I suppose I’m fortunate to move in the circles I do. In both the real and virtual world, I’m surrounded by some remarkably talented creatives, working in all fields. Many seem to have found new outlets for their creative leanings under lockdown, in many cases probably for the sake of their sanity.
The emergence of a brand new act, VVolves, proved as welcome as is was unexpected, because the duo’s debut, a blend of shoegaze and cool synth pop, is a belter.
‘Momentum’ is a brilliantly kinetic, driving tune that kicks in solidly after a gentle, spacious intro. I’m a sucker for a song that locks into a groove and feels like it’s surging forwards because of, not despite, the repetition, and ‘Momentum’ absolutely does that: a repetitive chord motif, overlaid with chilly synth stabs and a propulsive drum track which contrasts with the ethereal vocal delivery. In combination, it’s an exhilarating rush.
The latest Bearsuit offering is a single by The Original Magnetic Light Parade, which is a collaboration between Belgian musician, Alexander Stordiau and Edinburgh man, and Bearsuit favourite, Harold Nono.
‘Confusion Reigns’ is surprisingly unweird, at least to begin with, exploring a sort of cinematic synthwave trajectory, a sparse machine drum low in the mix. Then it breaks into something massively bombastic, and it’s faux-epic in tone, sounding as much like someone fiddling with the voice settings on a keyboard, before finally settling on a piano sound and rolling into a space-rock explosion. With about half a dozen passages in all packed into its five-and-a-half minutes, it feels more like a collection of ideas for longer pieces than a single composition. Confusion does indeed reign.
It’s a fitting summary of the now: everything is confused and confusing, especially in the UK, especially in England. I still don’t know under what circumstances I’m supposed to stay at home or meet people, what’s essential or non-essential, and the logic behind any explanations of the changes that seem to be announced by the day seems deeply flawed and downright contradictory, even for the things I think I do know.
Nothing is as it seems and you can’t trust even trusted sources, and counterpart ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ very much hints at this global obfuscation in its title. Who can you trust? What can you trust? Certainly not statistics.
Instrumentally, it brings together acoustic guitar and smoky synths. The transitions are less frequent, resulting in a piece that twists and turns, but flows rather more smoothly. It’s still odd, and angular, just not as brain-bendingly difficult to follow.
And as a set, it’s all good. Just don’t come here looking to make sense of insane times.
It’s no secret: I fucking love cheese. To the extent that it’s the single foodstuff that prevents me from being vegan, and to the extent that if I had to live on any one type of food, it would be cheese. Forget pudding, gimme the cheeseboard. In fact, scrap starters and mains, just give me all the cheese. My 4-tier wedding cake consisted of a wheel each of Brie, Stilton, Cornish Yarg, and a truckle of mature cheddar. So I kinda feel that Chronic Johnny’s debut single is a song that should appeal, regardless of actual content.
Harrogate may not be an obvious place to spawn a ‘wild noiserock trio’ like Chronic Johnny, but on reflection, it makes sense: it’s a lovely, leafy, middle-class market town close to York. What could possibly spur a bunch of guys to make angular, guitar-driven racket, the sound of anger and frustration in a setting like this? Well, precisely a setting like this. There’s always something to rebel against, always a reason to feel disenfranchised. And always a reason to make noise.
And Chronic Johnny make a cracking noise of a decidedly 90s alternative vintage, all spiky, overdriven guitars that jerk and jolt, and peppered with a substantial dash of rockabilly / surf spice, not least of all in the manic, yelping vocals. It’s such a frenetic, hybridized racket that comparisons are pretty pointless; it’s more that this furiously dirty din, driven by a growling, busy bassline, draws together the essence of a period in time, and drags it, squalling and brawling into the present. It’s gnarly, and it kicks ass.
Here in Britain, sophomore is such a music journo word: because of the structure of our education system, it simply doesn’t occur in any other context. The fact the same is true in Australia perhaps makes it an odd choice of name for an Australian band, but one suspects there’s a degree of knowingness around this, paired with the fact that the band is essentially a second project for noisy alt-rock duo Mannequin Death Squad, which sees Elly and Dan joined by Vanessa and Shelly in a quest to pursue a slightly more indie / pop direction.
‘Social Distancing’ is, as you might expect, another in a blizzard of recordings inspired by current events – or, indeed, non-events, as the days melt into one another – but does stand out as being particularly good. Maybe I’m biased; maybe it just resonates: it’s not the virus that’s putting me in a psychological spin, but news and social media, through which the landscape changes by the hour.
‘I can’t breathe / with all this information thrown at me’, are the opening lines, and it pretty much encapsulates the experience a connected digital society in which everyone has an opinion and data overload is more of a syndrome than something theoretical. I feel that communication with even me closest friends is becoming increasingly difficult as we all become zombified by bewilderment.
From a quiet, picked guitar intro, in classic grunge style, it breaks into a big, guitar-driven chorus, but the guitars chime rather than drive, and the vocal harmonies are so sweet as they advise ‘don’t listen to the radio /don’t listen to those TV shows’. I’ve been feeling the pain of government disinformation a lot lately, and much as keeping informed is useful, I’m beginning to question the validity of the exercise. But the real crux comes near the midpoint on the refrain ‘and the lonely get lonelier’ and it lands hard. Because it’s true. We all feel isolated to varying degrees, because we are, literally, in isolation – but some are more isolated than others.
Stuck indoors with your family may be tense and torturous, and only having text or Skype or similar may be a woefully weak substitute for human contact, but what about those without any of these things? The sentiment is touching, and it’s also a belting tune, that ultimately lands like The Pixies doing anthemic.
Having just completed a major tour with 3Teeth, which found Raymond Watts and co performing live in the UK for only the third time in their 30+ year career, PIG announced a new EP for release in June. And then, seemingly from out of nowhere, this landed at zero notice – a collaboration with John Fryer, who the press release reminds us is a ‘legendary producer and artist in his own right’ (and there is no escaping the fact his resumé is beyond incredible), the form of ‘the latest offering from his Black Needle Noise project.’
When it comes to both BNN and PIG, ‘industrial’ feels too limiting a term for artists who’ve expanded the territory with a rare imagination, not to mention a sense of grandeur, equally matched by a certain postmodern knowingness, humour even, particularly in the case of PIG.
For all the US and mainland European leaning of the genre, it’s perhaps the Englishness of these two artists which sets them apart and makes them stand out. It’s difficult to pinpoint, but it’s a factor.
‘Seed of Evil’ is a proper technoindustrial banger that’s reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails circa ‘92 and, er, PIG from around the same – the time when they toured supporting NIN on their Downward Spiral tour. It’s all in that distorted digital snare sound that sound like ‘Reptile’, the bubbling bass synth, the, cyclical repetition.
Even its very title revels in cliché and its seedy to the core, as Watts delivers a quintessentially grimy vocal, part gasp and part growl, over a gut-trembling synth bass, and it all explodes into a stomping chorus. In short, it’s got the lot. Get down.
I’ll spare you the retreading of old ground here, but Weekend Recovery’s evolution is one I’ve personally charted over the last few years, and debut album Get What You Came For confirmed their full transition from slick melodic alt-rock act to purveyors of fiery grunge / punk. They never lost their focus on melody, for all that, and ‘There’s A Sense’, which gives a second taste of album number two, False Friends pitches the melody very much to the fore.
‘There’s A Sense’ is ostensibly a three-minute pop tune. The guitars are a choppy, trebly, and provide a spiky backdrop to Lori’s buoyant, almost bubblegum vocals that bounce along so, so easily.
‘Tell my friends I’m coming down / and I can’t promise I’ll be back around’ she sings in the breaks when it all slows for a moment. Those slumps are relatable, and for all the bouncy and immediate tuuuuune that this blast of ebullient popness gives us, the truth is that there’s always darkness beneath the surface.
Weekend Recovery continue to expand their range, and deserve to one day rule the world.
It’s a strong title, and that’s a fact. There’s a vividness, a visuality, and a physicality to it that gives it a rare impact. Turns out that this single – the title track from their upcoming album – which is pitched as ‘a furious reverb-drenched and darkly caustic song lamenting a culture of hate and envy that has led to the dehumanisation of refugees, and the disturbing rise of the far-right’, is very much everything that captures the zeitgeist.
It’s got all the edge, and it’s nailed to a stomping single-string riff and goth/glam drum beat and a textural rhythm guitar that’s pure Bauhaus. It dismantles all the anguish of life lived under late-period capitalism and in the all-consuming machine that is social media, the fact money dominates every corner of our lives and the way the need to pay the mortgage saps your soul and steals your life.
Combining nihilism and fury and welding it to a post-punk angularity, ‘Crush My Chest With Your Hate’ has bags of edge, and exists in the same space as Arrows of Love – and with the pricking tension of this release, The Reverse give me the same kind of buzz. Ones to watch.
Word-fads come and go, and I’m as guilty as the next music journo hack-merchant of repetition and overuse, but I’ll make no apologies here, since this 7” revisits the early 90s zeitgeist with a breathtaking accuracy. Yes, I used both ‘zeitgeist’ and ‘breathtaking’ and I hate myself for both. But what I don’t hate is this release by Orchids.
This is a blizzard blur of vintage shoegaze noise, with ‘Dead Keys’ abrim with angling guitar and epic reverb and all the FX, with the result being a melt-together of early Ride and The Charlatans with latter-day exponents of psych-tinged shoegaze like The Early Years.
They whip up some blistering walls of noise across the two tracks here, while also delving into some spaces of motoric indie as guitars burst all around.
‘Another Day’ follows a similar template, a motoric beat and thudding bass groove underpinning a repetitive guitar line that rattles away in a wash of reverb, and it plugs away at that thing that it does for a hypnotic four and three-quarter minutes, to hypnotic effect.
Brighton four-piece Deaf Surf, having emerged from various punk bands and spent their first year in existence gigging hard, formally announce their arrival with ‘Sofa’, a jagged slab of (post) punk that’s pissed off and angsty and picks at the anguish and (self) -loathing that comes from FOMO. If you associate sofas with comfort, relaxation and the pleasure of binge-watching box sets on Netflix, then brace yourself: Deaf Surf’s sofa is hard and lumpy and full of angst.
The lyrics list everyone’s ‘best lives’ splashed all across social media while singer Manon bitterly reflects on her own vicariously-lived life, ‘another, another, another adventure from my sofa’.
Sonically, Deaf Surf come on with clanging, grungy off-key guitar and a raw, DIY post-punk feel reminiscent in some aspects of Solar Race, in others of Come and Live Skull. The song builds to a raucous crescendo, and it’s all over in a succinct 3:22.
It’s a hell of a debut, and as of this moment, Deaf Surf are my favourite new band.
Ahead of the release of the album Durma, experimental urban found-sound experimentalist Akkor offers up single cuts ‘An’, and ‘Zabt’. The work of Istanbul-based Üstün Lütfi Yildirim, the two tracks showcase the artist’s approach to rendering a broad range of sources into accessible sound-sculptures.
‘An’, released at the end of January, is a brooding slice of ponderous electronica. Woozy bass tones swoop low and ambulate abstractedly to provide a backdrop to airy piano and incidental synth notes. The structured ambience of ‘Ab’ takes a non-linear form, but clocking in at three-and-a-half minutes, it’s tight and avoids indulgence.
In contrast, the six-minute ambient trance workout that is ‘Zabt’ begins with quiet, softly chiming notes which echo into a soft breeze, before an insistent pulsing dance groove enters the mix. It’s low in the mix and murky, creating tension and a dark energy. Gradually, things melt together to coalesce into an expansive headtrip of a tune.
It all augers well for the album if these singles are representative.
Aural Aggravation 