After years of hearing about the mythical NWW but never actually hearing them, I finally broke down and ordered this album (then an expensive import) when I was 19. Despite the kitschy title and cover art, I was still completely caught off-guard by the cartoonish and self-indulgently absurd music within and immediately dismissed it as something so dreadful that probably only a Zappa fan could like it (I remember trading it to a used record store for a Carcass album or something later that same week). Many years later, with a somewhat broader mind and some increased context, I decided to give it another chance.  I still find it cartoonish and willfully annoying, but it's also kind of crazily inspired.
Give us an hour, we'll give you music to remember. This week we bring you an episode with brand new music from Softcult, Jim Rafferty, karen vogt, Ex-Easter Island Head, Jon Collin, James Devane, Garth Erasmus, Gary Wilson, and K. Freund, plus some music from the archives from Goldblum, Rachel Goswell, Roy Montgomery. Rubber ducks and a live duck photo from Matthew in the UK. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
|
The methods used by Jonathan S. Podmore and Peter Hope on Dry Hip Rotation were quite oblique as far as strategies go. Storming the studio with little more than a few scrounged AKS synths, a violin, harmonica, and whatever else happened to be lying around they managed to smash together their art punk masterpiece in a mere six days, presumably so they could rest on the seventh. The majority of the music produced on the album does not even come from sources generally thought of as musical instruments. Everything from a Creda 400 tumble drier to toilets and scaffolding pipes are used (Joe Meek would have been proud). The outstanding lyricism and vocal performance of Peter Hope coupled with Jonathan’s tape loops (several meters in length) make for a riveting listen.
Taken from a live performance at the impressive St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh last year, this collaboration sees Colin Potter teaming up with Michael Begg to create everything from a rich, heavy blanket to a delicate spider web of sound. Over the course of the performance, they continually force us to shift our attention as they move across a range of soundscapes. Unnatural vibrations collide with vaguely recognizable field recordings, making a sublime hybrid between the real world and a fantastic alternative to day to day listening.
For their latest full length album, the Ohio trio have nudged the controls of their vessel and changed course for new sonic territories. The character of their music has remained unchanged, they use the same synthesizer and guitar set up, but the form in which they present it is not the familiar waves of cosmic debris that populated albums like Solar Bridge or What Happened. Here they have adopted a more melodic style which has resulted in a more accessible but equally thrilling body of music.
The debut release from this American noise duo is a pedestrian attempt at creating som unpleasant, hateful and gripping post-industrial noise. However, Thor J. and Waddiah Rabiah Chami never feel like they are connecting with the sound they are generating. It is a shame because Chami's other work as Koufar prepared me for something huge and powerful which Disgust never manages to pull off. This is noise at its most inoffensive despite the supposed intentions of Disgust.
Back before he joined Sonic Youth and became an avant rock elder statesman, Jim O'Rourke played in Illusion of Safety with Dan Burke, who has continued the project since his then-partner went all big time. Here, one of those mid-period releases is reissued and remastered, bringing the 18 year old release on Staalplaat back into the economy, and demonstrating how both artists were on the top of their game compositionally even back then.
On his latest tape, Anthony Mangicapra again explores the sounds and textures of metals in order to find their hidden beauty. Carefully layered and manipulated, the source materials are transformed into a higher form; divinity wrenched from cold, hard matter. This is a vastly different beast to his other recently cassette Ship of the Desert; this is sound both liberated and liberating from reality.
This limited edition collection of live recordings sees irr. app. (ext.) stripped down from its usual group configuration for the stage; for these performances Matthew Waldron braved audiences on his own. The end result is a collection of pieces which allow Waldron to extend the live sound of irr. app. (ext.) into new musical plains. There is less clutter in the arrangements, having one pair of hands forces the music to be sparser than before. Yet the core values at the heart of Waldron’s music are preserved and although his audio surrealism has a new face, it still has the same primal capacity to unnerve and enrapture in equal measure.
I am a sucker for loud, heavy and white hot rock bands and Mugstar hit home on all three scores. From the opening track to the tinnitus after the CD has stopped playing, I am enthralled by their latest album. Mugstar tear the arse out of my stereo with their pounding performance, every piece on this, their second proper full length, is a mini-masterpiece.
