Posts Tagged ‘exploratory’

WMTID aka Well Martin This Is Different! – Silica Bombs

Posted: 29 November 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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27th November 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Richard Rouka is… an unusual man. He’s existed around the Leeds scene since the emergence of the goth scene, and he documented it back in the day, in real time, but to describe his own musical output as ‘adjacent’ would be generous, to say the least. The mid-to-late eighties saw his label, Rouska, release a stack of stuff, predominantly by The Cassanda Complex and Dustdevils, bands with strong Leed connections.

His own works, released under the guise of WMTID aka Well Martin This Is Different! draws on the post-punk vibe of that period, but is predominantly primitive electropop with a distinctly bedroom / four-track vibe. WMTID has been a thing for over forty years, but Rouska’s output has skyrocketed in recent year.

One way of pitching it would be early Depeche Mode as performed by Young Marble Giants, but this wouldn’t really convey the ways in which these elements – played and tossed together in the most ramshackle of ways coalesce. But what it hopefully would convey was the fact that this is steeped in early eighties analogue experimentalism, the time when synths were breaking through as emerging technology and the Musician’s Union was shitting itself about how this would herald the death of ‘real’ music – particularly on account of the increasing popularity of drum machines, which they feared would end the need for drummers. Just as home taping didn’t kill music – and if anything it meant that music sharing exposed more people to new acts (I know I discovered countless new bands because people gave me mix tapes), so synths and drum machines broadened musical horizons instead.

Silica Bombs revels in the primitive: ‘Fool Moon’ is simple, sparse, in its arrangement, synths quavering around a persistent piston-pushing drum machine beat. With its stark, minimal production, paired with a fairly flat, monotone vocal delivery, ‘If It Happened Anywhere Else’ very much channels the spirit of Joy Division. The bleak, synth-led ‘Walk With Me (Into the Sea) sounds like a demo for New Order’s Movement. And yes, the recording quality is pretty rough, and it very much captures the spirit and sound of the late 70s and early 80s.

It’s different, alright, but above all, it feels like a magnificent anachronism. The eighties revival had been ongoing for at least a decade now, and so many acts have sought to replicate the sound and feel they’ve largely failed. Maybe you needed to there. Maybe you need the right kit.

But the weird, trilling organ sound of ‘Good Mourning’ brings a dark weight and fizzed-put production which are incompatible with contemporised production values. ‘Crushing Bore; brings a certain humous to proceedings, while coming on like Cabaret Voltaire. ‘Opposites Attract’ brings some heavy drone which contrasts with the sing-song vocal melody, and in may ways this is typical of the way in which WMTID explore polarities with a shameless eighties naiveté. By this, I mean that the 80s was really the last decade of real innovation. The 90s were exciting, and that’s a fact – I was there – but the 80s witnessed the arrival of synths, of electronica, and marked a real turning point in the trajectory of music. And Silica Bombs doesn’t replicate that era so much as live there. With its thumping beats and swirling synth sound, ‘Rouge Planet’ has a strong club vibe. That vibe gets stronger and harder, with the pulsating groove of ‘Sweet Jesus’, which Rouska tells us ‘I’ve got a friend in Jesus’. Yeah. The Jesus and Mary Chain, perhaps. ‘Personal Jesus’ maybe. It drives hard fir a relentless five and a half minutes.

This is an album which wears its influences on its sleeve and shows no signs of shame in that. And why should it? Rouska is very much of that era and played a part. The fact that his musical output over the last few years is indicative of a person who doesn’t go for meetups with former colleagues. More than its predecessor, Finding the A.I. G-Spot, Silica Bombs feels significantly beat-orientated, and more hard-hitting. It’s retro, and its catchy. It’s retro and it’s weird in that it has no specific identity… it’s just what it is. And it’s a groove.

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Nadja – cut

Posted: 11 October 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Midira Records / Cruel Nature Records – 24th October 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

A new Nadja release is always cause for a pique of interest. Excitement doesn’t feel like quite the right term for an act who create such dense, dark, brooding soundscapes. Centred around the duo of Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker, each release marks a shift thanks to the contribution of a range of guest performers, and cut is no exception – and this time, following the instrumental epic that was Labyrinthine (2022) – we have vocals, from not just Baker and Buckareff, but also Tristen Bakker, Oskar Bakker-Blair and Lane Shi Otayonii, among others. They certainly bring a lot of guests to a party which features just four tracks. But that is ’just’ four tracks which each occupy an entire side of vinyl on a double LP. As with Labyrinthine, these are compositions which span ten to sixteen minutes, and utilise that timeframe to maximum effect. They don’t hurry things, with slow, tapering drones interweaving, the emphasis on the atmosphere and the detail over the impact. And yet, despite this, or even perhaps because of this, the impact is strong, albeit in more subtle ways.

Their comments on the album are illuminating, explaining that ‘Thematically, cut explores trauma and physio-/psychological stress, as well as possible tools and means of overcoming these stressors, of which the music itself (sonic sublimation) might be one… Musically, while Nadja retains their signature wall-of-noise doomgaze sound, they also explore quieter, more introspective moments as well as new/different instrumentation, with harp, French horn, and saxophone featuring for the first time on one of the band’s recordings’.

‘It’s Cold When You Cut Me’ is stark, bleak, minimal. The air feels dead, it’s suffocating. The sparse percussion rattles along, but the drones are glacial. Five minutes in, rumbling bass and heavy beats roll in, and by the mid-point there are crushing waves of lugubrious noise worthy of Swans, but overlaid with trilling brass and woodwind, jazz in slow-mo, the honk of migrating birds and trilling abstraction.

But this is just a gentle introduction ahead of the thunderous grind of ‘Dark, No Knowledge’, which begins with atmospheric whirlings and even hints of Eastern esotericism, voices rising in the distance, atop wisps and rumbles, echoes and murmurings, before the dense, sludgy, post everything doom drone cascades in like a mudslide. It’s low and it’s slow, crawling like larva. buzzes and rumbles sustain for an eternity. You can actually feel your stomach drop in response to the bass frequencies.

The sound seems to get thicker and murkier as the album progresses, and if ‘She Ate His Dreams From the Inside & Spat Out The Frozen Fucking Bones’ isn’t nearly as abrasive as the title may suggest, its slow repetitious form is truly hypnotic as it trudges its way along.it possesses a rare density which matches its delicacy, and comparisons to latter-day Swans stand in terms of positioning the piece. There are thick, distorted tones grinding like earthworks through the airier overtones, and the contrast brings something magical and soothing. Then ‘Omenformation’ crashes in like a tsunami. The volume leaps, the density leaps, and you find yourself blown away by a sonic force strong enough to knock the air out of your lungs. The dingy, booming bass alone is enough to send you to the ground. The drums are immense. In fact, everything about this is almost inarticulable, as Nadja scale up the sound to beyond that of mere mortal beings. This is music with a physical force and a power beyond words, beyond contrivance. It’s archaic, occult, primal in its power. This is a track which treads through a series of movements, the last of which is crushing in its weight.

It’s true that cut possesses all of the sounds which are recognisable as being concomitant with Nadja’s distinctive dense, doomgaze stylings, and a lot of the vocals are as much additional layers rather than clearly enunciated words, and as such, add further depth – and a certain human aspect to the overall sound. The result is a work which speaks to that level of the psyche beyond words, which conveys trauma and physio-/psychological stress, and which offers a degree of relief through an experience which is wholly immersive and immensely powerful.

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Photo: Hugues de Castillo

The Funeral March of the Marionettes – It All Falls Apart

Posted: 11 March 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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14th March 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

While the early- to mid-80s is considered by many to be the ‘golden age of goth’, 87-88 were pretty good years, too, and saw some of the first wave of bands breaking through commercially… It was at this time, with the release of Floodland and Children that The Sisters of Mercy and The Mission, respectively, broke big in the charts, and being 12/13 at the time, this was when my eyes – and ears – were opened to a whole new world of music. And so it was, too, that things really started to happen across the pond, too, and it was in 1987 that saw the formation of The Funeral March of the Marionettes, often referred to as The Funeral March.

There may well be a whole thing about how goths are obsessed with death, as even the band’s name suggests, but this release arrives in a genuinely sad context, namely the passing of founder and front man Joe Whiteaker from pancreatic cancer in his mid-fifties. With every year that passes, it becomes apparent that the people who are dying are closer to our own age, are our peers, or close to. But the fact Joe did complete the recording of It All Falls Apart is something to celebrate. Many of us ponder our legacy: what is it that we leave behind?

The Funeral March are drawing the curtain on a thirty-seven year career with what may be their finest work to date.

They started out, like so many gothy / post-punk inspired acts, drawing inspiration from seminal English acts like Bowie, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and Joy Division. The band’s name, meanwhile, was a nod to Charles Gounod’s ‘Funeral March of a Marionette’, best known as the theme music for TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And truth be told, this is all pretty standard: marionettes seem to be part of textbook goth catalogue: There was The Marionettes, for a start who started life as The Screaming Marionettes in ’86, and when you chuck all the words into a goth band name generator, let’s not forget Screaming Banshee Aircrew… So much goth seems to thrive on derivation.

It All Falls Apart brings with it a certain familiarity by necessity, really. But this release sees them push the boundaries rather more, forging their own identity more strongly than ever before. It’s a sign of artistic growth: many artists – regardless of medium, be it music, writing, visual arts – begin by learning from their precursors, leaning on their influences, and finding one’s own voice takes time and confidence. It’s also an album of two halves – essentially an EP and a remix EP, but again, in context, it feels appropriate.

So if ‘Starts at Night’ brings hints of The Mission’s ‘Sacrilege’ or ‘Amphetamine Logic’ by The Sisters, perhaps even Skeletal Family’s ‘Promised Land’, all of which are killer by virtue of the complex picked lead guitar parts, it’s equally worth noting just how hard it blasts out of the gates. Pow! It’s the drums that really make this one. More Danse Society circa Seduction than anything else than comes to mind, it packs all the power up front, and that impact really lands strongly.

All of the ‘standard’ goth tropes are present and correct, from the loping, dynamic drums, the chiming, chorus-rich guitars, and thumping down-on-the-floor bass, but their execution is exemplary. This is the sound of a band who are intensely honed and striding confidently through all aspects of songwriting and production. It’s the thinking bass that really makes ‘Shadow Games’, but with its chiming guitars and vocal inflections, it ventures into the territory of classic contemporary post-punk, in the way that the likes of Interpol have built on the foundations of Joy Division without being a carbon copy, and the energetic chorus calls to mind White Lies at their best. It’s not that The Funeral March have abandoned their roots here, but that they’ve cut loose and taken flight.

‘Save Us’ is more driving, more hard-hitting, more overtly post -punk than goth, bit it’s also dark, snarly, proper rock ‘n’ roll, the sound of leather jeans and legs akimbo, and a contrast with the more overtly atmospheric but no less punchy ‘Bobblehead’. As for the title track… well. It feels like the finale, and, with the benefit of hindsight, the farewell. Stretching out to six minutes, it’s the perfect blend of guitars, shimmering in waves of treble an reverb, atop the phattest drums and underpinned by a thick bass. It’s goth perfection and would have been at home on the recent album by Pink Turns Blue. It All Falls Apart is appropriately titled, as it turns out.

The quality is consistent throughout, and the remixes are actually nice additions here, making All Falls Apart a superb addition to the band’s catalogue, we can only speculate on what they might have done next, but All Falls Apart feels like the perfect way to finish a career.

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We Are Space Horses – Apologia

Posted: 20 January 2024 in Reviews
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29th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Alright, I’ll get the moment of amusement about the fact that US stoner / prog / space rock / psychedelic indie trio We Are Space Horses have a member named Kevin Vanderhoof out of the way before getting down to business – the business of getting to grips with this expansive seven-track EP, which sees the band really explore texture and detail across its duration. I make no apologia for my flippancy, since first and foremost, I’m here to offer a detailed and serious critique, and a small amount of levity is no bad thing.

The first track, ‘To Let Go… Absolutely’ is representative, beginning with a screed of noise which backs off to leave us with a simple acoustic guitar and wafting falsetto vocal. The vibe is very much 70s prog, accentuated by some bold guitar breaks over the song’s six-and-a-half-minute duration. It’s not so much leaning on this artist or that, so much as assimilating the broader oeuvre.

Bass and drum-led ‘Haunt’ mines some blued-based seems with some gutsy Led Zep-inspired riffology delivered with some serious swagger. The contemporary production values and overall gritty heft places it alongside the likes of Rival Sons. Now, on a personal level, I’m in two minds about the latest heavy blues revival and in particular about Rival Sons, and this comes from the perspective of someone who spent their early teens almost exclusively at pub gigs watching blues acts, electric and acoustic, and seeing countless blues artists in York around 2005, not least of all because every other pub was host to live acoustic blues at that time. And I learned you can have too much of a good thing.

We Are Space Horses are unquestionably a good thing, and that’s a fact, and best of all, when they transcend beyond the blues template to wander exploratory space, as they do on the meandering but beefy ‘God is a Ghost’ they’re hugely exciting.

If ‘Ketoacidosis’ is a bit standard alt-rock and is the sound of black-shirt wearing beard-sporting clean progressive metal, it is at least well-executed: there can be absolutely no doubting these guys’ musical competence or their capacity for dynamic structures, and the songs across the album as a whole are imbued with palpable emotional sincerity. ‘Stale Skies’ thunders in with an intro that’s pure Joy Division before pairing off towards something starker, sparser, more 80s AOR, but stretching its way boldly into more contemporary prog. Clean chords strike off in different directions as the bass rolls and strolls, moves and grooves before lunging in with some chunky distortion.

The vogue for epic last tracks may have become somewhat predictable of late, but I really can’t complain. Way back in the 80s, even, the killer epic longer last song by way of a closer became, for me, the mark of an album that was special. And of course, slower: from Duran Duran’s ‘The Chauffeur’ to The Sisters of Mercy’s ‘Some Kind of Stranger’, the extended, emotion-tugging closer emerged as a thing and over time, it’s become more pronounced, although I won’t suggest more indulgent – bands have simply created space to extend beyond their limits to deliver spectacular album finishes. And this is a spectacular finish to a spectacular album.

Apologia is bold, varied, and ambitious, and finds the band taking risks. More often than not, they pull them off, too, making for an album that’s bold, confident, and exciting.

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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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Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung – Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung

Posted: 27 September 2023 in Albums
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Sub Rosa  – 22nd September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

So many reissues recently have taught me a valuable lesson. I don’t know nearly as much music as I thought I did. Of course, it’s impossible know all the music, and despite feeling I’m reasonably knowledgeable, and compensating what I don’t know with enthusiasm. Time was, I was worried about knowledge gaps: they made me feel stupid, ignorant, and I’ve spent evenings with people who have reeled off bands in genres I’m interested in and not recognised the name of a single one, let alone heard them. I felt like a fraud claiming to be a music enthusiast and worse still, a music writer (I never proclaim to be a music journalist. I write about music, and do so very much from a personal perspective. Sometimes, I stab at maintaining an element of objectivity, but the appreciation of art isn’t objective. As I’ve written elsewhere, the reason we appreciate art is because of the feelings it stirs in us, the way it speaks to us, not first and foremost because of its technical proficiency.

This is a lengthy circumnavigation to the confession that Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung completely bypassed me in the day – in fact, until today, the week of the reissue of their 1995 self-titled full-length debut. I suspect that they didn’t get much coverage in the UK music press, and this was still a while before the advent of the Internet as we know it – and I was a relatively early adopter, setting up my eBay account in 1999 following the demise of Yahoo! Auctions.

As the accompanying bio outlines, ‘The band consisted of four young, ‚classically derailed’ musicians who played their own compositions exclusively their with acoustic instruments such as violin, cello, clarinet and accordion… Their work contained influences from Roma music, Eastern European folk, klezmer and jazz, but was performed with the energy, rebellious spirit and Sturm und Drang of a bona fide punk band. DAAU was part of the fertile Antwerp scene, which also produced dEUS, Zita Swoon and Kiss My Jazz, and soon signed an international record deal with Sony Classical.’

dEUS may have briefly made a mark here in the UK in indie / alternative circles, but the others, not so much, and I suspect that even with its first vinyl pressing, this re-release will likely have a bigger landing in Germany and, indeed, the rest of mainland Europe, than this pitiful island that still celebrates Britpop, and which spent 1995 dominated by turgid sludge by the likes of Oasis, whose pinnacle release (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? and Blur’s Great Escape (which was anything but great); the best we got was The Bends, while Robson and fucking Jerome dominated the singles charts for half the year. As if we needed further proof that we’re a small, crappy island with an overinflated sense of self-importance that the longest hangover from the Empire ever. It’s embarrassing, as is the fact that this domestic Brit-centric bullshittery has denied us introductions to many great bands. Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung is a perfect example.

It’s perhaps not hard to grasp why this extravaganza of neoclassical extravagance and its wild woodwind and unpredictable compositional forms didn’t grab the attention of the British Music press, but they missed a work that’s hugely innovative and belongs to no one genre. It’s wild and it’s challenging , but these are positives.

Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung is droning strings, it’s by turns melancholy and slow, and remarkably lively. It’s an untamed beast almost with a life and energy all of its own. But the compositions aren’t in sequence!

‘V Drieslagstelsel’ is the first track, the first of five ‘Drieslagstelsel’ pieces, and it’s followed by the frenzied yet droning folksiness of ‘II Drieslagstelsel’: it’s pretty, but it’s strange. Or, it’s pretty strange. I’m on the fence, while it sounds like they’re stripping the fence with some frenzied violin work. ‘III Drieslagstelsel’ scuttles in with some cheeky chamber stylings before popping in all directions, and it’s kinda cheeky – and perhaps tongue-in-cheeky – jaunty, incredibly busy, and extremely varied. It isn’t the kind of explosive, head-spinning jazz I sometimes find myself wrestling with here, but it covers a lot of terrain in just five and a half minutes, with stage musical qualities pushing to the fore before dipping back down to something altogether less ‘production’ orientated. The last of the ‘Drieslagstelsel’ sequence is ‘I Drieslagstelsel’, and following the frenzied strings and dramatic orchestral sculptures of ‘VI Drieslagstelsel,’ it’s a compact piece of neoclassical music which fulfils the oft-underrated and oft-overlooked purpose of entertaining. It’s a fun and often frivolous piece, in parts a wild hoedown with wind instruments, with an eye-popping energy which delves in to drones and darker territory at times.

What happened to IV? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Rounding the album off is the eleven-minute ‘Doorloop’, which appears to be a traditional track, and its slow, drawn-out notes are funereal at first, before thing go g=crazy and there are even vocal.

Over the course of these six pieces, Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung brings massive range. Back in 95, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it, and nor would anyone else I knew. But here we are, looking at an accomplished album with much texture and range.

And now, I appreciate it. Perhaps I wasn’t ready, perhaps it was out of step with the times for all but a few – and even fewer here in Britain – but Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung is a remarkable album, and one which is timeless.

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Sulk Rooms and The Incidental Crack – Split

Posted: 15 July 2023 in Albums
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Waxing Crescent Records – 7th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Since parting ways with Gavin Millar and worriedaboutsatan, Thomas Ragsdale has been incredibly busy recording both as Ffion and Sulk Rooms, as well as playing synths with Mancunian post-rock act Pijn. Looking at his bandcamp, you wonder how he has time to piss, let alone sleep.

The Incidental Crack, meanwhile, are no strangers to these pages either, and Simon Proffitt, Rob Spencer and Justin Watson are hardly idlers when it comes to creativity, with The Incidental Crack Does Nothing, released almost a year ago to the day from this release, following two albums in 2021.

And as the accompanying notes explain, it’s this shared love of the act of creating that brought the two together: ‘Split was created through the desire to collaborate. Thomas Ragsdale and The Incidental Crack spoke about the idea of working on a split release and then all hurried away into their studios to get to work. The split idea soon become a reality as music was exchanged ready to share.’

The title is factual, and gives nothing away, but it’s also descriptive in a way, in that it’s distinctly an album of two halves, complimentary and contrasting.

Sulk Rooms present a single longform composition of some twenty-one-and-a-half minutes in duration: The Incidental Crack’s contribution is of more or less equal length, but spread across three pieces.

Sulk Rooms’ ‘Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear’ has no connection to Meat Loaf and his bombastic rock, and is instead a big, slow-moving mass of ambience, which has a density and shade as well as a certain lightness. ‘Vaporous’ and ‘cloud-like’ are terms I often reach for in the face of such works, but this feels more like standing atop a mountain while the cloud thickens to the point that there is no visibility, to the point that you’re unable to even discern the presence of your own body, and so dense as to be suffocating – perhaps more like a smog or smoke. Tim Hecker managed to create such a sensation the time I saw – or, more accurately, was present, when he played in Leeds a few years back. The smoke was so dense and the lighting so minimal as to induce a kind of sensory deprivation. But with the swirling sounds all around, there was, simultaneously, sensory overload. You need balance: many of us are reliant on multiple senses, and those who lack sight, hearing, often experiencing a sharpening of the senses which do function. But his is not an immediate thing, and to suddenly find oneself with restrictions, it’s a shock of sorts. And so while ‘Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear’ is soft and tranquil, the experience isn’t entirely soothing as I feel an inner tension grow as the time drifts and dissolves, diffusing in reverberating waves of vocal samples.

The Incidental Crack’s three cuts are descriptively titled and combine elements of the dramatic and the mundane to intercut aspects of pathos with bathos to somewhat comic effect.

‘Rob To Holland Via Köln And Back Again’ sounds like is should have something of a travelogue feel, but is, in fact, a work of dark ambience with deep tensions evoking the chilling fear of The Cold War, while ‘Lawnmower Death And Subsequent Resurrection’ isn’t an homage to the parodic thrash band Lawnmower Deth, but a soundtrack to the trauma of dealing with tools and appliances when they don’t function as intended. Yes, most of us have been there, but to feel it so bluntly and boldly is impactful. This – if I’m not mistaken – the sound of a guy recording his DIY and the like before seeking a narrator. Yet, there are some dark atmospherics too, and thee overall sensation is ominous rather than uplifting. And by that measure, the ‘Bus Stops In Wigan’ must be pretty fucking terrifying: places to avoid in bleak territories.

As split albums go, it’s absolute perfection in that it gives you everything you want. If the two acts operate very differently in formal terms, both have created deep, dark works here that make for a release that’s wide-ranging, interesting, and just a little scary.

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Bleaklow – Glume EP

Posted: 4 July 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Gizeh Records – 30th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

In this sense, Bleaklow is a rather different proposition, and in some respects, the instrumentation is a significant factor in the shape of the sound, with Claire contributing ‘Voice, Nord Electro, Yamaha PSS-170, field recordings, Moog Taurus’, and Richard contributing ‘Electric gtr, drones, field recordings, Yahama PSS-170, Moog Taurus’. But by the same token, there is something about anything Richard Knox does which has something of a signature – not a signature sound as such, more of a signature feel, which comes from the kind of wispy ambience and dense atmospherics.

The overall effect of Bleaklow’s debut, Glume, is mellow, amorphous washes of cloud-like sounds drifting softly on invisible air currents, but there are moments where the textures are coarser, more abrasive, and these provide vital contrast. ‘Husk’ scrapes in with a wash of distorted guitar before tapering tones supple piano and vocals, layered to a choral effect surge and swell.

Claire’s voice by turns evokes Kate Bush and Cranes, haunting, ethereal, and as much as this sits in the post-rock bracket from which Richard and Gizeh emerged back in the early 00s (the label put out not only the The Heritage, the debut mini album by Her Name is Calla, but Knox also put out a super-limited CD of ‘Condor and River’ in a crazy corrugated card sleeve, as well as Arrivals, the debut album by worriedaboutsatan, wrapped in a chunk of blown vinyl wallpaper, which looks and feels amazing but is a real bugger to store… but I digress) it also very much harks back to 90s shoegaze, with a heavy debt to Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, but then again, it’s impossible to listen to this without recourse to The Cocteau Twins. If this sounds like a catalogue of touchstones, it’s testament to how deftly they draw on myriad elements and whip them into a sonic souffle with the texture of candyfloss – not that this is particularly sweet, but it is lighter than a feather, lighter than air. And nowadays, the packaging is a little less DIY, but still very much focused on sustainability: the packaging for Glume is a recycled cocoa-card sleeve, whereby the ‘recycled card is made from 40% Post Consumer Waste and 15% natural fibres (by-products derived from the food processing industry which would otherwise go to landfill.) Turning a waste product into a natural, GMO free, raw material derived from nuts, fruits etc, resulting in distinctive colour shades’. It’s not just commendable, environmentally: it taps into the physicality of a releasing music and rendering the physical release a work of art rather than a commodity of plastic in plastic.

Everything on Glume happens at a sedate pace, and everything melts slowly together. The chances are that at some point, you’ve sat, stood, or even laid on the grass and simply looked at the sky and watched the clouds slowly shifting shape, rabbits and elephants becoming elongated and increasingly deformed, until they’re no longer rabbits or elephants, but abstract shapes stretching and fading to formlessness. The songs on Glume are by absolutely no means formless, but the sounds are like mist and the structures are supple. It’s a magnificently realised work: textured, detailed, nuanced.

It may not be bleak, but it’s dark, and it’s got detail. Bask in it.

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Aidan Baker – Engenderine

Posted: 9 May 2023 in Albums
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Midira Records – 5th May 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Aidan Baker is one of those artists whose output is almost impossible to keep pace with – but the more remarkable thing is that for all of this hyperproductivity, the standard of work is of an unstinting quality. Recorded between 2020 and 2022, Engenderine – a double CD – lands almost simultaneously with Trio Not Trio, the first in a series of five albums on Gizeh Records, and just as Baker is gearing up for a tour with Nadja, the ‘ambient doom / dreamsludge, / metalgaze’ duo he is one half of.

To pause for breath for a moment, it’s worth stepping back and running through the context of this, which is worth quoting:

‘The neologism ‘engenderine’ comes from Lydia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan, a futuristic/dystopian/cli-fi retelling of the Joan of Arc story, and describes beings partially composed of pure energy capable of manipulating matter who, amongst a largely devolved human population, might be considered post-gender and a new evolutionary step.

‘Other song titles come from phrases and images from Tricia Sullivan’s duology Double Vision and Sound Mind, surrealistic fantasies about the nature of reality and perception and, like The Book of Joan, the possibilities of manipulating those.

‘Musically, the songs on Engenderine began as a series of slowly evolving ambient guitar loops – a bed layer of reality, so to speak – over which were layered bass, drums, and organ parts. These instrumental additions – the trappings of perception, signifiers, metaphorically speaking, our attempts to codify perception – incorporate traditional rock structures and progressions but are stripped down to a sort of somnambulant minimalism that might encourage introspection, a meditative background, uneasy listening, as much as they demand attention.’

It really is extremely uneasy listening. It’s perhaps as well it is, for the larger part, ‘background’, because the two CDs, while only containing eight tracks in all, span almost ninety minutes. We’re not quite in Sunn O))) or latter-day Swans territory, but still…

The first track, ‘Baby Dragon Slaughter’ pitches a long, unchanging organ drone note against a growling doom guitar and stop-start percussion which crashes hard. It’s hypnotic, paralysing, and I can imagine some might toss in a Doors comparison, but that’s only on account of the organ and the slightly trippy vibe, because it’s not only nothing like The Doors, but infinitely better.

If you want comparisons – because pretty much everyone seems to work on the premise that everything sounds like something else and recommendations – mostly algorithmic and based on purchases or streams, depending on the platform, Engenderine sits in the low, slow, doom-drone bracket of Sunn O))) and Earth 2. And this is indeed some ultra-low frequency shit. The first track on Disc 2, ‘Resurrection of the Child Army’ features some melodic, trilling pipe sounds around seven minutes into its nine-and-three-quarter-minutes gloomy, thick humming drone, is something you feel as much as you hear, and it resonates through the intestines and vibrates eternally.

The bass on ‘Calabi Yau Manifestations’ is pure dub, floor-shakingly dense, dark, minimal but quiveringly heavy, and it dominates the erratic drum clatters and rumbling roar of a drone that sounds like a jet engine warming up several miles away. Having experienced jet engines nearby, trust me., this is a good thing, but the rumble is unsettling. And then there’s ‘Dorvay’, which seems to take its cues from The Cure circa Pornography, with its hefty percussion dominating the sound.

Engenderine isn’t an album for a track-by-track, blow-by-blow critique: the tracks melt into one another and it’s an album that needs to be experienced as an album – and in context, that’s a continuous droning hum of murky noise without any clear sense of shape or form.

The second disc feels lower, slower, darker and more difficult: the erratic jazz drum-work on ‘Fear Sculptures’ is difficult to digest and assimilate – but then again, so is Engenderine as a whole. It’s just so much dark and difficult droning to chew on that it leaves you feeling low on energy, sapped, physically and mentally. But this isn’t about entertainment, and artistically, Engenderine is an outstanding exploratory / concept work.

AA

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Let Spin – Thick As Thieves

Posted: 7 November 2022 in Albums
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Efpi Records – 18th November 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Time flies when… life. And especially when a pandemic and a series of lockdowns rob you of two tears of doing anything. And so it is that Let Spin are marking the ten-year anniversary of their fourth album, Thick As Thieves.

The band are something of a supergroup: Formed in 2012, Let Spin feature four highly acclaimed musicians: Ruth Goller (Melt Yourself Down, Vula Viel), Chris Williams (Led Bib, Sarathy Korwar), Finlay Panter (Beats & Pieces Big Band, Sound 8 Orchestra), and Moss Freed (Union Division, Spike Orchestra), and Thick As Thieves features ten segued tracks of what they describe as ‘adventurous post-rock, experimental jazz’.

Thick As Thieves may be a cliché, but the music it contains is anything but. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Much as it subscribes to aspects of both jazz and post-rock, it’s an exploratory instrumental set that doesn’t really conform to any specific genre trappings, instead borrowing from them in order to form a unique hybrid.

While it’s largely driven by some crunched-up, noodling guitar work, Thick As Thieves very much mines an overtly jazz theme, and while it starts out quite gentle and doodly, on the third track, ‘Red’ it takes a hard lurch into altogether nor challenging terrain, and not just because it gets louder and more percussive: it’s altogether more jarring, the tempos and signatures tumbling into stop/start confusion before the brass ruptures into a cacophonic maelstrom.

‘Broken, I Told You!’ brings a chubby, strolling bassline that’s got some serous groove in a stuttering sort of a way and packs in some deft runs that weave in and out of the wild woodwind and jittery guitar work that’s disorientating and discombobulating. It’s pretty much ok that this feels a bit weird and woozy: it needs to be. ‘North Sea Swim’ takes things down a way and meanders along before swerving into ‘’Mixed Messages’. ‘Bead’ is perhaps the most overtly post-rock / jazz hybrid work, an expansive succession of crescendos with a soaring sax undulating into waves of stratospheric reverb. Closer ‘Liminality’ is almost nine minutes long, and is a space-rock jazz monster that’s absolutely dizzying.

This is one of those albums that not only feels like its album status is essential – you don’t seek out or skip to particular tracks, but experience it as a whole – but there’s a keen sense it would lend itself nicely to being performed live, in its entirety. It flows from end to end, with judiciously-placed peaks and troughs. The ten songs may be marked out individually, but this really feels like a single continuous piece segmented out into ten slices, and it’s a listening journey. At times intrepid, at times curious, it’s got a lot going on, often all at once. Brace yourself!

AA

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