Posts Tagged ‘Jazz’

Codex Serafini / Amon Acid / Sunbreather – Santiago’s Bar, Leeds, 26th April 2026

Posted: 27 April 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Situated in a retail arcade in Leeds city centre, Santiago’s is a hip but alternative bar (in that it’s £6+ a pint of keg, and they play Nirvana and have band posters on the walls – although they also include rather less obvious bands like OFF! and Cerebral Ballzy) downstairs, and somewhat contrastingly, a poky dive with a capacity of maybe 80, accessed via a rickety staircase and with a stage that’s barely six inches high, upstairs. Said upstairs room affords an unusual view of the streets outside through a large arched window which occupies the entire wall beside the stage. Seeing people and traffic moving around on the street below while the bands perform seems a strange juxtaposition, and with the limited lighting inside the venue, the interior starts unusually bright and grows progressively darker as the night progresses.

Sunbreather’s name may suggest something a bit hippyish, and in some respects, it’s not unrepresentative. They play doom heavily influenced by what in the 70s was heavy metal: that is to say, big Sabbath- style riffs. They play them with a certain swing, too, which is refreshing, and it’s nicely done. They close their four-song set with a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’, stripped back and heavy. The coda is played with the classic bassline at half-pace, with all the weight, and the wild guitar solo replaced by thunderous chords until the very end. It’s an inspired interpretation that works well, and isn’t out of place with the rest of the set.

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Sunbreather

Amon Acid are all about the flares and hair and lace and shades, and if the name sounds like something of a giveaway, then you’d be close enough: their thing is epic stoner doom with the deep infusion of psychedelia. The vocals are low in the mix, bathed in galactic-scale reverb and delay for good measure. The two guitars melt into one another, and while they may not be masters of innovation, they clearly know what they’re doing – and thankfully, the sound engineer has a handle on it, too. Winding up with a mammoth space rock groove, which skims out for an eternity, brings the set to a searing finale. And the longer they play, the hotter it gets. By the end of their set, we’ve all liquefied, and I find myself deliberating whether I need another £6.70 pint of am ok with the prospect of dehydrating.

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Amon Acid

While I’m deliberating, they put the fans on around the room. Meanwhile, some pissed-up cokehead cunt in an orange t-shirt who seemingly thinks he’s at a rave is going off his nut and trying to get onstage while Codex Serafini are setting up, and five minutes before they’re due on I get a sinking feeling and am hoping he’ll be leaving very soon. Mercifully, I realise around a third of the way through the set that he’d fucked off, hopefully his exuberance overtaken by a melted brain.

Codex Serafini are indeed brain-melting, after all. They’re a band I’ve been waiting to see for some time, and given the enormity of their music, the intimate nature of the venue is something of a surprise on some respects. But jazz-infused doom with a punk edge is pretty niche, and an act with albums released on Riot Season are never going to be playing anywhere huge. But this is precisely why we need small venues, and labels like Riot Season. And for all that, they definitely deserve a wider audience: when novelty acts like Angine de Poitrine are racking up millions of views, it’s apparent that the public aren’t averse to stuff that’s different or weird – in fact, they’re drawn to it. Especially when there are outfits and masks involved, as the popularity of Slipknot, Ghost, and Sleep Token (who aren’t nearly as weird as their presentation would suggest) – which means that it mostly comes down to PR. The fact of the matter is that ‘viral’ is almost never ‘organic’. And so here we have Codex Serafini, in red robes and tasselled face-masks, wrapped in Saturnian lore, merging metal, jazz, and post-punk, and this is what the music world needs right now, if only people would realise.

The first half of their ten-song set consists of material from their most recent album, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity, released last November. ‘Cause and Effect’ is an early standout for its deft, vaguely disco-hued drumming and almost funk-tinged groove. Matt McCartney’s bass doubles as rhythm guitar, the incidental melodies and atmosphere brought by the sax. And all the while, the percussion is cataclysmic and the vocals nothing short of other-worldly.

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Codex Serafini

‘Cronus’, ‘Janus’, and ‘Fountains of Enceladus’ are performed back-to-back in the sequence they appeared on Serpents of Enceladus, and Landing as the penultimate song of the set, ‘I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust’ is the sole representation of previous album The Imprecation Of Anima (2023).

At around fifty minutes in duration, their set is intense and sonically immense, filling the space with cathedrals of sound. It’s the last night of the tour in support of Mother, Give Your Children Sanity, and the Leeds reception sees it end on a high. And on a personal level, they were more than worth the wait. Would see again. Many times.

Chaidura – Plastic Beauty

Posted: 24 April 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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10th April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Postmodernism supposedly not only marked, but celebrated, the death of originality. Some time after the turn of the millennium, postmodern irony and the wit of parody began to evaporate, and now everything simply draws on explicitly stated influences. Art has become an endless treadmill of predictable recycling. There are rare exceptions, of course, and Chaidura is rare indeed.

Chaidura has been on the scene for a couple of years now, during which time he’s birthed an EP, Temple Paradise, and some standalone singles, showcasing styles ranging from JRock to emo, with his bio describing this work as ‘blending visual kei, emo, and alternative rock into a sound that’s heavy, emotional, and honest’.

Now resident in London, but raised in Asia, where, he says ‘beauty is often weaponized as a prerequisite for success’, ‘Plastic Beauty’ is the third single to be taken from forthcoming EP, Liminal. And what a single it is! It’s nothing short of an explosion of ideas– an entire album’s worth and more (hell, many bands with careers spanning decades don’t demonstrate this many ideas), packed into less than four minutes – leaping wildly yet also effortlessly and immaculately from one genre to another with each of the multitudinous segments.

And yes, the presentation is stunning – musically, of course, but also visually – taking cues from Adam Ant and Falco’s ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ – to forge something that is nothing short of spectacular, while at the same time presenting a strong message. Opening with a soft piano intro, we’re soon thrown into some loungey jazz with an understated drum ‘n’ bass beat before – a mere thirty seconds in – being hit with a ferocious blast of metal. The experience is akin to watching Roger Moore as James Bond being spun at organ-damaging speed in a centrifuge in Moonraker, one where you mind feels as if it’s been separated from your body and transported to another dimension. It’s like all of the new year’s fireworks from around the globe going off simultaneously. And yet, incredibly, it’s got a huge chorus with an instant hook that’ll be an earworm for a week. Nothing short of phenomenal. Now, excuse me while I go and lie down for a bit.

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Watch: ‘Lucky Cloud’ by Glissandro 70

Posted: 15 April 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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The experimental electronic duo of Craig Dunsmuir and Sandro Perri reimagines an Arthur Russell track, with longtime Russell collaborator Peter Zummo guesting on trombone.

‘Lucky Cloud’ is the opening song on forthcoming album G70 2: Bones Of Dundasa out 1st May 2026.

“’Lucky Cloud’ serves to bookend the whole project in a way, since it’s the new album’s first recording chronologically (from 2004) while also containing its last recorded element (Peter Zummo’s trombone from 2025), making it simultaneously the oldest and newest track on the record. Thanks and gratitude to Peter for his key contribution, to Steve Knutson for approving our cover of the song, and to Tom Lee and the estate, memory and legacy of Arthur Russell. – Glissandro 70

Hear ‘Lucky Cloud’ here:

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20 years after its self-titled debut, Glissandro 70’s follow-up straddles the Album and Archive: a decade’s worth of recordings that were abandoned, lost in a hard drive mishap, recovered in the form of rough stereo mixes, reappraised with the balm of time, and restored/augmented/enhanced to forge a captivating new LP.

Glissandro 70 is the collaboration between Toronto musicians Craig Dunsmuir and Sandro Perri, first formed in 2003 as a mostly studio-based project of longform loop-based guitar and rhythm-driven experimentation. An eponymous (and up to this point singular) album appeared on Constellation in 2006, blending Dunsmuir’s afrobeat and Perri’s tropicalia influences through their shared reverence for Arthur Russell and dub techno.

While continuing to collaborate musically and foster a close friendship, Dunsmuir and Perri largely went on to helm their own projects thereafter. Perri transitioned from his ambient electronic sobriquet Polmo Polpo to a string of acclaimed singer-songwriter albums under his own name starting in 2007, with a side quest as ringmaster for the inscrutably leftfield electronic collaborations of Off World. Meanwhile Dunsmuir continued deploying lo-fi loops and broken beat iconoclasm as Guitarkestra and Kanada 70 (whose early tracks provided the original birthplace of Glissandro 70) and intermittent live concert Hi-life extravaganzas at the head of Toronto’s Dun-Dun Band (recently captured on wax for the first time by Ansible Editions).

G70 2: Bones of Dundasa arrives 20 years after the Glissandro 70 debut as an archival celebration, revisiting unfinished paths and re-assembling rediscovered recordings originally made between 2005 and 2015. The new album includes a cover of Arthur Russell’s ‘Lucky Cloud’ (augmented by Peter Zummo’s trombone newly recorded in 2025) and a previously unreleased Dan Bodan remix of the debut record’s ‘Bolan Muppets’, alongside 10 tracks of sample- and beat-based vignettes brimming with skittish guile.

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Abigail Snail – Rad Berms

Posted: 15 April 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Romac Puncture Repairs – 17th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

While Rad Berms is Abigail Snail’s debut release, the musicians behind the name have a notable pedigree, and between them, drummer Will Glaser and guitarist Stef Kett (aka Stef Ketteringham) have numerous credits on record – and for Rad Berms, they’ve joined by ‘master reed player’ James Allsopp, who gets pretty much everywhere. And for this debut release, Abigail Snail’s promise ‘avant-rock, improv, and experimental soul groove into an adventurous collection of tender, boundary-pushing songs’.

After the gentlest of intros, the first track, ‘Show Breaking to Waves’ slowly derails before the arrival of the vocals. The vibe is rather Crooked Rain Crooked Rain era Pavement, only wonkier and significantly jazzier, particularly in the percussion. The instrumentation is sparse, the feel a shade folky… then ‘Soul Berm’, the first of the ‘Berms’ crashes in, wonky, scratchy, discordant. Counterpart ‘Space Berm’ sounds like a noisy tuning up / tuning down outtake, a chaotic interlude of jarring noise rock propelled by a jazz percussion break.

I remember reading a review of Trumans Water in the early 90s describing them as ‘the real Pavement’. Well, I think it was Trumans Water and not Archers of Loaf. AoL were kinda tame indie: Trumans Water were demented and truly off-kilter, taking the lo-fi slacker thing to a level that incorporated the weirdness of Captain Beefheart, down to the sounding like they were playing different songs in different keys and tempos, but all at the same time. This is a circuitous detour to arrive at the conclusion that Abigail Snail call to mind – well, my kind, which is a vault of disorganised musical files and recollections – Trumans Water, only even further out and significantly jazzier.

I appreciate that with every sentence, I’m probably alienating another ten per cent of potential listeners here. It’s probably for the best. Rad Berms is as niche as it is crazy, and it’s better to shed the ones who won’t dig it early on and save everyone the hassle of rubbing the wrong way.

A deranged howl of ‘Goooooood grief / That’s one batshit brief / Good Lord / How much shit can one chick hoard?’ delivered atop clanging, angular guitar that’s pure Shellac announces the arrival of single cut ‘Good Grief’, a raw, riotous blast of jazz and math-rock melded together. They explore a host of genre forms across Rad Berms, but manage to incorporate some jazziness into most of them.

‘Attach Bayonets’ lands in the middle of the album and brings with it a mellow psychedelic / desert rock feel, like a slacker retake of America’s ‘Horse with No Name’, only with bongos and woodwind – and no obvious hook. But you get the idea. Hopefully. It’s kinda trippy, primarily acoustic, and at times quite discordant. Laden with melody and harmonies, ‘Stay Rad’ is mellow, too, a quintessential slice of slacker indie with a dash of 60s psychedelia. There’s daftness in abundance here, and at times it does seem as if they’re just testing us as listeners while they dick about showing off their technical prowess and simply demonstrating their capacity to make music that doesn’t conform to any convention, and the fact they’re too cool for choruses, or even structure anyone can follow. ‘Yikes Bikes’ and ‘Bitchin’ Chords’ in particular feel indulgent, albeit in quite different ways. But why not? There was a time when bands would say in interviews that they made music for themselves, and it was a bonus if anyone else liked it. It became a cliché, and of course most of them were lying. But now? Who makes music to get rich and famous? Some, for sure, but the majority appreciate now that it’s not going to happen, so they may as well make music to please themselves – which is precisely what Abigail Snail are doing here. There’s no way you could accuse these guys of being predictable or lacking range.

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Watch: ‘Folding the Mind’ by Trelldom

Posted: 2 April 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Iconic Norwegians TRELLDOM, founded by legendary vocalist Gaahl, unveil the visualiser single ‘Folding the Mind’ as the next advance track selected from their forthcoming new full-length: …by the word…

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With …by the word…, TRELLDOM are pushing forward hard into their new musical era that was ushered in by the previous full-length …by the shadows… (2024), which ended a 17-year hiatus of the Norwegian band.

Mastermind Kristian Eivind Espedal aka Gaahl and his diligently selected collaborators have gone even beyond the complex yet sinister sound that they established with  …by the shadows… The exponentially grown confidence and hard-gained experience of joining together seemingly quite different musicians is reflected clearly in each track of …by the word…

TRELLDOM have concluded the process of escaping the narrowest definition of black metal without compromising their artistic mission. Their music does not only stay loyal to the spirit of their black metal roots, but the Norwegians are making a solid point that their new sound is even more dark and fierce than ever before – just in more twisted and unhinged ways.

…by the word… is the result of Espedal expanding the immense range of his vocals even further into unexplored territories. And it should be noted that this was partly achieved by his return to the famous Grieghallen Studios in Bergen to work again with legendary producer Eirik Hundvin aka Pytten, who was instrumental in the creation of the ‘Norwegian black metal’sound.

Although Espedal remains firmly at the helm of TRELLDOM, the current line-up plays a massive part in the fresh exploration of musical extremes. Guitarist Stian “Sir” Kårstad (formerly also in DJERV) guarantees a form of continuity as he already contributed to the second and third album of the band. Furthermore, the new constellation features renowned percussionist Kenneth Kapstad, formerly of MOTORPSYCHO and hammering the drums in SPIDERGAWD, MØSTER!, and THORNS. Kapstad brought the internationally acclaimed jazz musician and saxophone player Kjetil Møster (MØSTER!, RÖYKSOPP, THE END) along. Bass player Eirik Øien is the latest addition to the cast of characters.

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Bell Barrow – True Human Trough

Posted: 16 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Saccharine Underground – 27th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Bell Barrow are on fire right now. And so is half the world. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that they thrive on war and global turmoil, so much as feel the compulsion to create in the face of global crisis. I may be projecting a little here, but seriously – come the fuck on: how can anyone not feel all-consuming, abject terror right now? We’re hearing a lot of Israel claiming an ‘existential threat’ from the supposed nuclear activities of Iran right now – although this seems a little lacking in credibility, since it can’t also be true that the USA ‘annihilated’ Iran’s nuclear capabilities last summer. I mention this in my preface to the review of True Human Trough because although the current events aren’t mentioned specifically, it’s clear that this is an act who are tuned in to current tensions as well as ecological concerns, and who channel the energy of anxiety into their music.

As they themselves write, “These compositions function as experiments in torture empathy: forcing the listener to inhabit the suffering inflicted on our ecosystem by human dominance while simultaneously confronting a far older truth—that humanity’s power is temporary, localized, and ultimately irrelevant. Plant life, scavengers, and insect civilizations speak here through perceived chaos, not to ask for mercy, but to assert inevitability. True Human Trough reflects agony, yes—but more importantly, it documents supremacy. We may poison this world for now, but be clear…in the universal order, they rule in the end.”

I admire their optimism, and for what it’s worth, I share this hope. Because right now, it feels as if our species is suffocating the planet harder by the second. And suffocating is how the first track on this frenzied sonic blitzkrieg of an album feels. ‘Solunar Theory’ is a melting morass of experimental jazz immersed in a wall of phased reverb. Time signatures collapse into chaotic discord on ‘The Unbirthing of Jackals’. Everything lurches, drunkenly, it’s a dizzy stagger that’s powerful enough to unsettle the guts and leave you seeing stars. This is a woozy cacophony rendered all the more brain-frying by the wild application of reverb. Everything is off-kilter, the EQ is all over and there’s flange and phase and good old-fashioned manic musicianship, melting Beefheart and Zappa and Trumans Water in a cauldron with The Necks and Throbbing Gristle. Reading that back, it actually reads like some fucked-up Victorian era recipe that’s only missing some tripe and trotters to top a truly foul soup. Bell Barrow simmer up a pretty foul sonic soup even without these ingredients: ‘Neckless of Tongues’ delivers it

‘Infauna’ refers to the animals living in the sediments of the ocean floor or river or lake beds, while ‘bloat stage’ is occurs during the decomposition of a corpse. Yes, I looked this up while experiencing the obliterative force of ‘Bloat Stage Infauna’, and in context, it all makes sense. ‘Rites of Silent Spring’ is almost black metal in its frenetic frenzy, but of course, it’s also a jazz-infused instrumental which is a long way removed from black metal – which pretty much sums up True Human Trough, an album that’s everything all at once.

The production and mix is deranged, demented, furious. There’s no intention of softening the blows here: Bell Barrow are set on bringing pure mayhem and disruption – of the best possible kind.

We are living through historical moments in real time. As we hurtle towards self-extinction – it’s more a question of by which means than if now, what with the pace of climate change, AI’s rapid and unfettered advancement and now – let’s call it what it is – the onset of World War 3 – with True Human Trough, Bell Barrow have created a work which soundtrack the next stage of the end of times.

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Jeremy Moore by Fleurette Estes

Eamon the Destroyer – We’ll Be Piranhas Remixes

Posted: 14 March 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Bearsuit Records – 20th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Anyone who’s been following this site for any time will have likely encountered the work of Eamon the Destroyer, and Edinburgh-based label Bearsuit Records, and in doing so, will have learned that the label specialises in weird shit, and that Eamon is an artist who conjures a uniquely strange musical hybrid, which is entirely free of the mores of genre-specificity. Idiosyncratic is the word.

And what better way to shed new light on all of this than through a remix album? I’ve written extensively in the past with a critical view on remixes – about how they eke out material on and on, or pad out singles into EPs and albums, and also about how they can be really fucking boring, with back to back versions of the same song over and over but with different drums, more disco drums, more aggressive drums, more industrial drums, while the vocals are dubbed out and mostly what you get is some ravey shit.

This is very much not the case with the remixes of We’ll Be Piranhas, the original version of which was released in 2023 and has already been subject to a follow -up / satellite release in the form of Alternative Piranhas EP (2024), which, as the title suggests, features alternative takes of some of the songs on the album. Since then, Eamon the Destroyer has released another album of new material, but this evidences that there’s more mileage in Piranhas yet. These reworkings are subtle and sensitive and, in the main, preserve the essence of the original tracks. That is to say, it’s a chaotic assemblage of twangy Western stuff which clashed and melts into Eastern vibes, all melted together with a filmic overlay, and none of it makes sense, but at the same time it makes perfect sense – if that makes sense. And if it does, well, good, because little else about all this does.

The sequencing of the tracks is different from the original album, and it works, taking into account the transformative reinterpretations of the songs, starting with a laid back but grooved-up take on ‘A Pewter Wolf’ by Senji Niban.

The Elkeyes remix of ‘Rope’ is particularly brain-bending, with its warped jazz elements which are vaguely reminiscent of later Foetus. At the same time, it brings a weight, a long shadow of gloom, with organ-like drones. It’s a lot to process all at once. And while remixes often add length to tracks, the reworked title track is cut to half the length of the original, although with the weirdness and distortion turned up a long, long, way. Similarly, the No Mates Ensemble cut ‘My Stars’ from nine-and-three-quarter minutes to three and a half, and reframe it as a slowly evolving avant-jazz meandering. Elsewhere, ‘Société Cantine transform the low-key space-synth strum of ‘Underscoring the Blues’ into a seven-minute hybrid of quasi-operatic drama and drum ‘n’ bass.

It’s different alright, and that’s the point of a remix album, of course. But the success of the We’ll Be Piranhas remixes is that it doesn’t fall into the trap of regular remix mode. Here, the songs aren’t obliterated, but simply respun. It’s a winning formula, and this is anything but a predictable rehash exercise.

(Click image to listen.)

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Sicker Man – Spökenkieker

Posted: 23 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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blankrecords – 13th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

For context, a definition: Spökenkieker: soothsayer / a person who has second sight and is believed to have the ability to know and tell what will happen in the future. And we also learn that ‘The local mythological figure of the Spökenkieker is situated in the mystical depths of the Teutoburg Forest and serves both as name giver and patron saint for this journey to the initial starting point.

Arguably, anyone who has invested any significant time in studying the past can predict the future. History has a habit of repeating itself, and this has perhaps never been more apparent than now. Consider the following:

In 1933 Mussolini closed the national opera to “renovate” it.

In 1934, Hitler closed the national opera house to “renovate” it.

In 1935, Portuguese dictator Salazar closed the national opera house to “renovate” it.

Orwell’s 1984 is considered one of the greatest dystopian novels of all time, but 1984 is an inversion of 1948, the year it was written, and as such, penned in a recently post-war world, holds a mirror to the ways in which totalitarian regimes operate. And now, here we are, and it’s not just the US under Trump, but a creeping shift towards totalitarianism and total surveillance. We may not be in World War 3, but the world is very much at war, and what peace we have is hanging on a knife edge. If you’re not scared, you’re simply not paying attention.

Sicker Man’s fifteenth album, Spökenkieker is a mesh of different elements thrown together and mixed, blended, chopped, and pulped together. ‘Stop the Gravy Train’ is a perfect example of the melting pot of post-punk, stuttering drum machines, ambience, rave, and experimental jazz. And that’s just four minutes. And however representative it is, it doesn’t really prepare the listener for so much going on all at once. And it’s no mere wheeze that the album is strewn with spoken word samples culled from the past – the idea is to pull these snippets into the present, and cast the future, too, a layering of sorts whereby the past reverberates, echoes forward through the generations.

‘Jojatsu’ and its reprise, and the three-part ‘Ad Finem’ sequence is built around an orchestral / jazz hybrid that transitions between passages of tranquillity and of tension, while samples flit in and out.

I’m going to hit the pause button here for a moment: I’ve been fairly explicit in my dislike of Public Service Broadcasting over the years, online and in conversation. So why is Spökenkieker great and PSB’s work an abomination? It boils down to the fact that Sicker Man is digging through the archives and responding to both the past and the present in a way which strives to articulate something meaningful. It may not be immediately apparent, but some of the titles offer clues: ‘Greedy People’ and ‘Mean Drift’ for example. In contrast, boil these dark moments in history and present them as some for of nostalgia-infused entertainment, no more than the endless ‘documentaries’ churned out on Channel 5, lean on content and even leaner on analysis.

Spökenkieker engages on another level, and the aforementioned ‘Greedy People’ lands like Melvins gone jazz with a Roland 606 spinning a primitive post-punk beat while muttering samples criss-cross over one another as things take a turn for the experimental / ambient / dark dance vibe – and if that sounds like a wild hybrid, it is. ‘Matchless’ is simply a frenzy of elements which defies categorisation. The fact that it works is barely conceivable. But work, it does, and well.

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Smag På Dig Selv – This Is Why We Lost

Posted: 17 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Stunt Records – 6th March 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Well, this is a conundrum. This Is Why We Lost is the second album by Danish trio Smag På Dig Selv is pitched as a work which ‘shatter[s] the boundaries of electronic music’, and was made with the ambition ‘to create music that can exist within a trance or club-oriented setting, while still carrying a strong melodic and narrative arc’. Only, the band lineup consists of two saxophonists and one drummer, while single cut ‘Vik’s Rawcore’ features vibraphonist Viktoria Søndergaard. No arguing that it’s an intriguing, even exciting proposition, but can it really ‘shatter the boundaries of electronic music’? Or does it instead take acoustic music into new territories?

I’ll admit that I’m not mad keen on conventional ‘club’ music – no doubt a revelation which will come as a shock to many – but then perhaps I’ve never been to any decent clubs. It may seem perverse that I like noise and drone but find bangin’ choonz insufferable. This Is Why We Lost is built on techno / electronic tropes with insistent beats and some throbbing basslines – the second half of the album’s first track, ‘Like A Word I Never Knew’ goes full drum ‘n’ bass… and sax. For atop the frenetic fills and frenzied rhythm, not to mention the pulsating bass – whatever instrument is responsible for that – there are some strong jazz currents.

‘Let’s Go!’ is a slab of lively Europop / EDM, while ‘Vik’s Rawcore’ is full-on HI-NRG stomper – albeit with a mellow breakdown in the mid-section which prefaces the inevitable build before the beat drops again.

There’s no question that this is technically (or techno-ichally, if I’m up for deploying a shit pun) accomplished and innovative, and while AI is insidiously creeping its way and hollowing out the arts at a devastating rate, it’s refreshing to find an act which turns the tables, instead using acoustic instruments to create sounds associated with electronic music. The fact musicians and artists in all fields are embracing AI is bewildering. Why? Just why? The creative process is what makes the work of creativity, learning new techniques and ways to articulate the contents of the mind via any given medium. When I write, as much as delving for words and scouring a Thesaurus may at times be painstaking, this is precisely what it’s all about. The fundamental purpose of art is to convey the complexities of the human condition. To remove the human element from the art is to remove its very heart and any sense of feeling. AI is not art, it’s entertainment plagiarised from all preceding art. Fuck that.

Smag På Dig Selv aren’t the only ones using conventional, acoustic instrumentation in unconventional ways: Jo Quail is very much striking forth in new territories in forging immensely powerful ‘(post-)rock’ music with solo cello (aided by effects and a loop pedal), but what they’re doing is rather different.

‘Ya Tal3een’, featuring Luna Ersahin is altogether different, a stirring, primal folk composition led by an immensely powerful vocal performance, is more reminiscent of the earthy works of Wardruna, evoking vast expanses of woodland and rugged mountains. Elsewhere, the title track manifests as a thick, textured drone, an ambient piece which forms shapes as it evolves, but sounds more like strings, organ, synths, than any of the instruments listed. There’s a fleeting moment of melody which reminds me of something else, too, but it eludes me. ‘Fitness Bro’ amuses with its hyperkinetic energy, the pulsating groove – topped with big sax action – evokes fast treadmills and rapid reps, pumping biceps and perspiration. It also call to mind that brief moment in the early 80s when post-punk acts embraced saxophone, extending the initiative of The Psychedelic Furs and Theatre of Hate.

‘Jeg Ved Ikke Hvad Jed Siger’ swings into dark hip-hop territory, and it’s cool, unlike the happy hardcore of ‘Hits 4 Kids Vol. 3000’, complete with whistles and samples. Just no. It may not be quite as bad as Scooter, but there really is no need for this.

And perhaps THIS is why we lost. The album has some strong moments – many, in fact and they’re solid, too, showcasing a rare creativity, and an approach to composition that’s postmodernism turned up eleven… or thereabouts. I’m personally very much on the fence with this one, since it’s 50% mind-blowing and 50% Europop mediocrity. It certainly has its moments, and will likely to appeal to most, at least at some time.

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Harry Christelis – Preserving Fictions

Posted: 8 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Clonmell Jazz Social – 13th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

1984 has never felt more relevant. In the early chapters, Winston is shown rewriting history, in the form of news articles – something which has become a defining feature of the Trump Administration of late. The quotation ‘The Party told you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command’ has been all over social media in recent weeks. Because we live in a time when a woman in her car calmly saying ‘I’m not mad’, or a medic shielding a woman from assault, can be murdered by the state, the event filmed and broadcast from many angles, and reported as being ‘domestic terrorists’. When news reportage becomes outlandish fiction, there’s a problem of unspeakable proportion. And so it’s become the objective of the media wings of governments – those of America, if Israel, of ours here in England – to preserve fictions and mask facts for their own propagandist, gaslighting ends.

Harry Christelis – whose latest offering features Christos Stylianides (trumpet/effects), Andrea Di Biase (bass/synth) and Dave Storey (drums) – is not seeking to propagate propaganda here, but simply to explore sonic territories, with a album of ‘post-jazz, ambient and folk-inflected improv’, which ‘captures a deep collective instinct – reflective, spontaneous, and richly atmospheric…’ Christelis explains that “in the creative process — as in life — there is never true certainty, never a ‘right way.’ These are simply fictions we hold onto. This realisation inspired the title Preserving Fictions: a reminder to stay present with whatever comes, grateful for each lesson, knowing that something new may be just around the corner, waiting to turn that on its head.”

The album launches with the longest track, the nine-minute ‘Blues of the Birds’, which is, at heart, an ebb-and-flow ambient composition… but then there’s clattering percussion and waves and wisps flittering skywards, before, around the mid-point, it settles into a smooth, strolling, settled feel. Nice. And all that.

The spontaneous nature of the way this album was created is perhaps one of the reasons behind the broad spectrum of the pieces which it comprises, and it’s worth noting that Miles Davis and Talk Talk are cited as central influences, in that they become more apparent once you’re aware of this fact, which roots what is, on first hearing, a nebulous, meandering work. Not that it isn’t nebulous or meandering, or that these are bad things, but there is a solid contextual framework in which these pieces sit.

The title of ‘A Sense of Parrot’ is laced with absurdity, but the sonic actuality is a composition which drifts serenely, underpinned by a strolling bass and some nicely loose-wristed percussion, while ‘Wood Dalling’ (named after the Norfolk village in which it was

composed) has something of a post-rock feel, a sepia-tinted nostalgia augmented with gentle woodwind. The percussion-led ‘Djembe’ is fundamentally self-explanatory, and one of the album’s most explicitly jazz pieces.

‘How old are you?’ is a phrase I’ve often used to disparage people – usually in the workplace – over petty or otherwise juvenile or irritating behaviour. Christelis’ piece by the same title doesn’t convey anywhere near the same sense of frustration at human behaviour, but with bowed low notes scraping beneath ambient undulations, while chirps and chatters of wildlife are just audible in the background behind ringing guitar notes and vast reverberations.

The compositions on Preserving Fictions are sedate, and take their time in unfurling, and it’s a welcome alternative to much of the wilder, more frenetic jazz-leaning releases which have come my way of late. It’s not that I dislike them – far from it – but in stressful times, something gentler and somewhat transportive is most welcome. Preserving Fictions fits the bill nicely.

AA

Press pic 2

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