Posts Tagged ‘Jazz’

Out of the Loop but Still Trading: Neil Mackay interviewed by John Wisniewski

Posted: 10 August 2024 in Interviews
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Neil Mackay is perhaps best known for contributing to Loop: having joined after the recording – but before the release – of their 1987 debut, Heaven’s End, he provided the big, solid bass grooves to Fade Out and A Gilded Eternity before they split in 1991. Loop all too often get lumped in alongside Spacemen 3, or otherwise as progenitors of shoegaze, both of which do them an injustice and ‘underrated’ would perhaps be the most appropriate descriptor for their legacy.

Mackay went on to form The Hair and Skin Trading Company, which, too, incorporates elements of drone and psychedelic rock. As Trouser Press outline it, following Loop’s demise, ‘Neil Mackay and drummer John Wills (augmented by ex-Savage Opera guitarist Nigel Webb) cribbed this unsavory moniker from an old warehouse in London and persisted in their efforts to rephrase Metal Machine Music as power-rock.

Having released four albums since their formation in 1991, the most recent being I Don’t Know Where You Get Those Funny Ideas From (2019), as well as a bunch of singles, EPs, and compilations, The Hair and Skin Trading Company continue as a going concern.

John Wisniewski caught up with Neil to find out about what he’s been up to lately, and reflect on a few moments from his lengthy career.

Editor’s note: some interviews, it’s appropriate to proof and tweak interviews conducted by email for spelling and punctuation, as much for readability as what one might sell as ‘professional standards’. But for this one, any substantive ‘tidying’ would feel invasive, and to strip out so much of the essence of the replies. It’s important that artists are presented ‘in their own words’, without being subject to any mangled paraphrases. When an interview reads like jazz, you let it play like jazz.  And so this interview is presented more or less unedited, immediate, warts ‘n’ all, as they say.

JW: What are you doing now, Neil?

NM: Silent Invisible Radiation (SIR)

The Hair and Skin Trading Company (HASTCO)

Solo project

I have new album projects on the boil with all of them….

I am jamming regularly with Damon from SIR

And hopefully receiving and swapping more files from John and Nigel from HASTCO

HASTCO last album: I don’t know where you get those funny ideas from: released Sept 2019

SIR last album: Ventifacts : released July 2023   ….check that one out …2.5 hours long !!!

Occasionally I jam at the Vitaim S night at the Wine Cellar in Auckland central Monday nights ….( haven’t been for a while though ) ….Check that night out for some awesome improv / jazz / avant noodlings …. I want to and are planning to do much more live work …gigs etc ……

When and how did you join Loop?

I joined Loop in 1987 just before the release of their 1st album:Heavens End …For some reason the Bass player who played on that 1st album couldn’t be in the band anymore so I was one of only to people to apply for the job from an advertisement in Melody Maker …. The other guy apparently got really drunk when they met at the pub and threw up everywhere …..so I got the job lol….

Do you have any favourite bands?

too long a list

Can Stooges MC5, Moondog  Sun Ra  Peter Brotzmann , Faust , Einsturzende Neubaten, THe Pretty Things (UK )  , Steve Reich , Alice Coltrane , Arvo Part , Manuel Gottsching , Xenakis , Lee Perry , Dub Syndicate ,The Scientst ,Mad Proffesor,  Wire , Sex Pistols, Joy Division , New Order, Aphex twin , Velvet UNderground , THe Doors , THe stranglers ,  the pop group, The Raincoats , Daniel Johnston , Butthole Surfers , The Clash , Dead Kennedys , Black Flag , Hunters and Collectors , Dplit Enz , Ths Stones (NZ)  , The Rolling Stones ( US ) , THe Clean , The Chills , Talking Heads , Favid Bowie , Bjork , Captain Beefheart, The Residents , Sonic Youth, Brian Eno , Roxy Music , John Coltrane , Neil Young , Laurie Anderson , The Pixies , Public Image Limited , Devo , Pere ubu , Luigi Russolo , Boredoms , THe Beatles , Psychic TV , Throbbing Gristle , My Bloody Valentine , Nick Drake ,William Basinski,  Beach boys , Elvis , Kraftwek , Swans , Neu !  Massive Attack , King Tubby ,  Mikey Dread ,Suicide , Alpha and Omega ,  John Zorn ,,,,,

I like any music really as long as its  good !

It’s up to you what defines good

What was the concept for how Loop should sound?

Robert’s baby you should ask him …

Personally – live anyways I was trying to blast people through the back door …

Ridiculous we were too loud (sometimes )

I have really bad tinnitus now ha whatever ….

Why did Loop break up?

Burnt out I reckon …. I have read other band members give their reasons ….all good

i was gutted when we split ….but relieved in a way as well because it wasnt fun on tour at all any more ….

I remember when Loop came back from touring for 9 or so months …. I just wanted to chill out and reax at home …. But 9  o’clock came along and I got a huge energy rush of adrenalin and HAD to go out to a gig …… 

When and how did you join up with The Hair and Skin Trading Company?

John the drummer from Loop and I wanted to keep doing music together I immediately contacted my old mate Nigel Webb ,,,, I had been in a band with him called Savage Opera …. We could never get a drummer to stay in the band ….. anyways Nigel is an awesome guitar player …. so walking down turnpike land one Saturday afternoon we saw a decrepid old factory that had a sign that said : The Hair and Skin Trading Company : so we thought that would be a great name for a band … that was it

Do you like jazz and avant-garde music?

Yes big fan …..  I worked at The Rough Trade shops in London for 17 years and used to hang out and buy records from Rays Jazz shop …..European and US jazz/ experimental music … I also love :world : music and have a large collection of Gamelan and African vinyl from labels such as Occora …Also like Dada (1920;s)  environmental ,,,I was collecting Peter Brotzmanns label FMP …. Jazz wise IM more into the avant garde type weirdo jazz …..

Any future plans and projects, Neil?

I answered that in Question 1 ….

yes …..maybe thinking about coming to the UK for one more music blast ….

Getting older now at 60 ….

The tour with the loop re union was kinda fun great to see old fans / friends….

….

Could you tell us Neil, about your collaboration with Godflesh called Loopflesh?

And the double header tour in 2014 with Godflesh?

super cool tour ,,, we went into house in the woods and did the cover for the excellent label clawfist ……We were all freinds it was a great time ,,,,, that was a great tour apart from that ….thats it ……

The Shoegaze and psychedelia movement was much maligned, but seems to be experiencing a Renaissance. How do you feel about this?

At the time shoegaze wasn’t a expression we used ….. it was used by the press to get >something? going ….Psychedelia is a better expression ….but yeah all good ….. Im not up on new bands but Im up for new bands / music …always ….who are good in this field now ,,,( answering a question with a question )

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From the Vaults All-Dayer – York Vaults, 15th June 2024

Posted: 16 June 2024 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

The prospect of Objections making a return to York was incentive enough to snaffle a ticket for this some time in advance, without even paying too much attention to the rest of the lineup initially, but Teleost and The Bricks provided two strong reasons to get down early, and a fair few others clearly thought the same.

All-dayers tend to have a couple of acts people aren’t especially fussed about at the bottom of the bill, often newer acts cutting their teeth, so kicking off with a brace of well-established local talents proved to be a combination of coup, genius programming, and an indication of the quality of the bill – which, in the event, didn’t include a single weak or dud act from beginning to end.

Another rare – and impressive – thing about this lineup is that it features just one all-male act. When you hear so many promoters responding to accusations of gender inequality and a lack of representation by whining about how they struggle to find and book bands with women, it feels like a massive cop-out. And here’s the proof. Eight bands, and only one that slots into the stereotypical white male bracket – and then again, they possibly get an exemption on account of their age bracket (that is to say, they’re probably about my age bracket). Anyway.

The last time I saw them, supporting Part Chimp, Leo Hancill and Cat Redfern were playing as Uncle Bari. Now they’re Teleost, and they’ve totally nailed their slow, sludgy sound. The guitar sounds like a bass, the drums sound like explosions, and it’s a mighty, mighty sound. Slow drumming is always impressive to watch, and hear, and Cat it outstanding, in every way, a hard-hitter who makes every single slow-mo cymbal crash count. They’re properly slow and heavy, with a doomy heft, but with folky vocals. The contrast is magnificent and makes Teleost a unique proposition.

It’s been a few months since I’ve seen The Bricks, and yet again they seem to have upped their game. Their set is punchy and forceful, led by a fierce vocal performance from Gemma Hartshorn. As a band, they’ve really hit their stride, and having got a fair few gigs under their belts now, they’re super-tight.

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The Bricks

Instant Bin are a busy-sounding indie duo who knock out short songs packed tightly, and they’re good entertainment, while Knitting Circle are very unlike the somewhat twee, whimsical and fluffy indie band their name suggests. They offer up some tense, mathy, angular noise with a hint of The Fall and Gang of Four, and are very much about tackling issues, with a strong anti-war song, and a song about menopause (‘Losing My Eggs’) while ‘I am the Fox’ which about fox hunting (and no, they’re not in favour) which takes its stylistic cues from Gang of Four’s ‘Not Great Men’.

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The Knitting Circle

Objections – who I also last saw supporting Part Chimp, but on a different occasion – are out hot on the heels of the release of their debut album. As you’d expect from a band with their pedigree, they’re seriously strong. A tight set of noise played with precision, propelled by some magnificently crisp jazz drumming and busy baselines that nag away, they’ve got everything nailed down. The three of them each bring something unique as performers, and they’re simply great to watch in terms of style and technique. Joseph O’Sullivan’s guitar work is so physical, lurching and bouncing here there and everywhere, and working magic with an oscillator on top; Neil Turpin looks like he’s in another world, a drummer who seemingly feels the groove instead of counting time, while Claire Adams is intently focused – seemingly on the vocals, while the fast fretwork on the bass seems to happen subconsciously. They are, in so many ways, a quintessential Leeds act, both sonically and in terms of cult status. They’d have made worthy headliners, but public transport dictated their much earlier slot. Then again, there seems to be a lot of merit to spreading the quality more evenly.

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Objections

After a clattering avant-jazz intro, The Unit Ama launch into some sinewy math rock with some serious blasts of abrasion interspersed with some meandering jazz discordance. They’re certainly the most unexpected act of the night. Despite having been around some twenty-three years, having played around the north and north-east quite extensively in that time, even opening for Fugazi in their early years, and releasing music on a label that also gave us music by That Fucking Tank, they’re still completely new to me. Their set is wildly varied and intriguing: deep prog with an experimental jazz element – showcasing the kind of shudder and judder, rattle and crash cymbal breaks that you’re more likely to hear in Café Oto than a pub in York on a Saturday evening, whereby it’s hard to determine at times if they’re highly technical or just tossing about like chimps messing about to see what noise they can make. It’s expansive work which makes for a compelling and intriguing set.

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The Unit Ama

Wormboys are again interesting, and varied, but in a completely different way. The four-piece present a broad range of indie stylings with some strikingly athletic vocals. In places, they’re atmospheric, haunting, moving. Elsewhere, there are some motorik sections and big blasts of noise, and visually. they’re striking, with an imposing and lively bassist centre stage with the two guitarists, who also share vocals, either side.

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Wormboys

The crowd had thinned a little by the time Cowtown took the stage, meaning a few missed out on their brand of buoyant synthy indie with good energy. Another frequent-gigging stalwart act on the Leeds scene, they provide another reminder of the quality of the scene between Leeds and York, and this magnificently-curated event showcased that quality.

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Cowtown

That a number of the bands took time out during their sets to speak out on political issues, from giving praise for bands pulling out of Download, espousing people power, encouraging people to vote, and trans rights  – to use their voices, in any capacity, and even simply providing a ‘fuck the Tories’ call of disenfranchisement, it’s heartening to feel that we have bands who are politically engaged and using their platforms for more than mere entertainment. In bleak times, that there is a real sense of artistic community among such disparate acts gives a sense of hope. That hope may be misplaced, but to just step sideways from all of the shit for a few hours, immersed in a bubble, with beer and live music is the perfect escape. We should do this again sometime.

Watch: ‘Don’t Go Too Early’ by Asymmetric Universe

Posted: 4 June 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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InsideOutMusic is proud to announce the signing of Italian instrumental, prog-metal fusionists Asymmetric Universe to a new worldwide deal. The band, formed by brothers Federico Vese & Nicolò Vese, are also pleased to launch a brand new track titled ‘Don’t Go Too Early’, and you can watch the video for that here:

The band comment:

“We are so excited to join such a big family as InsideOutMusic! Being part of a team with legendary artists and bands that we’ve been listening to since we started studying music, is a dream come true!

Our new single, “Don’t Go Too Early”, is a mixture of fusion-jazz, aggressive progressive metal, wind quartet arrangements and an avant-garde string quartet orchestration, that brings a unique colour to complex yet catchy music. We can’t wait to share with you all the music we are already working on!”

Freddy Palmer, InsideOutMusic, adds: “Asymmetric Universe are a perfect example of the kind of exciting, instrumental guitar music making waves right now, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to add them to the label’s roster, and be a part of their bright future.”

The band are currently confirmed to support Plini & Haken in Milan, Italy on the 5th July, as well as playing Arctangent Festival in the UK on the 16th August alongside Meshuggah, Animals As Leaders & many more.

Formed in 2018, with the goal of pushing the limit of modern prog and fusing disparate genres, they combine metal with jazz & ambient music, alongside chamber orchestration. In 2023, the band released their second EP ‘The Sun Would Disappear As I Imagined All The Stars’, which was mixed by Forrester Savell and mastered by Ermin Hamidovic. They also embarked on their first European tour as support to Australian progressive metallers Ne Obliviscaris, as well as opening for Caligula’s Horse in Italy.

Both brothers are mostly self-taught musicians, who have been heavily involved in composition and orchestration, as well as music production.

Federico has composed music for as wide ranging places as Radio Montecarlo (one of the biggest Italian radio stations), as well as one of the largest Italian amusement park Mirabilandia. He is a metal/rock producer and this background influences his work as a composer in the video game industry. He is also a professional music and guitar teacher with online students from different parts of the world.

Nicolò has composed pieces for various orchestral organisations (two pieces were performed in the latest symphonic season of Orchestra Sinfonica of Sanremo and one performed at Rome Jazz Festival in 2021 with a big band), worked as a composer in many Musicals and he is currently working in the video game soundtrack industry (also as a sound designer), ranging from indie games to bigger productions. He also professionally teaches composition, orchestration and adaptive music techniques for video games.

dFUOtV0g

DRAAGS – HEADLINES

Posted: 2 June 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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LAAG Recordings – 10th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Over the last couple of decades, Leeds has thrown out some truly amazing acts, and while few have achieved the kind of commercial success of Kaiser Chiefs, in terms of creativity and sheer range, it’s come to stand in a league of its own. It was round about twenty years ago that The Brudenell began to build its reputation as being s place that provided a space for non-mainstream acts, notably becoming something of a residential spot for iLiKETRAiNS in their early days, hosting their Signal Failure nights. While I saw a lot of post rock there around this time, I also got to see the likes of That Fucking Tank, Pulled Apart By Horses, Blacklisters, as well as visiting acts which included Whitehouse and Unsane. The Brudenell may have expanded in terms of what it offers now, but it remains in many ways the essence of the Leeds scene, an open and accommodating space where pretty much anything goes, with emerging local acts still getting a platform and, significantly, high-profile support slots. And then that are – and have been – an array of smaller independent venues which have all been integral to the crazed melting pot which is the Leeds scene, from Wharf Chambers, to the Packhorse, via Chink and Mabgate Bleach.

From the quirky alternative noise of Thank to the banging rave mania of Straight Girl, Leeds in 2024 really does provide a broad span of representation, in every way. And if further evidence is needed, step forward queer-dance-punk five-piece DRAAGS, who offer up their debut album on their own DIY label, LAAG Recordings.

Their bio and album pitch set out their stall nearly, as they recount how the album was ‘Made in their home over 2023’, where ‘the five-piece explored themes of escapism, queerness, rebellion, anti-capitalism, -police and -mass-media, creating melodies and lyrics to reflect their feelings at the time. No one song sounds the same, just as no member of DRAAGS is the same.’

They go on to explain how ‘In Headlines we are grappling with the alienating nature of post-internet capitalist society, fuelled by a will to understand our surroundings and not succumb to normality and drudgery. The album is an unraveling of self-purpose, self-destruction and escapism vs reality in a world that distorts the truth and seeks exponential growth through false ambition. The work as a whole intends to reflect the overstimulating impact that a possessive individualist society has on the human psyche. How this obstructs our ability to connect and the challenges we face to not degrade our beings to reflect our bleak surroundings. This project has been a driving force for us to rebel, find togetherness, community, collective joy and purpose and we hope others feel that too.’

Headlines is a deranged mash-up of absolutely everything. ‘SPINNER’ is exemplary: starting with a recording of a standard call-queue experience – we all know that that the reason all the agent are busy and an agent will be with us shortly – or not – is because no company ever hires enough staff because paying staff to provide any real service eats into their profligate profits… and then everything goes crackers, a head-on collision between Age of Chance and iForwardRussia!, in turn continuing the lineage of Leeds bands who dare to be different. Then it goes a bit operatic, a bit Sparks, a bit drum ‘n’ bass, a bit Foetus, a but Mr Bungle, a bit Selfish Cunt. To say that it’s a crazed and bewildering three-and-a-half minutes would be an understatement.

Every single song on here is ABSOLUTELY WILD! It’s quite difficult to pay attention to the lyrics when there’s so much going on. It’s arch, it’s arty, it’s a bit campy, it’s WAY over the top. It’s a RACKET! And as the song titles evidence, THEY LOVE CAPITALS, because SHOUTING AND IN YOUR FACE IS THE THING! I don’t even mean that critically: this is an album that feels like a relentless blizzard of barminess, and everything is just brain-melting. ‘PAPERS’ is a full-on, brain-melting slice of jazz-flavoured derangement, and there isn’t a moment’s let-up here, with helium-filled freneticism leading a cacophonous carnival of dementiture.

Twisted jazz and grinding funk coalesce, or congeal, into a maniacal mess, and sometimes, it gets noisy, too. How do you possibly keep up with this, or stay sane? Maybe you don’t. HEADLINES isn’t really a SONGS album, so much as an EXPLOSION that leaves you shaking our head to get clear as you find yourself sitting dazed, utterly floored.

There is no sane or objective response to this album. There is no easy way to process it: there is simply too much.

DRAAGS are going all out here to push and test themselves and their potential audience. Surrender to the CRAZINESS.

AA

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Frédéric D. Oberland / Grégory Dargent / Tony Elieh / Wassim Halal – SHIR

Posted: 31 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Sub Rosa – 24th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Yet another 24 May release… It really does feel as if the world had conspired to release 75% of the years albums on this one day. So I’m still working my way through them. And this release from some known names is not what I was expecting. I can’t recall precisely what it was that I was expecting but certainly not anything as heavy or as percussion-led as this.

They describe SIHR as a ‘sonic manifesto by a post-anything quartet’, a work that offers up ‘new folklore for a devastated planet’. Within these words, there’s a sense of nihilism and gloom, but simultaneously an undercurrent of ‘fuck it’ and of quintessential avant-gardism, the principle ethos of creating anew only being possible from the destruction of that which came before. There’s a sense here that the destruction – the devastation of the planet – clearly isn’t something they’ve chosen, but in the face of apparent futility, they’ve come together to create, perhaps in the hope of a brave new world, or perhaps, more likely, something to be discovered among the ashes and the ruins of society and life as we know it.

The way in which they document their coming together and the creation of SIHR has all the hallmarks of the first stages of developing a mythology, which has the potential, in time, to grow its own legend: ‘The first sonic moves of this eclectic quartet, made in a bunker studio somewhere between Paris and Berlin, urgently took the form of a quest, that of a neo-folklore for troubled times, a music seeping with many kinds of atavism and experimenting in all directions. A fertile no-man’s-land where trance and contemplation, jazz and electronica, acoustics and electricity would merge in a stimulating mystical magma. From the possible emergence of a Babelian language to the shared desire to rediscover music as a ceremonial act, this encounter took place over three days of improvised sound bacchanalia, the phases of which were all recorded by Benoit Bel.’

The first track, ‘Oui-Ja’aa’ is a nine-minute colossus of a cut, drawing together elements of electronica and ‘world’ music with a dash of Krautrock and the sensibility of Suicide, with a throbbing rhythm melting into a hypnotic bubbling sonic cauldron. The tempo twists and seems to quicken as drones and jazz horns warp this way and that as if blown by the wind and everything builds to a frenzy before collapsing, exhausted in the dying moments.

While conjured in a bunker studio, SIHR sounds as if it was improvised around a fire in the middle of a desert while string out in an hallucinogenic haze. I suppose in some respects, the two scenarios bear numerous similarities in terms of their psychological effects: while one setting is a vast expanse of space with a huge sky vista and a distinct absence of other people, so the other, equally devoid of other people, forces the contemplation of the infinite realms of inner space.

‘YouGotALight’ is slow, smoking, soporific, a crawling, sprawling, mellowed-out meditation, before the glitchy whorl of bleeps and jitters that define the sound of ‘OhmShlag (Quake Tango)’ sees things take a very different trajectory at the album’s midpoint. A pulsating, seething miasma of sonic swampiness, punctuated with a metallic tin clatter of a snare that cuts through the murk, it’s like slowly sinking, not only in boggy terrain, but in a mental fog.

‘Babel Cedex’ eliminates the fog and just goes for the mental, beginning as another slow, serpentine, hypnotic exploration before building to a deranged frenzy of frenetic percussion and howling horns and chaotic discord that’s truly brain-melting. Eastern vibes and glitchtronica ripple through the woozy ‘Black Powder’, and you find yourself marvelling and utterly bewildered by the whole experience.

My earlier visions of desert campfires dissipate life vapourising mirages during the second half of the album, and I come to conclude that SIHR is indeed the sound of bunker life: one envisages the collective huddled in semi-darkness, hunched and half-crazed after months below ground in the wake of a global catastrophe, trying to keep it together in the hope of one day being able to return above ground. How will they know when it’s safe, when the coast is clear? Or is this a scenario akin to Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth?

We live in perilous times, and likely closer to the brink than any of us know or can even compute. In this context, SIHR feels like a document, and a message to future times.

AA

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Watch: ‘These Things’ by Eric Chenaux Trio

Posted: 10 May 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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“’These Things’ was the last song written for Delights Of My Life. Often the last song is written with the aid of what has come before it, the other songs on the record.
We have one song to write, or so we think, now then, what shall it be and why? I think that I asked this question. We will never know. And I also think that I thought that it might be novel to have a song with a very clear form (four times through a melodic verse, with a tag at the end that wraps it nicely). That, and that the record may very well appreciate a song with little to no improvisation. A straight curveball!

Eric Cazdyn, who made the ‘These Things’ video (and around 18 other videos for my music) may have heard the song similarly. He has certainly given me that impression. What I see in the video is a very simple movement or gesture, but with an immense amount of minimal detail. Well, that is how I often describe the dance of Angela Schubot, although she is just on the verge of dancing here in this video. She dances like vegetation. Or, she shows me again and again that vegetation is a dancing world.”

— Eric Chenaux

Check ’These Things’ here:

AA

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Blueblut – Lutebulb

Posted: 11 March 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Janka Industries – 3rd May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Once again, I find myself tussling with a jazz album and in a quandary as to quite what to make of it. For many, many years, I was absolutely certain I detested jazz. Until, that is, having been introduced in my line of work to acts like The Necks, I came to learn I’d simply been exposed to the wrong kinds of jazz. The weirdy, noisy, cacophonous kinds of jazz made sense in context of my appreciation of mathy noise rock, and wasn’t such an immense leap from Shellac to be incomprehensible. Like any genre, or even tea or coffee, it’s all about finding a point of entry, a flavour that suits your palette. I used to hate both tea and coffee, having been given the former with full-fat milk and sugar and the latter in the form of a fairly weak blend with milk but no sugar, and they only really clicked when I ditched the sugar and discovered Earl Grey, and that you could have really dark-roast coffee with no milk and a shovel-load of sugar. So, you know, you find your thing.

And then along comes Lutebulb, by Blueblut.

The blurb isn’t wrong in describing Blueblut’s lineup as ‘highly unusual, bringing together ‘three musicians acclaimed for exceptional contributions to their respective spheres in experimental jazz, electronica and rock.’ It’s a jazz-centred fusion, for sure, but it’s not jazz fusion as one tends to think of it, and certainly not as I’ve come to understand it. So what is it? As we learn, ‘Lutebulb is the fabulous culmination of ten years of intensive touring, with the Vienna based trio of Pamelia Stickney (theremin, vocals), Chris Janka (guitar, loops, samples) and Mark Holub (drums, vocals, percussion) socking it to global audiences with an international polystylistic musical language which takes in improv, jazz, avant-rock, ska, folk and Krautrock among other elements.’

There’s certainly a lot going on: initially, it comes on a bit laid back, not so much loungey as a smug muso pop collision of jazz and Latin dance, and I suppose the title, ‘Cocktail’ is something of a giveaway as to its swinging party vibes, but then shit happens – particularly some pretty crazy guitar work, and the percussion goes big and suddenly the party’s been crashed by a towering riot of sonic chaos, before suddenly, the entertainers seemingly remember themselves, pull their ties straight again and try to pull together some semblance of a funtime groove.

This sets the album’s template, really. Tracks tend to begin a bit kinda loose, a bit kinda boppable, a bit pool party fun times, albeit with some weirdness in the way the rhythms and the notes don’t quite chime in the conventional ways, and you wonder if it’s maybe the punch or the heat, but the tempo drifts a bit, first one way, then the other, and then maybe something doesn’t quite feel right, and it certainly doesn’t sound right and… what is going on? The room’s spinning and there are all sorts of random noises and you can’t tell if it’s people losing the plot or if some chickens have escaped and the sky’s falling in.

‘Aumba’ starts rather differently, a gentle piece led by acoustic guitar that brings a more reflective atmosphere, but it takes a hard swerve, the pace picks up, there are choral chanting vocals and then a handbrake turn into buoyant math-rock territory before some truly frantic fretwork. And because more surprises are needed, from nowhere, we get a crooning lyrical ballad in the last couple of minutes.

There’s unpredictable, and then there’s Lutebulb, which emerges with a fourteen-minute centrepiece of oddball experimental jazz that mashes absolutely everything together: one minute, I’m reminded of America’s ‘Horse With No Name’, the next, it’s Paul Simon’s Graceland and a Joolz Holland world music extravaganza. Then, somewhere in the midst of it all, we get the jazz breakdown with erratic percussion and space, dogs barking, and then, something else again. Led Zep riffage. Noise. More dogs barking. Every time I leave the house, the streets and parks and fields are like bloody Crufts, and the headfucking noise that’s emanating from my speakers – mostly a horrible conglomeration of barking and a strolling bass is making me angry and tense. And then the last piece, ‘Kaktusgetränk’, incorporates a familiar and popular jazz piece I can’t place or be bothered to research because by now I can’t decide if I need a lie-down or a massive gin.

With Lutebulb, Blueblut have created one of the most wildly varied – and in places, difficult, irritating, random – albums I’ve heard in a long time. I neither like nor dislike it: it has some truly great moments, and it has some not great moments. But when you throw this much into the blender, it’s to be expected, and I’d like to think that this kind of reaction isn’t entirely unexpected. The musicianship is outstanding, and their capacity to switch style, tempo, form, is something else, and the results are enough to leave anyone punchdrunk.

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Stewart Home vs JIz – Problematic Memorials

Posted: 26 February 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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26th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Having recently had his early punk rock recordings reissues, Stewart Home makes a new foray into the recorded medium, this time with a rather more experimental collaboration with JIz. Delivering a spoken word list of ‘problematic memorials’ (as the title suggests) with some additional commentary, in a fashion not dissimilar from The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu’s ‘It’s Grim Up North’, across three variants with backing that ranges from swampy experimental noise to minimal avant-jazz, Home leads us on a tour of London taking in sights that most people don’t realise have unsavoury connotations and commemorate people and events which probably ought to be damned rather than celebrated.

The long history of slavery throughout the British Empire has – belatedly – become subject to more open discourse in recent years, but our current government, who seem determined to resurrect the spirit of the empire through jingoism and xenophobia and a completely false reimagining of history as a way of selling Brexit as a win, are averse to such discourse, branding anything and everything from the Army to the National Trust as ‘woke’ – as if being woke is a bad thing.

For the most part, the sense of ‘Britishness’ which is increasingly only a sense of ‘Englishness’ in our ever-more isolated and impoverished part of a small island on the edge of Europe – geographically, and sinking off the coast of Europe politically – is born of ignorance. Stubborn, belligerent ignorance, but ignorance nonetheless. And out of such ignorance arise pathetic, futile culture wars.

Home has so far managed to slide his antagonistic sociopolitical position under the radar in recent years – in contrast to his controversy-piquing earlier years when he was churning out pastiche works about skinheads and riots and anarchy. What happened? Perhaps in developing his approach to be more subtle, Home achieved even greater subversion by being able to continue his mission without interference. Whatever the reason, here we have Problematic Memorials. Call it woke, call it what you like, but it needs to be heard. And beyond the message, it’s a top-notch spoken word / experimental music crossover collaboration, so go get your lugs round it.

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Ever Elysian – Feeling Good / House of the Rising Sun

Posted: 19 February 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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16th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

A good cover brings something different to a song. That doesn’t mean rendering it unrecognisable or necessitate complete irreverence, but a cover that’s so faithful to the original as to be a carbon copy is utterly redundant. Marilyn Manson’s cover of Soft Cell’s cover of ‘Tainted Love’ is a perfect example of a pointless cover. Johnny Cash’s cover of ‘Hurt’ and The Fall’s take on ‘Lost in Music’, on the other hand, are everything you could want from a cover. ‘Owning the song’, as they say on shit like X Factor and The Voice.

How could any artist bring anything new to either of these well-trodden and frankly threadbare standards? That Ever Elysian have actually succeeded is quite a feat, and a welcome and pleasant surprise. They pitch themselves as purveyors of ‘classic rock,’ ‘soft rock,’ and ‘soul rock’ which does them rather a disservice on the evidence of this inspired offering.

The blurred image which serves as the single’s artwork conveys the woozy, warped opening of their take on ‘Feeling Good’. It’s still got the essential jazzy vibe, but it’s twisted, messed: sultry is replaced with sedation, as if the room is spinning in a late-night nightmare. It’s the sound of ‘feeling good’ a few moments before you fall flat on your face and find you’re incapable of getting up, and you realise everything looks weird and you haven’t a clue who you are, let alone where. And then it takes wings with some big, bold strings, and finally, the flourish of a heroic guitar solo.

‘House of the Rising Sun’ again pairs it back, and slows it down, too, getting deep under the skin of this cautionary tale to render it with nightmarish qualities. This is one of those covers that gives one a moment’s pause to confirm it is in fact a cover, and when the penny drops as to how they’ve approached it… it’s a shiversome moment. Deep, dark guitar tones imbue the performance with a haunting, gothic quality, delivered with a dash of theatricality. The jazz flavour leans into tipsy post-rock and a slow burn that surges to something like the Amy Winehouse Bond theme that never was. It’s a daring rendition, but by absolutely no means disrespectful or irreverent: instead, these two interpretations draw out dark elements which lie at the heart of the originals and bring them to the fore. These are smart, considered, well-executed and exciting versions.

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Ever Elysian

Áron Porteleki – Cryptic Bodies

Posted: 6 February 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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5th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

People often say they hate surprises. I know where they’re coming from, although by and large, the surprise is less the issue than their reaction being seen. As children, we’ve all had the Christmas party and the birthday where we’ve suffered a head-exploding embarrassment where something’s been sprung unexpectedly, and where, as a consequence the walls have closed in and you’ve felt entrapped within a tight, tunnelling space and simply wanted to disappear – right? But there are two kinds of surprises: good ones and bad ones, just as there are two kinds of music: good, and bad.

‘Cryptic Bodies’ is good music, and the perfect surprise, presenting as a discordant chaotic mess of purgatorial abrasion, which smashes its way into a collision of post-punk and… well, what else is hard to say, beyond sinewy, straining dissonance. Really, this is one of those ‘what the fuck is this?’ releases. Personally, I absolutely love this kind of stuff, that’s challenging, shouty, difficult to listen to, let alone define. The music shifts in tone and intensity, a meandering twisting thread of jangliness and extraneous noise that bears jazz influences without being jazz, noise-rock elements without being noise-rock. What does it mean? What is it for? Cryptic is certainly the word, and perhaps it’s best to simply revel in the strangeness than attempt to unravel and decipher it.

But there’s more. The track is lifted from Hungarian artist Porteleki’s forthcoming album Smearing, which is out in March, and it’s not his first work by the title ‘Cryptic Bodies’, as a moment’s cursory research brings us to a ‘documentary’ film on YouTube, uploaded in three parts, which captures Porteleki – a percussionist first and foremost – performing a solo score, which is ‘structured yet improvised’ as the audio backdrop to ‘a contemporary dance piece, where 5 dancers traverse through space, body and time to throbbing experimental live metal music. The work is inspired by ancient bodily practices such as Egyptian mummification and Mesopotamian occult healing rites’.

Being instrumental, and extending to around forty minutes, it’s a powerful soundtrack to a visually striking and remarkably compelling multimedia experience, which also showcases Porteleki’s inventive, atmosphere-building approach to guitar playing. Elsewhere online, his SoundCloud uploads present an array of experimental works, ranging from minimalist dark ambience to wild, maximalist bursts of noise, meaning how representative of the album this cut might be is anyone’s guess. But given the title track, which is currently streaming on Bandcamp, there’s a strong possibility that it’s going to be an extremely varied and extremely unusual collection of highly experimental bits and pieces. ‘No genres’ he states on his Bandcamp. No kidding: Porteleki’s modus operandi appears to be to shatter every mould there is. He isn’t so much leftfield, or outside the box, but outside the field, and he’s burned the box to ashes.

Porteleki clearly likes to push boundaries, and none more than his own. ‘Cryptic Bodies’ offers a gateway into the world of an artist who warrants exploration – but not if you don’t like surprises.

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