Never a group content to rest on their laurels, Mission of Burma's third studio album and their second since reforming after a 20 year hiatus finds them raising the bar higher than ever with surging guitars, pummeling rhythms, and some other surprises that show a remarkable growth and renewed vitality in their songwriting.
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!
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This selection of works by López is disappointingly lacklustre. Compared to his normally vibrant work, the pieces here are drab and unexciting. Most of it feels like López is just rehashing various older ideas and not pushing any of the boundaries that usually make his work interesting.
Andrew Liles continues to take the familiar and turn it into something warped, something weird. Now, however, he's doing it in a perhaps unexpected way. Concertos normally have three movements and are typically composed for a solo instrument and an orchestra; the piano is the only proper instrument on this record. Liles, however, makes sense of it all plays the piano in a way that has me looking at the instrument in a whole new light.
The new EP by Boston’s 5ive sees the reissue of two pieces originally released on a split 12” with Kid 606, bundled with two new Justin Broadrick remixes. Granted the cover art is pretty gross but most of the music contained within is of the topmost quality.
The first album from Bergen’s Espen Sommer Eide under the name Phonophani is remarkable. There’s no two ways about it, this is an essential album. It may be eight years old but sounds fresher than the vast majority of new albums that have come my way.
The last time we covered a Jandek DVD on The Brain, it was Chad Friedrichs' 2003 documentary film Jandek on Corwood, a series of talking heads speculating about the music and the mythos, Jandek himself a no-show apart from a disembodied telephone voice recorded in 1985. A lot can change in three years, and this month brings the first official Jandek DVD released on Corwood Industries, a DV recording of Jandek's first-ever live performance at the Instal festival in Scotland in October 2004. Even if you've heard the widely distributed bootlegs, or Corwood's official CD release of the show, the Glasgow Sunday DVD still provides a shock to the system.
In Iran, heavy metal is banned. Of course, this means there is a strong metal underground. One band from this scene, Ahoora, are trying to do what they can to get their music heard both inside and outside their home country. Luckily, although the music is not a step forwards (nor even a step sideways) for metal, it is very good.
This Austrian band's prior release, the spectacular Heavy Heavy Monster Dub, revitalized my interest in dub reggae and made its way into my "best of" chart in 2004. So why does their new one leave me less than enthused?
The debut EP from the Atlanta doom metallers Zoroaster is a solid disc of riffery. It may not be the best Sabbath worship I’ve heard but it’s definitely above average. They do not reach the heady heights of Sleep or Electric Wizard but this release shows that they have the potential to rise up to meet those sonic titans.
Headlights play music which is not dissimilar to their predecessors on the Polyvinyl label like Rainer Maria: a mixture of male and female vocals with high melodies and catchy phrases. Songs alternate from jumpy to languid, sometimes even within themselves. Headlights use a healthy amount of keyboards at times for atmospheric sounds, strings, or chirpy measures. It's unpretentious music: all hooks and fun without dreary concepts regarding composition.
