Posts Tagged ‘Cruel Nature Records’

rsn | BA´AH – coarseness #1

Posted: 28 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 27th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Cruel Nature are on a roll again, with four albums released simultaneously on 27 February. And they could not be more different, stylistically, although one commonality shared between the Neon Crabs album and this is intercontinental collaboration.

As the accompanying notes inform us, ‘When sonic extremes meet meditative depths, an atmosphere is created that is both demanding and hypnotic. coarseness #1 is the result of a transcontinental collaboration between Malaysian noise tinkerer BA’AH and German ambient/drone artist RSN’.

The album contains four longform compositions, which tend to span between twelve and twenty-three minutes, with the five-and-three quarter minute ‘coarseness #1.3’ being something of an outlier and more of an interlude in the shadow of the other three megalithic pieces.

‘coarseness #1.1’ plunged straight into murky, dark terrain which conjures images of misty swamps, the likes of which were commonplace in horror movies and early 80s sci-fi series, with layers of dry ice covering the ground and shadowy trees looming from a blue-grey hue. Images which come to mind with this kind of dense, dark gloominess call to mind Dr Who for me: my recollections are a shade hazy, but born in 1975, and growing up with Tom Baker era Dr Who and – before the advent of Peter Davison as the Dr, repeats of earlier seasons, where, for me, John Pertwee stood out – some episodes were actually quite tense, even scary. And this is essentially what filters through here: the shifting tones and lurching tectonics are unsettling, queasy. This is thick, dark noise which churns like a cement mixer.

The tracks run together, the transitions subtle, and ‘coarseness #1.2’ is perhaps less abrasive, but nevertheless presents a sixteen-minute wall of buffeting, extraneous noise – thick, nebulous, cloud-like – and also suffocating, stifling, simultaneously tense and soporific. It builds and builds, almost subliminally, to a level of immersion which becomes almost like a straightjacket or a sonic pillow over the face. You can’t move. You can’t breathe.

The promised interlude brings rib-rattling bass and punishing low drones, dense with distortion, worthy of Sunn O))). It makes for a long and harrowing five and a bit minutes.

‘coarseness #1.4’ arrives by stealth, a low, humming drone, to which layers are gradually added, so squawks and trills, some gut-shuddering low frequencies, and over the coursed – or maybe that should be the ‘coarse’ of almost twenty-three minutes, the piece meanders and churns. Elongated trills ring out amidst metallic, grating edges, hints of post-rock and abstraction which head nowhere specific, but at the same time transport the listener on a dreamlike journey. Again, it’s hard to settle into this. It feels like a nuclear detonation in slow-motion, the sound of total annihilation played at half the pace, calling to mind the scenes in Threads when the bomb drops and there is a deafening roar which is also silence.

Bombs are dropping and missiles are striking now – again – as the US and Israel strike Iran, and retaliatory strikes are being made far and wide against countries who are home to US air bases and beyond. coarseness #1 feels like an appropriate soundtrack to this – something which feels like, if not the outbreak of WW3, then a particularly dark period in history. Remember where you are at this moment – and listen to this. This is the soundtrack.

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Neon Crabs – This Puppy Can See A Frog

Posted: 27 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 27th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s a small world, as they say, especially if you live in York. As a city, it has more of a town feel, and round my way to the south of the city, it’s more like a village. It’s rare that I go for one of my daily walks or head to the local shops without seeing at least one person I know to nod or say hello to, and it’s nigh on never that I turn up at a gig where there aren’t people I know – mostly from previous gigs, and it’s a positive thing: there’s a palpable sense of community. So it’s more of a surprise that despite mutual friends, I’ve never encountered Andy Goz, or his band Neon Crabs, a transatlantic collaboration with Matt Nauseous of Dallas, Texas (I’m guessing those aren’t the names on their birth certificates), which has been operating since 2021. They made their debut last year with Make Things Better? on Half-Edge Records, followed by Drop It On Ya on Metal Postcard Records, with the cassette edition of This Puppy Can See A Frog representing their first physical release.

I’m going to guess that the colour scheme of the cover is no accident, a knowing reference to Big Black’s Songs About Fucking – although the material it houses is more in the vein of The Hammer Party.

It’s pitched as a collision between The Stooges, post-punk, and 90s noise rock, and as a fan of all three, I’m sold. The way in which they draw these elements together to conjure a sonic hybrid is inspired: here, we have the mechanoid, piston-pumping drum sound of Big Black paired with the scuzzed-out guitar fuzz of Metal Urbain. Just as The Stooges were punk years before punk was even a concept, and Metal Urbain and offshoot Dr Mix and The Remix (a huge influence on both Steve Albini and The Jesus and Mary Chain), so Neon Crabs launch themselves headlong into that space where acts were feeling their way around forms, styles, and technologies which seem primitive now, but where limitations led to innovations. This Puppy Can See A Frog has a raw energy, an underproduced, analogue feel with jagged guitars and some loose but dynamic playing.

The songs themselves are simple in both structure and chords – the guitars often straying away from chords to create texture rather than melody. The same is often true of the vocals, Matt swerving between semi-spoken word and drawling, occasionally singing but weaving around a tune rather than following it, in a style that’s perfectly suited to the frenzied maelstrom of discord which fizzes all around. ‘White Collar Witch’ is a messy collision between early Pavement and The Fall circa 1983, and is arguably Neon Crabs’ equivalent of ‘The Classical’.

‘Creature Violence’ adds free jazz to a murky mess amidst which Nauseous lives up to his name with what appears to be an extended riff on the ‘your mum’ insult with some scatological references as an added bonus. Or something. Maybe. The Fall comparisons stand on ‘Vicious Debasement’, a snarling, mess of layers spilling every whichway over a throbbing motorik backing – but then again, there’s a bit of the irreverent chaos of Trumans Water happening here, and a whole lot more.

Things seem to get darker, starker, and more desperate and ugly and experimental during the second half the album, dragging in dubby bass which seems to reference Bauhaus and squalling, scratchy guitar work with hints of Gang of Four and Wire abounds.

The simple act of titling a track ‘Lisa Kudrow’ evokes the spirit of 90s noise rock, the likes of Butthole Surfers and Tar and sure enough, that’s pretty much what you get, with added samples.

This Puppy Can See A Frog is a wild assimilation of sources, a rackitacious mess of noise heaped together as an album. It sounds like it could have been recorded in a dingy basement on an 8-track, or even a 4-track, in the space of a week – and is all the better for it, because it possesses an immediacy and energy that’s rare here in 2026.

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Beckton Alps2 – Winter

Posted: 13 January 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 21st December 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

I fucking hate winter. And I fucking hate capitalism. These two statements are, in some ways, at least connected. Believe it or not, while the life of a serf is broadly associated with an existence synonymous with slavery, under feudalism, serfs were homed, and – harvests permitting – lived from the land they tended in exchange for providing some of their yield to their lord. As such, it was a system based on reciprocity. During the winter, when there was no work to be done, the serfs would rest, and without books or any of the mod cons we take for granted, would tend to live their lives around daylight hours. Even in Medieval times, a period in history commonly associated with barbarism and a comparatively primitive society, the landed gentry recognised that the people they owned were among their most valuable assets.

Under capitalism, the workforce has become expendable. There’s always another sucker, someone more desperate, who will work longer hours for less money to pay for their rented accommodation. For all the progress we’ve witnessed in giving workers rights in recent years, conditions remain pretty shit.

Since the industrial revolution and the ever-accelerating development of technology, capitalism has sought to squeeze every possible hour of labour from the workforce. Ill? Have a Lemsip and crack on, pussy.

My hatred of winter, then, is largely because of the demands of capitalism. It’s dark when I wake for work, it’s dark before the end of the working day. Many who work in offices or shops will be stuck indoors for the entire – brief – duration of daylight hours (if it actually gets light) and this simply isn’t healthy. I feel sluggish, lack motivation, and suffer from some crushing low moods, often wishing I could simply hibernate.

So arriving at Winter by Beckton Alps2 – the final part in the series of ambient concept albums released throughout 2025, imagining Stone Age people reacting to the changing seasons – I feel in some ways that little imagination is required. Technologically, we live in a different world. As beings… we have evolved… but only so much.

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Songe – Daughters

Posted: 16 November 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 28th November 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

November always feels like plunging into an abyss. It’s the month when , after the clocks change on the last weekend of October, the darkness encroaches at an exponential pace, while, simultaneously, the weather deteriorates and temperatures suddenly drop. I struggle with November, and I’m by no means alone in this – but the darkness and muffling cold brings with it a blanket of isolation, too.

Listening to the debut album proper by Songe in this context makes for a heavy experience. And it’s the context that counts here, because in reality, Daughters is largely calm and spacious rather than dark and oppressive.

The Anglo-French duo consisting of Gaëlle Croguennec and Phoebe Bentham formed in 2023 ‘upon stumbling on a lonely church piano’, and, we learn that ‘Songe explores what it means to live in a postmodern world that feels rooted in destruction’.

This resonates. Right now, it feels as if the world is on a collision course. The so-called ‘great pause’ of the pandemic seems more, in hindsight, as if it was a time during which tensions built and nations pent up rage ready to unleash the moment the opportunity arose. Some of this a matter of perception and distortion, but the bare fact is that the last COVID restrictions were lifted here in the UK on 21 February 2022, and Russia invaded Ukraine three days later. The pandemic, for many, felt apocalyptic. It wasn’t simply the deaths, the fear, but the impact of the restrictions, which didn’t suddenly dissipate the moment those restrictions lifted. The end of restrictions felt like a deep-sea diver coming up for air, the aftereffects akin to the case of the bends. While we were recovering our breath and dealing with the cramps, Russia invaded Ukraine, and from thereon in it’s felt like an endless succession of disasters, storms, and then – then – the annihilation of Gaza.

Musically, Daughters – on which the duo deliver a set of ‘vibrant and experimental soundscapes using a variety of e-pianos, pedals and theremin, pairing a traditional playing style with bit-crushed granular delays to create a soaring top line met with ethereal vocals’ – is by no means dark, bleak, or depressing. In fact, quite the opposite is true. It’s a delightful set of compositions.

But sometimes, the more graceful, delicate, uplifting the music, the harder it hits. And on Daughters, Songe reach some dark and hard-to-reach places. From the most innocuous beginnings, the epic, nine-minute ‘Warmer, Hotter’ swells to a surge of discordant churn beneath soaring, ethereal vocals. The piano-led ‘Ashes’ borders on neoclassical in its delivery, and is rich in brooding atmosphere. ‘Heol’ begins with distorted, discordant harmonics, with frequencies which torment the inner ear. Gradually, through a foment of frothing frequences and fizzing tones, bubbling undercurrents rise. Haunting vocals rise through the mist, the haze, the dense and indefinable drift. It’s ethereal, spiritual, bewildering in terms of meaning.

Waves crash and splash before soft, rippling piano takes the lead on penultimate track, ‘Eveil’. It’s graceful, majestic, emotive – but not in a way which directly or obviously speaks of the album’s subject or context. The vocals are magnificent, but the words impenetrable. It works because of this, rather than in spite of it. It’s slow, subtle, powerful.

It’s not until the final composition, ‘Wraith’, that we feel the emotive power of a droning organ, paired with saddest of strings, that we really feel the depth and emotion al resonance of Daughters. As it fades in a brief reverberation, I find myself feeling sad. No, not sad: bereft. This is an album that takes time to take effect, to soak in. It deserves time to reflect.that time.

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Nadja – cut

Posted: 11 October 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Midira Records / Cruel Nature Records – 24th October 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

A new Nadja release is always cause for a pique of interest. Excitement doesn’t feel like quite the right term for an act who create such dense, dark, brooding soundscapes. Centred around the duo of Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker, each release marks a shift thanks to the contribution of a range of guest performers, and cut is no exception – and this time, following the instrumental epic that was Labyrinthine (2022) – we have vocals, from not just Baker and Buckareff, but also Tristen Bakker, Oskar Bakker-Blair and Lane Shi Otayonii, among others. They certainly bring a lot of guests to a party which features just four tracks. But that is ’just’ four tracks which each occupy an entire side of vinyl on a double LP. As with Labyrinthine, these are compositions which span ten to sixteen minutes, and utilise that timeframe to maximum effect. They don’t hurry things, with slow, tapering drones interweaving, the emphasis on the atmosphere and the detail over the impact. And yet, despite this, or even perhaps because of this, the impact is strong, albeit in more subtle ways.

Their comments on the album are illuminating, explaining that ‘Thematically, cut explores trauma and physio-/psychological stress, as well as possible tools and means of overcoming these stressors, of which the music itself (sonic sublimation) might be one… Musically, while Nadja retains their signature wall-of-noise doomgaze sound, they also explore quieter, more introspective moments as well as new/different instrumentation, with harp, French horn, and saxophone featuring for the first time on one of the band’s recordings’.

‘It’s Cold When You Cut Me’ is stark, bleak, minimal. The air feels dead, it’s suffocating. The sparse percussion rattles along, but the drones are glacial. Five minutes in, rumbling bass and heavy beats roll in, and by the mid-point there are crushing waves of lugubrious noise worthy of Swans, but overlaid with trilling brass and woodwind, jazz in slow-mo, the honk of migrating birds and trilling abstraction.

But this is just a gentle introduction ahead of the thunderous grind of ‘Dark, No Knowledge’, which begins with atmospheric whirlings and even hints of Eastern esotericism, voices rising in the distance, atop wisps and rumbles, echoes and murmurings, before the dense, sludgy, post everything doom drone cascades in like a mudslide. It’s low and it’s slow, crawling like larva. buzzes and rumbles sustain for an eternity. You can actually feel your stomach drop in response to the bass frequencies.

The sound seems to get thicker and murkier as the album progresses, and if ‘She Ate His Dreams From the Inside & Spat Out The Frozen Fucking Bones’ isn’t nearly as abrasive as the title may suggest, its slow repetitious form is truly hypnotic as it trudges its way along.it possesses a rare density which matches its delicacy, and comparisons to latter-day Swans stand in terms of positioning the piece. There are thick, distorted tones grinding like earthworks through the airier overtones, and the contrast brings something magical and soothing. Then ‘Omenformation’ crashes in like a tsunami. The volume leaps, the density leaps, and you find yourself blown away by a sonic force strong enough to knock the air out of your lungs. The dingy, booming bass alone is enough to send you to the ground. The drums are immense. In fact, everything about this is almost inarticulable, as Nadja scale up the sound to beyond that of mere mortal beings. This is music with a physical force and a power beyond words, beyond contrivance. It’s archaic, occult, primal in its power. This is a track which treads through a series of movements, the last of which is crushing in its weight.

It’s true that cut possesses all of the sounds which are recognisable as being concomitant with Nadja’s distinctive dense, doomgaze stylings, and a lot of the vocals are as much additional layers rather than clearly enunciated words, and as such, add further depth – and a certain human aspect to the overall sound. The result is a work which speaks to that level of the psyche beyond words, which conveys trauma and physio-/psychological stress, and which offers a degree of relief through an experience which is wholly immersive and immensely powerful.

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Photo: Hugues de Castillo

Fat Concubine – Empire

Posted: 19 September 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Cruel Nature Records – 12th September 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Postmodernism, emerging primarily as a product of post-war America was defined by hybridity, the demolition of parameters and distinctions between different cultures, genres, and was, in many respects, tied to the accelerating pace of technological development, in particular the globalisation of communications and beyond. But postmodernism also not only recognised, but celebrated, the fact that originality has finite scope, and that anything ‘new’ will by necessity involve the reconfiguration of that which has gone before. Shakespeare had all the ground to break in terms of the advent of modern literature, and one might say the same of Elvis and The Beatles with the advent of rock ‘n’ roll and pop respectively. The reason the 80s were such a watershed was because technology revolutionised the potentials for music-making, and while this saw a huge refraction in terms of creative directions, from industrial to electropop, one could reasonably argue that the next leap in music after 1985 came with house and techno.

Post-millennium, it feels like there is no dominant culture, no defining movement, underground or overground: the mainstream is dominated by a handful of proficient but in many ways unremarkable pop acts, and notably, it’s largely solo artists rather than bands, and while there are bands who pack out stadiums, they tend to be of the heritage variety. At the other end of the spectrum, the underground is fragmented to the point of particles. There are some pros about this, in that there is most certainly something for everyone, but the major con is that unlike, say, in the mid- to late-noughties, when post-rock was all the rage, there’s no sense of zeitgeist or unity, and right now, that’s something we could really do with.

Fat Concubine are most certainly not representative of any kind of zeitgeist movement. With a name that’s not entirely PC, the London acts describe themselves as purveyors of ‘unhinged dance music’, and Empire is their debut EP, following a brace of singles. The second of those singles, ‘for Whom the Fools toll’ (with its irregular capitalisation, which is a bit jarring), is featured here, along with four previously unreleased tracks. This is a positive in my view: so many bands release four, five, or six tracks as singles, and then put them together as an EP release, which feels somewhat redundant, apart from when there’s a physical release.

And so it is, in the spirit of wild hybridisation, that they’re not kidding when they say their thing is ‘unhinged dance music’, or as quoted elsewhere, ‘unhinged no wave ravers’. ‘Feeding off the dogs’ pounds in melding angular post-punk in the vein of Alien Sex Fiend with thumping hardcore techno beats, and it’s not pretty – although it is pretty intense. The snare drum in their first thirty seconds of ‘for Whom the Fools toll’ takes the top of your head off, and the rest of the ‘tune’… well, tune is a stretch. It’s brash, sneering punk, but with hyperactive drum machines tripping over one another and a stack of synthesized horns blaring Eastern-influenced motifs.

There are hints of late 80s Ministry about ‘When we kick Their front door’, another synth horn-led tune that begins as a flap and a flutter before a kick drum that’s hard enough to smash your ribs thuds in and pumps away with relentless force. If the notes didn’t mention that it was a perversion of ‘These Boots We’re Made for Walking’, I’d have probably never guessed. As the song evolves, layers and details emerge, and the vibe is very much reverby post-punk, but with an industrial slant, and a hint of Chris and Cosey and a dash of The Prodigy. If this sounds like a somewhat confused, clutching-at-straws attempt to summarise a wild hotch-potch of stuff, to an extent, it is. But equally, it’s not so much a matter of straw-clutching as summing up a head-spinning sonic assault.

‘tiny pills’ is a brief and brutal blast of beat-driven abrasion, with a bowel-shaking bass and deranged euphoric vocals which pave the way for a finale that calls to mind, tangentially, at least, Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Nag Nag Nag’.

The version of ‘O so peaceful’ was recorded live, and builds to an abstract chanting drone work. It offers a change of angle, but is no less attacking, its percussion-heavy distorted, shouting racket reminiscent of Test Department and even Throbbing Gristle, particularly in the last minute or so, and you can feel the volume of the performance, too. This is some brutal shit.

Empire is pretty nasty, regardless of which angle you approach it from. It’s clearly meant to be, too. Harsh, heavy, abrasive, messed-up… these are the selling points for this release. And maybe having your head mashed isn’t such a bad thing if you’re wanting to break out of your comfort zone and really feel alive.

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Nicholas Langley – One Square Centimetre Of Light

Posted: 27 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 1st August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Nicholas Langley outlines his latest offering with the explanation that “One Square Centimetre Of Light is a continuation of the ideas and techniques I used to compose Thinky Space and especially Cymru Cynhyrchiol. Recorded in spring and summer 2024, this album was an outlet for a lot of thoughts and emotions regarding the involuntary loss of time and memory.’

There are gaps in the narrative here – gaps which I don’t feel it’s necessarily appropriate to probe or plug, particularly when, in his extensive explanation of the album’s final, thirteen-minute piece, ‘Missing Day’ – of which he writes: “‘Missing Day’ can refer either to the mourning feeling of losing whole days to bad health, or to the actual calendar day of mourning, Missing Day, on February 20th. For this piece, as well as layers of tracks 3, 4 and 5, I returned to the generative music techniques I started in 2016. This time around I spent many days getting to grips with programming multiple pieces until I eventually programmed a piece which exactly conveyed my feelings of mourning and hope.”

Memory loss can be a source of panic, anxiety, and while it appears to be a focus, or inspiration of sorts for this album, it feels inappropriate to probe here. But listening to the soft, soporific ambience of One Square Centimetre Of Light, I find myself wondering – where will it go next?

It doesn’t really need to ‘go’ anywhere: the instrumental works which make this album are subtle, sublime. ‘Welsh Summits’ is a beautiful, resonant ambient exploration, while ‘The Weather on the Seafronts’ is magical, mystical, ambient, while ‘Old Age’ quivers and chimes abstractedly, with layers of resonance and depth.

And so we arrive at ‘Missing Day’: fully forty minuses of melodic instrumental exploration, serene, calm, expansive. It’s soft and as much as One Square Centimetre Of Light soothing, the vast sonic expanse of ‘Missing Day’ encapsulates the album’s conflicting and conflicted nature.

One Square Centimetre Of Light is overtly serene and beguiling, but hints at an undisclosed turmoil beneath the surface, a work which is a sonic balm, the result of a process to calm inner strife. As lights at the end of the tunnel go a mere on centimetre is barely there – but there it is. And it is hope. keep the focus on that.

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The Spectral Light – Obliteration – Album review and EXCLUSIVE VIDEO STREAM

Posted: 16 July 2025 in Albums, Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Cruel Nature Records – 1st August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

If ever an album was appropriately titled, this is it. Obliteration is from the Sunn O))) / Earth end of the slow and heavy spectrum, with everything low and grinding and dense and seeping along at a snail’s pace – but it’s also so very different. The eleven-and-a-half-minute ‘Teeth’. which raises the curtain on this colossal work, trudges along, thick and murky, the guitars like sludge, overlaid with the most haunting, ethereal vocals, like spirits ascending to the heavens – or perhaps more accurately, fleeing the molten torment of the volcanic pits of hell. The quieter passages ripple gently, but there’s something off-key and off-kilter that proves unsettling, a discordance which isn’t quite right.

The album is described as ‘a visceral, atmospheric journey shaped by improvisation, deep literary roots, and a shared affinity for both crushing heaviness and ghostly ambience’, with the notes going on to add that ‘vocalist and instrumentalist Amanda Votta draws lyrical inspiration from classic rock icons and poets alike – Led Zeppelin, Stevie Nicks, Carl Sandburg’s poems ‘Alone’ and ‘The Great Hunt’, along with Sylvia Plath.’

If none of the influences are immediately apparent, it’s likely because influence can be subtle, more a process of osmosis and assimilation rather than being about emulation. Drawing influence from Led Zep doesn’t have to equate to epic solos and using ‘baby’ a thousand times. And so it is that The Spectral Light suck all of those influences into a swirling vortex.

The churning ‘Branch’ is wild: ZZ Top on acid, Led Zep in the midst of a breakdown, riffs played at a thousand decibels through shredded speakers and melting amps. But it also spins into cracked post-rock territory over the course of its disorientating nine minutes.

Make no mistake: this is a monster: ‘Moonsinger’ warps and bends and it’s emotionally gutting in ways that are difficult to articulate. It touches the core of the very soul. The title track is defined by a dense, metallic churn… and yet there is still a delicacy about it. It’s dark, disturbing, ugly, and yet… beautiful. There is nothing else quite like this. And the dark, airless trudge of Obliteration feels like a black hole… and I find myself being dragged into its eternal depths.

Ahead of the album’s release, we’re privileged to be able to offer a video exclusive for the album’s final track and choice of lead single, ‘Whisper Surgery’. You might want to pour a big drink for this one.

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Cumsleg Borenail – 10mg Citalopram

Posted: 4 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 27 June 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

The cover within a cover artwork is only the first example of near infinite layers when it comes to this complex and inventive work from the truly demented experimentalist who records under the moniker of Cumsleg Borenail.

This latest effort promises ‘a collision of methods—part LLM-based sampling, part MPC assembly, part human lyrics—stitched together into something fluid and unpredictable. AI scavenges random prompts, returning garbled errors and fractured phrases, while voices and instruments drift in from nowhere, guided by no fixed direction. Each track begins as one idea and mutates into another, warping its original design into something unrecognizable yet strangely intentional.’

Oh, and it delivers on that promise, alright. This is truly a derangement of the senses, a collaged cut-up, an uncompromising mash-up, a smash-up, if you will, where absolutely nothing is off limit, and it all gets tossed, unceremoniously and indiscriminately, into the blender and churned up into a mess of the most mind-blowing chaos imaginable.

To provide a detailed analysis of this would be to unpick the threads in a way which would reduce the album to less than the sum of its parts. 10mg Citalopram works precisely because it’s an exercise in brain-pulping loop-heavy derangement.

‘You mean nothing me!’ a female voice repeats, and repeats, against a clattering, springing backdrop of twangs and poings throughout ‘You Mean Something To Me’. My head’s a shed by the time we’re midway through the second track, ‘Denizen Invocation Via Lunar Phase’ – because this is a work that goes off in all directions, all at once, and it’s really not pretty. It is, however, weird and frantic. It’s a mess of noise and samples and glitchy electronic samples and frantic breakbeats. Later in the album, there’s a companion piece of sorts, ‘Now I Know I Am Nothing Because You Said’.

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In some respects, I’m reminded of early Foetus, JG Thirlwell’s crazed tape loops and cacophonous noise bursts, and the way Cabaret Voltaire took the tape experiments conducted by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin and the ideas outlined in The Electronic Revolution as their starting point – but it’s also a bit Trout Mask Replica, in that it’s like listening to several songs being played at the same time, only it’s got bust-up techno beats exploding all over the shop and frankly, it’s impossible to know what the fuck’s going on most of the time. Too much, for sure. But that’s the point.

For context, Citalopram is a widely-prescribed antidepressant, described on the NHS website as ‘a medicine that can help treat depression and panic attacks’. This album, however, sounds more like a prolonged panic attack or all of the listed possible side-effects being experienced at once, while the numerous references to being ‘nothing’ appear to allude to the inner voice of low mood. Then again, there are other medical matters of an altogether different sort which provide the reference points for tracks like ‘Clostridium Difficile’ (a bacteria which causes diarrhoea) and ‘Snifflers, Nostril Pickers and Dribblers’. All of it is utterly batshit wonky and wildly arrhythmic, and certainly not for anyone who’s feeling tense or jittery or suffering from any kind of psychosis. For anyone else… proceed with caution. May have unwelcome and unpleasant side effects.

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Beige Palace / Lo Egin – Beige Palace / Lo Egin

Posted: 14 May 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Cruel Nature Records – 30th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

First things first: Beige Palace were ace, and their departure has left a gap in the musical world, especially in Leeds. In a comparatively short timespan, the trio produced a respectably body of work, evolving from their minimal lo-fi beginnings to explore musical territories far and wide, and this final release, split with another Leeds act, Lo Elgin, who, in contrast, have released precious little.

The accompanying notes provide valuable context for the final recordings laid down by Beige Palace, recorded at Wharf Chambers, one of Leeds’ finest DIY venues by Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe (guitar/keys/vocals)… and now helming the mighty Thank.

Taking a step back from the discordant post hardcore of ‘Making Sounds For Andy’ and the freewheeling experimentation of ‘Leg’, Beige Palace’s side largely favours the repetition and extreme dynamic shifts found on their 2016 EP ‘Gravel Time’. The production here also returns to the lo-fi, DIY approach from that EP, eschewing the more polished sound of their two full-length albums. Through returning to their roots, Beige Palace manages to drag their sound to new extremes, with these three tracks bringing to mind artists as disparate as US Maple and Sunn O))).

‘Wellness Retreat’ is dense and discordant, low-end synth drone and bass coalescing to a eardrum-quivering thrum over which scratchy guitars and vocals come in from all sides to forge a magnificently disjointed and angular two minutes and twenty seconds. Too chaotic to really be math-rock, it’s a squirming can of worms, a melting pot where Shellac meets Captain Beefhart at a crossroads with Trumans Water. Or something.

Bringing hints of Silver Jews, the lo-fi crawler ‘Good Shit Fizzy Orange’ does math-rock but with an experimental jazz element, the sparse picked guitar and slow-rolling cymbal work juxtaposed with what sounds like the strumming of an egg slicer before sad strings start to weave their way over it all. The lyrics are, frivolous and stupid, and we wouldn’t want things any other way. Because much as one may value well-crafted, poetical lyrics, sometimes dumb, trashy, meaningless words work just fine. Better than fine, even.

There’s a hint of later Earth about the spartan folksiness of ‘Update Hello Blue Bag Black Bag’ – a song which sounds serious but as the title suggests, isn’t quite so much, but around the midpoint, all the pedals are slammed into overdrive and suddenly there’s a tidal wave of distortion, a speaker-busting cascade of heavy doom-laden drone. And as it tapers to fade, while we mourn the departure of a truly great band, we get to rejoice that during the span of their career, Beige Palace did everything. It’s a solid legacy they’re leaving, and one which may well expand in the years to come. There will be people in five, ten, fifteen years asking ‘remember Beige Palace?’, and other people will be replying ‘Yes! I saw them at CHUNK!’. Well, I will be, anyway. And we still have Thank to be thankful for.

The two pieces which represent Lo Elgin’s contribution mark a sharp contrast to those of Beige Palace. The first, the eleven-minute monster that is ‘Beneath the Clock’, is a thunderous blast of doom-laden rage and anguish. The barking, howling vocals are low in the mix of droning, lurching, lumbering noise, through which strings poke and burst, and as the noise sways and sloshes like a boat tossed hither and thither on waves in a storm as it attempts to guide its way through the entrance to the harbour, the listener finds themselves almost seasick with the unpredictable movement. Around seven minutes in, the tempest abates and the piece meanders into altogether mellower territory, where again I’m reminded of Earth circa Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light. And then, right at the end, there’s a massive jazz segment, backed with crushing guitars. I did not see that coming. And then ‘Abomination’ is different again- a gritty, gnarly, gut-spewing blast of noise that is simply too much…. But too much is never enough as we’re led through a racketacious swamp that starts out Motorhead and toboggans down to a crazed morass of manic jazz.

The two very different sides belong to completely different worlds, at least on the surface. But they are both staunchly strange, keenly experimental, and dedicated to inventive noisemaking, and as such, compliment one another well. And this also perfectly encapsulates the essence of the Leeds scene: diverse, noisy, weird, and wonderful.

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