But if there’s any justice, history will recognise Dolium as underground greats.

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