Posts Tagged ‘Experimental’

World Sanguine Report – Songs From The Harbour

Posted: 29 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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God Unknown Records – 25th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

A new album by World Sanguine Report is always something to pique the interest. The jazz-tinged avant-rock collective centred around Andrew Plummer, with longtime collaborators Matthew Bourne, Ruth Goller, and Will Glaser, has a knack of producing music that Does Something Different. In a world of mass-produced, off-the-shelf sameness, were even every ‘independent’ or self-professed ‘boutique’ business of any persuasion is simply a carbon copy of all the rest in their striving for Instagram perfection, this is welcome. Very welcome – even in their less accessible moments. Because all this endless sameness is brainrot.

A few years ago now, people started setting up independent burger places as a rebellion against the dominance of McDonalds, etc. But now there’s a hipster place doing smash burgers every few hundred yards, just as there’s an indie coffee place on every corner, and that’s great, but it’s total overkill. How much fucking coffee do we need?

In the early 00s, there was an oversaturation of post-rock. I can’t recall a time when we’ve ever been drowning in jazz-infused avant-rock, and while there are acts which stand by way of comparison when exploring their work, World Sanguine Report stand apart in a very open and sparsely-populated field. And for Songs From The Harbour, they’ve decided they need to do things a bit differently – just in case there was a risk of things getting a bit predictable.

They consider Songs From The Harbour ‘The most direct WSR album to date’. Plummer goes on to recall how ‘We auspiciously recorded the majority of the album aboard the Lightship 95 Studios on the Thames. The ship moved us, the ship moved with us. The Thames lapped at the boat, its tides washing in the Lightship’s echo chamber, housed in the hull of the ship, made its way into the recordings.’

London has a way of infiltrating the psyche and the creative mind of artists, in a way few other places do, other than perhaps New York. I digress. As usual.

‘Lay Down With Me’ makes for an interesting intro track: Less than two minutes log, it’s a low, slow, droner which leaves you pondering ‘where will this go from here?’ The answer is that will go deep, delving down and exploring difficult terrain. ‘She Is All’ is huge in its mere four minutes, with Plummer’s brooding baritone vocals resonating out over the space as reverb covers a crushing embrace. ‘Blue Skin’ finds Plummer brooding and musing, and sitting somewhere between late Leonard Cohen and Jim Morrison, only with a certain feel of despairing.

The same gloom hangs on the remainder of the album, with ‘Starboard’ not only clinging to the nautical theme of the album’s title, but sounding like a slightly inebriated sea funeral. ‘No Kids’ brings a slow, weary-sounding blues feel – and by weary, I mean fagged out, fatigued, it’s a knackered-sounding groan of a song, while the last song, the seven-minute ‘The Catching of the Bull’ rings out in a fuzzy-edged drift of melancholy with an almost sing-song back and forth with the dual vocals. It’s pretty and sad in equal measure, and leads the album out on an extended sonic cascade, like a slow incoming tide.

Songs From The Harbour is more bluesy and folky than jazz, and it’s also slow and weighty in its lugubrious mood. There’s a solidity to it, a coherence, and an assurance which radiates from its carefully-woven tapestry.

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staraya derevnya – Garden window escape

Posted: 23 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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2nd May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

British-Israeli krautfolk collective staraya derevnya are the epitome of obscure and underground, and it’s precisely for releases like Garden window escape that Aural Aggravation exists. Obscure and underground are not criticisms or judgements here: the world of music is broad and exciting because it affords room for all forms of expression. I’m not going to touch on politics or anything else that may impinge on this as an exploration of a creative work, and suffice it to say that I in no way consider any government to be representative of all of the people, especially not the artists, the creatives. staraya derevnya are the kind of artists who exist not only beyond politics, but simply beyond, and Garden window escape is one of those albums which isn’t only bold in its experimental, but

Precisely what ‘Tight-lipped thief’, the album’s first track expresses, is unclear to me. While containing traditional folk elements, the experimental edge is strong, and it twitters and tweaks, like a squeaky toy for a dog or a baby, over an array of clattering percussion, and the cumulative outcome is a wild, murky, jazzy cacophony, whereby the muttered vocals are largely submerged beneath a discordant tumult.

This isn’t only discordant, but it’s also pretty dark: while ‘What I keep in my closet’ brings a sandpapery scrape and a monotonous vocal yelp, and the effect is cumulative, like sandpaper applied to the skin slowly but steadily, becoming increasingly sore over time, before the woozy, warping, dissonant drone of the twelve-minute ‘Half-deceased uncle’ offers up new levels of discomfiture. It’s a gloopy Krauty swell and surge, combining elements of Suicide and Throbbing Gristle with the electronic pulsations of Chris and Cosey’s Trance, along with some low and heavy drone and tooting horns which evoke the spirit of Joujouka, but with a sci-fi swirl a creeping uneasiness and a tension which pulls away as the chords, the limbs, and ultimately the senses. Noises peel and lurch over a loping rhythm which plugs and plods away relentlessly for quite some minutes. There’s an acoustic guitar strumming away amidst the pings and pows and muffled vocal mutterings which melt together in this lo-fi sonic froth which occasionally calls to mind the breathy discordant tension of Xiu Xiu.

‘Cork flight operation’ grumbles and rumbles on, and on, and constructed around a sparse guitar, it’s faintly evocative of later Earth, but instead of rolling beats, there’s an insistent crunching thud like slow-marching feet and there’s rippling synths and slow drones backing the almost melody of the vocals.

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Amidst squealing circuitry and melting synths, ‘Onwards, through the garden window’ emerges, sparse and gloomy. The hushed vocal, thick with a syrupy distortion, is menacing, the instrumentation borders on jazz but with an industrial / dark ambient edge, which is unsettling, uncomfortable, and this is how Garden window escape slowly grows its unsettling sonic tendrils. There is nothing easy or accessible about it, but it is strangely compelling.

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RuinsZu – Jazzisdead

Posted: 21 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Subsound Records – 18th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Twenty-eight years and fourteen albums into their career, Zu continue to confound, and to defy comfortable categorisation. Jazzisdead, their first release in six years, is their third live album. It’s most certainly not, however, a set comprising live renditions of greatest hits and fan favourites, and instead being a collaboration between Zu bassist Massimo Pupillo and saxophonist Luca T. Mai, with drummer Yoshida Tatsuya, founder of the Japanese band Ruins – and as such, the moniker follows in the vein of Zu93 (Zu with David Tibet of Current 93). The result, then, is a crazed hybrid of punk, sludge metal and jazz driven by some frenetic full-kit drumming.

‘Gravestone’ kicks it off with a thunderous riff and it’s a track that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Melvins album, while the frenzied ‘Speedball’ comes on like The Dead Kennedys but with some wild falsetto vocals and a blustering blast of sax. How is this even possible?

There are some more sedate passages, but they seemingly exist as tricks to convince you that they’re capable of delivering something more conventional: the introduction to ‘Asmodeo’ is gentle, atmospheric, and it’s almost soothing – but halfway through, it’s explodes in a riot of honks and parps, drums flying in all directions, and each composition slalems hither and thither: at times they’re tightly together, at others , the three instruments play across one another at wildly divergent angles, as if playing three completely different tunes – and yet somehow there’s a groove happening.

‘La Grande Madre Delle Bestie’ features some eye-popping machine-gun snare work before slithering to a swampy crawl, and the thing about Jazzisdead is that it’s simply impossible to second-guess what’s going to happen next. Repeat listens don’t render the work more familiar, but instead reveal entirely different albums. Elsewhere, ‘Hyderomastgroningen’ is a lumbering beast that brings a grungy swagger that brings hints of the Jesus Lizard. However, it’s perhaps Melt Banana who stand as the closes comparison to this in their crazed and irreverent approach to music-making, and this is nowhere more apparent than on ‘Memories Of Zworrisdeh’, the album’s longest track with a running time of five minutes, and which packs in an album’s worth of ideas into that time. ‘Muro Torto’ is another track of two halves, with long, groaning drones giving way to an almost ska-like bouncing thumpalong. Predictable, this is not.

There are several pieces which are but fragments, intersecting passages a minute or two in duration, and these only add to the experience of an album so packed with changes in tempo and key that it’s most discombobulating. It’s dizzying, jaw-dropping, impossible to keep up with, and the interplay between the players is remarkable. Ultimately, Jazzisdead makes for a hell of a listen – although you might need to lie down for a bit afterwards.

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thisquietarmy – Langue Hybride

Posted: 15 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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18th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Eric Quach has been making music – or perhaps more accurately sculpting sound on the fringes of music – as thisquietarmy for over twenty years, amassing a substantial body of work as a solo artist, with an expanded band lineup, and with various collaborations, the most recent being Cîme, his second with Tom Malmendier

We learn that Langue Hybride was written and arranged in less than 4 weeks during thisquietarmy’s music residency at Centre d’Expérimentation Musical (CEM) in the region of Saguenay—Lac-St-Jean, Québec.

The album consists of five longform tracks, which range from seven and a half to sixteen minutes in duration. It’s the shortest work, ‘Les Rayons Cosmiques’ which lifts the curtain the album, with droning, dolorous strings and distant, delicate percussion conjuring evocative atmospherics, coloured with both a simmering tension and an underlying sense of sadness, which, while hard to define, is palpable. Around the midpoint, that distant percussion builds to stand front and centre and a groove emergers, suddenly and unexpectedly, and the whole feel changes towards something that’s a cinematic hybrid of folk and space rock.

‘Respirer l’instabilité’ crashes into altogether darker territory, a gloomy, doomy trudge of slow, deliberate drumming and a low, grinding bass, over which discordant sonic mayhem plays out. After a lull of calm around the mid-point, a pulsating rhythm merges, and things evolve into a strolling wig-out with some strong jazz-funk leanings and already, a pattern is beginning to emerge in terms of compositional structure, in that around halfway, the trajectory shifts, and the piece ends in a completely different place from the one in which it started.

This is confirmed by the pivot which takes place around five minutes into the third track. Reminiscent of latter-day Swans, ‘Les radicaux libres’ is woozy and weird, expansive and haunting, and begins to pick up pace and volume six minutes in, building to a bursting sustained crescendo that’s both hypnotic and tense, and if ‘Organismes en aérobiose’ starts out soothing, the sound of dappled sun through leaves on a summer’s day, it transitions to a fist-waving stomper and concludes as a skyward-facing surge of sonic exultation, via the detour of a post-rock tidal wave, while fifteen-minute closer ‘Solastalgie impalpable’ rides a wave of thick riffage and strings reminiscent of the long play-out on ‘Layla’ – only this is arguably more successful, as it always felt like an epic and overlong anti-climax in the wake of that guitar-line. True to form, ‘Solastalgie impalpable’ does make a shift, tapering into some elongated swirling drones which reverberate and rattle the ribs and taunt the senses, before suddenly bursting into life with a driving rock riff by way of a climactic finale.

Langue Hybride is a wild ride, and while claims for acts producing ‘genre-defying’ works are not just tedious and predictable but usually completely spurious, there’s no neat way of categorising this schizophrenic hybrid, where each track is a work of two halves, presenting almost oppositional styles and characteristics .But this stylistic polarity makes for exciting – if challenging – listening: given that the only thing that’s predictable is that each piece will fly in a different direction at some point, there’s no way one could call this album predictable. The vision – and its execution – are superb, and with Langue Hybride, thisquietarmy offer something which is quite different, and rather special.

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Kadaitcha – Urban Somnambulistics

Posted: 7 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Ant-Zen – 7th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Kadaitcha’s Urban Somnambulistics was originally released on cassette in 2017, and was lauded for its dark atmospherics and rumbling narrative, spoken in Russian. A lot has happened since then, and the Ukrainian duo have, against all odds, remained active, releasing Tramontane in September 21023, and now a new version of Urban Somnambulistics, with the vocals in English. It’s not only the urban landscape of Ukraine which has changed since the album’s initial release, but the cultural landscape also, and the decision to re-record the lyrics in English was in some ways a reaction to the cultural and political context which has evolved, with Andrii explaining to me that, for him, Russian has become ‘a language of occupancy’.

There had been a shift following the annexation of Crimea in 2024, with some people switching from speaking Russian to Ukrainian, something which became more prevalent following Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

It’s hard to really grasp, from a position of comfort and safety, what it truly means to be an artist in a country which is not only at war, but has now been so for more than three years. The idea of making art under such circumstances seems completely wild, but at the same time, something we’ve learned from the long history of war – and indeed, history as a long thread, riven with tribulation – is that art has always been something we’ve made. It seems as if it’s almost a part of our survival mechanism, and that in difficult times, it’s a compulsion within the human psyche that there’s an absolute necessity to document, to create.

Urban Somnambulistics is dark and intense, and while it’s devoid of beats, it’s far too noisy and gnarly and bears the hallmarks of Throbbing Gristle at their darkest, most experimental best, abrasive, and anything but ‘very friendly’. The vocal on ‘hiding the angel’, while clean but reverby on the original version, is thick with distortion this time around, and significantly darker and more menacing in tone. ‘bushmeat’ is nine minutes of blown-out distortion and fizzing electronics, snapped cables and firing sparks, and it’s not only tense, but intense, not to mention unsettling. It’s a messy noise drift that would work as part of a soundtrack to Threads, a post-apocalyptic drone with the whistle of a bleak wind cutting across a desolate landscape. There is shredding noise, too, metallic devastation: you can almost picture ruined farm buildings hanging on their frames beside cropless fields.

Things really step up with ‘symbiote’, five minutes of oppressively dark industrial grind, before the rather more airy expanse of ‘paninsecta’, a piece that groans and drones, clanks and clatters, cut through with snarls and burrs, distorted vocal utterances just beneath the level of audibility adding an unsettling layer of discomfort. The eleven-minute title track provides the finale, and again, it’s very much in the vein of Throbbing Gristle’s more experimental works – menacing, uncomfortable, unpredictable, and noisy, collaged overlays enmeshing with crunching metal, melting circuitry, harsh drones rising up, a surging sonic tempest.

It’s remarkable that this is an album which was recorded before life in Ukraine changed beyond all recognition, because Urban Somnambulistics appears to convey all the tension and all the devastation of conflict in its presentation of sonic extremities, and its embracing of noise that hits like… like… It has significant impact, and that’s a fact.

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Machine Mafia – Zoned

Posted: 4 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 4th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Machine Mafia may be largely unknown, but the duo’s members have some pedigree, being Adam Stone of Pound Land and Jase Kester (Omnibadger/Omnibael/Don’t Try/Plan Pony), all regulars at Aural Aggravation. Jase joined Pound Land’s ever-shifting lineup as the (then) sixth member in 2023 for a handful of live shows, and contributing additional noise to Mugged (because it needed more noise). Deciding to collaborate in early 2024, they slipped out a couple of self-released EPs, which as the notes which accompany Zoned observe, ‘more or less went under the radar at the time’ – which is why they’re getting a second go here, with Zoned being a compilation of those EPs plus four new tracks, or a new EP packaged with the previous ones, depending on your perspective. The tracks aren’t in their original order of release, and have bene resequenced, presumably for the purpose of creating a flow that’s sonic rather than chronological. And so it is that the album starts with ‘Killzones’, arguably the most overtly Pound land-like track on the album, which eases fans of Pound Land into the world of Machine Mafia nicely, or will otherwise alienate pretty much everyone else, unless they’re on the market for something that sounds like Sleaford Mods in collaboration with PiL while monged on Ketamine.

They describe themselves as ‘a voice/electronics duo in the grand tradition of Suicide, Silver Apples, Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys etc.’ And it is indeed a grand tradition, to which one would reasonably add Sparks, Air, and Erasure, and even the final incarnation of Whitehouse, although what this list ultimately achieves is to demonstrate just how wide-ranging the electronic duo format stretches in terms of style. I very much doubt you’d find these guys donning big hats or flamboyant costumes and kicking out a set of brassy dancefloor-friendly pop bangers, at least on the evidence of the thirteen tracks on offer here. They recount that their first gig was ‘in a small craft ale bar in the Staffordshire town of Leek, receiving a ban for high decibel levels and foul language’. This sets the bar of expectation, and in this context, Zoned does not disappoint.

As I suggested in my write-up of the Killzones EP, the electronic duo they share the most common ground with is Cabaret Voltaire in their early years, mashing up samples and noise in a Burroughsian cut-up style, and churning out gnarly noise that sits between Suicide and Throbbing Gristle. This is particularly true of the collage chaos of ‘Lecture 0.3B’,

But then, ‘F.O.S’, is a blast of uptempo, lo-fi, bass driven drum-machine propelled hardcore punk strewn with feedback and snarling aggression, and ‘Where’s The Money Gone?’, from the Money Gone EP is a filthy racket with massive blasting beats which lands in the space between The Fall and Big Black, powering away at a motorik groove for the best part of six minutes while Stone hollers thickly and ever-more desperately ‘where’s the money gone?’ Well, we know it’s not gone into public services, but there some mega-rich cunts swanning around and jetting into space. And has anyone seen Michelle Mone since she sailed off on her multi-million quid yacht?

‘England’, originally released on Industrial Coast’s ‘Rock Against Racism’ compilation is very Throbbing Gristle, in the (pulsating) vein of ‘Very Friendly’.

Of the four new cuts, ‘Crabclaw’ invites comparisons to Selfish Cunt’s ‘Britain is Shit’, and this may not be entirely accidental, a stinking snarling assault on culture and the senses, with an overloading gritty bass and vitriolic vocals ranting in a mess of distortion and reverb over the murky morass of a musical backing. It’s the sound of frustration, it’s the sound of anger mashed together with despair. ‘Jackpot’, meanwhile, is like John Cooper Clarke spouting over a segment of Metal Machine Music. All the while, a drum machine and throbbing bass pulse away relentlessly: this is Sleaford Mods for real punks. ‘Human Like’ revisits the dubby tendencies first explored with ‘Killzones’, and it’s a dark, sprawling cavernous hell of reverb atop an organ-shaking bass, again bringing together PiL (think ‘Theme’) and Throbbing Gristle (think ‘What a Day’). It’s meaty, and then some, and crunches and grinds away for a full six echo-soaked minutes. Closing with the eight-and-a-half-minute megalith that is ‘Outside My House’, they go full Whitehouse, with a booming bass that’s positively weapons-grade density, over which Stone delivers a rabid, drawling rant from the perspective of a crabby right-wing old-timer while electronic extranea bubble and eddy around. It’s utterly brutal, and completely uncomfortable, and this is the brilliance of Machine Mafia. Gnarly, nasty, uncompromising, Zoned is not friendly, and it will leave you feeling drained, harrowed, punished. Mission accomplished. You’re not supposed to like this.

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Ledley – Ledley

Posted: 3 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Impossible Ark Records – 4th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

The jazzosphere has a way of throwing surprises, and in the most unexpected ways. Ledley’s eponymous debut, which sees acclaimed electroacoustic improvisational musicians Raph Clarkson (trombone, FX), Chris Williams (saxophone, FX) and Riaan Vosloo (electronics, post-production), is – let me check this – yes, a tribute to legendary Spurs footballer, Ledley King. You didn’t see that one coming, did you?

My knowledge of football is scant: I was born in Lincoln and so feel obliged to follow The Imps – by which I mean check on the scores on the BBC when I remember, and I sometimes watch England international, when I have time and can bear to – but clearly, this does not make me a football fan. But I do have a deep interest in music that’s out of the ordinary, the weirder the better. And this is pretty weird.

Ledley is pitched as ‘is a celebration of improvisation, friendship, and shared passions, blending music and sport into an exploration of community, belonging, and resilience – one of the most extraordinary tributes ever paid to a footballer.’

Although split into eleven tracks digitally, the album is essentially two longform compositions, corresponding with the two sides of the vinyl release, which contain loosely-defined segments, or passages, which flow into one another. Some of these are dramatic, film-score like, with the trappings of bold orchestral bursts, only without the full spectrum of instruments, lending these pieces the feel of somewhat stunted reimaginings of John Williams scores. But then there are the meandering straight-up jazz meanderings, trilling, tooting woodwind, and moments that sound more like some kind of noir soundtrack excerpt – you can envisage some old black and white movie version of something by Raymond Chandler – and then the more extravagant, indulgent moments, which are, it must be stressed, brief and infrequent, evoke the spirit of Kerouac and The Beats. The association with The Beat Generation is something I’ll park here, as The Beats were as stylistically diverse in their writing as The Romantics, and there was nothing jazz about Burroughs. I digress, but to do so feels appropriate: while it does have a musical flow to it Ledley is not a narrative album, and it in no way presents a sense of sequentiality.

The second half is most definitely more sedate, and more prone to abstract wanderings, as the instruments criss-cross, snake, and interweave through and around one another, before tapering down into spacious, semi-ambient, almost drone-line expanses which yawn and stretch in one direction and swoon and glide in the other. Towards the end, it feels as if the batteries are slowly winding down to a low drone. There are bird-like squawks and slow, heraldic horns ringing out, but it’s more the sound of mournful defeat than triumph and celebration. Perhaps this is intentional, and perhaps an understanding of the context is beneficial here Or maybe not: hearing the final tapering tones fade over the horizon, Ledley could as easily be a hymnal to seabirds as it is to a football player, and the beauty of music, particularly instrumental works, is that regardless of their intent, there is ultimately a sense of interpretation which lies with the receiver. Personal experiences, life in the moment, these things come to weigh on how we receive and interpret, and determine not only pour reaction and response but the relationship we have with a given work of art.

Having a knowledge of Ledley King and his career may, or may not, be beneficial when it comes to this album. Sonically, it’s interesting, it slides between moods and spaces, pulling the listener along through them. No naff sporting analogy is required in creating a punchline for this one: it’s simply intriguing, and the musicianship is of an undeniable quality.

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Mars, and Beyond: Mark Cunningham interviewed by John Wisniewski

Posted: 30 March 2025 in Interviews
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Interview: John Wisniewski

Introduction: Christopher Nosnibor

It’s fair to say that Mars was a band ahead of its time. Formed in 1975, they were early to land on the No Wave noise-rock scene, and they’d called it a day before the scene really broke, and with only a handful of performances under their belts.

The history goes that Mars played live about two dozen times, and never ventured beyond Manhattan. Their first show was at CBGB’s in January 1977; their last one was at Max’s Kansas City on December 10, 1978. Their sole release during their brief existence was a seven inch single, plus a track on the influential No Wave New York compilation, produced by Brian Eno, although a live EP would emerge shortly after they called it a day, and their entire recorded output – which totalled half an hour’s music – would be released a couple of times in the mid ‘80s and in the ‘00s.

As is often the case, the legacy and influence far exceeds their brief history and scant catalogue, no doubt enhanced by the fact they never reformed. However, while most of the band’s members have disappeared from view, and both co-founder Nancy Arlen (drums) and vocalist Sumner Crane died in the early 2000s, since the end of Mars, bassist Mark Cunningham has remained active, and very much forward-facing in his musical output, most recently with solo albums Odd Songs (2020) and Blue Mystery (2023)

John Wisniewski caught up with Mark Cunningham to ask about Mars and their legacy, his recent releases, and plans for the future.

JW for AA: How did you get involved with music, Mark?

I’ve been playing since I was a kid. my uncle was a jazz drummer and he hooked me up with my first horn, and I played in the school band growing up. and as a teen I picked up guitar and bass to play in cover bands, but when I learned to really play and improvise was at college, surrounded by likeminded rock, free jazz and acid freaks studying avant-garde movements and playing all the time.

Any favorite music artists?

Lots, I grew up in the 60s, out in Jersey, and started going to shows at the Fillmore East in 68. saw a lot of the greats there, as well as little known strange psychedelic bands. I ate it all up, not discriminating too much, but of course Hendrix, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Zeppelin and a few others were extra special, and Electric Miles, who I first saw in 69 and showed me the future. Later at college I discovered the Velvets, Eno, Bowie and all the free jazz greats. I still followed Miles though.

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When did you join MARS, and what was the idea for how MARS should sound? Did you improvise?

Mars came together in late 75, a chance meeting that led to a year of working out our own way of expression before playing shows. At first we took the Velvets as a model, even jammed on some of their songs, and from there started making our own, somewhat similar frameworks and improvising on them. But we weren’t free improv. The character of the song and lyrics always came first. This has stayed with me through all my bands, although i do play 100% free in some duos and trios dedicated to that.

Why did you want to form your own record labels?

The first and most serious venture was Hyrax Records, which I managed to make happen in 1980 to release the John Gavanti LP and a Don King cassette. In those days it was possible to get distribution in the States and we sold quite well. But it still became a hassle and an expense to keep it going. DIY labels started getting popular in the 80s, when cassette recording and reproduction got cheap and easy. And in the 90s with CDRs. So I did some of that, especially with our duo Convolution, with my partner Silvia Mestres. We put out all our albums on CDR. Of course streaming killed that off completely. Nowadays all you have to do is put it out on Bandcamp and / or use the streaming platforms, which suck but do get it out there. So I do that with the more experimental stuff which we record on the cheap.

What were audience reactions to the music of Mars?

We had a pretty loyal and very vocal fan base in the city, which you can hear on some of the live stuff I’ve curated through feeding tube records and bandcamp. We always managed to draw enough of a crowd to keep things moving, even playing once or twice a month in the same clubs, which we did in Manhattan for two years, in *77 and *78. Unfortunately we never made it out of the city. Sometimes we got on bills with some more conventional bands and a mixed crowd, which provoked some interesting reactions. When we opened for Patti Smith at CBGB Theater, we had screamers both for and against, it was great!! We certainly were extreme, but never for its own sake, for us it was always about the music.

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What did you think of the No Wave New York scene?

That’s quite a question. At the time it was mainly a lot of work and fun. all of those bands worked hard to make their own music and sound. Mars rehearsed at least 5 days a week and sometime more. Something that could never happen later, when life became too expensive and distracted. So we were really a product of a time and place very special, with a lot of music and art movements sharing the same neighborhoods. It was a 70s phenomenon, which continued into the 80s but wasn’t the same as everything else was changing too quickly. It was over for us by the mid 80s, when I was working with my band Don King and started going to Europe, and in 91 I moved to Barcelona. Another thing altogether is the echo it’s had over the years, which keeps expanding, especially for Mars.

What was it like working with Brian Eno?

We got on really well. in fact we’d become quite good friends in those months he was in the city, I was living with Arto Lindsay at the time and he used to come over and listen to our records, as we had a lot of African and Asian stuff. So actually working with him was great though it was only a couple days, one for recording and the other for mixing. Recording he just let us get on with it, but then he was really hands on with the mixing, and had great ideas.

Tell us about your latest Blue Mystery album, and Odd Songs, your 2020 release? What was it like recording these albums?

Odd Songs, which came first, was half collaborations which I’d recorded over the previous few years and the other half playing everything myself, and on Blue Mystery I got deeper into that, plus it was during the Covid lockdowns, so it was really easy to spend all day working at home. Now I’m working on the third volume, Asombra7, which I’m recording at a rehearsal space I have in an arts factory in Barcelona, and some of the other residents are helping me out. Promising stuff, which I hope to finish by end of summer or so. I like taking my time and going as deep as I can, songwise and soundwise.

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Any future plans and projects?

I have lots of other projects already, some full time like my band Blood Quartet. which is marking 10 years now, others occasional, duos and trios with improvisers mostly. I have two recent LPs out, one, Infini with Marc Hurtado, formerly of the French industrial band Etant Donnes, the other Next, also a duo, with Jørgen Teller, a Danish experimental guitarist.

Cromwell Ate A Twix Here / Yol – Fragile / Glassed Ascension

Posted: 27 March 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Strategic Tape Reserve – 21st March 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s certainly been a while since we last heard from Justin Watson, the epically-bearded being who formerly ran the Front & Follow label, but here he has temporarily resurfaced as one half of the absurdly-monikered Cromwell Ate A Twix Here on a split release with underground noise legend YOL, released by Spanish cassette label Strategic Tape Reserve. As such, even before hearing a sound, one can predict that this is destined to be unpopular – by which I mean an ultra-cult release for a microniche audience – or, put simply, the noise scene.

The bio for Cromwell Ate A Twix Here tells us more about what they aren’t than what they are, hammering home that ‘Justin ran Front & Follow and definitely doesn’t now. It’s over. He’s half of MORE REALISTIC GOALS, a third of The Incidental Crack and a quarter of The Watson Marriage Experiment (2006-)’. So in the wake of its brief revival for the charity fundraising Rental Yields series of complications not so long ago, we can be confident that the lid is now firmly nailed onto the coffin of F&F and even Dracula wouldn’t resurrect the label’s activity. But this is how it tends to be with those of a creative bent. They simply can’t not do anything forever. It’s not even an itch: it’s a compulsion. ‘Fragile’ occupies side one, and is eighteen minutes of expansive, filmic music, constructed around quavering, wavering drones, sparse pseudo-strings and soft, supple abstractions by way of an accompaniment to a somewhat surreal spoken-word narrative about… what is it about, exactly? Death, yes, but also a new relationship, interaction… The music fades into the background during the narrative, rising to the fore between passages. David Yates’ delivery is natural, down to earth, friendly, even, and is fitting for a tale which is largely given to quite mundane details before shit gets weird at the end. The audio begins to grow more unsettling, a shade disturbing around the seven-minute mark, and things only get darker thereafter.

And then there is eighteen minutes of Yol, which is pure derangement. Anyone acquainted with his work will be expecting nothing less. It begins with him stuttering and choking in convulsions over a mess of noise about ‘wheel of life, wheel of cheese’, and he yelps and roars, sounding as if he’s utterly possessed or dying, spasmodic ranting overloading over a horrific mesh of feedback and sonically rough terrain. You can practically hear your speakers wilting as the blasts of distortion scratch and scrape and glitch and burst and grind and buzz like so much sputtering, sparking, damaged circuitry. The whole thing is deranged, although it’s no less deranged than Liz Truss’ famous proclamations about cheese or any statement issued by The Whitehouse in recent weeks. He knows this, of course: however insane his work sounds, there are political undercurrents and a certain knowingness to his brand of frenzied avant-gardism, as evidenced on viral cats and dogs (2021).

The fact that this is just short of twenty minutes of a man yelping and barking and seemingly losing the plot before a microphone, and yet making more sense than five minutes spent perusing the news or social media tells us where we are in the world right now.

The two sides of this split release may be very different, but the contrasts are complimentary, and in combination, offer a welcome excursion beyond the everyday madness we’re living through, offering insights into rather more specialist madness instead. But this is artful madness, or good mad, or something. These guys won’t wreck the economy, invade or annexe your country, or fuck you over. They’ll just be over there making some weird noise. I’ll be over there with them, and you’re more than welcome to join us.

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Aidan Baker – & You Still Fall In

Posted: 26 March 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Gizeh Records – 28th March 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

I sometimes wonder if Aidan Baker has secretly mastered cloning, since he has seemingly pursued multiple careers simultaneously. He’s been active for some time, it’s true, but even the compressed version of his bio makes for quite the read:

As a member of Nadja, Hypnodrone Ensemble, Noplace Trio, Tavare and a host of other projects and solo endeavours, Baker’s prolific output remains vital as he continues to explore a vast terrain of sounds and genres across a 30 year musical career.

His latest work, & You Still Fall In, we learn, was recorded at Baker’s home studio in Berlin, and ‘hints at the mood and songcraft of the likes of Midwife, Hood, Stina Nordenstam and Movietone. The album is a compelling listen, stripped down to mostly electric guitar and vocals and moving at a distinctly glacial pace. The intimacy of the hushed tones and muted textures lean into a dark, hypnotic and gentle stillness that lingers in the air…’

That fact that this is a truly solo work, with Baker taking care of guitar, bass, drum machine, and vocals is perhaps key to its low-key, introspective atmosphere. Intimate is the word: on the title track which raises the curtain on this soporific sequence of compositions, the acoustic guitar strum hovers to a drone, wavering in volume, seeming to drift, seeming to warp, to fade, you can hear fingertips swiping on strings between frets, and Baker’s vocal is but a mumble; you hear sound, but the words don’t fall free to clarity.

‘Drowning Not Waving’ blends rumbling bass distortions with glitching drum machine and an air of uneasiness: the experience is every inch the struggle the title suggests. And that title… the phrase may have become a popular adaptation of the line from Stevie Smith’s 1957 poem and a metaphor for depression, but to momentarily reflect on the actuality of this all-too -common experience is to recognise the extent to which we, as a society, still – STILL – fail to identify a person in crisis. ‘Cheer up, it might never happen’, we hear often. But it does happen. Even well-meaning friends will diminish the spasms of crisis with ‘well, my life’s shit or probably worse, actually’ type responses. And each such response is like a hand on the head, pushing down. And yes, I speak from experience, and not so long ago I was out for a walk in an attempt to find some tranquillity, some headspace, some time with my thoughts. A dog, off lead, ran up to me and began barking and hassling. Its owners called it back and then groused at me for my failure to smile and thank them. “Ooh, someone’s lost their smile,” the guy said loudly, purposefully so that I could hear. No fucking shit. But you know nothing about my life. My wife died recently and I am not in the mood for being hassled by dogs, and I owe you twats nothing, least of all a smile. I continued on my way without a word, let alone a smile, and there was no point in waving. I was simply drowning. The moral? People may have stuff going on you know nothing about, so don’t be a twat. And anger is only a few degrees along from depression. Music has a boundless capacity to inspire the most unexpected responses.

Things stray into even more minimal, lo-fi territory with ‘You Say You Can See Inside Me’, which captures the spirit of Silver Jews and the soul of some of Michael Gira’s solo recordings. It’s muffled, droning, barely there, even. And yet, somehow, its sparsity accentuates its emotional intensity. There’s almost a confessional feel to this, but it’s a confession so mumbled, either through shame, embarrassment, or plain unwillingness.

On the surface, & You Still Fall In is a gentle work, defined by mellow, picked acoustic guitar and vocals so chilled as to be barely awake – but everything lies beneath the surface. And the surface isn’t as tranquil as all that: ‘When The Waves They Parted’ may be defined by a rippling surge but there’s discomfort beneath the ebb, and the reverb-soaked crunch of ‘Still Cold from the Rain’ is bleak and lugubrious.

Although presented as two separate pieces, ‘Thin Film Interface’ is a continuous thirteen-minute expanse of murky ambience with lead guitar work which soars and echoes over a shifting sonic mist. It hovers in the background, yet simultaneously alters the texture and colour of the air, relaxing but with an unresolved tension beneath.

& You Still Fall In is a difficult album to place – but why should that be necessity? A lot happens, an at the same time, it doesn’t. & You Still Fall In is sparse, drifting between acoustic and altogether simpler acoustic instrumentation. But instead of dissecting the details or reasoning, I’m going to point to the album, and simply say ‘listen to this’. Because it’s simply incredible.

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