Posts Tagged ‘Experimental’

Microtub – Thin Peaks

Posted: 14 September 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Thanatosis Produktion – 30th August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Reconnecting with Microtub via their new album takes me back: a year or two into doing this reviewing thing, I began to find myself with access to a whole array of experimental music the likes of which I never knew existed, as released on labels like Editions Mego and Room40. Revelation is an understatement. It was the opening of the doors to a whole new world – a world where albums would contain a single track of ten to twenty minutes on each side, or otherwise a raft off really short snippets of what sounded like digital code, or… well, anything.

I thought I’d heard it all, having explored Metal Machine Music and picked up a stack of grindcore releases where a 7” EP packed in anything up to a dozen tracks and still had more playoff than a three-minute pop single. Pah. I knew nothing, and my tastes were so, so narrow.

Suddenly, my eyes were opened to new vistas, and I even learned that I didn’t actually hate all things jazz, and I lapped up all of these crazily inventive exploratory releases. Among them, Microtub stood out because I was simply blown away – and also somewhat amused – by the very idea of a microtonal tuba. What even is that? What does it look like, and who came up with the idea? And how on earth were there three players off this instrument who managed to find one another and come together to form a creative unit?

I still don’t have all of the answers to these questions, but Thin Peaks is the sixth album by Robin Hayward (UK/DE), Peder Simonsen (NO), and Martin Taxt (NO), and it contains five pieces: the four comparatively short compositions, ‘Andersabo’ (parts 1-4), which occupy side A, and the seventeen-minute title track which fills side B.

As ever with such works, the process is both interesting and integral when it comes to appreciating its evolution and final emergence, as well as the timespan from conception to release:

‘Initially developed during an artist residency in Andersabo, Sweden, the two pieces ‘Andersabo’ and ‘Thin Peaks’ underwent several adaptations before being recorded in 2022. The pieces draw on the acoustic phenomena of half-valve combinations, creating distinctive timbres and harmonic spectra based on the unique half-valve signature of each tuba. Whilst ‘Thin Peaks’ hockets between the pitches arising from a single half-valve combination, each of the four movements of ‘Andersabo’ results from a different half-valve combination, sometimes resulting in surprisingly consonant harmonies.’

A fair bit of this sounds quite technical to me, but technical knowledge and ability isn’t essential when it comes to listening – it may help, but I suspect many ‘technical’ musicians would find the way in which they use their extreme technical skills to create sound which doesn’t necessarily confirm to many people’s concept of ‘music’. The pieces on Thin Peaks are droney, often a shade atonal, a little dissonant, and almost completely without structure when compared to either conventionally-shaped rock, pop, etc., or even jazz or classical. There are no crescendos, no hooks, no… no nothing to grab a hold into. It’s a whole other realm when it comes to conceptions of what constitutes music. It isn’t an easy in. Abstraction is simply not part of musical convention or what our brains are generally attenuated to process. But if you can open your ears and enter this other sonic realm, it can be enriching in the most unexpected of ways.

Thin Peaks is intriguing, its sparse arrangements and contrasting tones acting simultaneously like a scarification and soothing of the faculties. Breathe slow, and go with the flow…

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PIG – Feast of Agony

Posted: 14 September 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 27th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Hot on the sweaty trotters of Red Room, released in May, the Lord of Lard, Raymond Watts has managed to mine fresh truffles for a whole new EP ahead of embarking on an extensive tour of the US, which so happens to take its name from the first track on said EP, ‘Heroin for the Damned’. The fact that this isn’t a set of remixes

The title alone is glorious, and you can almost feel the relish with which Watts conjured up the phrase, wicked, perverse, dark, and equally ostentatious and grand, evoking an image within the realms of The Last Supper but with an S&M slant as the participants dine on an orgy of gore… or something. When it comes to relishing the richness of language and delighting in deliciously devilish wordplay and alliteration, sifting through PIG’s catalogue for titles and lyrics (there’s a suitably extravagant book containing all of them just out) provides abundant evidence that Watts really gets kicks from it.

It’s also clear he is absolutely loving the whole self-styled industrial rock-god posturing, hamming it up in leather and mesh, and simply the whole music-making thing, perhaps more than at any point in his career. Instead of being awkward about self-promotion, he’s fully embracing its absurdity, and in a genre that’s largely dominated by serious, angry people, PIG stand out as being rather less po-faced, and altogether more fun than your average industrial act. I’m not sure I’ve seen Al Jourgensen or Trent Reznor posting pics on Facebook hugging their pooches.

That doesn’t mean that the music is any less serious. Watts and his various collaborators really know how to bring a crunching riff and a stonking beat, and, occasionally, having taken early cues from the legendary JG Thirlwell, spin in some bombastic strings and grand orchestral strikes. And Feast of Agony is dark, heavy, intense, and marks a strong return to the more experimental 90s work following a pursuit of an altogether glammier sound of late.

‘Heroin for the Damned’ – the opium of the people for the 21st Century, perhaps – starts low, slow, and sinister, Watts’ vocal a croak amidst a dank electronic swamp before a steady riff, laden with grit, grinds in, rubbing hard against a lowdown pulsating synth groove. It’s a bit NIN circa The Downward Spiral, but equally it’s quintessentially 90s PIG, and lands a monster chorus that combines the raging roar of Sinsation and the grainy grooves of Praise the Lard with gushing gospel grandeur – something that really dominates the final track, the Jim Davies remix of ‘Baptise, Bless, Bleed.’ Piano and bold orchestral sweeps meld with stark synths and crunching guitars on ‘Fallout’, before Watts comes on like Bowie on the slow-paced anthemic ‘Comedown’, while the verses of ‘Hand of Mercy’ owe more to Prince.

It’s a PIG release and therefore it’s a pure [serial killer] thriller, alright – but even within the now-expansive catalogue, Feast of Agony is a strong entry.

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Procter // Poulsen – PP8

Posted: 9 September 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Dret Skivor – 6th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Traditions are important: they’re grounding, they give us a sense of comfort and safety in their familiarity. In times of tumult, of confusion, during difficult times, they offer a raft to cling to in a sea of unrest. I’m not referring solely or specifically to old traditions, either, especially not the ones where Christianity has usurped pagan tradition, only for these traditions to in turn be usurped by the mechanisms of corporate capitalism. Christmas is the kind of tradition that should be tossed on the fire. What we need is to establish new traditions, traditions which are personal and meaningful – anniversary gigs or meet-ups, for example.

On a personal level myself, since one of the last holidays we made as a family saw us meet my late wife’s step-mum on Lindisfarne on August bank holiday week, and we had been due to stay there in accommodation with a view of the castle, we instead scattered some of her ashes with that view of the castle, and visit the spot around the same time each year before going to the pub we lunched in on that last visit. On the one hand it’s sad, but in such a magnificent and historically-rich location (we got married in Northumberland, and had Lindisfarne fruit wines obligingly delivered directly to the venue across the causeway), this new tradition of ours feels right, and in many ways positive.

The same is true – albeit in a different way, of course – of the traditional reconvening of the pairing of Procter and Poulsen. Something was written about it once, I seem to recall. Two friends, who see one another infrequently, but always make some noise together, and release the results, at some point or another. This is the kind of tradition which possesses real meaning, a symbol of connection. In a way, whatever music the session yields is irrelevant: this is about ritual, and interpersonal resonance.

As the title suggests, this is their eighth collaborative release, and contains two longform tracks, each occupying a full side of a C40 cassette, this time released in a limited edition of six.

There’s no way you’d describe the devastating soundtrack to nuclear annihilation that is ‘A’ as ambient: distorted, mangled vocals crackle out from the howling wails of feedback torn from shredded circuitry in a heavy gale which carries pure devastation. Once that raging storm dissipates, we’re still left with the sonic equivalent of a nuclear winter, the sounds drifting over shattered remains, fragments of things which existed before. Glitching beats fizz out in crackling walls of noise and fizzing distortion. Bleeps and wibbles pop and buzz and there are moments where it’s possible to catch a short breath. Sometimes it’s almost dubby, but it’s always a desert. It’s always desolate. The atmosphere is always thick, uninhabitable.

‘B’ is dronier, buzzier, more overtly electronic – but more like a giant bee hovering in suspension – sedate, bur trapped. As the track progresses – at least in terms of duration – it seems to degenerate, forms disintegrating, fracturing, crumbling, degrading. It’s not done elegantly, aesthetically, but presents as a greyening mess of murk and twisted wires, indistinct moans and Triffid-like clicks and clacks. It’s oppressive, and feels like crawling through the soundtrack to being a survivor of the apocalypse in a bleak 80s dystopian series.

Nothing is comfortable. Nothing is right. Tension and darkness are all around: every inch of this experience is eerie, uncomfortable. You don’t want to be here – but there is no escape. This is sheer horror, without words.

The shuffle into some sort of 80s industrial experimentation with a scratching guitar and stammering heartbeat percussion which soon slips into fibrillation, which comes to pass close to the end, only renders the experience all the stranger, before birdsong and groans hint that perhaps, this is it – you’re here, you’re dead. Perhaps we are all dead already, and life is an illusion. Perhaps this would be for the best.

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Hanrath & Fialkiewicz – LOVE

Posted: 30 August 2024 in Albums
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Petroglyph Music – 25th August 2024

Christopher Nisnibor

Deborah Fialkiewicz, who I first encountered performing as one half of her noisy dark ambient duo SPORE, is one busy and highly prolific creator, who not only manages to whip musical work spanning contemporary classical to ambience from out of the air at a remarkable pace, but clearly thrives on collaboration. This latest one, with German sound sculptor Wilfried Hanrath, is a further example of the way in which the coming together of artists with slightly different background and musical bents can make for unexpected – and brilliant – results.

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘the album starts with Deborah’s wonderful piece ‘Love’ and ends with Wilfried’s interpretation of it – ‘Love in other words’… The eight tracks in-between are based on noisy, dark ambient drones Deborah provided. Wilfried, inspired by a short trip to the sea, added to these by playing his synthesizer in the beautiful seaside resort. The result is a melange that combines the influences that both bring into this project to something larger than its components.’

Having recently returned from a week by the sea – on the Cornish coast – I can certainly vouch for the replenishing, refreshing, and inspirational qualities of the sea. Living inland and in climes which are perpetually humid and polluted, one immediately notices the difference in air quality when in the presence of a sea breeze.

As collaborations go, this is a particularly interesting one, not only musically as of and in itself, but it’s difficult to separate out what each of the contributors has brought here.

Fialkiewicz’ opening composition is gentle, combining tweaks, tweets, and twitters over the picked strings of a chamber orchestra of sorts, and a billowing wind which fills the background. It’s simultaneously sedate and mournful, and ends feeling unresolved.

Fialkiewicz’ capacity for conjuring dark drones is well-documented, primarily with her work as one half of Spore, but just how much manipulation they’ve been subjected to at the hand of Hanrath – which should really be an album title for a future collaborative / remix work of his – is impossible to determine. This is how collaborations should be, really: the aim should be to achieve a blend, to, and to conjure something which is neither one party nor the other. LOVE fits this criteria: it’s not about who does what, specifically, but the overall listening experience being something different, which is neither one artist or the other, but what they create in combination.

Following ‘Love’, ‘Oneness’ marks a complete shift in every way: it’s a bubbling quickfire electro piece that pretty much brings Kraftwerk together with Gershon Kingsley’s ‘Popcorn’. This numerical sequence of pieces, which runs from ‘Oneness’ to ‘Eigthness’ is an evolutionary, exploratory series, the majority of which are an expansive seven or eight minutes in duration and really mine a deep seam of bubbling, squelchy electronica which becomes increasingly engrossed in the quite granular details of the interplay and interaction between tone and texture, but without venturing fully into the dots-in-front-of-the-eyes details of the truly microtonal.

Slow winds and wide washes define the soundscapes offered here, and I suspect these are the foundations Fialkiewicz provided before Hanrath began to add his spin to them, with stabbing strikes and all kinds of digressions and generally unpredictable incidents which change both the course and the mood of the pieces.

‘Threeness’ is a particularly layered piece, ominous and brooding at first and subsequently, but interrupted by wibbling bleeps, a hint of an R2D2 seeking escape from the haunting confines of the track’s opening. Nothing is quite as it seems, and nothing feels quite right here.

‘Fourness’ is a torturous mess of oscillating drones and groans pitched against a mangled sampled vocal loop, and as one of the album’s darkest and most uncomfortable pieces, it’s very much in the vein of Throbbing Gristle. But suddenly, emerging from the frothing tempest of noise emerges a piano which brings tranquillity to provide balance. And this is where LOVE exceeds. There is a lot going on, and it’s an album which really revels in its contrasts and its manifold depths. This means that overall, and in context, LOVE is a standout work which conforms to no set parameters, doesn’t really sit anywhere, not least of all within the realms of expectation.

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Beige Palace – LIVE For The Very Last Time (2016-2024)

Posted: 28 August 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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27th August 2024

Christopher Nisnibor

Just read that bio, and reflect for a moment:

Beige Palace was a band from 2016 to 2024. During that time we released two albums, an EP, a split 7" and some other miscellaneous bits. We toured the UK a bunch, we managed to play shows in France and Belgium, and we opened for some of our favourite bands like Shellac, Mclusky and Dawn of Midi. It has been lovely!

These are no small achievements. But for all of them, Leeds’ leading exponents of low-key lo-fi have been humble and kept it DIY throughout their eight-year career. Fans inevitably feel a sense of loss at the demise of any band, but as someone who was present at their first ever show and having followed their progress through the years, this feels like a particularly sad moment. It shouldn’t: the members have moved on to become Solderer, with the addition of Theo Gowans, a Leeds luminary, gig promoter, purveyor of mad noise as Territorial Gobbing, and one-time member of Thank, another of Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe’s vehicles, and of course, they’ve all received coverage here along the way.

So we shouldn’t feel sad. Instead, we should celebrate the achievements of a band who seemingly set out with no ambitions other than to make music for themselves. But still… I was in attendance at their first show, and as I documented at the time, and as I’ve mentioned in subsequent reviews, they were ace. Unassuming, a shade awkward, perhaps, but warm, human, and appealing in the way they presented their set of sparse, minimal tunes, Young Marble Giants were my first-choice reference point.

How YMG, a band whose album was released on Rough Trade and who have been the subject of a number of articles, not to mention being referenced and covered by the likes of Hole, remain obscure, I will never comprehend. But no matter: Beige Palace picked up their baton and, er, hid it under the settee.

In contrast to the wildly flamboyant dayglo-sporting Thank, Beige Palace were always the introspective, introverted musical counterpart who hung back, heads down as they looked at their shoes. Beige Palace’s successes happened almost in spite of the band themselves. That’s no criticism. They were a great live band, and they released some great music, too. I’m reminded of one of the other great DIY Leeds – via Bradford – bands, That Fucking Tank, who bookended their career with recordings of their first and last shows. Without the documents, the events would be but myths and legends.

This looks like being the first of two retrospective releases, and as a recording of their last live show – which neatly bookends my experience of the band, having attended their first – makes my case about the quality of their performances.

LIVE For The Very Last Time (2016-2024) presents a career-spanning set, with opener ‘Mum, Tell Him’, ‘Dr Thingy’, and ‘Illegal Backflip’ representing their 2019 debut album, Leg, and a fair few cuts from Making Sounds for Andy packing out a varied set, which culminates in single ‘Waterloo Sublet’.

But there are a handful of unreleased songs here, too: like Thank, Beige Palace were always focused on the next project, the next release, and as the very naming of ‘Waterloo Sublet’ illustrates, irreverence was their thing. ‘Local Sandwich’ is a perfect illustration of their quirky irreverence, as Vinehill-Cliffe rants about, yes, a local sandwich shop.

LIVE For The Very Last Time (2016-2024) captures everything that was great about this trio. Awkward, honest, slightly disconnected between-song chat is integral to the experience, and there’s plenty of that – including comments on someone’s wind – on this warts-and-all, as-it-happened recording, captured in Leeds in the intimate but awesome grassroots venue, Wharf Chambers, where the sound is always good – and loud – the audiences are friendly, and the beer is cheap.

There are no overdubs, there’s no polish or pretence, and LIVE For The Very Last Time (2016-2024) is all the better for the fact. The mix isn’t always balanced – the vocals are half-buried and times and the guitars are way loud at times, but what you get is a feel for being in the room.

The music is gloriously wonky, skewed, angular math-rock with some valiant forays into noise. The vocals and guitar both veer wide of melody; it’s the lumbering, loping, rhythm section that keeps everything together: without them, it would be a complete disaster. But this is how some bands work, and Beight Palace always sounded like a band on the brink of falling apart, in the same way Trumans Water always sounded like they may or may not make it to the end of the song as they jerk and jolt their way through waves of chaos.

‘Update Hello Blue Bag Black Bag’ which lands mid-set making its debut and final appearance is unexpectedly evocative, and the eleven-and-a-half-minute ‘Dinner Practice’, also unreleased, hints at the trajectory they might have taken on their next album.

Beige Palace were never going to be huge: they were cut out for cult fandom, and comfortable with that, being one of those bands who made music for fun first and foremost. It’s the sense of fun that come across here. Even in the most downtempo songs, what comes across is that they’re enjoying playing. They will be missed, but we look forward to their next incarnation.

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Album review and video exclusive: ‘I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend’ and ‘Hashish (The Yelling Song)’ by ShitNoise

Posted: 19 August 2024 in Albums, Previews and Editorial, Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 11th September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

For those unfamiliar with ShitNoise, their bio describes them as ‘a noise punk band hailing from Monte-Carlo (Monaco). Formed in February 2022, the band has undergone several lineup changes. Currently, it consists of Aleksejs Macions on vocals and guitar, Vova Dictor on guitar, and Paul Albouy on drums.’ What’s more, they reckon their third album, I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend, ‘showcases their most energetic and mature work to date… Departing from their previous noise-centric style, the band blends grungy guitar riffs, metal-influenced double-kick drums, and a more polished production. The album explores themes of confronting the harsh realities of society and the lasting psychological impact of traumatic events. Through gritty soundscapes and stream-of-consciousness lyrics, it paints a raw portrait of present-day existence and the enduring human spirit in the face of adversity.’

I’m often wary of bands and artists who claim to have matured: all too often it means they’ve gone boring, that they’ve lost their fire and whatever rawness, naivete, edge, that made them stand out, drove them to make music in the first place. But these things are relative, and ShitNoise isn’t just a gimmicky moniker, but a fair summary of what they do. Here, they’ve stepped up from no-fi racket to lo-fi racket and evolved from the trashy punk din with dancey and electronic elements that at times sounded like a Girls Against Boys rehearsal recorded on a Dictaphone, toward a more wide-ranging and experimental approach to noisemaking. As for the album’s title… well. Was the act an accident, one of stupidity, gross negligence, or intentional? Either way, as the adage goes, with friends like these… ShitNoise are certainly not the friend of sensitive sensibilities, or eardrums.

So sure, they’ve ‘matured’ inasmuch as they’ve broadened their palette, but in doing so, they’ve discovered new ways of creating sonic torture.

‘Ho-Ho! (No More)’ launches the album with shards of shrill feedback and distortion: it’s two and a quarter minutes of nails-down-a-blackboard tinnitus-inducing frequencies and deranged yelping that’s somewhat reminiscent of early Whitehouse, minus the S&M / serial killer shit. Not that I have a fucking clue what they are on about, and the noise is so mangled it’s impossible to differentiate any of the sound sources from one another – guitars sound like screaming synths, and there’s so much dirty mess in the mix everything sounds so broken you begin to wonder if your speakers are knackered.

Proving just how much they’ve ‘matured’, ‘Brown Morning’ barrels into churning noise driven by thunderous beats as the backdrop to a rappy / spoken word piece, after which the arrival of the fairly straightforward punk tune ‘Gum Opera’ feels like not only light relief, but somewhat incongruous. But then, in the world of ShitNoise, anything goes, as long as it’s noisy shit. And keeping on with the noisy shit, there’s the gnarly Jesus Lizard meets Melvins gone rockabilly slugging sludgepunkfest of the oxymoronic ‘Pleasant Guff’ to go at, and it’s abundantly clear that they’re absolutely revelling in following their curiosity in every direction when it comes to exploring any and all avenues of racketmongering. I Cocked My Gun is wild, and wildly divergent, stupid, chaotic, and fun.

If the off-kilter grunge of ‘X-Ray Phantom’, with its incidental piano tinkling along behind crunchy guitars hints at something approaching a kind of sensitivity – and a closet ability to write songs – ‘Endless Void’ demonstrates their capacity to step back from noise completely, and venture into near-ambient territories, and with remarkable dexterity.

But mostly, these deviances only serve to bolster the impact of the manic racketmaking which dominates the album, which brings us to the epic penultimate track, ‘Hashish (The Yelling Song)’ – a ball-busting seven-and-a-half-minute stoner-doom slammer that slaloms its way through some heavy drone and some explosive psychotic episodes… and we’re immensely proud to be able to present an exclusive premier of the video which accompanies this mammoth slab of sonic derangement right here:

Get it in your lugs. Let it permeate every cell. Bask in the insanity. With I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend, ShitNoise have really gone out on a limb, and while teetering on a precipice of madness, have proved that artistic fulfilment lies on the other side of mania. It’s a far more enjoyable place than the everyday in which we find ourselves of late, so why not dive on in?

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Gwennaëlle Roulleau & Reinhold Friedl – strata & spheres

Posted: 3 August 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 – 9th August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Reinhold Friedl was one of the composers / musicians who provided an introduction to new musical forms to me when I started doing this ‘properly’ late in 2008. I’d done bits and bobs of reviewing in local and regional inkies in the mid- to late-nineties, but at that time, I was very much preoccupied with a fairly narrow spectrum, not that I realised at the time.

While I had got into the likes of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire at that point, it was while researching my PhD on William Burroughs’ cut-ups that I came to appreciate John Cage and the prepared piano, meaning that when I was introduced to the work of Reinhold Friedl, I was finally ready.

I certainly don’t want to perpetuate a sense of elitism around this kind of music or art; quite the opposite. I feel that comprehension grows from exposure, and that what’s needed is wider exposure to art which is considered niche. Anyone who has studied the avant-garde will have likely come to understand that much of what is mainstream has evolved from the avant-garde, the underground, before being repurposed, repackaged, commodified and marketed. This is the nature off the avant-garde; this is the nature of capitalism.

But like Burroughs, like Cage, Friedl has remained fringe, underground. The same is true of Gwennaëlle Roulleau, whose biographical details seem rather more obscure.

strata & spheres is a quintessentially experimental collaborative work, which brings together the elements of both contributors in equal measure, with squelchy, microtonal rivulets running through the channels which lay open between slow, ponderous chimes of almost piano notes. Surges and scrapes, like factory workings or excavations, rub against glitchery insectoid flickerings and harsh polar winds.

More often than not, albums such as this, even when released as a download, tend to feature compositions of a similar length, broadly corresponding with sides of vinyl, be it two or four. This seems to be something that many avant-gardists have ingrained in their creative psyche, a certain connection to physical formats – which is rather strange, when one considers the function of the avant-garde, and, simultaneously, the way in which physical formats are now inherently entwined with nostalgia. But strata & spheres is unevenly weighted, and conspicuously so, with ‘Papillon’ having a duration barely over five minutes after the ten-minute ‘Tectonique’, before the two ‘side two’ pieces each spanning a solid fifteen minutes.

In context, the discordant scrape, the buzzing discord, the rattle and crash of piano abuse and broken mic distortion of ‘Papillon’ feels like a mere interlude – albeit a chaotic, violent one. But then, the elongated drones and sighs of ‘Entre les vides’ and ‘Frottements’ are far from mellow; these are difficult, disjointed compositions, full of twangs and scrapes and sounds which simply set the teeth and lungs on edge, and you find yourself, on the edge of your seat, neck muscles tense. The former flits between doomy drones and hyperkinetic movements like liquid mercury rolling as if shaken around a maze.

Clattering, clanking, chiming, and slow liquid bubbling conclude the track before heavy drones and fracturing, snapping strings split apart the arrival of the woozy, droney, fragmented ‘Frottements’. Twangs and scratches pass through low hums and hovering feedback, creating a haunting, atmospheric effect.

While violence and chaos breaks out around the country, strata & spheres may be far from an exercise on calmness and blissful relaxation, but it is immersive and a work which offers a certain escape from reality and the every day. The fact that it’s sonically quite weird at times is welcome.

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Ulrich Troyer – Autostrada del Brennero

Posted: 2 August 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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4Bit Productions – 19th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Ulrich Troyer’s output this year has taken an interesting turn. While he’s often favoured comparatively short-form releases (NOK 2020, released in 2020, surprisingly enough, featured six tracks originally released on a 3” CD twenty years earlier, bolstered by additional material to render a full-length album, while other albums in his catalogue contain only four tracks, or more very short ones). But ‘Autostrada del Brennero’ represents this third seven-inch release of the year after four years of silence. However, while ‘Moments’, which we covered here in March was a standalone release, ‘Autostrada del Brennero’ is a companion to ‘Echoes’, released in May, and both are prefatory pieces to the forthcoming album, Transit Tribe, slated for release later this year.

As with Echoes, Troyer has brought on board guest to feature here, with reggae luminary Diggory Kenrick contributing his signature flute to the lead track, and Taka Noda bringing melodica to flipside ‘Brennerautobahn’.

Continuing his pursuit of some deep dubby vibes, as formed the basis of Dolomite Dub, and the Songs for William trilogy, ‘Autostrada del Brennero’ is four and a half minutes of spacious, echo-drenched rimshots which crack out from shuffling drums and cut through spectacularly swampy bass. It’s got groove, but it’s low, slow, and mellow, with Kenrick’s flute adding an almost trippy folk aspect, which is a perfect counterpoint to the fizzling space-rock synth details which burst like laser-beam Catherine wheels.

Either my ears are deceiving me, or ‘Brennerautobahn’, which has exactly the same running time, is the same track but with the flute substituted with the melodica, and as such, this release follows the format of the previous two, where an alternative version occupies the B-side.

This was, of course, common practice on old reggae releases, whereby the B-side would contain a dub version – often simply as a ‘version’ – of the A-side. Here, there’s a certain irony in maintaining this tradition when the A-side is already essentially a dub version, and one doubts this irony will be lost on the artist.

Both cuts are solid – sparse yet dense, confident experiments in bass frequencies and massive echo and reverb it’s difficult to resist the urge to nod along to, slow, heavy-headed, mellow to the max. Good vibes, for sure.

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Vamberator – Sleep the Giant of Sleeps

Posted: 25 July 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Unifaun Records – 26th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Vamberator’s debut single, ‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps’ (26th July 2024) is from the forthcoming album Age of Loneliness (Unifaun Records). And? Well, Vamberator is a new musical duo of some pedigree – namely Jem Tayle of Shelleyan Orphan and Boris Williams of The Cure.

This is far from a joyful reuniting: Williams had also contributed to Shelleyan Orphan, until the band’s demise following the death of Caroline Crawley in 2016.

Jem describes his transition from Shelleyan Orphan to Vamberator as follows: “After Caroline’s passing, I had been offered the chance to make a solo album. I had been writing on and off without a focus and not having someone to bounce off was new to me. Boris is family, and we have played together with Shelleyan Orphan live and in the studio on and off for years, so it felt very natural for us to work on this together. I am extremely fortunate to have a drummer of his calibre pounding out the rhythms on this album.”

Grief has a habit of manifesting and finding its channels via unexpected routes and channels, and – from painful personal experience – creative outlets can be incredibly beneficial, a form of therapy, even, and so there’s a clear sense in Tayle’s wanting to push through on this new project. And the first fruits are pretty tasty.

‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps’ is a mega-hybrid of alt-rock, post-punk, and psyche. I mean it with no malice when I observe that many artists who reach a certain age lose some of their edge and start putting out kinds middle of the road rock that’s like Chris Read without the guitar breaks. There are some elements of that underpinning the form of ‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps’; standard guitar chord progressions tied to a fairly mid-pace rhythm. But there’s much to set this apart, too, in particular a certain sense of playfulness and experimentalism. There are some unexpected twists to the percussion, some savvy instrumental switches from guitar to piano to the fore, and some spacey whizzes and whirrs. The arrangement is layered, bold, orchestral. The video is a bit nuts.

They reference Lou Reed, and he’s clearly in the mix, but this whips together a visionary sonic cocktail which is impossible to pin down. But more significant than the wide-ranging elements and dazzling sonic experience, is the fact that ‘Sleep the Giant of Sleeps’ is a top tune with hooks and soul and passion.

AA

Vamberator - Sleep the Giant of Sleeps

Cowhause – Break it Like This

Posted: 22 July 2024 in Albums, Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , ,
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1st May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Once again, I’m late on this one, but also, once again, not nearly as late as the artist. This album has been a long, long, long time in coming. And that’s an understatement. As the bio details, ‘Janet Feder plays mostly baritone guitars and analogue, hand-made sounds; Colin Bricker (aka Brokerclinic) is an electronic musician and record producer known for his cutting-edge computer music, characterized by beautiful, twisted, broken soundscapes and skittering rhythms. This is their first new album in 19 years.’

19 years! Consider that for a moment. Almost two decades: there will be people who have been born, gone through school, got married and have started families of their own in this time. After such a protracted time out, it feels perhaps likes less of a return and more like starting afresh. Not that Janet has been creatively dormant during this time by any stretch (I recently covered the reissue of See It Alone by Sorry For Laughing, on which she features, and there have been numerous other releases in recent years, but collaborating with different people inspires different approaches and Break it Like This sounds and feels fresh, inspired and invigorated.

Break it Like This is brimming with ideas and range. The first composition, the appropriately-titled ‘Opening’ introduces the album’s manifold varied elements – scratchy guitar scraped and manipulated more often than picked or strummed intersect with extraneous noise and stuttering electronic beats. The volume see-saws and things suddenly break down at the most unexpected moments, disrupting any emerging flow.

Then again, there are some folksy runs of picked notes, and some heavily treated vocals, as on ‘Angles & Exits’, a crackling collision of disparate elements. Gentle guitar and clattering percussion joust it out as if two songs are overlaid in a sonic palimpsest, and what could be a beautiful pastoral tune is rendered as wreckage.

There are tangles of notes and serpentine rhythms which clamour, clatter, and crack from every whichway, and the mix is such that details spring from left and right, from the back of the room, from above your head and around your ankles, adding to the extreme disorientation of jarring pieces like ‘Blue State’. There are so many hints of songs and melodies which exist in a potential state; there are moments where something threatens to take shape, but simply never emerges. ‘Plan to Live’ offers haunting echoes of something atmospheric, splintered by rapid-fire beats which seem completely at odds with it. ‘Banjo’ reconfigures hillbilly wanderings into a postmodern, post-apocalyptic, post-everything soundscape which evokes visions of broken down cars and broken down society, a fatigued scraping out of making music after there’s nothing left but desolation, the notes ringing out into ruins and rubble, a theme which continues through the desolate flamenco-tinged ‘Heater’, before it swings into a psychopathic dance groove. It feels like the soundtrack to a bleak, Ballardian tale set amongst drifting sands, rusting vehicles, and dilapidated buildings, while the only survivors are the deranged.

A deep-running sense of ‘otherness’ runs through Break it Like This. Familiar elements, twisted and misshapen to a point that they no longer feel so familiar, and instead take on a more curious and uncomfortable form, abound. So many moments feel so close, and yet so far, in their proximity to the things we know and are comfortable with. But twisted, distorted, mangled, they take on more sinister forms, shadowy, strange.

Break it Like This is testing, nudging at the senses, piling up the discord and the irregularities of the structures and stoking a sense of bewilderment. This is experimentalism and collaboration at its best, excavating new terrain and forging something unexpected and challenging – while retaining a musicality which keeps it within the realms of listenability.

AA

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