Posts Tagged ‘Experimental’

ZAHN – Adria

Posted: 19 November 2023 in Albums
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Crazysane Records – 24th Nov 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The press release describes Zahn as a ‘German post–modern noise rock ensemble’, while their bandcamp bio offers ‘A bold escape from your daily life through technicolor transmissions of post–rock, krautrock, dark jazz, noise–rock, post–punk and electronic music. Influenced by the likes of TRANS AM, THE JESUS LIZARD, METZ, THE MELVINS and TORTOISE’, adding that ‘Adria is a compelling soundtrack to a 1980’s anti–utopian road movie!’

As a prospect, it’s head-spinning, sounding like an everything-all-at-once hybrid, and the actuality isn’t much different. There are plenty of driving grooves, largely propelled by solid bass and insistent drumming, but there are also some angular riffs and big splashes of noise.

The first track, ‘Zebra,’ boasts a bulbous bass with some big low-end and some easy, noodly synths which wibble and wander agreeably and mellifluously… and then towards the end it builds and distorts and things get altogether more twisted and less pleasant. And this is a feature characteristic of the compositions on show here. They don’t mash everything into every second simultaneously, and there’s none of that jazz / Beefheart kind of stuff that sounds like each band member is playing a different tune in a different key and time signature all at the same time. There are times where that kind of avant-gardism most definitely has its place, and works, but this isn’t what Zahn are doing here. In keeping with the road movie concept, the pieces are constructed around transition.

The ten-minute ‘Schmuck’ is a magnificent example of their ability to do mellow, with clean sounds and even a tinge of a country twang, it swings along breezily and evokes sunshine and expansive vistas. Then, near the seven-minute mark, the bass steps up to a crunching grind and things get a whole lot noisier, from where it builds into a big, driven riff which crackles with energy. ‘Yuccatan 3E’ is another colossus of a cut, running to almost nine and a half minutes and manages to take it time in pushing outwards and working a single passage for a fair while, but equally packs in at least three or four songs’ worth of ideas.

The changes feel organic, and sometimes emerge gradually, and at others there will be a sudden and unexpected swerve, and there’s so much happening that the absence of vocals barely registers.

Because the mood, tone, and tempo differs so radically between songs – and between sections – Adria very much does feel like a journey, through space and time. ‘Apricot’ is a sparse synth work with crispy vintage drum machine snare cutting through quavering analogue synth sounds – then, without changing the instrumentation or the simple repetitive motif, it goes massive. A post-rock Depeche Mode chronically undersells it, but it’s as close as I can get, at least off the top of my head. The final minute is an extravagant climax, and truly magnificent.

The majority of the album’s eleven tracks run past five minutes, with the majority sitting more around the seven-minute mark, but the eleven-and-a-half-minute ‘Faser’ is the album’s megalithic centrepiece. It blasts hard with a fuzzy, scuzzy repetitive riff cycle with stoner rock tendencies, and it’s dynamic and exhilarating. Dropping down to bubbling synths in the breakdown around six minutes in, the threat of a re-emergence of the heavy lingers suspensefully. When it does land, it does so with a vengeance, before transitioning once more into something altogether different again, skittering its way into Krautrock territory.

The power blast of ‘Tabak’ hits square between the eyes and feels unexpected however expected it actually is. These guys are absolute masters of the unpredictable and varied structure, and conjure some highly evocative and atmospheric passages, and while the playing is technical, it’s not technical for its own sake: there’s nothing showy or extravagant, and the focus is very much on the compositions, the structures, and the impact. ‘Amaranth’ piledrives a full-on doom riff, slogging away at it for what feel like an eternity. It’s a heavy trudge, and really hits the spot – again, when you least expect it.

Adria straddles many, many genres, and does so in a way that’s incredibly imaginative. The key to its success is its execution, which balances precision with passion.

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Sun Color Sound – Ritual One (Climbing the Fire into the Sky)

Posted: 17 November 2023 in Albums
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Mind Altering Records – 13th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Back at the start of 2021, I penned a pretty positive review of the solarminds album Her Spirit Cracked the Sky. The combination of ambience and extreme weight was a thrilling proposition. And it was – and still is – monumentally epic. It feels a long time ago already, and much has happened in the interim. If emerging from the pandemic was trailed for a long time by the release of myriad ‘lockdown’ projects, we’ve subsequently trickled into a ‘world’s turned to shit’ phase, and like the pandemic, it feels like there’s no end in sight. Trump may be out of office, but he still looms large and continues to pose a threat in the arena of world politics, and it’s a world at war, and a world where alternately wild fires and floods decimate swathes of land. Slowly but surely, the planet is becoming less inhabitable. And yet, still, people jet off on skiing holidays and bemoan the lack of snow despite being the cause of the lack of snow, and whenever it rains, people take to their cars to make five-minute journeys to avoid getting wet, thus ensuring it will rain an awful lot more in the time to come.

And since the release of Her Spirit Cracked the Sky, after more than a decade, Chris Miner has put the project to bed. But, like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, he now returns with Sun Colour Sound, and the first in a projected trilogy of releases. On the evidence of this first one, it will be something special.

Ritual One (Climbing the Fire into the Sky) consists of a single piece, which runs just short of half an hour, and it shares many elements with solarminds – namely a fair bit of noise, some hefty guitars and punishing percussion, at least in the first two thirds, and it’s heavy, harsh, noisy, and it crashes straight in with some grating, heavy drone, twisting feedback and thudding drums.

This is one of those tracks which stars like the end of many sets, and it feels like it’s winding down from the offing. This is by no means a criticism, simply an observation that what in the context of many works is a climactic, tempestuous crescendo finale, is simply the start of a ferocious sonic storm. It does very much call to mind Sunn O))) and the epic, swirling instrumental passages of contemporary Swans, although the guitars are very much geared towards generating howling feedback rather than crushing, clashing chords that sound like buildings being demolished. Therte’s something of a psychedelic twist in the spacey delivery, too. As whining, whistling notes ring out, the percussion builds from the occasional roll to a relentless thunder. The combination is immensely powerful, and assails the senses with a real physicality. Buy around the thirteen-minute mark, it’s reached wall-of-sound levels, a dense, shimmering sonic force which shimmers and ripples while coming on like a bulldozer, at the same time as hand drums fly at a frantic pace and evoking something spiritual in the midst of a hypnotic frenzy. And still, it goes on, surging forwards.

The shift in the final third occurs subtly: the percussion continues to clatter away, but the guitar abrasion tapers away, to be replaced by altogether softer strings.

Ritual One (Climbing the Fire into the Sky) is more than just a really long piece of music: it’s an ambitious piece in every way, and its scope and scale are immense. There is so much depth and detail here, and it takes repeated listens to really appreciate just how much is happening, especially given that the first reaction is simply to bow to its sheer sonic force.

But the last ten minutes belong to a different world from the first portion. Hypnotic, soothing, graceful, the tension dissipates and Eastern vibes radiate through the gauze-like layers which drift and float over the busy but altogether more subdued percussion.

So while it is an ambitious work, it also delvers far above any expectations, and it’s both unique and special.

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Listen: ‘Schmuck’ by ZAHN

Posted: 2 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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German post–modern noise rock ensemble ZAHN will release their second full–length album Adria on 24th November. Adria offers a bold escape from your daily life through technicolor transmissions of post–rock, krautrock, dark jazz, noise–rock, post–punk and electronic music. Influenced by the likes of TRANS AM, THE JESUS LIZARD, METZ, THE MELVINS and TORTOISE. Adria is a compelling soundtrack to a 1980’s anti–utopian road movie!

Adria was mixed and mastered by Magnus Lindberg (RUSSIAN CIRCLES, CULT OF LUNA) at his Stockholm studio. The cover artwork, based around photographs by Lupus Lindemann(KADAVAR), was designed by Fabian Bremer (RADARE, AUA).

The album is a testament to the incredible power of this trio and its ability to effortlessly ensnare your attention for the duration of a ten minute–song of purely instrumental music. Over the course of the album’s 11 tracks ZAHN emerge as a form of PINK FLOYD of noise rock, relentlessly pushing the envelope on what’s already accomplished while remaining tasteful and tasty at every corner.

Listen to ‘Schmuck’ here:

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Gintas K – Catacombs & Stalactites

Posted: 2 November 2023 in Albums
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Antenna Non Grata – 8th September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Bloody hell, he’s at it again: Lithuanan soundmachine Gintas K has yet another album out – and this one is different again. While Catacombs & Stalactites does, almost inevitably, feature rapid, bubbling, bibbling, watery electronic skitters, which sound like flurrying insects, bubbling water racing around a drain., and R2-D2 fizzing in malfunction, the dominant sonic feature here is not the microtonal bleeps which have been the focus of many of his albums, but heavy, grating synth sounds which buzz, scrape, and distort.

Things begin comparatively gently, but by the third track, ‘Into deepness’, we’re into pretty heavy territory. There are hints of tune to be found in places – dark, gothic synth motifs briefly emerge from the thick haze. It feels loud, and the listening experience is oppressive, like pressure being applied to either side of your skull, and the track really tests your mettle over its six minute duration, because there’s simply no let up, and the thick buzz presses at your brain relentlessly. It’s the same thick, hazy sounds which blare forth on the next piece, ‘Somewhere’ – only rent with tearing laser blasts and distortion which scratches and scrapes at the speaker cones, threatening damage, before it culminates in a crackling blast.

‘Wandering Joy’ wanders through dissonance and discord, warping and scraping through tearing walls of noise and aberrant glitches, spiralling around and spinning through territory shared with power electronics and the more experimental end of industrial (in the Throbbing Gristle sense, not the latter-day Industrial metal of Ministry et al). For all of its wandering, whether or not it brings joy is a matter for discussion, I suppose.

The bold, buzzing, abrasive synths sounds are broad and bassy, and the grinding lower-end oscillations are evocative of Suicide, only amped up to eleven. ‘Atmosphere / Voices’ crashes in on a wall of feedback and overloading distortion. At this point, things reach a new intensity, and the crackling, fizzing buzz at the edges of this enveloping blanket of noise simply adds to the tension which rips from the speakers.

There are lighter moments, which are more quintessential K: then flickering flutters, clicks and pops of ‘Mystery’ are almost playful, sounding somewhat like the pouring of carbonated mortar with twangs and deadened thwaps creating a muggy texture, and ‘Local Beings’ brimming with zaps and squelches which fly every which way before trickling down to a dribble resembling a fast leak.

This is very much Gintas K’s way: his approach to ‘composition’ is very loose and geared toward improvisation.

The album’s title derives from the ninth and tenth tracks, ‘Catacombs’ and ‘Stalactites’ which both in their way evoke the subterranean, darkness, tunnels, claustrophobia. ‘Stalactites’ shutters and reverberates, grates and gyrates, the frequencies registering around the navel amidst another squall of fragmented, glass-like shattering, and ‘Stalactites’ hangs heavy amidst blasts of noise. ‘Catacombs’ fractures and disintegrates as it leads the listener down, down, down. In my mind’s eye, I’m drawn towards recollections of the Paris catacombs – endless miles of tunnels lined with bones, neatly stacked, row upon row of old skulls, fibulas and tibias piled high and all around to forge cavities of death. Few things hold a mirror to mortality more powerfully than infinite piles of dank bones, and K leads – or moreover drags – us through these gloomy tunnels, while still electronic sparks skip and flash like damaged lighting or split cables before explosions of sparking white noise collapse into nothingness.

We’re grateful for a few light splashes and bubbles near the end, but the chances are the trauma has already taken hold.

Catacombs & Stalactites is a harsh and heavy album, and one that isn’t easy to lay to rest, to move on from.

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Polwechsel – Embrace

Posted: 26 October 2023 in Albums
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Ni Vu Ni Connu – 2nd November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

While the late 80s and early 90s saw the absolute peak in format-driven consumer exploitation, with the major labels finding evermore extravagant and ostentatious ways pf presenting a single or an album to boost its chart position by milking hardcore fans who would buy every format for the sake of a bonus track, a remix, or a poster, there’s been a strong return for physical releases in recent years. Admittedly, the days of CD singles packaged in tri-fold 12” sleeves, cassette singles in album-sized boxes, 12” boxes in which to house a series of CD singles, albums released in boxes as six 7” singles, and the like are well over, the fetishisation of the object is very much enjoying a renaissance, most likely as a reaction to the years when everything became so minimal and so digitised that no-one actually owned anything.

This was a bleak period. As someone who had spent a lifetime accumulating books, records, CDs, even tapes, I found it difficult to process. I had grown up aspiring to own a library and a wall of records, and found myself foundering, drifting in a world where entire lives were condensed to a playlist on a phone and a few kindle picks. I’d walk into houses – admittedly, not often, since I’m not the most sociable of people – and think ‘where’s the stuff?’ Stuff, to my mind, is character. It’s life. People would endlessly wave their Kindles and tell me ‘it’s just like a book!’ and rejoice at their Apple playlists on their iPods because they had their entire collections in their pocket and no clutter. I suggesting I should clear out my ‘stuff’, these techno-celebrants were missing the point, and continue to do so. Rifling through a collection, finding lost gems, engaging in the tactility, remembering when and where certain items were purchased is an integral part of the experience. My collection isn’t simply a library of books and music, it’s a library of memories.

In more underground circles, the existence of the artefact remained more consistent, perhaps because more niche artists and labels always understood the relationship between the artist and the consumer as conducted via the medium of the object. The release of this epic retrospective as a 4-LP box set is, therefore, less a case of getting on board with the Record Store Day vinyl hype in the way that HMV are now carrying more vinyl – at £35 a pop for reissues of 70s and 80s albums you can find in charity shops and at car boot sales for a fiver (and you used to be able to pick up in second-hand record shops until they died because no-one was buying vinyl), and more a case of business as usual.

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Vienna- and Berlin-based ensemble Polwechsel have a thirty-year career to reflect upon, and with a substantial back-catalogue to their name, and it’s a landmark that truly warrants a box-set retrospective. Although it’s not a retrospective in the conventional sense: this is a work created in collaboration with a selection of instrumentalists and improvisers who share their exploratory mindset. Traditional compilations feel somewhat lazy, and are ultimately cash-ins which offer little or nothing new to the longstanding fan. And so this set serves to capture the essence and style of their extensive catalogue, rather than compile from it.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, too. As the accompanying notes detail, ‘Vienna- and Berlin-based ensemble Polwechsel have been making music at the interface of collective improvisation and contemporary composition. With their changing cast, the group have been at the forefront of musical experimentation, from style-defining works in reductionism in the 1990s, which concentrated on silence, background noises and disruptions, to a change in direction in the 2000s, which saw the introduction of traditional musical aspects such as tonal relationships, harmony and rhythm. Through varying constellations, instrumentations and collaborations, Polwechsel have developed a unique body of work that has firmly established them as one of the driving forces in contemporary music-making… Their music has mostly straddled a line between contemporary music and free improvisation, and is characterized by quiet volume, sustained drones, and slowly developing structures.”

And so it is that for EMBRACE, Werner Dafeldecker, Michael Moser, Martin Brandlmayr and Burkhard Beins are ‘joined by a roster of likeminded guest musicians and former band members to perform a series of new pieces reflecting the whole breadth of their musical investigations.’

‘Jupiter Storm’ is spacious, spatial, strange and yet also playful, an assemblage of sounds that lurch from serious and atmospheric to sleeve-snickering toots and farts, and everything in between over the course of its eighteen minutes, with slow—resonating gongs and trilling shrills of woodwind and plonking random piano all bouncing off one another, while the bass wanders in and out of the various scenes in a most nonchalant manner. On ‘Partial Intersect’, drones and hesitant drones occasionally yield to moments of jazzification, parps and hoots and squawks rising from the thick, murky sonic mist which drifts ominously about for the track’s twenty-minute duration.

Sides C and D contains ‘Chains and Grain’ 1 and 2, again, longform pieces almost twenty minutes long, comfortably occupying the side of an album, are the order of the day. Clanking, clattering, chiming, bells and miniature cymbals ring out against a minimal drone which twists and takes darker turns.

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The tracks with Andrea Neumann are eerie and desolate, and occupy the third album. These pieces are different again, with the two ‘Magnetron’ pieces building from sparse, moody atmospherics to some piercing feedback undulations. The shrill squalls of treble, against grating extraneous noise, make for some tense listening. The second in particular needles at the more sensitive edges of the nerves. ‘Quartz’ and ‘Obsidian’, are more overtly strong-based works, but again with scratches and scrapes and skittering twangs like elastic bands stretched over a Tupperware container. The fourth and final album contains two longform pieces, with ‘Orakelstücke’ occupying nineteen and a half minutes with creaking hinges, ominous tones, and a thud like a haunted basketball thwacking onto a bare floorboard. There are lighter moments of discordantly bowed strings, but there’s an underlying awkwardness with crackles and scratches, muttered conversation in German. The fifteen-minute ‘Aquin’ is sparse, yet again ominous and uneasy, majestic swells of organ rising from strained drones and desolate woodwind sinking into empty space.

The set comes with a thirty-two page booklet containing essays Stuart Broomer, Reinhard Kager and Nina Polaschegg (in both German and English) and some nice images which are the perfect visual accompaniment to the music, and while it’s doubtless best appreciated in luxurious print, a digital version is included with the download.

EMBRACE is a quite remarkable release – diverse and exploratory to the point that while it does feel like an immense statement reflecting on a career, it also feels like four albums in their own right. It’s a bold release, and an expansive work that certainly doesn’t have mass appeal – but in its field, its exemplary on every level.

Shane Aspegren – Describing The Thing

Posted: 23 October 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Prohibited Records – 27th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The… the… you know? Clicking fingers, gesticulating, waving hands in a rolling motion around your ears. The… thing? The… you know? The thing? The thing!

We’ve all been there. It’s on the tip of your tongue, the fringes of your memory. It hangs like a shadow, a fraction beyond the reach of the active brain. You curse your mind because you know it, and your interlocutor would, too, if only they had a clue what you were on about. The thing. The fucking thing.

The very prospect of reviewing Shane Aspergen’s EP flung me into a spin , because the title tossed me into the frantic headspace in which words run out and everything feels overwhelming, and it’s all down to the title. Because… well, that’s the thing. What is the thing? And how do you even begin to describe it?

This EP, we’re told, ‘comes as a precursor to a forthcoming album (tentatively titled Emblems of Transmuting Heat) that was finished a few months prior to the conceptualization of this four-track EP. While recent in its development, the music originates from the same period of transition, during which Shane Aspegren relocated from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.’

It feels like the sonic articulation of transition, of movement, and it feels transitory, ephemeral, fleeting moments, some of which leave an indelible imprint, others which fade instantly or barely even register in the moment. Precisely how or why this is, it’s hard to pinpoint with any kind of exactitude. But then, that feels like the point: the pieces are impressionistic sound collages. It’s a molecular morass of clamorous, scrabbling treble and scratching insectoid busyness and bubbling synthines which dissolves in a fuzzy hum and clatter; a cross of Gregorian chant, ambient, experimental electronica, and dance.

Aspegren explains how the title track ‘is a complete reworking of a different piece [he] started in 2022. “I completely abandoned the original in its initial form — the raw vocalizations were the only thing that I wanted to keep when I went back to revisit those sessions. The voices were recorded as a form of cathartic release during a period of time that I was heavily exploring voice and frequency as a form of somatic connection and release. In the end, this morphed through several different iterations, and finally turned into this version more than a year later, after moving to LA.” The sense of movement here is one of a forward propulsion, which comes largely from the subtle but insistent beat.

‘Imaginal Pathway’ is but a brief interlude, as was intended, penned as an interlude for the Imaginal Pathways app for which Aspegren was the lead artist. It’s a mere minute and a half – of eddying ambience layered with light, hovering drones which bends and droop amidst birdlike tweets, over which a narrative – seemingly lifted straight from an education video – explains the workings of the ear, a ‘magical’ organ ‘which transports perceptual vibrations from the physical realm into the experiential’.

The final track, ‘iTiS’, is the most recent composition, which came about following his relocation, with Aspegren recounting “It started with a Moog Subharmonicon improvisation and turned into a slow build of layers and structure. Strangely, it feels like the oldest track to me… like I made it in another era of my life.”. It certainly sounds like music from another era, too, the contemporary kit very much harking back to more vintage analogue sound. There’s a soft, squelchiness to the bass tones, a blurring edge to the broad space-filling sweeps. But perhaps sometimes the equipment determines the mood and the sound more than the creator. Either way, it makes for a fitting close to the EP – for having brought the listener through a journey of upheaval, of uncertainty, of feeling unsettled, it ends with what feels like a sense of final settlement, of resolution. And end, but also a new vista, and the possibility of a new beginning.

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Speculum Bunny – Liminal Fluff

Posted: 19 October 2023 in Singles and EPs
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New Reality Records – 17 October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Speculum Bunny’s been doing the rounds on the live circuit with New Reality Records labelmate Stewart Home of late, and while in terms of presentation they’re leagues apart, her modus operandi bears strong parallels with Home’s, not least of all the audacious piss-takery of his earlier career, which is – quite unexpectedly – experiencing something of a renaissance – she’s also a completely different animal.

Her bio outlines how ‘Having written music since she was a kitten, Speculum Bunny enjoys blending words and sound to provoke, enthral and mystify her audience. Inspired by the depraved nature of love in all of its majestic forms, her childhood, masochism and devotion. Challenging mainstream narratives on motherhood and women’s expression she blends noise, synths, voices and field recordings. She pushes her edges.’

Female voices in music – strong ones, not sonic wallpaper popmakers dollied up by record labels – may be growing in number, but they’re still few and far between in the scheme of things. It’s a sad reflection on society and the music industry, but it does mean that when someone comes along and says ‘fuck the norms’, it’s powerful, and stands out, and Speculum Bunny – an overtly challenging moniker, uses a profile pic on her Bandcamp bearing the slogan ‘I’m not cute, I’m disgusting’ (it’s the cover art from her first release in May 2023: this is her fourth). It’s clear that her objective is to provoke a real sense of discomfort, and if both her choice of name and the EP’s title work through incongruous juxtapositions of hard / soft or similar, then the four tracks contained therein are the sonic manifestations of this oppositionality.

‘Demon Boyfriend’ is built around a chubby bass groove that’s reminiscent of the early years of The Cure, and it provides the backdrop to a dark spoken word piece. ‘he’s quite old… and he’s quite hairy… and he’s got horns…’ Much of the impact / appeal lies in the delivery, of course. Flat, monotone.. and unashamedly Scottish. There’s a tinkly fairytale tone to the keyboard sounds on the lo-fi ‘Dragon of Lure and Dread’. The vocals are sung, but mumbled so as to render the words almost inaudible, and the drums are distant, a thumping heartbeat below the surface.

You can probably consider this a spoiler alert. Pretty much the last thing I expected was for ‘House of the Rising Sun’ to be a fairly straight acoustic cover, delivered in what one might – for wont of a better description – an intimate, witchy tone. As the song plays out, a double-tracked vocal gives a slightly disorientated twist. The final song, ‘There is No Ash Without Fire’ is again minimal in its arrangement, and while a bulbous Curesque bassline provides the main element of the backdrop to her haunting vocal, which soars and swoops, the atmosphere is more akin to Young Marble Giants.

Liminal Fluff doesn’t sit within any single genre pigeonhole: in fact, none of the songs really conform to any style or genre, and ultimately, it seems a fair summary of Speculum Bunny as an artist. It’s truly refreshing to discover an artist who really doesn’t sound like anyone else – and even more of a deal when what they’re doing is good. And this is good.

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Watch: ‘A Hand to Hold the Gun’ by Hanging Freud

Posted: 16 October 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Glasgow-based duo HANGING FREUD join hands with the Belgian label Spleen+ (division of Alfa Matrix) for the release of Worship, their most personal and emotive full length ever.

On this 7th studio album, Paula Borges and Jonathan Skinner continue refining their unique sound identity that nobody managed so far to narrow down to one specific music style, often evoking influences and elements of post punk, ethereal, synthgaze, cold wave, ambient pop or yet experimental electronica.

With the heartbeat of a drum machine as metronome, Paula’s vocals are dark, haunting, almost glacial, her enunciation is both plaintive and full of echoing fragile grace. While the cinematic music warps them all in a melancholic ethereal cocoon made of mechanical funeral melodies, icy minimal sequences and suffocating synth atmospheres. The overall ambience is dense, lingering, almost claustrophobic, but so poignant and uplifting that it takes you by the throat and touches you at the deepest end of your soul.

The 10 songs featured on this album literally come from a place of contradiction hanging somewhere between courageous vulnerability and fearful resilience, and deal with themes such as collective distress and loss, finding beauty in tragedy or yet questioning about what makes us human in the symbolic contrasts of life and death.
It’s no surprise to hear that this “less is more” introspective ode to melancholia was written in particular claustrophobic circumstances during the pandemic lockdown. “Because of what was going on, we were essentially stuck in temporary accommodation in Scotland, away from our studio and forced into a period unexperienced before. The songs that came out therefore come from a different place. Everything was done within a laptop and is proudly 100% digital. It was recorded and mixed while literally sitting on the side of a bed in a mouse infested apartment…” explains Paula Borges.

Strong from their somewhat nomadic past with multicultural backgrounds of coming from Sao Paulo (Brazil) and London (UK), HANGING FREUD sign here a timeless chef d’oeuvre full of beautifully dark simplicity, an emotional body of work that is uncompromising and genre defying at the same time. If you missed HANGING FREUD so far, the moment has come to fall under their freezing spell and addictively hit the play-button again and again.

As a taster of the album, out in December, they’ve unveiled a video for ‘A Hand to Hold the Gun’, which you can see here:

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North Vänern Appreciation Society – the moment multibillionaires realise that their money could be better spent helping humanity on Earth

Posted: 9 October 2023 in Albums
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Dret Skivor – 1st September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

This twenty-two-minute continuous composition is ‘A consideration and contemplation of the stupidity of people who have more money they could ever spend and fritter it away on dick-waving projects instead of paying the tax they should be paying and contributing to society’, adding ‘Billionaires shouldn’t exist at all and we need to start having this conversation.’

Yes. Yes. And yes. It’s been something I’ve been silently raging and experiencing existential agony over in recent months. During the summer, half the planet was on fire. Meanwhile, tax-avoiding billionaires were jetting off into space and planning cage fights to settle the argument of who’s the bigger testosterone-fuelled egotistic manchild.

August saw Oregon flooded following hurricane Hillary and a billion-dollar plus restoration project in its wake: the same week, Virgin Galactic was jetting people into space for fun at a cost of around half a million dollars a ticket. If the ticket fees had been put towards the recovery operation, they’d be well on the way. But these cunts just don’t care. Fuck the plebs in their flooded homes: they’ve all got multiple penthouses well above sea level and they’ve earned their jollies – through the labour of the people who have so little, and some who have even lost everything.

I suffer corpuscle-busting rage at people who jet off on skiing holidays bemoaning the lack of snow. They’re one of the primary reasons there is no snow. How fucking hard is it to grasp? And if cars and planes are heavy polluters, launching rockets is off the scale. Not that they give a fuck. They’ll be dead before the earth becomes inhospitable to human life, and their hellspawn will have all the money and can go and live on Mars, so everything’s fine in their megarich world.

It begins with a grand organ note, as if heralding the arrival of a bride or clergy…and so it continues. On… and on. Five minutes in, and very little has changed. Perhaps some light pedal tweaks , a shift in the air as the trilling drone continues, but nothing discernible. The note hangs and hovers. It fills the air, with the graceful, grand tone that is unique to the organ, a truly magnificent instrument – and I write that with no innuendo intended, no reference to the Marquid de Sade submerged for my personal amusement here.

Admittedly, I had initially anticipated something which would more directly articulate my frothing fury at the fucked-up state of the world, but begin to breathe and relax into this rather mellow soundtrack… I start to think that this abstract backdrop is the salve I need to bring my blood pressure down, and think that perhaps this is the unexpected purpose of this release… but by the ten-minute mark, I find myself bathed in a cathedral of noise, and before long, it’s built to a cacophonous reverb-heavy blast which sounds like an entire city collapsing in slow-motion. And this builds, and builds. Fuck. I’m tense again. I feel the pressure building in my chest, the tension in my shoulders and back aches. It makes sense. This is the real point of this recording. Everything is fine until you log onto social media or read the news, and you see the state of things. Momentarily, you can forget just how fucking terrible everything is, how the world is ruined and how there is no escape from the dismalness of everything, and how capitalism has driven so much of this, creating a life stealing hell for those who aren’t in the minuscule minority.

Fact: 1.1% of the population hold almost 50% of the global wealth. A further 39% of wealth is held by just 11% of the population. 55% of the world’s population hold just 1.3% of the wealth between them. So remind me, how is capitalism working for the world? Trickle-down economics is simply a lie as the wealthy retain their wealth and simply grow it. Liz Truss may think that the UK importing cheese is ‘a disgrace’, but this statistic is mind-blowing.

Eighteen minutes in and my mind is blown, too. It feels like it could be part of the soundtrack to Threads. It’s a dense, obliterative sound, a blowtorch on a global scale, the sound not of mere destination, but ultimate annihilation. It seems fitting, given the future we likely face.

AA

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Red Painted Red – That Was the Reason Why

Posted: 6 October 2023 in Albums
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ZOHARUM – 17th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It wasn’t so long ago that I’d arrive home from work and struggle to open the door for the pile of jiffy bags which had cascaded through the letterbox while I was out, and that I’d regularly receive vinyl for review in the mail. The pandemic and the spiralling coast of everything really kicked that into touch. The sheer volume was quite overwhelming at times, but I do miss it, and the occasional delivery of a physical copy of a release reminds me why.

My copy of That Was the Reason Why was accompanied by a stack of wonderful postcards for a start: a strange array of scenes printed on thick card with a matte finish they’re fantastic. And so is the CD’s tri-fold packaging, which includes the full album lyrics, which I read through as I’m listening to the album. Yeah, yeah, I’m old – at least according so some people. But yes, I grew up with physical media and am comfortable with that as I read the contents of the truly beautiful sleeve. This is what people who don’t do, and have never done, physical media are missing out on. The fact is that music is, or at least is at its best, a multi-sensory, inter-dimensional experience. I took this for granted when I was younger. I’d go to record shops in town and but records and tapes, and later CDs, and spend hours looking at the artwork and pouring over the lyric sheets.

Starting with beeping keytones and with an ominous keyboard score, ‘Human Condition’ is dark and dense and builds a palpable tension as the glacial robotic vocals enunciate the stark declarations of ‘Self-mutilator. Mother. Arsonist. Materialist. Abuser. Assassin. Scientist. Charmer. Harmer. Narcissist. Artist. Redeemer. Explorer of the fauna’ on a loop that becomes more chilling with each cycle. Creepy is the word, and the bass and drums build as the track progresses, along with the extraneous noise that sits behind the nagging motif.

‘Astronauts’ cuts a sound collage which overlays a strolling, bass-led groove that’s almost proggy, and over that, Yew spins semi-narrative lyrics with cool detachment.

That Was the Reason Why is an unusual blend of experimentalism, cut-ups, collaging, and trippiness, which incorporates elements of a range of genres but belongs to none. The synthiness of the sultry ‘Come to Me’ is almost Vangellis-like, while ‘Knife’ is sparse, atmospheric electronica that’s oddly reminiscent of Kate Bush, at least in Yew’s delivery, and it’s magnificently melodic and dreamy in a melancholic sort of a way, and ‘Silence’ brings discord, abrasion and snarling zombie backing vocals tearing through a hybrid post-punk drone that sounds like a collision between The Doors and Toyah. ‘Dances’ is altogether weightier, and brings hints of Swans circa Children of God. But for all of its diversity and divergence, there is a strong homogeneity to the album as a whole, and it works well.

Samples of narrative and dialogue, and snippets of all sorts come together to conjure a disorientating reflection of the world and somewhere beyond – sometimes exterior, sometimes interior, bringing inner space and outer space into the same frame. Breathy, ethereal, yet tense and claustrophobic, That Was the Reason Why is a dialogue of inner turmoil, an exploration of liminal spaces, and an unstintingly intriguing and unusual work.

AA

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