Posts Tagged ‘Single Review’

Solid State Sunlight – FailSafe

Posted: 7 September 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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29th August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

When I was a child, I used to suffer anxiety – often when I was unable to sleep (my complex relationship with insomnia began at the age of five) – that my memories were stored in the vast eighteen-volume encyclopaedia my family owned, and I would be unable to access them because I couldn’t remember which volume they were stored in. Not that it was recognised as anxiety at the time: my parents would tell me to stop padding downstairs and bothering them, and to go to sleep. There’s a (sort of) valid reason for this (the anxiety, not the parental dismissal, but that’s an essay for another time): said encyclopaedia was made up from weekly magazines string-bound in identical hardback covers – a precursor to those infinite volume magazines devoted to knitting or whatever, or where you would build a Death Star in 300 instalments, that would likely cease publication before the collection was complete – and there were issues missing, including segments of the index, and topics were not arranged alphabetically like a conventional encyclopaedia. I couldn’t even find my favourite illustrations of dinosaurs fighting a lot of the time.

Things have only become more difficult since the advent of the Internet, and while spent my youth and even my early twenties in a pre-Internet world, there are many now who have never known anything else. Kids have existed online even pre-cognisance thanks to parents posting endless pics of them growing up on social media, and YouTube and Netflix have replaced conventional TV for anyone born in the last twenty years now.

Memory, identity, and their changing nature of both under the conditions of lives lived permanently online, are primary subjects of exploration for solo artist Will N, songwriter, performer, engineer, admin, and the man behind industrial / darkwave act Solid State Sunlight. These topics provided the focus of the ExoAnthro EP last year, and ‘Failsafe’ continues that trajectory, ‘address[ing] the realization that the more we develop our own identity, the less memory remains for experiencing life moving forward. Does it delete previous memory to make space for ongoing growth? What memories are disposable? What are the consequences if it fails?’

I hadn’t considered this, or the idea of what he refers to as ‘data-poisoning’ before, having come to view the mind as a recording device, which captured and archived every single experience, every thought, e very book read, movie seen, but stored them in such a way that it accessing those archives was often a random process – Random Access Memory in the most literal sense.

But we scroll, and we scroll, and we troll, and we troll, and personalities become fragmented, real-life and online personas and experiences partitioned off from one another. Who are you? As AI takes over, the lines are becoming increasingly blurred.

‘FailSafe’ is a gnarly, glitchy technoindustrial stomp through melting circuitry that collides Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails with Twitch-era Ministry, with crunching beats dominating jolting electronics and raspy vocals. The intro is a grating bass throb, emerging from an abstract crackle – and then the beat kicks in. And it kicks hard.

If the autotune / robotix breakdown in the middle sounds a shade retro or corny, it works in context, reminding us of how the visions of the future portrayed not so long ago have been replaced by a truly dystopian present. The future was exciting. Computers would make life easier, give us more leisure time and infinite knowledge: that was the promise. Now look where we are. The corporate takeover of the Internet was where it all started to sour, and it was inevitable, but still somehow came as a surprise.

With ‘FailSafe’, Solid State Sunlight draw together a host of references and points of discussion, directly or otherwise, through the savvy hybrid formulation of the composition. It’s hard, and it hits with some attack. This is the vibe of the late eighties and early nineties updated to poke the paranoia of the now. We live in troublesome – by which I mean hellish, fucked-up – times, and with ‘FailSafe’, Solid State Sunlight poke that nerve.

AA

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Re:O – Crimson Desire

Posted: 15 August 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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13th August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Re:O’s ninth single is a song of frustration, of dissatisfaction, about giving everything and receiving underwhelming returns. It’s a song about life’s struggles. And it takes the form of musical hybridity taken to another level. And when it comes to taking things far out, Japan has a long history of it. Only Japan could have given us Merzbow and Masonna, Mono and Melt-Banana, Shonen Knife and Baby Metal – acts which couldn’t be more different, or more wildly inventive. J-Pop may not be my bag, but on reading that Re:O take ‘the best of Japanese alternative music and combin[e] western metal and rock… Re:O has been described by fans as “Japancore” a mix of Metalcore, industrial metal, J-Pop, Darkpop, cyberpunk inspired symphonic layers with high energy and heavy guitar.” It’s a tantalising combination on which I’m immediately sold.

Hybridity in the arts emerged from the avant-garde, before becoming one of the defining features of postmodernity: the second half of the twentieth century can be seen as a veritable melting-pot, as creatives grappled with the notion that everything truly original had already been done, and so the only way to create something new was to plunder that which had gone before and twist it, smash it, reformulate it, alchemise new permutations. If the zeal – not to mention any sense of irony or knowingness – of such an approach to creativity seems to have been largely drained in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, Re:O prove that there’s life in art still after all.

With ‘Crimson Desire’ they pack more ideas into three and a half minutes than seems humanly feasible, starting out with snarling synths, meaty beats, and churning bass – a combination of technoiundustrial and nu-metal – before brain-shredding, overloaded industrial guitar chords blast in over Rio Suyama’s blistering vocal. And it blossoms into an epic chorus that’s an instant hook but still powered by a weighty instrumental backing. The mid-section is simply eye-popping, with hints of progressive metal in the mix.

The only other act doing anything remotely comparable right now is Eville, who have totally mastered the art of ball-busting nu-metal riffery paired with powerfully melodic choruses rendered all the more potent for strong female vocals, but Re:O bring something different again, ad quite unique to the party. It’s all in the delivery, of course, but they have succeeded in creating a sound that is theirs, and theirs alone. No two ways about it, they’re prime for Academy size venues, and given a fair wind, they could – and deserve to be – there this time next year.

AA

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Dragged Up – Blake’s Tape / Clachan Dubh

Posted: 16 June 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

When it comes to formats and the strategies for marketing new releases, it’s clear – particularly in hindsight – that the 90s was the peak period for milking fans with myriad formats, each featuring different mixes or edits, B-sides, and artwork. Now, I am by no means a nostalgia nut, but as a collector, part of me does miss this – particularly when most releases aren’t even available physically anymore, and some aren’t even downloadable. Adding a track your playlist is… nothing.

The latest offering from Glasgow’s wonky lo-fi maestros, Dragged Up, sees a different approach, at least, with an edited version of the A-side being released to streaming platforms but a full-length version available to download via Bandcamp, with the B-side being released a week later, followed by a physical release via the ever-innovative label Rare Vitamin.

You really need the full five-minute version of ‘Blake’s Tape’ to take it all in, to bask in the glory of the epic intro of churning feedback and rumbling discord which eventually gives way to a stomping, rambunctious indie tune which brings in elements of post-punk and folk, a collision of UK 80s and US 90s, and with the verses and choruses sounding like they belong to different songs, the dynamic is strong, switching as it does from nonchalance to pumping energy. And both are magnificently executed.

‘Clachan Dubh’ is a fast-paced, high-energy blast of fizzy guitars and blissfully loose interswitching vocals, and again it’s a collision of Pavement and The Fall plus all the scuzzy indue acts you’d read about in NME and Melody Maker in the early 90s. It’s less a case of them sounding like this band or that band, and more about the way they distil these various zetigeists and amalgamate them into a magnificent alt-rock hybrid which sounds like so much that’s gone before, and at the same time completely unique.

Oh, and they’ve got songs. Great songs. Get stuck in. And maybe go and see them on tour in a small venue in August, because after touring as the support for Steve Malkmus’ new band in the summer, there’s a fair chance they’ll be playing bigger places by this time next year.

AA

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OWLS – Give Me Your Stare

Posted: 19 May 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Negative Gain Productions – 16th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

‘Give Me Your Stare’ is the first taste of the forthcoming album, Death Games from Irish darkwave artist OWLS.

It’s pitched as ‘a seduction: a desperate call for the gaze of someone whose love comes with a quiet promise of devastation… a dance floor confession in the fog of emotional collapse…. With echoes of goth romanticism and a subtle menace beneath its polish.’

Seduction and desperation strike me as sitting at odds with one another: desperation has a scent, a look in the eye that’s less ‘come to bed’ and more ‘flee the situation’ – and yet with ‘Give Me Your Stare’ it makes some kind of sense.

These contradictions are elementary, harking back through time and now well-worn cliché to the tropes forged by Elizabethan sonneteers. I’m reminded of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s ‘I Find No Peace’, which contains the lines, ‘I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice’, and ‘I desire to perish, and yet I ask health / I love another, and thus I hate myself,’ concluding ‘And my delight is causer of this strife.’

And in essence, ‘Give Me Your Stare’ succeeds as a contemporary articulation of that inner turmoil, all delivered with a steely control that’s either clenched-tight keeping things together, or sociopathic.

With the vocals down in the mix, and delivered with an easy soulfulness, it’s the bass and beats which dominate, and the groove is simultaneously smooth and hard-edged, thanks to the combination of soft synth layers and a crisp kick drum that packs some punch. And for all of the glass-like production, there’s emotion there, and, what’s more, it’s all packed into a neat dark pop package that clocks in at a perfect three minutes and thirty.

AA

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Chess Smith – Drama King

Posted: 27 March 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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27th March 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Chess Smith, the self-styled ‘Queen of the High Held Head Walk’ continues her return to the musical fray after four years out, having split from the band she fronted and become a parent, and follows the energetic pop statement of intent that was ‘Bounce Back’ with ‘Drama King’. Writing about it here feels a shade incongruous, given Aural Aggravation’s commitment to all things as far away from the mainstream as it’s possible to conceive, because as was the case with its predecessor, ‘Drama King’ is a tightly-packed and meticulously delivered slice of pop that’s overtly commercial and as mainstream-orientated as it gets. But Chess hasn’t broken into the mainstream consciousness yet, and having grown up and discovered music by watching Top of the Pops and listening to the Top 40 on Radio 1 in the 80s, I am never going to be snobby about pop music as a thing, and reckon I know a decent pop tune when I hear one. And this fits the bill nicely.

Time have changed since the 80s, of course, and technology and production values have evolved significantly, and his singles then would be considered demo quality now. Suffice it to say, Smith has it all absolutely nailed here.

‘Drama King’ three-and-a-half minutes of stirring, soulful and incredibly slick pop. The production is smooth, clean, crisp, and everything is ironed to wrinkle-free perfection on this uplifting, buoyant tune. But she balances style with substance, as she navigates the difficult terrain of narcissism and abuse:

You chase

Manipulate

Create

participate

Erase

And if word escapes

You retaliate

Interrogate

Deny ever to participate

Proof overtakes

And It escalates

It may be easy on the ear, but this is strong stuff. That she’s drawing on experience and processing through art is powerful. That she speaks for so many is a grim reality. Calling this shit out is really only the start, but a start it is. Chess is back, alright, and her voice needs to be heard.

AA

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Mercury’s Antennae – The Reflecting Skin

Posted: 20 February 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Sett Records – 22th February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Just over a decade on from their debut album, and just shy of seven years after their last release, purveyors of ethereal goth, Mercury’s Antennae mark their return with a new single in the form of ‘The Reflecting Skin’. The trio comprises Dru Allen and Cindy Coulter of This Ascension, and Erick R. Scheid of The Palace of Tears, and the fact they’re currently based between Switzerland and the US is a possible factor in their time away (not to mention the fact a lot of musical artists, especially those who are geographically disparate lost a lot of time and progress to a global pandemic).

As their Bandcamp page states, ‘Their sound incorporates influences from shoegaze pop, ethereal darkwave, and unadorned acoustic beauty, while also drawing inspiration from ambient and modern electronica’.

‘The Reflecting Skin’ brings pretty much all of this in a near-perfect three-and-a-half minutes. Starting out with a dense, chorus-soaked bass, loping drums and chilly synths conjure a dark yet dreamy atmosphere that’s quintessentially gothy but without being cliché. Dru Allen’s layered vocals spin evocative and mystical words gracefully through it all, to mesmerising, almost spiritual effect.

B-side, ‘AGALIA MMXXV’, is, as one might expect, a rerecording of the song from their debut album, A Waking Ghost Inside. It’s different enough to justify the effort: it has a more muscular, denser feel, altogether less brittle and cloud-like, with the bass and drums being sturdier and more pronounced, while still retaining the expansive shoegaze magnificence of the original. This, I suppose is telling in terms of reflecting the evolution of their sound.

That this single release is remixed by William Faith, ex-Faith and the Muse, suggests there’s an original version, which is – one would hope – going to feature on the forthcoming album, due for release in the spring.

AA

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Eville – Plaything

Posted: 14 February 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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14th February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Eville, who have been gaining momentum – and radio play – for a while, soared to a new peak with ‘Ballistic’ late last year. While sonically encapsulating the title, it also distilled the very essence of the band into THE most explosive two-and-a-bit minutes of no-messing nu-metal.

If ‘Plaything’ suggests something more cuddly, think again. Once again, they tap that classic nu-metal structure of a quiet but tetchy intro, jittery electronics by way of an intro – Something that can be traced back to Pitch Shifter’s first couple of albums back in the early 90s. ‘Gritter’ from Submit is exemplary, and of course not only would Pitch Shifter transition to an overtly nu-metal sound at the turn of the millennium, incorporating elements of drum ‘n’ bass in their sound in the late 90s, but guitarist Jim Davis played with both Pitchshifter (as they became) and The Prodigy. This detour is simply to illustrate the crossover between genres, and to contextualise the sound Eville have absolutely mailed – because after this tense, tetchy intro, the monumental riff hits, and hits hard, and immediately hits an irresistible groove.

A mere ten seconds in, and it’s clear that this is going to be a killer – and it is.

‘I might look cute but Imma get gnarly / I can get nasty, nothing gets past me,’ Eva Sheldreake warns, picking up the lyrical thread of ‘Ballistic’ and presenting a strong feminist stance. The message is direct and clear, and the band’s photos back it up: whether the outfit is a pink bikini or decorating garb, never judge a woman by her outfit, and never assume she’s lacking capability, whether it’s to do DIY or play guitar and rock out, hard.

‘Plaything’ certainly rocks out, and hard. The sheer density of the sound kicks the air out of your lungs, while the chorus hook is as strong as they come. The mid-section goes full Slipknot, the barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat referenced in the lyrics translating to the brutal delivery.

Where Eville stand out – apart from on every level – is in the way they bring ultra-pro, radio-quality production and accessible melody to massively hefty, bludgeoning metal. If there was ever any doubt that they should be playing festivals rather than pubs, ‘Plaything’ obliterates it. No two ways about it: these guys are ready to conquer the world.

Sister Envy – Swallowed By The Ground

Posted: 10 February 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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28th February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Sister Envy may hail from Wales, but they sound like they’re from way out of the reach of Earth’s gravitational pull.

Their third single, ‘Swallowed By The Ground’ begins gently, but builds in successive waves: the delicate, wistful jangle of the opening bars has something of a classic 90s / 00s alternative / indie vibe to it, with an emotional pull that’s equal parts Placebo and The Twilight Sad – and then the chorus powers in on a tsunami of guitar.

They set the expectation that the song ‘combin[es] elements of the epic gaze sound of early Verve or My Vitriol with echoes of the sound of bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana’, and yes, this much is true, but so many acts draw on the same touchstones without raising so much as a shrug in the direction of their underwhelming derivative sounding efforts. Yet Sister Envy take those same elements and spin pure alchemy.

The best songs are nigh on impossible to break down to the details of why they work, and it’s here where the famed line about dancing about architecture really makes the most sense. Dissect why ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was an instant timeless classic and you will not only end up empty-handed, but you’ll have stripped out the joy, too. Sure, as is also the case with Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ you have disaffection, alienation, dynamics, and a huge, ripping guitar blasting the chorus, but these elements alone do not in themselves a classic make. It’s in the delivery, for sure, but it’s also in that… je ne sais quoi. ‘Swallowed By The Ground’ has it: passion, power, hook, dynamics, and fuck yeah. This is special.

Helle – Hyper Bitch

Posted: 31 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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31st January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Whether they like to admit it or not everyone likes to have the opportunity to say ‘I told you’. And so Leeds feminist punk four piece Helle, who describe themselves as ‘a flurry of blistering riffs, unflinching lyrics and explosive live intensity’ and ‘an irresistible firestorm of grit and glamour that takes no prisoners’ drop their fifth single at the end of the longest month in history. And while revelling over witnessing one of their first gigs, supporting Weekend Recovery three years ago, and being blown away, leaving absolutely convinced – and rightly so – that this was a band to watch, I find myself wondering where the fuck has the time gone?

But there’s no time to wallow, and ‘Hyper Bitch’ goes a few steps beyond merely blowing away the cobwebs.

It starts with some dialogue, some chatter, it’s probably staged, but is the perfect representation of the superior music snob wanker who lectures at gigs, not only between bands, but talks over them because his opinion is so much more important. And yes, it’s always a him and it’s always some middle-class white twat who knows he knows best and could do far better. And then – BAM!

This is punk done proper: guitars, bass, drums all going all out – nothing fancy, just full-tilt, four-chord aggression, providing the perfect foil for vocals which bring that same, angry energy.

There’s some sass in the lyric department, too, constructing lines with a patchwork of movie titles in a fashion that we might have nodded to as an example of postmodern referencing and intertext not so long ago: the chorus hits with ‘I don’t wanna be a Mean Girl / I don’t wanna be Clueless like you’ as their tear into the object of antagonism.

It could be that I’m simply more aware now than before, but it seems that masculinity got even more toxic of late, that the shittiest, twattiest representations of the males of the species are pushing back against all of the progress made by feminism in preceding decades, presumably because the idea of strong women makes them feel somehow emasculated, or, put straight, scares them and wounds their pathetic egos and deflates their pathetic dicks. But what’s not necessarily worse, but harder to fathom, are women who are complicit in this, and who go out of their way to undermine others. I suppose this song is for them. But as a package – and a fiery one at that – Helle are part of a new wave of strong female bands who rock harder and rage harder than almost any of their male peers and are all about taking no shit, shouting up, and kicking ass.

‘Hyper Bitch’ encapsulates all of this perfectly.

AA

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Papillon de Nuit – Jude

Posted: 19 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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14th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

They only released their debut single on 1st December last year, and here we are, not quite halfway through January and we’re being presented with single number three.

While Argonaut’s track-a-month schedule for their ‘open-ended’ album Songs from the Black Hat, matching only that of The Wedding Present in 1992, seemed like the pinnacle of prolific – not to mention the ultimate advertisement for the DIY approach – three singles in six weeks must surely have the makings of a record (pun partly intended). As of this moment, though, we don’t know what their longer-term aim is, or even if there is one, beyond releasing new songs as soon as they’re ready, and if that is their MO, it’s admirable. Without the need to work to the schedules – or budgets – or a label, their only limitation is their own time and energy.

I had initially noted, following ‘Scarlet’, and ‘Amber’, a theme of colours linking their songs, but perhaps it’s female names. Or perhaps it’s pure coincidence, and they have simply plucked one-word titles to denote their songs.

‘Jude’ – which comes with appropriately dramatic artwork, somewhere between swooning gothic drama and pre-Raphaelitism, the source of which I haven’t been able to identify – once again features the voice of poet Monica Wolfe, here whispering, and, as credited, ‘breathing’. These contributions are significant in rendering an atmospheric composition, particularly in the introduction, before the arrival of the piano – of which there are, in fact, two, adding layers to the brooding theatricality of the song, and Stephen Kennedy’s voice.

The feel – particularly in his delivery, with some quavering intonation, and enveloped in a spacious reverb – is very much gothic folk, as he casts introspection, while chasing ghosts.

‘Will the world miss me?’ I whisper

And sigh, as my life drifts away.’

It’s moving, poetic, and powerful, presenting a straight-ahead contemplation on mortality – not in some cheesy ‘romantic’ gothic style, and not in a crass emo way, but a rare sincerity.

Somewhat ironically, in our teens and twenties, we tend to agitate about death, while also treating it with a flippancy, because it’s what happens to old people, but as we grow older, we go out of our way to avoid thinking or talking about it, because as we begin to lose parents, uncles, aunts, and even – increasingly – peers, shit gets more real than we can handle. Invariably, we bury our heads in the sand, shrug off life insurance and toss making wills into the distant future along with pensions, laughing darkly how we never expect to retire anyway.

In the final minute, the song swerves into more electropop territory as the rippling piano combines with a crisp, insistent drum beat. It’s a magical, ethereal moment, which is but fleeting, like dappling sunlight through the branches of trees in a woodland on a breezy day. In many ways, this captures the essence of the song and its sentiment, in its fleeting ephemerality, a metaphor for life itself.

It ends suddenly, with only inaudible whispers fading to the close, and again the metaphor stands. This is perhaps their strongest and deepest release to date, and best absorbed by candlelight, with a large measure of something intoxicating.

AA

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