Posts Tagged ‘Experimental’

Lothar Ohlmeier / Rudi Fischerlehner / Isambard Khroustaliov – In the Gloaming

Posted: 1 February 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Not Applicable – 16th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

What we’re given to expect from this three-way collaboration is ‘an album of explorative, freely improvised electroacoustic music by an acclaimed trio of acclaimed genre-defying musicians’. I can’t help but blame the music press – as was, rather than the broken skeleton of what remains of the music press – and streaming algorithms for the obsession with genre. One could probably take it as far back as to the 50s when the press was all over this shocking ‘Beatnik’ counterculture, but to consider more relevant and recent history, ever since the ‘goth’ tag was applied to a fairly disparate selection of post-punk bands – and their fans – categorisation has been the method by which to both shortcut detailed analysis and to market acts. The groupings rarely make sense, or at least never did to me. For example, I loved Nirvana, but had absolutely no interest in, say, Soundgarden or Pearl Jam, who lacked ant of the elements I loved about Nirvana, and to my ear weren’t especially grungy. Bauhaus and the Sisters of Mercy have nothing in common beyond there being an arch, art aspect to their work, and the idea that both Throbbing Gristle and Ministry are ‘Industrial’ is absurd (and while I get that ‘industrial metal’ may be the distinction when considering Ministry, Pitch Shifter, etc,. it’s never rendered any more clear than when the term ‘hardcore’ is used. Many acts claim to be ‘genre defying’, but so few are. That said, the very function of the avant-garde is to defy genre, to smash preconceptions, to push boundaries, to do something different. In the Gloaming, remarkably, is something very different, and is truly ‘genre defying’.

It’s often intriguing to see just what players of such an unusual selection of instruments will produce when they come together and set out with the primary purpose of seeing what happens. Lothar Ohlmeier’s bass clarinet, Isambard Khroustaliov’s electronics, and Rudi Fischerlehner’s drums make for an interesting lineup, and sometimes, even the most experienced musicians will come together and create sound, but it doesn’t really gel. This is most certainly not one of those instances.

The album contains six pieces, and they each explore subtly different musical terrain, seemingly with all participants working on the understanding that less is more. There is a lot of space in which they all breathe and step back from soundmaking to allow the atmosphere to evolve. While the bass clarinet clearly has jazz connotations, this isn’t an overtly jazz album in any sense.

‘Leaf Silhouettes’ is a celebration of discord and dissonance, as clattering drum rattle like bin lids blown down an alleyway in a gale, the squelching electronic sounds conjuring an eeriness amidst seemingly random toots, while ‘Out to Dry’ has an almost sixties sci-fi feel, with hints of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop about the alien ambience, where the electronics take the lead, but remain restrained, with the result being sparse and atmospheric.

If any one of the pieces does have a more avant-jazz feel, it’s the nine-minute ‘Violet Weeds’, where the clarinet tootles and hoots every which way, spreading like tendrils over the bibbling synths. The percussion remains noteworthy for its restraint, as it does over the course of the album. And if ‘End Zone’ employs the same elements, the mood is quite different by virtue of the difference in balance of its instruments. It is, in the main, a subdued, understated piece, but whistles of feedback and extraneous bleeps bringing extra dimensions..

The final piece, ‘Pixel Head’ is a ten-minute monster of a composition, and one which, while spacious, brings so many different ideas and segments that it really does bend the brain.

From the beginning In the Gloaming is a work of intuition, and the interplay between the three musicians is something special.

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Robert Poss – Drones, Songs and Fairy Dust

Posted: 27 January 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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25th January 2024

With Band of Susans, active between 1986 and 1996, Robert Poss curved an arc from the New York noise scene towards more of a shoegaze sound. With releases on Blast First and Mute, and featuring a pre-Helmet Page Hamilton on second album, Love Agenda, not to mention a reputation for eardrum-shatteringly loud live performances, the band unquestionably achieved more in terms of influence and cult cred than commercial success (something their final album, Here Comes Success (1995) seemed to acknowledge in its title). But what qualifies as success? Capitalist culture and media tell us that success is a career, promotion, cash, holidays, cruises, bug house big car. But that’s because these are the status symbols capitalism tells us we should aspire to. How about having enough to be ok, a home you like and feel comfortable in, having friends, knowing yourself and being comfortable in your own skin, and having the freedom to do things which give you pleasure? It’s a question of values: what do you value more, time, or money? Status, or the satisfaction of being true to yourself?

There seems to have been a fair bit made of fellow BoS alumni Karen Hagloff’s return to music making in recent years, but not so much about Robert Poss’ sustained output since the band called it a day. But then again, Poss has spent a career being somewhat overlooked and vastly underrated. Both his songwriting and style of playing is quite distinctive and unusual – quirky seems a reasonable adjective, and is certainly not a criticism. The notes on bandcamp note that ‘The release is dedicated to composer/filmmaker/photographer Phill Niblock, a long-time mentor, colleague and friend.’ The timing of this certainly renders this dedication particularly poignant, and also highlights the way in which exponents of avant-gardism feed off one another and evolve one another’s ideas in different directions.

The Niblock connection certainly sheds additional light on Poss’ approach to composition and sound, favouring drones and repetition over rigid verse/chorus structures and progression, and Drones, Songs and Fairy Dust does very much contain, as the title suggests, a miscellany of bits and pieces, ranging from exploratory wanderings to fully-formed songs using conventional ‘rock’ format of guitars, bass, and drums – and on some, there are even vocals, notably the punchy post-punk cut ‘Your Adversary’, which marks a change of style with its murky production and blustery drum machine backing.

The first of these, ‘Secrets, Chapter and Verse’ is a title which could easily be on a Band of Susans release and the song carries that Band of Susans vibe – jangly indie but played loud – and I mean LOUD, with strolling bass running back and forth and up and down beneath the layers of guitar, the vocals low in the mix and serving primarily functional capacity – sonic placeholders.

‘Out of the Fairy Dust’ combines jangling indie and ambient drone and in many respects does carry echoes of ‘Here Comes Success’ – but also Love of Life era Swans – at least until about halfway through where it takes a sudden turn into deeper folk territory. It’s quite a contrast with the deep, ultra-droney sonorous ambience of ‘Foghorn Lullaby’.

Like the epic solo workout that is ‘Hagstrom Fragment’, which comes on like some legs akimbo 90s rock, ‘Skibbereen Drive’ lunges into rock mode, and follows the chord sequence of ‘Flood II’ from The Sister’s of Mercy’s Floodland – and sounds very like it, with its cold synths and crisp drum machine, but without the acoustic guitar detail and lead guitar line. It’s a real contrast to the epic dronescape of ‘Into the Fairy Dust’, on which the drums are a million miles behind the drone as they clatter and roll away, onwards, ever onwards, but also almost entirely submerged in the mix. Elsewhere, with its snarling synth grind, ‘S Romp’ sounds like Suicide doing dirty disco, and ‘Trem 23’ – well, it takes us back to the 23 enigma.

Drones, Songs and Fairy Dust showcases a remarkable diversity of styles, and it’s neither as dry nor as dark as all that, with ‘Imaginary Music On Hold’ presenting a most whimsical feel. As a collection, it never fails to be interesting, or enjoyable, and showcases Poss’ eclecticism and range, and there’s pleasure to be had from listening to a collection of work by an artist who never feels constrained or compelled to confirm to a given genre or mode. It’s something that seems to trouble many people, not least of all labels and critics, that an artist’s creations are based on the pursuit of creative endeavour and interest rather than assigning themselves a category by which they must live. The flipside of this is that it may not feel particularly like an album it its own right, but more like a collection of demos and ideas – and just as the title summarises the contents as three separate elements – Drones, Songs and Fairy Dust – so it feels like it contains the seeds of three separate and distinct projects – a droney one, an indie one, and a dark rock-orientated one. It would be exciting to witness those three projects realised, but what we have here, regardless of future intent, is a document of forward-facing music-making and an artist whose sole priority is doing his own thing. This is, ultimately, the ambition for any artist: to create without concern for commercial matters. And Drones, Songs and Fairy Dust is an exemplary product of creative freedom.

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Phill Niblock – Looking for Daniel

Posted: 25 January 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Unsounds/Echonance Festival – 2nd February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s never a comfortable experience to learn of someone’s passing, even if it’s someone you’re only really aware of rather than familiar with. My knowledge of Phill Niblock and his work was relatively scant, although I had written about a few of his releases over the years. I wasn’t particularly enthused by Touch Five back in 2013 – an album I would probably appreciate considerably more now. This likely says as much about me as it does Phill Niblock, but does perhaps indicate just how artists who fully espouse avant-gardism are always ahead, and tend to only be truly appreciated later. And so, to learn of Niblock’s passing only this month, from the press release which accompanies this release was a… moment, a cause to pause.

And so as I read how this release serves to ‘commemorate the late Phill Niblock with this release made in close collaboration with the composer,’ and features recordings of some of his very last compositions just before his passing in January 2024. ‘The two works on this album, ‘Biliana’ (2023) and ‘Exploratory, Rhine Version, Looking for Daniel’ (2019) represent the hallmarks of his unique approach to composition where multiple, closely-tuned instruments and voices are used to create rich and complex sonic tapestries…

The fact that he was still composing up to the age of ninety is remarkable. The fact these two pieces don’t feel radically different from much of his previous work is impressive. And yet, in context, the fact that these final works are such long, expansive, and unsettling compositions feels fitting.

To understand and contextualise the pieces, it’s worth quoting directly: ‘In Biliana, written for performer Biliana Voutchkova, her violin phrases and vocalizations carve out a deep sonorous space full of fluctuating overtones. By emphasizing on the physicality and materiality of her sound, the piece gives us the sensation of stepping back to reveal a singular portrait of the musician. ‘Exploratory, Rhine Version, Looking for Daniel’ was recorded by two Netherlands based ensembles, Modelo62, and Scordatura ensemble from a live recording made at the Orgelpark, Amsterdam during the Echonance Festival in February 2023. It is a complex work comprising of 20 parts, where lines seem to emerge and disappear out of a landscape of harmonies and sonic spectra. There is also a voice hidden in this mass of instruments, just like in Biliana, giving both works an added human element – something that always emerges out of Phill Niblock’s seemingly dense musical constructions.’

Each piece takes a long form, extending beyond the twenty-minute mark.

A decade ago, I bemoaned just how ‘droney’ Touch Five was, how it was impossible to perceive any tonal shifts. Listening to ‘Biliana’, I’d have likely posited the same complaint, bit with hindsight and personal progression, it’s the eternal hum, the intense focus on the most minute and incredibly gradual of shifts, which are precisely the point and the purpose – and the things to appreciate. On the one hand, it is testing. It’s minimal to the point of a near-absence, an emptiness, but present enough to creep around your cranium in the most disquieting of fashions.

It’s not uncommon to lie awake and night or have deep pangs of regret which knot the stomach when you replay that awkward exchange, that time you said the wrong thing, the occasion when you plain made a twat of yourself one way or another. The same anguish hangs heavy over reviews where I’ve simply been wrong. There’s no way of undoing them – and to repost or revise down the line would be disingenuous, an act of historical revision. You can only correct the future in the present, and not in the past. We all know how rewinding history to make a minor alteration goes. Before you know it, your hands are fading and you’re about to become your own father or something.

You almost feel yourself fading over the duration of ‘Biliana’ as the eternal glide of string sounds hangs thick and thickening in the air and somehow at the same time remains static. Where is it going? Where are you going? Everything feels frozen in time, slowed to complete stasis in a slow-motion drift. Wondering, waiting… for what? A change. But why would change come? Breathe, let it glide slowly over you, however much you feel a sense of suffocation.

‘Exploratory, Rhine Version, Looking for Daniel’ begins sparser, darker, danker. Ominous, string-line drones swell and linger, here with scraping dissonance and long-looming hums. Nothing specific happens… but it crawls down your spine and you feel your skin tingle and creep. Nothing is quite right, nothing is as it should be.

Over the course of his long, long career as a defining figure of the contemporary avant-garde, Niblock was outstanding in his singularity, and the unswerving nature of his compositions, a vision which, as this release evidences, remained unaltered to the end.

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AUREOLE – Alunarian Bellmaster

Posted: 19 January 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Lupus Lounge – 9th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The notes in the press release which accompany this release are strange and intriguing in equal measure, and pique my interest for all of the things they evoke, mysteriously and evocatively. The one thing they don’t really do, it set my expectations stylistically, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

‘For whom the bells toll in the Citadel Alunar shall encounter the Bellmaster!.. The particularly sinister and insidious musical and lyrical universe that Markov "M.S." Soroka is continuously creating with his various projects AUREOLE and TCHORNOBOG as well as ETERNIUM, KRUKH, and DROWN is enriched by a new chapter… The third AUREOLE full-length Alunarian Bellmaster differs stylistically from its direct predecessor Aurora Borealis (2016) in atmosphere and feeling. The album returns to the spirit of the 2014 debut Alunar albeit as a more advanced version with the added experience regarding production techniques and conceptual writing that Soroka has acquired over the years.’

It goes on to explain how ‘Armed with a vicious sound, the album’s lyrical theme is echoed in the sound of 30 bells sampled by Markov and incorporated on Alunarian Bellmaster. The story told on this album is part of the same grimdark fantasy and science fiction based cosmos that AUREOLE and TCHORNOBOG share.’

I don’t know what even half of this means, and I can’t help but be a shade sceptical when bands talk of things like a ‘grimdark fantasy and science fiction based cosmos’. Either we’re plunging into deeply enigmatic territory here, and have perhaps gone beyond a point where lore and mythology and are merely influential elements to become something altogether greater, or we’re in the realms of self-absorbed pretentious guffery. There’s a fine line between high art and theatre, and wank.

In the event, the themes and concepts behind the album are very much that – to the back when it comes to the actual listening experience. The vocals serve as another facet of the overall sound rather than being pitched to the fore, and the titles, too, are sufficiently abstract as to be unobtrusive: that is to say, it’s possible to listen to and appreciate the album without becoming bogged down in any narrative or pseudomythos, while stylistically… well, it soon becomes clear why there’s no attempt to align AUREOLE with any genre. Just as ‘female fronted’ isn’t a genre, neither is ‘experimental’: these are adjectives, and it’s possible to experiment in so many ways within – or without – the confines of any given genre. But experimental, for many, brings with it connotations of happenstance, of the random, the arbitrary, and while the way in which samples and sounds are explored is experimental in nature, to define Alunarian Bellmaster as an experimental work would be to unfairly downplay the detailed, structured nature of the album’s many-layered and multi-faceted compositions.

‘Alunarian Ghosts of Bellmaster’ grows and swells organically from the drones of low ambience searing post-rock, only with ghostly There are echoes of guttural vocals reverberating in the eternal darkness. There are also echoes of Gregorian chants, and guttural mutterings, amplified and reverberated to a colossal scale, which very swiftly swells to become something truly immense. This in itself is a difficult thing to process, even in isolation. In context – an ever-evolving one, where the sounds and textures shift imperceptibly – we find ourselves adrift and in motion through an expanding alternative universe.

The thirty sampled bells are multiplied – and multiple, and multiplied again – to create the immense sound of ‘10000 Bells Resonate Cosmos Untold’, a title which sounds like a phrase from a William Burroughs cut-up. Muttered voices, uttering in an unknown language, flit in and out of earshot. ‘Arrival of the Deathless Interlopers’ is a bold, surging piece of grand proportions and high drama, which isn’t only spectacularly cinematic, but a sweeping piece of neoclassical music which evokes the same stirring of the senses as Mars from Holst’s Planets Suite. If there is a sense of narrative flow between the pieces, then ‘Orbiting Among Alunarian Ruins’ tells us that not everyone here is deathless, as purgatorial howls and screams swirl in a pitch void, from which emerges a big post-metal riff with an atmosphere reminiscent of Field of the Nephilim at their most doomily bombastic. At nearly ten minutes long, it is epic in every sense, while ‘Alunarian Surrender’, another ten-minute monster soundtracks doom and destruction in slow motion against a backdrop of contemplative strong sounds before everything is obliterated by thunderous percussion and slowly the tide turns to another soaring expanse of post-rock with the darkest, most sinister undercurrents. ‘UGC 2885’ is a last piece truly worthy of the word ‘finale’, almost fourteen minutes of dark ambience, through which a piano echoes into nothingness, through the sound of matter slowly collapsing in on itself.

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Reinhold Friedl / Martin Siewert – Lichtung

Posted: 10 January 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Karlrecords – 21st January 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Reinhold Friedl’s career has been long and interesting, and continues to be so. The list of collaborations on his resumé is beyond outstanding, and he has taken the concept of the prepared piano, as first conceived by John Cage, to limits beyond imagination. As such, while the idea may not have been his own, Friedl’s advancement over the last twenty years has been the definition of innovation. But what makes Friedl such a remarkable figure is his capacity to explore so many different and divergent avenues, and to turn his hand to so many different projects – and this latest, with Martin Siewert is exemplary. Siewert’s instrument is the guitar, but his style of playing is far from conventional, tending to conjure atmosphere from feedback and sustain and otherwise working the space between the notes instead of blasting chords. As such, this is an inspired pairing.

Lichtung blasts in with a thick, heavy, grindy drone that almost borders on Sunn O)) territory: the twenty-four-minute first track, ‘Genese’ is a journey, which begins with an all-out assault of thick, gut-twisting drone and shards of shrieking feedback which twist into a maelstrom of chaos before receding to reveal altogether more tranquil shores. From this, it builds, a droning, churning wash, buzzing drones and dramatic crashes. And from the rising tempest, lone piano notes rise… These particular notes are identifiable as a regular piano, rather than a ‘prepared’ one – but that’s the nature of the tweaked instrument: random items on the strings create random sounds. It’s a curious array of sounds, and over the course of the track, the sound rises and falls, ebbs and flows, but the water is always choppy, the storm building and rumbling before it rages its full force. ‘Genese’ feels like it could be an album in its own right, but there’s a whole lot more to come.

‘Gedstade’ is a mere interlude at five minutes in duration: with plinking, plonking random twangs and scrapes and woozy drones, not to mention extraneous noise and crashes and more, it’s strong on atmosphere and oddness.

Often when interacting with music, or when critiquing music – and these are two different, if quite proximate experiences – I will ask myself, or otherwise consider, ‘how does this make me feel?’ Because ultimately, music, like any art, is about the experience of the recipient, and that experience defines its success and / or impact. To expand on that, and to clarify, many may dislike and so decry a great work of art on account of their singular experience, because it’s difficult to rationalise or otherwise quantify said work. As a critic, to baldly declare ‘they’re wrong’ would be a mistaken and to devalue the experience of others. But if others share a very different experience… then that is their experience.

And so we arrive at ‘Gestitche’, the album’s third and final track, a fifteen minute exploratory work which begins with crashes of low-end piano which sound like thunder and shake the ground beneath this exploratory composition. It’s heavy, doomy, dolorous. The scratchy, discordant guitar work only accentuated the album’s immensely broad sonic range. Squalling squealing guitar ruckus and feedback riot tears its way through the tempest of noise and plunging piano and sputtering sparks of wires. As the track progresses, things evolve and escalate, the thunder builds to a tempest, and at times you feel thoroughly assailed.

To my ears, then, Lichtungis a compelling experience. Lichtung is unquestionably niche, like all of Friedl’s but that in no way diminishes its value. And the joy of Friedl’s work is its variety, and the way in which he interacts with his collaborators. To this end, this album is a work which brings joy.

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ØrsØ – Terms and Conditions EP

Posted: 5 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Lake of Confidence – 15th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Having worked for far too many years in financial services in order to pay the bills, ‘terms and conditions’ is a term that weighs heavily on my soul and my psyche. All that small print… the devil is in the details, and there’s a good reason customers often feel swindled by the inclusion of impenetrable clauses written in language which only someone with an advanced degree in legalese could even begin to decipher. The title, then, brings fitting connotations to a complex and detailed work, although, mercifully, it’s more rewarding than frustrating and doesn’t leave you feeling bamboozled and shafted over.

Label Lake of Confidence – which sounds like it’s on the moon – informs us that ØrsØ’s debut EP ‘is a reflection on our civilization, offering a gripping critique of consumable culture and post-social network alienation.’ They also describe his style as a fusion of ‘experimental music, indietronica, dark wave and English-speaking pop’, and ‘English-speaking’ is right: ‘Unreal Moment’ has the nagging industrial-strength electro pulse of DAF paired with the electro pop layering of early Pet Shop Boys, topped with a vocal delivery that alludes to the monotone nonchalance of The Flying Lizards.

ØrsØ’s brilliance lies in his ability to amalgamate such a range of elements while still keeping the compositions relatively simple, structurally and in terms of things happening at any given time. These songs – and they very much are songs, even if conventional hooks and choruses aren’t dominant features – are clever and carefully constructed. ‘Dancing Girl’ has something of a recent Sparks vibe about it, while he channels shades of Bowie in the vocals, and this is accentuated on ‘To Yourself’, which could be an outtake from Outside.

The EP’s five tracks showcase the work of an artist who possesses a high level of musical articulacy, matched by a high level of experimental curiosity. There isn’t a weak track here, and significantly, no two tracks are particularly alike: the last of the five, ‘Follow the Wind’ brings a more overtly dance feel, with a pumping bass beat and rippling, trancey synths, but at the same time, there are hints of The Human League and Visage in the mix.

In an ocean – not a lake – of retro-tinged, vaguely dark-hued synthy pop, ØrsØ’s ‘Terms and Conditions’ stands out as being more detailed, more nuanced, and more inventive in its assimilation of wide-ranging elements – and the results are accomplished.

ALTR∞ – Infinite

Posted: 1 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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12th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

German electro duo ALTR∞ seem like a pretty chipper pair, pronouncing the arrival of their second EP with the theatrical, Shakespeare-referencing proclamation ‘The world is not a stage, it’s a dancefloor: welcome to the Cosmic dancefloor of Eternity!’

They go on to explain how the ‘INFINITE’ EP is a celebration of the complexity and the beauty of life and the connection that binds us all! The broad spectrum of music influences, woven into the EP’s music tapestry, symbolises the infinite flow of ideas and references that shape and drive the Collective Consciousness. We hope that these songs will make you feel free: dancing and releasing all worries and troubles! We wanted to try new things, while exploring a more dancefloor-oriented sound, while still sticking to our own style. The energy was there and the rest just happened as usual – immersing in the magic of the studio and channelling our feelings!’

The EP’s four tracks span just over eighteen minutes, and while they are certainly very rhythmically-orientated, in terms of commercial dance, they’re not what anyone would call bangin’ dance choonz – not even your dad or your grandad. Sonically, Infinite sits somewhere in the middle ground between the minimal techno favoured by Gilles Peterson on his 6 Music show, and the kind of stuff I find modular synth fanatics noodling out at the Electronic Music Open Mic nights we have around the country.

‘I Saw the Future’ is, ironically, a squelchy analogue workout that’s decidedly retro, and the sparse vocals are more 90s dance track dub remix than avant-garde futurism. The vocal snippets add layers or mystique and esotericism, ‘Hurricane’ brings more urgent beats, clattering hand drums rattling over a thudding bass drum and pulsating groove, with weaving synths conjuring an expansive and trace-like atmosphere. The last track, ‘Infinite Mind’ pulses away in an inwardly-focused way.

This isn’t music that will send you wild or dance yourself into a frenzy, but will instead likely catapult you into inner space, and inspect your own psychological circuitry – in a most pleasant way. It kinda sounds like the cover looks.

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Madrelarva – Tierra de Silencio

Posted: 18 December 2023 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Recordings – 24th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Spanish electronic musician Julio Tornero has been producing minimal techno, IDM and experimental music since 2015. He’s one of those people who has a million different projects and as many different pseudonyms, also recording as Dark Tibet, Oceanic Alpha Axis, Sequences Binaires, with his work published by a multitude of labels including Fmur, Intellitronic Bubble, Detriti, Phantasma Disques.

I never cease to be amazed by artists who simply effuse and froth with creative output: how do they do it? How do they have the time, let alone the headspace? Given the economics of art in the 21st century, the likelihood of a life on the further recesses of obscurity in the most obscure of genres could provide a living seems improbable, but then to have the capacity to produce art after the slog of a day-job seems almost superhuman. And this, this is not just some easy, off-the-cuff, going-through-the-motions half-arsed toss-off.

Tierra de Silencio is pitched as ‘A homage to the formative years and evolution of electronic music’, with nods to Nurse With Wound and other progenitors of that nascent industrial sound, which was born primarily out of a spirit of experimentalism, and a desire to be different, facilitated as it was by emerging technology.

It’s perhaps hard to really assimilate now how the late 70s and early 80s witnessed a technology explosion, which not only witnessed the advent of new synths and drum machines, but saw them become available on a low-budget, mass-market basis. But while many bought them up and started making synth pop, some oddballs did what oddballs always to and decided to push the kit as hard as they could. And some of the results were utterly deranged. Tape loops and all kinds of messing yielded results with varying degrees of listenability, from Throbbing Gristle to NWW to Foetus and Cabaret Voltaire.

With only four tracks, this is one of those albums which would lend itself to an extravagant 2×12” release, with a track per side, since these are very much longform works, with ‘Duermevela’ stretching out beyond seventeen minutes, and the title track lasting more than a quarter of an hour. But if the expectation is for a set of compositions which are primitive, difficult, and in some way steeped in nostalgia for that early 80s noise, this isn’t that album. Despite the analogue feel, Tierra de Silencio finds Tornero exploring the spirit of the period, rather than striving to recreate the sound.

The first track, ‘Metamorph’ splashes in at the dancier end of the spectrum with some hard groove vibes. Fast, urgent, flickery, and glittery, it’s a shimmering curtain of electronica which ripples over a driving, dynamic beat that doesn’t let up. It’s got heavy hints of DAF, but it’s still not without a taste of Yello or Chris and Cosey. And it keeps on going for eleven and a half minutes. In time, the beat peters out and we’re left in a whirlpool of fizzing electronics.

The aforementioned ‘Duermevela,’ the album’s second track, draws on 70s electronica, with endless bubbling, rippling synths and incursions of altogether harsher sounds. Blasts of dark noise deluge over the bleak explosions of dankness. The beats are busy, and also metrononomic, and the effect is mesmerising.

Something dazzles for a moment. Then the lights flicker. What is this? This is likely panic. Negatividad Absoluta binks, bonks, bleeps and tweets, and the atmosphere is 70s sci-fi, something on the cusp of strangeness, jarring, alien, robotic. There are crunches and fizzes, crackles of distortion, and top-end tones ping back and forth like ping-pong.

Tierra de Silencio is very much an album which pushes an experimental vibe, while maxing out on what feels now like more contemporary dance tropes, largely on account of the rippling synths and glooping repetition. But it also incorporates elements of Kraftwerk and early Human League in its deployment of those vintage synth sounds and layerings. It’s an intriguing and entertaining work, and it passes hypnotically in what feels like no time at all.

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Plague Rider – Intensities

Posted: 15 December 2023 in Albums, Reviews
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Transcending Obscurity Records – 10th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Somehow, despite James Watts having about a dozen musical projects on the go, with each touring in support of recent releases in addition to running a label, Newcastle quartet Plague Rider have come together once more to record a new album. It’s been out a few weeks already, but now, in addition to the myriad packages which include all the merch bundles you could possibly want and more besides, from mugs to denim jackets, it’s available on some pretty lurid-looking coloured vinyl. One might describe the retina-singeing flame-coloured hues of the disc as intense, which is fitting, given not only the album’s title, but its contents.

All of the various outfits featuring Watts are at the noisy end of the spectrum: the man has been blessed – or cursed – with vocal chords which have the capacity to evoke the darkest, dingiest, most hellish pits of hell, and the ability to transform the least likely of objects, like radiators and so on, into ‘musical’ instruments capable of conjuring the kind of noise that would bring forth demons.

Whereas Lump Hammer are devotees of relentless, repetitive riffs, and Friend are heavy buy dynamic, Plague Rider are… Plague Rider.

This isn’t just about Watts, though: guitarist Jake Bielby is of Dybbuk, and ex-Live, Lee Anderson (no, not that one) on bass is ex-Live Burial, and ex-Horrified), as is Matthew Henderson on drums. They make for one mighty unit, who, according to the accompanying notes, exist to weave together ‘vile, repulsive, and challenging death metal music whose original influences are now twisted and decomposed beyond recognition. Sure, you can find bits and pieces here and there, traces of hair, fingernails, broken teeth fragments, but overall their music is too far gone for any obvious comparisons. And that’s only remarkable because it adds an element of uniqueness and unpredictability in their music, a rare thrill to be derived from this style these days.’

There is so much going on all at once, it’s brain-blowing. It’s not technical metal, because it’s simply too raw, to ragged, and it’s not jazz, because, well, it’s just not – but they apply the principles of jazz to extreme metal, resulting in a mess of abrasion that’s… I don’t know what. I’m left foundering for marks and measures, for adjectives and comparisons and find myself grasping at emptiness. ‘Temporal Fixation’ explodes to start the album, and within the first three minutes it feels like having done six rounds in the ring. It’s as dizzying an eight minutes as you’ll experience. When I say it’s not technical, it’s still brimming with difficult picked segments and awkward signatures – but to unpick things, the technicality is more jazz-inspired than metal, the drums switching pace and fitting all over. The vocals are low in the mix, lurching from manic frenzy to guttural growling at the crack of a snare.

And at times, those snare shots land fast and furious, but not necessarily regularly. The rhythms on this album are wild and unpredictable – but then the same is true of everything, from the instrumentation to the structures. The mania and the frenzied fury perhaps call to mind Mr Bungle and Dillinger Escape Plan, but these are approximations, at least once removed, because this is everything all at once.

It’s as gnarly as fuck, and if ‘An Executive’ is all-out death metal, it’s also heavily laced with taints of math rock, noise rock, jazz metal and grindcore. It’s a raging tempest, an explosion of blastbeats and the wildest guitar mayhem that sounds like three songs all going off at once, and that’s before you even get to the vocals, which switch between raging raw-throated ravings and growls so low as to claw at the bowels. The sinewey guitars and percussive assault of ‘Modern Serf’ are very Godflesh, but in contrast, immediately after, ‘Toil’ is rough and ragged, and dragged from the raw template of early Bathory.

The lyrics may be impossible to decipher by ear, but thanks to a lyric sheet, it’s possible to excavate a world that’s broadly relatable to the experience of life as it is: ‘Psychically exhausted / Yet still plugged in and wired’ (‘Temporal Fixation’);

‘An Executive’ nails the way corporate speak has come to dominate everyday dialogue:

‘Chant the slogans

With conviction

Doesn’t matter

What we tell them

All that is solid melts into PR’

Fuck this this shit and capitalism’s societal takeover. As if it’s not enough to dominate the means and the money, the cunts in suits are taking over the language, too. But they’re not taking over Plague Rider. No-one is touching them as they lay convention to waste with this most brutal album. ‘The Refrain’ takes the screaming noise to the next level and brings optimum metal power for almost ten minutes before, the last track, the twelve-and-a-half minute ‘Without Organs’ is grim and utterly relentless.

With Intensities, Plague Rider deliver a set that lives up to the title. It’s utterly brutal, frantically furious, and devastatingly dingy. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the rapid transitions between segments, and it’s likely many will move on swiftly because it’s simply too much. But that’s largely the point: Intensities spills the guts of dark, dirty metal. Utterly deranged, this is the best kind of nasty.

AA

band photo

Splat R. – Kill Spill Thrill

Posted: 8 December 2023 in Albums
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Panurus Productions – 1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

What better way to mark the start of advent than with a new release on Newcastle’s Panurus Productions, home of noisy and weird shit on tape, eh?

This latest offering covers both bases, being noisy and weird, but predominantly weird.

Panurus releases always come with cracking explanatory notes, and they’re worth quoting for this one, too:

‘Glitching and laced with interference from its temporal transit, Splat R. intercepts nine broadcasts of lo-fi noise drenched beats from a possible future. Hooks lead you through what could be samples, generated electronica or interference noise, that at times meshes and augments the beat and others swells over and underneath it with a sense of menace. There’s a sense of retro-future to the album in its tones and the recognisability of some of the sound used, but presented as if those ideas were carried further forward before being thrown back towards us, warped and distorted; as if it was constructed from pieces of culture scavenged in the aftermath of some distant cataclysm.’

My work here is done.

Of course, I’m not being entirely serious, but whereas many press releases bring a heap of hype, much of which is a world apart from the product being presented, or otherwise fails to really explain what the release is about, Panurus always absolutely nail it in their summaries.

But of course there is more. ‘Kill Spill Thrill’ is a murky, messy mash-up which evokes The Last Poets, Dalek, and RZA’s Bobby Digital, as well as glitched-up, chewed-up, mangled elevator music. It’s chilled-out hip-hop, trip-hop, and ambient tossed together, melted down, and left to fester and ferment for a while. ‘peace to you, if you’re willing to fight for it’ adds a whole load of wrecking bass and distortion to the bubbling dingy mess, lurching into the territory of dirty experimental industrial noise in the vein of Throbbing Gristle, only with samples thrown in hither and thither. ‘reality denied comes back to haunt’ is plain fucking horrible: lurching booms of thunderous noise and trills of feedback and wailing synths pushed to their limits in a power electronics meltdown suddenly segues into a crackling mess of club-friendly dance, but distorted in a nightmarish way.

‘authentic creation is a gift to the future’ lurches so hard as to reach the pit of the stomach, before ‘there is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns’ pumps a beefy beat that’s pure nightclub – but obviously, the vibe is anything but buoyant or euphoric. It’s bad trip, apocalyptic, the dance dynamics distorted to the shade of a nightmare, fizzing sparks and subsonic detonations occurring simultaneously, like a nuclear blast landing a direct hit on a night club.

I can’t decide if I need to puke or shit as the messy mass of stuttering overload stammers and rolls and lurches onwards. This is glitch of the highest order: the briefest, almost imperceptible of stammers are amplified to the most uncomfortable, blurring, bilious horrors which emulate the worst post-binge room-spin.

Kill Spill Thrill is a splurging, intestinal-churning, head-shredding sonic attach that lands thick and heavy. For all of its touchstones, it doesn’t sound quite like anything else, and it rips the ground before it to devastating effect.

AA

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