Posts Tagged ‘Cruel Nature Records’

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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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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