French psychedelic/prog-rock collective Djiin will have recently revealed a music video for a brand song of their forthcoming fourth full-length album Mirrors due out on May 3 via Klonosphere Records/Season of Mist.
The follow-up to 2021’s third album Meandering Soul was recorded, mixed and mastered by Peter Deimel at Black Box Studio and sees Djiin further honing their exciting and powerful blend of psychedelic stoner rock and 70’s progressive rock. Written during the last four years by Chloé Panhaleyx (Vocals/Electric Harp), Allan Guyomard (Drums/Backing Vocals), Tom Penaguin (Guitar/Backing Vocals) and Charlélie Pailhes (Bass/Backing Vocals), "Mirrors" is full of powerful and fuzzy riffs, twisted beats, psychedelic melodies and vocal incantations that invites listeners to embark on transcendental and magical journey. The use of the electric harp in this “classic” rock line-up adds a unique and surprising sonority that accentuate the band’s mystic and ritualistic universe.
What’s often fascinating to me as someone who writes about music quite extensively, is to observe the avenues other writers explore, particularly when engaging with music that’s ambient, obscure, or otherwise difficult to take a hold of and to pin down. This fascination is amplified when the music, either by its inherent nature, or by virtue of explanatory words from the artist, has a foundations in a theoretical or conceptual context.
Achim Szepanski has been tasked with a challenge when it comes to the notes to accompany
Oolong: Ambient Works, which is the 17th studio album from multi disciplinary artist Ran Slavin, which is pitched as ‘a 74 min drone-ambient-minimal-symphonic infused LP that takes after various teas in the far east.’ To heighten the experience, each track is accompanied by ‘a slow and atmospheric visual journey shot by RS in East Asia and the total can be experienced in total and joined as an immersive 74 minute journey.’
Szepanski helpfully explains the layered meanings in the translations of the word ‘oolong’, and expounds the complex interconnections of tea and dragons through a filter of Felix Guattari (which isn’t entirely surprising, given the label releasing it). He grapples with ‘the minimalist concept of tea architecture’ and the way in which ‘Not only the centripetal, but also the centrifugal orientation of the sound is imaginary.’
While the visuals clearly form an integral pat of the project overall, I shall preserve my focus exclusively on the audio release, and in advance of this draw the distinction between audio created to provide a soundtrack, and visuals created to accompany an audio work, because while Szepanski discusses at length the relationship between the visuals and the tea path and the simultaneous limitations placed on the work by the visuals and their capacity to enhance the experience, Oolong: Ambient Works is an audio release or an ambient persuasion, as the title suggests.
The seventy-four minutes is divided into eight individual pieces, with titles such as ‘Grand Jasmin’ and ‘Assam Jungle; as well as others which are less overtly tea-derived, like the first composition, ‘Time Regained’. It’s fifteen minutes of slow-simmering ambience, the levels of which fluctuate and catch, the glitches rupturing the smooth surface of the soft sonic fabric.
Szepanski makes an important point when he writes ‘It is impossible to know exactly what the individual sounds signify. Sometimes it might be the intention to hear the sounds of nature. But it’s not a question of identifying its source and its effect.’ And so we come to what is, for me, the crux of the ambient listening experience, whereby the source of the sounds is far less significant than what the listener hears. Not even what I hear as a listener, although I can only speak and interpret for myself, and the beauty of this experience is that however much Slavin strives to imbue this work with meaning, it cannot be imposed. Slow pulses bring a rhythmic element to this otherwise abstract piece, which is deeply calming, but occasional warps jolt the listener from their state of tranquillity like a prod.
‘Butterfly of Ninh Binh’ flits by with crackles and scratches by way of disturbance, and the introduction of static and ersatz surface noise to recordings is a curious one, as something which only became a feature with the advent off digital audio. Those who have come to vinyl since the renaissance are less likely to relate, since vinyl is now a plush commodity and not something people leavy lying around or use as a coaster or whatever as was commonplace in the sixties, seventies, eighties. But such interference is integral here: Slavin’s approach to ambience on Oolong is subtly different, and introduces just enough dissonance and discomfort for it to be not entirely comfortable.
The ten-minute ‘Ruby Ceylan’ is soft and ripping repetitive and hypnotic, but something – perhaps the abstract moans, perhaps something else – is just off.
Iroh, in Avatar: The Last Airbender, is a keen advocate of the calming properties of Jasmine tea, and I get a far stronger Jasmine connection from this – the original animates series, that is – than from ‘Grand Jasmin’ here – the album’s shortest track is subtle and soothing, but also marks a change of texture with a thumping beat which echoes away hard and fast beneath its slow-swelling outer layers.
‘Himalayan Flower’ unfurls slowly and with pronounced percussion, before the ten-minute ‘Summer Monsoon’ brings the album’s conclusion. A slow, mesmeric, soporific cloud of ambience passing by, with occasional clangs and abstract interruptions which echo through the drift, this is a real; eyelid-drooper which suggests it’s time to sleep, or time for a coffee.
Hot on the heels of their acclaimed EP Hex Domestic, Dragged Up release their new single ‘Missing Person’ on Rare Vitamin Records on 2 February, as digital, super-limited CD and cassette.
The single is taken from the band’s forthcoming album, High On Ripple, which will be released in April by Cruel Nature and Rare Vitamin Records.
Check the video here:
Missing Person was recorded by Robbie Wilson (The Kundalini Genie) and Chris Geddes (Belle and Sebastian), mixed by Tommy Duffin (The Cosmic Dead) and mastered by Sam Smith at Glasgow’s legendary Green Door Studio. The flipside is the a dub-dirge remix of the title track, entitled ‘Machine Person’.
Dragged Up are an off-kilter psych-garage proto-grunge band with a spoken word element, founded in late 2018 by Eva Gnatiuk (Violent Butlins) with Simon Shaw (Trembling Bells) and writer Lisa Jones. Chas Lalli (Vom) and Stephen Mors (The Owsley Sunshine) joined in 2019 and 2022 respectively.
Upcoming live shows (more to be added):
Feb 3rd – The Ferret, Preston (daytime)
Feb 3rd – The Source Collective, Carlisle (evening)
March 8th – Summerhall, Edinburgh (with Amateur Cult)
April 11th – Stereo, Glasgow (supporting House of All)
May 2nd – The Ferret, Preston
May 3rd – Big Hands, Manchester
May 4th – The Underground, Bradford
May 5th – Museum Vaults, Sunderland
(Click image to listen / purchase both tracks on bandcamp)
In the week of release of their new album Love’s Holiday, Oxbow have shared the video/track "Lovely Murk (ft. Lingua Ignota)"
About the video and track, Niko Wenner says;
"I started Lovely Murk in late 2011 imagining the perspective of my mother then dying from Alzheimer’s, and what it would feel like to lose everything, even one’s self. So personal, I kept the song for myself; she died in early 2012. But soon Lisa Meyer at Supersonic Festival in Birmingham England asked us to play, encouraging me to orchestrate a version for an Oxbow Orchestra performance. And eventually I was ready to record the song for our new Oxbow album Love’s Holiday, with new lyrics. I asked Kristin Hayter to create a Lingua Ignota choir using my melody from 2011, she also added voice over the bridge, altogether creating a stunning and essential addition. A long journey for what for me is a beautiful, powerful song, made with love."
Eugene S. Robinson continues,
"My favourite part of filming the entire video was during a break in the recording when the home owner of the historically significant house in Pennsylvania where we recorded it, walked into a room where I was sitting and screamed on account of him believing I was an actual ghost. In his mind I guess 17th century ghosts have iPhones. "When Kristin’s voice comes swelling up in the song’s centre, right about the time my dying and almost dead carcass ascends to the sky gods, I actually had a moment where it felt like that’s precisely and ‘for real’ what was happening. Her voice, my voice, the voices all contributed to…yes: that feeling of… release."
UPCOMING TOUR DATES:
Friday, September 01, 2023 UK Glasgow Broadcast Saturday, September 02, 2023 UK Birmingham Supersonic festival Sunday, September 03, 2023 UK Leeds Brudenell Social Club Monday, September 04, 2023 UK Bristol Exchange Tuesday, September 05, 2023 UK London Studio 9294 Wednesday, September 06, 2023 BE Kortrijk Wilde Westen Thursday, September 07, 2023 BE Brussels Botanique Friday, September 08, 2023 NL Nijmegen Merleyn Saturday, September 09, 2023 LUX Tetange Human’s World festival (free entry) Sunday, September 10, 2023 DE Bochum Die Trompete Monday, 11 September 2023 AT Vienna Volkstheatre Rote Bar Tuesday, 12 September 2023 PL Wroclaw Liverpool Wednesday, 13 September 2023 PL Warsaw Hydrozagadka Thursday, 14 September 2023 DE Berlin Roadrunners Paradise Friday, 15 September 2023 DE Hamburg Hafenklang Saturday, 16 September 2023 DK Aalborg Lasher fest
Venomous Concept, the hardcore punk band formed by Kevin Sharp of Brutal Truth and Shane Embury of Napalm Death, return in 2023 with their 5th album The Good Ship Lollipop. Bonding over their love of punk heroes such as Black Flag, GBH and Poison Idea, the duo have been the core members of the band since 2004.
Now all these years later Venomous Concept are about to release their most unique album to date on 24th February. "When the pandemic hit we decided we needed to make an album that didn’t fit – we all loved so much other kind of punk and rock, so why not explore that which is in essence closer to our hearts?. To do the same album over and over again would be boring” Shane comments.
The Good Ship Lollipop sees Sharp and Embury joined by fellow Napalm Death member John Cooke alongside Carl Stokes, former drummer with UK death metal legends Cancer. ‘Having John Cooke of Napalm Death on guitar brought a new variety to the record, and Shane’s lifelong friend Carl Stokes formerly of the bands Cancer, Current 93 & The Groundhogs came in on drums to lay down some more solid rock grooves and old school power” Kevin adds.
First single ‘Voices’ is described by vocalist Kevin as a track that, "deals with the darker side of manipulation in narcissism… the devaluing of gaslighting… the wiring and unwiring of deceptive abuse… re-discovering self-identity for the better and stronger… my humour is dark… I will place the most shit of human qualities next to a melody… it’s a coping mechanism…"
Listen to ‘Voices’ here:
Lyrically this album reflects the various fractured pieces of the band that existed before and during the pandemic. "As with most people they were emotionally unprepared for what was about to happen over the coming weeks, months and subsequent years. “We tried to forge on the only way we knew how" Shane acknowledges. “We all have our darkness to deal with and that look in the face that says “Shit my life is in pieces’‘ Kevin called that The Good Ship Lollipop. What a great album title we thought!"
The album was engineered by Piers Mortimer (Deep Purple, Jakko Jakszyk) and produced by long term friend and colleague Simon Efemey (Paradise Lost, Cancer). Shane concludes, “It was an amazing fun and creative experience, recording while there were COVID restrictions. We seem to now only dimly recall the whole process but this record lives it and breathes it. Kevin then breezed through U.K. customs in the summer of 2020 to record his vocals at headline music studios in Cambridge. There friendships were rekindled amidst worldwide hysteria."
Sharp and Embury formed the band in 2004 and were joined by Danny Herrera and Buzz Osborne (The Melvins), who went on to be replaced by Danny Lilker. They have released 4 albums: Retroactive Abortion (2004), Poisoned Apple (2008), Kick Me Silly VCIII (2016) and most recently Politics Versus the Erection (2020) on Season of Mist.
The Good Ship Lollipop is released in association with Extrinsic Records on 24th February 2023.
The fantastically-named Portuguese thrash-metal unit Last Piss Before Death have just revealed a music video for a new track off the band’s debut LPBD, released yesterday, February 21st on Raging Planet Records.
Titled ‘Out of Luck’, you can watch it here:
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The newly formed four-piece group from Lisbon is comprised of current and former members of bands like Vulkanink, Fallen Seasons, Dollar Llama and Sannedrin among others, and play a powerful combination of colossal and groovy riffs with pummelling rhythms and angry vocalizations, not too far removed from acts like Lamb of God, Devildriver, Prong and Exhorder.
It’s a challenge faced by many artists, and many try but fail to capture the fleeting moments that pass before we even see them. They’re sometimes visual, sometimes auditory, sometimes emotional, and sometimes a combination of all three, like an instant where the lighting is so rare or perfect and you feel a fleeting pang of something inside that you can’t even pinpoint… there is a soundtrack to that somewhere, but it’s so fleeting, intangible, there is simply no way you can grasp it, no way to capture it.
This is where we convene with Sozna and Young Tribe, whose biographical details are sparse but likely irrelevant. Because as the title intimates, nothing is fixed, and details are not important; what matters is chasing the mood of the moment, which is like catching air in a fishing net. It’s a common notion within the spheres of ambience, and more often than not manifests as gentle, ethereal works, with mellifluous trails of vapour drifting softly in attempts to convey the wistfulness of fleeting intangibility.
Where Ephemeral stands out is not only in its heavy use of field recordings and material lifted from various sources – snippets of voices, building work, street sounds – to create a layered collage that quite literally captures and combines fleeting moments and assembles them in a kind of patchwork, bit its darkness and weight. Everything overlaps to crowd the mind, as construction work and idle chatter overlap.
‘Subincision’ is a swampy murk of swirling dark ambient electronica withy rumbling, thunderous grumbles and ominous overtones. Following that, ‘Gods From Saturn’ is particularly dense; part space-age abstraction with hints of Krautrock, [art dark ambient, it’s not a sigh of reminiscence about that brief moment of ecstasy, but the gut-pulling nag of anguish that comes from recalling that social wrong step, that embarrassing misspeak, the sinking feeling of that wrong choice or bad decision. These emotions too are fleeting and ephemeral, and in many ways a more common kind of ephemera. The title track is dark and punishing, a gloomy chant and thud from the depths of a cavernous cave; it’s oppressive and somewhat scary, with monasterial moans and elongated shadows droning and rising. It’s eerie, creepy, and other-worldly. You may feel a pang of fear, but it, like everything else, passes in no time. There is no permanence; everything happens, and exists, in but a moment.
Every moment is just that; a moment, and it’s gone before you realise it. The highs may often prove more memorable and feel more protracted in comparison to the highs and the alrights, but in terms of the period of their existence, all is equal. Sozna and Young Tribe explore this space, and delve courageously into the lows, the throughs, the darker spaces, the moments of discomfort, shame, and embarrassment which are but fleeting which often haunt us forever. Ephemeral grips the corners of fleeting discomfort, the lower reaches of the intestine, and pokes the points of nagging discomfort from fleeting moments which linger there. In doing so, they inch closer to creating art that reflects life.
Since 2006 Maybeshewill have released four full-length albums of towering, cinematic instrumental music. After a decade long career that saw them tour across four continents they bowed out in 2016 with a sold out show at London’s Koko. Having reformed briefly in 2018 at the request of The Cure’s Robert Smith for a show at Meltdown Festival, 2021 sees the band return with their first new material since 2014’s Fair Youth. Having worked on ideas separately in the intervening years, it was the sketches of music that would become ‘No Feeling is Final’ that pulled the band back together. Building on the songs that they felt needed to be heard, together.
‘No Feeling is Final’ was born from a place of weary exasperation. From the knowledge that we’re living in a world hurtling towards self-destruction. We watch as forests burn and seas rise. As the worst tendencies of humanity are championed by those in power; rage, fear, greed and apathy. We see every injustice, every conflict, every catastrophe flash up on our screens. We stay complacent and consume to forget our complicity in the structures and systems that sustain that behaviour. As the world teeters on the edge of disaster, we sigh and keep scrolling, the uneasy feeling in our stomachs eating away at us a little more each day.
However easy it would be to switch off and pretend all is lost, there’s no choice but to remain engaged. To set that feeling of hopelessness aside and use the fear and frustration as fuel to make something positive.
‘No Feeling is Final’ is a message of hope and solidarity. It’s a story of growing grassroots movements across the world that are rejecting the doomed futures being sold to us, and imagining new realities based on equality and sustainability. It’s a reckoning with the demons in our histories and a promise to right the wrongs of the past. It’s a plea to take action in shaping the world we leave for future generations. It’s a simple gesture of reassurance to anyone else struggling in these troubled times: “Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
Guitarist Robin Southby comments on the new video for first single ‘Refuturing’, directed by Fraser West,
“Conceptually, Refuturing (and the album as a whole) is concerned with the existential dread surrounding the climate crisis, how we understand our complicity in the crisis within the confines of our current morality system and ‘refuturing’ – rejecting existing power structures used to subjugate, and reimagining a future built on entirely new systems that are sustainable and beneficial to all.”
Watch the video now:
Maybeshewill will also perform their first London headline show since 2016 at Islington Assembly Hall on 15th December 2021. Tickets are on sale now.
Today industrial trail blazers Uniform have announced their return overseas. They’ll embark on a 27 date run across the UK and Europe in Spring 2022 with Pinkish Black along for support. In anticipation of this and their upcoming U.S. tour – their first since the release of the lauded 2020 heavy-hitter, Shame – they have released a new video, “The Shadow of God’s Hand"
Vocalist Michael Berdan explains, “The central theme behind ‘The Shadow of God’s Hand’ are the inherent contradictions present in conventional Christianity. I was brought up with this idea of ‘act right or you’re going to hell.’ I’ve listened to family members as they worried themselves to tears over the fate of a loved one’s soul. To me, the concept of a punitive God is antithetical to the comfort I derive from a spiritual practice. Does God serve to comfort or chastise? Does following Christ’s teachings serve to create a kinder, more equitable world or have those teachings become so perverted that they simply stand as tools of control? For many, there is a fine line in their belief structure between salvation and damnation. This song attempts to touch on these paradoxes.”
AMENRA share the official ‘Voor Immer’ music video from the forthcoming Relapse debut full-length De Doorn (June 25). Watch the full video on YouTube here:
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AMENRA vocalist Colin H. van Eeckhout comments:
“What you lose in the fire, you will find in the ashes”
"Voor Immer” (“For Ever”) was one of the first songs we have written for De Doorn. We played it for the very first time in 2018 on the city square of Dixmude, West Flanders Belgium. Accompanied by the carillon, its bells a typical instrument from Belgium and the low countries, we connected the earth with the sky. It was initially written for a commemoration ceremony of the ending of the first world war.
Images of widows and mothers bereft of their sons. Destroyed cities and whom was left to die. Finding strength and courage to rebuild what once was there, without what was theirs.
The last time we played it live was in Menen, West Flanders Belgium end 2019. That night we gathered and burnt all our unacknowledged loss. Revealing by fire the 20feet high bronze AMENRA statue glowing red, a symbol of hope.
This is a song about finding that hope, the strength to carry on. Its content ever present in the world today.
Additionally, AMENRA announce a livestream event celebrating the release of De Doorn. The fire ritual will commence on June 27 at 9pm CET. More info at tickets are available HERE.
Aural Aggravation 