Posts Tagged ‘Cruel Nature Records’

Pound Land – Can’t Stop

Posted: 15 March 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 28th March 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Pound Land have evolved, expanded, metamorphosed, mutated, from two guys cranking out two-chord dirges, to a shifting lineup of musicians cranking out some wild freeform jazz over murky two-chord dirges. And now we learn that they’ve returned to their roots for this latest offering, their third of the year, no less. As they put it, ‘Can’t Stop sees founding Pound Land members Adam Stone and Nick Harris return back to the gratifying freedom and eccentricity of DIY recordings and lo-fi audio projects. Nine diverse tracks spread over half an hour, this short experimental collection nods to Pound Land’s absurdist ‘kitchen-sink punk’ past’.

Can’t stop? Or won’t stop? Not that they should, either way: Pound Land’s mission, it seems, is to proliferate their dingy bass-driven racket as far and wide as possible, and the world – as unspeakably shit as it is, especially right now – is in some small way better for it.

“Got my joggers on / got my flapjack / got my shaven head,” Stone mumbles laconically as if half asleep, over some trickling electronics at the start of the opening track, ‘Armed with Flapjack’. Then some dirty, trebly guitar clangs in and everything slides into a messy mesh that’s neither ambient nor rock, providing a seething, surging drone by way of a backdrop to the spoken word narrative, which is only partially audible, but seems to be a gloriously mundane meandering tale involving, essentially, leaving the house and going about ordinary business.… But it actually turns out to be more of an internal monologue of an anxietised mind. “I’m alright, I tell myself that, I’m gonna be ok, I can do this… bus, and train, take one thing at a time…” It’s really quite powerful in its way.

And staying with the mundane, ‘Watching TV’ is a spectacularly sloppy-sounding celebration of the mindrot pastime that starts out sounding almost sensitive and with a dash of country in the mix, but slides into soporific sludge, before the choppy ‘Lathkill’, which clocks in at just under two and a half minutes, shifts the tone again: it’s a classic Fall rip, or perhaps Pavements ripping The Fall, a sparse, lo-fi four-chord effort which just plugs away repetitively.

Things get really murky with the pulsating ‘Stuff’, where Stone’s meandering contemplations ring out through waves of reverb, and the whole thing feels – and sounds – very Throbbing Gristle. Dark, muffled, monotonous, it grinds and clatters away, a thick sonic soup, and it’s as primitive and unproduced as it gets. It’s not pleasant, but it works perfectly: it needs to be rough, raw, unfiltered. There’s simply no way this act is ever going to have commercial appeal, and that’s perfect: Pound Land are made for limited cassette releases and playing tiny venues to audiences who will be split roughly down the middle between absolutely loving them and wondering what the fuck they’ve stumbled upon. Pound Land really aren’t for everyone. They’re the anti-Coldplay. They’re for people who relish being challenged. ‘I Spy’ brings that challenge straight away, being different again, the rawest, scratchiest, scratchiest, most abrasive no-fi-punk you’ll hear all year.

Things get even more jarring and difficult towards the end of the album. ‘Janet’s Here’ should be a breezy interlude, announcing the arrival of a guest, but instead it’s tense because the delivery is straight-up demented, and ‘Affordable Luxury’ is a rabid rant, again reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle. It’s uncomfortable, the drawling vocal secondary to the warping drones and scratchy experimentalism. Stripped-back not-quite acoustic ‘EGG’ is a trick: again, it has hints of The Fall doing ‘sensitive’ – like ‘Time Enough at Last’, for example – and it’s delicate, but it’s also not.

And this is the thing. Can’t Stop is their most wide-ranging and accessible album to date. And yet… well, it’s not really accessible, for a start.

Can’t Stop is challenging in new ways, too. Working with so little, they’ve pushed the songwriting in divergent directions, making for an album that reaches in all different directions, while, of course, retaining that primal Pound Land core and purposefully simple, direct approach and aesthetic. I love it, but I expect many will hate it. And that’s the way it should be. It’s peak Pound Land.

AA

a3349026030_10

The Bordellos (with Dee Claw) / Neon Kittens – Half Man Half Kitten

Posted: 21 February 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 21st February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

This split release has a lengthy backstory, which is given in full on the label’s Bandcamp page – but the short version is that when York’s Neon Kittens (how had I not heard (of) them, given that they appear to be from round my way and absolutely my bag? I feel ashamed, and fear I cannot even remotely claim to have the finger on the pulse of my local scene right now – but still, better late than never, right?) approached The Bordellos about a collaboration, the latter, having taken an eternity to only half-finish their current album-in-progress, some ten years after the release of will.i.am, you’re really nothing, offered everything they had for a split release. And lo, this is it.

I suppose the eight songs Neon Kittens have contributed here provide a solid starting point to their rapidly-expanding catalogue, and being paired with The Bordellos works a treat. Both espouse the same lo-fi DIY ethic, with a certain leaning toward indie with a trashy punk aesthetic.

That the cassette edition sold out on advance orders hints at the anticipation for the release: for, as The Bordellos describe themselves as being ‘ignored by millions, loathed by some, loved by a select few’, when you’ve got a small but devoted following, they get pretty excited for new material.

‘Set Your Heart to the Sun’ is perfectly representative of their scratchy, harmony-filled indie – kinda jangly, a tad ramshackle, but direct, immediate. Dee Claw’s airy vocal contributions really lift the sound and raise the melodic aspects of the songs. Not all of the songs have full drum-kit percussion, often favouring tambourine or bongos or seemingly whatever comes to hand, and more than any other acts, I’m reminded of Silver Jews or really, really early Pavement – those EPs that sounded like they were recorded on a condenser mic from the next room with more tape hiss than music, but still undeniably great tunes. And yes, they really do have great tunes – overall, they’re pretty laid-back in their approach to, well, everything: remember when ‘slacker; was a thing? Yeah. In place of polish, they have reverb, and these songs tickle the ears with joy.

Neon Kittens bring a rather denser sound and a greater sense of urgency with the buzzy, scuzzy ‘Better Stronger Faster’. A hyperactive drum machine stutters and flickers away beneath a sonic haze of fuzzy guitar: there are hints of Metal Urbain crossed with The Fall and Flying Lizards in the mix, while ‘All Done by Numbers’ brings Shellac and Trumans Water together in a head-on collision – and one suspects any similarity to Shellac’s ‘New Number Order’ is entirely intentional from a band who recently featured on a Jesus Lizard tribute. ‘Cold Leather’ presents a spoken word narrative over a lurching, lumbering morass of discord, held together by the whip crack of the snare of a vintage-sounding drum machine.

The majority of their songs are around the two-minute mark, and crash in, slap you round the chops, and are done before you really know what’s hit you. ‘Deaf Metal’ is a work of beautiful chaos, constructed around a thick, rumbling bass and rolling drums., while the rather longer ‘White Flag’ is almost a stab at a grunge-pop song, while the discordant clang of ‘Sailing in a Paper Boat’ is absolutely The Fall circa Hex Enduction Hour: lo-fi post-punk racket doesn’t get much better than this.

AA

a3951021685_10

Emmaleen Tangleweed – Songs From The Unseen, The Unsaid and The Unborn / The Sun Will Still Shine When You Die

Posted: 9 February 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 21st February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, I find myself reading – and returning to – the write-up for an album and thinking ‘Yes: I’m going to like this… but perhaps not tonight. I don’t know if I’m ready or in the mood’. This immense release, which finds two previously-released album reissued as a single package consisting of seventeen pieces, by Namibian-born Emmaleen Tangleweed is one such example. Listening to new music daily doesn’t mean that writing about it is always easy, and sometimes, I find myself feeling daunted by the prospect, and asking myself ‘how could I do this justice?’

Here’s the preface, which accompanies the release on Bandcamp:

Emmaleen Tangleweed’s music is more accurately described as a channeling than a song. Summoning stories of lost souls too tortured to let go, she cries and yearns as they no longer can, and yet, a silver thread of faith binds them. Themes of death, relationship and lingering hope imbue the listener with an eerie feeling of communion, of conversing with souls who have crossed the great divide.

Painting a visionary picture for the listener the stories contain hidden characters and everyday dramas played out in a time capsule of song giving the words weight in the earthly as much as in the ethereal they are delicately plucked from.

There’s also the fact that I feel obliged to listen to a release the whole way through, uninterrupted, so as to experience it as intended, not as people dipping in and out and skipping through playlists do, meaning that two albums back-to-back is quite a commitment. Anyway.

Songs From the Unseen, The Unsaid And The Unborn (Tracks 1 – 8, 10) was originally self-released in November 2022, while The Sun Will Still Shine When You Die (Tracks 11 – 17) was again self-released in October the following year.

Listening to these simple yet hypnotic folk songs of Songs From the Unseen, The Unsaid And The Unborn, I find myself wondering if Tangleweed is really her name, in the same way I muse whenever I see someone wearing a coat from Jack Wolfskin. It would certainly be convenient if it was, because it’s a perfect match for the sparse but swampy blues of songs like ‘Screaming and Crying’ and ‘Bluebeard’. I also find myself thinking of early PJ Harvey – not because she was in any way blues, but because there’s something in the feel, the fact that it’s folk but not folk, blues but not blues, but not indie either. ‘3 Nights And 2 Days’, one of the shorter songs, is light in delivery, heavy in lyric, but the skipping, picked notes and easy groove are a joy.

Tangleweed’s voice is rich in timbre: not low but it has depths which imbue it with a gravity which in turn adds substance to the songs. And these are not short songs: Tangleweed spins out narratives over slow and steady acoustic strums running for five minutes at a time. But the time floats by.

The songs on The Sun Will Still Shine When You Die feel more considered, and are perhaps a few shades darker. Certainly, the seven-minute ‘Being Born’ is low, slow, epic in scope, and there are two songs – ‘Forever and Ever’ and ‘Lullaby for Lonely Nights’ – which stretch past eight minutes. The former balances a Leonard Cohen vibe with a more Beat-influenced spoken word approach. ‘Nice’ might not be quite the word, but it’s nicely done.

The arrangements – such as they are – are simple, the playing raw, immediate: it’s very like listening to the songs being played in a dimly-lit pub, with a room capacity of thirty, sitting on low stools around sticky circular tables with low chatter bubbling around as people go to the bar and pass observations. I have fond memories of many a night in pubs listening to some outstanding blues artists in my formative years, and I would say that my appreciation of live music really stems from these experiences. But it’s not solely for this reason that this release appeals: there’s something which resonates on a deeper level when it comes to heartfelt blues. It may be due to its timelessness. Wherever you go, whenever you go there, the blues is the blues, and it speaks to the soul. Tangleweed plays with honesty and without pretence, and the result is magic.

AA

a1995837137_10

Watch: ‘Here’s My Handle’ by Neon Kittens

Posted: 2 February 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , ,
0

Neon Kittens have made a fab little video for the track ‘Here’s My Handle’.

It’s taken from their split album with THE BORDELLOS & DEE CLAW, released on Cruel Nature Records on 21st February, and you can watch  it here:

AA

0038566804_23

Chaos Emeralds – Passed Away

Posted: 28 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 21st February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Cruel Nature are delivering a slew of releases on 21st February – an overwhelming volume, in fact. We’ll be coming to a fair few of them in the coming weeks, but first up, is the second album from Lanark / Reading based sludgy shoegaze project Chaos Emeralds, Passed Away, which comes in a hard-on-the-eye dayglo green cover which is catchy and kinda corny in equal measure.

According to the bio, ‘Chaos Emeralds is Formerly the solo project of Charlie Butler (Cody Noon, Neutraliser, Mothertrucker) with releases on strictly no capital letters, Les Disques Rabat-Joie and Trepenation Records, Chaos Emeralds has now expanded to a duo with Sean Hewson (Monster Movie, Head Drop, This) joining on lyrics and vocals.

Passed Away combines the lo-fi slowcore, shoegaze and doomy post-rock sounds of the previous Chaos Emeralds releases with a more song-focused approach to create a set of scuzzy emo gems.’

For some reason, despite ‘sludgy shoegaze’ and ‘lo-fi slowcore, shoegaze and doomy post-rock’ featuring in the above description, I didn’t quite expect the Pavement gone Psychedelic vibes of the title track which raises the curtain on the album. A primitive drum machine clip-clops away, struggling to be heard above a tsunami of feedback and waves of distortion on ‘Count Me Out’, which adopts the kind of approach to production as Psychocandy – quite deft, breezy and ultimately melodic pop tunes almost completely buried in a blistering wall of noise.

‘Juggler’ brings a wistful tone – somewhere between Ride and Dinosaur Jr – amidst ever-swelling cathedrals of sound, a soaring lead guitar line tremulously quivers atop a dense billow of thick, overdriven chords which buck and crash all about. The way the elements play off one another, simultaneously combining and contrasting, is key to both the sound and the appeal. It’s one of those scenarios where you find yourself thinking ‘I’ve heard things which are similar, but this is just a bit different’, and while you’re still trying to decide if it actually works or not, you find yourself digging it precisely because of the way it’s both familiar and different.

The vocals, low in the mix, feel almost secondary to the fuzzed-out wall of guitar, but their soft melancholy tones, sometimes doused in reverb, add a further minor-key emotional element to the overall sound, especially on the aching ‘Matter’.

When they do lift the feet off the pedals, as on ‘Welcome Home’, the result is charmingly mellow indie with a lo-fi sonic haze about it – and a well-placed change in tone and tempo, paving the way for the epic finale that is ‘In Our Times’, a low-tempo slow-burner which evolves from face to the ground miserabilism into something quite, quite magnificent, Hewson’s near-monotone vocals buffeted in a storm of swirling guitars as the drum machine clacks away metronomically toward an apocalyptic finish.

AA

a4117384026_16

Toru – Velours Dévorant

Posted: 13 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 14th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Released on various formats by various labels in different countries, the latest offering from genre-blasting French instrumental trio Toru is being released on cassette (and download) by Northumberland’s Cruel Nature in an edition of 65. Following on from 2020’s eponymous debut and a split release with Teufelskeller, which saw Toru join forces with CR3C3LL3, this time around, they’re different again, and having been featured as album of the day at Bandcamp Central just the other day, the signs are that Velours Dévorant could see them significantly expand their fanbase – and deservedly so.

Velours Dévorant featires five V-themed tracks defined by some riotous riffmongering and big, dirty, overdriven guitar noise with tempo shifts galore. Blasting in with ‘VHS’, it’s a manic ride through waves of tempestuous, bludgeoning racket from the very start. Trilling feedback fulfils the duty of a lead guitar line, while a shuddering, ribcage-rattling bass tears its way out from the chaos atop some heavy, but highly skilled jazz-inspired drumming.

Some will likely describe their sonic blitzkrieg as ‘experimental’, but that’s something of a misrepresentation, in that it suggests a lack of coherence, a haphazard and unplanned approach. The sudden stops and starts, the moments where a chord hangs, suspended in the air for just the briefest moment before the fractionally-delayed snare smash or cymbal crash, where the three of them simultaneously draw breath in just a split second… those microcosmic moments require remarkable precision – unquestionably, intuition is key, but rehearsal too. The skill is to make it sound haphazard, unpredictable, to keep the listener on the edge of their seat, buttocks clenched, while having it all worked out. Every composition contains moments which feel like the sonic equivalent of watching trapeze artists, where you tense and momentarily stop breathing as they fly through the air, seemingly in slow-motion, tense in case they fail to grab on: will they keep it together, or will everything collapse into a mess of sludge like a sewer rupturing and spewing a fountain of slurry?

These are long tracks – the shortest is over five and a half minutes – with infinite twists and turns. The skewed, surging jazz-grunge of ‘Voiles’ – a whopping eleven and a half minutes in duration – is representative, and encapsulates the essence of the album. The guitars squall and screed in a showcase of noise-rock par excellence, while the bass lurches and snarls, grooves and grinds, and the percussion is simply wild. It’s like listening an instrumental version of every track by the Jesus Lizard all at once. There’s a low-impact, atmospheric mid-section that rolls and rumbles, yawns and splashes… lazily would e the wrong word, but it takes its time, with bent guitar chords twanging like elastic bands, while the sparse percussion meanders seemingly without aim. But then it all reshapes and takes form once more, building, building, and then exploding so hard as to detonate so hard as to blow your eyeballs out of their sockets. Fuck, when these guys hit the pedals, they really do go all out.

I’ve heard a plethora of zany noise-rock acts, and have loved many – most of whom are so obscure that to reference them or draw comparisons would be the most pointless exercise imaginable: ‘hey, wow, this band I’ve not heard of sound like a bunch of other bands I’ve never heard of, that’s informative!’.

On Velours Dévorant, Toru take the tropes of post-rock, with its protracted delicate segments and slow-building atmosphere, and incorporate them within a noise-rock setting, with the result being epic tunes with some incredibly graceful, and ultimately poignant expanses, pressed tight against some of the most explosive overloading, overdriven abrasion going. And then, of course, there are the jazz elements: ‘Volutes’ is the apex of jazz/grunge hybridization, and it works so well. Not sold on Nirvana meets The Necks? Trust me.

The fourteen-minute title track is… special. It is, in many respects, the evolution of post-rock circa 2004. Chiming guitars, infinite space, haunting atmosphere. The intro is magnificent, beautiful. Her Name is Calla’s sprawling ‘Condor and River’ comes to mind. That use of space, that simmering tension, that sense of something growing which is more than… well, it’ s simply more. There are things hidden. When the riffing lets rip, holy shit, does the riffing let rip, fully shredding blasts of distortion tear through with obliterating force. The track feels like an album in its own right.

It seems like a while since I’ve felt compelled to describe an album as ‘epic’ – but this… this is next-level epic.

AA

a0213833004_10

Aidan Baker / Han-earl Park / Katharina Schmidt – Thoughts Of Trio

Posted: 16 December 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 6th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The ever-prolific Aidan Baker has been a frequent and recurrent feature on the pages of Aural Aggravation since its inception in 2016, and I’ve been listening to, and covering, his works since a fair few years earlier. He’s an artist who never fails to intrigue, and his manifold collaborations see him revealing new aspects to his creativity.

This three-way collaboration was, according to the accompanying notes, ‘recorded live at Morphine Raum in Berlin, Germany on February 21, 2024 by Canadian guitarist Aidan Baker, Korean-American guitarist Han-earl Park, & German drummer/percussionist Katharina Schmidt. The group brings together their respective, disparate musical backgrounds to explore the intersections of ambient music, improvisational (free) jazz, and musique-concrète.’

It’s worth noting just how many live releases of collaborations there seem to have been released recently: in fact, only yesterday I was delving into the dynamics of the latest offering by CEL. This may be a ‘cost-of-living’ matter, in part: economic circumstances really aren’t favouring anyone who isn’t two-homes-and-at-least-one-cruise-a-year rich, and this is a global issue, whereby post-pandemic the disparity between the wealthy and the rest has increased exponentially (a word I’m mindful of tossing about being aware of its actual meaning), and it’s never been a tougher time to be a musician, unless you’re Taylor Swift, or Ed Shearan or Elton John or Coldplay… you get the idea. And it’s certainly not (only) because of the shit streaming revenues paid (or not) by Spotify. Studio time is expensive: getting together for intercontinental collaborations is expensive… and when it comes to it, it’s not always easy, or even possible, to recreate the energy, the frisson, the immediacy of a live performance in the studio.

And so here was have Thoughts Of Trio, which captures a set from the start of the year, mastered as eight segments, simply titled sequentially ‘TOTone’ to ‘TOTeight’. The arrangements are often sparse, and combine nagging, regular repetitions with erratic irreglularities: ‘TOTone’ sounds like a pulsating wave or a slow alarm simultaneous with a game of ping-pong and some urban foxes foraging through bin bags. I mean, it doesn’t really sound quite like that, but the different elements belong to different places, and while it does work, it does not feel like a composition in any conventional sense. And this is very much the form of the album: there are no overt structures, there is no sense of cohesion or linearity.

But where Thoughts Of Trio evades the pitfall of being a discordant disaster is in just how they somehow keep things together, with an absorbing, if loose, sense of rhythm, which is both absorbing and bewildering, but, however subtly, ever-present. ‘TOTthree’ features springing guitar twangs and lurching grumbles, but a distinct sense of almost abstract rhythm. Clanking rattles and slow-bending, woozy drones hover and slowly wilt, with scrapes and subterranean bumps and nudges unpredictably rising and falling.

There’s no obvious shape to any of this, but amidst a set of pieces which are five or six minutes long, the eighteen-and-a-half-minute ‘TOTseven’ stands out a dominant track on the album, although one suspects that for those who were actually there, it was difficult to differentiate the pieces, which tend to bleed into one another. It rumbles and hums, tense and dense, simmering, without ever breaking through the tension that holds down the surface.

There’s little to no audience noise, no applause in the interludes or intersections, which works well in terms of the overall listening experience, but means that this doesn’t sound or feel like a live album. That’s by no means a criticism, and again illustrates how live recordings can replace studio recordings for so artists. This simply doesn’t sound or feel like a live recording, and that’s not only due to the lack of audience noise, but the way everything flows.

For all of the discord, the twists and knots and disparities, Thoughts Of Trio comes together somehow. While it’s is by no means overtly, jazz, Thoughts Of Trio sits between jazz and ambient, with an experimental / avant-garde. Ultimately, it does its own thing.

AA

AA

a4098448952_10

Album Review and EXCLUSIVE Video Stream: Empty Cut – Allens Cross

Posted: 24 October 2024 in Albums, Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 25th October 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

In the debate of nature versus nurture, it’s noteworthy how many artists find themselves influenced in no small way not only by their formative years, but also the place or places where they grew up. There’s an entire thesis to be made from this, but here I make the observation because on Allens Cross, Empty Cut – a duo consisting of Douglas Fielding-Smith and Robert Bollard – have forged a work ‘Inspired by their childhood growing up in Birmingham they blend together all their experience and inspirations to create a noise that holds a heavy solid groove mixed with harsh noise and fuzzed out reverbed bass, topped with psychedelic synths, and chopped and screwed vocals.’

Birmingham, the city which gave us Black Sabbath and UB40, the second largest in England, with a population of over two and a quarter million, and has long been renowned for its diversity, and is a truly multicultural melting-pot. It’s perhaps unsurprising that cities like this – in contrast to so many predominantly white, often middle-class towns – are the source of musical innovation: throw in an element of social deprivation, the frisson of frustration driven by class and cultural disparity, and inevitably, this backdrop will fuel the fires of those with a creative bent.

Allens Cross is exemplary: as the blurbage summarises, ‘mixing together drums, bass, samples, effects and vocals they have created a sound that incorporates punk, hardcore, electronica, jazz, drum’n’bass, experimental-industrial and shoegaze.’ It’s one of those that on paper probably shouldn’t work, but thanks to the dexterity if its creators, works far beyond imagination.

It grinds in on a sample looped and echoed across a dirty bass and slow-building beat… and then everything slides into a doomy, sludgy sonic murk. ‘Bloodline; makes for a dank and difficult opening, five minutes of feedback and dinginess sprawling and lunging this way and that, culminating in a manic howl driven by frantic percussion and driving bass.

‘Fidget’ whips up a howl of feedback against a juddering stop/start bass, and with shouty vocals low in the mix, it brings a quintessential 90s Amphetamine Reptile vibe with a hint of Fudge Tunnel… until things take a detour into dub territory in the mid-section. When the noise blast returns, it hits even harder.

With none of the album’s eight tracks running for less than five minutes and the majority straying beyond six, it feels like there’s an element of slog, of punishment, inbuilt. ‘The Well Beneath’ certainly mines that dark seem of metal that plunges underground, but with the contrast of jazz drumming and some quite nifty bass work, at least until they hit the ‘overload’ pedal and everything blows out with booming distortion.

If ‘Fluff’, by its title sounds cuddly, like a kitten, or a bit throwaway, like that which you’d sweep up from the corner or the room, the reality is quite the opposite: a six-minute seething industrial sprawl, it’s slow-burning, dark and menacing, and a clear choice of lead tune… Not, but then again, with an echo of Eastern promise and a certain ambience, and the strains of feedback a way in the distance, it perhaps is the most accessible cut on the album.

We’re proud to share a video exclusive of ‘Fluff’ here:

AA

Elsewhere, ‘Hymn to Then’ pitches cold synths and rolls of thunder to conjure dark images, a stormy backdrop to an eye-opening hybrid of prog rock, industrial, and krautrock: the result isn’t only epic, but conjures images of Dracula and unseen horrors with its icy atmospherics, while the last track, the eight-minute ‘Shatter’ begins with an eerie take on Celtic folk

Allens Cross is a highly imaginative work, an album that draws together a broad range of styles in a cohesive form. Its impact lands by stealth, building as it does across a range of styles, often creeping under the skin, unexpectedly, to register its effect. Sparse synths laser-cut across distorted, arrhythmic percussive blasts, as a low-level crackle and hum of distortion hovers around the level of the ground. Fractured vocals add to the disorientation, and the experience is uncomfortable. You cower, and will for release, not because it’s bad, but because it’s intentionally claustrophobic, torturous, and so well executed.

This is perhaps a fair summary of Allens Cross as a whole. It is not, by any means, an easy listen. Enjoyable would be a stretch. But it is utterly compelling.

AA

a3947501964_10

Lush Worker – Sear

Posted: 19 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 25th October 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Mike Vest’s output continues to be nothing short of staggering. He’s played with a host of bands – great bands at that – Bong, 11Paranoias, Drunk In Hell, Blown Out – to name but four, and Discogs records a total of one hundred and sixty credits, with a hundred and nineteen of them being for instruments and performance.

Sear is the latest album from Vest’s ongoing solo project, Lush Worker. The accompanying notes promise a work ‘Blending smouldering guitar explorations with old-school noise psychedelia,’, and an album which ‘showcases Vest’s signature maximalist guitar sound mixed with heavy riffs and drone-rock atmospherics. A blissful yet intense listening experience.’

With stoner doom merchants Bong, Vest explored, in detail, droning riffs over longform formats: 2018’s Thought And Existence contained just two tracks, each just shy of twenty minutes in duration. Around the same time, Vest released Cruise as Lush Worker, a half-hour long behemoth, and he’s continued to pursue epic soundscapes.

Sear is perhaps the most epic yet.

Momentarily, on noting the title, I thought of the Swans album, which spans a full two hours, and its monumental title track. But a single letter makes all the difference. While a ‘seer’ is one who sees, a visionary, with all of the connotations of spirituality and mysticism, ‘sear’ is to scorch, burn, or to fry meat at a high heat. And over the course of thirty-eight monumental minutes, Vest spins forth guitar work which blisters and peels, the sonic equivalent of white-hot sheet metal. At first, drums thump away, almost submerged as if engulfed by a flow of molten lava. The squalling wall of noise heaves and howls, while sibilant sounds like whispering voices of the dead burst like pockets of has rupturing from the seething sonic miasma.

Long, meandering lead work emerges over time, the most spaced-out trippy solo seeping out over a thick, grainy backdrop of droning overdrive, from which strains of feedback break through, before everything gradually sinks into a swirling soup of feedback and distortion, the rhythm having collapsed.

The experience is somewhat akin to listening to Metal Machine Music and Earth 2 simultaneously, but that’s only an approximation of everything that’s going on here. While there’s no overt structure to Sear, there is a strong sense of ebb and flow, and each time the immense sound tapers off for a time, it gradually rebuilds to a point that seems even denser and more intense than before. Around the twenty minute mark, the percussion is back, and there is later upon layer of yawning drone which swirls into an eternal vortex. And the fact that it does go on for what feels like forever is essential to the fullness of the experience. A burst of this may give a flavour, but ultimately, Sear is designed as a fully immersive work, and indeed, it is.

For all the detail here – there are so, so many layers and textures to this – it’s the immense drone that sucks you in and leaves you staring into space. It’s like the cyclical growing hum of ten thousand didgeridoos, amplified and reverbed, and over time, the sounds seems to bend and twist, and it feels as if your very perception is warping as it slowly melts out of shape.

After half an hour, the drums once again stop, and an eight-minute wind-down begins. It’s another lifetime of slow-shifting blurring shades as darkness gradually descends and silence finally follows.

AA

cover

Pound Land – Live At New River Studios / Worried

Posted: 9 October 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Cruel Nature Records – 24th October 2024

Pound Land have become regulars here at Aural Aggravation, essentially because I absolutely love what they do and feel that it’s fitting use of the platform I have to broadcast the fact. They’re clearly not everyone’s proverbial cup of tea, with their overtly dour, dingy, misanthropic racket which provides the sparse backdrop to sociopolitical critique being presented with a grainy, lo-fi production which is absolutely guaranteed to ensure that they’re not going to be all over the radio, or even usurping the popularity of Sleaford Mods anytime soon, or ever. ‘Dour’ and ‘dingy’ hardly sound like strong selling points, but I’m clearly not alone in my appreciation of their work, and it’s been perversely satisfying witnessing the growth of both their reputation and audience.

But just to be absolutely one hundred per cent, cast-iron solid in guaranteeing this, their latest album is something of a twofer, a cassette release (of course) with a live set occupying the first side, and a single longform track in the shape of the half-hour long ‘Worried’ filling the other. It’s effectively Pound Land’s Ummagumma.

And while most bands who put out a live release pick recordings which are the most representative, while at the same time capturing them at their best – which is why a lot of live albums tend to be assembled from recordings made over the course of a whole tour, Pound Land are giving us a document of a one-off, as they write: ‘[It’s] a recording of the band playing live at New River Studios in North London in the summer of 2023. This was in the midst of a heatwave, without Nick on guitar, and joined by the good boss of South London DIY label Rat Run Records, Rob Pratt (who organised the gig and opened proceedings that night as his electronic alter-ego Entschuldigung). 35 minutes of dub-inflected psychedelic synth-soaked Pound Land has been captured, improvising through the heat and the alcohol, and laden with BBC Radiophonic-style special effects. Recorded by Tom Blackburn at the desk, then mixed by Tom and finally mixed and mastered by Nick Harris. This is Pound Land live as they’ve never sounded before (and possibly won’t again).’

Yes, it’s been mixed and mastered, but it’s essentially a warts-and-all document of a single moment in time.

Minus the guitar but with the addition of jittery sax, the bass-led rendition of ‘Violence’ reminds me rather of the Foetus track ‘Honey I’m Home’, which foetured on the live album Male and semi-official bootleg, with its simple, trudging chord sequence, especially with the drawling, thick-throated snarling vocal. Brutally atonal, it’s a hell of a set opener, and sounds like they’re on stage trying to see how many people they can drive out of the room in the first five minutes.

Single cut ‘Liar’ is a raw and raucous blast, motoric beats and monotonous bass groove laced with frenzied woodwind and a blitzkrieg of laser synths provide the sonic backdrop to Adam Stone’s ragged hollering, before they dig even deeper with ‘Flies’, which lands somewhere between The Fall and the Jesus Lizard. The eight-and-a-half-minute ‘Brain Driver’ is something of a standout: fully two minutes longer than the studio version, it’s a dirty, bassy, jazzy, reverby spaced-out journey through darkness.

And then there’s the new studio track on the reverse, which they describe as ‘a 30-minute-plus sonic odyssey’, expanding that ‘This mammoth audio-journey was the result of many months of hard work by Nick Harris, joined by Adam Stone on voice and guest-star Adam Pettis (ex-The Ofays/Fuck Fuck) from America, on guitar, electronics and vocals. Arguably some of the best production and sound work Nick / Adam have committed to tape.’

No argument there: it actually sounds produced (which is no criticism of their other work), and is an expansive and explicitly experimental piece with infinite layers of echo and delay giving this tense composition a dubby vibe. In the dark blend are elements of trip hop and late nineties / turn of the millennium apocalyptic hip-hop and nihilist No-Wave spoken word, plus tribal beats and a whole lot more, including a dash of Scott Walker and Suicide. The sound is cleaner – in that it’s not buzzing and fuzzed-out or breaking your guts with booming bass – but still murky, and treble tones and sibilant syllables in the vocals cut through it. It’s clearly a departure from their existing body of work but whether it marks the start of a new direction, or is, like the live set it’s being released with, a one-off, remains to be seen. Whatever happens next, this is a very different kind of offering from Pound Land, and one which proves they’re not moored to a fixed idea of what they are.

AA

cover

Older Entries
Newer Entries