Posts Tagged ‘Review’

Dense / Sea Legs – Split 7”

Posted: 30 November 2019 in Singles and EPs
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Come Play With Me – 6th December 2019

Christopher Nosnibor

Leeds-based singles label Come Play With Me end 2019 on a high as they continue to promote the most exciting fresh talent from the region – and remind us that regional and local doesn’t have to mean substandard or amateurish. Then, Leeds has long been a hotbed for emerging talent to cater for all tastes, to the extent that listing the acts that the city has produced in recent years – and further back -seems vaguely pointless and moreover, there are simply too many to name.

Dense live up to their name on ‘Fever Dream’, a song inspired by a dream the band’s singer Charlie had while ill, and conveys the horror of vivid scenes and heightened sense as he hollers gruff and manic into a shuddering wall of juddering bass, crashing drums and thick guitars. It’s dirty, it’s grungy, it’s gritty, and it’s loud. Somewhere in the murky mess is a surprisingly tight groove that pins everything together. Around the midpoint, everything explodes into a frenzied, head-shredding mass of noise and demented yelping. This seems the only way to truly convey an unspeakably disorientating and otherworldly trauma.

Sea Legs offer up something altogether lighter and brighter: ‘Favourite Doll’ is a sliver of buoyant but shadow-shaded indie that has Hints of the Cure about it. It’s a nice contrast to Dense’s brutal noise, and with a light melody and ready accessibility, provides a welcome contrast. That’s a contrast that’s complimentary, of course: CPWM have long demonstrated a knack for perfect pairings, and this latest is no exception.

DENSE - FEVER DREAM (ARTWORK)

CPWM016

Modern Technology – Exploding Head Sessions

Posted: 29 November 2019 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

It’s fitting that noisy-post-punk London duo Modern Technology should have recorded a live session at the Shacklewell Arms under the banner of Exploding Head: everything about the band to date has been explosive, from the sonic blitzkrieg of the eponymous debut EP to their growing fanbase, due to a committed live schedule which has seen them deliver some killer performances. The fact they’re thoroughly decent guys whose sociopolitical message extends beyond the lyrics and into the active donations of proceeds and profits to charitable causes hopefully counts for something, too: they’re not Bono about it: they just fucking get on and do it. and so the proceeds from this release are going to Crisis at Christmas ‘to help support the homeless during this critical time of year and to help fund and support Crisis’ vital year-round work with homelessness’.

Hearing the nihilistic fury of the music, it’s clear that this philanthropy is born almost entirely of frustration and despair at social injustice and inequality, and this six-tracker captures the live experience very well indeed, with four tracks culled from the aforementioned EP along with a brace of new cuts in the shape of ‘All is Forgiven’ and ‘Bitter End’.

It packs full-throttle viscerality from beginning to end, and two things stand out on this release: 1) the colossal noise they churn out with just bass and drums 2) how faithful to the studio renditions the EP songs are.

2) is a testament to how tight and well-rehearsed they are, with metronomic grooves holding everything together 1) is about ore than just pedals. Modern Technology do volume and appreciate that effects and all that stuff only fill so much space. Ultimately, there is no substitute for hard volume. There is a 3), as well. What’s unique about Modern Technology’s sound is that for all the thunderous density, they create a vast amount of space, and the way the air hangs between the notes, between the punishing snare hits, creates a stark, yet simultaneously oppressive atmosphere.

‘I ain’t quick, I ain’t cheap’ Chris Clarke barks on ‘Queue Jumper’, against a backdrop of tumultuous drums and a grating bass chord that sustains into infinity. It’s a simple but effective refrain that’s instantly memorable. It’s all in the delivery, of course.

The new material is monumentally dense and abrasive, with the downtuned, sinewy riffage of ‘All is Forgiven’ reminiscent of Melvins, while ‘Bitter End’ is sparse, slow and bleak and throws in a vaguely psychedelic twist in the verses, crashing into a grinding low-tempo riff for the chorus, such as it is.

One of my bands of 2019, and with dates booked for 2019 already (I may have something (ruined) of a vested interest in the February dates), Modern Technology are a band on the up because they’re a band for our times.

AA

cover

The Shakin’ Nightmares – Revenge & Regret

Posted: 31 October 2019 in Singles and EPs
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1st November 2019

Christopher Nosnibor

So The Shakin’ Nightmares gatecrashed my radar thanks to a message via Facebook from Dan Gott, guitarist and the man wit all the whoops and howls for manic rockabilly duo Snakerattlers. Since he books gigs at my favourite venue as a day-job he sees and hears a lot of bands, so if he reckons I need to hear an act, the chances are I really do.

They do the matching outfits thing – which is a bit Snakerattlers, but also reminds me of The Computers – and the four songs on this, their debut EP are kicking, but with a sense of order and a determined sense of identity.

‘(I’ve Got) The Shakin’ Nightmares’ kicks it off with a slow swagger and a reverb-heavy twang that struts its way into a swampy gothed-up surf riff that reminds me of The Volcanoes – which means I’m instantly sold. It’s very much about a well-worn template that has its origins in the blues and has been kicking around in various mutant forms since ‘The Hippy Hippy Shake’ in 1959, but it gets increasingly wild, twisting 60s psyche with grunged-up alt-rock.

They step up the pace on ‘Revenge’ which brings a frenzied punk aspect to the boogie-woogie wig-out and ‘I Wish’ chops a groove that sashays into the more straight-ahead rock closer ‘A Little Death’. It’s still dominated by a choppy guitar and some deep reverb, and these guys are cruising hard on an obsessive death trip. I can get on board with that. If it’s not sex or drugs, then rock ‘n’ roll needs death. We can’t all get sex or drugs, and don’t even necessarily want them, but we’re all going to die. And given the state of things, sooner rather than later seems increasingly appealing. On that basis, plus the basis of some solid tunes, The Shakin’ Nightmares have all the appeal right now.

Cunts – Cunts

Posted: 30 October 2019 in Albums
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Ipecac Recordings – 1st November 2019

You could look at this from two different angles: one – some people never grow up. Two – some people never sell out. Cunts’ eponymous debut is the product of both simultaneously. The ‘snarling LA-based punk band’ features guitarist Michael Crain (Dead Cross/Retox) and singer Matt Cronk (Qui), with drummer Kevin Avery (Retox/Planet B), bass player Keith Hendriksen (Virginia Reed) and guitar player Sterling Riley (Hepa.Titus).

So they all have other projects, and so the fact Cunts will never achieve radio play or mainstream attention simply by virtue of being Cunts isn’t an issue. Then again, their other projects won’t achieve major-league success and radio play either, despite not being graced with a media-blackout moniker, meaning that none of them has anything to lose or gain here. So yeah, fuck it: Cunts are keeping it real and keeping it antagonistic, and forget being cynical, they’re doing this for the right reasons: they’ve got the rage. Rage used to be for the young, descending into the impotent bitterness of the cliché grumpy old man. But times have changed. Older, wiser, more furious and better equipped to articulate that rage, Cunts represent the new generation of over-40s who, rather than mellowing and settling into midlife, have all the anger and need to vent or suffer an aneurysm. These are the worst of times, and we live in a divided world.

This is proper old-school gnarly US hardcore punk shit, played at a hundred miles an hour, and if song titles like ‘Ass to Grind’ and ‘He’s a Lady’ carry distinctly un-PC connotations, the lyrics reveal the band as being on the right side of consideration for difference. They’re not afraid to venture into Unsane gore territory, but shock tactics aren’t entirely without merit in a desensitized society. There’s noting subtle about an of this, least of all the over art.

‘Goin’ Out West’ gets a bit Ministry, but with glammy / goth overtones to its thudding stomp, while a number of the frenzied thrashabouts, like ‘Fail at Failure’, clocking in at 1’46”, and the 1’ 26” ‘Seagulls’ bear hints of Dead Kennedys, while ‘For the Greater Good’ lunges messily into Unsane territory, and there are a fair few tracks that clock in well under three minutes, with the longest song on the album being just 4’08” and no other songs being much over three-and-a-half minutes.

Cunts is fiery, shouty, fast and furious with the emphasis on the furious. Primally raw and brutally uncompromising, it’s harsh but vital, and punk at its best.

You could look at this from two different angles: one – some people never grow up. Two – some people never sell out. Cunts’ eponymous debut is the product of both simultaneously. The ‘snarling LA-based punk band’ features guitarist Michael Crain (Dead Cross/Retox) and singer Matt Cronk (Qui), with drummer Kevin Avery (Retox/Planet B), bass player Keith Hendriksen (Virginia Reed) and guitar player Sterling Riley (Hepa.Titus).

So they all have other projects, and so the fact Cunts will never achieve radio play or mainstream attention simply by virtue of being Cunts isn’t an issue. Then again, their other projects won’t achieve major-league success and radio play either, despite not being graced with a media-blackout moniker, meaning that none of them has anything to lose or gain here. So yeah, fuck it: Cunts are keeping it real and keeping it antagonistic, and forget being cynical, they’re doing this for the right reasons: they’ve got the rage. Rage used to be for the young, descending into the impotent bitterness of the cliché grumpy old man. But times have changed. Older, wiser, more furious and better equipped to articulate that rage, Cunts represent the new generation of over-40s who, rather than mellowing and settling into midlife, have all the anger and need to vent or suffer an aneurysm. These are the worst of times, and we live in a divided world.

This is proper old-school gnarly US hardcore punk shit, played at a hundred miles an hour, and if song titles like ‘Ass to Grind’ and ‘He’s a Lady’ carry distinctly un-PC connotations, the lyrics reveal the band as being on the right side of consideration for difference. They’re not afraid to venture into Unsane gore territory, but shock tactics aren’t entirely without merit in a desensitized society. There’s noting subtle about an of this, least of all the over art.

‘Goin’ Out West’ gets a bit Ministry, but with glammy / goth overtones to its thudding stomp, while a number of the frenzied thrashabouts, like ‘Fail at Failure’, clocking in at 1’46”, and the 1’ 26” ‘Seagulls’ bear hints of Dead Kennedys, while ‘For the Greater Good’ lunges messily into Unsane territory, and there are a fair few tracks that clock in well under three minutes, with the longest song on the album being just 4’08” and no other songs being much over three-and-a-half minutes.

Cunts is fiery, shouty, fast and furious with the emphasis on the furious. Primally raw and brutally uncompromising, it’s harsh but vital, and punk at its best.

AAA

Cunts

Black Ribbon / Don’t Try – Split 12”

Posted: 10 August 2019 in Singles and EPs
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30th August 2019 – Retratando Voces

Christopher Nosnibor

This split release, which pairs Leeds solo artist Black Ribbon with Nottingham duo Don’t Try, follows up on the former’s remix of Drahla’s single ‘Twelve Divisions of the Day’ and the latter’s 2018 single, ‘JWAFJ’, emerging on a German label. Mixed and mastered by Wayne Adams of Bear Bites Horse Studios, and featuring artwork by Hayden Menzies (METZ), this has got the lot behind it – and it delivers on all of its promise.

Listening to the dark, goth-tinged post-punk vibes that permeate both contributions, it makes sense: you get the impression that however much there’s been a sustained renaissance for all things goth-tinged and post-punk here in Britain (which, let’s face it, hasn’t been especially great of late), these are artists who will likely fare better on the mainland, especially in Germany.

Black Ribbon’s ‘Interception’ arrives in a squeal of feedback before clattering percussion and angular synth discord pave the way for a driving dark disco groove. It’s a magnificently mangled hybrid of DAF, Gary Numan, The Human League and early Foetus. Take away any one of the elements and it’s a different animal, but it’s the collision of all things at once that make it special. Done differently, it could be a straight-ahead electropop tune, albeit with an industrial production and early 80s vibe. But with incidentals exploding all over the place, while the vocals, heavily treated and low in the mix have a robotic tone and veer between blank monotone and rising desperation.

Transitioning through a series of passages with some expansive instrumental segments, it stretches out to build a masterfully epic listening experience. Fading out just shy of nine minutes, its end brings a disappointment that its not much, much longer.

The Big Black comparisons that have been hovering around Don’t Try are of merit in the context of ‘Melancholy Chapters’, the drum machine pounding relentlessly behind a gauze of guitars reminiscent very much of ‘Bad Houses’ from Big Black’s debut. Notably, this was Albini and Co’s attempt to sound like The Cure. And while it captured the claustrophobia of 17 Seconds, it did so with everything cranked up to eleven. Don’t Try bring the goth via Big Back loop full circle here with a pulverising six minutes of hard-hitting bleakness.

However, something about ‘Melancholy Chapters’ calls to mind other acts, notably to my ear The Screaming Blue Messiahs, particularly in the sneering vocal delivery. It’s kinda punk, kinda something more sophisticated. That doesn’t mean it’s not direct, hard-hitting, heavy: if anything, this is denser and packs more impact than their previous releases, which have focused on primitivism and treble.

It may only contain two songs, but this feels like a massive release, a landmark of sorts, and something deserving of a lathe-cut clear vinyl 12”. It’s challenging and likely divisive, with both acts taking something that could be accessible and rendering it with degrees of difficulty. On a personal level, this is much of the appeal: I crave art that makes demands, and admire the makers of the art that does so. But it’s more than that: art that challenges probes into the soul and the psyche, it alerts the senses and makes you feel. Against a backdrop of sameness that induces a numb torpor, we need that jolt, that kick, that buzz to remind us we’re alive. And this does that.

Hayden Menzies Artwork

Gudrun Gut – Moment Remixes

Posted: 30 July 2019 in Singles and EPs
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Monika Enterprise – Monika94 – 16th August 2019

Released in December, Moment was one of those albums that grabbed my attention by virtue of its ‘otherly’ take on the conventions of electronica. Gudrun summarised it as being ‘stark, somber, sultry, and clever’, and indeed, it was all of those things, as well as being utterly compelling. How you do improve on that?

Ordinarily, I’d have said you don’t mess with near-perfection, and that you certainly don’t improve on anything with remixes. But then, much as I enjoy my reputation for always being right, I’m sometimes happy to be proven wrong, and with Moment Remixes, Gudrun Gut has found sympathetic remixers who all seem to have honed in on similar elements of the album’s tracks, meaning it’s a stylistically coherent collection, and with only four tracks, it doesn’t feel laboured or like it’s milking the material in any way.

The remixes very much accentuate the stark, minimalist aspects of Moment, as well as the retro vibe that amalgamates early DAF with ‘Warm Leatherette’ by way of a blueprint, and it’s the crisp cracks of vintage drum machine snares that dominate and define the sound here, while everything else is backed off. It’s robotic, dehumanised, and in some respects, challenging in its mechanised sterility. Or, as the press release puts it, ‘4 goose-bump inducing tracks ideal for all floors and moods’.

T. Raumschmiere’s remix of ‘Lover’ launches proceedings as a pumping dance track. It’s energetic and energized, but at the same time sultry and bleak, somehow balancing the seemingly contradictory atmospheres or claustrophobia and spaciousness.

The remix of Gut’s cover of David Bowie’s ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ courtesy of Pilocka Krach distils everything that was quirky and interesting about the album version and brings it together in magnificent style, and Dasha Rush and Paul Frick (remixing ‘Baby I Can Drive My Car’ and ‘Musik’ respectively) retain the emphasis on sparse yet ultimately danceable grooves. I don’t dance, but I do dig.

Gudrun Gut - Moment Remixes

Die! Die! Die! – O EP

Posted: 26 July 2019 in Singles and EPs
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16th August 2019

Their first release in a couple of years finds bassist Lachlan Anderson return to the fold after eight years away. Recorded in just one afternoon, the EP exudes urgency and marks a return to earlier form. The guitars jolt and scratch, sharp treble explosions that crackle like fire. They’re choppy and cut across the rhythm section at blurred, oblique angles, fraying the edges as they side and scrape skewiff and frenetic. The rhythm section pins it all together tight, but it’s attacking, relentlessly kinetic and propulsive, driving, and simultaneously solid and agile.

‘These songs find the band much more raw and harsh than they have sounded in years. Maybe it’s something personal or maybe it’s because the world is on fire’, writes Nate Holdren in his enthusiastic text which accompanies the release. It’s true: New Zealand may not be the place most directly feeling the pain of Trump or Brexit or now Johnson, but it’s clear it’s no place to be. In fact, the bottom line is that there simply is no place to be right now, with rapidly accelerating climate change and, quite simply everything. We’re all doomed. But while we’re all screwed, at least we still have art and music.

‘Casualties of Decades’ slams in hard by way of an opener, machine gun drumming driving a stop/start riff attack that’s a blend of Shellac, Fugazi, and Trail of Dead. ‘What We Choose to Remember’ is also reminiscent of Shellac, the minimal lyrics half-spoken, half shouted, and half buried beneath angular guitar blasts and a throbbing bass that’s less of a groove than a hammer assault. It’s the bass that dominates ‘Everyone Else’ and hold the whole blustering, blistering racket together. ‘Break the Mirror’ rams it home in a blistering minute and 23 seconds, a full-tilt stuttering frenzy of (post)punk noise that goes hell for leather in a scream of feedback.

This is the sound of a band rejuvenated, reinvigorated, a band bursting with energy, passion, and fury. There’s no shortage of things to fuel fury in the world now, and I’m certainly not the only one with a vast thirst for music which channels that fury and frustration.

Die! Die! Die! on Facebook and Bandcamp.

AA

Die! Die! Die! – O EP

HIN – Warmer Weather EP

Posted: 27 June 2019 in Singles and EPs
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James Wells

And after weeks of torrential rain, temperatures so far below the seasonal average if feel more like a different season, we suddenly find ourselves not experiencing just warmer weather, but day one of a burning heatwave set to last for… two days.

Imbeciles may scoff about so-called ‘global warming’ because they fail to grasp the fact that in some places, like Britain, the melting of the ice caps doesn’t mean we can grow bananas, grapes and coffee beans in our window boxes, and that instead, tropical storms are going to batter us while the coastline shrinks beneath rising sea levels.

So, what do we know? Thanks to the press blurbage, we know that ‘HIN is the new ambient/electronic project of Jerome Alexander, best known as Message To Bears, along with his school friend Justin Lee Radford, also known as The Kids And The Cosmos’. We also know that the ‘Warmer Weather EP’ is HIN’s debut release.

The five songs on offer here are mellow to the max. The beats are so laid back they’re practically soporific, all the tones so soft-focus as to be tantamount to dissipating vapours in a clear blue sky on a hot summer’s day. Yes, this is definitely a hot summer’s day soundtrack. But it’s also completely smoothed out, depersonalised, chilled to the point of total blandness, the Mr Whippy of ice cream. What is there to say? Can I have sprinkles and a flake with that soft vanilla?

AA

HIN

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