Like your experimental noise / black metal to be ulra-dark and heavy with sinister occultism and mystical imagery? The new video from T.O.M.B. (Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy) for the track ‘Awake…Darkness’ from Fury Nocturnus should be right up your darkened, blood-slicked alley…
Posts Tagged ‘Stream’
Watch: ‘Awake…Darkness’ by T.O.M.B.
Posted: 11 February 2017 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Awake... Darkness, Black, Occult, Peaceville, Stream, T.O.M.B., Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy, Video
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Listen: ‘Nightmare Logic’ by Power Trip
Posted: 11 February 2017 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Audio, Brujeria, Napalm Death, Nightmare Logic, Power Trip, Southern Lord, Stream, Tour Dates
Ahead of the release of their new album, Nightmare Logic through Southern Lord on 24th February, Power Trip have unleashed the title track by way of a taster. You can hear it here, with tour dates alongside Napalm Death and Brujeria listed in full below.
POWER TRIP JOIN ‘CAMPAIGN FOR MUSICAL DESTRUCTION TOUR’ WITH NAPALM DEATH & BRUJERIA
Tuesday, 25 April 2017 Copenhagen – Amager Bio, DK
Wednesday, 26 April 2017 Gothenburg – Pustervik, SWE
Thursday, 27 April 2017 Stockholm – Kraken STHLM, SWE
Friday, 28 April 2017 Flensburg – Roxy, DE
Saturday, 29 April 2017 Magdeburg – Factory, DE
Sunday, 30 April 2017 Haarlem – Patronaat, NL
Monday 1 May 2017 Koln – Underground, DE
Tuesday, 2 May 2017 Berlin – SO36, DE
Wednesday, 3 May 2017 DAY OFF
Thursday, 4 May 2017 Krakow – Kwadrat Club, PL
Friday, 5 May 2017 Brno – Klub Fléda, CZ
Sunday, 7 May 2017 Saarbrücken – Garage, DE
Monday, 8 May 2017 DAY OFF
Tuesday, 9 May 2017 Birmingham – O2 Institute, UK
Wednesday, 10 May 2017 Glasgow – Classic Grand, UK
Thursday, 11 May 2017 Manchester – Rebellion, UK
Friday, 12 May 2017 London – The Electric Ballroom, UK
Saturday, 13 May 2017 Paris – Le Glazart, FR
Sunday, 14 May 2017 Antwerpen – Zappa, BE
Monday, 15 May 2017 DAY OFF
Tuesday, 16 May 2017 Six Fours Les Plages – Espace André Malraux, FR
Wednesday, 17 May 2017 Geneva – L’Usine, CH
Thursday, 18 May 2017 Bologna – Zona Roveri, IT
Friday, 19 May 2017 Karlsruhe – NCO Club, DE
Saturday, 20 May 2017 München – Backstage, DE
Sunday, 21 May 2017 Eindhoven – Effenaar, NL
…with more dates to be announced
Album Art: Paolo Girardi
Watch: Preview of Pure Phase Ensemble feat. Anton Newcombe Documentary
Posted: 2 February 2017 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Anton Newcombe, Brian JOnestown Masscre, Documentary, emerging Polish bands, Marion, PLacebo, Preview, Pure Phase Ensemble, Ride, Shoegaze, Six By Seven, Stereolab, Stream
SpaceFest presents a brief documentary about the latest experience with Pure Phase Ensemble. In its current incarnation, the collective is led by a true legend: Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, along with with Emil Nikolaisen of Scandinavian rock band Serena Maneesh.
Filmed by RSU / Agencja Vizualna, this film presents a sneak preview of what is to come on the ‘Live at SpaceFest!’ album and the story behind Pure Phase Ensemble 6. Every December during Gdansk’s illustrious SpaceFest!, an eclectic group of musicians from across Poland are joined by a guest curator from abroad to form Pure Phase Ensemble. The group’s makeup constantly changes, guided by the artistic vision of a new curator every year and directed by Karol Schwarz of Nasiono Records who has been responsible for its musical cohesion from the very outset.
Through improvisation at a workshop organized by Nasiono Records and SpaceFest!, the musicians produce a set of unique songs during a week-long workshop ahead of the festival at the Laznia 2 Centre for Contemporary Art in the city’s Nowy Port district, seeking inspiration amidst its post-industrial atmosphere. The festival then culminates in this music being performed and recorded in real time for the inevitable album release.
Anton Newcombe espoused one rule for this experiment – that there are no rules when making music… and one standard… “get weirder… be heavy. and dreamy. but not pointless”.
Pure Phase Ensemble 6 is comprised of 8 musicians, including six from emerging Polish alternative bands:
Karol Schwarz (7faz, KSAS) – guitar, vocals
Olga Myslowska (Polpo Motel) – vocals, keyboard
Maciej Karminski (Jesien) – drums
Marcin Lewandowski (Judy’s Funeral, Castlings, Soon) – bass guitar
Jakub Zwirello (Oslo Kill City, Szezlong) – guitar
Kacper Graczyk (Aiodine, coding) – electronic beats, synths, backing vocals
“I prefer to hear the sound bouncing off the walls and most festivals are outside and have time limits and various handicaps…I am more or less a jazz folk guy, I’m not an entertainer there to jump up and down and get you pumped…I just do as I feel…,”says Anton Newcombe. “I see myself as an idea person. I play like 80 instruments in as many ways as I can reinvent them because I am not a virtuoso… I want to contribute to Polish culture by writing at least one song that is worth listening to.”
In past incarnations of Pure Phase Ensemble, the group was curated by Mark Gardener (Ride), Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), Ray Dickaty (Spiritualized), Steve Hewitt (Placebo), Jaime Harding (Marion), Chris Olley (Six By Seven), and Hugo Race (The Bad Seeds, The True Spirit). Nasiono Records’ very own Karol Schwarz (7faz, KSAS) has been responsible for the Ensemble’s musical cohesion from the very outset.
You can watch a preview of the forthcoming documentry here:
Watch: ‘Negative Drone’ by Lawrence English
Posted: 2 January 2017 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Lawrence English, Negative Drone, Room40, Stream, Video
‘Negative Drone’ is one third of a final suite on the record, born out of his own research into the sound of fear and the weaponisation of audio over the past few decades. It is a piece about “recognising that technologies with huge promise tend to fall into particular tropes that are pre-existent and reflect cycles of power and capital interests.” Lawrence continues to describe how his research led him to all manner of surveillance and target acquisition footage from drones and other military craft… “Needless to say it was harrowing viewing, but it very much made me recognise the dynamic shifts erupting just beyond our everyday horizons. We don’t tend to think about these things, what they are used for and what it is they could be used for. We just assume that their uses are somehow prefigured. For most of us these machines and the implications they carry are distant and in some way unthinkable, but for other peoples across the world their sound alone is enough to bring terror and anxiety. I found this a powerful question to explore and the composition grew out of it. In fact the final third of the album grew from this particular line of investigation.”
Musically, ‘Negative Drone’, featuring Norman Westberg and Thor Harris of Swans, Werner Defeldecker and The Australian Voices, was one of the final pieces to come be completed on the record. It is also one of a number of pieces in which Lawrence plays pipe organ, recorded on what was once the largest organ in Queensland, the state he resides in.
Expanding investigations into the politics of perception, and exploring the possibilities of new recording processes, technologies, locations and relationships, as well as conveying different sonic textures, Cruel Optimism is ultimately a record that considers power (present and absent). It meditates on how power consumes, augments and ultimately shapes two subsequent human conditions: obsession and fragility.
We’re big fans of Lawrence English and Room40 here at AA (as our many reviews of the label’s output attest) and the indications are that this could be one of his strongest works yet. Check out ’Negative Drone’ here:
https://player.vimeo.com/video/194648555
Humus – Eterna Condanna
Posted: 29 December 2016 in Singles and EPsTags: Crust punk, D-Beat, Death Crush, Eterna Condanna, Gnarly, Humus, Nasty, Noise, Orchestrated Dystopia, Review, Stream, Thrash
Orchestrated Dystopia – 1st October 2016
Christopher Nosnibor
Another release it’s taken me four months to review, and for no reason than that I’ve been utterly swamped and a little disorganised, both in terms of my time management and my thoughts. Such is the life of an unpaid music reviewer who stumbles in from working the day-job to be greeted by around twenty emails each evening and a bundle of CDs on the doormat, all demanding attention.
Somewhat ironically, this latest offering from Italian band Humus, purveyors of nasty metal noise, is one of the shortest releases – including singles – I’ve had come my way all year, with the running time for these four tracks totalling barely a fraction over five minutes.
We’re in authentically brutal, crusty, grindy d-beat metal territory here. The guitars a dirty, murky, churning mess, the drums a frenzied thousand-mile-an-hour tempest. The bass is all but lost in the frenetic, furious low-fi treble fest, while the vocals are all about that snarling, strangulated, torn-throat demonic rage, the sound of one of Satan’s minions gargling nitric acid while dancing over hot coals en route to a purgatorial abyss.
It’s dark, the sound of burning rage, a blurring welter of relentless noise. Keeping the songs savagely short and the production mercilessly raw, it’s everything you would want from a band who trade in thrashcore crustpunk.
Listen: ‘Molten’ by Dälek ahead of UK dates
Posted: 23 November 2016 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: dates, Dälek, Heavy, Hip-Hop, Live, Molten, Stream, UK shows
The abrasive, otherworldly hiphop pioneers Dälek will be touring this month for a week of live shows, following on from the release of their 2016 comeback LP, Asphalt For Eden (Profound Lore), the first new record from the NYC trio since 2009. Ahead of these shows, they have released a brand new track, ‘Molten’, and the wind-tunnel production and furious wordsmith delivery that have become the group’s calling card have been amped up to reflect the song’s theme…
"After this unprecedented Presidential campaign, a venting was needed. This is bigger than the individual candidates, bigger than a broken system, bigger than the dumbing down of America. ‘Molten’ is the quiet rage, angst, and sadness against the current climate in our country and in this world, it’s a state of mind and emotions manifested. ‘Molten’ is the guttural yell into the nothingness by those of us who still think."
Their live performances are known as intense events that often end in a shoved mic stand and sonically assaultive layers of sound. Witnessing Dälek live is like coming face to face with the bastard child of Public Enemy and My Bloody Valentine; an amalgamation of the heaviest noise that the Velvet Underground or Merzbow ever unleashed and the knowledge spit by the likes of Rakim. The trio leaves you in a trance, sends shivers down your spine from the haunting beats intertwined with ambient textures and noise scales, and hits you with a powerful raw flow from one of the most charismatic MC’s of his, or any, era.
Listen to ‘Molten’ below. Full list of UK live dates after the jump.
22/11 – The Louisiana, Bristol
23/11 – Saint Lukes, Glasgow
24/11 – Chunk, Leeds *new addition
25/11 – Thomas House, Dublin
26/11 – Corsica Studios, London
27/11 – Islington Mill, Salford
Arrows of Love – Beast
Posted: 1 November 2016 in Singles and EPsTags: Arrows of Love, Beast, Bob Weston, Gentrification, Grunge, London, Mikko Gordon, Protest, Redevelopment, Shellac, Single Review, Stream, Thom Yorke, Vittoria Wharf
Tape Records – 9th December 2016
Christopher Nosnibor
Fuck yeah! Purveyors of premium quality grungey no-wave noise Arrows of Love serve up the second taster of their second album, Product, and ‘Beast’ is appropriately titled. A sprawling, squalling mess of chaos, it sums up everything that makes Arrows of Love the band they are.
Now, I was hooked on AoL from the moment I heard the opening bars of ‘Honey’ back in 2012 . That low-slung, dirty bassline and the fizzy guitar racket was one of the most exhilarating things I’d heard in years.
Granted, it’s live that they really come into their own, but their studio recording are a pretty accurate reflection of their wildly unpredictable, full-tilt, performances, and Everything’s Fucked was one of the most courageously raw albums -debut or otherwise – of 2014.
Beyond the music, Arrows of Love have a social and political conscience, too, as the band members’ Facebook postings and the press release in support of the single attest: ‘During the last few months Arrows of Love stepped away from their album recording process to fight a campaign against the ex-Olympic Authority LLDC. With their own warehouse community threatened with demolition as London continues to lose parts of its soul to gentrification, Vittoria Wharf hit local and worldwide news when residents stood up to fight closure. The band and a slew of local artists spearheaded the defence of what i-D called “a thriving centre for cultural and artistic output” during the #savevittoriawharf campaign… ‘Beast’ is a song built for speed. Its anthemic forward march is a sensibility that runs counter to the over-stuffed, of-the-moment world we live in and its context runs parallel with the bands defiant nature. “A lot of people have asked me if I’ve written any songs about this fight with the corporation” says Nima, “This song was actually written over a year ago, but as we’ve been playing and recording it this summer the lyrics turned out to be prophetically relevant”. Proving that Arrows Of Love are one of a rare breed of bands that stand by what they preach when the moment calls.’
All the more reasons to love the band: they’re not your regular egotistical musos, but a gang who give a shit about stuff that matters at a grass-roots level.
Produced with a suitably light touch by Mikko Gordon (Thom Yorke, Gaz Combes), and mastered with a full appreciation of the band’s intent by Bob Weston of Shellac, ‘Beast’ is a bass-driven sprawl of angular racket which indicates that Product will be even more gnarly and uncompromising than its predecessor. I for one am very excited by the prospect. You should be too.
Watch: ‘Zipperface’ by The Pop Group
Posted: 22 October 2016 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Honeymoon on Mars, Mark Stewart, Max Kelan Pearce, Stream, The Pop Group, Video, Zipperface
The Pop Group have collaborated with one of Bristol’s most forward thinking and distinctive visual artists, Max Kelan Pearce, for the video of their first single Zipperface, taken from their forthcoming new album Honeymoon On Mars. You can watch it below… and yes, we very strongly recommend it.
Listen: ‘Monument Builders’ by Loscil
Posted: 15 October 2016 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Kranky, Loscil, Monument Builders, Stream
Monument Builders is the new album from loscil, the ambient/electronic project of prolific composer Scott Morgan. It was primarily created on sample-based instruments in Morgan’s century- old Vancouver home. Like that aged space, this music is also rough-hewn, with rickety samples of boiling kettles and resonant moving air. Recordings from a vintage micro-cassette recorder contribute distortion, rattles and textures that serve as both percussion and abstract aural colour.
Ahead of the album’s release on 11th November via Kranky, you can hear the title track here:
Listen: ‘Finally, Peace’ by Swans Ahead of Final European Tour
Posted: 4 October 2016 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: European Tour Dates, Finally Peace, Michael Gira, Stream, Swans, The Glowing Man
Swans have shared an edit of the closing track on their latest album, The Glowing Man – out now on Mute / Young God (N America) – ahead of the start of their European tour in October 2016.
Listen to ‘Finally, Peace’ (edit) here:
‘Finally, Peace’, described by Michael Gira as a "farewell", sees Jennifer Gira join him on a double vocal track, an uplifting finale for the last album in Swans’ current incarnation. The song was described by The Arts Desk as "…redemptive and uplifting" and by The Quietus as "…optimistic" while The Line of Best Fit said, "…on closer "Finally, Peace", Swans bow out with a knowing nod to the innate vanity of the physical and fleeting."
Swans embark on the European leg of their mammoth world tour next month and return to the UK for a series of shows including two SOLD OUT performances at the Islington Assembly Hall on October 13 and 14. Anna von Hausswolf is Swans’ very special guest on the European dates, full details below:
SWANS EUROPEAN TOUR
6 Oct – Brussels BE, Orangerie Botanique
7 Oct – Eindhoven NL, De Effenaar
8 Oct – Brighton UK, Concorde 2 – SOLD OUT
9 Oct – Manchester UK, 02 Ritz
11 Oct – Glasgow UK, Oran Mor
12 Oct – Newcastle Upon Tyne UK, Northumbria University
13 Oct – London UK, Islington Assembly Hall – SOLD OUT
14 Oct – London UK, Islington Assembly Hall – SOLD OUT
15 Oct – Reims FR, La Cartonnerie
17 Oct – Hamburg DE, Kampnagel
18 Oct – Berlin DE, Huxleys Neue Welt
19 Oct – Prague CZ, Divaldo ARCHA Theatre
21 Oct – Budapest HU, A38 Ship
22 Oct – Vienna AT, Arena Big Hall
23 Oct – Graz AT, Orpheum Extra
25 Oct – Ljubljana SL, Kino Kiska Centre for Urban Culture
26 Oct – Zagreb HR, Lauba
28 Oct – Basel CH, Kaserne
29 Oct – Vevey CH, Rocking Chair
30 Oct – Bern CH, Reitschule Dachstock
1 Nov – Nantes FR, Stereolux
2 Nov – Nimes FR, La Paloma
5 Nov – Bologna IT, Teatro Auditorium Manzoni
6 Nov – Rome IT, Orion Live Club
8 Nov – Tourcoin FR, Le Grand Mix
9 Nov – Paris FR, Le Trabendo
10 Nov – Cologne DE, Gebäude 9
11 Nov – Munich DE, Feierwerk
12 Nov – Wiesbaden DE, Kulturezentrum Schlachthof
13 Nov – Utrecht, NL, Le Guess Who? festival
* with Anna von Hausswolf
Aural Aggravation 