Posts Tagged ‘Manchester’

Watch: ‘Pound of Flesh’ by ESA

Posted: 11 October 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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British industrial/EBM artist ESA is proud to release a new music video for the song ‘Pound Of Flesh’, taken from the artist’s recent album Sounds for Your Happiness out from July 5th via Negative Gain Productions label.

‘Pound of Flesh’ is the most ambitious cinematic journey from ESA to date. Shot on location in Bangkok (Thailand) during July 2025 with additional scenes filmed in Manchester UK, the video sees the participation of Tan Toafa Maneepasopchock (Gotham/Oceans 10) and Panita Hutacharern along with three other native Thai actors. ‘Pound of Flesh’ is in part a powerful and compelling narrative experience, alongside a love letter to Thailand. A country that has meant a lot to Blacker over the years.

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The story follows a troubled soul, tormented by inner demons, trapped within their own mental prison, happening upon a vehicle to allow astral projection from one body to another in a vain attempt to escape their own pain and anguish. From body to body, it soon becomes apparent that dwelling within a new host body is not the solution it might first appear to be. As time passes within the host, breakdowns begin to emerge and the demons that are tethered to the troubled now take up chase, culminating in a powerful and incredibly cinematic exorcism experience.

‘Pound of Flesh’ is a music film in 3 parts, both adventurous in script and energetic in its execution. The acting of Tan and Panita levels up further the Universe that Blacker is trying to achieve with the ESA multimedia experience.

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Watch: ‘Stitched Up’ by Barbarian Hermit

Posted: 10 June 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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2nd August 2024 will see the return of Barbarian Hermit, Manchester’s leading purveyors of groove laden, stoner/doom metal.

Released on APF Records, Mean Sugar may just be the heaviest ever tribute to Northern life. Frontman Simon Scarlett comments,

“The album is about what we know, and that is the bitter-sweetness of growing up in a northern town. It’s a crude representation of what it is to be us these past few years: Lads catapulted against our will into manhood, at a time when everything is changing, and yet here we stay under the comforting and watchful shadow of the Pennine hills.

The north is an invigorating place, there’s a post-industrial beauty here unlike anywhere else. It’s also a tough place, precarious and on the edge. Sometimes we can feel powerless and unheard; our response to this, is to pick up guitars, make noise and hammer down a punishing rhythm.”

Written over a 3 year period, Mean Sugar is a cathartic creation, set against a back-drop that has seen people endure global pandemic, endless political turmoil, a cost of living crisis and war. During these times often the best coping mechanism is to go into a room with your friends and focus your energy on playing some very heavy and loud music.

Recorded by Joe Clayton at No Studio and mastered by Chris Fielding (Foel Studios), the album sees the return of original vocalist Simon Scarlett who helped craft the band’s debut ‘One’ EP, originally released in 2016 (and reissued on APF Records in 2021). First single ’Stitched Up’ was according to the band,  "one of the first songs we wrote as a full band after Si rejoined and it was one of those where everything clicks and it almost writes itself. It just fell out of us. It features not only one of the catchiest riffs we’ve ever written but also one of the heaviest and most disrespectful.  Lyrically the track is about perseverance. We are surrounded by disruption, things that trip us up, make us lose sleep and neglect our own fulfilment."

Watch the video now:

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Credit: Jay Massie

Dirty Laces – Blink For Nothing

Posted: 23 December 2023 in Albums, Reviews
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25th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Pink Floyd, Joy Division, and Queens of the Stone Age don’t leap to mind as compatible influences for the pollination of a new musical venture, but we learn from the outset that these are the touchstones of Manchester act Dirty Laces, whose debit album, Blink for Nothing has been fully six years in the making. It’s a fully DIY venture, too – self-produced, self-released, and presented in their own artwork. Steve Albini would approve. It may be that Blink for Nothing won’t sell truckloads, but there’s much satisfaction in knowing that any proceeds will go straight to the band, meaning that any profits will, too, instead of lining everyone else’s pockets first before the band receive any leftover change, if they’re lucky. The model is fundamentally flawed, but of course, the industry thinks otherwise: of course it does, because artists who turn a profit turn a profit for labels, management agencies, etc., etc., and those who don’t, find themselves ejected pretty swiftly. It’s unlikely that the industry machine would have afforded these guys six years to evolve and hone their sound, their songs, and tinker with everything, while giving them complete creative control.

‘Midnight Mile’ makes for a strong opener with a bold, melodic lead guitar line carving an entry into a song that packs in so many different elements while keeping it all tightly together with some strong hooks. With some digital bleepery and kicking guitars and an atmospheric breakdown about two-thirds in, it’s got a very 90s/00s alt-rock indie vibe, and somehow manages to land somewhere between Jesus Jones and The Cooper Temple Clause, all delivered with an archetypal Mancunian swagger.

The swagger is something that could be rather divisive, and the baggy beats and bass runs which crop up here and there make nods to the likes of The Stone Roses and The Charlatans which feel a shade derivative and don’t necessarily do them any favours. But despite these features, ‘Old Friend’ is innovative and solid, some nonsensical lyrics aside (‘There’s an old friend I know / Never seen him before)’, and transitions from paired-back and primarily acoustic to big and – yes, I’ll say it – anthemic. ‘All I See’ does the big, expansive funk-tinged blues thing, but unexpectedly, Charlie Jordan’s vocals are soulful and in combination, the end result is rather more like Mansun than anything – and then it really blasts off. these guys really know how to build a song and bring a rushing climax.

The guitar licks on ‘Another Day’ are a bit Dire Straits, but they fire both barrels on ‘Seeker’, which again boasts a chorus that’s absolutely fucking massive, and the fact it reminds me of several other songs, none of which I can put my finger on, doesn’t detract. ‘Tomorrow Comes Again’ arrives as something of a surprise: a slow-burner that again brings hints of Mansun and even a more guitar Duran Duran.

The fact I’m personally conflicted is no bad thing, and while no doubt some will be absolutely gripped by this from the first listen, it’s healthy to accept that music isn’t always an instant grab, especially when there are moments that feel just a bit standard, a bit Oasis, even. I might not get much of Pink Floyd, Joy Division, or Queens of the Stone Age from this – apart from the mid-section of ‘Wanna Know’, where a bassline worthy of Peter Hook lunges into a dirty riff that does have a strong whiff of QOTSA, that is – but what I do get is a shedload of ideas and some strong attitude, backed up with some solid musicianship.

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Dirty Laces Artwork

The Battery Farm – House of Pain

Posted: 24 October 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Rare Vitamin Records – 20th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The Battery Farm have had a truly extraordinary twelve months: the Manchester foursome released their debut album last November, and have been gigging hard off the back of it, with some pretty high-profile shows along the way. And this is a band that’s driven – not so much by ambition or aspirations of stardom, but by passion. These guys are purveyors of political, pissed off, authentic punk – not haircuts and threads, but sweaty, full-throttle 110% all the way. Benjamin Corry makes for a powerful presence, vocally, visually, and in the interviews he’s given. He may appear a shade scary and borderline deranged, but comes across as affable, articulate, and genuine.

The band exists to rail against the shitness of the world we find ourselves in, and perhaps buoyed by the reception of the album and recent shows, their twelfth single is more amped-up and fiery than ever. ‘House of Pain’ is three minutes of riff-driven fury that blasts in at a hundred miles an hour with a message that needs to be heard. Arguably, that message could be boiled down to the barest bones of ‘fuck this bullshit’, but the expanded articulation is that it addresses ‘the shame imposed on all of us who are scraping by in an ongoing and worsening cost of greed crisis. You do what you have to to survive, and how dare anyone in a position of privilege look down their nose.’

It needs to be heard because, as I was reading only earlier today online in The Guardian, ‘The number of people experiencing destitution in the UK has more than doubled in the last five years – up from 1.55 million in 2017. One million children are now living in destitute homes – a staggering increase of 186% in half a decade.’ That every single supermarket now has a place to donate to food banks speaks for itself; yet our government, whose job it is to protect society’s most vulnerable, simply dispense advice that if you can’t afford a cheese sandwich, to forgo the cheese, and who seem to think that broadband and mobile phones are luxury items the poor should do without, despite the fact it’s impossible to apply for jobs or even maintain benefits without them. The privately-educated governing elite are in the pockets of the likes of the oil industry, and they absolutely fucking hate the poor, and they want you to hate the poor too. And their hateful campaigning and sloganeering is depressingly effective: how else do you explain working-class people voting Conservative? It’s bewildering to think that people in impoverished towns in the north of England would vote for these cunts who’d happily bulldoze every council estate in the country, that they might think that the likes of Bozo Johnson and Richboi Sunak give even a flake of shit about them, let alone represent them – but the increasingly right-wing Tories appeal to the mentality of the impoverished and disenfranchised by apportioning the blame for the state of everything on ‘illegal’ immigrants, who come over here and sponge all the benefits. Stop the boats! Right. Then what?

The Battery Farm are spot on when they describe the current situation in the UK as a ‘cost of greed’ crisis. Everyone who’s already in the money is making on this: banks, oil and energy companies, supermarkets… any increases in costs are being passed directly to customers, and then some, all to protect profits, all to pass on to shareholders, all to give CEOs even bigger bonuses. The injustice, the social division is at a point where something has to give. Sadly, it seems that something is the lives of those at the bottom of the heap.

The Battery Farm can’t change the world, but they can provide a voice and an outlet to the anger at this injustice, and flipside ‘A Time of Peace’ is another full-throttle gritty blast of punk fury, reminiscent of the sound of ‘79/’80 – I’m thinking grimy roar of The Anti-Nowhere League and fellow Mancunians Slaughter and the Dogs by way of references here.

At the time of writing this, four days after release (I’ve been slack / drowning in dealing with everyday life stuff (delete as appropriate); physical copies on 7”, CD, and cassette have sold out, which is a huge achievement and shows just how they’ve built a committed following through a combination of belting tunes and sheer hard slog. This is their strongest work to date.

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Red Painted Red – That Was the Reason Why

Posted: 6 October 2023 in Albums
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ZOHARUM – 17th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It wasn’t so long ago that I’d arrive home from work and struggle to open the door for the pile of jiffy bags which had cascaded through the letterbox while I was out, and that I’d regularly receive vinyl for review in the mail. The pandemic and the spiralling coast of everything really kicked that into touch. The sheer volume was quite overwhelming at times, but I do miss it, and the occasional delivery of a physical copy of a release reminds me why.

My copy of That Was the Reason Why was accompanied by a stack of wonderful postcards for a start: a strange array of scenes printed on thick card with a matte finish they’re fantastic. And so is the CD’s tri-fold packaging, which includes the full album lyrics, which I read through as I’m listening to the album. Yeah, yeah, I’m old – at least according so some people. But yes, I grew up with physical media and am comfortable with that as I read the contents of the truly beautiful sleeve. This is what people who don’t do, and have never done, physical media are missing out on. The fact is that music is, or at least is at its best, a multi-sensory, inter-dimensional experience. I took this for granted when I was younger. I’d go to record shops in town and but records and tapes, and later CDs, and spend hours looking at the artwork and pouring over the lyric sheets.

Starting with beeping keytones and with an ominous keyboard score, ‘Human Condition’ is dark and dense and builds a palpable tension as the glacial robotic vocals enunciate the stark declarations of ‘Self-mutilator. Mother. Arsonist. Materialist. Abuser. Assassin. Scientist. Charmer. Harmer. Narcissist. Artist. Redeemer. Explorer of the fauna’ on a loop that becomes more chilling with each cycle. Creepy is the word, and the bass and drums build as the track progresses, along with the extraneous noise that sits behind the nagging motif.

‘Astronauts’ cuts a sound collage which overlays a strolling, bass-led groove that’s almost proggy, and over that, Yew spins semi-narrative lyrics with cool detachment.

That Was the Reason Why is an unusual blend of experimentalism, cut-ups, collaging, and trippiness, which incorporates elements of a range of genres but belongs to none. The synthiness of the sultry ‘Come to Me’ is almost Vangellis-like, while ‘Knife’ is sparse, atmospheric electronica that’s oddly reminiscent of Kate Bush, at least in Yew’s delivery, and it’s magnificently melodic and dreamy in a melancholic sort of a way, and ‘Silence’ brings discord, abrasion and snarling zombie backing vocals tearing through a hybrid post-punk drone that sounds like a collision between The Doors and Toyah. ‘Dances’ is altogether weightier, and brings hints of Swans circa Children of God. But for all of its diversity and divergence, there is a strong homogeneity to the album as a whole, and it works well.

Samples of narrative and dialogue, and snippets of all sorts come together to conjure a disorientating reflection of the world and somewhere beyond – sometimes exterior, sometimes interior, bringing inner space and outer space into the same frame. Breathy, ethereal, yet tense and claustrophobic, That Was the Reason Why is a dialogue of inner turmoil, an exploration of liminal spaces, and an unstintingly intriguing and unusual work.

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Various Artists – Rental Yields Volume 5

Posted: 1 October 2023 in Albums
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Front & Follow / gated canal Community – 6th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

When Front & Follow called it a day as a label, it was a sad day, and their subsequent emergence from the mothballs for the Rental Yields series was extremely welcome. This was a project that came from the heart and really showed what F&F was all about – yes, music first and foremost, but also community. By working with a certain network of artists, the label built a community of its own, but there was always a sense of locale which was integral to this, and this is what compelled label-leader Justin Watson to resurrect the label to release a series of fundraisers to help raise money to tackle homelessness in Manchester.

This is a project which has clearly taken on a life of its own, and it seems unlikely that when first touting the idea, Justin could have ever seen the deluge of contributions which would pour in over the coming months. He writes, ‘Over 100 artists are involved (the spreadsheet is fun), each one tasked with creating a new track from the sounds created by someone else –we are then collating the tracks and releasing them over 2022 and 2023… This is VOLUME FIVE –THE FINAL VOLUME. 19 tracks, 38 wonderful artists. All money raised will go to SPIN (Supporting People in Need), whose purpose is to feed, shelter, clothe and generally support the homeless and people in need of Greater Manchester.’

This release simply shouldn’t exist. Homelessness shouldn’t exist, either. Levelling up my fucking arse. This government can’t even manage the basics, and while the imminent cancellation of the stretch of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester is making all of the headlines and the government are refusing to comment on the ‘speculation’ about the inevitable, insisting that there are many other projects which are equally essential to the plan to provide the north with the same quality of life available to those in the capital, the fact that homelessness remains such a huge issue in Manchester is evidence that they’re not receiving the finding they need either. It’s not just Manchester, but charity begins at home and people can only do so much, so it stands to reason that F&F should donate to a local charity.

The one positive outcome of a truly depressing situation is that all five of the Rental Yields compilations is absolutely superb, and this fifth and final one is a glorious showcase of predominantly regional talent from a city with a long history of producing outstanding music, alongside Leeds. While it’s fair to say that much of this musical output has been born from frustration, it only serves to demonstrate just how much the north has contributed, and continues to contribute, to the nation’s creative output. And a nation without art… is simply dead. Over the last nineteen years, which I’ve spent living in York, I’ve often said that the best thing about living here is its proximity to Leeds. The city’s music scene is phenomenal, and where in London could you watch local / national / international touring bands while supping local ales for four quid a pint?

So, while the fact of the matter is that there should be no need for this album in terms of its social motivation, Rental Yields Volume Five is ultimately yet another essential release in terms of the fantastic music it showcases. More than any of the preceding editions, it’s a murky, atmospheric collection.

I’d been bobbing along nicely to the mellow drift before the penetrating feedback blast that heralds the arrival of ‘Rental Yields Weekend in Manchester Mix’ by Dan Gusset vs Omnibadger. Had to be these buggers, of course. Regular contributors / usual culprits, they bring another layer of discomfort to the party. It’s like Test Dept’s ‘Unacceptable Face of Freedom’ for 2023, a punishing, sample-filled industrial racket that tells it like it is, and without compromise. We live in harsh times, dominated by harsh language from government, and if ‘and then it was gone’ by gormless vs Distant Animals is superficially buoyant, the underlying stains of noise are dark and turbulent and this is the noise that fills our heads day in, day out, as we walk down the street. There is no escape, only the delusion. There is plenty oof harsh reality to be found on here, with thick bass blasts dominating Repeated Viewing vs Four Italian Pep Pils’

Most of the contributors on here are new to me, but as has been the case with all of the previous instalments, the quality of consistency is remarkable, and it’s incredible to think that this is a compilation assembled from open submissions. Rental Yields Volume 5 feels more like a film score than anything else, the tracks showcasing a cohesion and unity our government could only dream of. But then, this what happens when artists come together for a cause. And coming together is the crux here. The entire Rental Yields series is essentially about unity, and also about compassion. The government, and the capitalist world at large needs to learn from this. In the meantime, this glorious compilation provides a much-needed salve to the muscle-twitching rage the societal situation elicits. It’s yet another great album from Front & Follow, who deserve to hang up their virtual boots after this.

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Pound Land – Violence

Posted: 17 September 2023 in Albums
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Cruel Nature Records – 29th September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Following the stop-gap video release of ‘Liar’ from their singles compilation, Manchester’s most miserable are back with another long-player.

For their sixth album, they promise ‘eight filthy tracks of vitriolic desperation’ on a set that ‘often veers towards a nineties alt-metal/industrial sound, along with the usual smatterings of customary Pound Land abstraction…In addition, this new album continues to aggressively push lyrical themes relating to the same old shit that seems to be getting worse: corporate hegemony, business culture, mainstream media influence, automation, class polarisation and economic austerity.’

I sit in the dim, narrow ‘spare bedroom’ that is the office where I work my day-job by day and write reviews by night, slumped, exhausted by life. I moved into this house ten years ago, and while I was fortunate to be able to buy it, it was previously a magnolia-coated rental with fire doors and stain-forgiving turd brown carpets throughout. The fire doors may be gone, but my poky office which, measuring 7 feet by 12 feet, would make for a fucking tight bedroom, still had the turd-brown carpet, because when presented with the choice of food and beer or a new carpet, carpet seems like an extravagance I can survive without. I realise and appreciate that I’m fortunate: I can at least afford both food and beer.

If Pound Land’s releases seem to plough the same furrow only deeper and laced with a greater despondency, that’s largely the point. As they say, ‘the same old shit that seems to be getting worse’, and that’s the shit that’s grist to their mill. No doubt their mill will be sold off or shut down, or knocked down to make way for a hotel or flats before long, but for the time being at least, they’re still plugging away. And thank fuck they are.

Yes, there is a rising swell of music that’s telling it like it is: if Sleaford Mods led the way, it’s been a slow trickle rather than an opening of the floodgates in their wake, most likely because people are too busy working overtime in their day jobs to pay the electricity bill to make music, but lately we’ve seen these guys, plus Benefits, Kill! The Icon, and Bedsit calling out the shitness of everything. And make no mistake: everything really is fucking shit, unless you’re a fucking billionaire.

‘Programmed’ barrels in with a squalling mess of grimy bass and screeching electronics reminiscent of Cruise-era Whitehouse, and it’s a sonic amalgamation that’s painful and penetrating, hitting the guts and piercing the ear drums simultaneously. The thunderous ruff buries the drums and when the snarling vocals enter the mix, spitting vitriol with blinding rage, everything combines to tear forth with a wall of nihilism that’s in the same field as Uniform. Then – what the fuck? Wild roaming saxophone sprays all over before another onslaught of rabid rage. It’s seven and a half minutes of devastating carnage that leaves you feeling hollowed out and wondering where they could possibly go from here?

More of the same, of course: grimacing and with gritted teeth, they grind, thud, trudge and bulldoze their way mercilessly through another six tracks – and half an hour – of relentlessly grey sludge, by turns angry and despondent.

Like Sleaford Mods, Pound Land’s compositions are built around monotony and repetition, but whereas the former place predominant emphasis on the lyrics, the snappy wordplay and caustic commentary, Pound Land batter and bludgeon repetitive lyrics in the way that Swans did in their early years, and their music is very much a mirror of the crushing effects of drudgery. It does articulate the gut-puling anguish of the everyday, and in the most direct way possible.

The raw, raging punk of ‘New Labour’ offers a shift in tempo, but it still sounds like it was recorded on a mobile phone left in a corner of the rehearsal room.

The majority of the album, though, is a succession of crawling dirges dominates by overloading bass. The lyrics are simple, direct – when they’re audible. ‘Fuck the facts and roll the news’ Adam Stone yells repeatedly over a bowel-busting bass growl on ‘Media Amnesia’. ‘Life is so much easier / with media amnesia,’ he spits before launching into a brutal rant – one of many.

There is absolutely no let up on Violence. It’s hard and heavy, uncompromising and unpleasant. Even sparser tracks like ‘Low Health’, where it’s more spoken word with churning noise, the atmosphere is never less than crushingly oppressive, harrowingly bleak.

The last track, ‘Violence Part 2’ is five minutes of brutal racket that’s the nastiest of lo-fi- sludge and which is the perfect encapsulation of the album as a whole. It’s grim, it’s bleak, and it’s supposed to be.

Rarely has a band so perfectly captured the zeitgeist through a horrible mess of noise that makes you physically hurt and ache and feel like you’re being subjected to an array of tortures. This is the world. This is Britain, in 2023. If you’re not a millionaire, you might as well be dead. It’s what they want. Poor, disabled? Fuck off and die. This is the grim reality of the world Pound Land present, and while that isn’t actually one of their lyrics, the bleak message is clear: we’re fucked.

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Watch: ‘Walk Among the Spectres’ by Harry Stafford and Marco Butcher

Posted: 2 August 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Manchester underground music icon HARRY STAFFORD (frontman/founder of INCA BABIES) and North Carolina-based trash blues guitarist MARCO BUTCHER present their new single ‘Walk Among The Spectres’, following the resounding triumph of 2021’s ‘Bone Architecture’ LP. This is a cool piece of walking blues, with percussive Hammond organ and Butcher’s laconic backbeat. Their forthcoming album We Are The Perilous Men is out this autumn via Black Lagoon Records.

The video is fitting for this song, which is about an old friend who is fondly remembered. Our hero travels across town to put an electric piano-keyboard on his grave, discovering his own fragile mortality along the way. Directed by Stafford, this video was filmed in an expansive cemetery in South Manchester, which dates back to 1700 and was used throughout the Victorian era. Now a public park, people are invited to wander among the tombstones… to literally Walk among the Spectres.

Watch the video here:

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Various – Rental Yields Volume Three

Posted: 29 November 2022 in Albums
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Front & Follow – 25th November 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Longtime Aural Aggro faves Front & Follow have delivered the third in their series of truly immense Rental Yields compilations, with another twenty-five tracks of remixed works which showcase the community spirit they espouse as a label and among those in its orbit.

They describe it as ‘a multi-release collaboration project raising money to tackle homelessness in Manchester… Inspired (if that’s the right word – perhaps ‘motivated’…) by our current housing system, the project encourages artists to steal (or borrow, nicely) from another artist to create their own new track – in the process producing HIGH RENTAL YIELDS. Over 100 artists are now involved (the spreadsheet is fun), each one tasked with creating a new track from the sounds created by someone else – we are then collating the tracks and releasing them over the course of the next year.’

Some would describe the project as ambitious, others as simply crackers, and it’s likely both in equal measure, but this is why we love F&F. That, and the fact that they seem of have a knack for attracting and releasing interesting artists who exist far beyond the peripheries of any kid of commercial radar (or even most alternative radars).

This compilation really does make the most of the medium: unrestrained by the limits of vinyl, cassette or CD, and has a playing time of about a week. Yes, I exaggerate, but the point is, each contribution is the length it needs to be, or the artist feels it ought to be, rather than cut or constrained, meaning that while a fair few pieces sit around the five minute mark, the Decommissioned Forests vs Pulselovers rendition of ‘Rental Yields’ runs for nine minutes and forty-four seconds, ahead of the ten-minute workout that is IVY NOSTRUM vs The Snaps Jar’s ‘AND MONEY LESS’ and a few other six- and seven-minute monsters.

But what is time, anyway, and what’s it for? As much as it’s a measure of time, it’s a tool by which lives are ordered, limited, constrained, controlled. The vast majority are paid work by the hour, not by output, and time on the clock is not your time, but your employer’s. You don’t own your time, and you don’t own your space, and you give your time to some company who profit from your time and output in order to pay for a roof over your head, a space to eat and sleep, for the profit of a landlord or a bank you owe tens, even hundreds of thousands.

How often do you hear people shrug about their shit jobs saying ‘well, it pays the rent’. Imagine lying on your deathbed, reflecting on a lifetime of drudgery to say ‘I paid the rent’, while your landlord’s spent their life living it up in restaurants and on overseas holidays and celebrating their success because you’ve paid their rent too.

Audio Obscura VS Secret Nuclear’s ‘Vacant Period’ opens the album with an apposite sample from a TV show discussing gross and net yield before embarking on a glitchy, flickering journey of droning industrial Krautrock, and paves the way for an extensive and magnificent-curated collection of variant forms of ambience. Pettaluck Vs Giant Head’s ‘Dot to Dot’ is disorientation yet soothing and hypnotic – and fucking strange. But we like strange, and Front & Follow provide plenty.

If it’s a long, long listening journey of crackling stating, looming darkness, bleeps, bloops, and extraneous noise intercut with snippets of radio, film, and TV, and ultimately forges an immense intertext of sources.

Sometimes it’s swampy, eerie, tense, others it’s quite mellow and finds a subtle groove, but Rental Yields is unyieldingly brilliant, both in terms of range and quality. And you really can’t go wrong for a fiver – the worthy cause is simply a bonus.

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Watch: ‘Stamp You Out’ by IST IST

Posted: 21 October 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Delivering a resolute punch with an acerbic sting in its tale, new single ‘Stamp You Out’ sees the Manchester band return to the spotlight with commanding form and typically uncompromising style.

From its blistering post/punk guitar lines to its punishing percussives, ‘Stamp You Out’ creates an impending atmosphere of anxiety throughout. With Adam Houghton’s trademark baritone vocal booming with all the force of an omnipotent autocrat at the lectern of a police state; it makes for a powerful statement of intent that instantly envelops listeners back into the shadow-strewn world of IST IST.
Speaking about ‘Stamp You Out’, Houghton says:

“[Stamp You Out] tips its hat to the previous IST IST where the modus operandi was to try and make an impact in the most forceful way; pounding drums and bass and repetitive lyrics. I remember watching a news report where a politician, whose name I forget, just kept saying: ‘we need to stamp this out’. I was thinking ‘we need to stamp you out’, so I wrote an aggressive fight song and a call to arms about it.”

The single is accompanied by an official video that sees the band deliver a voltaic performance of the track against a flurry of incandescent lights. Watch it here:

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Of the video Keating adds: “We felt like the track is a straightforward rock song which required a straightforward video and we didn’t want to over-embellish the visual aspect. For existing IST IST fans, it re-affirms what we’re all about, and for anyone new it tells you everything you need to know.”

The new single is also accompanied by the announcement of IST IST’s third studio album Protagonists, out 31 March 2022 via Kind Violence Records. After securing their status as one of Manchester’s most exciting acts with their 2020 debut Architecture, and then consolidating the title with its 2021 follow-up The Art of Lying; new album Protagonists arrives as something of a new dawn for the four-piece. As Andy Keating says:

“This was our first straightforward album, which sounds strange given it’s the third one. Our first album was a little bit of a back catalogue, and the rest was written in the same vein to have a coherent record. The second album was a stab in the dark and written and recorded during lockdown restrictions, but it broke us into the top 100. ‘Protagonists’ feels like the first album where there’s no pressure.”

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An album all about new beginnings, with a nod to the trials and tribulations of love, tricky family relationships and the feeling of being trapped by the past, ‘Protagonists’ arrives as an attestation to a band sure of their own identity. With the time and space to experiment in order to solidify their own sound, Keating adds:

“We originally started just exploring sounds and textures which appealed to us, and it evolved into fully-fledged songwriting. There are some elements which hark back to our ballsy days of a heavy sound, but we feel like this is a band expressing themselves how they want to.”

Owing its title to songwriter Adam Houghton’s magpie-like method of writing, Protagonists finds the frontman taking prominent characters that have caught his imagination, whether fictional or non-fictional, and transplanting them into dystopian worlds with new and uncertain outcomes. As Hougton explains:
“My process has always been taking inspiration from everything around me including but not limited to TV, Books, Movies, Newspaper, Articles on Wikipedia, Crime Documentaries etc. I then use these sources to craft fictitious stories around an imagined persona. The title ‘Protagonists” seemed to work with this method.”

Blurring the lines between fact and fiction and traversing a broad spectrum of genres, tracks like “Nothing More Nothing Less” — a  “simple love song written from a woman’s perspective” — take on a gauzy and ethereal pop-tinted quality, while slightly more menacing moments like “Fool’s Paradise” and “Trapdoors” find closer alignment with the band’s brooding, brazen rock roots.

From future favourites like “Something Has To Give”, a jittering guitar track about “a stick or twist situation”, to fully fitted-out classics like the anthemic “Emily” (a live fixture from the band’s earliest days, which has finally found its place on this record), ‘Protagonists’ will provide plenty to pore over for fans new and old.

Recorded and mixed by Michael Whalley and IST IST at Milkshed Studios, the album was mastered by the legendary  Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone at Sterling Sound (The National, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol).
A compulsive, character-driven record from a band hitting their creative zenith, IST IST will release ‘Protagonists’ in Spring of 2023.

To mark the release, IST IST will be playing a special hometown launch show for the new record at the Manchester Ritz in March next year – details below. There will also be a small preview tour before the end of 2022, with dates in London, Birmingham and Hebden Bridge. Standby for further UK live dates soon.

IST IST UK LIVE SHOWS

NOVEMBER 2022

3/11 O2 Academy 2, Islington,
4/11 The Rainbow, Birmingham,
25/11 Trades Club, Hebden Bridge (Sold out)

MARCH 2023

31 – Manchester Ritz

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