Plenty of new music to be had this week from Laetitia Sadier and Storefront Church, Six Organs of Admittance, Able Noise, Yui Onodera, SML, Clinic Stars, Austyn Wohlers, Build Buildings, Zelienople, and Lea Thomas, plus some older tunes by Farah, Guy Blakeslee, Jessica Bailiff, and Richard H. Kirk.
Lake in Girdwood, Alaska by Johnny.
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The second full length album since Godflesh's 2010 reformation, Post Self seemingly came out of nowhere, with little of the anticipation or hype that surrounded 2014's A World Lit Only By Fire. As someone who follows Justin Broadrick on all forms of social media, I personally only heard of it due to a preorder email from an online store. My first listen to it ended up defying the expectations which I had, based on the post-reform work I have heard from the duo. I suppose that that is exactly what a great Godflesh album should do, and Post Self manages to defy very, very well.
In my review of A World Lit Only By Fire I stated that it was the first "true" Godflesh record in nearly two decades:no hip-hop flirtations, no electronica, no live drummers (as defined Songs of Love and Hate, Us and Them, and Hymns, respectively).It was just a seething mass of growling vocals, Benny Green’s subterranean bass chug, programmed rhythms, and Broadrick’s trademark barely controlled guitar.Which made sense, given Broadrick had essentially compartmentalized his go-to styles:melodic, pop tendencies were locked into Jesu and electronic experimentation became JK Flesh, leaving Godflesh the outlet for pure industrial-tinged metal.On Post Self though, these demarcations have blurred, and that is a very good thing.
It is not obvious from the onset, however.The big riffs of "Post Self" are very much inline with Godflesh sensibilities as of late, though the distorted drums and heavy vocal processing herald what is to come later in the record.The same goes for "Parasite," on which the duo refocuses more on rhythms than riffs with Broadrick's vocals less processed and more purely guttural.By the time "No Body" arrives, the differences from the album’s predecessor become difficult to ignore.The overall structure and rhythms have a more electronic feel to them, while everything else is caked in distortion and processing.
Broadrick has always cited Killing Joke and other artists from the post-punk era as major influences on his work, and that feels apparent on "Mirror of Finite Light."The song features much of the same bassy, electronic-heavy rhythms as the remainder of the album, but in a more complex mix and a slower tempo. In this case, the vocals have that flat, disconnected quality that is so familiar from that era, allowed to echo around the mix erratically, coming across almost as a lost Factory band blackened by years of heavy metal.
Some of the songs of Post Self stray even farther from what we have come to expect from Godflesh."The Cyclic End" blends a more expansive, ambient guitar sound with digital beats, crawling along but more of a textural work, and Broadrick breaking out a tiny bit of his inner Robert Fripp.With a lush arrangement and more singing, rather than growled vocals, it is a standout on an already strong album.The duo even break out what sounds like a vocoder for the vocals on the lumbering "Mortality Sorrow," considering how indecipherable much of the vocals are on the album, this is even another step further to inhumanity.
Album closer "The Infinite End" is one of the most trademark Godflesh moments to be had, largely for the fact it captures that end-album gloomy, dirgey sound that has been prevalent throughout the band’s nearly three decade discography.The snappy rhythms are offset by the lugubrious tempo, awash in synthesizers with heavy processing to Broadrick"s voice, distorted but not growled.Ending on a depressing note has been a staple for years (e.g. "Don't Bring Me Flowers," "Live to Lose," and "Forgive Our Fathers"), and it remains appropriate here.
While it is not hard to see that the noisy electronics of JK Flesh have invaded Post Self, the underlying feel of many of these songs are actually rather catchy and pop-tinged in nature, drawing from what has become the Jesu sound.Superficially that may seem anything but the case, but structurally, these songs are all are far more memorable then metal riff fests or purely noisy electronic outbursts.To be honest, the closest parallel I feel is with 1999’s Us and Them album, one that may not be a favorite among everyone, but I have always felt to be a lost Godflesh classic.Just as Slavestate was such a left turn from Streetcleaner and Us and Them is sandwiched in between the more metallic Songs of Love and Hate and Hymns, Post Self is Broadrick and Green’s statement that even after reforming, predictability is not something that applies to Godflesh, nor will it ever.
It's perhaps coincidence that Rob Hayler’s most recent tape release has coincided with the recent disassembly, and retiring, of his legendarily No Audience Underground Midwich alias. A single piece, assembled from source material from fellow UK Noise / drone player Ian Watson, Metronome is a blurred cut and mix of smudged digital / analogue tin and tape wreckage.
Passing over the questions of ownership, design, purpose and who-did-what-with-what-intent, this duo's collaboration has a familiarly discordant and heavy sense of Nurse With Wound throughout—but without the mischievous sense of exploration. Multiple manipulated mantelpiece clocks bob and float under washes of digital scrub, Watson’s coppery sources cast into and submerged in and out of a layer of burning acid wash. The spine of the piece is a selection of lopsided loops that could have once been patterns, but whatever they once were they've now been anvil coaxed out of shape like hobnail wearing bent-backed and chained wraiths. The atmosphere is negative one, the cold of clang and clamor giving Metronome a digital brittleness. Hayler's woozy orbit sets the sound's heads dipping in and out of the aforementioned scald, the metronome swept from its clock like tick into a lapping of ugly tidal washes.
As a shorter soundscape, Metronome may have had scope for a possible bleak beauty but at nearly 44 minutes long this is stretched a little too far. Without enough variation, and too many familiar aural phrases welded from a relatively narrow palette, the final third of Metronome can feel more of a climb than a journey.
The opening piece, "Catharus," deceptively borrows its name from a species of thrush despite being totally unlike any earthly birdsong that I am aware of.Instead, "Catharus" is built upon a swirling mass of eerie whistles that feels unnervingly like a haunting chorus of frogs intent on some sort of occult and potentially malevolent business.That surreal and shifting atmosphere is the most intriguing part of the song, but Burke and Espvall weave some ghostly intertwined Siren-esque vocals over the top to beckon me further into the album.Actual instruments make their first appearance on the following "Spirea of Ulmaria," which is essentially a gnarled and tormented-sounding violin (or cello) solo prone to occasional sharp harmonics and flurries of demonic chromaticism.It still feels deeply unreal and unsettling though, as it takes place over a backdrop that seems like some kind of wood flute being used to mimic warbling and fluttering calls of night birds.The "bird calls" have a very strange and hollow texture though, which subtly furthers the feeling that something is not right.The lengthy "Mabon" closes out the first side of the album and it is the first of Tourmaline's two legitimately mesmerizing centerpieces.It opens as a roiling and distorted drone piece that churns and swells like a My Bloody Valentine-style shoegaze roar, but Espvall's cello soon takes the piece in an even more viscerally snarling, howling, and cathartic direction.There are some chant-like vocals too, which lend the piece a suitably ritualistic atmosphere, but the real appeal of the piece lies in how Anahita transform drone into something far more physical, wild, and possessed-sounding.Espvall's strings sound completely psychotic at times and it is absolutely wonderful.The final moments are especially beautiful, as actual notes are abandoned for an eerie cascade of metallic harmonics.
Anahita's dark spell continues to beguile with the similarly lengthy "Nascent Wings" that kicks off the album's second half.Unexpectedly, it is more of a vocal-centric piece than anything previously found on Tourmaline, but the underlying music is no less inventive and disturbed-sounding.For one, Espvall's cello is especially menacingly this time around, unpredictably swooping and seething behind the moaning and howling vocals.There are also some brief flourishes of spacey, lysergic electronics that beautifully add to the sense that reality has become hopelessly blurred and I am now getting a full-on glimpse of a flickering and vibrant spirit world of faeries, nymphs, and ghosts.I was especially struck by how seamlessly "Nascent Wings" can shift from nightmarish to heavenly, elevating dreamlike unreality into something even more complex, layered, and mercurial.The closing epic "A Tapestry to Weave" is yet another drone piece in structure, but one with a haze of ghostly voices swirling around vaporously.There are also some faint bells, adding to the already convincing illusion that I have stumbled upon a coven or a black mass while lost in the woods at night.As usual, however, Burke and Espvall have a striking set piece of sorts lurking up their collective sleeve, as "Tapestry" unexpectedly transforms into a rather lovely, melodic, and bittersweet cello performance at the midpoint, tenderly moaning and churning amidst a bleary haze of half-spectral/half-angelic vocals.
If Tourmaline were a somewhat more conventional album, I would probably grumble a bit about how it would have been better if it were less amorphous and improvisatory sounding, but Anahita's illusion is perfect from the first notes to the last.If someone told me that Burke and Espvall were not actually psych musicians from Philadelphia, but were actually twins who were raised in a remote tundra by a pack of wolves and a kindly warlock, I would probably accept it as a fairly credible claim.In fact, I keep wanting to describe this album as "Lovecraftian," as it so perfectly distills the feel of an enchanted wood that all of the villagers avoid because ancient witches and druids are always trying to reawaken slumbering arcane gods and forest spirits.Such a comparison, while colorful, is a disservice though, as Tourmaline is more sophisticated, sensuous, and darkly passionate than Lovecraft's works of pure imagination (also, there would have been no women in Lovecraft's version). Regardless, this album feels like the veil of reality just suddenly dissolved and plunged me in the middle of a dark fairy tale tinged with supernatural horror.As such, it is quite a remarkable and otherworldly achievement (I am not at all fond of reality).Admittedly, it is hard to imagine an album as bizarre and challenging as this one connecting with very many people, but that is not Anahita's fault–people just need to have better taste.Hopefully, Tourmaline will find its way to those of us receptive to its timeless "forest necromancy" aesthetic, as it will likely make a deep impression on anyone drawn to the immersive, temporally dislocated visions of fellow fringe-dwellers like Natural Snow Buildings (or Burke's own work as Fursaxa).
Timo van Luijk is the sort of artist that somehow manages to stand out as being especially unpredictable and eccentric even within experimental music circles, as I have become increasingly less able to describe his aesthetic as I hear more and more of his work.Also, he seems to make a good amount of curious and counter-intuitive decisions.One such decision, for example, was opening his debut album with a piece like "Matinal," which slowly fades in with arbitrary-sounding ride cymbals, strange scrapes, and a stuttering thicket of violins.Once it gets completely rolling, it is quite likable, but it takes a long slow fade to get there.Also, the bottom completely drops out soon after that point, plunging the piece into a weirdly cavernous soundscape of reverbent drips, bizarre metallic plinking, and something that sounds like an agitated monkey armed with a microphone and some effects pedals.It is hard to imagine a more quixotic and wrong-footing way to commence a solo career, as "Matinal" sounds like an ethnographic forgery for its first few minutes, then becomes a very different sound collage that sounds like a field recording of a rain forest teleported into a deep cave.The following piece, "Secret Belly" is similarly perplexing and disorienting, sounding like someone distractedly crooning alone in yet another cave while a broken music box fitfully plays through a wah-wah pedal.It is not bad or anything, but it is willfully childlike and indulgent–the appeal is primarily that it is just puzzling and alien.Promisingly, the following "Paean" is a bit more structured, resembling some kind of weird and erratic Sun City Girls-style percussion jam, yet the instruments still share space with moaning wordless chants and crunching footsteps.
Given the amorphous and understated tone of the first half of the album, the considerably more vibrant and melodic second half comes as quite a pleasant surprise."Astral Twist" is the first unambiguously wonderful piece on the album, blurring together an eerie vocal loop, rolling hand percussion, strange whines, and something that sounds like a strangled tuba.It kind of evokes some kind of lurching and ramshackle pagan funeral parade and van Luijk uncharacteristically allows it all unfold naturally, accumulating some welcome power and momentum.By the end, it resembles a wild free-jazz session accompanied by a didgeridoo and a menacing groundswell of visceral non-musical textures that ultimately rip the piece apart like a black hole.Remarkably, it continues to linger around after that, making me feel like I am being engulfed in a giant compactor filled with crunching chunks of sharp, rusted metal."Bitter Suite" is even better still, unfolding as a strange and clanking metallic groove with a weirdly haunting melody of ringing, out-of-tune-sounding strings.Eventually, that structure falls away, but the piece then turns into appealingly evocative and carnivalesque collage of mumbled singing and broken melodies.It feels like a bizarre dream where I am being serenaded by a clown, but someone had pulled the hapless clown’s hat down over his face, thus hopelessly muffling his song.The final piece on the Robot reissue is a bit of an interesting surprise, as the original album’s "Loquacious" is replaced by a piece from a later CDr (2003's 2me Fascicule).I have never heard the excised song, but the inclusion of "It's Raining Clouds" seems to have been an inspired move, as it beautifully continues the winning trend of unusual percussive grooves and gnarled squalls of free-jazz brass.It sounds like what I imagine a recording of Terry Riley jamming with street musicians in India might be like.
Taken only on its own and devoid of its context within van Luijk’s larger oeuvre, Murrille feels like the work of an artist who was partly in the thrall of his iconoclastic, noise-adjacent contemporaries like Organum and Small Cruel Party, yet had some rather original ideas of his own to share as well.If I had been hip enough to know about Af Ursin back in 2002, I probably would have liked the more abstract, "musique concrète" bits quite a lot.With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is definitely the imaginary traditional/international music that makes Murrille a significant release.Given that aesthetic dichotomy, it is admittedly a bit of a flawed and uneven album, resembling a split release from two different artists rather than a thematically coherent whole (particularly when the quizzical sequencing in factored in).That said, it is hard to complain when van Luijk is so distinctive and inventive with each facet.In a perfect world, Murrille would be two separate EPs and I would be able to say that the "ethnographic forgery" one is a perfect, if modest, gem of junkyard percussion, faux-ethnic appropriations, and mangled jazz.Instead, I will merely say that Murrille is a likable early release that features a handful of inspired moments and flashes of brilliance that enigmatically foreshadow what was to come.
The master of twisted noise is adding a new album to his incredible discography. Following his monumental album The Gag File on Dais, Switches is the next chapter in the evolution of Dilloway's sound. Created on piano and tape Switches is a spiraling journey into the rugged mind and soul of one of the most influential figures in radical modern music.
"Once encountered, the exquisite, low-key charms of Craig Tattersall, Andrew Johnson, and Nicola Hodgkinson's band, Remote Viewer, leave an impression that lingers long after their records stop playing.
A decade since departing with I Can't Believe It's Not Better (2008), Other Ideas recalls their lower case sound as you've never heard it, presenting ten previously unreleased songs drawn from minidiscs "before the last functioning MD player in Prestwich gave up the ghost," and pressed it to vinyl.
Perhaps the greatest champions of drizzly, Lancastrian mood music ever known, Remote Viewer formed as a splinter group from Leeds-based Hood with their eponymous 1999 debut, taking the opportunity to pursue a fragile, downbeat strain of electronic song-craft and experimentation that quietly held steady against the grain of much electronica during that era.
Over the course of four albums and four EPs, they addressed ambient pop music's barest essentials with a succinct blend of miserablism and refined, adroit technicality that they could safely call their own, and more or less sprang a whole scene of copycats in their wake. Us. In Happier Times is the Remote Viewer's typically ambiguous title for this collection; ten grainy and richly evocative pieces of haptic scrabble and jaded gestures as inviting as a warm brew and a two-bar heater on a piss wet night. It's the sound of glacial English valleys after-hours, finding them animating ambient embers and wilting pop hooks with clipped, Teutonic glitches, and subby pulses. The results form a curious and emotionally intelligent adjunct to then-contemporary dance or pop music, a sound best received on punctured sofas in small coffee shops and living rooms, one which will forever be reminiscent of wet mornings back at the turn of the century.
With the flickering fizz of "Tonight It Feels Like Spain," you hear all three members in intimate dialogue, opening a session that variously takes in SND-like garage minimalism and what sounds like Muslimgauze fever-dreaming in two-step on "Complaining Of Feeling Unwell," or a pre-echo of autonomic D&B in the Arovane-esque nerve pinch of "The Sound Of Old Helmshore," whereas "This Old Face Dates Me" is like a prickly Arran to the suave, cashmere gentility of To Rococo Rot, and the crackling group harmonies of lullaby closer "When It Was Over" forms possibly the loveliest finale to any record you'll find in 2017."
San Francisco, CA – Gearing up for the release of its first full length album in over seven years, (they released a tour-only EP last year) seminal electronic band MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO (MBM) is ready for the release of IMPOSSIBLE STAR on January 19, 2018 via Flexidisc distributed by Virtual Label. The album will be available for preorder through iTunes (http://apple.co/2hR3DYb), Google (http://bit.ly/2hZ3vpy) and Bandcamp (http://bit.ly/2xj1uLi).
Often using politics and cultural events as a starting point, MBM mastermind Jack Dangers connects the current climate to the creative direction of Impossible Star. "I suppose it would be similar to an MC Escher optical illusion which spirals around and around and never seems to end, which can be used as a metaphor of many current events and other pertinent things right now," he says.
Minimal, textural and cinematic in scope, Impossible Star follows the music innovator deeper into more experimental territory. From the thick and discordant soundscape of “One” to the cut-and-paste pastiche of “Bass Playa” to the downtempo of “T.M.I.”, Impossible Star is a layered exploration of sounds and rhythms.
"MBM has always gone in many different directions," Jack explains. "'I Am Surrounded' and 'T.M.I.' represent the paranoid xenophobic 'so-called' fake news cycle we are living in. But seriously at this point, I really wouldn't know what to say. We've entered a world of surrealism which is uncharted territory for me… or maybe it's territory we've been through before in the '30s? What do I know… Further explorations are in the pipeline!
With tour dates being planned for next year, MBM will be performing one show on this side of 2018 at Cold Waves LA – Day 2on Saturday, November 11 at The Regent Theaterin Los Angeles (headlining with Revolting Cocks and MC900 FT JESUS). Those familiar with MBM's mind-blowing live performances are fully aware that the visual component combines a sonic electronic assault with their stunning and often political video mash-ups. The visual “battles” waged between mastermind Jack Dangers and MBM partner-in-crime Ben Stokes will undoubtedly be uproariously provocative and incredibly timely with video samples culled from news reports and found footage.
MBM's consistent musical invention has led to all forms of electronic musical experimentation over its 30 year history, from jungle to techno to industrial to dubstep to jazz fusion. Its long string of influential futuristic classics includes such groundbreaking tracks as "God O.D.", "Strap Down", "Psyche Out", "Helter Skelter", "Radio Babylon", "Edge of No Control" to "It's The Music". The single, "Prime Audio Soup"(from the album Actual Sounds and Voices) was featured in the sci-fi fantasy blockbuster The Matrix and on its platinum-selling soundtrack.
An acknowledged and celebrated innovator in the electronic music scene (his remix of Tower of Power's "What Is Funk?" was nominated for a Grammy in 2006), Jack Dangers continues to stretch sonic boundaries and influence new generations of sound activists. As a premiere remixer, producer and sound designer, he has played a seminal role in defining tomorrows' music today. Past production/remixing projects include: Public Enemy, David Bowie, Orbital, Nine Inch Nails, David Byrne, Bush, Depeche Mode, and Tower of Power.
Looking ahead to 2018 and the release of Impossible Star, Jack is cautious at best for what's in store. "Well, I am afraid at this point it looks like it's going to be fear… more fear… I got the fear… happy new year! <mis·in·for·ma·tion> is all we are gonna get now."
Impossible Star will be released on January 19, 2018via Flexidisc with distribution by Virtual Label.
On-U sound are proud to present the re-release of Dub Syndicate's first five albums: The Pounding System, One Way System, North Of The River Thames (with Doctor Pablo), Tunes From The Missing Channel, and an album of all previously unreleased dubs, Displaced Masters.
All Albums have been re-pressed as high quality vinyl editions with printed inner sleeves, extensive liner notes, and download cards. Included in this set is the rare second album, One Way System, originally a cassette-only edition on the seminal ROIR label from NYC, and reissued now as a double gatefold version with new artwork and re-cut at 45rpm for maximum frequency impact. To top it all there is a new album - Displaced Masters, nine stripped-back takes of early On-U dub magic, and everything is anthologised on CD in the 5 disc Ambience In Dub 1982 - 1985 boxset, complete with 24 page booklet and liner notes by Steve Barker (On The Wire)
On-U Sound in the area at the Indie Label Market.
Come and see us at the Christmas edition of the ILM in Old Spitalfields, London, on Saturday 25th November. We'll have a full range of On-U back catalogue and new releases, plus some exclusive goodies. All the Information for the event can be foundhere.
Last Chance to buy tickets for Sherwood at the Controls, at the Jazz Cafe.
On-U sound return to the Jazz Cafe on Saturday the 18th November, with an ace lineup of the legendary Little Axe, and DJ Rob Da Bank.Tickets are selling fast so don't miss your chance to grab one for what's sure to be a great party. All tickets and info can be found here.
Factory Benelux presents an expanded 3x disc deluxe edition of The Guitar and Other Machines, the sixth studio album by Manchester ensemble The Durutti Column, originally released by Factory Records in 1987.
The origin of The Guitar and Other Machines was the Christmas present given by Factory founder Tony Wilson to Durutti mainman Vini Reilly in 1985. “He gave me another kick and bought me a load of electronic instruments,” revealed Reilly at the time. “I never dreamt of getting into this electronic thing, and I struggled and fought and stayed up til half seven in the morning and really worked on it. I know that Tony’s got this vision and I persevered. And I found a way of using a sequencer that isn’t like New Order – it’s my way, and it’s my music.”
Produced by Stephen Street (The Smiths; Morrissey), the album also features percussionist Bruce Mitchell and viola player John Metcalfe. Remastered in 2017, this new FBN edition restores all three bonus tracks included on the original Factory CD, being experimental pieces written and recorded with Jez Kerr and Simon Topping of A Certain Ratio.
Disc 2 gathers together a wealth of associated recordings, including the rare Greetings 3 EP (released only in Italy), non-album tracks such as Our Lady of the Angels, LFO Mod, and the exquisite acoustic instrumental Catos con Guantes. Other tracks on Disc 2 include various mixes of When the World (a video single at the time), oddball Jefferson Airplane cover White Rabbit (recorded in LA on a whim with guest vocalist Debi Diamond), and several ‘sporadic recordings’ which revisit themes first heard on the original album.
Disc 3 is an in-concert recording of the band taped at the famous Bottom Line club in New York City in October 1986, along with two further live tracks taped at the WOMAD festival in August 1988.
The 3xCD set is housed in a clamshell box with individual interior wallets. A double disc vinyl edition is also available, featuring the core studio album on Disc 1 and live versions of selected album tracks on Disc 2.
A double gatefold vinyl edition will also be released with the core album on Disc 1, and live selections on Disc 2