Posts Tagged ‘Quirky’

25th July 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

2025 continues to be the year of the comeback. My remark earlier in the week, in context of the release of the new Curse Mackey album, that ‘three years is a long time’ pales rather when considering that just a few days before I’d covered the first Red Lorry Yello Lorry album since 1992, and reviewed The March Violets touring only their second album proper since their formation in 1981. And that’s before we consider the unexpected return of the Jesus Lizard… But somehow it’s been fifteen years since the last new material from the progenitors – and likely sole purveyors of – cack pop, Wevie Stonder.

2017 compilation The Beast of Wevie provided a potted history of their exercises in perversely calculated naffness, and since then… tumbleweeds.

Sure Beats Living is every bit as bizarre as anything they’ve done previously, and successfully nudges beyond… and then accelerates over the horizon. It’s not so much cack as demented. Instrumentally, it’s a wide-ranging work, sometimes expansive, bold, ambitious, even cinematic – as the epic, widescreen ‘Piccolo’s Travels’ illustrates. But mostly, it’s a collection of lo-fi electronic dicking about with irreverent babbling in lieu of serious or meaningful lyrical content. So it’s a step up from previous outings…

It’s a sparse electro backdrop which frames the first track, ‘That’s Magic’, and no doubt fans will like it – but not a lot – as is immediately ventures into the domains of the strange, a Scots brogue narrating the steps for performing a magic trick which culminates in setting the cards alight, vacuuming the ashes and moulding polystyrene. What makes it all the stranger is that the delivery isn’t so different from that of a self-help tutorial, and reminds me of the guided relaxation CD I got given when I attended CBT some years ago.

‘Carpet Squares’ pitches the old-skool groove of Mr Oizo against crunching industrial beats… while providing detached directions for carpet-laying amidst a looping reverb-heavy collage of commentary on carpet. But then the urgent wibbly wobbly ping-pong bloopery of ‘Vanja and Slavcho’ takes things to another level. There’s storytelling, there’s cheesy Japanese-influenced pop and a whole lot more, and it’s quite bewildering – but then, so is the stomping glam beat of ‘Tiktaalik’, which kicks in hard and with all apparent intention of bringing something serious… As if these guys have a serious bone in their collective bodies.

In fairness, quirky humour and an overt lack of seriousness should never be seen as corresponding with a lack of ability to be serious. It’s often reported that comedians are in fact depressives who use humous as a way of deflecting their inner sadness, and clowns are often masking. And something in the title carries hints of a clowning subterfuge: you can almost picture a downbeat character in a US sitcom turning to the camera, breaking the third wall, with an exaggerated shrug, and declaring, ‘Well, it sure beats living’. And so it may just be my own state of mind which colours my perception of this, or maybe there really is something darker beneath the surface. ‘Push It’ inches towards funk, but ends up elsewhere completely, and in seemingly taking some of its lyrical inspiration from the game ‘Bop It’, it’s the epitome of irreverence. ‘Customer Services’ is a perfect pastiche of corporate phone line hold hell, down to the frustrated ‘shut up’ and tossing aside of the phone. Because beneath humour usually lies truth.

However you look at Sure Beats Living, this is a different kind of nuts. The core of the album is constructed around bleepy, shuffling electronica and spoken word… spoken word what? They’re not diatribes, they’re not really narratives, either. They’re words, often detached from meaning, or otherwise, where not abstract, designed to be daft, and Wevie explore words because they can.

Sure Beats Living is perverse, it’s stupid, and it know it is, because that’s what it sets out to be. And in these dark, depressing times, we need the wild irreverence of Wevie more than ever. Welcome back, you barmy buggers.

AA

AA

a3883920739_10

Fire Records – 26 April 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Another day, another artist I’m discovering and wondering if I’m increasingly poor at keeping up or of there really is just more music in the world than I could ever keep abreast of even if I devoted every waking minute to trawling every corner of the Internet for news and playlists. Maybe it’s a bit of both. There is, perhaps, something of an expectation that someone who writes about music should have a deep and wide-ranging knowledge of the subject. The trouble is, the more music you’re exposed to, the more avenues it opens up, and suddenly there’s this and this and this… and how is there time for all of it?

If you’re obsessive about a given genre, you may be an expert in your field, but you’re missing out on all of the other fields. Explore the other fields far and wide, and you’re missing something elsewhere. I see people on social media who seem to spend their entire days playing – usually streaming – new albums, and they’ve heard pretty much everything on release, five, six, seven albums a day. I’m rarely able to listen to music while working my dayjob, and when reviewing, I can’t really manage more than an album a night to hear, digest, process, formulate an opinion and sentences to articulate it.

In daily life, I rarely suffer from FOMO, but when it comes to music, I feel – increasingly -that I’m unable to keep up. I’ve not listened to the latest Taylor Swift album, for example. Or any of her albums for that matter. Am I missing out? My daughter would insist that I am. But as much as I listen to music for pleasure – at least when I can – I also listen with a view to providing coverage to artists who aren’t Taylor Swift, who you won’t find covered in every other publication. And so we come to Yosa Peit, who I clearly can’t claim to have discovered at the dawn of her career, but who, while having gained a following and a contract with Fire records, clearly isn’t a household name either.

The pitch for ‘The free-ranging sound of Yosa Peit’ is that her work ‘recalls the intense arrangements of a cyber-era Prince with the surrealist tones of Arthur Russell and the vulnerability of Arca circa 2017.’

I’m a little uncomfortable with Prince. By that I mean, likely somewhat controversially, I think he’s massively overrated, and moreover, I’m not really a fan of anything funk.

Perhaps it’s my relatively superficial knowledge of Prince that’s the reason that Prince is by no means my first point of reference on hearing Gut Buster, an album which is positively brimming exploding with ideas. There are elements of crisp pop and some bust-up, fucked about bluesiness to be found in the mix in this extravaganza of inventiveness, which also sculpts dark electropop shapes with some heavy bass and ethereal synths. At times, skitters and ripples rush by faster than the mind can compute, and there are some pretty slick grooves, even hints of what one might broadly refer to as ‘urban’ shades – as exemplified on ‘Tower Shower’, which also brings some dubby bass and blasting beats.

Gut Buster has soul – bit tosses it in a liquidizer and pulses it to a pulp with skittery bits and pieces of synth and hyper-processed vocals, 80s AOR melted into soporific trip-hop and hyperactive techno tropes. The chipmunk vocals area bit irksome at times, but there’s so much else that’s good that you can forgive it. The minimal gloop of ‘Call Me’ is a slow bump and scrape, and showcases the way in which Peit’s compositions are riven with intricate and fascinating detail.

Gut Buster is odd, quirky, in places dark and in others, less so. Unashamedly other and oddball, there is much to unravel here.

AA

383430

Arriving more than three decades after his first solo album and almost 20 years since his groundbreaking group Telex delivered their final message, Belgian electro-pop musician Michel Moers is finally making a comeback with As Is, his brand new album. To celebrate its imminent release, the synth man has invited iconic vocalist Claudia Brücken from the similarly revitalised Propaganda (now xPropaganda) to guest on its first single, ‘Microwaves’. A 50% electro-pop, 50% new wave anthem, it will delight fans of Ladytron as well as Telex classics such as ‘Moskow Discow’.

“Claudia has a great voice that you recognise from the very first note,” says Moers. “I was thrilled to get the opportunity to work with her and was determined to place her vocal upfront in this song.”

Check ‘Microwaves’ here:

AA

Michel Moers will release As Is in mid-April. Coming 33 years after his solo debut, Fishing Le Kiss, the long-awaited record features ten tracks that showcase Moers’ wisdom and artistic reflection as he offers a blend of thoughtful, electronic music infused with surrealism in his own unique style. It includes contributions from xPropaganda singer Claudia Brücken, who adds her distinctive Teutonic touch to ‘Microwaves’, plus Moers’ compatriot DAAN (Daan Stuyven), whose deep, expressive voice is utilised to full effect on ‘Back To Then’.

Containing songs that have been developed over several years, the album has an intimate, diary-like quality, reminiscent in part of the compositions of Erik Satie. With highlights that include the stridently uptempo ‘Potentially (Love-Hate)’ and ‘Pixels’, plus the lyrically unsettling ‘New Friend’, the album actually opens with an updated version of ‘Les Gens Sont Affligeants’ (People Are Disappointing) from Moers’ debut. It resonates more than ever in today’s individualistic society.

As Is represents a triumphant return for Moers, blending past influences with contemporary sounds and themes, and stands as a testament to his enduring creativity and adaptability in a continually evolving music landscape.

Moers has spent the last three decades working as an architect and photographer while continuing to make music. Involved in the remastering of the Telex back catalogue that was reissued to great acclaim on Mute Records in 2023, this also served to reinvigorate his skills and contributed to the creation of As Is. Belgium’s first electronic band, Telex were influential pioneers, appearing on Top Of The Pops in 1979 and representing their nation at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1980.

ff3a0909a1752b34921296440990af1eb6900c49

Moabit Musik – 8th March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Gudrun Gut has forged a career on the fringes, participating in numerous collective and collaborative activities as well as solo projects. Often creating artistic work which sits well outside the boundaries of genre categorisation, her output has never been dull, or predictable. And so it is that GUT Soundtrack is precisely what the title suggests – her own soundtrack, to – wait for it – a mini-series about Gudrun Gut.

It’s a difficult call to make in assessing whether this is indulgence or an essential artistic profile, especially without actually viewing the series, but reading the synopses of the three episodes, it does seem that GUT is a bizarre hybrid of documentary and reality TV, particularly on the arrival of episode three:

Episode 1 The Blank Page. In the first episode of “GUT,” everything revolves around the mysterious blank page that means so much to artists. A Boat trip at moonlight with Thomas Fehlmann, a foto session with Mara von Kummer, and the surprise guest Ben Becker.

Episode 2 MMM. In the second episode the letter M takes center stage: Music, Mother, Malaria, and the mysterious Monotron. Gudrun composes the soundtrack for her series, everything turns into a pink dream. In the studio with her bandmates Manon Pepita and Bettina Köster.

Episode 3 The Sourdough. In the final episode, Gudrun turns her attention to the everyday, the routines, the laundry, and the bread. Here, an artistic ode to the freedom hidden in the seemingly ordinary unfolds. The visit of musicians Pilocka Krach and Midori Hirano culminates in a garden performance with Monika Werkstatt. A delicate symphony of the everyday, the essence of art and community resides.

Ah, that delicate symphony of the everyday. On a personal level I find pieces where people recount their routine not only vaguely dull, but, worse, depressing, as they invariably seem to have time – time to eat a nutritious breakfast, do some yoga or go to the gym or got for a run, before their morning session of creativity or money-making from a comfortable environment, be it a studio, or spacious office, or a coffee shop or somesuch. I feel myself shrivelling inside as curling with envy as I compare these routines to my own, which involves a daily to-do list an arm long whereby I squeeze in endless laundry and changing cat litter around my dayjob, runs to the shops and making sure everything is ready for my daughter to go to school in the morning, including making a packed lunch, before finally sitting down to knock out a review around 9:30pm and waking up at my desk, review-half-written around 11:30 and panicking about being back at the dayjob for 6:30 the next morning.

But I’m not here to berate the former Neubauten member’s breadmaking, but to critique the audio accompaniment, and, as ever, to reflect on how well a soundtrack stands when standing apart from the visuals to which it is intended to augment.

The series may contain three episodes, but the soundtrack comprises some twenty-four short, incidental snippets, which are nothing if not wide-ranging in style and form. One minute it’s like an episode of The Clangers; the next, it’s like listening to percussion made from the banging of bin lids. Spoken word and space-rock, swirling synths and fizzing electronics are tossed around all over the shop. There are moments of glacial synthpop glory – ‘Gutscore’ is atmospheric, dynamic, a bit Kraftwerk, a bit Tangerine Dream, a bit Mike Oldfield, while ‘Garten (Edit)’ is reminiscent of Yello. Yes, it does sound, often, overtly German, but then, Gudrun Gut was there from the early days of electronic exploration and as such, she isn’t following the lineage, but has been instrumental in its evolution.

‘Biste Schon Weg (23 Mix)’, one of the set’s few longer songs – that is to say, over three minutes – is a reworking of the song which appeared on Guts’ last album, the 2018 release Moment, while ‘How Can I Move (24 Mix) revisits a song which originally featured on Wildlife in 2012.

Tossing bumping electronica and some weird excursions make for an interesting journey, and a collection which encapsulates Gudrun Gut’s varied output during the course of a lengthy career. Quirky, odd, idiosyncratic, these are all highly appealing features which define a unique artist, and render GUT Soundtrack a fascinating listen.

AA

MOA24_front

NYC-based electronic punk band LIP CRITIC have detailed their anticipated debut album – Hex Dealer – out 17th May via Partisan Records. To coincide with the announcement, the band has shared the album’s lead single and accompanying music video: ‘Milky Max’.

‘Milky Max’ is a pulverising slab of electronic hardcore. The song’s shapeshifting groove anchors a sound that’s theatrical, captivatingly irreverent, and completely outside so much of modern experimental music. Meanwhile Bret Kaser’s vocal delivery feels like it’s being delivered by a cult leader who has occupied the announcer’s booth at a football stadium and refuses to come out (“All my life I just wanted to live / Now I gotta die just because of what I did”).

The official video for ‘Milky Max’ showcases a fully playable video game inspired by the song and designed by Jesse Natter (brother of Lip Critic drummer Ilan Natter). Direct link to play the video game HERE.

Check the video here:

‘Milky Max’ follows previous singles ‘It’s The Magic’ and ‘The Heart,’ which earned early critical acclaim from NME (“on their way to becoming the next great NYC band”), Paste (“an apocalyptic wasteland of NYC’s best underground punk”), Rolling Stone (‘Songs You Need to Know’), Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC 6 Music, and Matt Wilkinson (“totally essential”).

Produced in collaboration by vocalist Bret Kaser and Connor Kleitz, ‘Hex Dealer’ represents an evolution of the eclectic style that the group began cultivating on earlier projects. Drummers Danny Eberle and Ilan Natter combine breakbeats and pingy snares with heavy cymbal and tom work, creating a singular mixture of classic punk/hardcore and electronic styles. The end result is 12 frantic tracks of postmodern pop for the genreless future. A project of wide-reaching sonic and thematic curiosity, above all ‘Hex Dealer’ is an inquisition into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption.

Audiences have also already been captured by the sheer energy and undeniable chemistry as they toured the US, sharing stages with IDLES, Screaming Females, and Geese, and made their way across the UK / EU including a stop at the Pitchfork Festival in Paris. Lip Critic will tour extensively behind ‘Hex Dealer’, including stops at SXSW, End Of The Road and further UK dates. UK dates are listed below.

LIP CRITIC – UK TOUR DATES:
13 May – The Louisiana – Bristol, UK
14 May – The Deaf Institute (The Lodge) – Manchester, UK
15 May – The Windmill – London, UK
29 Aug – 01 Sep – End of the Road – UK

AA

zhQHEycQ

6th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I hadn’t been looking for something that straddled Bauhaus’ more experimental cuts and David Devant and his Spirit Wife… But that’s how it goes. You don’t know what you want – or need – until you find it, and stuff lands on your lap when you least expect it. This is theatrical, crazy, over the top. It’s the sound of a band flipping out, melting down in every direction – more of a document of an electrical shock to the brain than the frazzled fizz of the frothing seafront.

‘The Wheel, the Spade, the Stars in Motion’ is no instant grab post-industrial froth: instead, it’s a frenetic electronic mania, all the froth and panic. The panic… the panic is real. It’s the soundtrack to waking up disorientated and wondering where the hell you are and what on earth is going on, and the video only adds to the bewilderment, the wackiness as surreal as the most inexplicable dream.

Strolling bass and wonky guitars are only half of a story which throws into the melting pot the sharp, sinewy guitar pop of Franz Ferdinand and the over the top agitated dramatics of The Associates.

The lyrics are utterly barking, but shouldn’t be dismissed as mere quirky nonsense: there’s a genuine poeticism and flair for language on display here.

The maid was in the garden

Disfigured by a bird

That reactionary raptor

Left her undeterred

The specksioneer made it clear

harpoon held aloft

Declaring that his love for her

could melt the permafrost

Playing with the tropes of the Elizabethan sonnet, but at the same time spinning circles of Surrealist imagery, Erotic Secrets of Pompeii are a unique proposition, and for all the warped oddness, which shouldn’t work but does, ‘The Wheel, the Spade, the Stars in Motion’ is a cracking single if you can step back from the craziness for long enough to reflect and absorb.

AA

su80898-The_Wheel_the_Spade_the_Stars_in_Motion_single_artwork

1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I may have mentioned before that I’m a sucker for the sound of vintage drum machines – partly by association with so many of the innovative acts which emerged in the late 70s and early 80s, which used them in a host of different contexts, exploring the near-infinite avenues these little bits of kit afforded. For a start – and perhaps most significantly – it was possible to make solid percussion without the need for a drummer or drum kit, meaning furthermore, thanks also to the advent of the portastudio, there was no need for a proper rehearsal space or studio to rehearse and record music. In fact, with relatively cheap synths, you could record as a band without even having a band. The other thing was that, if amped up right, these things could be immensely powerful. And so it was that we saw the emergence of acts as diverse as The Sisters of Mercy and Metal Urbain, Young Marble Giants, and The Human League.

Poly Ghost are a German synthpop trio, and ‘Ananas Ring’ is a quirky, fairly minimal tune that brings together the primitive sound of the aforementioned Young Marble Giants with the retro-chic of Stereolab, delivered with a humourous twist that could only come from a German act. Anyone who says the Germans lack humour is simply missing it. Absurdist wordplay might not be everyone’s bag, but from Die Toten Hosen to the deliberately clunky lyrics on St Michael Front’s first album, there’s no denying that there’s a thread of quirky amusement that’s uniquely German.

And so we arrive at Poly Ghost’s ‘Ananas Ring’, and while the twisted punning of the band’s name is one thing, the inter-language incongruity of ‘ananas’ – French for pineapple – with the English ‘ring’ (the French word for ‘ring’ is ‘bague’) from a German band takes messing around with language to another level. Despite the lyrics seemingly being in English, I have absolutely no idea what the song is actually about. But, I do have functional ears, which are totally sold on this quirky sound. The accompanying video is daft, and ‘Ananas Ring’ is a nifty tune that brings all the analogue, and the squeaky, inflected vocals just make it all the more wonderous.

AA

su80615-AnanasRing-Thumb01m

La Force, the fascinating solo project of Ariel Engle, released a critically acclaimed second album, XO SKELETON this Autumn and today she unveils a music video for ‘outrun the sun.’

The video for ‘outrun the sun’ was directed by two faithful collaborators of Engle – Sara Melvin and Ali Vanderkruyck – in scorching hot locations in the Californian Anthropocene.

“The video for ‘outrun the sun’ explores the pride and arrogance of humanity, which thinks it can fool Mother Nature. Instead of a vital force, the sun is turning into something that makes us fear for our lives,” say the directors.

“Thanks to animation and an infrared drone, the perspective shifts between the runner (La Force) and the stalker (the sun). We shot in arid places like the Sepulveda Dam, an abandoned open-air location. Among the hot concrete and dried weeds, Ariel and our small crew were overheating, sweating, covered in dust. In the Californian Anthropocene, we experienced the issues addressed in the song in real time.”

Watch the video here:

AA

44750c7f-0ca6-6038-e1e5-c23d9c8885d5

Photo credit: Norman Wong

New Reality Records – 17 October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Speculum Bunny’s been doing the rounds on the live circuit with New Reality Records labelmate Stewart Home of late, and while in terms of presentation they’re leagues apart, her modus operandi bears strong parallels with Home’s, not least of all the audacious piss-takery of his earlier career, which is – quite unexpectedly – experiencing something of a renaissance – she’s also a completely different animal.

Her bio outlines how ‘Having written music since she was a kitten, Speculum Bunny enjoys blending words and sound to provoke, enthral and mystify her audience. Inspired by the depraved nature of love in all of its majestic forms, her childhood, masochism and devotion. Challenging mainstream narratives on motherhood and women’s expression she blends noise, synths, voices and field recordings. She pushes her edges.’

Female voices in music – strong ones, not sonic wallpaper popmakers dollied up by record labels – may be growing in number, but they’re still few and far between in the scheme of things. It’s a sad reflection on society and the music industry, but it does mean that when someone comes along and says ‘fuck the norms’, it’s powerful, and stands out, and Speculum Bunny – an overtly challenging moniker, uses a profile pic on her Bandcamp bearing the slogan ‘I’m not cute, I’m disgusting’ (it’s the cover art from her first release in May 2023: this is her fourth). It’s clear that her objective is to provoke a real sense of discomfort, and if both her choice of name and the EP’s title work through incongruous juxtapositions of hard / soft or similar, then the four tracks contained therein are the sonic manifestations of this oppositionality.

‘Demon Boyfriend’ is built around a chubby bass groove that’s reminiscent of the early years of The Cure, and it provides the backdrop to a dark spoken word piece. ‘he’s quite old… and he’s quite hairy… and he’s got horns…’ Much of the impact / appeal lies in the delivery, of course. Flat, monotone.. and unashamedly Scottish. There’s a tinkly fairytale tone to the keyboard sounds on the lo-fi ‘Dragon of Lure and Dread’. The vocals are sung, but mumbled so as to render the words almost inaudible, and the drums are distant, a thumping heartbeat below the surface.

You can probably consider this a spoiler alert. Pretty much the last thing I expected was for ‘House of the Rising Sun’ to be a fairly straight acoustic cover, delivered in what one might – for wont of a better description – an intimate, witchy tone. As the song plays out, a double-tracked vocal gives a slightly disorientated twist. The final song, ‘There is No Ash Without Fire’ is again minimal in its arrangement, and while a bulbous Curesque bassline provides the main element of the backdrop to her haunting vocal, which soars and swoops, the atmosphere is more akin to Young Marble Giants.

Liminal Fluff doesn’t sit within any single genre pigeonhole: in fact, none of the songs really conform to any style or genre, and ultimately, it seems a fair summary of Speculum Bunny as an artist. It’s truly refreshing to discover an artist who really doesn’t sound like anyone else – and even more of a deal when what they’re doing is good. And this is good.

AA

a3042142564_10

Everest Records

Christopher Nosnibor

Guess it pays to learn to trust your sources: if I’d seen pics of these guys or simply seen mention of this release in passing, passing is precisely what I’d have done, without a second thought. It would have vert much been my loss.

A skim over the press release cause me to take pause as I read that ‘Two Dogs are Beat Keller on guitars and Joke Lanz on turntables and voice, both based in Berlin. An uncompromising union of two musical individualists who are shaking up the noise world.’

Shaking up the noise world, are they? In that case, I’m all ears to hear what these two Swiss musicians who ‘oscillate between perfect dissonance and intelligent harmony’, and who, ‘with their stripped-down instruments, Lanz and Keller create a unique language somewhere between pavement poetry and free improvisation.’ The pair both have impressive resumes, which even mention artists I’ve heard of.

‘Mom’s Birthday’ is the first track and lead single from their debut album, Songs from the Trash Can. It’s a short (sub-two-minute) glitched-out collage of whacky shit which finds Lanz half-speaking, but almost shouting, about the events which befell him on waking, namely his inability to find his toothbrush or toothpaste. But, here’s the real wince moment: he got drunk and forgot his mum’s birthday. Ah, shit. So he sings an off-key rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ by way of a belated apology. As you do when you’re probably still drunk from the night before.

‘Mom’s Birthday’ is discordant and chaotic and sits very much at the experimental end of noise: it’s also very much of the lineage from early 80s tape-looping noisemaking – think Foetus’ Deaf!.

It’s a fitting companion to ‘In the Pub’, the quirky track that’s available to stream as a taster for the album, which, with tongues firmly in cheeks, pokes droll fun at English pub culture with an astuteness of observation that should shame most natives, and in just two minutes, they capture the reasons why I avoid town pubs and miss Europe, and why these guys are great.

AA

Two Dogs (uncredited photo)