Posts Tagged ‘Cruel Nature Records’

Ballpeen – What You Need, What You Deserve

Posted: 28 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Just over six years ago, one of my favourite labels, Cruel Nature Records, released Pachinko, the third EP / mini-album from Newcastle noisemongers Ballpeen – a band appropriately named, given their capacity to hammer home heavyweight riffs with bludgeoning brutality. With noise rock, grunge, and hardcore punk all in the mix Pachinko was rabid, raw, primitive, recorded, not produced.

2020 was a productive year for them, with the release of two live recordings and a split EP, and 2021 saw the stop-gap EP Bunch of Sevens, which featured material recorded in 2017 at the same time as their debut release. And then, silence. It transpires that they sadly called it a day some time after this. They’re not the first band to abort before the release of their debut album by any means, but the shock news is that they actually recorded an album which then got ditched.

But now here it is. Ballpeen are no more, but finally, there is closure in the delivery of the lost album, What You Need, What You Deserve. And it’s a beast. Thirteen songs packed into thirty-seven minutes. That’s an average of approximately 2.8 minutes apiece. And into these compressed timescales, they pack in so much energy, so much explosive riffery, and so much… just so much.

The first single, released in May, is also the first track on the album, and from ‘Modern Life is Hell’, it’s immediately apparent just how much they’d evolved from previous releases. It’s by no means polished or pop, but the sound is crisper, denser, the songwriting more sophisticated, a solid hook snaring the listener early, with a sound and style which warrants comparisons with Hawk Eyes, who are also now sadly missed. And the sentiment probably resonates more powerfully now than when it was recorded. How times have changed – and not for the better. We thought the pandemic was hell – because it was. But little could we have anticipated what was to come.

What follows is nothing short of a gut-busting guitar-driven blast. ‘Unit Three’ amalgamates the steely nihilism and sinewy strain of Kowloon Walled City with a thick bass-driven grunge heft. There are some neat descending bass runs in the second half of the song which remind me of something else, but we’re into the squalling wall of feedback that drives ‘Poverty of Ambition; before my brain has remotely got itself into gear. But ballpeen are very much in gear: there’s no mid-album slump, no breath-catching ballad here. Instead of slowing the pace, they crank up the distortion and stoke up the rage.

The bass on the intro to ‘Engram Theory’ is nothing short of rib-rattling, a chunky, clunky, bruising assault of pure density, reminiscent of Shellac, for sure, but closer to that of Blacklisters with their original bassist – which is a fair comparison for the song as a whole, really, and it provides a welcome reminder of just how the North of England has been so strong in its generation of noisy bands over the last fifteen ears or so. Seattle and Chicago have the longstanding reputation for their scenes, but we’re looking back to the late eighties and early nineties for their heydays: more recently, Leeds and Newcastle have proven to be the crucial hotspots, and Ballpeen’s contribution is strong. The belated arrival of What You Need, What You Deserve only cements this view.

Second advance single, ‘Ukiah’ is yet another fiery onslaught, and compels one to consider what might have been. It’s true that such speculation is futile, and instead of mourning, we should be grateful, and the juddering riff of ‘Crossing Waters’ provides every reason to be grateful. It hits so hard, it makes you sweat. There isn’t a weak moment on What You Need, What You Deserve. In fact, there’s barely a moment to catch breath. It’s intense, alright.

There can be little doubt that it’s best to quit while you’re on top, kill things while you’re at the peak of your game (Nirvana perhaps took that a bit too literally, but Big Black are a fine example of a band who left a concise but unsullied legacy). And to the list, we can now add Ballpeen, a band who demonstrably saved their best for last.

What You Need, What You Deserve needs to be heard. It’s all killer and no filler, and more – and it doesn’t just go all the way to eleven: it starts at eleven and works its way up over its skull-cracking thirty-seven minutes. It’s the good shit alright, hitting with enough force as to dislodge your fillings.

This must surely be their legacy.

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Emmaleen Tangleweed – The Weaving

Posted: 20 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 3st1 July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

“This album is kind of a collage of all the books I was reading and my impressions of the general emotions swimming in the collective experience, as well as personal stories I’ve picked up along the way.” So says Emmaleen Tangleweed of her new album, The Weaving, which was recorded in September 2025 ‘in a log cabin in Swartvlei (“black lake”), Western Cape, South Africa’. The liner notes describe it as ‘a collection of gothic folk and blues ballads tinged with hypnotic magic realism’.

The first song, ‘The Hours’ is likely, then, to be a direct reference to Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer-winning novel – which in turn was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway. It’s a wonderfully earthy slice of dark, primitive blues, rendered all the more potent by the rich patina of Tangleweed’s voice. In the recent Six of the Best feature for Aural Aggravation, she cited Black Pudding by Mark Lanegan and Duke Garwood as an influence, citing ‘an archetypal timelessness’, and this is what very much comes through here, perhaps with a hint of PJ Harvey in the mix, too. There’s nothing complex – or even innovative – about it, but blues isn’t about complexity or innovation, it’s about feeling, about soul. And this is something The Weaving brings in spades.

‘Silent Killer’ could be a hundred years old, but it could also be an outtake from Rid of Me. Emmaleen sings from her gut, and with guts, too, and plays with a perfect feel for the swing required to bring the songs to life. There’s a bit of fuzz on the low strings which gives a vintage, analogue feel to the production. This is also true of the sepia-toned ‘Strangeling Angel’, which very much replicates the feel of those early twentieth century blues legends and those altogether more obscure.

The introduction of cello on ‘Blind Faith’ is done subtly, but adds depth to the otherwise sparse arrangement, and for the most part, everything hangs on her voice and acoustic guitar. Perhaps because of this, there’s a palpable intimacy and immediacy about The Weaving, capturing as it does the sensation of being in a small room as the songs are performed live. ‘Never Ending History’ is almost a crawl, and she drawls the lyrics low and slow, and something strange happens with time as it slips back. one can almost envisage grainy black and white photographs accompanying it.

Most of the songs are in the five-minute region and she fills the space with a rare tension. ‘Ask the Dust’ is another song which makes a direct reference, this time to John Fante’s 1939 novel set in The Great Depression, and shit, it’s bleak. ‘Is there anyone out there’ she asks against images of ‘the burnt out rust’ and a monotonous, repetitive riff reminiscent of Michael Gira at his most lugubrious. It’s here that is becomes most apparent that it’s possible to be heavy without distortion or volume, and that weight comes from the heart. You can hear her fingers hitting the strings on ‘Ask the Dust’, in a way that has the same feel as striking dry earth with a pick. It’s not entertainment, but labour, and The Weaving finds Tangleweed dredging deep. There’s no showing on the doll where this music touches: it’s somewhere deep inside, subconscious, subliminal. And herein lies its power – it’s something that’s affecting on an almost cellular or biological level, resonating with experiences of past lives or something. You feel it in a way that’s impossible to explain. But feel it, you do.

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Earth Mother Fucker / Pound Land – Earth Mother Fucker / Pound Land

Posted: 12 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 31st July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s too hot. Granted, I make this complaint whenever it goes above 24C, but on day three – or maybe it’s day four or five or ten – of a 30-plus heatwave – the third heatwave of the year – I am absolutely dying. Typing is making me sweat like running a marathon. Hell, even thinking about typing is making me sweat like running a marathon. My brain is jelly.

The two bands have a side each on the vinyl, plus collaborative tracks closing each set.

I’ve devoted a fair quality of words effusing over the output of dour Derby dingemongers Pound Land, and as theirs is the second half of the album, I’ll focus first on the EMF who didn’t have any bouncy dance-driven indie hits in the 90s. Earh Mother Fucker formed in Ipswich – the hometown of the equally commercially-orientated Extreme Noise Terror – in 1988. Only unlike ENT, EMT (so close) didn’t record a bunch of Peel sessions, sign to Earache, or perform at The Brit Awards with The KLF before releasing a ridiculously rare collaborative single available only by mail order through Melody Maker or The NME. Again, so close.

Instead – and respect is due here – they’ve ploughed their own noise-rock furrow with a slow – very slow – flow of albums released on tape and CD-R. There was nearly a 20-year gap between Let Him Go Up (2001, CD-R) and It’s Shit (2020) and then another six years before the arrival of Do Not Resuscitate earlier this year. It seems they changed their mind, and are very much resuscitated, and two releases in a year is a real cause for celebration. Well, it is if you like Earth Mother Fucker.

There’s a sense that they don’t particularly want to be liked, and instead exist to test listeners with a uniquely English form of noise rock. Their solo cuts are scuzzy, grungy, abrasive and raw as it comes, but there are some sublime moments of melody, at least in the guitar department.

‘Happy Shopper’ powers in amidst a squall of angular guitars, landing primarily somewhere between The Fall and Sonic Youth. It’s a ramshackle racket, lo-fi grungy, gloriously unpolished. ‘Changeling’ does low-slung twisted country crossed with wonky noise and vocals – half-spoken, half-shouted, bridging Enablers and A Band of Susans. That’s a substantial gap to bridge, superficially, but Earth Mother Fucker span it with discordant, chaotic ease.

‘Puppy Fat’ is very much a spirit of 77 punk blast at heart, but twisted with a strong element of Krautrock as defined by its motorik beats, and almost veers into Fall-like Mancabilly. It also feels like the optimal summary of what EMF are about.

‘Second Aunt’, with Pound Land is a raucous maxed-out rendition of Eno’s ‘Third Uncle’, but based more on the Bauhaus cover than the original, and manifesting as a wild punky thrashabout.

Pound Land push things further still, ‘Liar’ being a rampant roar of disaffection. The bass is thick and booming, the production as gloriously primitive as the sax freak-out that runs all over it is wild. They lumber into even sludgier territory on ‘Janet’s Here’, a mangled mess of noise and snarling vocals atop that gut-churning bass giving it a hint of early PiL. ‘Feeling Sick’ lumbers and lurches in such a way it becomes a work of self-fulfilment, a musical manifestation of dire disgust and seething (self) loathing.

‘Shitoctacy’ sees Pound Land joined by Earth Mother Fucker, and is a true monster, with a collage of sped-up samples overlaid across some weirdy, warping drones before a ten-minute trudge begins, grimy bass and spewing vitriol atop the nastiest, most discordant racket, and from time to time there’s some pained sax from Jo Stone which wails in anguish over the whole heaving mess.

As split albums go, this one couldn’t have been better curated: it feels like the two bands – particularly with the collaborative works – are egging one another on to take the levels of grime and slime and nauseating churn up, notch by notch. The result is gritty, gruelling, and spectacularly visceral.

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melondruie – Sound of Rain

Posted: 28 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 3rd July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Despite our reputation, it’s not just us Brits who have a weather fixation, and the fact of the matter is, the weather has a baring on our daily lives, perhaps more than many of us even recognise – and that’s without considering the effects of weather events on the likes of transport and food production. On a primal, human level, weather conditions affect our moods, and even our health.

I myself recorded a longform piece, ‘January Can’t Last Forever’ from a bleak place in early 2023, when weeks of rain had caused widespread flooding locally, and a few particularly heavy downpours overwhelmed the guttering at the front of the house. Those weeks, in the darkest days of winter, felt like a lifetime, and it was all I could do to get through it by reminding myself that these things do pass, eventually. April and May of this year saw rain most days, too, although I’m writing this as sweat pours off me at the tail end of the second heatwave of 2026, during which a couple of brief thunderstorms have only contributed to ramping up the already suffocating levels of humidity.

As such, there’s a particular relatability, on a personal level, with the inspiration for melondruie’s Sound of Rain: the Seattleite’s latest work of minimalist ambient electronical was ‘made in the spring of 2025 during various rainy days’. As the liner notes explain, ‘The record frames rain as a calming, almost therapeutic force – masking the noise and tension of human life with a steady, immersive sonic wash’, with ‘a focus on texture, atmosphere, and subtle emotional resonance.’

There’s a certain playfulness about some of the compositions: ‘Washed Away’ bounces and ripples with something of a lightness, and the rhythmic nature of the notes interplay through patterns which shift gradually and with a liquid ease.

Despite the angry and negative connotations of titles like ‘Red Mist’ and ‘Destroyed Again’, the heavier, darker undercurrents of rumbling bass and wraith-like howls which resemble thin, chilling winds are counterbalanced by soft sounds which seem to connote the relief of shafts of light breaking through the cloud cover, or a vague hint of a rainbow. Consequently, and album which could have been rendered relentlessly bleak, gloomy, oppressive, is anything but.

On Sound of Rain, melondruie explores the interplay between gentle textures, with smooth, gliding drones interacting and interpolating with rippling, bubbling layers. ‘Falsehoods’, the final track, expands on this territory with the gush of a torrent to begin, gradually tapering from a current of sweeping tension towards something altogether calmer.

The rhythmic cadences of the pieces give them a sense of movement, of flow, even a kind of groove at times, which draws the listener in and holds the attention in a way which is rare – in my experience – for an ambient work. The conception and execution is inspired, and while the extent to which it evokes rainy days will vary according to one’s own experience and perception, Sound of Rain cannot fail to inspire reflection and contemplation.

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Picking / Gnarled Fingers – Picking / Gnarled Fingers

Posted: 25 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 27th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

This one’s been out for a bit, but was too good to let go without comment. Some will likely thank me for this: others may be less grateful as they sit, hands over their ears, wondering why they should ever pay heed to a word I write. It’s niche and it’s noisy – as the notes which accompany the release on Bandcamp make clear from the outset:

Gnarled Fingers and Picking are two artists drawn together by a shared love of bleak, crushing, low-end oblivion.

Picking is a new raw doom / noise / drone project from Charlie Butler inspired by lifelong incessant excessive picking of nails.

Gnarled Fingers is an experimental, ambient drone project, relentless wall of fuzz and atmosphere, no escape, created after growing up in Somerset Levels with stories of witchcraft and pagan superstition.

The Picking track, ‘Toenail’ sits in the droney doom bracket dominated by Sunn O))), but there’s something magnificently lo-fi about this, which adds a layer of filthy muck and treble distortion that conveys a performance which is of a volume just beyond the capacity of the equipment used to record it. It’s fourteen minutes of raw, howling guitar noise, and because of the way in which they seem to be struggling to contain the feedback while ploughing relentlessly at a loose semblance of a riff, the result is something along the lines of Earth 2 crossed with Metal Machine Music. ‘Uncompromising’ is a word that music journalists and bands alike chuck about, but this is the absolute epitome – although something about this recording is possessed of a primitivism that suggests they don’t know how to do it any other way. Is it uncompromising if that’s the case? Feel free to make that question a topic for debate next time you’re down the pub with your coolly opinionated music-loving mates, but whatever side of the fence you find yourself on, Picking make a gnarly noise, and if your toenails ever bear visual comparison to this, I would strongly recommend consulting a podiatrist, and sooner rather than later, before your entire foot rots off the end of your leg.

Gnarled Fingers showcase a more polished form and a sound which sits closer to the Sunn O))) template of ribcage-rattling density, whereby a chord struck every twenty seconds conjures an atomic detonation that hangs heavy in the air. Downtuned and distorted to the max, their track ‘Echoes from Futures Past’ is a wall of crushing devastation. Sixteen and a half minutes of guitar noise so weighty it feels like how one might imagine being trapped under rubble after a nuclear bomb. Feedback scrapes so abrasively that it strips the skin, and all the while you’re slowly suffocating. It’s brutal.

While some split releases benefit from contrast, this is one where similarity is strength. This type of music is most effective when subjected to prolonged periods of exposure, ideally at high, even extreme volume. The desired effect is complete immersion, to reach the point where your body feels detached, as if its floating. This is some heavy-duty drone shit, and it sure hits the spot.

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Machine Mafia – Red

Posted: 15 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 27th March 2026

The work ethos of Pound Land always makes me think of The Fall – and the same is true of the relentless repetition of their compositions. And it comes as no surprise that Red, the second studio by Pound Land side-project Machine Mafia, consisting of Jase Kester and Adam Stone, was recorded in a single day. Keeping things in-house, it was mastered by Agent Kester, too.

Whether or not the album’s title is in any way connected to its being recorded at Big Red Studios in Macclesfield, we don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. What matters – and what we are told – is that ‘Lyrically, Red explores themes such as the sanctity of personal freedom, the dreary mediocrity of business academia, the medicalisation of human behaviour, the strange comfort found in boredom, and supernatural motorcycle-riding anti-heroes with flaming skulls.’ Some of these topics I find personally relatable (my brief time as a university tutor was not enjoyable, essentially working a zero-hours contract teaching modules miles beyond my own field of research, to receive poor feedback from students who’d shelled out thousands for a degree and felt let-down by having a tutor who wasn’t a specialist, and only worked limited hours, so wasn’t sitting in their office for drop-in visits or able to respond to emails immediately. My favourite was a student emailing me five minutes before an essay submission deadline asking where the submission sheets were on the website while I was on a train with no access to my emails), others less so (I simply don’t get boredom: there’s always too much to do). But what I absolutely get is channelling all the frustration into something creative.

Given that Pound Land are kings of gnarly, repetitive, grinding noise and that Kester’s work outside Pound Land (Plan Pony, Omnibael / Ombibadger) has explored numerous shades of abrasive racket, that Machine Mafia create an unholy din is to be expected, and that’s what they provided with their debut album, Zoned, released almost a year ago to the day of this, their second full-length. But whereas Zoned tended to deliver short, sharp sonic assaults, with the majority of the thirteen tracks clocking in at less than five minutes, Red really pushes the boundaries, the five track release dominated by a brace of megalithic monsters in the shape of the thirteen-and-a-half-minute ‘Business Studies’ and their epic rendition of Suicide’s ‘Ghost Rider’ – which is even more manic and more brutal than the one performed by Foetus with Marc Almond. As for its colossal elongation, although the original is a mere two and a half minutes long, its hypnotic, repetitive groove could readily withstand looping into eternity. The Sisters of Mercy used to run it for six minutes or so as an encore in 1984 and ’85, Eldritch cutting loose with the Alan Vega screams. Machine Mafia tweak the tempo up a notch, and it’s a messy, dirty blast of electropunk, Stone spitting and whooping the words through the mangled metallic whir of overloading electronics.

It’s the perfect finale, and sits perfectly with the originals, which are a mess of pounding beats, squalling feedback, and angry vocals. The first of these, ‘NO’, is a relentless howl, five minutes of nonstop thunder and ear-splitting treble, Stone rabid and raving.

‘DSM’ is more straightforward noise rock, a bass-driven blast with layers of feedback. The format is repetition, repetition, repetition, like a noise reimagining of The Fall, drawing in elements of Metal Urbain. ‘Business Studies’ is simply brutal, a bludgeoning bastard of a noise with the refrain ‘fuck business studies’. ‘It’s all shit and piss’, Stone summarises with the kind of anguish that feels like he’s bursting out of his very skin. The vocals are thick with distortion, the glitching bass blasts from the speakers with dangerous density and it’s all wrapped in a mesh of feedback that makes The Jesus and Mary Chain sound like easy listening. ‘Boredom’ takes its cues from Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Discipline’ and adds wild feedback to the mix. It’s punishing.

There’s an additional, unnamed, ‘secret’ track a little way after ‘Ghostrider’, and it’s a messy, lo-fi mess of crashing drum machines and grinding synths over which Stone rants so hard you can almost hear the spittle. It sounds like early Uniform – stark, harsh, rabid.

Uncompromising doesn’t come close. Red is absolutely fucking punishing. If you’re into dense, dark, nasty noise, you need this.

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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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