Posts Tagged ‘Experimental’

King Sans – Sell the Cow

Posted: 23 August 2026 in Reviews, Albums
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Dipterid Records – 21st August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Chicago noise rock duo King Sans, consisting of Jake Steven James (guitars, synths, vocals) and Izabella Rose (drums, vocals) describe themselves as ‘cryptids of noisepunk’. Make of that what you will, but they’ve gone all out on the ‘cow’ theme of the title on the cover of their debut album and accompanying promotional shots.

This very much feels like the culmination of their work to date: since 2024, they’ve released half a dozen singles, four of which have made it onto the album. As such, Sell the Cow stands as a document of their evolution, from the raw and raucous blues-rock-via-Melvins blast of debut single ‘Liar!’ – all one minute and twenty-seven of it (remixed / remastered for the album)– to new and previously unreleased songs like ‘Sold.’, which opens with a piano part lifted from Mozart before crawling into sludgy morass of dark ambient experimentalism. It so happens that ‘Sold.’ bookends the album neatly, as the opener, ‘Two Figures’ is a brooding, atmospheric piece with droning fear-chord synths, jumpy incidentals, and a suspenseful spoken-word vocal that gives way to thumping tribal drums and dingy bass. These three songs alone are demonstrative of their huge ambition and stylistic range and illustrative of their operating far beyond the parameters of both noise and punk.

They pack in some high-octane bangers along the way, too: previous single ‘Jumpstart’ isn’t just appropriately titled, but appropriately placed in the track sequencing, kicking things into overdrive immediately after the more experimental intro. It’s a taut and explosive two-and-a-quarter guitar-driven minutes of stomping glam punk with a dash of the kind of mania that defined the first Pulled Apart by Horses album.

‘Let me Lie’ is the most excitable-sounding example of stoner sludge I think I’ve ever heard. It’s like Melvins on speed, and seems to manage a nod to Lene Lovich’s ‘Lucky Number’ somewhere in the melee. Herein lies much of the thrill of Sell the Cow. There’s a lot going on, so many different references and ideas drawn from across a vast musical swathe, that each listen reveals something different, something new.

‘Dienen’ is another which melts together thick, scuzzed out low-end overdrive with a kind of glam-influenced stomp and doomy power chords. That they manage to render this preposterous combination without sounding like the Spinal Tap of sludge is an achievement, but the fact it’s followed by ‘Lasting Hold’, which takes things a step further is almost beyond comprehension. The verses are soft, with a delicate, gentle vocal and almost folky, with an atmospheric, spiritual-sounding feel, while the choruses erupt into screaming filthy metal – and they take this idea further on the operatic art-rock infused thrash of ‘S.Y.D.’ Yes, it’s almost impossible to keep up with everything that they’ve got going on, and I keep finding myself thinking ‘this shouldn’t work’. But it does. And it works well.

There’s birdsong and a pastoral feel to the lulling ‘the floodplain’, while puntastic single ‘No Diddley’ is a squalling blast of guitars that’s equal parts blues and rock ‘n’ roll and noise rock, with a dash of Suicide.

Sell the Cow is the album you didn’t know you needed, but believe me, you sure do.

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Circuit3 – Metanoia: Music From Therapy

Posted: 19 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Mortality Tables – 14th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Ordinarily, I tend to pave the way to grappling with a release with some form of discursive preamble, but here, I feel it would detract from the work itself. Instead, I present the context for Metanoia: Music From Therapy directly from the accompanying notes, and without comment:

The first spark for Metanoia came from a simple plan to meet for a drink after a gig. Peter Fitzpatrick (Circuit3) and Mat Smith from the Mortality Tables imprint ended up talking about trauma, therapy, and the parts of ourselves we usually keep out of sight. That conversation led to a small, recorded experiment. From there the music began to take form, guided by fragments pulled from their notebooks.

Metanoia grew out of therapy and the slow process of letting difficult truths surface. Instead of singing those words, Fitzpatrick shaped them through analogue machines. The title refers to the deep shift that can follow self-reflection: a break, a reset, a way of living with more honesty.

A defining moment in the project was the opportunity to work with Vince Clarke, a long‑standing influence on Fitzpatrick’s music. They created an eleven-minute piece titled ‘The Hope’, named after the bar near Farringdon, London where that first conversation between Fitzpatrick and Smith happened. The collaboration feels like a dialogue across time: the artist Fitzpatrick once was, the one he is now, and the one emerging through this process.

Metanoia is not a linear or predictable account of trauma, breakdown, and recovery. Instead, it moves through a series of moments and memories that surfaced during therapy.

Vince Clarke crops up with remarkable frequency around Mortality Tables artists and releases, and his presence proves to be a positive one. There’s nothing here, or on other releases, which directly hints at Clarke’s celebrated electropop career

‘Cracked Eyes’ offers minimal, dulcimer-like tones, the notes fuzzy around the edges, as the backdrop to a skipping, fractured vocal loop which resembles to some extent one of William Burroughs’ tape experiments, the phrase, or phrases – muttered, mumbled – reverberates in fragments, overlapping, cutting in and out while played at different speeds, to quite unsettling effect.

A number of the pieces – in particular ‘Mood’, and ‘Where Are We Going?’ are comparatively brief interludes, and some of the instrumentals, such as ‘Imperfect’ are very much in the vein of Tangerine Dream or Mike Oldfield, built around sift, rippling notes and textured drones – flowing sounds of tranquillity, which don’t immediately evoke trauma or anguish. But of course, trauma and anguish aren’t necessarily endless stricken screaming, and therapy – the key to unlocking this album – can, for many, bring moments of peace and clarity amidst the painful psychological excavations.

‘Burnout’, on the other hand, it tense, the sound of a palpating heartbeat and panting breaths, albeit against an overtly uplifting electronic backdrop. This is something I personally find more relatable in some sense, and I suppose this is the leading point to observe when it comes to Metanoia: clearly, it comes from a deeply personal space, and some listeners will relate to some aspects more than others based on their own experiences. I know many people who have been through therapy, for a wide array of reasons, and with mixed experiences and outcomes. The trilling 70s synth sounds which course through the six-and-a-half minute ‘Shielding from the past’ seem to make sense, with their soft ambient cushioning, and despite their more sci-fi leanings that seem to tip a hat to Dr Who. Titles like ‘What If Everything Goes Right?’ take the listener through the difficult journey of self-doubt and catastrophising, before finally arriving at the eleven-minute finale, ‘The Hope’. And while there are undercurrents of doubt as articulated through darker shades, particularly at the start of the track, it does, ultimately, bloom into light.

Metanoia may be non-linear – and I understand this is often true of the journey through therapy, which can be riven with setbacks and periods of stasis – but it very much concludes with a piece which feels like the sun breaking on a new dawn, the curtains opening on a new chapter.

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Flowers for Sophie: Doberwoman / Tiny Forehead / Courtesan / Machiner / Social Youth Cult / Westenra – The Fulford Arms, York, 15th August 2026

Posted: 16 August 2026 in Previews and Editorial, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Well, this certainly wasn’t the introduction I’d been plotting previously. And it’s almost certainly not the review anyone was expecting – least of all myself. But I started Aural Aggravation specifically to create a platform for more in-depth, essay-like pieces which ventured into topics around the music, rather than simply giving cut-and-dried star-rating reviews in a hundred and fifty words or fewer. Bucking the trend? That was essentially the point. And so here we are.

I’d had a great time. I’d seen some outstanding live music, and spent time with friends and acquaintances – and perfect strangers, and short dark ones – united in an appreciation of music and (sub)culture. I was walking home over the bridge less than ten minutes from my house – a busy spot at any time, even at night – in what’s generally considered the ‘nice’ end of York, holding a black plastic rose I’d been handed towards the end of the night, when suddenly my ear prick up: “carrying a rose an’ shit… is it an ‘ee?” Then, incredulously, “Yeah, it’s an ‘ee,”. A couple of drunk blokes are rasping loudly between themselves as they sit on the bridge in the dark. Yes, I’m an ‘ee. A fifty-year-old ‘ee, white, bald, and wearing a battered Stetson, just minding my own business. And yet, for some reason, they found it necessary to comment. Why?

In my head, I’m whispering ‘cunts, cunts, cunts’ to myself, but strangely enough, never once in all of my fifty years have I felt the need to pass comment, and certainly not to shout out some shit, at a random stranger. And yet, since the age of fifteen, when I ‘turned goth’, I’ve been subjected to street heckles – or, let’s call it what it is – verbal abuse by strangers for simply walking down the street. A lot of it comes in the form of unintelligible yells from passing white vans. The first I distinctly remember – perhaps being one of the first instances – was some bloke yelling out of a van, “St. John’s is that way!” I used to live just outside Lincoln, close to St John’s Hospital, which was at one time the largest mental institution in the country, before the Conservatives introduced ‘care in the community’ (a topic which is an essay in itself). I get a lot of people doing Michael Jackson impressions at me – because, y’know, he was a bald white bloke who wore a Stetson… ohhh. Of course. A hat and shades. I must be Michal fucking Jackson. Easy mistake to make.

But here are two things I feel I must note. The first is, that apart from the time some drunk female racegoers passed me making stage whispers of “It’s Pitbull!” (I wasn’t wearing my hat, and being a bald bloke in shades, hey, it must be Pitbull, because there are no other bald guys in shades in the summer), it’s always – ALWAYS – men. The second its that I simply cannot grasp the way people are seemingly incapable of having a thought without verbalising it, and at volume, even if not with the intention of intimidation or harassment. But seemingly the Catchphrase hook of ‘say what you see’ is a rule to live by for far too many boneheads.

Doberwoman, tonight’s first act, summarises this shit most succinctly, when she observes that prejudice is the product of fear (and perhaps self-hatred). Racism stems first and foremost from a fear which comes from a lack of understanding of other cultures. The most rabid homophobes seem to be mostly afraid of their own homosexual tendencies (take a moment to reflect on Andrew Tate’s absurd assertion that any man who sleeps with women is gay), and it’s clear that people who feel compelled to harass anyone who’s even vaguely alternative are likely scared because they simply can’t comprehend anything that isn’t their own tiny mainstream sphere, but more than that, they’re afraid because they see either an element of themselves, or the potential for them to become that thing, of crossing into that otherness.

Doberwoman, incidentally, is great, getting things going early doors (really early, as in 4pm early) with an energetic and entertaining set of lo-fi electropop with some strong feminist messaging. In a nutshell, she’s a one-woman Soft Cell. The vocals being up in the mix allows her powerful lyrics to be heard with clarity.

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Doberwoman

The strong messaging is a leading reason why we’re here, and it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on this, particularly in context of the experience I recounted of my walk home. I would say it didn’t bother me, since I’m largely immune to it after thirty-five years of it, and the grief I get is fairly low-level in the scheme of things. But of course, whatever my level of immunity, I did bother me. The guys griefing me will have forgotten they even saw me two minutes later. This isn’t about me, but then, in a way, it is. The Sophie Lancaster Foundation exists to educate on the importance of inclusivity, to stimulate conversations about prejudice, and to celebrate difference, and tonight’s event is a fundraiser for the foundation, which was founded after Sophie and her boyfriend were attacked by a gang of five boys in a park in 2007. Sophie lost her life as the result of this attack. The provocation? She dressed alternatively. Although Sophie was labelled a ‘goth’ by the media, this feels both misrepresentative, and reductive (and again, that’s probably another essay), but the thing I will say on this matter is that the goth subculture may have its fair share of posers and musical gatekeepers, but the general ethos of this broad subculture is to live and let live. You won’t find goths knifing one another or brawling in the streets – or at gigs.

Following Doberwoman is Tiny Forehead. Their set could be summarised as ‘started weird, and then the guitarist removed his leg’. They’re a Nottingham six-piece who are visually discombobulating. None of them look like they belong to the same band, and the front man is wearing a chequered full-face balaclava he can’t see out of, which means he has some struggles with the mic stand. And the lack of a face is something I find quite disconcerting – it’s mostly surreal, but also taps into something deeper and more fearful. But he disarms those fears with some affable banter and some spectacularly awful jokes, which he hoots away to, and meanwhile, they serve up some solid 80s alternative rock, and the dual vocals work an absolute treat. They’re by absolutely no means goth in the conventional sense, but they have some songs about vampires, and their entire vibe is very much a celebration of non-norminess. They bring some tidy grooves, too. ‘Keep Dialling’ is a bit All About Eve, only with some trancy synths spun into the mix, while ‘Pogos Wood’ is more uptempo dream pop, and it’s during this that the guitarist removes his artificial leg and hops around at the finale. Zany, unpredictable, and with some solid tunes, they’re a lot of fun.

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Courtesan are the first truly goth-sounding act of the night: their second song sounds very like Skeletal Family’s ‘She Cries Alone’ in the guitar parts in the verse, and this is very much the space they occupy musically – northern goth circa 83/4. The third song is called Incubus Succubus, introduced as a song about ‘ghosts that shag’. Ignore the backwards baseball caps on the drummer and the bassist (who looks a bit like Fred Durst): these guys are proper early goth. New song ‘Sister Crow’ has heavy hints of mid-80s Damned. They close with a cover of Nancy Boy. It’s a bit stodgy, but goes down a storm, and deservedly so.

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Courtesan

This show is well-timed for Machiner, who released their album just over a week ago. The last time I saw them, we were sharing a bill in a cemetery chapel in York, and while tonight’s venue may be less dramatic, their brand of sweeping shoegaze is no less captivating. The drum machine is a little quiet to begin with, as is singer Paul’s guitar, but the mix is soon sorted, and they’re in the zone. The melancholic ‘The Sound of Disappearing’ lands mid-set, which is a heady blend of neo-prog and post rock, with hints of Oceansize, and Vessels but with a vocals. The slow-burning album opener, ‘Silent Running’ arrives as the penultimate song of the set, where dripping synths and layered guitar drift together. They definitely won themselves some new fans tonight.

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Machiner

It’s here that my notes start getting briefer; we’re four bands and four pints in, and it’s getting warm. But more than this, Social Youth Cult are nothing short of mind-blowing, and I find I’m completely gripped. The singer channels Peter Murphy and Ian Curtis in equal measures. Wearing high-waisted boot-cut jeans and a brocade shirt, he’s as white as a sheet and thin as a lath. He’s got the looks and the moves as well as the voice. And hell, yes, he’s got the voice, with all the brooding, the drama, the dynamics. He brings the theatrical, art rock style, and he absolutely fucking owns it. Peter Hook style basslines boom out atop soaring guitar parts, which often switch to a more scratchy, textural approach. At the back, there’s a minimal kit, from which emanates heavy, tom-led drumming. ‘The Lighthouse’ comes with hints of ‘Dark Entries’ and explosive energy. These guys need to sort a double-header tour with Mouth Ulcers as the ultimate new goth showcase. They are an absolute must-see.

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Social Youth Cult

Westenra are playing their latest album, Burn Me Once, in its entirety for the first time. This is a bold move. But they’re a bold band, and the album, as I observed in my review, is well-paced and nicely balanced, and as such, flows well in a live setting. Opener ‘Ghosts in the Machine’ highlights the busy bassline and Luci leaps around and comes on like Siouxsie with dance moves. Bassist Dominique is an imposing presence, but with heels which are practically stilts, Luci really dominates the stage, her voice even stronger as her presence. And despite struggling for breath and sputtering between songs due to the smoke from the previous acts, she doesn’t miss a note, and remains as energetic while performing throughout. Guitarist Karl could be reasonably as a generic goth guitarist, being middle-aged and sporting a hat, but that would be to severely diminish his understated contribution here.

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Westenra

The slower ‘Hold Me Close’ is epic and operatic, so hardly offers the kind of respite the mid-set slowie bands regain their breath during. In fact, this is a set which keeps the energy and high throughout, and it’s without doubt that this is the reason they’ve made swift progress in establishing their place on the scene. ‘Stuck in a Cage’ gets its first live airing, and rocks solidly, before ‘Regret’ brings even heftier riffage and thick, low-end bass tones.

The main set and the (self-imposed) pressure of performing the album out of the way, they get to cut by loose opening encore with ‘Trinity’, and they close with their gothed-up take on Iron Maiden’s ‘The Number of the Beast’.

Not only was there not a duff band on the bill, but everything about this was magnificent – even the cheesy compering. The alternative scene is effervescent, and abrim with exciting new acts. And the hassle on way home notwithstanding, it was as close to perfect as a night gets.

Watch: ‘Nothing in the Dark’ by Xasthur

Posted: 14 August 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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XASTHUR reveal the next advance single, ‘Nothing in the Dark’, taken from their forthcoming new album Open to Misinterpretation. This self-recorded exploration of Dark American Folk is scheduled for release on October 2, 2026.

Xasthur comment: “The song ‘Nothing In The Dark’ deals with the emptiness that people meet whenever they go looking for answers in darkness and suffering”, mastermind Scott Conner explains. “In the lyrics, I am asking what is really waiting in the darkness and whether misery can ever truly become the company that people imagine it to be.”

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Bug Facer – Nuclear Bounty Hunter / Beggar’s Last Words

Posted: 10 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Warren Records – 7th July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I’ve written extensively on the topic of formats before, and having grown up in the 80s and 90s when the physical single was still a dominant format – in particular the 7” single, which could be purchased cheaply (and with wide availability on the high street from not just Our Price and HMV, but also Woolworths and WH Smith) for a quid or two, the whole experience of the A-side and B-side, or a double-A-side is scored into my psyche. Most digital singles now only contain one track, and while I get it, it’s just not the same – and nor is paying a tenner or more for a lathe-cut limited edition of twenty. It feels as if the market has split in directions which are diametric opposites, and neither is particularly satisfying.

The latest release from Hull’s Bug Facer manages a satisfactory compromise, in the current economic climate: a digital single release with two tracks for four quid. Because another thing that’s largely been forgotten is that the cost of production of a physical release is not all of the cost involved – in fact it’s only a fraction. A studio, an engineer, a producer, all cost. Rehearsal space. PR. And so on. All of these things are expenses involved in being a band and recording and releasing music. This is the reason that Spotify sickens me, and the culture whereby people believe music should be free blows my mind. Home taping didn’t kill music. Illegal sharing via Napster and Soulseek didn’t kill music. Legitimate corporate-driven platforms, however, really fucked things, especially for smaller artists. The industry co-conspired, and didn’t so much shoot itself in the foot as hug a landmine.

Imagine being buzzed about starting a new band and getting your music out there, and then the few hundred streams you get after some heavy plugging and a PR scoring a review or two and maybe a couple of radio plays, to receive absolutely nothing, while your fraction of a penny that actually goes to the artists rather than the platform has been dripped into the pool that’s divvied out between Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, and U2. So yes, £4 for a digital release in 2026 is probably fair – especially when it’s a proper two-song single which replicates the 7” experience of the A-side and B-side, and especially when both songs are killer.

And here, both songs are indeed killer. ‘Nuclear Bounty Hunter’ stars slow, with a tense build-up and an intimation of a riff, squirming its way to a thick, gnarly riff that’s halfway between raging punk and sludgy noise. Sling the Melvins together with Slaughter and the Dogs and you’re in the right domain. It’s heavy, hefty, rabid, and gloriously messy.

‘Beggar’s Last Words’ is an entirely different proposition: it’s nearly seven minutes long for a start, and sashays in with soft instrumentation over a waltz-time beat. It’s kinda hazy, kinda droney, deeply psychedelic, and very much of an experimental bent. In short, it couldn’t be more contrasting. The vocals, when they finally arrive, are heavily treated, warped, and woozy, and are half-submerged among the ever-rising cacophony which is building, and almost out of nowhere, we’re four minutes in and find ourselves in the midst of a sonic maelstrom. After this crescendo of chaos, everything gradually winds down, wheezing, wasted, to a slow fade.

The fact that this release showcases two vastly divergent styles is a strength. It’s a release that shows a band willing to take risks, to challenge themselves – and their listeners. It’s so easy – and tempting – for artists to create a template early in their careers and say with them. It works, the band and any PR they might have gets to tout them as X or Y, everyone knows what they’re going to get, they find their niche, find their audience, however small, until boredom sets in and / or fashion changes. It takes a different kind of band to eschew genre limitations, and particularly to go this far out on a limb with a single release. Bug Facer are that different kind of band, and their continued evolution is a joy to observe.

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Watch: ‘Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice’ by Ecce Shnak

Posted: 29 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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NYC art-rockers Ecce Shnak present ‘Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice’, the second single from their full-length album Dandy Variances, anticipated later this year via Records, Man Records. Recorded and produced by Jeff Lucci, this single was mixed by Grammy award-winning producer Mario McNulty (David Bowie, Prince, Nine Inch Nails, Julian Lennon).

Formed in the mid-1990s and forged in NYC’s experimental scene, Ecce Shnak (pronounced Eh-kay sh-knock) is made up of David Roush (composer, bassist and baritone vocalist), Bella Komodromos (vocals), Chris Krasnow (guitar), Gannon Ferrell (guitar), and Henry Buchanan-Vaughn (drums).

An ode to camaraderie, ‘Eddie’ reaches its lyrical denouement with what may be the “oldest prayer of friendship", but sounds like a throwaway Rivers Cuomo line: “I pray you don’t be a rat in a rat-suit! Pray you don’t be a rat in a rat-costume!”

“Like ‘Larry, Sleepover Friend’ from our 2019 Joke Oso EP, our new song is a garage-rock homage to a beloved friend of mine. Like ‘Larry’, ‘Eddie’ explores big themes in great friendships: their gnarly ambivalences, their absurd misunderstandings, their inside-jokes, and their contradictory mix of irreverence with utmost care,” says David Roush.

“We are also overjoyed to feature two great friends as the co-stars of the music video, the preposterously funny and talented comedic duo Syd and Olivia! I was lucky to have met these two pugnaciously podcasting, thoughtfully Thespian, joke-slinging YouTube yokels on a fantastic journey to the Greek island of Crete two years ago, and the rest was thirst’ory.”

Bella Komodromos adds, “They absolutely kicked butt at their roles in this Wes-Anderson-hued buddy-comedy music video, directed and produced by DJay Brawner. It is our ardent hope that all fans of Ecce Shnak and Syd and Olivia alike can shart out with their hearts out to this badass collaboration!”

Apart from directing and editing the new video with Brooks Jones, Beth Narducci and David Roush, Brawner also worked on the video for the album’s lead track ‘Vincent’, an homage to superb music videos of yesteryear – for Meshuggah’s ‘Bleed’ and 311’s ‘Down’. Here, operatic trills collide with frantic rock energy in a high-decibel takedown of a formulaic antagonist through the power of one’s own voice.

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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.

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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Gintas K – Sugar Noizy

Posted: 13 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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zeromoon – 1st July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Gintas K’s relentless release schedule (Discogs lists a whopping 70 albums credited to him since 1999) continues with his second album of 2026, recorded, again, live, with no overdubs, ‘using computer, midi keyboard & controller.’ And while this album contains a not insubstantial seventeen pieces, there are a fair few which are barely over a minute in duration, meaning that it clocks in at under an hour, making it significantly shorter than Merzmania, released in March, with its seventy-five minute run time.

The title implies either sweet but harsh, or the brain froth of a surfeit of sucrose. This being Gintas K, it’s actually both, simultaneously. Sugar Noizy is by no means a radical departure from the vast majority of his work over the last decade, and that’s all to the good. Arguably, he’s emerging as Lithuania’s bubbly, glitchy answer to Merzbow, in that his sound is by no means as harsh, but he very much has a distinctive sound and style.

If anything, Sugar Noizy is rather more sparse and minimal than many previous releases. ‘geras noise ss’ is constructed around subdued trills of feedback, and it has that low-key, subdued, even vaguely muffled feel of ‘Never Forget Death’ by Whitehouse’ – minus the shrill, mangled vocals – but claustrophobic, quietly intense.

As ever, Gintas K’s work sounds like circuitry collapsing into a foamy, frothy meltdown, and amidst the bubbles and bleeps, a chaotic cacophony of dripping, glooping squelches and squiggles, Sugar Noizy is a hyperactive work that’s essentially intended to overwhelm. And it does. Even when it slows to an infrequent drip, you find yourself on edge, wondering what’s next. And when it comes to ‘letas noiz zem’, the answer is a mangled morass of fractured, stuttering distortion that sounds like your speakers are breaking.

Some of the shorter ‘interlude’ tracks are truly wild: ‘minutinis’ may be a minute long, but it’s fried, a complete frenzy, and there are a lot of moments – often extremely brief – which sound watery, and slow digital darkness drips amidst the freakout of dark, digital violence as the segments and elements intersect.

Like the majority of Gintas K’s works, Sugar Noizy is a discombobulating barrage of wibbles, dribbles, whirs and buzzes, fragmented shards and dying drones, often all at the same time – making for a nice addition to his ever-expanding catalogue.

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