Apparently recorded on a Canal Street rooftop in New York, this double disc set documents the No-Neck Blues Band's first ever Orthodox Easter concert in 1996, an event they've repeated every year since. The group's tribal rhythms and crackling electronics have little to do with the Savior, though, and more to do with the strange world they create on their own. |
|
Apparently recorded on a Canal Street rooftop in New York, this double disc set documents the No-Neck Blues Band's first ever Orthodox Easter concert in 1996, an event they've repeated every year since. The group's tribal rhythms and crackling electronics have little to do with the Savior, though, and more to do with the strange world they create on their own.
7071 Hits
Kid 606 has once again maintained his distance from glitchy cut-up breakcore that so many still assume he still records and has come out with fantastic results. Unlike last year's subdued, melody-heavy Resilience, Pretty Girls is a brilliant 4/4 techno homage, both worthy of the tireless movement from a sweaty night club and a perfectly blastable summertime album.
9509 Hits
Despite playing and recording with various groups for nearly ten years this is the first solo release by Norway’s Thomas Strønen. It is a fine way to start a long overdue solo career. Pohlitz is a delightful album focussed mainly on Strønen’s speciality of hitting unusual objects with drumsticks.
4867 Hits
For Todd Drootin the commonly held belief that most band's earlier records are better than their later ones must hold true. Dinosaur Dinosaur is a fun record, one that I still listen to; Throw Down Your Laptops surpasses it on every level, however. It's not just a better record and a better place to start with Books on Tape, it actually manages to make sense of the term "beatpunk."
6688 Hits
With Six Organs of Admittance, Ben Chasny has orchestrated both guitar-themed and noise-based releases, and on the latest masterpiece he has split the album in half with six bright, guitar heavy songs on one side and a single, deep, dark, and sprawling drone-based song on the other.
10478 Hits
Niblock makes drones that, even at low volumes, fill the entire room. At more appropriate volumes the drones replace the room with a thick goo of sound. This three disc album is intimidating to say the least. It is a fulfilling and gratifying endurance test to listen to it all the way through.
4745 Hits
Reverence is a powerful force that shapes the way we hear music. Matmos' most recent record channeled that force and constructed new music for outsiders and artists of strange history. Ekkehard Ehlers' approach is different; if the past haunts the present, it is evident in how this music sounds, not in how it was created. The deep dark blues are alive and well, swelling up in new places, but telling a hauntingly familiar story.
8231 Hits
I would be lying if I didn't say that Mojave 3's fifth album was immediately met with a whole lot of trepidation, however, a few songs into the record I found myself bebopping to Neil Halstead and co's most upbeat release ever.
12023 Hits
This deluxe 5xCD set acts both as a box for collectors wanting some restored concert recordings and a fantastic archive of Wire's 1970s studio albums all in one place for those who might not own them already. While the covers are artfully restored, the accompanying booklet is immaculate, and the mastering is stunning, it doesn't make the 1995 Japanese CDs nor the Behind the Curtain release obsolete (yet).
7244 Hits
This is the sound of brain stimulation flash storms which play out like the dreams of anaesthetised car crash victims. The floats of electronically altered high violin movements are spread a mile thick over glaring beams of individually picked notes.
10191 Hits
Just in time for hurricane season '06, New Orleans electro-pranksters 'open up the bruise blood' with this Steve Reichian handjob on Bush43 and FEMA's 'Brownie' (with eventual ranting from Ray 'Bob Geldof' Nagin.)
10000 Hits
Originally performed as part of All Tomorrow’s Parties “Don’t Look Back” series, the Melvins decided after they had played the gigs to actually record the album. So they hired a warehouse and ran through the set without an audience. The end result is an album that shows how ahead of its time Houdini was; it still sounds as relevant and powerful today as it did thirteen years ago.
5952 Hits
2002 saw the release of two Peter Brötzmann related albums, both performed and recorded with his Chicago Tentet. Pillow member Fred Lonberg-Holm was part of that tentet and is joined by Michael Colligan, Liz Payne, and Ben Vida to re- imagine Brötzmann's "Images." An already difficult piece of music, Pillow rework this piece eleven times over, erecting a consistent, if drawn out, album.
6764 Hits
I bought this because I’m a sucker for two things in life: a nice sleeve and 3” CDs. This has led to some duds in the past but you get the odd release that makes the random purchase worthwhile. This EP by Elsworth Cambs is one such release. Unfortunately it’s over nearly as soon as it begins but for just over twenty minutes, I was rapt by Leaf or Tree.
4790 Hits
This double CD set collects songs previously only available on 6" vinyl and adds a second disc of remixes to sweeten the deal. The level of aggression here is almost ridiculous, with every aspect of the music overflowing with testosterone. If anything, this collection is like aural steroids, with any form of subtlety to be avoided at all costs.
6090 Hits
This curious quintet makes sounds that recall the glory days of Nurse With Wound: long, shapeshifting collages of psychedelic murk interrupted by random outbursts of industrial clatter, nightmarish drones, deeply bizarre audio mutations and tangible masses of sticky audio goop of impossibly vague origin. The Sleeping Moustache consists of five ten-minute tracks interspersed with five brief interstitial tracks. Everything blends together well because nothing blends together well; forced juxtapositions and jarring eclecticism are par for the course, just like the finest NWW of yore.
9545 Hits
Splitting this vinyl, and the handmade silk-screened covers, between a pair of duos from Canada and Brooklyn shows noise, guitars and drums acts don’t have to follow the routes of their bigger peers. Although Mouthus’ heavily textured freakout is worlds apart from Cousins of Reggae’s broken behemoth, there is a common battleground.
7060 Hits
Eugene Mirman is a very funny guy, the most promising of the current crop of so-called "alternative" comedians, a group that also includes Zach Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt, Michael Showalter and Brian Posehn. His debut album, The Absurd Nightclub Comedy of Eugene Mirman, was a hilarious, brilliant collection of stand-up material that introduced Mirman's unique brand of self-reflexive, postmodern comedy. In comparison, this follow-up CD/DVD on Sub Pop can't help but seem like something of a letdown, but it's not entirely a lost cause.
11846 Hits
Up until very recently, black metal was close to death. The great bands that helped cement the genre had lost their way and most new bands were one dimensional at best. Over the last few years, exciting bands began to rear their heads and life crawled back into the genre. Christendom Perished is one such album that has reaffirmed my faith in all things spikey and Norwegian.
5276 Hits
If it isn't swathed in black and grim enough to cause rigor mortis, then it can't rock. That seems to be the prevailing attitude the nay-sayers take towards Boris and their newest record. Without a shred of reason, I've seen Pink hated upon in vitriolic doses, the result of a trendy paradigm shift towards doom metal and its various incarnations. Boris is going to appeal to a different crowd, though, a crowd that thinks My Bloody Valentine could rock just as hard as any metal and that dirty is just as good as heavy.
13908 Hits
