Style and substance are constantly being removed from each other asmore and more releases like this one find their way to CD players. Asense of urgency can do a lot for a record or song, especially when thelyrics suggest something urgent; it's hard to believe Wolf Parade aredoing anything other than acting, however.
Hotter than July. This week's episode has plenty of fresh new music by Marie Davidson, Kim Gordon, Mabe Fratti, Guided By Voices, Holy Tongue meets Shackleton, Softcult, Terence Fixmer, Alan Licht, pigbaby, and Eiko Ishibashi, plus some vault goodies from Bombay S Jayashri and Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin. Solstice moon in West Midlands, UK photo by James. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
|
1981,they left behind a legacy of one single with renowned Factory Records,17 live shows, and the embarrassment of being labeled "spineless heavymetal" by the New Musical Express. Apparently, this was good enough toconvince LTM to release Tunnelvision's complete works to an indifferentpublic.
Nothing could possibly convince me that these songs were all conceived to be part of one record. Joke Lanz and Annie Stubbs (of Lustmord and SPK) are either comediansor seriously devout industrial fans gone simultaneously slapstick andblood hungry. 
And Everything Else rises beyond being bland audio scenery, butnot enough to be great. After a string of respectable and, by thestandards of the industry, reasonably successful records, Nobody (knownto his mom as Elvin Estela) has kept mum regarding the reasons for hisswitch from beat-heavy hip-hoppin' Ubiquity to the less funky, moreelectronic Plug Research. 
The liner notes read, "This recording is numerologically accurate andanagrammatically active." It's a journey from the recesses of the humanmind to the world of words and sounds; Andrew Liles has resurrected hislove for the anagram and created two discs of inverted uneasinesspractically bathing in the dread and fear of every human psyche. 
It's hard to make a good genre record. The emphasis there is on "good" because it's easy as hell to follow a formula of expected tricks and gags and come out with yet another regurgitation of a genre. Like in the film world, the trick to making a genre record that stands out on its own as a pillar of the genre is an artist behind the work that is willing to jump in head first with a love of the material and an acceptance of the genre's successes and its detritus. 
Recorded live in Dublin, The Anaestheticis composed of seven tracks of piano improvisations. The performancewas recorded in a small building dating from the early 18th century andas such, there is no sound-proofing so at certain points in therecording there are sirens heard from the fire station across thestreet and other city noises.
Stereo Total's latest album (available in three versions from threecountries: Germay, France and the USA) is a bit of a disappointment. 
I thought I'd right a wrong here by reviewing Marissa Nadler's debutalbum, which I completely overlooked upon its release last year. Ballads of Living and Dying is unmistakably the same voice and sensibility as that on Mayflower May, but without the conceptual trappings, there are a greater variety of approaches to be found on the record.
