Posts Tagged ‘instrumental’

hubris. – White Shores

Posted: 7 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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10th September 2026

Having never felt compelled to explore Tolkien’s writing – and perhaps consequently even less compelled to watch Peter Jackson’s epic Lord of the Rings trilogy – I feel in some ways unqualified to review White Shores¸ the fifth album by Swiss post-rock band hubris. which follows four albums inspired by Greek mythology.

This is one of those albums which does require some grounding in context, not only in terms of its literary inspiration, but also the personal circumstances which prompted the shift in focus, and so I shall quote from the accompanying notes in order to avoid any misinterpretation.

In Tolkien’s legendarium, elves in spite of their immortality (a trait often coveted by humans) refer to death as the “Gift of Men.” This paradox offers a striking alternative to the Western perception of death as purely tragic. A “gift” implies something desirable, even fortunate. While Tolkien presents multiple perspectives on death throughout his works, the one that resonated most deeply with Jonathan comes from the main protagonist Frodo’s departure at the end of The Lord of the Rings: "the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

In the wake of his grandfather’s passing, this perspective became Jonathan’s emotional and conceptual foundation of White Shores. The album unfolds across five movements, each representing a word in a single sentence: Death. Is. Just. Another. Path.

The sentence is drawn from Gandalf’s words to Pippin in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation. It was spoken in the face of what appears to be their last moments. This phrase serves as both a moment of respite and a thematic conception.

Inevitably, fans of the books and the films – and there are many – will appreciate White Shores in ways I simply cannot, in that they will be able to identify references and revel in the details. This is clearly an album where detail is important. Comprising five movements, the album is designed to reflect Dr. Kübler-Ross’ theory on the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance – although split into six tracks, with none making any obvious reference to this, it’s not readily apparent.

The first piece, ‘death’ is a delicate, rolling work, which is expansive and feels comparatively calm, particularly for the first three minutes. Additional layers of guitar with overdriven, choppy chords arrive at this point, but the same interweaving lead part continues to drift on through, before it all dissipates into a slow-motion ambience to fade near the end. This in turn segues into ‘is’, which is textured, and builds, but does so gently and in a way which remains easy on the ear. It’s pleasant, but there’s very little grab or bite to it, and as such, it’s music that’s easy to let slip into the background.

The nine-and-a-half-minute ‘just’ is the centrepiece in every way, and with its rolling drums, and a crashing snare which cuts through the rippling guitars which lap away for the first four minutes, it’s the first composition that feels like it’s going somewhere, and offers a glimpse of emotional intensity. The same overdriven guitar sound which brought the power chords on ‘death’ crunches in to underpin an arpeggiated lead line. There’s a definite tension which pulls through the weave of this cinematic composition, but while it conjures sweeping vistas and rolling hills, there’s no rugged, mountainous crescendo, nothing which conveys any palpable sense of anguish. As the final minutes taper down through a soft piano segment, there comes a greater sense of tranquillity, and a sense of ill-ease and frustration at the passage of time, but equally a sense of musical restraint placing limitations on what could have been an impactful epic, and what could have been.

The album’s shortest piece, ‘another’ goes a bit Radiohead, before the final movement, ‘path’ arrives. Split into two parts and with an overall run time of nearly twelve minutes, it unquestionably meets the ‘epic’ criteria. Around the four minute mark, they do finally cut loose, at least a bit, but it still feels lacking somehow.

White Shores is a most listenable album, but it’s not an album that makes you want to listen to it. Instead of grappling with the fundamentals which inspired in a way which demands attention, hubris. seem more interested in keeping things safe. The instrumental work is faultless in its execution, and the compositions are considered. The quieter passages are achingly magnificent and evocative… but they sound like they’re holding back, and the peaks don’t peak much: everything sits around the middle, rather than exploring a greater dynamic range which would have so much more impact, sonically and emotionally.

White Shores is pleasant, and near-flawless on a technical level. But perhaps that’s it’s greatest failing: it places technicality and production over dynamism and impact, and while I like it well enough, I simply find myself wanting more.

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Felix Kubin & Asmus Teitchens – Senderkennungen

Posted: 5 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Auf Abwegen – 3rd September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Is Internet radio really radio? There may still be live broadcasts, but they tend to be then saved and made available for streaming for a period of time, or indefinitely. This has certainly changed the way many of us listen to radio – for those who still do – in the same way streaming has completely changed out TV viewing habits. One obvious benefit of this for viewers / listeners is that there’s no cursing that you’re having to miss something because of another engagement or a clash or other external factor, but one thing that’s most definitely been lost is the way in which TV and radio schedules used to provide social and cultural cohesion. Of course, the near-infinite choice now available is also a factor in this, but even when a series captures mass attention, you simply don’t have a quarter of the nation stopping everything to tune into the same show at the same time. Rarely are schools and workplaces abuzz with the ‘did you see so-and-so last night?’ conversation anymore. There are a few things that still appear to have that pull on terrestrial television – the likes of Love Island and Strictly – but they’re increasingly rare. Even when series are released episodically, many viewers prefer to wait until the whole season is available, and ‘binge’ it. Personally, I don’t get how people have the time to watch six hours or so of a single show in just one weekend, but then, I hardly watch any television – live or streaming – because I’m usually reading or writing and / or listening to music.

It’s not simply nostalgia to reflect on the experience of tuning into John Peel on a night with a blank tape in the machine ready to record whoever was in session or anything else that was potentially interesting, not least of all because I don’t miss the days of tapes getting chewed, intros missed or spoken over, failing to catch the name of the artist, etc.. But it did make for a very different relationship with music, and one which made it more valued. Listening out for and also being introduced to new music in this way – or by being passed a compilation tape done by a friend – meant we were perhaps more invested than being fed endless recommendations selected by algorithms.

It’s in this context that we arrive at Senderkennungen, the first collaboration between Felix Kubin & Asmus Teitchens, of which the latter explains a follows:

‘In order to make radio stations acoustically recognizable they need a so called station ID. This audible signal is synonimous to a visible logo. Both logo and station ID create identities. The German word for station ID is „Senderkennung“. For the album Felix Kubin composed a series of unique Senderkennungen – each ca. 5 seconds long – which have been commissioned by various radio stations, who where in need of a station ID or were looking to relaunch their existing acoustic branding. Most of these miniature compositions are tonal but some verge towards an atonal or noisy character. Time and again Kubin and I discussed the possibility of creating pieces out of these ultra compressed and short Senderkennungen. This was realized for the album in applying the rule of keeping Kubin’s original musical material recognizable while at the same time using any form of manipulation, modification, stretching, shortening or expanding in the development of the new pieces. One limitation: Those new pieces should not be longer than three minutes each.’

The resultant double album contains an immense thirty-nine tracks, although the first nineteen, recorded by Kubin alone, are each around half a minute long. On the vinyl, these are all packed onto side A, meaning the remaining three sides are given to the collaborative pieces, which tend to be around the two and a half minute mark.

The nineteen initial station ID pieces are simple synth pieces, with a single motif – either a chord or two or some chiming notes – repeated a couple of times with some space between. Some sound as if they’ve been lifted from an album of sci-fi sound samples from the 60s and 70s, and occasionally – as in the case of ‘Radio Dipol’ and ‘Radio Schneekoppe’ – segues from old TV shows. Often weird, always unpredictable, Kubin seems to have a real thing for heraldic or faux-medieval-sounding motifs, and these microtunes are varied, as well as alien in that they have no place in the world of Internet radio and Spotify.

The newer, longer pieces, do mark something of a stylistic shift. It perhaps goes without saying that the expanded time markers give more room for sonic exploration which extends beyond simple motifs, but more than that, they feel like more fully realised compositions rather than functional sonic stamps. This is no doubt because that’s the fundamental difference: Kubin’s original commissions were created for a specific – and most utilitarian – purpose, rather than for musical entertainment, while the recent collaborative pieces are designed with being listened to, and perhaps even a sense of audience in mind. ‘Freies Danzig’ may be sparse initially, but builds from a multi-voiced synth piece into a layered work of tonal and textural contrast, while ‘Krimikanal’ leans towards dark ambient territory. ‘Paranorm Radio’ is eerie and squelchy, as good a sonic representation as you’re likely to hear, and there’s an abundance of reverberating, woozy weirdness on offer as the work progresses.

Senderkennungen feels less like an album of two halves, or even of one quarter and three quarters, but two quite separate albums, and the two sets of compositions make for very different listening experiences.

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Watch: ‘Heavy with Fruit’ by Kali Malone

Posted: 1 September 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Burning Song is the new release from Kali Malone and the first new album of solo compositions since early 2024’s All Life Long. The album arrives via Ideologic Organ on October 30th and is previewed with today’s single and video for the song ‘Heavy with Fruit.’

Music that hovers in the moment just before understanding, where revelation lives. Moving through endings and beginnings, reflection and foresight, Burning Song represents a transformation in Malone’s compositional strategy towards a process that is more intuitive and direct. The album was recorded at the historic Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Germany, where J.S. Bach was cantor for the last 27 years of his life; his body rests beneath the sanctuary. Malone is the first musician to perform contemporary works on the church’s Bach Organ, an instrument completed in 2000 but with bespoke tuning and temperament systems based on historical norms of the baroque period.

She is joined by Lucy Railton on cello and Stephen O’Malley on bowed acoustic guitar, the same trio that honed a profound connection based on deep listening through the development of Malone’s work Does Spring Hide Its Joy. Recording took place over the course of two late nights in August 2025, with the engineer Francesco Donadello placing over 20 microphones throughout the room and closely upon the instruments, allowing the listener to locate themselves within the music as it fills the historic sanctum.

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Across the album, chord follows chord, each in slow succession, emerging like stones of various shades and shapes on a winding path. The trio moves as one, stepwise, through passages that are alternately ambiguous and radiant, at times triumphant as the tones rise towards the organ’s upper register. By discarding canon form, which has dominated much of her organ work, there is a clear sense of freedom that allows these pieces to unfold more gradually and speak more declaratively than ever before. Even with the presence of one of the most canonized and dissected composers of all time just underfoot, Malone felt the pressure of tradition lifting, an ease of being dictating the flow of the music. She is careful to never extend the narratives of any individual piece beyond what feels conclusive, resulting in a relatively compact cycle of compositions.

The metaphor of burning holds two meanings. Fire moves in ways that appear intuitive, changing shape moment by moment, and relentlessly insistent. Here, Malone moves from harnessing the fractaline beauty of mathematics to reveling in the impact of feelings, of foresight, of something more undefined and from within. But burning is a process of change in which transformation spreads from a nexus point to rapidly consume whatever it encounters. The freedom found in the process of composing and realizing Burning Song is one that opens innumerable doors of possibility. In the fertility of ashes grows whatever comes next.

Live dates 2026/2027

Wed. Sept. 23 – Lisbon, PT @ Culgurest *
Sat. Sept. 26 – Cologne, DE @ St. Gertrud [Brutalism] *
Sun. Oct. 11 – Bern, CH @ Berner Münster [bee-flat] ^
Sun. Nov. 29 – Bratislava, SK @ Novy evanjelicky kostol [NEXT Festival] ^
Thu. Jan. 28 – London, UK @ St. Martin #
Fri. Jan. 29 – London, UK @ St. Martin #
Sun. Jan. 31 – Vernier, CH @ Madeleine Chapel – Espace de la Madeleine [Festival Antigel] #

* = Electronic set
^ = Solo organ set
# = Burning Song set
Plus more to follow

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Photo: Kingsley Ifil

Circuit3 – Metanoia: Music From Therapy

Posted: 19 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Mortality Tables – 14th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Ordinarily, I tend to pave the way to grappling with a release with some form of discursive preamble, but here, I feel it would detract from the work itself. Instead, I present the context for Metanoia: Music From Therapy directly from the accompanying notes, and without comment:

The first spark for Metanoia came from a simple plan to meet for a drink after a gig. Peter Fitzpatrick (Circuit3) and Mat Smith from the Mortality Tables imprint ended up talking about trauma, therapy, and the parts of ourselves we usually keep out of sight. That conversation led to a small, recorded experiment. From there the music began to take form, guided by fragments pulled from their notebooks.

Metanoia grew out of therapy and the slow process of letting difficult truths surface. Instead of singing those words, Fitzpatrick shaped them through analogue machines. The title refers to the deep shift that can follow self-reflection: a break, a reset, a way of living with more honesty.

A defining moment in the project was the opportunity to work with Vince Clarke, a long‑standing influence on Fitzpatrick’s music. They created an eleven-minute piece titled ‘The Hope’, named after the bar near Farringdon, London where that first conversation between Fitzpatrick and Smith happened. The collaboration feels like a dialogue across time: the artist Fitzpatrick once was, the one he is now, and the one emerging through this process.

Metanoia is not a linear or predictable account of trauma, breakdown, and recovery. Instead, it moves through a series of moments and memories that surfaced during therapy.

Vince Clarke crops up with remarkable frequency around Mortality Tables artists and releases, and his presence proves to be a positive one. There’s nothing here, or on other releases, which directly hints at Clarke’s celebrated electropop career

‘Cracked Eyes’ offers minimal, dulcimer-like tones, the notes fuzzy around the edges, as the backdrop to a skipping, fractured vocal loop which resembles to some extent one of William Burroughs’ tape experiments, the phrase, or phrases – muttered, mumbled – reverberates in fragments, overlapping, cutting in and out while played at different speeds, to quite unsettling effect.

A number of the pieces – in particular ‘Mood’, and ‘Where Are We Going?’ are comparatively brief interludes, and some of the instrumentals, such as ‘Imperfect’ are very much in the vein of Tangerine Dream or Mike Oldfield, built around sift, rippling notes and textured drones – flowing sounds of tranquillity, which don’t immediately evoke trauma or anguish. But of course, trauma and anguish aren’t necessarily endless stricken screaming, and therapy – the key to unlocking this album – can, for many, bring moments of peace and clarity amidst the painful psychological excavations.

‘Burnout’, on the other hand, it tense, the sound of a palpating heartbeat and panting breaths, albeit against an overtly uplifting electronic backdrop. This is something I personally find more relatable in some sense, and I suppose this is the leading point to observe when it comes to Metanoia: clearly, it comes from a deeply personal space, and some listeners will relate to some aspects more than others based on their own experiences. I know many people who have been through therapy, for a wide array of reasons, and with mixed experiences and outcomes. The trilling 70s synth sounds which course through the six-and-a-half minute ‘Shielding from the past’ seem to make sense, with their soft ambient cushioning, and despite their more sci-fi leanings that seem to tip a hat to Dr Who. Titles like ‘What If Everything Goes Right?’ take the listener through the difficult journey of self-doubt and catastrophising, before finally arriving at the eleven-minute finale, ‘The Hope’. And while there are undercurrents of doubt as articulated through darker shades, particularly at the start of the track, it does, ultimately, bloom into light.

Metanoia may be non-linear – and I understand this is often true of the journey through therapy, which can be riven with setbacks and periods of stasis – but it very much concludes with a piece which feels like the sun breaking on a new dawn, the curtains opening on a new chapter.

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Watch: ‘Ghost Piano’ by Martin Virgo

Posted: 3 August 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Martin Virgo is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer who worked with musical luminaries such as Björk and Massive Attack in the early 1990s before going on to enjoy global success with his own band, Mono, later in that decade.

Almost three decades on, Virgo is releasing his debut solo album. Entitled Ghost Piano, it can be seen as a prequel to his hit-making years. Classically trained in composition and piano at the Guildhall School of Music, he had developed a taste for Chopin, French Impressionism, the austere strangeness of Erik Satie and the minimalism of Philip Glass and Brian Eno. However, he then hooked up with Nellee Hooper and began a career in pop music that also led to work composing for cinema and TV commercials. These included an award-winning ad for Help The Aged.

“I came to the point a couple of years ago when I wanted to create something that was completely stripped of all the frippery and distractions of modern production techniques,” explains Virgo. “I wanted to write music that had a sense of lineage, but within a very distilled style. I also wanted to take a break from the world of digital audio production, so all the tracks on Ghost Piano were recorded live by myself on a Steinway model B acoustic grand piano, with the cello on the title track played by Nick Cooper (The Michael Nyman Band).”

Hear the title track here:

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Ghost Piano contains eleven evocative pieces in which the listener can hear the ‘ghosts’ of Chopin, Debussy and Satie playing in the absinthe soaked atmosphere of late 19th century Paris. “You can hear those influences on this album, although I think there are also traces of my time working with Björk on Debut, Massive Attack and Nellee Hooper on ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ and ‘Safe From Harm’, Shara Nelson on ‘Friendly Fire’ and Alanis Morissette on ‘Still’ (from the film Dogma),” Virgo adds. “These were all formative creative experiences for me. By the time I came to write and produce Mono songs like ‘Life In Mono’  and our album Formica Blues, I had embarked on a quest for a more European sounding harmonic and melodic palette.”

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Amps Kill – Avulse EP

Posted: 25 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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23rd July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

With Amps Kill’s Avulse EP, we’re in dark ambient territory here, with the emphasis on the dark, at least sonically. In terms of intent and narrative arc, it’s a little more nuanced in hue.

As the accompanying notes outline, ‘Without lyrics, Avulse guides the listener through a story. The track titles on the EP provide some context to the emotional inspiration behind the music… Avulse explores the idea of removing aspects of the self or of one’s life that are holding one back from growing and moving forward just as lizards, spiders, and insects need to shed their skin to grow. It’s a process that is often quite painful but always for the better. That pain is the core of Avulse’.

The EP’s title certainly makes sense in this context, the dictionary definition being ‘to pull or tear something away, especially a part of the body as a result of an accident or surgery’. And so it is that Amps Kill delivers something of a performative purging over the course of the EP’s five compositions.

As is the method when it comes to EP releases in recent years, the four of the five tracks on Avulse have been released individually as singles. I’m still not entirely clear on the wisdom of this approach to promotion: there’s building interest through advance singles, and then there’s emptying the tank. But then I spent a long time being accustomed to one or two singles in advance of an album’s release, and one or two more after to maintain its profile and to extend its trailing sales. Now, everything is up-front – a consequence surely being that anticipation for an EP is diminished because there’s less – if any – new material to look forward to. But I’m 50 and came to music in an era of physical releases and singles chart shows on the TV and radio, and I’m clearly get to grasp the benefits of the new way.

The first four tracks, all released as singles do, it has to be said, work better in succession than as standalone pieces. ‘Slough’, landing with a dense, hard, serrated-edged billow of noise that crashes in like a tidal wave, is heavy and oppressive. There are softer sounds beneath, but overall, it forges a thick, oppressive atmosphere, and ‘Chronophage’ plunges deeper. The title references the Corpus Clock, also known as the Grasshopper Clock, outside the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, a clock with no hands or numerals and guarded by a metal grasshopper or locust. Amidst scrapes and hums of feedback, electronic insectoid skitterings create texture on the track, creating a scratchy, uncomfortable tension, and ‘Husk’ brings more heavy, sonorous drones and cracking distortion at the edges of dense surges of sound. It’s not entirely ambient, as there are thick, booming beats which land like detonations, and the atmosphere is tense, akin to the sound of low-flying planes and crashes and splashes like shattering metal rupture all about. It’s pretty intense, and comfortable it is not.

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‘Basilisk’ brings more of the same, in essence, but the thunderous beats are brought to the fore, amidst the flutter of flapping, like the sound of a thousand bats fleeing a bottomless cave. And so there is a clear sense of progression here: dark ambience transitions to throbbing industrial – in the more traditional sense, tracing a lineage to Throbbing Gristle, Coil.

Arriving at the last piece, the only one previously unreleased, there is a significant shift in tone. As Amps Kill intimates, “‘Des Pas Sur Les Cendres’ completes the idea of the group and ties all of them together. That track takes all of its musical thematic material from a piano work by Claude Debussy called ‘Des pas sur la neige’ and expands or explores it’. It sure as hell doesn’t sound like Debussy, but it very much does feel like a composition which brings the EP to a fitting close – altogether more subdued, softer, more delicate, it’s five and a half minutes of mellow ambience, albeit with a few serrated edges – which, while dark, hints at some vague sense of hope, and the sense that once the avulsion is complete, there is the potential to grow anew.

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Watch: ‘Put You Out Of Your Misery’ by Xasthur

Posted: 7 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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XASTHUR premiere the track ‘Put You Out of Your Misery’ as the first advance single taken from the forthcoming new album Open to Misinterpretation. This self-made recording of Dark American Folk is chalked up for release through Prophecy Productions on October 2, 2026.

Xasthur comment: “Wherever you go, there you are – and you have to live with yourself”, mastermind Scott Conner writes about ‘Put You Out of Your Misery’. “This song revolves around reaching that inner crossroads where something has to give, and you either confront the issues that make you miserable or you are allowing them to destroy you.”

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The eminent French philosopher and Literature Nobel Prize laureate Albert Camus posed and taught that the key in dealing with the absurdity of life and the universe is acceptance. Xasthur founder Scott Conner, an astute chronicler of the dark side of the American dream, has come to terms with that idea in his own way.

Conner has learned the hard way that his work can confuse people and be misread. He has come to accept that. This notion is clearly expressed in the title of his new work Open to Misinterpretation. This insight has also firmed his resolve to neither change his artistic direction nor to attempt making his music easier for people to access. Conner is just not interested in chasing what has worked for other people or fitting neatly into a genre.

This does not mean that Xasthur are standing still. Open to Misinterpretation represents a deeper and more developed version of what Conner already does. He keeps honing his expression and to find new sounds and moods for his ideas. As a result, his songwriting has become equally more detailed as well as harder to predict at the same time. The bass is used more prominently and also more technical on this album. A greater variety of guitar tunings opens up new possibilities, while the drum programming has become a serious part of how the songs are built.

The production has audibly been cleared up, even though Conner still aims for the recording process to feel live, organic, and real. Open to Misinterpretation probably feels more complete because these songs have already been performed live on stage due to Xasthur’s prior touring activities on both sides of the Atlantic. This means that the reactions of the audience have become a part of the tracks.

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Puce Moment – O.R.G.II

Posted: 24 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Odd Doo – 12th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

There is something uniquely compelling about the sound of a pipe organ. I’m clearly not alone in this, as there have been many non-religious works which have explored the use of the instrument, ranging from ribcage-rattling drone to the tired groaning wheeze of dilapidated organs in dire need of restoration. Because organs tend to be installed – often designed and built specifically to work with the acoustics of the space – they can’t readily be transported elsewhere, and equally, they each have their own individual sounds, however nuanced the differences may be to the average ear.

After four subsequent albums, O.R.G.II finds Puce Moment – the musical and visual project of Nico Devos and Pénélope Michel, whose choice of name references a short film from 1949 – revisit the inspirations for their 2019 album O.R.G. It was recorded at Saint Joseph Church Armentières, France – a truly remarkable building, with, it would appear, a quite spectacular pipe organ.

They describe the album as ‘an immersive musical work that brings the traditional pipe organ into dialogue with electronic and drone compositions, unfolding within a liminal soundscape — a space of transition and encounter orchestrated by Puce Moment’.

And so it is that they present five compositions constructed around quivering, slow-moving drones which are tonally rich, warm and organic. And immersive they are, indeed. The album begins with the ten-and-a-half-minute ‘Simoon’, which was aired with an accompanying video last month. It’s incredibly textured and nuanced, but to extract those textures and nuances requires a degree of attention. In our overloading, hyperaccelerated, technologically-driven times, where the average attention span is barely three seconds, the idea of sitting down and paying attention to prolonged hums might sound untenable, but the fact is that spending time with the lights down, or off, and the phone in another room while simply feeling the textures, the subtle interplay between the layers and waves is nothing short of a revelation.

The individual pieces melt together – which seems appropriate, given that I’m writing this in the middle of a punishing heatwave, and I feel as if my entire body is slowly melting. ‘Pavna’ pulsates in a way which resonates with my own palpating internal organs… and as if in protest, my laptop crashes and I lose three hundred words of my review in progress. But I’m too sapped to panic, and perhaps more pertinently, I’m feeling too zen thanks to the soporific nature of the cinematic dronescape in which I find myself.

The nine-and-a-half-minute ‘Ruach’ rumbles almost subliminally at first, before transitioning into a rippling wave reminiscent of a combination of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, a trilling waltz with a distinctly retro feel, which bleeds into the fourteen-and-a-half-minute ‘Ilma’, a piece which truly encapsulates the layering and detail of the album.

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Listen: ‘One Line Sky’ by Lawrence English

Posted: 20 June 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Lawrence English shares a second piece from his forthcoming album, The Rest Is My Ghost arriving on Room40 on 7th August. ‘One Line Sky’ starts uneasy, towering and stuttering before bursting forth into an ecstatic wash of bass heavy, dense harmonics.

About ‘One Line Sky’, Lawrence says, "I spent a good deal of time researching in mega-cities whilst making this record. ‘One Line Sky’ was a term passed to me by a friend in Hong Kong. It has numerous readings, many of which float around the experiences of being at the bottom on these long canyon of buildings. which form the one line sky. The sky then is a slither of something else we can see beyond the immediate towers of architecture. I like the sense of escapism that is promised in that view, that outside of these places we build and sometimes cage ourselves into, a whole other possible life exists."

Hear ‘One Line Sky’ here:

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Photo credit: Traianos Pakioufakis

AD Ozium – In the Style of Dead Sparrows

Posted: 10 June 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Saccharine Underground – 9th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I like my shit weird and experimental, and so it is that AD Ozium’s In the Style of Dead Sparrows is both weird and experimental, and needless to say I like it – but with the caveat that listening to it is an experience akin to being dragged through an near-endless nightmare, and every time you think you’ve woken up, you discover that you’re simply in another level of this multi-faceted anxiety dream.

The pitch is that ‘In the Style of Dead Sparrows is the latest transmission from the outer edge of instrumental music – a fractured, hallucinatory convergence of freak folk textures and no wave dissonance that dissolves the boundary between sound and psyche. Created by Washington D.C.-based solo musician Jeremy Moore (Zabus, Zero Swann, Bell Barrow) under the name AD Ozium, the album operates at the intersection of freak folk, no wave, avant-garde drone and experimental instrumental music.’

But this barely scratches the lumpy, irregular, alien, fog-covered surface of this album. The first composition, ‘Lifespring’ is exemplary in its exploratory nature. It begins subtly, some desert rock twang in a drift of breeze and warping ambience. With tweets and yawns, it feels as if the tape is stretched in places, and there’s a crackle and hiss reminiscent of that old four-track tape noise and plunging synth rumbles. Discord builds as the sound swells, unsettlingly. It continues in this way for the first six minutes or so, until the nerve-jangling tension and suspense breaks into a brief but thunderous rupture.

The ten-minute ‘Tender Loving Seed’ is swampy, straggly, churny, a mangled mess of broken-sounding country guitar and fractured electronics, not so much a whistle of feedback as the sound of circuitry melting amidst a swell of distortion. It sounds like fucked-up flamenco, it sounds like dialling through radio stations and managing to tune into none of them, it sounds like a cerebral spasm. It’s a slow unwinding of discordant chaos.

I’ll take a stab that ‘Whore of Sound’ is perhaps a reference to ‘Whorle of Sound’ by Throbbing Gristle, which appeared on their First Annual Report, and was subsequently reprised in a radically altered but altogether more brutal form as Walls of Sound on DOA: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle. Certainly, the sonic parallels are apparent: this is seven minutes of gnarly noise which swells to head-shredding intensity with hints of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.

‘Faith is a Hole’ brings new layers of discomfort, the overloading low frequencies creating mic distortion and the most hellish vibrations, making for a long seven and a quarter minutes, before ‘Portents of the Terminal Mind’ ripples and reverberates a whirlpool of the wrongest confusion.

Confusion, contusion… ‘The Nazarene Distortion’ is gentle at first, but again, discord and chaos and blasting lasers reign… and all the while, there is a background rumble, a tape his that never stops. The background noise at times reminds me of Rudimentary Peni’s Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric – not because its similar in musical terms, but that endless, nagging background sound gnaws away at your ears and your brain. It’s not the most abrasive or attacking nine minutes of noise, but it’s a heavy slog of the most difficult atonality. It’s stomach-lurchingly messy. At times, you just want it all to stop.

This is challenging. It’s woozy, head-spinning. It simply sounds wrong. It’s not some Beefheart-style cacophony. It’s darker, the lo-fi leanings and atonality only amplifying the tension. Drones and buzzes, hums and fleeting phases are interspersed with annihilative blasts of noise, and the guitar notes simply echo out into the void.

In the Style of Dead Sparrows isn’t simply weird or experimental – it’s harsh and abrasive, and it will assail your intestines and hollow you out.

AA

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