Despite having been involved in probably about 90% of all British manifestations of all that is heavy, grindy and noisy in the last twenty-odd years, from Napalm Death to Jesu, Justin Broadrick is still only fourteen years old; or at least that’s how he appears. And given that my job here as a critic, is [...]
While improvisation and social activity are natural bedfellows, improvisation and relationship can be a trickier proposition. It’s a reasonable – albeit vaguely fundamentalist – argument to say that familiarity is antithetical to improvisation; the former is about learned responses, primed expectations and prior awareness; whereas the latter is about responding in the moment, [...]
The foundations of rock music are built on strata that have long eroded for all but the most credulous. It was initially fun, sexual and swaggering; angry, rebellious and irreverent; energetic, spontaneous and irrepressible; extrovert, engaged and innovative. Decades of mishandling by musicians, record labels, critics and musicologists have caused these qualities [...]
Longevity in the fickle world of pop music has traditionally been an undervalued trait and Cluster, now well into their fourth decade as a musical unit, have long been an elusive presence as they’ve sailed through the decades since their inception in 1969 (with fellow electronic pioneer and Zodiak Arts Lab alumni Conrad Schnitzler as [...]
I have to admit I’d never heard of Disappears before this record landed in my lap, so I looked them up online. (Research, see? Professionalism and that. That’s what seperates us real professional music writer types from the blogroll masses.) A noisy Chicago four-piece, refugees from the sad decline of Touch and Go records, Disappears [...]
Lisa Dillan is a vocal improviser originating from the northern parts of Norway. She is a trained and educated jazz singer, but many years ago she moved further away from the jazz, and started exploring the possibilities that lies within improvising with the voice and creating various mouth sounds. When I first watched this tiny [...]
Recording studios are time machines, capable of layering conflicting alternate pasts, warping space into new configurations and building dreamlike gestalts from contrasting times and places. But we could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Engineers and producers have worked diligently for decades to maintain the illusion they’re releasing records made by pub rock bands [...]
The June edition of the Jazkamer monthly series, We Want Epic Drama, is the first album with the full metal line-up since the highly acclaimed Metal Music Machine was released. Two drummers, electronics and three guitars promises quite an onslaught. However, that is often the case with Jazkamer, two or more members almost always [...]
This is an EP that really wants you to like it from the moment you see the sleeve. It screams “Hey, I’m friendly, we could hang out and play Swingball!” First off you get a really endearing picture of a smiling jukebox as the sleeve art, and then the CD itself is pretending [...]
The problem with the notion of Hypnagogic Pop was never the music, and Oneohtrix Point Never‘s superb Returnal demonstrates that fact perfectly.
Brooklyn’s Daniel Lopatin makes tried and tested emotive music with plenty of precedent. Tangerine Dream is the most frequently cited, but you could equally choose any number of works by Vangelis [...]
(Midwich)
A folk group from Essex recording a concept album about the Lofoten Islands in Arctic Norway seems an intriguing though ultimately self-defeating idea. After all, isn’t the idea of folk music that it reflects the culture it comes from, rather than holiday snaps of exotic locations?
Arts Café, Toynbee Hall, London
3 July 2001
One of the things about getting older is the urge to mellow out, to chill into a fully-realised state. Warn Defever has been skimming the surfaces and wading into the depths of music for over a decade now, and his frequently disparate collision of so
Concrete And Glass
Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London
2 October 2008
When you go to a show by a shirtless, rabble-rousing mob like O'Death, you really expect to see the band set up on the floor, separated from their sweaty audience by little more than a few blobs of spit and sawdust. That's how I
Thrill Jockey
Wow, this is a really different kind of Trans Am album. But wow in general, too, it's also a pretty fucking great album. The first thing that struck me about Thing was its soundtrack-like quality. At points it is more like a vision of Blade Runner rather than the electro rock we
Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London
28 March 2001
Tonight's Wire Session Live promises to present a few intriguing collaborations, and first up on the scene are Jaki Liebezeit and Burnt Friedman. The latter's usual live minidisc setup is enhanced with a Korg analogue synth and anothe
Xinli Supreme - All You Need Is Love Was Not True
Label: Fat-Cat Format: 7"
Short description: Xinli Supreme sound something like the Japanese Flying Saucer Attack.
Longer review: Xinli Supreme sound from time to time like Flying Saucer Attack when they were so much more lo-fi than recently.
The Astoria, London
18 April 2004
First up, Pink Grease. I've been holding off on reviewing these buggers until I could manage the supreme effort of will that is not being so drunk while watching them that I couldn't tell whether they were wonderful, or really shit. Happily, I can tell you it's
The Slimelight, London
1 November 2003
The Pressure Point, Brighton
2 November 2003
The Legendary Pink Dots return to their founders' home country after an absence of a good few years is always a welcome event - that they then play two gigs in a mini-micro tour is an added bonus. First surpris
Label: Ignite Music Format: DVD+CD
I'm never really sure how to review live DVDs. This is partly because I don't buy them often myself, except as records of gigs or tours I've seen in person. But also it's because they don't really fit with my music listening habits. Thankfully, although I wasn'
Denovali
Available on both heavyweight vinyl as a proper double-sided split LP and the more prosaic, though no less lovingly-packaged CD edition, this record serves partly as yet another waypoint on Nadja's seemingly unstoppable mission to collaborate with every possible combination of drone/doom
The Bloomsbury Theatre, London
6-7th April 2001
Perhaps if Billie Holliday had received nuptial visits from the spirit of La Cage Aux Folles and produced an offspring, that might explain how the universe has been blessed with Antony. Perfoming live for two nights in London in support of Curre
Wormwood Live
The Forum, London
19th July 1999
When The Residents put on a show, it's something very special to see indeed; like Jesus Christ Superstar (surely one of the defining moments of pomp-pop-opera, and whose theme provides the opening fanfare as the curtain goes up on the monocular one
(Hydrahead)
For most of the twenty-eight years since Lustmord’s debut, the lot of a devotee has involved much twiddling of thumbs between infrequent releases and little chance of catching the man live – the portentous date of 06/06/06 seeing his first (and to date only) live appearance since
Dingwall's, London
7 August 2008
Chrome Hoof should be appreciated by the light of a billion braincells misfiring; by the sound of a world exploding, because that's what they're capable of resembling on a good night - and tonight is one such event. Though it takes while for Dingwall's to gather
The Garage, London
28th November 1999
If a band sounds the same live as they do recorded, it can be a bit disappointing. Too clean, too rehearsed. Seeing Salaryman live at The Garage could easily have been like that, only it never strayed into those well-trodden pedestrian precincts. The only
Beyond Baroque, Venice, California
29 June 2001
(15 in attendance)
Consolidated Lint
Guitar, Pro One and toy spun over the head of the person furthest right. Pitch shifts and the bowing starts. Chattering, like automotive idling, wells up and fills the room. Much bowing, and it's as if the
London Fields Lido, London
19 July 2008
Nurse With Wound at London Fields Lido. It just sounds so right. And it was, too: pleasingly strange, charmingly eccentric. It was the culmination of a series of underwater sound events, staged at various venues around the UK under the banner of Wet Sounds
(Salamander)
The Schiphorst 2008 CD is a live album, recorded at the festival held quite literally in the rural backyard of founder member Jean-Hervé Peron, and is as ramshackle as you like. The tone is set by the packaging, which successfully conveys a flavour of the event - the front cover pho
The Garage, London
9 April 2004
It's good to know Thrash is alive and well and kicking up a stir, and tonight The Garage is graced with a queue down the street and eventually with a venue full of The Kids, Heavy Metal or otherwise, almost visibly churning with excitement at the prospect of a ni
The Ralfe Band;
The Destroyers;
Guillemot;
The Paetbog Faeries;
Salsa Celtica;
Sild;
Cheltenham, UK
2nd-4th June 2006
Lying in the green heart of the Cotswold valleys is the small town of Cheltenham, where the remains of the emerald giant Wychwood Forest stands. This had been a site for fo
The Albery Theatre, London
from 4th April 2002 for 11 weeks
Based on Heinrich Hoffman's dark fairy-tale Struwwelpeter, Shockheaded Peter originally opened in 1998 and last year alone played to an audience of some 80,000 West End theatre-goers. For its 2002 production, David Thomas & Two Pale
Welcome to Freq.
Freq was founded on 1 April 2008, and the main focus of Freq for the last decade and more has been on the bastardized forms of music which are polluting Millennial culture so nicely - the forms which offer innovation, eccentricity and unashamed noise. Resistance to the pervading
The Mean Fiddler, London
2 July 2001
Somehow Lolita Storm should have got a better reaction on this bill - their shouty teen rants and splattery Digital Hardcore beats and pieces are part of the busy collision of Electronics and Rock the Young Gods were instrumental in creating after all. Bu
Label: NTT (available exclusively via Touch) Format: DVD (Region 0, NTSC)
Sometimes, nothing satisfies quite like the immersive intensity of a minimalist audio-visual feast for eyes, ears and cerebellum, and Formula provides more than adequate satisfaction on all counts. Starting with the packagi
The Forum, London
26 July 2008
They're certainly not 22 going on 23 any more, but the Butthole Surfers have taken measures to ensure their set goes down in properly deranged psychedelic hardcore style tonight. First, it's the classic late Eighties lineup of Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary at the fro
Pure Pop For Now People
Along comes the latest release from PPFN, the label run by Joachim Gaertner of German psyche/kraut powerhouse group S/T, and it's another that explores the territory somewhere on the borders of electronica and a peculiar concept of pop music. As with most of PPFNs releases
The Royal Festival Hall
South Bank Centre, London
27th September 2000
Performing for their 25th anniversary, Pere Ubu delivered such a marvelous performance as to bring me around to wondering why I don't listen to this band everyday. And why are they not lauded as the one of the best of the las
LA2, London
8 July 2004
Digital Hardcore's new signing, Panic DHH, seem to be the hot new thing on the Industrial circuit. Having managed to miss them thus far other than hearing their truly awesome album Panic Drives Human Herds, I had little idea what to expect. Would they be able to replicate
ULU, London
23 April 2008
Ah, what better way is there to celebrate St George's Day than to avoid all the jingoistic flag-waving nonsense and go and see a band who come from the other side of the world? Probably none. None whatsofuckingever.
First up we get Growing, who I heard described by s
The Forum, London
9 October 2004
Having reincarnated with a new touring band as PTV3, Genesis P-Orridge returned to the London stage five years after his triumphant - if ultimately unsatisfying - Royal Festival Hall cocking of snooks and other no doubt pierced appendages (how does one pierce a c
The Spitz, London
26 April 2001
The I/O event at The Spitz was a little bit of a nerd-fest (meant in the best possible way), as several generations of audio technophiles opened up their various laptop computers and let rip with the best in glitchry they could muster for the occasion. To a shift
The Peel Sessions Live
Queen Elizabeth Hall, The South Bank Centre, London
3rd June 1999
The ongoing, haphazard selection by John Peel for his live Sessions continues with the welcome return of Stereolab to live performance after an absence of a year or so. Peel comperes in his usual style, jov
Label: Wu Records/Sanctuary Format: DVD
It's Wu, motherfuckers! Wu-Tang, motherfuckers!
And indeed it is. A 34-track live DVD featuring all nine of the buggers (well, ten, what with Cappadonna an' all), all on stage at once!!!
It's an oft-stated truism that the Wu-Tang live experience can b
Fabriquedecouleurs - Imite Moi
Label: Dorodine Format: CD
Emmanuel Allard, AKA Fabriquedecouleurs, revels in jagged sounds and digital distortion. At points his music is harsh and distorted, a chaotic barrage of abrasive static crackles and aggressive shortwave squeals. Keyboards pushed to the p
Brixton Academy, London
13 May 2002
Quick question. Have you ever done, like, TONS of acid, read the entire works of HP Lovecraft AND watched Audition, all in one night? No? Well, whoever sorts out Tool's visuals certainly has. So we don't have to. Let's just say "thanks" now, shall we? But of t
A Music Club at The Others, London
25 July 2008
Glass used to have more members, but tonight they're a duo who make their presence felt as is, shimmering and rattling their soft motorik way through a set which shows copius affinity for the soporific psychedelia of Spacemen 3 and Harmonia's eleva
The Junction, Cambridge
9 July 2001
For whatever bizarre reason, this gig couldn't be advertised. Having found out about it, having already missed Tricky's appearance at Robert Wyatt's South Bank Meltdown, and noting that his only other UK appearances this tour were at the V2001 festival and Pen
The Kosmische Club
Upstairs At The Garage, London
28 July 2001
For the Kosmische Club's fifth birthday, the party hats, balloons and banners have been brought out to celebrate half a decade of putting on one of the best clubs in London, if not the country and possibly the world. A touch of
The Festival of Central European Culture
Queen Elizabeth Hall,The South Bank Centre, London
10th July 1998
Across between political rally, religious service and Thrash Metal gig, tonight's appearance in the centre of High Art's temple of culture simultaneously enthralls and overpowers with meta
(Further)
Murmurations sees guitar noise dronemeister Urthona teaming up with London based electronic boffin The Asterism to create some wonderful alchemy on two long pieces inspired by the natural world in the West Country.
Although a CD release, Murmurations is conceived as a classic vinyl L
Drifting Falling
London bliss-rockers Kontakte continue their journey into the outer reaches of motorik rhythms and chimingly elevated guitar work with an EP which works around the theme in differing ways. "Superbug" itself boils over with tightly-wound energy, surging from twinkly psychedelic gu
Corsica Studios, London
2nd May 2007
Looking like refugees from several different bands who all met up in a jail cell after a drunken night gone horribly wrong, it's north London's finest pirate bar band Owlls, and they really should be playing in Tortuga in the 17th Century rather than Elephant &
The Mean Fiddler, London
27 April 2003
I'll be honest: I went for Peaches. Her 93ft East show last year was one of the most bacchanalian gig experiences I've had in recent years, a benevolent riot of loud, fired sexuality and abandon. But, truth be told, I'd really enjoyed the lyrical audacity /
Overground
There is no Underground in N16 - the only way to get there on public transport is by overground train, or by bus - but Stoke Newington has a diverse musical history. In a one-off special, DJ Tango-Mango of the Kosmische Club and the Drones Club explores by way of an audio collage and s
The Borderline, London
9th November 1999
A night at The Borderline, a night for Americanism. We arrived too late to hear the first set, a band called Kenny Process Team, so no insights there apart from the appropriate(d) soundtrack feeling their last couple of songs gave me as I took in the set
The Underworld, London
15 July 2008
The first time I came across Part Chimp, a few years back, they were tipped as The Loudest Band in London, but now that the reanimated corpse of My Bloody Valentine has reclaimed that title with its rotting, maggoty fingers, Part Chimp have mellowed a little.
Groenland
New NEU! Releases are by their very nature important events, their three classic albums having grown in stature year on year since their original release back in the early 70s. Most serious fans of the group will have bought NEU!4 when Ken Matsutani’s excellent Captain Trip Records re
Editions Mego
The problem with the notion of Hypnagogic Pop was never the music, and Oneohtrix Point Never's superb Returnal demonstrates that fact perfectly.
Brooklyn's Daniel Lopatin makes tried and tested emotive music with plenty of precedent. Tangerine Dream is the most frequently cited
Meltdown 2007
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
18th June 2007
The smoke and glitter which characterises Chrome Hoof's performance at Meltdown 2007 is something of a wonder to behold. Unleashing a brain-boggling riot of progtastic disco - complete with intoned disclaimer for any responsibilty for t
Kosmische @ The Spitz, London
5 June 2003
When the Acid Mothers Collective come to town, a few things are certain - extended improvisations, guest appearances (tonight's honourable psychonaut is none other than Daevid Allen), antics and japes at the keyboards, and hair. Lots and lots of hair: no
@ RoTa
Notting Hill Arts Club, London
21st February 2000
There's a great sense of expectancy generated by Chicks On Speed tonight; buzzing chatter from the West London cool squad building up a tension upon a foundation of eclectic Electro DJing. When the Chicks come on stage in decorated paper
The Spitz, London
21st April 2006
Akron/Family are not from Ohio, nor are they apparently related to each other. They are also sometimes Michael Gira's band Angels Of Light. Tonight at The Spitz they might be themselves, though along the way they play up a storm of other identities, genres and m
(Leather Apron)
What do you get when you cross a dandified occultist comedian (Andrew O'Neill) with the jovial former frontman of Creaming Jesus (Andy Heintz, now rather splendidly decked out in purple muttonchop whiskers), the drummer (Ben Dawson) from Million Dead and another comedian, Marc Bu
Club Mesa Costa Mesa, California
19th December 2000
AA23 opened the night, and I thought they had some really, REALLY nice moments. but things did seem a bit sloppy and loose at points - especially with the excessive scratching (which when ON - was wonderful.. but less is more when it comes to s
June 2000
People Like Us is Vicki Bennett, a resident of Brighton on the South coast of England and creator of extraordinarily witty cut-up film and music projects which take the cultural critique of Plunderphonics into new dimensions of layered reference and dissociated signifiers. As wi
Red Rose Club, London
16th September 2000
A night of drones on Seven Sisters Road, strangely light on traffic in the aftermath of petrol protests, but still teeming with North London's variegated Saturday night fun seekers and the requisite fully made-up Goths on the 253 bus. The Red Rose is no
Vidna Obmana & Serge Devadder - The Shape Of Solitude - Suite For Electric Guitar, Atmospheres And Recycling
Label: Multimood Format: CD
Ah, how Swede...erm...suite it is... (Ouch - Ed.) Sound that often appears on the Hearts of Space broadcast (recently sacked from Los Angeles airwaves in f
The Scala, London
12 October 2003
Witnessing Laibach perform onstage is guaranteed to be a spectacular experience - not in the form of flaming scenery, explosives or even sheer brutalist noise, but because they put on a show. A proper show with much too much in common with a political rally for
H: - Group Tracks
Label: Black + White Records Format:12"
"Bushwacker" took a little time to grow on me. My first thoughts were don`t do much does it, then I realised just what this slab's purpose is. It builds up & up & up. This isn`t the kind of record you`d consider listening to on it
On The Rocks, London
10th December 1998
What does a New York Jewish MC from East Berlin sound like in soundclash mode with his East End muckers? Especially when set off by their apearance on a stage in a Shoreditch nightclub seemingly more frequented by stag and hen parties - complete with spang
Southern Lord
Black Cascade, the third album from Wolves In The Throne Room, is truly epic stuff, clocking in at four superb monolithic compositions. For me it ticks all the black metal boxes: big guitar riffs, big keyboard parts, triplets galore, and tempos that run from the majestically slow to
The Garage, London
6th December 1998
There are few enough gigs where all three acts are equally placed in their levels of enthusiasm, energy and sheer in yer face enjoyment, but tonight is one of those nights where the rush of machine noise goes from strength to strength. Bomb 20 is first up, a
Thrill Jockey
Trans Am's blend of rock/electro comes to the stage with live album What Day Is It Tonight? Many lesser bands wouldn't be able to pull this kind of fusion off. Synthpop and hard driving rock are seemingly chalk and cheese. Lesser bands might have troubles, but this is what Trans Am
Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts
25 February 2001
The present-day composer refuses to die, according to Edgard Varese, a man with legendary eyebrows. He also influenced the guy whose music an eager bunch of resurrectionists revived in the Paul McCartney Auditorium. The Liverpool based-ba
Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London
22 & 29 January 2010
Strange Attractor Journal, now in it's third edition of writings promoting unpopular culture, has long been intertwined with the visual, musical and performing arts. For January 2010, the Strange Attractor machine has moved into exhibitionist
@ Kosmische
Upstairs At The Garage, London
16 September 2003
A reasonably well-filled Upstairs At The Garage is in store for a sleazy night of lateral Rock and Roll tonight. Caesar Romero pull off several good sweaty tricks - they use keyboards and guitars like they were meant to be scuzzed up
Various - Advance 2000.3
Label: Mute Format: CD
What are the folks at Mute up to right now?
Advance 2000.3 isn`t really an album as such. It's a compilation of the up and coming Mute (and Novamute) releases. You won't find it in the shops, unless you work in the shops.
2000.3 has new releases fr
The Klinker,
The Sussex, London
17 April 2003
The Klinker! A club to conjour with, and a place to witness the indigestibly strange among the ineffably great. Take The Unseemly Trio for starters, three genially odd chaps who pluck the exposed piano strings of one of two which adorn the back room
