Posts Tagged ‘Noise’

Foldhead – Paris Braille

Posted: 3 October 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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3rd October 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Foldhead has been quiet on the output front of late, after something of a purple patch around lockdown, there was a lull, broken by Mirfield Pads in 2022, with only the ‘Single’ release with …(something) ruined since, and a live outing or two. This is the only kind of quiet you’ll get from Foldhead, mind you: the Yorkshire maker of mangled noise likes to turn it up and blast the frequencies – and tones.

If Mirfield Pads ventured towards mellower, more Tangerine Dream-like electronica, Paris Braille sees a return to the harsher territories more frequently wandered by Foldhead.

Paris Braille – the title likely a reference to two cut-up novels by the late Carl Weissner (who not only appeared in some collaborative / split works with Burroughs, including the seminal pamphlet So Who Owns Death TV?, but translated many of his novels for the German market), namely The Braille Film and Death in Paris – is a typically abrasive affair, with the title track being a nine-minute loop of noise which captures of the essence of the ‘derangement of the senses’ Brion Gysin strove to achieve with his multi-sensory performance pieces which extended the concept of the cut-ups to its logical extreme. The thunderous beat, when surrounded by and endless loop, becomes almost trance-like and strangely euphoric. It’s difficult to discern precisely what’s in the mix here: there may be voices, or it may simply be a tricky of the human ear – my human ear – in its quest to seek recognisable forms amidst the formless sonic churn, in the same way one finds the shapes of animals and faces in clouds. In the right context, say, as a remix on a Cabaret Voltaire EP (where it would be right at home, and the William Burroughs / cut-up connection is again relevant here), this would be hailed as an industrial dancefloor stomper – largely because that’s what it is. Intense, hypnotic, relentless, it’s a pulsating, shifting noise beast that slowly spins off its axis and out of control in a swelling surge of sound.

‘CW Loop’ unashamedly harks back to the tape experiments of Burroughs and Gysin from the late 50s and early 60s, which in turn were a huge influence in Throbbing Gristle, and in particular Genesis P-Orridge, who released a selection of archival recordings on the Nothing Here Now But the Recordings LP on Industrial Records in 1980. It is, quite simply, short vocal sample, heavily bathed in echo, looped, and overlayed with a churn of undulating noise.

The third and final track, ‘Film Death’ – the title echoing and mirroring that of the first – round the set off with a return to the thunderous, beat-driven sound of ‘Paris Braille’, this time with a squall of shrill feedback and full-spectrum static. The result is akin to Throbbing Gristle covering Matal Machine Music. In the world of Foldhead, this is absolutely mission accomplished.

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Kevin Drumm – Sheer Hellish Miasmah

Posted: 27 September 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Editions Mego – 10th October 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

This is a monster. A monster that’s been roaring and raging for twenty-three years now. The appropriately-titled noise classic, Sheer Hellish Miasmah, was first released in 2002. It remains a pinnacle of abrasive noise after all this time. To say that Kevin Drumm has released a lot of albums would be an understatement: as is the case with many experimental / noise artists, the likes of Merzbow, and myriad lesser known underground noise acts he’s cranked out multiple albums per year, and the question of quality versus quantity becomes an obvious point of debate, or even potential friction. But when it comes to Sheer Hellish Miasmah, there’s no real debate: the consensus is that it’s a classic in its field.

I step back for a moment to present the summary offered in the press release: The history of Drumm’s Sheer Hellish Miasma is one of resilience to the twists of underground trends that have come and gone since its initial release. Using guitar, tape manipulation, microphones, pedals, analog synthesizers, and subtle computer processing, Sheer Hellish Miasma is an overwhelming experience: a sonic onslaught of storming feedback, fractured textures and an unrelenting energy. At once brutal and meticulously composed, the album offers a singular vision at the outermost edges of sound art.

And here it is, reissued on four sides of vinyl. I assume it’s nice and black and heavy and shiny, because I’m working from an MP3 download, as is the way these days. Does vinyl sound better? It depends on your kit. And your ears.

A lot of extreme noise albums are mercifully brief, presenting a short, sharp shock. Not so Sheer Hellish Miasma, which presents a sustained and truly brutal assault, with five tracks stretching out for well over an hour, some sixty-six torturous minutes. The track sequencing has been altered, with the two longest tracks first, and ‘The Inferno’ is split over sides B and C.

The first, ‘Hitting the Pavement’ is a twenty-minute blast of oscillating, pan-heavy drone and distortion. As grating sinewy nose and distortion riven with feedback hard enough to annihilate even the toughest eardrum, the discomfort levels are high. Sunn O))) may be hailed as pioneers of heavy drone, but Drumm’s activity is contemporaneous, taking electronica to the same extremes and over the same epic durations. The first couple of minutes of ‘The Inferno’ are gnarly, overloading crackle and pop, stutter and static that give you cause to wonder if your speakers are fucked or there’s something wrong with either the recording or your equipment (something I genuinely experienced when I first heard Whitehouse – having downloaded a couple of tracks via Napster back in the day, I deleted the files and searched elsewhere as I assumed the files were corrupted). But no, it’s supposed to sound this fucked-up, and it burrows into your skull in the most intense and uncomfortable way. Over the course of twenty-four minutes, he gives the listener’s ears a proper kicking, and more, seemingly conjuring new frequencies and discovering infinite new angles from which to deliver a truly brutal sonic assault.

At times, it’s like having a road drill applied directly to the head. Full-on doesn’t even come close. It’s not just the frequencies, either: it’s the jagged, abrasive textures that graze hard enough to draw blood. And there is absolutely no respite. Glitching laser bleeps shoot across grinding earthworks. It’s the sound of total annihilation. The album’s title provides the perfect summary of its content: it is absolutely, mercilessly, hellish.

If ‘Cloudy’ offers a momentary pause to breathe and feel the tinnitus, the sawing oscillations of ‘Impotent Hummer’ hit with all the more impact, a persistent buzz that grates away at every sense. The effect is cumulative, and the reaction is physical. The track’s thirteen minutes is a test of endurance. ‘Turning Point’, which now closes the album, leaves the listener with an obliterative thrum, which, while comparatively mild in terms of its attack, is insistent, and again feels like a considered, targeted sensory assault.

Sheer Hellish Miasma is a hard listen – but it’s not hard to understand how it’s come to be considered an outstanding noise album. It’s not for the feint of heart.

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Jackie-O Motherfucker / Lo Egin / Sour Faced Lil – Wharf Chambers, Leeds, 23rd August 2025

Posted: 24 August 2025 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

It’s good to be back at Wharf Chambers. Personal circumstances have meant that the trip to Leeds has been largely beyond me, but stepping into the place felt like coming home. It’s unassuming, some may even basic, but it’s got a unique – and accommodating – vibe. There aren’t many small independent venues that can keep going by sticking to a programme of leftfield live music, or being explicit in a keen leaning towards inclusivity for LGBTQIA+ and anyone else who stands outside the fence of the normies, but Leeds is a big enough, and diverse enough, city for a place like this to not only survive, but thrive. It’s kinda quirky, a bit shabby chic, and it works: the beers – local – are cheap, the sound in the venue space is good, and it’s all cool, and tonight’s advertised lineup is a cracker. Diverse, but solid quality of an international reach.

Before we come to that, it’s a strange and rare occurrence to arrive at a venue to discover that there is an additional, unadvertised, band on the bill, and even more so when the band in question has effectively gatecrashed the event without prior arrangement with the promoter, but by dint of deception. But the first band on tonight have done just that. Perhaps it’s the only way they can get gigs. Because they sure do suck, and it was obvious that they’d never have been booked for this lineup in a million years. I head back to the bar after a couple of songs, having heard enough. When they’re done, promoter and sound man (in both senses), Theo takes the mic to explain that he hadn’t booked them and that they didn’t espouse the experimental ethos of the acts Heinous Whining exists to promote. The band did not respond well to this, validating the opinion a number of us had already formed, and they fucked off in a huff. Dicks.

Thankfully, normality – of the kind we’re here for – resumed with the arrival of Sour Faced Lil, the solo project of Hilary from Cowtown. Her set starts – somewhat incongruously – with a quirky electropop cover of Bright Eyes. I just about manage not to cry. Then she swerves into swooshing space rock noise galore, and she explores the weird and wibbly, and it’s everything you’d expect from a Heinous Whining night. Live drums, looped, live guitar, and warped, undulating synths create a cacophony of sound in layers. The performance is a little tentative in places, but the audience is behind her all the way. There’s something quite enthralling about seeing a solo artist juggling myriad musical elements and instruments, knowing what a balancing act, how much effort it is to remember everything and keep the flow, and the fact she manages it is impressive.

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Sour Face Lil

Also impressive are Lo Egin, but for quite different reasons. I feel I owe Lo Egin an apology, as it happens. When I reviewed their split release with Beige Palace a little while ago, I misspelled their name as Lo Elgin, more than once (although I managed to get it right when covering Volumancer in 2013) Hammering out reviews on a daily basis means I slip up sometimes. It’s not great, and I do try, to do better but… I did really rate that release, though, and I’ll admit that they were as much a draw for me as the headliners. And the fact is, they were worth the entry fee alone. On paper, they’re perhaps not the easiest sell, bring atmospheric post rock in the vein of early Her Name is Calla, with brass – sax and trombone – crossed with elements of doom – with the addition of screaming black metal vocals. They do epic. They do crescendos. They also do ultra-slow drumming, something I am invariably transfixed by having first become fixated during my first time seeing Earth live. The drummer raised his arms to fill extension above his head, before smashing down with explosive force.

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Lo Egin

Dolorous droning horns create a heavy atmosphere. Then, out of nowhere, from the delicately woven sonic tapestry they’ve been weaving, things turn Sunn O))) and the skinny baggy jeans wearing trombone guy who looks like a young Steve Albini delivers cavernous doomy vocals as he contorts and the mic stand and then all hell breaks loose. When they go heavy, they go heavy – and I mean HEAVY, the drummer smashing every beat so it hits like a nuclear bomb. To arrive with high hopes for a band, and to still be absolutely blown away is a truly wonderful experience, and one that stays with you.

I feel I should perhaps take this opportunity to apologise to Jackie-O Motherfucker, too: in my review of Bloom, I described them as a country band. And while there are without question country elements, they’re really not a country band. They’re not really a psychedelic band, either, or any other one thing. Instead, they’re a hypnotic hybrid, and they’re deceptively loud considering how mellow everything is. What they do is simple in many respects, but in terms of genre, it’s rather more complicated, not readily pigeonholed. I’d clocked them about the venue beforehand, and they seemed like really chilled folks, and while they’re not exactly chatty during their performance, it’s apparent that they’re humble, and simply really chuffed to be playing here. The room is pretty full, too. Tom Greenwood looks like he’s just taken some time out from doing some decorating to play. He’s got paint on his trousers, and is as unassuming as they come.

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Jackie-O Motherfuker

The current lineup consists of three guitars, synth, and some electronic stuff including subtle percussion. No bass, no drums. There are, however, many pedals and much pedal fiddling throughout the set, as they sculpt a wall of reverb and feedback and a whole lot more from this hefty – but ultimately portable – setup.

The resultant sound is detailed, but at the same time a hazy blur. Picked notes – and much of the sound is clean, with next to no distortion, but with all the reverb – bounce off one another here and there, creating ever greater cathedrals of sound. I find myself utterly transfixed. Their hour-and-a-bit long set features just seven songs, and they are completely immersive. There’s no real action to speak of, just an ever-growing shimmer which envelops your entire being. In some respects, their extended instrumental passages invite comparisons to the current incarnations of Swans, only without the evangelically charismatic stage presence or crescendos. In other words, they conjure atmosphere over some extended timeframes, but keep things simmering on a low burner, without any volcanic eruptions. The end result is a performance which is hypnotic, gripping because of, rather than in spite of the absence of drama. Low-key, but loud: absolute gold.

Rún – Rún

Posted: 16 August 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Rocket Recordings – 22nd August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

While you wouldn’t exactly call Rún a supergroup, they certainly represent a coming together of disparate artists of no insignificant pedigree, as their biography attests:

Rún comprise firstly Tara Baoth Mooney – sometime Jim Henson voice artist, with a longstanding background in everything from folk and choral music to experimental film-making. Diarmuid MacDiarmada – Nurse With Wound co-conspirator and brother of Lankum’s Cormac, brings with him the experience of avant-garde collaborations with a plethora of artists stretching back over thirty years. Drummer, sound designer and engineer Rian Trench, meanwhile, has worked on everything from the psychedelic IDM of Solar Bears to auto-generative experiments to orchestral arrangements, and owns the studio – The Meadow on Ireland’s East Coast – in which the album was made.

It’s a delicate folksome vocal which floats in on the first composition, ‘Paidir Poball (Pupil)’over what initially sounds like a mechanical wheeze of a bellows, or some form, of life support. The juxtaposition between something so earthy, so human, and something so very much not is compelling, and quite powerful, in a way which isn’t immediately easy to unravel. But a couple of minutes in, a thick, droning guitar – reminiscent of Earth 2, with that thick, sludgy distortion and trebly metal edge – winds its way int the mix and immediately, the mood and the direction changes. And then, on top, choral, almost monastic layers of vocal build and rise upwards to the heavens through the grit and grind and howls of feedback before eventually there is percussion. The drums – thick, thudding, low in the mix, feel as if they’re lagging, foundering in the tide or struggling against a head-facing current.

‘Your Death My Body’ strips things back primarily to percussion, but turns up the intensity with the vocals, which hit a wild intensity which borders on rabid. But with this, and some bleepy computer incursions and a grumbling but groovy bass which makes allusions to Jah Wobble, this album becomes increasingly difficult to place, or to pigeonhole. It’s a sad fact that nowadays, not only will they throw you in jail if you say you’re English, these days (I’m safe as I’m ashamed to pronounce my Englishness, even – or perhaps especially – in Scotland) – but aligning oneself to a genre can be a minefield, too.

The eight-minute ‘Terror Moon’ is a dark morass and a muti-layered, bass-heavy mindfuck that explodes into blistering, shredding electronic overload in the first minute before thumping percussion and the filthiest, fuzziest bass drive in and punch straight in the gut, propelling a psychotic, psychedelic weird-out with tripping space-rock synths and strains of feedback and infinite echo, which leaves you feeling dazed, dizzy. Terror? Yes, just a bit: it’s huge, it’s warped, and a tiny bit overwhelming in its weight and witchiness.

But this is nothing compared to the final track, the ultimate finale, the thirteen-and-a-half minute behemoth that is ‘Caoineadh’. Arriving as it does after a pair of punchy cuts – ‘Such is the Kingdom’ is murky, atmospheric, leaning toward experimental / spoken word, but a mere three an as half minutes on duration, and ‘Strike It’, which is perhaps the album’s most direct composition, evoking Swans circa ’86 but on speed, the grind coming with pace –it takes the album in a whole new trajectory. Gentle, even tentative at first, with nothing but a wandering bassline, it has a slow-burning drone-rock vibe to it as first. But then, the vocals – oh, the vocals! Tara Baoth Mooney brings a lilting folk feel against a slow, droning backdrop, which eventually gives way to a slow, expensive prog-pop mellowness, opening new horizons in every way. And every direction. It ends in a rippling wave of distortion.

This is essentially Rún in a nutshell: they have no confines, no limits, and to touch them is to embark on a journey. And what a journey this is.

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Watch ‘The Weight (Official, Lyric Video)’ by Agriculture

Posted: 13 August 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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The forthcoming full-length from Los Angeles–based band Agriculture, The Spiritual Sound, traces a narrative arc through extremes.  The album is largely a fusing of the visions of its two principal songwriters: Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson.  Though distinct, their voices converge in a singular spiritual grammar—one that defines the totality of The Spiritual Sound, not as separate parts, but as one unified expression.

Dan writes like someone clawing toward the divine through noise, channeling Zen Buddhism, historical collapse, ecstatic grief. Leah’s songs move differently: grounded in queer history and AIDS-era literature, amid the suffocating fog of the present, they carry the weight of survival as daily ritual.  Levinson leads the charge on the album’s latest single ‘The Weight’  of which she comments:

“’The Weight’ is part of a series of songs on the album that bears witness to queer life. It was written reflecting on a particular month last year when so much seemed heightened. It seemed like many of my friends were being harassed in public—both verbally and physically—for being trans, for being queer, and/or for being women (it’s not always clear which). This was also a time when I was feeling a lot of love and a lot of community. I wanted this song and the songs around it to honestly reflect both these elements. I wanted to write about transness but didn’t want to rely on political aphorisms and indulgent images of suffering. I wanted to paint a holistic portrait of queer life.” – Leah Levinson

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Photo credit: Olivia Crumm

AGRICULTURE LIVE DATES 2025:

Sep 3  Bristol, UK — The Exchange
Sep 4  Brighton, UK — Dust
Sep 5  London, UK — Oslo
Sep 6  Manchester, UK — White Hotel
Sep 7  Newcastle, UK — The Cluny 2
Sep 9  Leeds, UK — Brudenell Social Club
Sep 11  Dublin, IE — Workman’s Club
Sep 12  Cork, IE — Nudes
Sep 13  Belfast, NIR — Voodoo
Sep 14  Glasgow, SC — CORE. Festival
Sep 16  Paris, FR — Point Ephemere
Sep 17  Kortrijk, BE — Wilde Westen
Sep 18  Haarlem, NL — Patronaat

Oct 8  Brooklyn, NY — Union Pool (Record Release Show)

Oct 27  San Antonio, TX — Paper Tiger $
Oct 28  Austin, TX — Mohawk $
Oct 30  Atlanta, GA — Masquerade $
Oct 31  Saxapahaw, NC — Haw River Ballroom $
Nov 01  Silver Spring, MD — The Fillmore $
Nov 02  Philadelphia, PA — Union Transfer $

Nov 04  Louisville, KY — Zanzabar
Nov 06  Oklahoma City, OK — 89th Street
Nov 08  Albuquerque, NM — Launchpad
Nov 09  Phoenix, AZ — Valley Bar
Nov 11  Denver, CO — Hi-Dive
Nov 13  Salt Lake City, UT — The State Room
Nov 14  Boise, ID — Neurolux
Nov 16  Seattle, WA — Madame Lou’s
Nov 18  Vancouver, BC — Fox Cabaret
Nov 19  Portland, OR — Mississippi Studios
Nov 21  Sacramento, CA — Cafe Colonial
Nov 22  San Francisco, CA — The Chapel
Dec 04  San Diego, CA — Soda Bar
Dec 05  Los Angeles, CA — Lodge Room

$ with Boris

Relay for Death – Mutual Consuming

Posted: 12 August 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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The Helen Scarsdale Agency – 8th August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

When the accompanying notes and press release which replicates them describes a release as ‘dire’, you know you’re in for an uncomfortable ride. In the world of noise, such a choice of adjective doesn’t carry quite the same negative connotations as is the majority of musical spheres. When it comes to noise, and certain strains of metal, the objective is to make it as unpleasant as possible. It will alienate most people, and that’s precisely the objective: those who can withstand the torture are the right people.

And so it is that Mutual Consuming is described as ‘a dire piece of isolationist thrum, spectral caterwaul, and heavy gloom through an oblique and abstracted coupling of electronics, noise, and ominous field recordings.’

To quote further from the accompanying notes, Roxann and Rachal Spikula, the twins who make up Relay for Death’, offered the consideration that “Mutual Consuming comes from a concept in the philosophies that underpin traditional Chinese medicine theory, where the two opposing states (yin and yang) are 2 states on a continuum and their interactions produce an infinite possible number of states of aggregation. Within this interplay, there is a dynamic balance that is maintained by a constant adjustment of their relative levels. So an excess of yin consumes yang and vice versa.” We asked if this has anything to do with the concept of the Ouroboros, to which they responded, “We hadn’t thought about Ouroboros, but the eternal cycle of things makes sense too. The gorge fest of existence.” Does this relate to previous works? The twins concisely respond to that question in a rare interview in Untitled, “No.”

The album features but two pieces, each clocking in around the seventeen minute mark. An awkward length, but plenty of time to make for an uncomfortable, unsettling, and even torturous experience. And it is.

‘intone the morph orb’ is a darkly unsettling expanse of dark ambient, the sounds of thunder and cavernous growls from the pits of hell are collaged with scrawling metallic drones. Distant detonations reverberate, like volcanic eruptions beyond the horizon, as wispy ominousness lingers in the air. Very little tangible takes place, but the tension grows. There is a dark thriller / horror aspect to this: the hairs on the back of your neck prickle and you fear whatever may lie around the corner. The second half of the track is less precipitous, given to a protracted mid-to-high-end drones that swirls and eddies, cut through with occasional whistles of feedback.

There’s something vaguely Ballardian about the title ‘terminal ice wind’, and it is, indeed, a cold atmosphere which runs forth from the speakers, churning an ever denser sonic murk as the first few minute pass. It’s a seeping morass of dark discordance which takes cues from Throbbing Gristle. Three minutes in, thunderous explosions register, and all is noise, albeit for a brief time. In time, dissonant drones, thrumming reverberations and low rumbles emerge and come to dominate the mix in what is an ever-shifting soundscape, where light is in limited supply. This is, indeed, dark, and oppressive.

Everything about Mutual Consuming is as it should be. A collage of challenging sound on sound, any underlying concept fades to insignificance as the sounds assail the ears without apology. Mutual Consuming is not harsh, and on the noise spectrum, it’s fairly gentle, but it’s by no means accessible or easy on the ear.

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Dragged Up / Juku / Pea Sea / Chaffinch – Fulfordgate WMC, York, 8th August 2025

Posted: 9 August 2025 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

The third Utterly Fuzzled event boasts another strong lineup, with a mix of out of town talent, the cream of the crop from York, plus new and emerging acts. It seems wholly fitting that they’ve found Fulfordgate WMC as a home for these events. One might describe it as quaint, but it has everything you’d want for a DIY musical microscene – stage, PA, cheap beer, a little way off the beaten track but still accessible from the city centre – and some things which are harder to define. A sense of community, and quintessentially northern, unpretentious.

I recently finished reading Sleevenotes by Joe Thompson of Hey Colossus and Henry Blacker – which is, hands-down, the best book about being in a DIY / small band, and I cannot recommend it enough. So many of the observations on the DIY scene resonated with me as an attendee – and occasional performer – at venues which are rehearsal rooms, rooms upstairs or at the back of pubs, gigs where there are fifteen people in attendance, and eleven of those are the other bands. He writes of playing these spaces, some with capacities of fifty, and being grateful that anyone turns up at all, about how they all have day jobs and make music because… because, and not with any hope of making money – covering costs to pay for the petrol back is winning.

On my way out, JUKU’s Dan Gott asked if I would be doing a review, and expressed disappointment when I said I would be. He said he wanted me to just enjoy a gig. But just as for makers of music, making music is a compulsion, so is writing for me. As much as I assess and analyse, this project, or whatever it is, is ultimately a document – an ever-evolving document, a diary of sorts. Just as Hey Colossus have been ploughing their furrow for an eternity – or since 2003 – so I’ve been a heavy gig-goer for many years. I can’t remember everything. But I can document it.

Dragged Up are one of those acts who clearly aren’t in it for the money. I’ve covered a few of their releases, and on seeing that they were making the trip from Glasgow to play this humble venue was immediately buzzed. I suppose something about straddling being press and a music fan, and having a Facebook network largely made up of people in the same circles, it’s not always easy to maintain perspective when it comes to a band’s status. There’s an element of ‘wow, are they really playing this little place?’ – and then you’re faced with the fact that any band that’s big in your world isn’t necessarily big in the wider world. It goes both ways, of course: there are bands I’ve never heard of selling out O2 venues and bigger.

The first act on the bill is so new and emerging that they didn’t even have a name until about a week before the event, and so suffice to say that Chaffinch were an entirely unknown quantity. It transpires that they’re a new permutation of Knitting Circle, a band centred around Jo and Pete Dale, who also happen to be the movers behind Utterly Fuzzled events. Tjeir set is clearly a work in progress – Jo confessed that the lyrics to one of the songs, on a sheet of paper in front of her, had only been completed that morning. But they show great potential. As my cursory notes attest, there’s ‘jangle, post-punk, angular, Band of Susans riffiness, elsewhere more 80s indie, a bit Wedding Present. Mathy dynamics. Interesting and a very promising first outing.’ It’s a fair summary that requires little expansion.

Pea Sea is a singer/songwriter whose set is a mixed bag of rearranged traditional folk songs, and quirky narrative led indie tunes, even incorporating bossa nova rhythms, and some quite nice blues, too. It’s kinda ramshackle, and inherently Scottish, and it’s entertaining enough, although I’m not sure if it’s because of or in spite of the bad puns and awkward chat and spaces between songs.

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Pea Sea

I was already down for this the second I saw Dragged Up were coming to York, but the addition of JUKU to the bill absolutely made it. I’ve been banging on about them since their debut gig. And still, some of my mates who’d come down tonight seemed perplexed as to why they hadn’t seen them, as their brand of punk rock played hard and fast and at blistering volume absolutely blew them away. My mates should pay more attention to my reviews, I say. Suffice it to say, JUKU were fucking blistering. Naomi is kinda nonchalant but also goes hard, and there’s the constant worry as to whether the mic stand will fall over or her glasses will slip off her face (in the end, by some miracle, neither) and Dan wrings noise from his guitar with clenched tattooed fists, hunched over so low his forehead is practically scraping his strings. It’s primitive, four-chord punk cranked up to eleven, and they play so, so hard. This is a band that destroys every stage it sets foot on. They need to be on a label. They need to go national, international. Live acts don’t come better than this.

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Consequently, Dragged Up perhaps suffer from having to follow JUKU. They’re decent, though, and no mistake. But venturing out with their new bassist, things feel a bit tentative at times I’m too into the set to make many notes. I’ve hashed together some observations on how they’re masters of post-Fall post-Pavement ramshackle indie, and how their songs chime and crash with strolling bass and shuffling drums.

New single ‘Clachan Dubh’ lands around mid-set with its chunky, chuggy driving groove driven by thick bass and energetic drums, and they swing between succinct killer blasts and sprawling beasts led by thumping grooved and manifold swerves and detours.

It’s hard to tell if they’re not quite firing on all cylinders or if this is simply the way pf Dragged Up, and it’s likely a bit of both. But there’s no question that they simply do their thing and don’t really give a crap, and the attitude is worth all the applause and plaudits alone.

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Dragged Up are one of those bands who don’t even have a game to raise most of the time. They play their songs. They have some good songs, and people take notice.

It’s a tidy/messy end to a night of solid quality.

fåntratt – skitstövel

Posted: 3 August 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Dret Skivor – 1st August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Having debated the merits – or otherwise – of the extensive, expansive, hyperdetailed press release, and having felt a certain trepidation when tackling a work rooted deeply in weighty postmodern theory beyond the peripheries of my personal field of – perhaps rather specialist – expertise, I find myself on altogether more confident footing here. The latest release on Dret Skivor, a Swedish label devoted primarily to drone, noise, (darker) ambient, and general weird shit, offers up two longform tracks, each corresponding with a side of a C30 cassette, accompanied by precisely zero information, beyond the fact that it was ‘Mastered by Dave Procter at Svinig Studio, Skoghall.’ Hell, it doesn’t even have any capital letters.

I’m at ease with this. When it comes to abstract / instrumental / experimental works, I don’t need to know who the musician or musicians are, what gear they’re using, and unless there’s something quite specific which inspired or motivated the work on a theoretical or personal level, I generally prefer to allow the music to speak for itself, and for my mind to do the work of interpreting how the sounds affect me.

The tracks are, in fact, both exactly 14:27 in duration – which is oddly precise. It’s the only thing which does seem to be precise, but not odd, about the compositions – such as they are, with ‘my crustacean brother’ manifesting as a huge, churning wall of full-spectrum noise. It’s the mod-range that fills the space and fills your ears and your head as it barrels from the speakers, a dense, relentless rumble like a mangled engine – but there’s low end that hits around the gut and enough treble to add an extra level of pain. Sometimes, it sounds as if there may be fucked-up vocals gnarled up in the machine, distorted, fractured, and buried in the mix – but it’s as likely that it’s my ears deceiving me as my brain tries to subconsciously find form in the formless. If you mic’ed up a tractor engine and then ran the recording through half a dozen distortion pedals, it would likely sound like this. The sound feels mechanical, analogue: rather than harsh in the way pure digital often is, this is the sound of moving parts, or rusted metal flapping as it slowly disintegrates. Around eleven minutes in, it seems to gain in volume and intensity, but this again could be an auditory hallucination. Yes, this is how methods of torture involving sonic elements, the likes of which were trialled as part of MK Ultra, work. It’s not sensory deprivation, but complete sensory overload. When it stops, the silence feels wrong.

‘gås!’ is a fraction less dense, favouring treble a little more, and also containing more detail, or at least more clarity, which allows the detail to be heard. There is a distinct throb which creates a rhythm – one which glitches and stutters as it snarls and roars. It’s harsh, pure, brutal sonic punishment, taking the Merzbow template and… replicating it perfectly, not just sonically, but in the spirit of inflicting damage, both physical and psychological, on the listener, knowing that the whole thing is insane, beyond excessive, testing the patience as well as the stamina over the course of almost a quarter of an hour. It’s nasty, and I love it. You (probably) won’t like it, sugar…

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Listen: ‘…(something) ruined’ by Foldhead vs Christopher Nosnibor

Posted: 6 July 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Foldhead had making noise for some time. Nosnibor had spent the last few months taking steps beyond the staid spoken word scene via a series of ‘versus’ collaborations with experimental artists in and around York. So when Foldhead put out a shout out on Facebook for a collaborator to provide vocals for a set he was booked for, Nosnibor’s name cropped up.

The pair met for the first time on the day. Consequently, no one knew what the fuck to expect, least of all the two guys plugging into the PA. In an instant, a ‘third mind’ moment occurred, yielding noise terror which was infinitely greater than the sum of the parts. In that moment, they knew that this had to be the start of something. And so it was that …(something) ruined was born.

This is a document of that first explosive coming together.

Recorded live at Chunk, Leeds, 1st March 2019.

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Why Patterns – Screamers

Posted: 17 June 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Human Worth – 11th July 2025

Why Patterns’ latest offering marks something of a shift from Regurgitorium, released back in 2022. I say ‘back’ in 2022 because it feels like a lifetime ago. Some of that is, admittedly, due to personal circumstance, but for most, 2022 was a very different time. We still weren’t all that long out of lockdown, for a start. We were still coming up for air, and finding our way – and likely crawling our way back to the office, while a lot of shops still had their Perspex screens in place. I remember in the checkout queue in Aldi just willing these weird cunts who had seemingly either forgotten the preceding year and a bit, or had lost all sense of how to engage, by looming and leaning over and pressing too close would fuck off. I revisit the context of the last album because it somehow managed to capture the mood in some obtuse way, and when I wrote ‘It’s fucked up. It’s deranged. It hurts,’ I could as easily have been referring to life itself at that point in time.

Screamers is different again. Or, if not so much, different, compressed, compacted, distilled, the intensity amplified by the concision of the tracks.

The crunchy, gnarly bass still dominates, and it’s snarling away and tearing strips straight out of the traps on the frenzied ‘After the Bullfight’. Clocking in at a mere minute and forty-seven seconds, it’s noise rock smooshed down to the tight parameters of grindcore, and with insane amounts of reverb, the stuttering, stammering vocal yelps from Doug Norton, the man behind the ‘Mouth Sounds’ owe an equal debt to Suicide and The Cramps, and this may be the spawning of industrial psychobilly as a new genre. Everything is overloading, the speakers are crackling with megawattage overload, and when ‘Clown in a Housefire’ blasts in, you actually begin to wonder if it’s supposed to sound like this of it your gear’s fucked.

One may cling in references to the Jesus Lizard and all the rest, but really, this sounds like a psychotic reimagining of early Blacklisters – specifically early because of THAT bass racket. But whereas Blacklisters were, and remain, quite song-orientated, at least structurally, Screamers sees Why Patterns take their template and smash the living fuck out of it by throwing it against a brick wall and stomping on it until there is nothing but splattered pulp. None of the songs – I mean, they’re not really songs, more demented blasts of discord played at three hundred miles an hour, all of the instruments playing at angles against and across, rather than with one another, the vocals the sound of a breakdown in real time. And listening to this as bombs and missiles are going off everywhere and no-one knows what is going on anywhere, I fin myself listening to this tumultuous mayhem and thinking ‘yep, they’ve done it again. This is the closest I’ve heard anyone articulate this moment.’ I mean, they don’t really ‘articulate’: as the title suggests, Screamers is a raw, primal scream. It’s a frenzied, lurching, gut-punching racket that rattles the bibs and kicks the balls, hard. Pleasant, it is not. Especially that grungy bass that churns the stomach.

There aren’t really any riffs: it’s just a relentless assault of jarring noise. ‘Nervous Laughter’ brings hints of the latest mclusky album, but does so with menace, malice, and a hint of the unhinged, and following on ‘Wind Up Chattering teeth’ is a minute and six seconds of rabid raving. It’s almost enough to make you want to puke.

Then there’s ‘Club Foot By Kasabian by Blacklisters’. It extends the joke of the original – since the Blacklisters song, ‘Club Foot By Kasabian’ wasn’t a cover, and had nothing to do with Kasabian, and so it is that ‘Club Foot By Kasabian by Blacklisters’ is a minute and a half of squalling, brawling, guitar-led abrasion. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Castrovalva in its deranged intensity, and frenzied, squawking disregard for decency. The title track is fifty-two seconds long. It’s rabid. It has to be heard to be comprehended.

The last track, ‘Buffoons and Barel Organs’ is both the longest and most structurally coherent. ‘Why do I cross the road? Why do I cross the road? Because I’m a fucking chicken!’ Norton hollers amidst a raging tempest of bass and drums.

Screamers is certainly appropriately titled. Every song is a brief but blistering assault. It’s full-on, and will melt your face, and as such, I wholeheartedly recommend it, unless you’re a wuss.

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