Posts Tagged ‘Experimental’

Listen: ‘Brothers at the Wheel’ by Caulbearers

Posted: 29 September 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Manchester-based outfit Caulbearers return with ‘Brothers At The Wheel’, an urgent and uncompromising single that confronts the structures of power governing modern life, while ultimately offering solidarity and collective action as an alternative to despair. It’s is a rich and timely preview of their forthcoming album Come Back Home, out on October 30th via Single Cell Recordings.

‘Brothers At The Wheel’ traces a journey of political awakening – from a naïve plea for those in power to change course before disaster hits, to disillusionment at the resulting hollow words and empty promises that leave the status quo intact.

“If we truly consider humanity as a brotherhood and sisterhood of equals, it seems the ultimate betrayal of our family to exploit, to oppress and to victimise others whilst creating structures that concentrate wealth in the hands of an ever-smaller, unaccountable minority,” explains Damien Mahoney.

“The ‘wheel’ in the title is that system — a machine built to keep turning for profit and power, regardless of the cost to people, communities, or the planet.”

The song’s resolution isn’t despair but solidarity: a call for unity at the grassroots level, recognising that the same struggle echoes in other streets, other words, other languages. In resisting the forces intent on dividing us, the lyrics point to real power within the collective — like a seed that can grow into something more balanced, harmonious, and connected.
The song’s urgency isn’t just lyrical — it’s built into the music itself. ‘Brothers At The Wheel’ comes straight out of the traps with an unrelenting groove: strings, bass, and keys locked into a single insistent pattern, guitar answering in the gaps, percussion driving it forward, while the vocal melody cuts its own path in short, sharp phrases that swap between landing on and off the beat.

Past the tempo shift, the song opens into a second movement: a soaring, wordless lament from ethereal folk artist Ruth Blake — beautiful and mournful, yet defiant, a celebration of the human spirit. Underneath, the arrangement builds in waves — guitars layering, cello and violin rising, keys, bass and drums gathering weight — swelling to a crescendo before dissolving.

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A collective of musicians formed in 2007 and led by Damien Mahoney, Caulbearers are known for blending diverse musical styles, including soul, funk, hip-hop, dub, nu jazz, folk and post-punk influences. With contributors hailing from around the UK and Europe, their DIY ethic has coursed through every element of their releases, from design, production, videos and gigs to the recording process itself.

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Sly & The Family Drone – With Love

Posted: 25 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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28th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Time has a habit of evaporating, and life has a tendency to obstruct plans, and so it is that the latest offering from twisted jazz weirdos, with the slightly slushy, smushy loved-up Clintons Cards connotations of its title was intended to land on Valentine’s Day. Oh well, it’s perhaps for the best. I’m picturing a scene where a couple are enjoying a romantic evening in, a candlelit dinner with some nice food, a glass of wine, and after maybe a Rom-Com they’re getting in the mood, but instead of Barry White or something smooth and sultry, one of them says “I know just the thing. There’s this new album by Sly and the Family Drone…” Fuck knows how the scene ends, but it’s certainly not with the blissful soft-focus union of an 80s romance – more likely indescribably carnage, likely unspeakable gore, probably even at least one death.

As ever, most of the titles are random or otherwise inexplicable, although I’m sure they have their reasons, but unusually, the crazy puns and wordplay are largely absent, suggesting perhaps a newfound seriousness – although that seems unlikely. And what of ‘Cloth Control’, the album’s final piece? There’s probably something wrong with me that I’d leap to ‘touching cloth’, but from a band with songs with titles like ‘Handed Cack’ and ‘Sunken Disorderly’

‘Psychic Surgery’ begins innocuously enough, although, being Sly and the Family Drone, it’s more dark atmospheric sax and swampy drone with a reverb-soaked abb and flow, than it is smooth, seductive sax: there’s a noirish hint to the opening minutes, before supernatural skitters begin to creep in at a low level, and the percussion begins to clatter with unsettling irregularity – but increasing urgency – a couple of minutes in. It conveys the sense of a gathering storm, and noise begins to swell… but it passes without breaking. However, any sense of relief is but brief, as things get weirder and more tense with the more electronic ‘The Guts of Albion’. It starts with a murky, muffled-sounding pulsation, and a metallic clatter that calls to mind Neubauten or Test Dept. It’s against this tense backdrop, with heavy hints of another growing tempest, that the sax arrives – and this time, it is actually pretty smooth. I mean, it’s hardly 80s Tina Turner, or Dave Brubeck for that matter, but it’s by no means disagreeable. But as the beats build, and the sonorous drone sustains, so sax becomes more fragmented and the tension grows, and around halfway through the track’s seven and a half minutes, a plateau is attained, and you feel a shift as static and distortion creep in… and finally, it hits like a tidal wave. It’s the perfect release.

As a title, ‘Over the Rainbow’ instantly calls to mind the song from The Wizard of Oz. A ballad, but one flavoured with hope and optimism for another place, a brighter future. But while that motif is actually present, it’s distorted and stretched and played against a backdrop of three and a half minutes of crackling distortion: it’s more like hearing a lullaby or the tinkling of a child’s music box when it appears on the soundtrack to a horror movie. The context shifts, and something light and innocent becomes something dark and ominous. And here, we feel that disconnect, that discomforting disjointedness. Here, it’s quite subtle, but in some respects, that renders it all the more unsettling.

‘In The Oils’ goes for the low, heavy drone – and you feel it in our gut, a slow churn. There are some vocals swimming low in the mix, and there are moments where if feels like listening to Throbbing Gristle where the speaker’s submerged in a domestic aquarium. Plus, the final three minutes bring more drumwork than anyone would ever need in a lifetime. It’s not beats, it’s an explosion. But it feels good, because yes, finally, we get it: a climactic, pummelling blast of tribal drums and a rising drone that feels more like a jet engine warming up for take-off. It’s a climax which is a mind-bending crescendo that feels like the end of days.

The last track, ‘Cloth Control’ is built on a slow, rolling drone and reverberating, echo-swamped sax hum and grinding electronics which lead the listener into an otherworldly space of abstraction and strangeness. And what’s strangest of all is that feels like a different album with every play, and different layers, different aspects, reveal themselves.

Overall, the percussion is much less prominent on With Love than on many previous releases, but the abstract jazz meanderings and overall sense of musical exploration is significantly greater than ever. The only thing that’s really predictable about Sly and the Family Drone is their unpredictability, and With Love ventures into new realms of weirdness.

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Push For Night – That Porous Line

Posted: 13 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 – 7th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Three years on from Lasped Gasps, their collaboration with Jon Mueller, experimental duo Push For Night, consisting of Oliver Chapoy and James Elliott, decided they needed to take a slightly different approach and pull back on the intensity a tad and allow some hints of light into the darkness for the follow-up.

They write in the accompanying notes – as if offering reassurance to anyone who may be concerned that this means that their new album is some kind of breezy pop fun – that That Porous Line ‘is absolutely a collaged, flickering, chaotic, electro-acoustic record. The project is the project after all. Although our tomb-room isn’t fully hermetic (what is?), I think it is a place PFN will always reside. A total escape outside into harshly lit reality without mystery is fairly unappealing, for us anyway. Inside is personal, guarded from too much light; a dark terrarium of weird ghosts and peculiar shadows ripe for conjuring and harnessing in order to make them kick and howl in a way pleasing to us. Or at least be near enough to them to try and hear what they sing. That’s the motive. We decorate the cave, invite the specters to reveal a message, and try to capture something. Inside, cocooned in the semi-dark of our uncommon space, we bang our heads against the act of interpreting these shifty, chimeric, hidden sonic shadows. How big is it in here? How much further down can we go? Did something move in that corner over there? Can it touch us? Can we catch it? That’s where the fear is. That’s where the fun happens. That’s why we listen. That’s why we play.’

Compared to Lasped Gasps, pretty much anything would be lighter and less tense. But the first composition, the nine-and-three quarter-minute ‘A Good Hosing Down’ immediately makes clear the difference, opening with some scratchy strings and chiming notes which ring through a soft static and ambient mist. There’s no real sense of danger or threat here, and you don’t immediately feel as if you’re suffocating. But around seven minutes in, the atmosphere does change, and shit does get weird. Warped, spongy electronics rub against one another as they twist and turn in unpredictable directions.

The underlying structure of ‘Fang Vendor’ is a low, slow beat and swampy bass that’s almost a desert rock reimagining of Suicide, but over these are strains of retro-futurist space-age synths and random glitches and all kinds of sonic incursions that disrupt the flow.

At the centre of the album stand a brace of monolithic works: ‘It’s Sure To Be Dark If You Shut Your Eyes’ and ‘Idler’s Reward’ both pass the eight-minute mark, and place the collage nature of their approach to the fore. On the former, fragments of processed, glitched-out vocal samples and random snippets intersect with a piano motif which fades in and out while flickering beats flit around subtly in the distance, by no means driving or propelling the piece forward, instead adding further distraction to a palette already overloaded and blending to indistinction. Heavy drones, elongated organ sounds, ominous rumbles, and electronic explosions fizz and spark all over. Cymbals crash and tension builds. The latter provides some respite, with a slow, gradual glimmering change of hue accompanied by a sparse pulsation. I start to envisage the deep sea, the gentle, fluid movements of jellyfish… but then there’s a corrupted proggy synth break that utilises an awful farting synth sax sound or something, and further on, there’s some trilling jazz-infused woodwind. No two ways about it: That Porous Line explores experimentalism to the max. Asserting that the duo apply the collaging of materials indiscriminately may sound like a harsh criticism, but I make the observation more in the context of William S. Burroughs’ cut-ups, which brought collage to the page, and, shortly after, audio works, with the intention of creating art which was closer to life, and the way we experience an array of sensory inputs simultaneously. That Porous Line may be a fair bit smoother in its application of the methodological principles than early adopters of sound collaging – from John Cage to Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, but ultimately, this is about applying a technique established a long time ago in art to other media, specifically sound. And the aim is to be disorientating, to overlay fragments to achieve a certain effect.

‘Bait is Lowered’ is a dark, rippling wash of unsettling layers of sound, creeping, thrumming, before sputtering beats burst amidst a wail of siren-like sounds and everything dissolves into a panic-infused morass of sound. In many ways, it’s low-key: there are no brain-shredding walls of white noise here, but nothing about it is right, nothing about it is easy, comfortable.

That Porous Line isn’t one of those albums where you find yourself praying for it to finish, and it doesn’t suck the life out of you – but it’s no party, either. Culminating in the wall of static wash that is the final minute of ‘Turned Slowly and Slowly Turned’, and the somewhat proggy, somewhat Krautrock, somewhat ambient title track which draws the curtain remarkably gently. It’s a journey, and no mistake.

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KiKu – Suzhou / It’s All The Rage (feat. Blixa Bargeld & Black Cracker)

Posted: 12 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Everest Records – 25th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

What we effectively have here is a pair of EPs from Swiss avant-garde act KiKu, led by trumpeter and composer Yannick Barman and drummer and percussionist Cyril Regamey, each one a collaboration – but rather than rendering them separate works, what we get is an album of two distinct halves, conceived, we’re told, as a diptych: ‘two distinct bodies of work held together by a shared musical architecture’, where, ‘on one side, Blixa Bargeld moves through language with precision, restraint and abrasion. On the other, Black Cracker turns language into rhythm, pressure and momentum. Between them, KiKu constructs a dense, unstable framework of trumpet, drums, sampler and electronics’. The result is something akin to a split album, on which the two sides of KiKu are as much a defining feature as their collaborators.

The first of the four works with Bargeld, ‘Orlando’s Victory,’ slides in with some retro-vibing electropop which isn’t a million miles away from late-career Leonard Cohen. Simmering synths strike some dramatic shapes and brooding tones atop a slightly shuffling, trip-hop infused beat. ‘The Number of the Millibeast’ is a slice of dark storytelling, a minimal, almost folky instrumental provides the backing for a half-sung, half spoken narrative, delivered with a theatrical flourish, before ‘Suzhou XX XY YX YY’ continues in the same sonic vein, while the lyrics become more abstract. The instrumentation becomes ever sparser and the lyrical cohesion crumbles with each successive piece, culminating in the flickering pulse and gasping weirdness of ‘Nonsense Rock ‘n’ Roll’, which seems to be a moan about some people playing music in the street in the night which rapidly escalates in divergent directions. The atmosphere is that of late-night, downtown, smoke and rough liquor, Bargeld adopting a persona that’s a bit Tom Waits, a bit Charles Bukowski, but which comes across with a hint of grizzled old man, chewed up and ground down by life, veering erratically between raconteur and curmudgeonly malcontent. ‘Do I like the music? No! Nonsense!”

While it’s Regamey’s percussion which sits to the fore on the Bargeld cuts, it’s Barman’s brass which takes the lead on ‘Bull Whip’, the first of four ‘bull’- themed tracks with Black Cracker. ‘So much road rage / so much road kill’, Black Cracker reflects. His delivery here is soulful yet sad, and the trip-hop vibe of ‘Suzhou’ makes a subtle but distinct switch to hip-hop on ‘It’s All The Rage’. ‘Leaping Bull (Chicago)’ is different again, and something deep within the song – the way the mournful trumpet which echoes out over stuttering beats, and Black Cracker’s grizzled, world-weary vocal, vaguely reminiscent in its patina to Mark Lanegan – tugs at half-forgotten emotions and a sense of memories of the past, hazed by time. And then, halfway through, it switches to a dense, droning slab of dark hip-hop, tense and twitching with angst. Coming out of nowhere, it hits hard, but paves the way for ‘The Running of the Bulls’, where bleak instrumentation and soulful but anguished vocals combine to convey a sense of conflict between the interior and the exterior. ‘Sleeping Bull’ notably is subtitled ‘Woke’ in parenthesis, and its lyrical and sonic latticework makes for a compelling combination while reminding us where the term ‘woke’ actually came from. It’s absurd to think that it’s been adopted as a pejorative term, predominantly by white, right-wing wanksacks. It’s high time to reclaim it, and to not only be woke, but woke and proud.

Decidedly more downtempo and downbeat than ‘Suzhou’, ‘It’s All The Rage’ feels less driven by anger or rage than it conveys an aching sadness, the kind that permeates the body to the core, and makes the limbs and the very heart weigh heavy. As a whole, Suzhou / It’s All The Rage is very much an album of two halves, precisely as intended. And as contrasting as the two sides are, they do, most definitely compliment one another, and, perhaps more importantly, they tap different triggers for response. It’s a multifaceted work, and most certainly an album to chew on.

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Isn’tses – Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole

Posted: 9 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 14th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Working under the Isn’tses moniker, London duo Lisa McKendrick and Tim Drage have spent more than a decade sculpting noise with their own unique slant, evolving not only their own methods and methodologies, but their own circuitry, perhaps most famously the ‘Chernobylizer’, a compact yet devastatingly powerful noise-generating device.

The notes which accompany this, their latest release in a prodigious and ever-expanding body of work, describe Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole as ‘raw and chaotic’, departing from noise alone to deliver a work where ‘a mix of complex beats, textures, unpredictable sounds and frenetic rhythms enter the music, at times with melody and screamy vocals as they push the boundaries of electronic music,’ and finally summarising it as ‘an intense mind-bending spacey journey of wild explosive emotion and sonic textures.’

It contains ten compositions – songs would be a hell of a stretch – the titles of which either seem purposefully incomplete and therefore impenetrable, or otherwise oblique, apart from those which include references to ‘rave’. There is certainly an abundance of heavy-duty pulsating electronic beats and whoops and cheers and yelps crop up with a certain frequency. But if this is to be considered in any way a ‘dance’ album, it’s in the context of late 70s and early 80s electronica – the warped groves and unsettling, detached vocals of Throbbing Gristle circa 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and Chris and Cosey’s Trance. The beats are industrial strength, but shudder and stutter, pulsing through fuzzed-out, distorted synth waves and an endless array of extraneous interjections. Demented shrieks and wailings rise though the thick atmosphere towards the end of the first track, ‘Sol Receiver’, and ‘I Spit on Your Rave’ only amplifies their commitment to melding propulsive beats and throbbing synths and melting them together with a sonic haze and disconcerting sense of psychopathy.

The majority of the pieces evoke a kind of derangement of the senses, repetition and disconcerting discord conjuring a trance-like evocation – but it’s dark and murky, and there’s a thick, squelchy analogue feel which contributes to a sound that feels more like the drug-induced hellish nightmare of a cult than spiritual transcendence. The thumping, clumping stomp or ‘Freekfall’ is nothing short of purgatorial, and you want to escape, but you find your limbs are leaden and limp, and you can’t move as you find yourself staring into a swirling vortex, even when you close your eyes. There is no escape.

‘Undo Fear Biases’ is an unadulterated seething miasma of heavy noise propelled by a palpating myocardial spasm of a beat, while ‘Free The Party’ is centred around an interview or some other monologue about the days of rave culture. In contrast, ‘I’m Not The’ is the soundtrack to the rave where the trip is bad, man. It’s like hearing The Prodigy and some shit shoegaze indie at the same time while your brain is exploding one lobe at a time and the fragments form small vortices as they cascade from your ears. Pleasant, it is not, and the same is true of ‘Do Or Die’, with its sonic allusions to ‘Discipline’ and ‘Whorl of Sound’, and which escalates to something akin to the detonation scenes in Threads. Total sonic annihilation, absolute obliteration. Sitting here with only a beer, my head is beginning to spin and my stomach is slowly starting to churn. This isn’t accidental: Isn’tses understand the impact of frequencies, and the way sounds interact.

Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole is by no means especially harsh as noise goes, but it is relentlessly, unyieldingly hellish in its conception and execution. It’s no criticism when I comment that this is hard work and a difficult album: it’s supposed to be. But why is the churning, shifting, reverberating discord of Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole more challenging than a screeding blast of continuous harsh noise? Everyone’s brain processes things differently, so I can only speak for myself when debating this, but it’s more often than not possible to allow waves of noise to wash over and flow across the mind, to go with the flow, as it were. Dance music is different in many ways, but by the same token, it’s easy to process a steady four-four beat, particularly when it’s the constant, consistent bass thump which defines the majority of dance music – it’s that beat, and that consistent tempo, which makes it music for dancing. You zone out the extranea, and focus on that core element. And that’s the common ground shared by dance and noise when it comes to how we process it – by zooming out and focusing on something within it. This isn’t possible with Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole. Everything about how each piece is assembled is built on continual disruption. There’s nothing to latch on to, there’s nothing consistent. Yes, there are rhythms, but they’re jarring, riven with irregularities, or what the brain will likely perceive as irregularities, and there’s so much else going on, disconnected and disjointed sounds flying in all directions, that any attempt to filter them out and focus is impossible.

Back in the late 70s, much of what Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire were doing was inspired by the tape experiments of William S. Burroughs, and the proposed methods for psychic warfare using sonic weaponry as detailed in Electronic Revolution and The Revised Boy Scout Manual. There’s a palpable sense that with Throwing A Shoe Into A Black Hole, Isn’tses are returning to the origins of industrial music. And what’s remarkable is that even now, it’s absolutely devastating. Complete sensory overload. A derangement of the senses.

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PIG – Dirt Box

Posted: 6 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Lately, PIG’s rate of output has been nothing short of phenomenal. Having released the album Hurt People Hurt in May, they’ve just embarked on a substantial, two-month long tour of North America and Canada, and to coincide with that, they’ve not only got a remix EP, but also Dirt Box, which features four new songs paired with a remix of each, making for another album-length release.

There is, to an extent, a sense that if you’ve been following recent PIG releases, you’ll have a reasonable idea of what to expect. Since resurrecting his porcine project in 2016, Raymond Watts has discovered that the swine yields pearls when plundering a seam which places a uniquely gritty spin on glam ground up with industrial and greased with S&M sleaze and a dash of religion for that extra spice. This isn’t to say that PIG albums have fallen to the formulaic, so much as the fact that they’ve found their groove, and the new material over the last ten years hasn’t so much flowed, as been in full spate. It’s working out petty nicely, too. Despite touring as the support for Nine Inch Nails on the seminal Downward Spiral tour and having albums released on Reznor’s label in the mid-90s, PIG remained eternal outsiders, perhaps being just that bit too weird and eclectic for the prevailing tastes at the time. So while NIN were hailed by the press as being groundbreaking, Watts’ work, which tossed in classical samples, strings and all sorts into the grinding industrial mix, taking cues from mentor and collaborator JG Thirlwell, AKA Foetus, the outsider’s outsider – was simply three steps too far. But now… it seems that having tempered the hybridity and experimentalism a shade, the world has finally come around to PIG, with the likes of Classic Rock and Vive Le Rock raving about Hurt People Hurt. I think it was Genesis P-Orridge who made a comment along the lines that if you stick around long enough, you’ll come to be accepted, and whoever it was, this certainly seems true of PIG, who’ve been going nearly forty years now, with the release of debut single ‘Never for Fun’ and album A Poke in the Eye… With a Sharp Stick being released in 1988.

Lead single and EP opener, ‘An American Ideal of Beauty’ starts out sounding like Watts may have jumped the shark – or the wall of Marshall stacks – and gone straight-up spandex hair metal on us, or perhaps even all-out Kiss, but then the quintessential guitar chug of Jim Davies cuts in and grinds hard and we get to breathe a sigh of relief. And here we go: religious-sounding ululations ring out against a bubbling synth bass. ‘Put up, shut up! Do your duty!’ Watts snarls against a backdrop of chugging rhythm guitars and layer upon layer of detail – and the truth is, this is as boldly extravagant in its sonic span as the most revered work among fans, namely the material which featured on Red, Raw and Sore, Sinsation, and Wrecked, which saw Watts colliding insane ambition with some inspired songwriting. Yep, he’s still got it, and any recognition, however belated, is well-deserved. But does this mean that PIG are mainstream now, and beyond the remit of Aural Aggravation? I don’t think so. They’re not about to be played on the Radio 1 breakfast show, I’ve been a fan since the early 90s, and Raymond Watts will forever be one of my favourite interview subjects when we met in York a few years ago.

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After the rabid industrial glam grind of ‘Your Reptilian Overlord Presents’, ‘Infidel’ slows the pace and finds Watts go Bowie circa Outside with a heavy dose of darkwave in the mix. With a strong hook and a poppy undercurrent, it showcases the range and quality of the songwriting that sets PIG apart from many of their peers – not that they really have any at this point. They’ve diverged a long way from the acts that emerged around the same time on Wax Trax! evolving along a very different trajectory from, say, KMFDM (of whom Watts was a member) or Ministry. ‘Butterfly’ is a churning, mutant beast of a tune, and has the makings of a future classic given time to embed.

The remixes… well, they’re remixes. In their favour, they’re very different from the original versions. The Cyanotic remix of ‘Your Reptilian Overlord Presents’ is up first, and it’s a noisy, fucked-up industrial blast reminiscent of JG Thirlwell’s remixes of NIN. Admittedly, it’s nowhere near a extreme as his contributions on Fixed, but they set new precedents when it came to remixes, and the world has never been the same since. The beat calls to mind early 00s Pitch Shifter, and it makes for an intense four and a half minutes. The surprisingly mellow Combichrist remix of ‘Butterfly’ is the other standout: in stripping the song back and going for a more darkwave backing to Watt’s gnarly vocal, it makes for a radical transformation.

What’s remarkable is that in producing an album a year – give or take – plus EPs of offcuts and remixes in between – the standard of PIG releases hasn’t only been consistent, but continues to reach new heights. Instead of running out of ideas, PIG are surging with creativity and riding the crest of a wave.

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Felix Kubin & Asmus Teitchens – Senderkennungen

Posted: 5 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Auf Abwegen – 3rd September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Is Internet radio really radio? There may still be live broadcasts, but they tend to be then saved and made available for streaming for a period of time, or indefinitely. This has certainly changed the way many of us listen to radio – for those who still do – in the same way streaming has completely changed out TV viewing habits. One obvious benefit of this for viewers / listeners is that there’s no cursing that you’re having to miss something because of another engagement or a clash or other external factor, but one thing that’s most definitely been lost is the way in which TV and radio schedules used to provide social and cultural cohesion. Of course, the near-infinite choice now available is also a factor in this, but even when a series captures mass attention, you simply don’t have a quarter of the nation stopping everything to tune into the same show at the same time. Rarely are schools and workplaces abuzz with the ‘did you see so-and-so last night?’ conversation anymore. There are a few things that still appear to have that pull on terrestrial television – the likes of Love Island and Strictly – but they’re increasingly rare. Even when series are released episodically, many viewers prefer to wait until the whole season is available, and ‘binge’ it. Personally, I don’t get how people have the time to watch six hours or so of a single show in just one weekend, but then, I hardly watch any television – live or streaming – because I’m usually reading or writing and / or listening to music.

It’s not simply nostalgia to reflect on the experience of tuning into John Peel on a night with a blank tape in the machine ready to record whoever was in session or anything else that was potentially interesting, not least of all because I don’t miss the days of tapes getting chewed, intros missed or spoken over, failing to catch the name of the artist, etc.. But it did make for a very different relationship with music, and one which made it more valued. Listening out for and also being introduced to new music in this way – or by being passed a compilation tape done by a friend – meant we were perhaps more invested than being fed endless recommendations selected by algorithms.

It’s in this context that we arrive at Senderkennungen, the first collaboration between Felix Kubin & Asmus Teitchens, of which the latter explains a follows:

‘In order to make radio stations acoustically recognizable they need a so called station ID. This audible signal is synonimous to a visible logo. Both logo and station ID create identities. The German word for station ID is „Senderkennung“. For the album Felix Kubin composed a series of unique Senderkennungen – each ca. 5 seconds long – which have been commissioned by various radio stations, who where in need of a station ID or were looking to relaunch their existing acoustic branding. Most of these miniature compositions are tonal but some verge towards an atonal or noisy character. Time and again Kubin and I discussed the possibility of creating pieces out of these ultra compressed and short Senderkennungen. This was realized for the album in applying the rule of keeping Kubin’s original musical material recognizable while at the same time using any form of manipulation, modification, stretching, shortening or expanding in the development of the new pieces. One limitation: Those new pieces should not be longer than three minutes each.’

The resultant double album contains an immense thirty-nine tracks, although the first nineteen, recorded by Kubin alone, are each around half a minute long. On the vinyl, these are all packed onto side A, meaning the remaining three sides are given to the collaborative pieces, which tend to be around the two and a half minute mark.

The nineteen initial station ID pieces are simple synth pieces, with a single motif – either a chord or two or some chiming notes – repeated a couple of times with some space between. Some sound as if they’ve been lifted from an album of sci-fi sound samples from the 60s and 70s, and occasionally – as in the case of ‘Radio Dipol’ and ‘Radio Schneekoppe’ – segues from old TV shows. Often weird, always unpredictable, Kubin seems to have a real thing for heraldic or faux-medieval-sounding motifs, and these microtunes are varied, as well as alien in that they have no place in the world of Internet radio and Spotify.

The newer, longer pieces, do mark something of a stylistic shift. It perhaps goes without saying that the expanded time markers give more room for sonic exploration which extends beyond simple motifs, but more than that, they feel like more fully realised compositions rather than functional sonic stamps. This is no doubt because that’s the fundamental difference: Kubin’s original commissions were created for a specific – and most utilitarian – purpose, rather than for musical entertainment, while the recent collaborative pieces are designed with being listened to, and perhaps even a sense of audience in mind. ‘Freies Danzig’ may be sparse initially, but builds from a multi-voiced synth piece into a layered work of tonal and textural contrast, while ‘Krimikanal’ leans towards dark ambient territory. ‘Paranorm Radio’ is eerie and squelchy, as good a sonic representation as you’re likely to hear, and there’s an abundance of reverberating, woozy weirdness on offer as the work progresses.

Senderkennungen feels less like an album of two halves, or even of one quarter and three quarters, but two quite separate albums, and the two sets of compositions make for very different listening experiences.

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Superføkk – Superføkk!

Posted: 2 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Fysisk – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The line ‘here we are now, entertain us’ from Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is on which has come to resonate with me more powerfully in recent years than it ever did at the time. It’s a sad fact that – and I like to think of it as being through no fault of my own – my attention span isn’t what it was, and I’m no longer quite as patient as I was. I can still listen to a twenty minute instrumental without any issue, but have to be in the frame of mind to do so. But then, as far back as 2018, Forbes reported that 24.14% of songs were skipped within the first five seconds by users of Spotify, some 29% skip in the first ten, and that increases to a 35.05% chance of a skip within the first 30 seconds. I very much doubt that we’ve grown more patient in the last eight years. An article published earlier this year at Mixreflect detailed the reasons listeners skip, and gave practical solutions like ‘How long should a song intro be on Spotify?’ with advice including ‘The practical target is 8 to 12 seconds for pop, hip-hop, and R&B; up to 20 seconds for rock and indie if something is actively developing throughout.’

It’s twenty-six seconds before the vocals start on the single edit of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. The intro to one of my favourite singles of all time, ‘Alice’ by The Sisters of Mercy occupies the first minute of its three and a half minute duration. And how long is the fade-in on ‘India’, the opening track on the eponymous debut album by The Psychedelic Furs? All very different songs, but each a classic in its own right. Are we really in a place where most people would simply skip before things got going? Instant gratification is one thing, but there is so much to be said for a good build-up.

Thankfully, there are musical fields where a slow-build and an unravelling over time is appreciated, and Superføkk – pitched as ‘a bursting new raptus project that shoots off in inexplicable directions’ which is ‘neither background listening nor pop music’ they’re described as having ‘a foot in many camps’ and ‘aim[ing] to break down established genre conventions and create a sound that is distinctly their own…. drawing inspiration from jazz/noiserock, electronica, and no-wave’. And their debit album contains just three tracks, the shortest of which is six minutes long (there is a four-minute radio edit, but I doubt that it’ll get much airplay on the likes of Radio 1 or Kiss FM, or that it’s going to convince the Spotify casuals to stick around, not that the algorithm is likely to insert it amidst a lengthy cycle of Taylor Swift and Charlie XCX or whatever.

And so it is that ‘Grønn’ provides our introduction to Superføkk, and it may be brief (in comparative terms’, but it packs plenty in. It’s jazz in that cacophonic sense, horns blaring and doing so simultaneously in all directions – not smooth or noodly, but an instant riot – before an extended atmospheric post-rock passage in the middle before everything goes off at once, giving us an expansive post-rock surge topped with the most extravagant sax break. The twelve-minute ‘River Igjennom’ is remarkably light and easy going for the most part, but around three minutes in, the levels of tension explode with frenetic drumming and strains of the most demented fretwork colliding with crazed sax chaos, and it culminates on some kind of huge prog-like grand finale which on the one hand seems entirely incongruous, but on the other, perfectly fitting. I can’t say I’m entirely into it. And then there’s ‘Piggeple’, another twelve minute multi-segmented opus.

Around the mid-point, it drops down to a spare bass, squalling synth, and processed-sounding vocals, and it’s only after this that things really seem to kick off, with a locked-in drum beat, throbbing, insistent bass, and some crunky guitar dischord. Finally, the noise-rock element is freed! And they do go all-out in the final minutes.

When they write that ‘Superføkk is neither background listening nor pop music’, but that it’s ‘immediate and danceable, but also unhinged, hard-boiled, improvised, and idiosyncratic’, they’re mostly accurate. There are some deep bass-driven grooves buried in the mix here, but the chances of me actually dancing it any of it are non-existent.

Recent weeks and months have delivered some truly outstanding – not to mention angry, bleak, nihilistic, and highly political – noise rock releases, perhaps most notably from Chat Pile, Kings Sans, and Remote Viewing, and each has hit hard and resonated in a deep and powerful way. Superføkk (which continually reminds me of Superbock, which is great stuff) lands differently. Not only is it largely instrumental, its noise-rock elements are blended – and at times buried low – amidst an array of experimentalism, and an emphasis on the warped jazz leanings of the composition. But, being as hectic as it is, it’s no less tense that the aforementioned noise-rock works. In fact, there are moments which are little short of dizzying, and you wonder if your brain might burst.

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Ashley Reaks – Post-Hope World

Posted: 29 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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17th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

We’ve spent the last few decades with the present time being described as ‘post-something. Postmodernism made sense in terms of the lineage of artistic phases, coming, as it did, after modernism. But things did get murky , in that postmodernism wasn’t only about art, but culture, society, and the way technology has infiltrated all aspects of these. The arrival of the post-truth age must surely mark one of the most unedifying and shameful in centuries. I qualify this with the observation that we have spent our entire evolution seeking knowledge, enlightenment, progress. And here we are, in the twentieth century, and instead of advancing these things, we have an ultra-rich elite whose sole interest is self-interest, and with a love of money over all else, including knowledge and intellect – in fact, they despise knowledge and intellect, to the extent that they will chop the legs off every advancement we’ve made in the last two hundred years and rewrite history for nothing more than their own fiscal gain. This includes the denial of genocides and climate change. And what’s worse, people fall for this entirely false narrative and endlessly regurgitate the lies, on social media, and in conversation with families and friends.

So where does this all actually bring us – when it’s impossible to believe in anything, or even anyone? Well, Ashley Reaks pretty much captures that all-pervading sense of gloom and despondency with the title of his latest – his twentieth – solo album, Post-Hope World. Because yes, the fact of the mater is that we’re fucked. The question now is, what’s going to finish us first? World war? Climate change? AI going rogue and pushing the button or something? The world is on fire and missiles are poised in all directions, and it’s starting to feel like a race of the worst kind.

But for the everyday person, 2026 carries echoes of 1976 and the early 80s. Economic depravity, social unrest were the conditions which inspired the punk revolution and the rapid emergence of post-punk shortly after. And so it is that with Post-Hope World, Reaks gives us ‘nine songs about outsiders, damaged childhoods, authoritarian fathers, King Babies, conspiracy nuts, religious zealots, sneaky cunts, the end of one world and the start of another’, which are ‘musically rooted in late-70s /early-80s punk — Ruts, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Killing Joke, Dead Kennedys and Nirvana (not that Nirvana were 70s or 80s punk, but were borne of that same frustration at the sameness of cardboard culture in the late 80s and early 90s).

And so it is that Reaks channels that spirit of rebellion and disaffection through the album’s twelve tracks – rather than a spirit of resignation. Lead single ‘In With the Out Crowd’ kicks things off in energetic style, fizzing with energy, its intricately woven blanket of fretwork coupled with layered vocal melodies, before things lunge deeper and darker with the bass-driven title track – although the chorus again provides a powerful injection of melody that’s not a million miles away from The Stranglers, but equally could be seen as owing some small debt to The Adverts.

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It’s inevitable that any Reaks release will venture into dub and / or reggae at some point, and ‘I Wanna Be a Stain on Society’ leans unashamedly into the aforementioned Ruts influence. And that’s to the good: if you’re going to take inspiration from forebears, make it the good ones. The Ruts belonged to the first wave of punk, the class of ’77, but it was clear from the outset that they stood apart from their peers. They remain criminally underrated, but it’s clear why they’re henry Rollins’ favourite band, and anyone familiar with Reaks’ work will have made the connection between their punk / dub crossover and his unique genre hybrid style.

But nothing Reaks does is ever just a gathering together of ideas lifted from his various influences. These are always a conduit to him delivering his own ideas – both lyrical and musical – and in this context, he has long offered a unique voice. Yes, ‘King Baby’ may be an unexpectedly straightforward poppy punk tune, but its three-chord thrashalong and sing-song vocals provide the perfect platform, for his powerhouse takedown of the orange clown currently occupying the Whitehouse.

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In the spirit of punk, Post-Hope World pulls no punches, but does bring some heavy-slugging riffs, with some hefty drumming behind them, ad never more so than on ‘Daddy Was’. It’s The Damned in the 80s that come to mind listening to ‘War On the Home Front’, another high-octane kicker, and the same is also true of the infectiously poppy final song, ‘Sneaky Cunt’. If it was called anything else, and had a different refrain, it would be all over the radio, or would have been or should have been, if radio networks still existed. But true art refuses to censor or self-censor, and that’s as it should be.

Post-Hope World feels like one of Reaks’ more accessible albums, but in terms of messaging, it’s one of his most vital.

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Watch: ‘Anna O’ by Ecce Shnak

Posted: 29 August 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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NYC art-rockers Ecce Shnak is bombastically stoked to present ‘Anna O’, the third single from their much-anticipated full-length record Dandy Variances, slated for release on October 23rd via Records, Man Records. With its ferocious blend of art-rock swagger, grunge grit, and theatrical ambition, ‘Anna O’ offers a raucous first taste of the sonic unruliness in store on the album.

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) and mastered by multi-platinum engineer Kris Crummett.

Formed in 2011 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).

‘Anna O’ is a jump-off-the-couch, roaring-the-hook anthem with big grunge energy. For the first time, Ecce Shnak’s composer-baritone-bassist defers his lyric-writing duties to someone else. His mother, Robin Kneubuhl, wrote a poem months before he and his producer, Jeff Lucci, cooked up a noisy instrumental in March 2019. Roush and Lucci tried the poem out as a lyric, and it fit just right.

Kneubuhl has described her poem as “a lament about tragic contradictions in contemporary feminist thought and practice”. While Kneubuhl wholeheartedly believes in feminism’s ideals, she is concerned that it is misused toward nefarious ends, to the detriment of women and others alike.

“The song’s tragic hero embodies both a noteworthy psychoanalytic patient of Freud’s protégé Josef Breuer and the real-life gun-slinging heroine Annie Oakley. Though Anna is beleaguered by the contradictions Kneubuhl observes in the poem’s story, she ultimately emerges triumphant in the fight against patriarchy by the song’s end,” explains David Roush. “Though we are in the process of firming up the specifics, we can’t wait to play this for the Shnakiverse and music lovers generally on tour this fall!”

The music video is a third collaboration between Ecce Shnak and LA-based film producer DJay Brawner, who also directed the videos for the album’s first two singles, ‘Vincent’ and ‘Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice’. Ecce Shnak’s soprano, Bella Komodromos, plays the role of Anna, who is deeply distressed in captivity, as she seems wrongfully entrapped in an asylum. However, through an act of heroic resistance, she overthrows her abusive doctor and his servile aide. She sets herself free while the mighty rock band Ecce Shnak plays her homage as loudly and wildly as they can.

While Ecce Shnak’s songs draw on a wide array of styles, fans of Nirvana, the Pixies, and the Jesus Lizard will likely latch onto ‘Anna O’ quite tenaciously. With a reputation for astounding performances, Ecce Shnak’s music a volatile yet meticulously crafted ecosystem, where technical precision meets inspired mayhem.

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