Posts Tagged ‘Drone’

Slomo – The Creep

Posted: 21 August 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Ideologic Organ – 5th September 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Umberto Eco is one of the many authors I feel I should have read, and hope that one day I will get around to reading. Social media has of late showered me with posts and reposts with a quite from Eco about owning more books than you will ever read – something I never much relate to. I only have so many hours in the day, and reading – since I insist on engaging with books rather than passively absorbing audio books while participating in other activities – is one of those pastimes which is time-intensive. I find music-listening to be comparable. As much as I enjoy listening to music while I’m cooking or participating in other activities, I like to give music full attention, especially new music. And it’s in this context that I often find I purchase music – like books, albeit to a lesser extent – at a faster rate than I can consume it. And this is why it’s taken me until the twentieth anniversary release of Slomo’s The Creep to catch up with this cult classic which brings together sludge / doom and vintage industrial influence.

The album’s context, too, is worth providing here, and so, I shall quote at length rather than paraphrase – not because I’m lazy in my writing, but because I fear making omissions, and feel that liner notes or press releases articulate in a way which better represent the artist.

Just one week after the passing of COIL’s Jhonn Balance in late 2004, the 61-minutes of "The Creep" manifested in a Sheffield suburb. Not yet a band and only captured due to happenstance, this first music of Slomo flowed forth without any consideration of it even being "a piece", let alone a release, though it didn’t take long for the participants (Chris "Holy" McGrail and Howard Marsden) to realise they’d captured something of distinct colour on account of how often they were listening to it.

Initially dubbed "The Ballad of Jhonn & Sleazy", the pair soon instead ascribed the music to Boleigh Fogou; a prehistoric underground chamber on the Land’s End peninsula that both had recently visited and been affected by. "The Creep" took its name from the peculiar side chamber assumed to be if ritual function, having no apparent practical use. This ponderous music chimed perfectly with the fogou; an apparently stolid place that teems with life once you become attuned to its frequency.

Fitting in perfectly alongside other massive single-track albums such as Sleep’s "Dopesmoker", COIL’s ‘Queens of the Circulating Library’, Cope’s "Odin", and Boris’ "Flood", "The Creep" secured a limited release on Cope’s Fuck Off & Di CD-R label in 2005 that quickly sold out via supportive outlets such as Southern Lord, Aquarius Records and Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ – then operating merely as a blog and micro-store.

And now, Ideologic Organ present a twentieth-anniversary vinyl edition. No doubt there will be plenty of people who are happy about this: after all, it’s never been released on vinyl, and I expect the tonal qualities of vinyl are ideal for a work where there is so much texture, so much richness of tone. The slow, resonant, reverberating bass during the quiet intro deserves deep grooves and decent speakers.

One downside of where the industry is now – and there are, as most of us are aware, many – is that the days of a promo copy of a slab of vinyl are essentially over (unless you’re writing for a major national or international publication), meaning I’m here with some decent enough speakers, but basing my opinion of the mastering and overall sonic experience based on an MP3 version. And as the low notes crawl, quivering, from those decent enough speakers, the rooms seems to darken and the atmosphere grows thicker, heavier.

Not a lot really happens during the first fifteen minutes, but the effect is profound, in that it resonates throughout the body. There is movement, but it occurs at a tectonic pace, and by stealth, rumbling around the far reaches of internal organs. For anyone who has read The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton’s seventeenth-century analysis of depression which explores the effects of the various humours on both mind and body. And The Creep slowly pulls on the gut and the intestinal tract in the most shuddering, lugubrious ways. At times it’s barely there, but shudders and shivers uncomfortably low on the psychic register. Others… there are low peaks among the troughs, but this is an album that registers more on a subliminal level and certainly low in the guts.

Where I raised the point of the vinyl release likely being popular with many fans, the counterpoint to this is the disruption to the continuity that the format creates. Listening to the MP3 version, there’s a fractional pause at just over thirty-two and a half minutes. It feels like a minor stutter, given that there is a long, low, undulating bass boom that fans out like a ship’s horn or subaquatic signals – but imagine having to get up and flip the record at this critical point before things begin to build. I’m perhaps being picky, but this feels like an unwarranted disruption.

The second half is even lower and slower than the first: twenty-nine minutes of bleak, rumbling abstraction. It’s the perfect amalgamation of drone, experimental, and dark ambient. And The Creep is dark. Whisps of feedback trail around and waft over hovering bass tines which simply roll and reverberate. Time stalls. Everything hangs in suspension: even your mind, and your digestion, hang, suspended, paused. Your breath… your mind. You stop thinking and simply float in this, this sound. Immersive is an understatement. It’s all-consuming, and you can easily lose yourself – completely – in this slow, slow, heavy drone.

20 years on, it’s clear that this is a work which is timeless. Niche, but timeless, in the same way that Earth 2 and Sleep’s Dopesmoker are more than just heavy droning noise. It’s no means an easy listen, but I’d still point to it as an essential one.

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Rún – Rún

Posted: 16 August 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Rocket Recordings – 22nd August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

While you wouldn’t exactly call Rún a supergroup, they certainly represent a coming together of disparate artists of no insignificant pedigree, as their biography attests:

Rún comprise firstly Tara Baoth Mooney – sometime Jim Henson voice artist, with a longstanding background in everything from folk and choral music to experimental film-making. Diarmuid MacDiarmada – Nurse With Wound co-conspirator and brother of Lankum’s Cormac, brings with him the experience of avant-garde collaborations with a plethora of artists stretching back over thirty years. Drummer, sound designer and engineer Rian Trench, meanwhile, has worked on everything from the psychedelic IDM of Solar Bears to auto-generative experiments to orchestral arrangements, and owns the studio – The Meadow on Ireland’s East Coast – in which the album was made.

It’s a delicate folksome vocal which floats in on the first composition, ‘Paidir Poball (Pupil)’over what initially sounds like a mechanical wheeze of a bellows, or some form, of life support. The juxtaposition between something so earthy, so human, and something so very much not is compelling, and quite powerful, in a way which isn’t immediately easy to unravel. But a couple of minutes in, a thick, droning guitar – reminiscent of Earth 2, with that thick, sludgy distortion and trebly metal edge – winds its way int the mix and immediately, the mood and the direction changes. And then, on top, choral, almost monastic layers of vocal build and rise upwards to the heavens through the grit and grind and howls of feedback before eventually there is percussion. The drums – thick, thudding, low in the mix, feel as if they’re lagging, foundering in the tide or struggling against a head-facing current.

‘Your Death My Body’ strips things back primarily to percussion, but turns up the intensity with the vocals, which hit a wild intensity which borders on rabid. But with this, and some bleepy computer incursions and a grumbling but groovy bass which makes allusions to Jah Wobble, this album becomes increasingly difficult to place, or to pigeonhole. It’s a sad fact that nowadays, not only will they throw you in jail if you say you’re English, these days (I’m safe as I’m ashamed to pronounce my Englishness, even – or perhaps especially – in Scotland) – but aligning oneself to a genre can be a minefield, too.

The eight-minute ‘Terror Moon’ is a dark morass and a muti-layered, bass-heavy mindfuck that explodes into blistering, shredding electronic overload in the first minute before thumping percussion and the filthiest, fuzziest bass drive in and punch straight in the gut, propelling a psychotic, psychedelic weird-out with tripping space-rock synths and strains of feedback and infinite echo, which leaves you feeling dazed, dizzy. Terror? Yes, just a bit: it’s huge, it’s warped, and a tiny bit overwhelming in its weight and witchiness.

But this is nothing compared to the final track, the ultimate finale, the thirteen-and-a-half minute behemoth that is ‘Caoineadh’. Arriving as it does after a pair of punchy cuts – ‘Such is the Kingdom’ is murky, atmospheric, leaning toward experimental / spoken word, but a mere three an as half minutes on duration, and ‘Strike It’, which is perhaps the album’s most direct composition, evoking Swans circa ’86 but on speed, the grind coming with pace –it takes the album in a whole new trajectory. Gentle, even tentative at first, with nothing but a wandering bassline, it has a slow-burning drone-rock vibe to it as first. But then, the vocals – oh, the vocals! Tara Baoth Mooney brings a lilting folk feel against a slow, droning backdrop, which eventually gives way to a slow, expensive prog-pop mellowness, opening new horizons in every way. And every direction. It ends in a rippling wave of distortion.

This is essentially Rún in a nutshell: they have no confines, no limits, and to touch them is to embark on a journey. And what a journey this is.

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Yorkshire Modular Society + Peter Digby Lee – Beneath the Hanging Sky

Posted: 10 August 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Dragon’s Eye Recordings  – 22nd August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

A year on from my review of Yorkshire Modular Society’s Fiery Angels Fell, I find myself presented with another release of theirs on LA label Dragon’s Eye Recordings, and I can’t help but contemplate the circuitous routes by which music travels, since the release landed in my inbox courtesy of a PR based in Berlin – while no-one in my sphere of acquaintance, which includes a broad swathe of electronic artists around York and, indeed Yorkshire as it spreads in all directions – appears to have even the first inkling of the existence of YMS, despite their connection to Todmorden. But then, I often observe that what holds a lot of acts back is confinement to being ‘local’, and it’s a lack of vision, or ambition – or, occasionally, practical matters – which prevent them from reaching the national, or international, audience they deserve.

Yorkshire Modular Society clearly have an audience, and it’s not going to be found at pub gigs in their native county. This is true of most experimental artists: there’s no shortage of interest in niche work globally, but it’s thinly spread. There are places, predominantly across mainland Europe, and like Café Oto, which cater to such tastes, but they’re few and far between, which explains why most such projects tend to be more orientated towards the recording and release of their output, their audience growing nebulously, more often than not by association and word of mouth.

This release – which is the first collaborative album from Yorkshire Modular Society with Peter Digby Lee – could only ever really be a download. With ‘a suite of four ambient compositions shaped by intuition, ritual, and shared resonance’, it’s over two hours in duration, giving recent Swans a run in terms of epic.

The story goers that ‘The artists first crossed paths not through conversation, but through shared vibration — at the resonance Drone Bath in Todmorden. A quiet alignment. Some time later, Peter sent over a treasure trove of sound: samples he had recorded and collected over many years — textures, fragments, and moments suspended in time. From this archive, Dominick Schofield (Yorkshire Modular Society) began to listen, to loop, to stretch, to shape… What followed was a process of intuitive composition—letting the materials speak, revealing what had been buried in the dust and hum. This album is the result: four pieces, each unfolding from the source material with care and curiosity, a shared language spoken in tone, breath, and resonance.’

The title track is soft, gentle, sweeping, lilting, serene, floating in on picked strings, trilling woodwind and it all floats on a breeze of mellifluousness, cloud-like, its forms ever-shifting, impossible to solidify. With hints of Japanese influence and slow-swelling post-rock, it’s ambient, but also busy, layered, textured, thick, even, the musical equivalent of high humidity. It moves, endlessly, but the breezy feel is countered by a density which leaves the listener panting for air. The sound warps and wefts in such a way as to be a little uncomfortable around the region of the lower stomach after a time, like being on a boat which rocks slowly from side to side. ‘Beneath the Hanging Sky’ lays for almost thirty-six minutes, and it’s far from soothing, and as a consequence, I find myself feeling quite keyed up by the arrival of ‘Glass Lung’, another soundscape which stretches out for a full half-hour. This is more conventionally ambient, softer, more abstract, but follows a similar pattern of a slow rise and fall, an ebb and flow. Here, the application is emollient, sedative. I find myself yawning, not out of boredom, but from relaxation, something I don’t do often enough. And so it is that this slow-drifting sonic expanse takes things down a couple of notches. You may find yourself zoning out, your eyes drooping… and it’s to the good. Stimulation is very clearly not the objective here.

Third track, ‘Echo for the Unseen’, is the album’s shortest by some way, at a mere twenty-two minutes in length. It’s also darker, dense, more intense than anything which has preceded it, and as ambient as it ss, the eternal drones are reminiscent of recent both latter day Swans, and Sunn O)). The epic drone swells and surges, but mostly simmers, the droning growing more sonorous as it rolls and yawns wider as the track progress. There are harsher top-end tones drilling away in the mix as the track progresses. It makes for a long and weighty twenty-two minutes, and we feel as if we’re crawling our way to the closer, ‘Spiral of Breath’, which arrives on a heavy swirling drone that’s darkly atmospheric and big on the low-end. Instead of offering levity, ‘Spiral of Breath’ is the densest, darkest piece of the four, as well as the longest. With no lulls, no calm spells, no respite, it’s the most challenging track of the release. It’s suffocating. There is no respite. There is, however, endless depth, and eternal, purgatorial anguish.

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Gintas K – Intense Beauty

Posted: 4 August 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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28th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly, it requires a fairly specific subjective standpoint to hear the beauty in a bleeping rush of effervescent electronic froth, but there is something in it – and yes, it is intense – to the extend that it’s like a fizzing chemical reaction, like vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, exploding in your brain. And it’s quite a high.

Intense Beauty finds Gintas Kraptavičius (Gintas K) in his most common setting, with the album being fully improvised, ‘recorded live, using computer, midi keyboard & controller’. Recorded in June 2025 of this year, by the power of the Internet and micro-labels, it was released as a limited cassette on Tokyo-based label Static Disc just weeks later on 10th July, before also becoming available on Gintas’ own Bandcamp page.

As is common to many of Gintas K’s works recorded in this manner and with this – seemingly unique setup, there’s something playful, even joyful and uplifting about the sound. It is chaotic, but it’s also carefree, and it’s not remotely dark or heavy: there’s nothing harsh or abrasive to be heard here. ‘intense’ is skittery and skittish, off-key electric piano thumps and stomps erratically, glitching in and out throughout, while cellular sounds fly around all over like plankton in a storm before gradually slowing, tinkling and flitting at a more sedate pace until grinding to a halt.

‘harmony’ isn’t particularly harmonious, instead merging static and drone with groaning whirrs before yielding to discordant bent notes playing across one another. One thing that is a constant throughout Intense Beauty is a sense of movement. There isn’t a moment is stillness, as sounds and ideas flit from one place to another with no discernible flow, and th9is is nowhere more apparent than on the shifting sonic collage of ‘gal bet’. It’s hyperactive, and should be exhausting, but the sheer energy is contagious and uplifting.

Watching the accompanying video of Gintas recording for the album is illuminating, particularly the vigour with which he plays, simultaneously striking keys on the keyboard with hands, wrists, forearm, seemingly at random, but with remarkable speed and dexterity, while cranking knobs hard and fast: the camera and table shake under his frenetic kinetic activity. K isn’t one of those who creates sound simply by pushing buttons here and there: this is a full-body physical performance. This, too, is an example of intensity, and the artist pours it into the act of artistic creation.

There are a lot of experimental electronic artists around, but no-one else sounds quite like Gintas K.

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DuChamp – The Wild Joy

Posted: 20 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Torto Editions / Ramble Records / Atena Records – 25th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

DuChamp (certainly not to be confused with the seminal avant-gardist Marcel Duchamp) is a Berlin-based artist, and for this release, is the product of ‘a journey of development, research, and refinement of a deeply personal voice’, their chosen selection of instruments is listed as ‘baritone guitar, voice, organ, synths, bouzuki, electronics, incredible stubbornness.’

The baritone guitar is not a common instrument, but oner which sounds quite unlike any other guitar in terms of its tonality. Its application here is in providing the core to elongated sonorous drones on the five compositions on The Wild Joy. It’s a title I take to be somewhat ironic, for despite the resplendent flora which graces the album’s cover, the title of the first piece, ‘Sine proprio’ translates, depending on your choice of reference source, as ‘without property’, ‘without possession’, or ‘poverty’. Whether or not this is a reference to a physical or spiritual poverty isn’t apparent, but what this nine-and-a-half minute dronescape does possess is a wealth of texture as the layers build and vibrate against one another.

‘The Shape of Time’ is very much constructed around contrasts; a whining, scraping drone nags the conscious level of listening, while a low, rumbling bassy resonance lingers way below, and it’s something you feel as much as hear. In the space between, incidentals drift in and out. In the distance, gongs chime and fade slowly, and the disparity between their timing and that of the pulsating throb which has begun to build is disorientating, unsettling.

‘Epithalamion’ marks a dramatic shift – in every way, starting with the change of instrumentation, and by no means ending with the change of approach, with a wild, undisciplined key-bashing crescendo occupying the first couple of minutes, before giving way to a wheezing sound like an organ on the brink of expiry. With its origins in the classical age, an epithalamium is a poem written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber. This, however, sounds more like a piano being pushed down six flights of stairs, before a ghastly gasp sputters along interminably for the remainder of the duration. I pity the bride this was penned for.

Things are different again on ‘Fulaxos’: there, the baritone guitar comes into its own and to the fore, played conventionally, a picked, rolling motif that’s brooding, even doomy provides the starting point for a piece which gradually unfurls toward a place of light and optimism. The final track, which is also the title track, brings us almost full-circle, but there’s a levity to this extended, delicate dronescape, and the soaring vocal only accentuates this sense of elevation.

The joy may be somewhat subdued overall, but it’s there, on what is, ultimately, an accomplished, multi-faceted work.

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

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

Christopher Nosnibor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Stephen O’Malley – But remember what you have had

Posted: 12 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Portraits – 27th June 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Stephen O’Maley will be forever synonymous with Sunn O))). However fervently fans revere Khanate, whatever the reputation of Burning Witch or KTL, however many solo albums he releases, and regardless of the outstanding work Ideologic Organ presets to the world, none of it will ever come close to the success of Sunn O))), which will eclipse anything and everything else he is involved ion for all eternity. It’s not difficult to grasp the reasons for this. It likely quite frustrating, but that band have elevated a niche not-really-a-genre to stratospheric levels, and have achieved more with a single, sustained chord than most could ever dream of.

When I saw him perform solo some years ago, he appeared quite comfortable with this, playing – just off stage – through a backline that was so immense it wouldn’t quite fit onto the stage of the 450-capacity Brudenell in Leeds. Better to have a reputation to play up to than not, and since bowel-churning guitar drone played at eardrum-shredding volume is what people want, delivering it seems like a fair trade.

The blurb for his latest solo release suggests, however, something a shift, but by no means a departure, writing that ‘With But remember what you have had, Stephen O’Malley continues and expands his musical approach by transposing it to multiphonic electroacoustic writing and acousmatic listening. Drawing not only on his extensive experience as a composer and live instrumentalist, but also on the countless studio production and mixing sessions he has taken part in the course of his many projects (in solo, with SUNN O))) or KTL, to name but a few), Stephen O’Malley’s work on this new piece is ambitious, engaging in an inspired research that delves into the deep intricacies between polyphony, intonation and timbrality, enhanced by melodic motifs. To do this, O’Malley summons up his own very personal sound universe, constellated with amplified textures, instrumental sustained tones and raw energy, in order to diffract them into wavefronts, waves and blows that weave a complex, rich and fascinating matter. But remember what you have had stands out as an important work in Stephen O’Malley’s repertoire: it brings together the multiplicity of his musical approach in an exemplary way, while laying the foundations and promises for the future of an already extraordinary journey.’

But remember what you have had is a single, continuous piece, just over thirty minutes in duration. It begins with a parping drone that sounds somewhat like a didgeridoo. It lingers, resurging, cyclical hums and layers of sound and texture build atop of one another… and then what the fuck’s this? Bagpipes? It sounds like bagpipes. But then, it also sounds like guitar feedback and a single chord being struck and resonating for an eternity. And then another chord crashes like a giant Wave breaking over rocks at high tide with a stormy wind behind it.

Whereas the overall pitch and tone of the Sunn O))) sound is low and growling, But remember what you have had altogether more keenly favours the mid and upper ranges, and howls of feedback while whining engines fill the air as it heats up. There’s more discord as the sounds bounce off one another. It’s an exploration of the interaction between notes and frequencies, conducted in a way which can only happen at volume,

By the midpoint, the feedbacks are interweaving in such a way to form a huge reverberating howling drone, which in some respects shares common ground with Metal Machine Music, and it would be difficult – and inappropriate – to completely sidestep Earth 2 here, too. By twenty-minutes, O’Malley conjures an immense collision of sound, jousting and jostling amidst a sonic tempest, before gradually diminishing to a point of tranquillity which is more reminiscent of a string quartet than experimental wave of noise. It makes for an unexpectedly soothing finish, but once again shows the range of O’Malley’s musicianship, as well the breadth of his sonic interests, which extend far beyond all-out weight and sheer volume.

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Hampus Lindwall – Brace For Impact

Posted: 19 June 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Ideologic Organ – 20th June 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

In his liner notes, Robert Barry suggests that ‘Brace for Impact might just be the first album of post-internet organ music’, and goes on to explain that ‘it is a record weaned on networked processes and algorithmic thinking, a suite of tracks which build their own systems then push them to the point of collapse. Lindwall is not a programmer, but he will wield whatever technology is ready to hand much as Chopin made use of the richer, fuller sound of an Erard piano. From the software subtly weirding the interior textures of ‘Swerve’ and ‘Piping’ to the juddering, kernel panic of ‘AFK’ and ‘À bruit secret’, these are works of music unthinkable without the ubiquitous experience of life lived online. Imparting that hypermodern aesthetic sensibility through the austere sound of a baroque organ only heightens the anachronistic sense of temporal disjuncture characteristic of days spent rabbit-holing through ever-multiplying stacks of browser windows. The vernacular of Web 2.0 is here re-transcribed in the ornate script of a medieval illuminated manuscript.’

As Barry also suggests, the organ has been undergoing something of a renaissance in recent years, and cites a number of significant organs which have been recently restored, including the grand organs at the cathedrals of St John the Divine and Notre-Dame (New York and Paris respectively, and, not so much closer to home but on my very doorstep, York Minster, which ‘heralded a “once-in-a-century” refurbishment of its own 5,000-plus pipe instrument’.

It marks something of a shift from an album I reviewed around maybe fifteen years ago, the details of which elude me now, which was recorded on a series of broken-down and dilapidated organs from around Europe which wheezed and groaned as if gasping out the last breaths from their collapsed lungs.

Brace for Impact is an altogether more vibrant work, although as much as it celebrates the organ and the instrument’s sonic magnitude, it also reaches far further into exploratory sonic territories over the course of these five compositions.

The title track features ‘a highly saturated and distorted electric guitar, performed by collaborator and SUNN O))) founding member, Stephen O’Malley’ – and ranges from tectonic crunches, machine-gun rattles and alienated whines rising from the kind of dissonant dronescape only O’Malley can conjure. And so we brace… and then we swerve. The collision fails to materialise during the ten-minute dark ambient swirl of the second track, spreading ominous overtones and watery, echo-heavy plips and plops. The muffled beats are akin to listening to a minimal techno set overlayed with a piece from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, performed in the Blue John Cavern, and it shimmers accordingly, slipping into off-kilter fairground trilling in the final minutes.

The final diptych of compositions rally ventures out: both ‘AFK’ and ‘Piping’ extend beyond twelve minutes. The former brings jolting discord and drama, lurching stabs that manage to bring a crazed dance feel to the sound of the organ before swinging into a circus-type jive. It stands out as perhaps the most playful track on the album. There is a playfulness to ‘Piping’, too, but it feels more like it belongs to a film soundtrack or theatre performance, and it whirls and winds and spins and pirouettes it way to a pretty but perhaps confused conclusion.

Brace For Impact is very much a non-linear work, and one which stands, uncertain of where it’s going next. But is it unquestionably interesting, not to mention disorientating, and it’s a work which seems to bend time as well as notes. It’s an album to lose yourself in.

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BLOOM – The Improvisation Sessions (Vol I)

Posted: 12 June 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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11th June 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Some artists thrive on collaboration. Deborah Fialkiewicz is one of those. While she’s prolific as a solo artist, the volume of collaborative works in her discography is also noteworthy: when she’s not working as part of SPORE, she’s part of the ever-rotating lineup of BLOOM – and that’s before we touch on the frequent collaborations with (AN) EeL, the most recent of which was only released three weeks ago.

The Improvisation Sessions was recorded live May of this year, with a lineup of Dan Dolby, Deborah Fialkiewicz, and John Koser, marking an expansion from the duo which recorded the trilogy of Parallel Minor, Besides, and Hybrid in 2020. Fialkiewicz is without doubt an artist with range, but one who favours the dark end of the ambient spectrum more often than not, and this is very much the case here.

The Improvisation Sessions features two longform tracks which would quite nicely align with a vinyl release.

‘Chameleon Soul’, which spans a colossal continuous twenty minutes, begins with low, rumbling ominous drones, but soon escalates to a busy, buzzy criss-cross of sounds, interweaving and interlacing, leaving one’s head in a spin as if after trying to trace several flies flitting about the kitchen on a hot summer’s day for any period of time. It’s a morass of warping tones overlaying a ballast of churning noise, and any comparisons to Hull luminaries Throbbing Gristle or Merzbow are entirely justified.

The layers of distortion only grow denser and gnarlier as the track progresses, crashing waves of white noise blast in from one side and then the other as they really push to test the stamina. And then you realise we’re only six minutes in. This is a positive: plenty more left to enjoy… Enjoyment is of course subjective, and enjoyment of this requires being appreciative of a dizzying, disorientating assault simultaneous with a full-on white noise blizzard.

The momentary lulls, the spells where they pull back from the precipice of all-out aural obliteration, are far from mellow, as serrated spurs of hard-edged drones, wails of feedback and brain-melting extraneous noise conglomerate to seismic effect. There are some nasty high-end frequencies knocking about in the mix, moments were one has to check if the whistle is coming from the speakers of if it’s that troublesome tinnitus nagging again, and said frequencies rise from a battery of ugly distortion, bone-shattering blasts of which simple explode around the twelve-minute mark, and from hereon in, things only grow harsher, more corrupted, more intense, more difficult to withstand. We’d be inching into polythene bags on heads territory were it not for the variation, but the last three minutes or so are fractured, damaged, and agonizing – part power electronics, part circuit meltdown.

As the world becomes evermore and increasingly fucked up, I find words fail me more by the day. It’s harder to articulate, and this is where I’ve found that sound has come into its own. Sound as the capacity to convey something beyond words, something that lies in the most innermost parts, giving voice to the subconscious, even. On The Improvisation Sessions, BLOOM convey anxiety, gloom, pessimism.

‘The Dark Room’ is indeed dark, constructed primarily around a fixed but thick, distorted hum. Oscillators whine and whistle, and something about it calls to mind Whitehouse around the time of Never Forget Death, when they discovered low-end frequencies and restraint, the impact of a low undulating wave and subtle tweaks of reverb.

It rumbles and drones on, eddying and bouncing around in a shrilling mesh of dissonance. There isn’t a moment where this is an easy listen, and so often, it sounds as if the equipment is faulty, whether it’s a stuck loop or generating unexpected noise.

This set hangs on the edge of ambience, but be warned, it’s dark, and noisy at times, to the extend that it may shred your brain. For me personally, that’s my idea of fun, so it gets a two thumbs up, but for the more sensitive, this is a release to approach with caution.

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Beige Palace / Lo Egin – Beige Palace / Lo Egin

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

Christopher Nosnibor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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