Posts Tagged ‘Drone’

Soma Crew / How Buildings Fail / Speed Readers – The Golden Ball, York, 17 July 2026

Posted: 18 July 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

It’s been a while since I went to ‘bands in the bar’ kind of thing. Although the Horsemusic nights are essentially bands in a bar, it’s a large space and they play on a raised area at the far end of a rectangular room, meaning there’s a sense of separation (in addition to the handrail which runs across it). For many years, there would be acoustic soloists and duos – nearly always playing variations on the blues – in the corner of every other bar, and it was kinda fun for a while, but got a bit samey rather fast. Still, the point is that there’s something less formal about the ‘bands in a bar’ setting. The Golden Ball, consistently in the Good Beer Guide, is a community owned and run pub with multiple rooms (some more like nooks or snugs), where they host quizzes, spoken word and open mic nights and the like, plus decent size beer garden.

It might be Soma Crew lite tonight, paired down to minimal gear, with no cymbals and fewer pedals, but it’s still a lot of pedals, and by the time you’ve got a PA, amps and pedals for two guitarists and a bass, plus drum kit and another amp and mountain of electronic equipment for How Buildings Fail, plus a massive – and truly essential – thermostatically-controlled fan, seating, and space in general is very much at a premium. More than twenty people and it’s pretty cosy, to put it mildly.

David Mudie playing a solo Speedreaders set is the closest to truly stripped-back as it gets, with just him and a clean-sounding guitar and a couple of pedals. Played this way, it accentuates the sad, emotional nuisance of the downtempo slowcore songs, and he seems unusually relaxed and even borderline chatty by his standards.

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Speedreaders

It sets the tone for the night: the intimacy of the space is a great unifier, and the warmth of the atmosphere isn’t just heatwave and humidity.

Simon – aka How Buildings Fail – seems genuinely quite overwhelmed by the positive response to his performance, each song received with enthusiastic applause. He soaked the small room with low end feedback as he drawled monologues reminiscent of The Fall – the first track in particular seems to lean on ‘Smile’, and the more uptempo (house) pieces rattle along, propelled by a primitive drum machine. Electronica with live guitar, it’s gloriously ramshackle and old-school in every way, from the scratchy guitar to the, we, scratchy electronics. And people are amazed. This is telling: he runs the York EMOM (Electronic Music Open Mic) night – it’s part of a now (inter)national network of events which gives a safe space for all the nerds and oddballs to perform (I say this in the most positive sense as a regular myself), and the York one in particular seems to cultivate a culture of experimentalism, left-field, ambient, noisy, and downright weird shit, and it’s brilliant. But it is a bubble, and maybe not all of the EMOM participants have the same potential beyond the bubble. But How Buildings Fail balances quirky post-punk with just enough catchiness to appeal to a broader audience, and to see how he’s received out in the wild is a joy for me, and clearly, a revelation for those unfamiliar, which is a fair few of those in tonight.

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How Buildings Fail

Soma Crew might well be the band I’ve seen and covered the most since I started out with Aural Aggravation a decade ago, and I’d seen them a fair few times before that, too. They are, definitively, mainstays of the scene, and have landed some high-profile support slots for visiting bands (notably The Fall at Fibbers in 2016) can be depended on for three things: 1) a different lineup nearly every time 2) drummer Nick wearing his Sin City Rockers T-shirt 3) they’ll always play counterintuitively and start with the most hesitant-sounding, ploddiest song on the setlist. It’s like a test, but also a warm-up as they feel their way towards the groove. It’s only after the drawling crawl that they strike their motorik stride, and once they do, they’re mining gold all the way to the finish. Chugging rhythm guitar, strolling bass, soaring lead and thudding minimal drums all settle in nicely. And then from nowhere, the sound erupts a few songs in. It’s not devastatingly loud, but in this confined space, the sound feels huge. On ‘Westworld’ they hold a single note – not even a chord – for about five minutes. Then the drums kick in and they hold it another eternity. It’s glorious. The band are looking relaxed and right in there, and I find myself completely immersed for a spell.

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Soma Crew

And the thing is, it’s simply nice. It’s also more than that. There is a palpable sense of community here tonight, people stick around and chat afterwards, taking their time over pints purchased at last orders instead of the usual emptying minutes after the music finishes. Soma Crew probably rehearse in a bigger room than this, but it’s not about the numbers, it’s about the music, the vibe, the connection. None of the performers is new or up-and-coming, and won’t be offended by this observation. But there’s a further point here: so many of the up-and-comers find that life – work, mortgages, families – put paid to creative activity post-thirty. That all of tonight’s acts have remained artistically active is testament to a certain commitment to creativity. It may simply be stubbornness, but for that  stubbornness kudos is due, not only for keeping on, but keeping on doing good stuff. Better than good, in fact. Grassroots music events don’t come much more essential than this.

Jana Irmert – Messengers (Original Soundtrack)

Posted: 15 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Superpang – 17th July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Jana Irmert’s catalogue is a body of work defined by ever-shifting focus, and her capacity to do so makes her an ideal choice for soundtrack work. Her bio features credits for receiving the German Documentary Film Music Award in 2019, and in 2021 she was nominated for an Edda Award for her sound design on Jóhann Jóhannsson’s film Last and First Men. She also created the soundtrack to Henrike Meyer’s auto-fictional hybrid documentary To Be an Extra, and this work in turn was respun to make When I Dissolve.

Portals, released last year, was an entirely different kind of soundtrack: produced entirely from field recordings made in the Amazon rainforest, it soundtracked a lived experience and captured the artist in nature, in the purest sense.

Her score for Jeffrey Zablotny’s film Messengers is different again, although does very much draw on elements of the natural world – albeit far removed from the rainforest, with the film being ‘a poetic exploration of three subterranean observatories hidden deep beneath Canada, Japan, and Antarctica’.

Sometimes, I wonder if reviewing a score independent of the film it soundtracks, and without having seen said film, is a good idea. But I would contend that the measure of any score is its ability to stand up without the visuals. And the Messengers soundtrack very much does – so much so that I find myself questioning whether to picture could possibly convey the quiet intensity of Irmirt’s score, which is designed around a vintage Yamaha Electone organ.

There’s depth and detail to the compositions here, with slow-moving analogue drones providing an earthy, organic feel throughout. ‘Dream Cabin’ shifts between atmospheres and brings together elements of light and dark, serenity and tension, playing them against and across one another. ‘Subatomic Collisions’ brings ominous echoes, unseen movements in the dark. Yes: there is something powerfully visual and sensory about this work. In places it’s dank, claustrophobic. I find myself holding my breath in suspense. With nothing to look at to guide or illustrate, the mind fills the spaces in interpreting the sound. And the imagination is always capable of inspiring a deeper fear, a deeper dread, than anything in life. I’m not talking about monsters or skeletons, although the mind will inevitably prey on your own worst fears. And largely, this is why we’re so often scared of the dark. The probability of there being a predator of some sort, or falling into a bottomless chasm are slim compared to, say, stubbing your toe or banging your head. But fumbling in the dark, perhaps along a narrow tunnel with damp walls, no-one fears a bruised toe or scraped skull. Darkness, and isolation, play into our biggest, deepest, most primal fears, because alone, in the dark, we’re at our most vulnerable.

The way Irmirt weaves the details into these pieces is incredibly subtle. There are no horror-like fear chords, no overt sense of impending doom or danger exists within the fabric of these compositions. And yet, with pieces like ‘Something is Listening’ with its reverberating clicks and shuffles and sonar-like droning pulsations, the sounds set you on edge. Note that it’s not someone, but something that’s listening. What is listening? We don’t know, because we can’t see: all we can do is sense it, and feel our paranoia swell.

There’s something almost David Attenborourgh about ‘Ultrapure’, a piece which would feel quite natural as an accompaniment to footage of jellyfish and angler fish and deep aquatic creatures moving in slow suspension – although equally it could be the slow-motion backdrop to scenes from a deep-space telescope with its tranquil images of nebulae drifting millions of light years from here and now – a sensation only accentuated by the slow tones of ‘Sleeping, Listening to the Stars in Darkness.’ Note, listening. Because as much as we think of space as silent, everything has sound. The stars are not static, but in constant flux, until they fizzle and fade or otherwise implode or swallow everything. There is both stillness and movement here: that is to say, listen closely to the stillness, and the movement will reveal itself.

Messengers is evocative, and inspires contemplation, a reflection of the contrasts between confined space and infinite space – and the similarities, in that both are dark and you will find yourself alone in that darkness with nothing but your thoughts and fears. Weaving through infinite passageways of ponderance, Irmert finally brings us to ‘Monuments to Our Questions’, and it feels as if this should offer some form of solidification to all of the abstraction which has preceded it. But like a shadow, like mist, it leaves us feeling that answers are illusory, things we tell ourselves to still the anguish rather than because we have attained conclusive knowledge. Ultimately, we know nothing, and are, and will be, forever fumbling blindly in darkness.

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Colin Webster / Balázs Pándi / Matt Cargill – Chewed Up And Spat Out

Posted: 13 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Raw Tonk Records – 15th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I’m late to the party with this one. Can I pretend it’s fashionably late, rather than simply tardy? I’m going to say yes, since the event actually took place in 2019 and it’s taken till now to make its way into the world, but let’s focus on the fact that this is, indeed, one hell of a party.

Chewed Up And Spat Out was recorded in a one-off session in London. Hungarian master drummer Balázs Pándi (Merzbow, Thurston Moore, Mats Gustafsson etc.) was in town for a few days and contacted saxophonist Colin Webster (Sex Swing, Dead Neanderthals etc..) who suggested adding Matt Cargill (Sly & The Family Drone) to the session on electronics. And if that lineup isn’t enough, the whole thing was recorded and mixed by Tim Cedar of Part Chimp, who knows a thing or two about noise.

We’re deep in wild jazz experimentalism here, and this is apparent from the groans and honks of saxophone which warp and drone amidst a simmering cacophony of rolling drums – not so much a rhythm as a gathering storm. The electronic elements are subtle at first, a few bleeps and twitters of treble pass here and there while a low drone hums almost subliminally on the first track, ‘To Arise from Sleep’. But the drone mutates into a thick, throbbing pulsation which gargles like a digital didgeridoo on ‘Chewed Up’, while the percussion is more subtle, predominantly manifesting as clattering rim shots initially and the sax is similarly restrained, simmering under until it finally cuts loose. At over eight and a half minutes, counterpart ‘Spat Out’ is something of an endurance test, and works backwards, starting with a crescendo before lurching stop-start blasts of noise which almost approximate a riff give way to a prolonged freeform spasm.

Not only does it have the best title, but ‘Money Shitter’ is peak freak, one of those crazed cacophonous jazz monsters that starts like its ending and ends like its starting and never goes anywhere but at the same time flies in all directions simultaneously. It sounds like unplanned, unco-ordinated chaos – and perhaps it is – but the thing to remember is that it’s supposed to sound like that, and they manage to navigate a succession of explosive crescendos interspersed with subtler, more ponderous passages, and in combination, they interrogate the interplay between the instruments, the tones, the textures, the dynamics. The final piece, ‘Blot’, sees them inspect these sonic relationships in a more granular detail, ponderously pushing through a succession of peaks and troughs for almost twelve minutes. Here, the abrasive intensity is tempered in favour of atmosphere – although the mid-point finds Webster wringing some prolonged bleats over rolling, fluid beats, building to a frenzied extended crescendo and a slow collapse.

There’s a lot of movement on Chewed Up And Spat Out, an album which conveys not only great energy, but a physicality and kineticism – which does, ultimately, leave you feeling as the title tells it. This is the good shit, and by the conclusion, it’s fair to say that from a listening perspective, it does what it says on the proverbial tin.

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Sunn O))) / Black Mountain – Project House, Leeds, 1st July 2026

Posted: 2 July 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

I can still smell the smoke on my clothes and skin. I can still taste the smoke. Not tobacco smoke, as used to be the case way back (although more recently than seems possible), but smoke machine smoke. Back in the 90s – and no doubt prior – gigs would often leave this lingering residue embedded within the senses. But some time, around the turn of the millennium, perhaps, there seemed to be a change in the formula of smoke used at most live events, in favour of something less dense and noxious, and which didn’t make you sweat so much, with most fog formulas now being advertised as being white, without ‘unpleasant odour’ and ‘leaving no oily residue’. Sunn O))) seem to have managed to hijack an entire tanker’s worth of the old vegetable oil-based stuff and pump it out at a rate of gallons per second during the entirely of their set, which, despite featuring (apparently) five tracks, has a colossal duration in the region of an hour and three quarters.

So much of the Sunn O))) experience is steeped in ritual and ceremony. From the hooded robes, the power of incense drifting in amongst the smoke from the machines, the wielding of the guitars as eternal drones ring in sustain from the amplifiers. Those amplifiers, vintage valve amps, stacked almost to the ceiling my towering monoliths, arranged in such a way as to resemble the interior of a prehistoric monument, bathed, before the show begins, in a celestial blue hue, inviting worship simply by their looming presence, even when silent.

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Black Mountain make for an interesting choice of support, and an appropriate contrast. Initially, they present as a quiet acoustic folk duo. There’s some chat at the side towards the toilets and bar, but the swelling audience is largely quiet and respectful in front of the stage. Their second song introduces drum machine and distortion on the guitar, and while the harmonious form doesn’t change, the texture very much does, with squalling desert rock overtones and bluesy strains and a dash of 70s rock filtering their way into the songs throughout the set, which is pleasant – not in the vague, not much of anything sense, but mellow and melodic and low-key. It’s a most enjoyable half hour which contrasts nicely with the earth-shattering experience which follows.

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Black Mountain

By way of an intro, they play all of the talk from between the songs from an entire live set by Venom, the progenitors of black metal (something Melvins did with their ‘Cowboy’ single, which was equally frustrating). It made for a long and twitchy eight minutes of suspense that felt like an eternity. But this is Sunn O))) all over. Their entire ethos seems to be based on the question of ‘how far can we actually push this?’ – and when they find what must surely be the absolute limit, they nudge it a bit further, and then further still. And as it played on, and on, the stage began to flood with smoke… and more, and more smoke, until it became completely impenetrable. Vertical LED beams along the front of the stage illuminate the smoke in such a way as to create a curtain which renders the stage itself invisible when viewed from the other side.

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Sunn O)))

Anderson and O’Malley are guided onstage with torches, and moments later the first chord strikes. Immediately, everything shudders. The very air quakes as I feel my flesh quiver and my ribs, my lungs tremble. Time immediately stalls. And something strange happens. Perhaps I enter something approximating a trance-like state. Whatever it is, I find myself utterly spellbound, and borderline hypnotised by the combination of the spectacle and the sound. It’s not zoning out, but zoning in, fixated on the tones and textures, and the way the two interact and interweave, catching glimpses of the band in the brief moments when the smog thins.

Stripped down to a two-piece, the volume is typically obliterative, but it’s clear they’re fully immersed in exploring the spaces between the notes, more subtle dynamics of the way certain frequencies resonate. The sound is remarkably clear, and while there are howling walls of feedback, the sonic spectrum is predominantly low-end, meaning that there’s no tinnitus-inducing harsh treble (at least not with earplugs, and everyone I see is suitably equipped), and as a consequence, it’s easier to simply bask in the huge throb which envelops every inch of your being. The first two tracks are run together as one continuous piece, a full hour in duration, and at this point, the smoke reaches a new peak of density. It’s beyond suffocating, you can’t see your own hand let alone the stage, from which emanates the most brutal howl of feedback yet. But there’s no checking your watch to puff that only twenty minutes have elapsed, and they’ve barely played three notes. Some people move further back to escape the full force of the backline, but the majority simply stand, transfixed. This is peak Sunn O))). As much as there’s a sense that they’re testing us, they’re also testing themselves, and revelling in the theatre of it all. It’s high art.

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More smoke blasts across the stage like a tidal wave. Everything is vibrating, from my nostrils to my buttocks. I’m amused to see people nearby attempting to film clips of the show, only for their phones to be completely submerged in billows of smoke – which are an analogue of the billowing rumble radiating from the stacks of speakers, and with the backline alone capable of filling the 1,000 capacity with that organ-bothering low-frequency drone, the fact they’re all in turn mic’d up only adds layers to this oceanic swell of sound. Anderson and O’Malley don’t so much strike chords as mildly stroke a string to set off another devastating avalanche of sound.

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Towards the end of the set, O’Malley lodges his guitar on top of a stack, wedged against the ceiling, before subsequently hanging it by the neck from a power cable above, and letting it swing from the rafters.

And just like that, it stops. The smoke clears, and the two men step forward and receive – humbly, and with gratitude – the most rapturous applause. Because for all of the theatre involved in creating the separation between band and audience, the obstinate absence of engagement, for the pain-threshold volume, the appreciation flows both ways. It’s a joyously respectful experience: no chat (as if!), no heckling, but a symbiotic exchange based on pure immersion in pure art. And tonight, we’ve witnessed an ascendency to a new pinnacle. Pure transcendence.

Conflux Coldwell – Echolalia

Posted: 25 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Bulletdodge – 26th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Since first presenting work under the Conflux Coldwell moniker in 2013, Leeds-based sound architect and explorer Michael C Coldwell has used this particular vehicle to venture forth through different environments of an external nature, often with field recordings providing an integral element. As such, while maintaining a focus on aspects of hauntology, Echolalia marks something departure in terms of its inspirations and themes, primarily in just how personal it is, particularly in comparison to his previous offering, Shadows and Simulacra which dug deep into the dark domains of AI and the absence of any human soul therein. This time, the explorations are focused very much on interior environments.

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘Echolalia explores the notion of internal “ghosts” — the lingering traces that inhabit the mind. Sparked by his daughter’s autism diagnosis earlier this year, and his sister’s AuDHD diagnosis the year before, Coldwell was prompted to reflect on his own neurodivergence. The result is a deeply personal and introspective work that interrogates how these experiences have shaped his creative process, his unique perception of the world, and his enduring fascination with machines and hauntology’.

Something I’ve noticed, quite acutely, in the last few years, is just how many people I know – particularly on social media, where I’ve evolved a substantial network of creatives in all types of media – are receiving diagnoses of autism, ADHD, and various other neurodivergences in adulthood. Many are in the fifty-plus demographic. And so many of them relay that so much makes sense with this information. It isn’t, then, that there’s more autism, more neurodivergence, but simply that we have finally got better at diagnosing it. There remains, however, some way to go in terms of accommodating it. But this observation has set me thinking of late, that, given the way creatively-minded individuals gravitate toward one another – taking my virtual social circle as an example – perhaps neurodiversity is directly correspondent with creativity? I’m merely touching the edge of a discussion here, nudging an idea out into world… but artists are renowned for being misfits, a bit weird, prone to many of the traits associated with neurodivergence, and it may explain why some people – neurotypical ones – are content with working the nine to five, watching some TV and then going to bed at 10pm, while the creatives can’t settle and feel unfulfilled, and are instead compelled to stay up till the small hours doing stuff.

The ten pieces on Echolalia are tense, intense, and hit the listener from all angles simultaneously. And in doing so, Coldwell not only captures, but replicates that sense of overstimulation, of excessive input.

‘Complex Machines’ arrives in a fizz and crackle of distortion, wibbling synths and a sampled voiceover from what sounds like an educational or instructive film about the use of computers in school, before disembodied voices drift over some ominous drones. The number 23 emerges from the reverberating haze. It has the hallmarks of being from the soundtrack to a sci-fi technodystopia, but the fact of the matter is that this is where we are. Our education system is in crisis, and kids are increasingly suffering from an ever-diminishing attention span on account of the ubiquitous bombardment of myriad media. This is magnified significantly for those with ADHD and AuDHD, whose brains are already crammed and overcrowded, who find simply existing in the world an overwhelming experience.

‘Homeworld’ may or may not be a reference to Harry Harrisons’s 1980 novel, the first instalment of the To the Stars trilogy, but skittery synths and muttery vocal loops combine to create a tension that isn’t resolved by the end of the piece, which instead gives way to the crackling static and stammering electronic primitivism of ‘Pattern Glare’, with its aural allusions to Throbbing Gristle and Suicide, and also its near-infinite reverb. It’s eerie, unsettling, and it makes you feel nervous. Well, it makes me feel nervous, anyway.

It’s true that I feel nervous often, but something about Echolalia is truly nail-biting. ‘Dysthtythmia’ – a condition which covers a broad spectrum of irregular heartbeats – returns to lifted segments of speech to round off the first side of physical release, and as neat as this feels in terms of closing a loop, it equally feels like revisiting a trigger point.

The second half of the album is yet harder to process, a collage of synths and voices layering ever faster and ever deeper and ever more complex in their combination, the flickering shimmer of ‘Five Wing Four’ being exemplary. There is simply too much to take I in at once, and Coldwell knows this, because this is the soundtrack to assimilation and processing. ‘Left hand, right eye…’ My wife used to get so angry when driving: it was my job to navigate and I would forever confuse left and right. Having a PhD in English bears no relation to my suffering LRC (Left–right confusion) which apparently affects nearly 10% of the male population. But what it does go to show is that brains are strange and unpredictable. And ‘strange and unpredictable’ is ultimately a fair summary of Echolalia, too.

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Conflux Coldwell 2026

Puce Moment – O.R.G.II

Posted: 24 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Odd Doo – 12th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

There is something uniquely compelling about the sound of a pipe organ. I’m clearly not alone in this, as there have been many non-religious works which have explored the use of the instrument, ranging from ribcage-rattling drone to the tired groaning wheeze of dilapidated organs in dire need of restoration. Because organs tend to be installed – often designed and built specifically to work with the acoustics of the space – they can’t readily be transported elsewhere, and equally, they each have their own individual sounds, however nuanced the differences may be to the average ear.

After four subsequent albums, O.R.G.II finds Puce Moment – the musical and visual project of Nico Devos and Pénélope Michel, whose choice of name references a short film from 1949 – revisit the inspirations for their 2019 album O.R.G. It was recorded at Saint Joseph Church Armentières, France – a truly remarkable building, with, it would appear, a quite spectacular pipe organ.

They describe the album as ‘an immersive musical work that brings the traditional pipe organ into dialogue with electronic and drone compositions, unfolding within a liminal soundscape — a space of transition and encounter orchestrated by Puce Moment’.

And so it is that they present five compositions constructed around quivering, slow-moving drones which are tonally rich, warm and organic. And immersive they are, indeed. The album begins with the ten-and-a-half-minute ‘Simoon’, which was aired with an accompanying video last month. It’s incredibly textured and nuanced, but to extract those textures and nuances requires a degree of attention. In our overloading, hyperaccelerated, technologically-driven times, where the average attention span is barely three seconds, the idea of sitting down and paying attention to prolonged hums might sound untenable, but the fact is that spending time with the lights down, or off, and the phone in another room while simply feeling the textures, the subtle interplay between the layers and waves is nothing short of a revelation.

The individual pieces melt together – which seems appropriate, given that I’m writing this in the middle of a punishing heatwave, and I feel as if my entire body is slowly melting. ‘Pavna’ pulsates in a way which resonates with my own palpating internal organs… and as if in protest, my laptop crashes and I lose three hundred words of my review in progress. But I’m too sapped to panic, and perhaps more pertinently, I’m feeling too zen thanks to the soporific nature of the cinematic dronescape in which I find myself.

The nine-and-a-half-minute ‘Ruach’ rumbles almost subliminally at first, before transitioning into a rippling wave reminiscent of a combination of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, a trilling waltz with a distinctly retro feel, which bleeds into the fourteen-and-a-half-minute ‘Ilma’, a piece which truly encapsulates the layering and detail of the album.

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Death-Static – Red Fire In The Open

Posted: 16 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Sound in Silence – 18th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Sound in Silence produce nice releases. Like the Loom label and early Gizeh releases, they disprove the notion that the CD format is impersonal, no more than mass-produced plastic. The latest offering from Death-Static, released as a run of 200 handmade, hand-stamped, and hand-numbered copies is exemplary. It’s more than just a CD. It’s art, and an artefact, and one worthy of the music it houses.

Death-Static is the solo project of Gareth S. Brown, who has no small catalogue of output to his credit, having previously released music as a member of the bands Hood, The Declining Winter and Memory Drawings, and solo under his real name and various aliases. We learn that Red Fire In The Open, his second full-length album, ‘is more drone-based than his last year’s debut Time Is Ignorance and consists of three tracks… conceived as a prelude, interlude and main piece, using bellows instruments, organs, cellos and field recordings’.

The prelude takes the form of the fourteen-minute ‘Blackhorse Infirmary’ and it starts out as a quavering analogue drone which stutters and stalls in between undulations. It’s the kind of warm tone that’s eerily close to the human voice. Organs and bellows are uncannily breath, and the polyphonic exhalation which defines this piece is uncanny and somewhat discomfiting. It swells like a chorus of voices humming, wordless, all around you, as trilling synth drones and elongated scrapes ripple, with feedback occasionally rising up through the slow, dense drift. The final minutes are a rustling, rupturing cacophony of churching chaos and discord. Although not entirely unpleasant, it is challenging, and feels like being assailed by a storm.

In context, the interlude, in the form of ‘The Last Days of Light’ is welcome. It’s a piano-led moment of reflection. Quiet, calm, with a hint of melancholy, it’s soothing, and extremely emotive. I feel a certain sadness. Not in having been manipulated to sadness, but because there is simply something about it. Life is sad. The world is sad.

The title track, ‘Red Fire In The Open’ is the main event – a composition which stretches beyond thirty-four minutes in an exercise in patience. It’s pitched as being ‘like a guided meditation, using bellows instruments, organs, cellos, and field recordings to move the listener from the grimy, urban trudge of a major metropolitan train station to a woodland dawn chorus – and at the same time towards a sense of possibility and hope.’ It very much marks a shift in tone, but at the same time expands on the gentle drone forms of the previous pieces.

Like cheese, or for some, bacon, birdsong always makes everything better. I used to march into town to get a bus to the office on the city’s outskirts on the opposite side from where I live under the power of the MP3. Since lockdown, I’ve sought silence and felt the need to keep my ears open, and to venture into nature as much as possible. This has been a huge life change in many ways. I actually appreciate the sound of the breeze, the ripples of air though the leaves of trees, now, not because I’ve turned into some massive hippy, but because I crave the sounds of life, and feel I need that connection. The nature on my doorstep has become far more meaningful to me than any David Attenborough documentary. Whales are cool, but so are bees and birds and green spaces closer to home. We live in the most horribly overstimulated of worlds. We’re far beyond the postmodern blizzard Lyotard and Jameson wrote of, in that we’re in a place where we’ve devolved, concentration spans have been diminished to mere seconds and most people use AI to do their thinking for them. We’re so fucked, in so many ways, and on so many levels. But Red Fire In The Open reminds us that there is an alternative, and that there is more. It reminds us that it’s still possible to step outside, and to open your eyes and open your ears, and open your lungs. Please, do, while you still can.

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Flocks – Lagoon

Posted: 13 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Karlrecords – 22nd May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Flocks is the duo consisting of drone specialist Werner Durand and percussionist Uli Hohmann, and their second album, Lagoon, we’re informed that ‘the duo further explores the aesthetics it has crafted on its selftitled debut (2023, on the now defunct ZEHRA imprint): DURAND and HOHMANN shape drone-y soundscapes based on their self-built wind- & stringed instruments, Persian percussion and subtle electronics, drawing additional inspiration from Krautrock (listen to the irresistible, hypnotique, ever-changing rhythmic pattern of the title track) as well as JON HASSELL’s “fourth world” aesthetics, placing the duo nicely between tradition and experiment!’

For those unfamiliar with the fourth world concept, it can be traced to the 1980 collaborative album Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics by Hassell and Brian Eno, with the former defining the fourth world as “a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques.” And it does very much describe the sounds on Lagoon, where electronic drones and quavering digital textures are melded with percussive forms of ancient origin. Indeed, Hohmann’s credits on the album include kanjira, riq, ghatam, Tibetan bells, Venetian shells, and bamboo tube zither. And the result is nothing short of hypnotic.

The three longform tracks share aquatic-themed titles, matched with gloopy tones and fluid forms. Side one contains two ten-minute pieces in the form of ‘Whirls’ and ‘Tidal’, while the twenty-minute title track fills the entirety of side two.

The length of the pieces means they each have time – and space – in which to fully explore the tones and textures of the instruments involved, and to create fully immersive soundscapes. There are breathy stutters amidst the wavering undulations, and sounds which evoke the sound of waves lapping the sides of a small boat. There are gentle ripples, ebbs and flows in these extensive sonic expanses, and it’s not difficult to let go and simply succumb to the drift.

The arrival of some quite smooth sax in the middle of ‘Tidal’ is something of a surprise and feels kind of incongruous at first, but in time it manages to nestle in nicely. ‘Lagoon’ features stronger, busier, percussion and denser, more claustrophobic drones, and is also the most overtly ‘jazz’ of the three compositions due to the more prominent sax work. Over its extended duration, it builds a solid groove, and seems to quicken in pace, although it may only be an increasing density and the tension of eternal repetition. Eleven minutes in, and you really begin to feel it: the relentless rhythm and eternally monotonous drone which underpin all of the additional layers have a cumulative effect. As horns and clients and an array of extraneous sounds from twittering to laser-like bleeps come and go, it becomes increasingly disorientating, and while the experience is by no means unpleasant, it does fully envelop the mind and body.

The combination of sci-fi sounds and weird electronica with urgent polyrhythmic percussion does, indeed, feel other-worldly – of this planet, and not, of the distant past and the equally-distant futures of imagination. And among it all, the listener finds themselves lost, adrift between the two, in time and space unknown.

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AD Ozium – In the Style of Dead Sparrows

Posted: 10 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Saccharine Underground – 9th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I like my shit weird and experimental, and so it is that AD Ozium’s In the Style of Dead Sparrows is both weird and experimental, and needless to say I like it – but with the caveat that listening to it is an experience akin to being dragged through an near-endless nightmare, and every time you think you’ve woken up, you discover that you’re simply in another level of this multi-faceted anxiety dream.

The pitch is that ‘In the Style of Dead Sparrows is the latest transmission from the outer edge of instrumental music – a fractured, hallucinatory convergence of freak folk textures and no wave dissonance that dissolves the boundary between sound and psyche. Created by Washington D.C.-based solo musician Jeremy Moore (Zabus, Zero Swann, Bell Barrow) under the name AD Ozium, the album operates at the intersection of freak folk, no wave, avant-garde drone and experimental instrumental music.’

But this barely scratches the lumpy, irregular, alien, fog-covered surface of this album. The first composition, ‘Lifespring’ is exemplary in its exploratory nature. It begins subtly, some desert rock twang in a drift of breeze and warping ambience. With tweets and yawns, it feels as if the tape is stretched in places, and there’s a crackle and hiss reminiscent of that old four-track tape noise and plunging synth rumbles. Discord builds as the sound swells, unsettlingly. It continues in this way for the first six minutes or so, until the nerve-jangling tension and suspense breaks into a brief but thunderous rupture.

The ten-minute ‘Tender Loving Seed’ is swampy, straggly, churny, a mangled mess of broken-sounding country guitar and fractured electronics, not so much a whistle of feedback as the sound of circuitry melting amidst a swell of distortion. It sounds like fucked-up flamenco, it sounds like dialling through radio stations and managing to tune into none of them, it sounds like a cerebral spasm. It’s a slow unwinding of discordant chaos.

I’ll take a stab that ‘Whore of Sound’ is perhaps a reference to ‘Whorle of Sound’ by Throbbing Gristle, which appeared on their First Annual Report, and was subsequently reprised in a radically altered but altogether more brutal form as Walls of Sound on DOA: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle. Certainly, the sonic parallels are apparent: this is seven minutes of gnarly noise which swells to head-shredding intensity with hints of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.

‘Faith is a Hole’ brings new layers of discomfort, the overloading low frequencies creating mic distortion and the most hellish vibrations, making for a long seven and a quarter minutes, before ‘Portents of the Terminal Mind’ ripples and reverberates a whirlpool of the wrongest confusion.

Confusion, contusion… ‘The Nazarene Distortion’ is gentle at first, but again, discord and chaos and blasting lasers reign… and all the while, there is a background rumble, a tape his that never stops. The background noise at times reminds me of Rudimentary Peni’s Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric – not because its similar in musical terms, but that endless, nagging background sound gnaws away at your ears and your brain. It’s not the most abrasive or attacking nine minutes of noise, but it’s a heavy slog of the most difficult atonality. It’s stomach-lurchingly messy. At times, you just want it all to stop.

This is challenging. It’s woozy, head-spinning. It simply sounds wrong. It’s not some Beefheart-style cacophony. It’s darker, the lo-fi leanings and atonality only amplifying the tension. Drones and buzzes, hums and fleeting phases are interspersed with annihilative blasts of noise, and the guitar notes simply echo out into the void.

In the Style of Dead Sparrows isn’t simply weird or experimental – it’s harsh and abrasive, and it will assail your intestines and hollow you out.

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Mick Harris & Martyn Bates – Murder Ballads [Incest Songs]

Posted: 21 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Sub Rosa – 15th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Mick Harris may have left Napalm Death some thirty-five years ago, but it’s still for his work with them – and his coining of the term ‘grindcore’ – that he’s largely known. There are, of course, far worse things one could be known for, particularly as this meant that he featured on the band’s seminal debut album, Scum. While having participated in numerous projects in the years since, Scorn will forever be an enduring standout in cult circles, but beyond this, Harris has explored far further-flung corners of the musical spectrum on many occasions with comparatively little recognition, with dark atmospherics having been his primary focus for a good number of years now.

The fact that this is the third instalment of Murder Ballads, recorded in collaboration with Martyn Bates and released on estimable Sub Rosa label in Belgium – which has released albums by William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Test Dept, Oren Ambarchi, David Toop, Bill Laswell, Asian Dub Foundation… the list goes on – is a measure of how Harris has transitioned to what one might call more ‘arty’ territories, which may sound snobby or poncey to some, but let’s focus on the work at hand – at least, in due course.

Although murder ballads are likely most commonly associated with Nick Cave in popular culture, they have a long cultural heritage, with roots in the folk history of Scandinavia, England, and lowland Scotland reaching back as far as the 1750s. The entire premise of murder ballads is bleak and grim, and Harris and Bates remain true to this principle here, on an album which is mercilessly dark and lugubrious.

There’s no avoiding the fact that the subtitle brings an element of discomfort. We’re in a strange place right now, culturally, in that half of the world – or maybe that’s just half of the US and those in the UK who for inexplicable reason who describe themselves as ‘patriots’ while also being fans of Donald Trump – seem to think that paedophilia is just fine, and in many states, marrying cousins is similarly just fine. Similarly, incest porn and step-sibling porn is all the rage. Why? What is wrong with people? But then, history is built on tales of incest, going right back to Greek mythology. This is no more than an observation, and to note that as a species, we’ve been warped for the entirety of our existence. That discussion is an entire thesis in itself, though.

Murder Ballads [Incest Songs] is a long way from Peter Sotos territory. But what it is, is four ominously-shaded longform compositions which are uncomfortable and uneasy. As they pitch it, ‘Incest Songs is the final chapter of the Murder Ballads trilogy, and its most fully realized expression. Where Drift and Passages explored the post-isolationist frame through voice and single instrument, this third volume dispenses with that approach entirely, opening instead onto a more labyrinthine sonic architecture – one built from overlapping, saturating, blurring voices, all of them Martyn Bates’.

Bates does indeed prove to be versatile, and capable of conjuring the most moving vocal evocations. ‘The Bonny Hind’ is essentially a folk song, a shanty, even, at heart, but the lilting vocal, which would work as readily acapella as against conventional instrumentation – flute, or fiddle, for example – takes on a more ominous shade when pitched against groaning, shape-shifting drones. The result is unsettling, and would sit within the soundtrack of a folk horror movie in the way a warped, discordant rendition of a nursery rhyme would in more mainstream projects.

‘Sheaf and Knife’ is notable for its sparse nature. Bates’ voice is practically in your ear – and this ism no small feat of the production. Whispers, echoes, and reverberations echo around, and it’s not immediately apparent that most of this is Bates, the wind and the air, and the dank, low drones which define this album. ‘The Two Brothers’ – a seventeen-minute monster of a composition – drifts into moments of space-age spin, flanged swirl and fractal details turning a textured sonic nebula behind the vulnerable vocals – and the narrative said vocals deliver is chilling, a tale of a stabbing, whereby the narrator washes the blood off and goes about his business. Or something. While the lyrics sometimes trail away in swathes of reverb the auditory experience is gripping in itself. This is the sound of heavy fog, and of silent decomposition. This leads us to the album’s final cut, ‘Edward’, extending beyond seventeen and a half minutes is magnificently haunting. At times so sparse as to be barely there, it’s a trawl into the darkest of spaces, suffocating, claustrophobic. Bates croons and quavers with a detachment which accentuates the sense of disconnection. There’s something in the way he delivers the words, against sparse, eerie, near-ambient backdrops of difficult drones, that is quite chilling: calm, soft, psychopathic. Enjoy, but watch your back.

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