Posts Tagged ‘Album’

Defy the Ocean – Elderflower

Posted: 2 September 2016 in Singles and EPs
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2nd September 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

With seven tracks and a running time in excess of half an hour, it’s one hell of an EP. ‘Elderflower’ is also a whole lot more than the prescriptive ‘post-rock’ tag attached to the duo. Much as I appreciate labelling as much as the next time-pressed music journo struggling to place a band and clutching for pointers for pitching a band in a review, and much as I like a lot of what slots into the post-rock bracket, Defy the Ocean are a band who create music that simply cannot be readily classified on their expansive and accomplished new release.

For a start, it’s more rock than post rock. It’s pretty loud. It’s pretty heavy. There are a lot of vocals. None of these are bad things, and ‘Elderflower’ is a work of depth, range and power. From the get-go, they demonstrate a knack for shifting between segments and moods with real panche, dragging the listener along with them: ‘Rest’, the first track may only clock in at two minutes and fifty-five, but it’s got more twists and turns and ideas and emotional range than some bands’ entire albums.

‘Veils’ is restrained, darkly atmospheric, moody and is perhaps the most post-rock track of the set. But it’s got a bleak, metallic edge that also tips a nod to the mid 90s alternative rock sound.

The title track breaks into full-on grunge mode, the quiet / loud dynamic and brooding atmosphere more Alice in Chains and Soundgarden than I Like Trains, and the crushing power chords are thick and heavy, and paired with a drawling vocal delivery, it calls to mind Melvins – the mellow piano breakdown notwithstanding. ‘Brine’ is serpentine, stripped back, and provides a distinct contrast with its chiming guitars which does call to mind I Like Trains – but then again, the burst of powerchords, distorted vocal and full driving climax, alludes to millennial progressive acts like Oceansize, Amplifier, Porcupine Tree, Anathema, and if anything, ‘Vessel’ amalgamates neoprog with the desert rock vibe of Queens of the Stone Age and their ilk. There’s a lot going on here, and it’s all well-assembled and musically articulate.

Everything about ‘Elderflower’ points to a band who aren’t confined to any one format or bank of instruments, which makes for a refreshingly varied collection of songs, and one which demands repeated listening in order to reveal its full richness.

 

Defy the Ocean EP

Gang of Four – Live… In The Moment

Posted: 29 August 2016 in Albums
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2nd September 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Gang of Four’s Entertainment! Still stands as one of the definitive post-punk albums, capturing the zeitgeist of the late 70s. ‘Left’ and ‘socialist’ weren’t terms spat derisively by the media. The early years of Thatcher’s dismantlement of the country in the pursuit of the neoliberalist dream was already finding many disenfranchised and angry, with musicians articulating the sentiments of a generation in voicing dissent and dissatisfaction. Sound familiar?

I’ve been listening to Gang of Four since I was in my teens: too young to appreciate them in their day (I was born in1975), I was hooked a good decade before Franz Ferdinand and others started namedropping them and their status as one of the most important bands of the era. This isn’t any kind of hip gloat – not least of all because it would be a pretty shit one if it was. But my experience of the band live until earlier this year was limited to a few shitty VHS recordings, and the not so shitty various artists compilation VHS from circa 1984 that I picked up at a car boot in the early 90s.

So finally seeing them play live in 2016, given that the current lineup only features one original member could have been a disappointment on a monumental scale. But it wasn’t. the current lineup not only sounds great, but still has that vital sense of tension, of danger, that was always the band’s trademark.

‘Live… in the Moment’ captures this perfectly, and is released in two different forms: During a year spent touring the world, the band recorded two of the best, namely their sold-out show at New York’s Irving Plaza (which will be available as a DVD or download) and their penultimate show of 2015, at London’s Islington Assembly Hall, which will be available as an audio CD, double coloured vinyl album and download. The DVD will be packaged with the CD. Both, it has to be said, are excellent.

As a live recording, the quality is good, but it’s not excessively crisp or polished, and doesn’t scream heavy EQing, mixing, overdubbing. No, this is an honest, real live album that captures the intensity and immediacy of being in a room with a band playing live at high volume. If sounds and feels like a live album: as it should: any act who sound exactly the same live as in the studio may be musically accomplished, but fails to make the live ‘experience’ an actual experience. What matters most is that the separation between the sinewy, choppy guitar lines and elastic, funk-infused stop/start bass grooves is spot on.

Similarly, the concert visuals, whole shot from a number of cameras, is straight-ahead: dark, murky, primarily from a lower, audience vantage point. Budget? Maybe, although I’d prefer to watch something that replicates the actual experience of the live show, rather than some ponced-up, glossy fixed-up representation. My only criticism of the footage lies not with the footage itself – I can handle the wobbles and slightly amateurish hand-held pans – but the editing: the cuts are simply too fast, and the zooms on fretboards, etc., simply too… zoomy. With multiple angles to choose from, they haven’t always picked the best. Still, it’s watchable enough in a way fits with the rough ‘n’ ready, ‘as it was’ approach. Moreover, it sits with the band’s general ethos: this is no major-label, big-money production and no corporate exec’s coining it at the expense of hard-working artists.

The track listing draws from across their albums with the exception of Mall, although no-one’s going to be disappointed to see that Entertainment! Is well-represented, with ‘Love Like Anthrax’, ‘Damaged Goods’, ‘At Home He’s a Tourist’, ‘History’s Not Made by Great Men’ and ‘I Found That Essence Rare’ all featuring. The DVD also features ‘Return the Gift’, which doesn’t appear on the CD, as well as non-CD cut ‘I Love a Man in a Uniform’. They all sound great, spiky and urgent, ‘To Hell With Poverty’ as pertinent now as 38 years ago. Irrespective of their influence, Live… In the Moment shows that Gang of Four are very much a going concern, and a band who aren’t only relevant after all this time, but a cracking live act.

 

Gang of Four Live

Watch: ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ (Live, Excerpt) by Swans)

Posted: 2 May 2016 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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On June 17, iconic avant-rock ensemble Swans are releasing The Glowing Man,  the fourth and final studio album from this line-up since their reactivation by band primum mobile Michael Gira in 2010 after a 14 year hiatus. This will be followed by their customary year-long world-wide tour celebrating the release after which Gira says, "I’ll continue to make music under the name Swans, with a revolving cast of collaborators…touring will definitely be less extensive." This is an excerpt of "Cloud of Unknowing" from the live concert DVD that will accompany the deluxe 2-CD release:

United Sounds Of Joy – United Sounds Of Joy

Posted: 21 March 2016 in Albums
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Bronze Rat Records – BR5 – 26th February 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

I’m late to the party here. Lauren Laverne’s already been bigging up this collaboration between Michael J Sheehy and former Dream City Film Club bandmate Alex Vald. I guess that’s the price you pay for having a full-time job that isn’t listening to and playing music, and you don’t have a production team to sift through your promos. I don’t begrudge Lauren getting in first, because I’m pleased to see the latest work by musicians who, in their former incarnation, recorded not one, but two Peel sessions.

Dream City Film Club were band out of time, and the same may be true of United Sounds Of Joy. However, the way in which music is disseminated and received now as opposed to 20 years ago means that outside the mainstream at least, music is more likely to be accepted on its own merits rather than on the basis of prevailing fashions.

There’s a strange polarity at play here: it’s harder than ever to break into the major league to achieve top-flight status and all that comes with that, in the form of international success, wealth and recognition. But the infinite fragmentation of everything beyond the mainstream means that bands can connect with niche-level audiences globally, and aren’t reliant on radio play or support at home to attain a degree of recognition. If there’s any justice, the channels now available will enable United Sounds of Joy to connect with the audience they merit.

Yes, they are an acquired taste. For those unfamiliar with his previous work, Sheehy’s soft, haunted croon comes of a surprise at first, and in this musical context, it’s particularly unusual. It’s simply so rare to hear vocals on what is, in effect, an ambient audio work. Yet with hints of Scott Walker, minus the arch theatrical side, Sheehy’s voice is perfectly suited to the

The music is wispy, vague, hauntingly intangible. Shimmering guitars tremolo in ‘The Sun That Hides a Darker Star, and the monotone spoken word of ‘Dust Veil’ cracks dryly over the sparse bassline and dark, pulsating industrial wasteland conjured by the crunching, mechanical rhythm. ‘Wounded Moon’ has something of a Michael Gira / Angels of Light quality to it, calling to mind the sparse, folkier later works, infused with a slow-burning drone.

It’s a greatly understated work, at times it’s almost sonically subliminal – yet it still succeeds in achieving a most hypnotic effect. And that’s precisely why it warrants exposure, exploration, consideration. By no means an immediate album United Sounds Of Joy is most definitely an intriguing album, built on many layers. It’s not one to hurry, but one to explore.

United Sounds of Joy

United Sounds Of Joy Online

Richard J. Birkin – Vigils

Posted: 12 March 2016 in Albums
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Reveal Records – 11th March 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Vigils comprises a suite of 11 sparse piano-led compositions. As a unit of work, its pace is predominantly sedate; the strings are subtle, graceful, and the mood is thoughtful, reflective. This is very much Birkin’s objective here, and he describes the album as ‘a soundtrack to the idea of looking back at our present from somewhere in the future’. But Vigils is not an album that cries nostalgia. It does not evoke a sense of longing for a future past. But equally, nor does it soundtrack a sense of guilt or a desire to separate from the part. It evokes the passage of time, of retrospection, of ageing, but without resorting to Instagram filters. Vigils is about time, but doesn’t set out to evoke a specific time as such, and in doing so, transcends time.

In context, ‘Accretions’ is surprisingly spirited and uptempo – that isn’t to go so far as to say it’s pop, but the rippling chords and hooky repeated motifs are accentuated with big chords that imbue the piece with a boldness that romps along in a way which is overtly accessible.

‘Moonbathing’ introduces picked acoustic guitar and harmonious vocals while a violin weaves shades of pastoral folk, while the orchestral chamber music of ‘Atomhog’ is sweet, crisp, and uncluttered in its arrangement.

Birkin explains the concept behind the album its artwork by observing that “Significant human evolution is not fast and loud but slow and quiet. So slow that you almost don’t notice it happening. Except when you look back and see changes after they’ve happened…that’s when you see the giant leaps.” Based in Derbyshire, Birkin formulated the album secluded in his isolated residence in an old mill, itself an artefact from a bygone era repurposed for contemporary living.

And while we – that of course is me speaking on behalf of an assumed section of the population right now – often speak of the unbridled pace of change, in real terms it’s all relative. Mobile phone models and laptops may change faster than you can blink, but that’s only superficial change. Lifestyles, attitudes, the big things, change much more gradually, almost imperceptibly. And indeed, it’s during those imperceptible, gradual changes, that the leaps occur.

I daresay that no-one living in the Industrial Revolution felt as though they were living in a period which would come to mark a pivotal period in human history, just as those living in the inter-war or post-war years we likely too busy simply living to consider the present as a period. Similarly, growing up in the 80s never felt like the dawn of the digital age or late capitalism, and there’s very little obvious difference between pre- and post-millennial life as it goes. But in the present, the eighties feel like another life, the sixties and seventies like historical fictions.

Time is but a construct measured in lived experience, and subtly, subliminally, by implication and by simply side-stepping stylistic trappings of past, present or imagined future, Richard J. Birkin captures all of this in a beautiful, poised and soothing collection of work.

 

Richard-J-Birkin-Vigils

Richard J. Birkin Online

Moustache Prawn – Erebus

Posted: 24 February 2016 in Albums
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PBP

Christopher Nosnibor

If the band’s name sounds a little odd in a quirky, absurd dada sort of a way, then it’s due in part to the translation. Initially formed as a post-punk band working under the name Dystopia, the bandmembers’ discovery of acts like the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, Interpol, The Smiths, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion prompted a radical change of direction and a new name, which, I’m reliably informed (i.e. from the press release, not Google) translates as ‘shrimp whiskers’ in Italian. Ok, so it still doesn’t make much sense, but it’s certainly different.

The same is true of the Italian trio’s second long-player, pitched as ‘a concept album, a fantasy tale that explores environmental issues and animal rights.’ I respect and even admire that. These are big issues, and they’re more than merely political issues. Yet pop culture as a whole seems strangely removed from real culture. It’s very much a measure of the first-world late capitalist society that ‘culture’ can be a separate entity unto itself, and concerned with entertainment and personal emotions instead of things that matter, like, say, the state of the planet or the dominance of global corporations.

Not that much of this is apparent in their wild and often experimental alternative rock, which jolts and jars, lurches, scratches and scrapes. They don’t ape any of the aforementioned influences in any obvious way, and instead head out on a very long limb to create something that slaps the listener round the face with its otherness and a real sense of urgency. Nagging basslines and angular guitars explode in frenzied discord against drums that fire spasmodic rhythms in every direction.

A chunky, elastic bass guitar line worthy of Gang of Four underpins guitars that twitch and jerk every which way on ‘Mountaintop’, and the funk-tinged ‘Breakdown’ makes you want to dance and makes you feel tense at the same time. There are occasional moments of hippy-trippy psychedelia (‘Goodbye Zero’, for example), and jangle-centric indie (‘Something is Growing’), but despite gleaning snippets of lyrics about elephants and breaking the government, this doesn’t feel like an excessively preachy work, and it’s certainly not about gooey, wide-eyed idealism.

It is, however, wildly eclectic, and there’s some superlative drumming, not least of all on the explosive ‘Waterquake’ which combines harmonious melody with immense percussive firepower.

How much of the concept or the message you get is likely to vary, but there’s no missing the universal and utterly exhilarating delivery.

Moustache Prawn

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YORVelOf6Y4?list=PLTd0ejrxraFwNp7GWzSncgMUA_0XuFHlo

Moustache Prawn Online

Maja Osojnik – Let Them Grow

Posted: 23 February 2016 in Albums
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Rock is Hell / UNrecords – RIP 66 / unrec11 – February 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

 

Maja Osojnik is an angry woman. A woman on the edge. A woman with inner strength. After 14 band albums, her first solo outing is a highly charged work, heavy with stark emotions and raw catharsis.

‘Tell me, what do you want me to be?’ she asks in an opium monotone on ‘Tell Me’. Slowly, her offers become more desperate and pained, her multiple voices speaking simultaneously before she slams it all down on the table, unable to maintain her decorum any further: ‘Ill become… all the images you want / so you can walk on me / sleep in me / so you can throw all your shit on me / Tell me, what the fuck do you want me to be?’ It’s chilling in its directness, its apparent lack of artistic distance.

‘Let Them Grow’ is one of those albums that hits like a punch to the solar plexus. It’s impossible not to laud the artist for her openness, her ability to convey so many painful emotions – but at the same time, it’s deeply uncomfortable. Listen, people who use terms like ‘TMI’ are, in the main, uncomfortable because they don’t like to face brutal truths, particularly those belonging to other people. On ‘Let Them Grow’, Osojnick pays no regard to these emotionally closed or stunted types and simply lays it all out there, telling it like it is, spilling her guts because she has no other choice. This isn’t simply music, this is pure art and the very definition of catharsis. Let Them Grow is a work of exorcism, of expulsion.

If you hadn’t already figured, this is a challenging work. ‘Condition’ is a full-tilt rant against a backdrop which amalgamates industrial noise and tribal beats. ‘Stick it up your ass… Come out, you rotten cocksucker, here’s your fucking POP SONG’ she hollers bitterly. And she fucking means it: this isn’t mere petulance, but a middle finger to an establishment and a wider world that’s failed and ultimately fucked up- and which doesn’t value the arts and doesn’t recognise the value of art. It’s a shame, because this is art.

It’s not just the music: I received the CD in its gatefold card sleeve enveloped within a four-leaf pamphlet type wrapper, accompanied by a sticker and five postcards of the artist beautifully shot by Rania Moslam in a range of striking poses. The whole package was in turn wrapped in a parchment paper bag. It’s about the artefact, the attention to detail, the building of suspense and expectation while gaining access to the disc itself, which, in turn, does not disappoint. This is not merely an album. It’s a grand gesture.

From the most subtle, delicate pieces, led by softly-fingered piano, she slowly drags out every sinew of anguish, draws on every drop of pain and presents real emotion. Emotion that can’t be faked.

Brooding instrumental passages offer moments of respite, but then there are sections of growling industrial noise, dark and sinister, grinding and crushing, which are nothing short of devastating. Taut, tense and from the heart, Let Them Grow sees Maja Osojnick present an album that is unparalleled in its sincerity and astounding in its emotional and musical power.

Maja Osojnik

Maja Osojnik Online

Silver Snakes – Saboteur

Posted: 21 February 2016 in Albums
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12th February 2016

They come straight on with all guns blazing on this one. A repetitive, driving riff, amped up to eleven dominates the album’s first track, ‘Electricity’. It may be corny an cliché to say it grabs the listener by the throat and gives an instant hook, but the bottom line is that it’s entirely. As a music reviewer who received anywhere up to 50 albums and Eps a week for review, I know as well as anyone the importance of making an impact in the first minute or two. We live in a world that’s time-precious and time-pressured, of instant gratification and low patience thresholds. If whatever you’re pitching don’t grab the attention immediately, then fuggeddaboutit. ‘Saboteur’ is a riffcentric album that blasts off with the claws out, sinks ‘em in deep, and digs right in.

Full-on as it is, it’s got range and dynamics, and they don’t resort to formulaic verse/chorus/loud/ quiet structures by way of a default. Although, then they do tale the more conventional path they end up with ‘Raindance’, a full-on grunger reminiscent of Nirvana and lesser known T&G acts like Tar, and it’s belting – arguably, the most obvious single choice from an album that’s dominated by raging, overdriven guitars and angst-laden vocals, ripped with rage.

They stalk stealthily through the breakdowns and bring it all back with tumultuous overdriven attack. ‘Dresden; hit s a slower, more stoner-rock vibe, with some heavy-duty tom-driven-drumming propelling a slow, grinding riff into oblivion over the course of an expansive nine-minute sprawl. It’s one of three longer tracks (as in over seven minutes), through which they explore more prog territories, but without losing any momentum.

There are elements of Soundgarden and Korn are at play here, not to mention Nine Inch Nails (as exemplified by the full-tilt ‘Charmer’, but it would be wrong to tag them as 90s revivalists. Regardless of decade, the driving guitar riff and thunderous drumming is always king, and the song that conveys sincere emotion and delivers a tangible punch to the gut is god. Silver Snakes are both kings and gods, on the strength of this album.

They come straight on with all guns blazing on this one. A repetitive, driving riff, amped up to eleven dominates the album’s first track, ‘Electricity’. It may be corny an cliché to say it grabs the listener by the throat and gives an instant hook, but the bottom line is that it’s entirely. As a music reviewer who received anywhere up to 50 albums and Eps a week for review, I know as well as anyone the importance of making an impact in the first minute or two. We live in a world that’s time-precious and time-pressured, of instant gratification and low patience thresholds. If whatever you’re pitching don’t grab the attention immediately, then fuggeddaboutit. ‘Saboteur’ is a riffcentric album that blasts off with the claws out, sinks ‘em in deep, and digs right in.

Full-on as it is, it’s got range and dynamics, and they don’t resort to formulaic verse/chorus/loud/ quiet structures by way of a default. Although, then they do tale the more conventional path they end up with ‘Raindance’, a full-on grunger reminiscent of Nirvana and lesser known T&G acts like Tar, and it’s belting – arguably, the most obvious single choice from an album that’s dominated by raging, overdriven guitars and angst-laden vocals, ripped with rage.

They stalk stealthily through the breakdowns and bring it all back with tumultuous overdriven attack. ‘Dresden; hit s a slower, more stoner-rock vibe, with some heavy-duty tom-driven-drumming propelling a slow, grinding riff into oblivion over the course of an expansive nine-minute sprawl. It’s one of three longer tracks (as in over seven minutes), through which they explore more prog territories, but without losing any momentum.

There are elements of Soundgarden and Korn art play here, but it would be wrong to tag them as 90s revivalists. Regardless of decade, the driving guitar riff and thunderous drumming is always king, and the song that conveys sincere emotion and delivers a tangible punch to the gut is god. Silver Snakes are both kings and gods, on the strength of this album.

 

Silver Snakes

 

Silver Snakes Online

Jozef Van Wissem – When Shall This Bright Day Begin

Posted: 17 February 2016 in Albums
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Consouling Sounds – 18th March 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Oftentimes, I’ll set an album to play and, although listening to it, will find myself distracted by other things – email, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. We live in a world of information overload and we find ourselves multitasking – or distracted – constantly. It seemed fair to assume that I’d be able to get a few bits and bobs done while giving a first spin to Jozef Van Wissem’s latest offering. I was mistaken. But then. It’s not often I’m presented with an album that combines both elements of the avant-garde and the baroque, performed on the lute, an instrument I cannot help but associate with Elizabethan court poetry – not least of all Sir Thomas Wyatt, author of lyric verses ‘My Lute, Awake!’ and ‘Blame Not My Lute’.

Van Wiessem’s lute is very much awake, and there is no blame to be apportioned when examining his latest work, When Shall This Bright Day Begin. Am I uncomfortable with the absence of a question mark in the title? Yes, but that’s about all.

The Dutch composer has received no small degree of recognition for his lute compositions – which seems, on the face of it, a little odd. I mean, who plays the lute nowadays, apart from medieval revivalists, the kind of people who are heavily into LARP and all the rest? But listening to When Shall This Bright Day Begin, I find I’m doing nothing but listening. Van Wissem’s compositions and playing are magnificent, and utterly compelling. And it’s hard to imagine anything further removed from ‘Greensleeves’ or the Elizabethan court. The instrument may be ancient in its origins, but the eight tracks here aren’t steeped in historical reverence. Instead, Van Wissem conjured beautiful and timeless music.

If ‘To Lose Yourself is Eternal’ opens the album in what may be considered a fairly conventional, accessible, lutey way, the darkly warped swampy garage drone of ‘You Can’t Remain Here’ completely annihilates any sense of comfort or rapport that’s been established. Coming on like a ‘White Light’ era Swans track covered by Dr Mix and the Remix, it also drags in some fucked-up ketamine-slowed psychobilly leanings and imbue the song with a sense of absolute derangement. It’s genius.

By genius, I mean almost as genius as inviting Zola Jesus to feature on two of the right tracks. Another admirably idiosyncratic and utterly unique performer – not to mention a vocalist in possession of a stunning voice which is dramatic and stunningly powerful – she brings breathtaking dimensions to ‘Ruins’ with a suitably spellbinding performance that’s well-suited to the musical accompaniment.

The stark, dark country twang of scratchy strings, coupled with muffled samples, which make ‘The Purified Eye of the Soul is Placed in the Circle of the Eternal Sun’ and sort-of counterpart ‘On The Incomparable Nobility of Earthy Suffering’, pull hard on the attention.

Van Wissem shows admirable restraint, and contains the album to just eight tracks, with the sparse ‘Death of the Ego’ providing a delicate and understated conclusion which is enough to leave the listener sated. Bask in the glorious elegance, for this is music of the most magical kind.

Jozef Van Wissem

Jozef Van Wissem Online

Miguel Frasconi – Standing Breakage (for Stan Brakhage)

Posted: 12 February 2016 in Albums
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clang records – clang032

Christopher Nosnibor

Stan Brakhage was an experimental filmmaker who sometimes closely shot glass objects. A huge influence on Frasconi, who sometimes makes music with glass instruments. The album title is a play on words, in reference not only to his artistic forebear but also the cracked quartz crystal bowl which was used to make this 20-minute musical work.

Having previously given the instrument a rather too vigorous workout during a rehearsal, Frasconi decided to explore its absolute limits. As Frasconi himself observes, ‘Glass is fragile. Glass is easily broken. Most glass instruments ignore these fact and instead focus on the material’s delicate beauty’.

Standing Breakage captures the artist’s efforts to complete the job he unintentionally began when the instrument – pictured on the front cover – became fractured. Ironically, despite labouring at the fracture in order to bring about the bowl’s ultimate destruction, he failed to achieve the desired moment of breakage. As such, for all its fragility, the glass held firm against a sustained assault.

An awareness of the circumstances of the album’s creation is, in this instance, integral to its appreciation, first and foremost, because if you didn’t know it was made using only the sounds created with a glass bowl, you would never guess that it was made using only the sounds created with a glass bowl. Because it doesn’t sound like it was made using only the sounds created with a glass bowl. In fact, it doesn’t sound like anything organic, or even of this world.

Standing Breakage finds Frasconi create an intriguing blend of chimes, rings, swirls and twangs, scrapes and chatters. Heavy, bulbous bass tones resonate, twisting and spinning upwards. Percussive thumps and sounds like scraping violin strings all emerge from the single instrument under the musician’s interrogation. Clanging, gong-like sounds crash. Eerie sounds that defy any obvious description, and sound alien and other-worldly in their origin drift. Booming synth-like notes balloon outwards, expanding in the air.

Tension mounts and builds. You sit, teeth on edge, fists clenched. You’ve no idea what will come next. You will twist and squirm. You’ll conjure myriad images in response to the strange sounds. But never once will you think ‘this sounds like someone pissing about with a glass bowl with a crack in it.’

Miguel Frasconi

Miguel Frasconi’s Website

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