This takes me back. Sometimes innovations can be pinned down to very specific musical moments. In the same way that Eddie Van Halen‘s tapping on “Eruption” spawned a legion of followers, Mick Harris‘ death blasts on “Scum” set the pace and tone of metal drumming for decades to follow. Its hard to overstate [...]
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 from Erasure, Goldfrapp, Add [...]
Yet again, it’s a Goth revival. Only a couple of weeks ago, one of the broadsheets began proclaiming black as the new black. The old black obviously not having been quite black enough. So here’s Cleopatra, with a bunch of nostalgia and some newer stuff too. Companion to their immense Goth Box, [...]
Midwich Records
Ellen Mary McGee, founder of folk-rock band Saint Joan, has created a short but magnificently intense début album with The Crescent Sun. Its a dark lyrical collection of folk songs written, sung, and largely performed by McGee. She plays guitar, banjo, glockenspiel, drums, percu
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
T & C, Leeds
17th April 2000
So this is what gigs look like these days. It's been awhile. Last time I was here I got thrown out for pogoing atop the right-hand side speaker stacks on, if I remember rightly, a combination of mushrooms and speed. This time I sit quietly on the stairs overlooki
Thrill Jockey
I wasn't expecting Super Roots 10 to sound like this, which is what I have come to expect from the Boredoms and the Super Roots series. Super Roots 10 contains "Ant 10" and three remixes of it, and lives up to the impressive legacy Super Roots lays down. "Ant 10" itself continues th
Royal Festival Hall
South Bank Centre, London
25th October 2000
Faust were originally asked to improvise a live score to F.W. Murnau's classic expressionist retelling of the Dracula story for an outdoor vampire film festival in Germany a few years back. For some reason the promotors asked them
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'
Holy Mountain
Restraint is not a word you usually associate with psychedelia. “Excessive”, yes, "silly", perhaps, but “restrained”? Nonetheless Dos, Wooden Shjips’ follow-up to their 2007 self-titled album, is for the most part a very restrained psych record. On each of the albu
Pica Disk
The Monroe Doctrine is the March edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly abum series. This CD is a 30 minute track with full on noise rock free jazz improv beat hysteria. Performers are the regular four piece of Gross, Hegre, Marhaug and Drønen. Beautiful artwork by José De Diego.
To ma
Freq is dedicated to the memories of artists who have inspired us collectively and individually, and who have died during our own ten years on the web:
Bryn Jones of Muslimgauze;
Drum & Bass stalwart DJ Kemistry;
Dub maestro Augustus Pablo;
Teenage Rioter Carl Crack;
elliptical poet
Klangbad
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
The Water Rats, London
2nd November 1999
The Water Rats seems like a broken place, barely still pulsing with the life of the twenty or so people inside. I wonder if it was once posh, evidence: rubbed-off velvet on the too few bar stools, forgotten glass cases built into dingy walls, and a mid-si
Mika Vainio - Kajo
Label: Touch Format: CD
More than just Pan(a)Sonic without the bass oscillations, Mika Vainio's second solo outing still bears obvious connections to his work with Ilpo Vaisanen on their last album release under that name as A, a recording which featured moments of unsettling
Label: Chalice Format: CD,2LP
1. As I reclined in my sketchy little world and allowed the gasses to go to my head, I became overpowered with the notion that I was being carried away. Silly flashes of Communion-like images of alien beings lifting me and placing me against soft chrome and sprayin
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 &
Irregular
The Africa Centre, London
2nd July 1998
Having sat throught he absence of promised DJ Holger Hiller - and hence a repeated digi-dub tape instead - the appearance onstage of two-thirds of Pan Sonic presaged the arrival of Alan Vega. Strutting with his customary swagger, and dressed li
Eardrum - Last Light
Label: Leaf Format: CD,LP
Eardrum is the percussion-led project of Richard Olatunde Baker and Lou Ciccotelli, and makes some heavyweight ventures into rhythm and texture, assisted by guests Nana Tsiboe, Gary Jeff, Matt Barge and Ike Leo. The live studio recordings are dubb
The Barbican, London
27 April 2002
Part of the Only Connect series of live events, tonight was self-described thus: "The history of computer games has also been a parallel history of the development of electronic music . . . this evening's performances are less illustrations of these sounds and
Kosmische/The Sausage Machine
The Vibe Bar, London
11th June 1998
I was foned on Wednesday night by Iain, a friend who I hadn't heard from for a little while. He asked if I liked Fridge. I asked whether he meant my fridge or whether I was merely well disposed towards refrigerators in general.
The Underworld, London
10 and 12 February 2008
The day after a chunk of Camden Market burnt down, Southern Lord's finest black metal act touch down in The Underworld. Thankfully the conflagration was at the other end of the High Street, so the gig continued as scheduled with the only hint that s
Label: Decay/Target Video Format: DVD,VHS
Originally released on VHS in 1987, this collection of the Dead Kennedys live in concert and the studio finds them in fine Punk Rock form. As is to be expected, the sound quality of the gig footage (mostly recorded at Mabuhay Gardens 1979-80) is less than
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 Spitz, London
18th July 2005
A balmy, dirty London night finds me climbing the spiral at The Spitz to see Morning Bride solely for this review, or souly for my own pleasure. There is no way that humans can survive long in this heat, or so I imagine. It's raining outside, a slow tease rain th
Guinea Pig
The Buffalo Bar, London
16 March 2003
The Guinea Pig club's second outing finds the experiment being performed through the strange filter of Hyper Kinako, an Anglo-Japanese power Punk Pop band. As they've apparently got classical training to back up their skittish riffs and obscure l
Applebush/Easy Action
The world finally caught up with The Stooges when punk exploded, while Iggy himself ingeniously morphed into an alienated teutonic modernist, simultaneously retaining his appeal with the punks while appearing several steps ahead with his two 1977 Berlin albums The Idiot and
ULU, London
19 April 2008
Merzbow was brutal. That could be the whole review. We went in knowing he would be brutal and he delivered. We came back out deaf, balance impaired, and probably several shades paler. Merzbow, aka Akita Masami, is one of the pre-eminent industrial noise artists and has
Calexico - Even My Sure Things Fall Through
Label: Quarterstick Format: CD
Spanning most of the musical history of Calexico, a band highly reminiscent of duo Joey Burns and John Covertino's previous bands, Giant Sand and especially Friends Of Dean Martinez, this EP combines unreleased tracks wit
The Spitz, London
7 June 2001
The Spitz tends to look different every time I go there. Tonight it is a late arrival just in time to see Appliance play their version of Krautrock-inspired Electronica. Projections on small screens around the room show Rand McNally maps of the Great Lakes areas of t
The Forum, London
17 December 2009
'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the Forum, not a creature was stirring apart from that seething, thronging mass of goths, punks, crusties and beardy CAMRA-men that only New Model Army seem to be able to unite into one celebratory whole. And the
Interference
Union Chapel, London
30th October 1998
The cold snap is just hitting London in time for this event, set in the chilly North London church (OK, technically it's a chapel, but it looks and feels more like a Gothic construction, all pointed arches and uncomfortable pews) which has pl
Along the Dotted Line...
12th December 1999
The Legendary Pink Dots are a phenomenon, producing a seemingly endless stream of deeply intense records and genuinely spellbinding live shows for nearly twenty years, initially as a London-based group and for more than a decade now from their Nijmegen
Anal;
Ash Ra Tempel;
Brain Donor;
Coil;
Julian Cope;
Groundhogs;
Kid Strange;
Queen Elizabeth
The South Bank Centre, London
1st-2nd April 2000
Since this two-day festival in the South Bank Centre is essentially Julian Cope's entry in the venue's largely excellent series of Mini-Meltdowns
Pica Disk
This release is the first in the Jazkamer 2010 Monthly Series. A card accompanying the CD states: “One new Jazkamer album on Pica Disk every month of 2010. One year of music and anti-music.”
Perfomed by the two founders and regular members Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre, plus Jean-
Denovali
French black metal hardcore act Celeste has realesed an album that is a proper dirty heavy black screaming noisy rotten piece of work that really takes me to some of my darkest places. Not only being dark, they are occasionally so heavy it makes my head want to go down and the rest of my
Rachel's - Selenography
Label: Quarterstick Format: CD
Rachel's may be the logical conclusion of the tradition of Tortoise and Slint. This is not to say that they sound like either of these bands, but rather that one may trace an evolution in contemporary American music from a highly developed N
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
Atomhenge
Ah, the mighty 'Wind. Where to start? Let's assume that readers have at the very least a passing knowledge of Hawkwind's classic 1970s material and mythos. That decade's long strange trip went roughly thus for the Hawks: early 'electronic barbarian' days in the Ladbroke Grove freak scen
The Barbican Centre, London
22 March 2001
"This guy played at The Barbican. About 200 people watched the show. The jam session was awesome. It rocked a snow leopard's ass. The crowd roared like a lion. WES-LEY WILLIS, WES-LEY WILLIS, WES-LEY WILLIS, WES-LEY WILLIS. Rock over London, rock ove
Dakar & Grinser - I Wanna Be Your Dog
Label: Disko B Format: 12"
Those Electro funsters Dakar & Grinser are at it again, this time ripping into one of the most covered of all songs. It turns out that "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is a prime candidate for the drum machine and 303 pulse treatment.
The Fridge, London
12 April 2001
Autechre play in the dark to an audience bursting the seams of The Fridge. The auditorium is packed, the crowd heaving without much dancing going on, and the beats are fractured into shapes that would make rhythmic movement something of an exacting chore. People
(Applebush/Easy Action)
The collections of ‘rare’ T. Rex material to have appeared in the years since Marc Bolan’s death in 1977 by now dwarf the official output released during his lifetime. Although much of them are deeply inessential, and sometimes indeed unlistenable, carefully sifting
93 Feet East, London
8 March 2002
Kitty-Yo hit London, taking over the snazzily labyrinthine 93 Feet East venue on Brick Lane for an evening of the label's quality acts and a host of guest DJs from Berlin, London and further afield, one of whom seems to be playing Generation X's "Dancing With M
(Load)
The centrepiece of the recent All Tomorrow's Parties documentary is a clip from a Lightning Bolt set at the festival back in 2006. The band, true to form, is set up on the floor of the venue and the crowd is jostling around Brian Chippendale's drumkit in a claustrophobic huddle of beards a
(Sinnbus)
I Might Be Wrong come from Berlin and are, apparently, "supported by the Initiative Musik Non-profit Project Company Ltd. with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media on the basis of a resolution passed by the German Bundestag."
Splendid! - how ca
Queen Elizabeth Hall
South Bank Centre, London
13th June 2000
The South Bank Centre seemed to be all on with their rules of protocol as I watched David Thomas from a tiny vertical glass in the big imposing closed door or the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I was a little late and the steward decided not
(Hometapes)
Hailing from Copenhagen, Slaraffenland have made an album that seems quite out of time without sounding in the least bit dated. Their sound is at once infectious and fidgety – a restless pop music that harks back to the days when groups had too many ideas to stop and spend
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
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
The Institute for Contemporary Arts, London
30 January 2008
Here is my ATP festival experience. I always seem to miss the bands that I wind up liking the most. So, having missed Fuck Buttons at The Nightmare Before Christmas I wasn't going to miss them again when they came to Ithe CA, and they mor
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
Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
27 March 2004
Described as a 'brilliantly conceived concert' by The New York Times this promised an evening of aural and visual assaults from across a century. It almost seemed too much to squeeze into one performance but, with the exception of the interval, all video
9, 15, 17, 21 October 2003
The South Bank Centre, London
The Mind Your Head festival for 2003 is subtitled "Exploring new meanings in sacred music", though this seems more of a loose thread connecting the line-up together somewhat tenuously. However, the intriguing double bill which opens the se
The Scala, London
20th November 2007
This has been a long time coming. Last time I tried to see Jesu (supporting Jarboe, in this very venue) it got scaled down to a Justin Broadrick solo perfomance as Final, which consisted of him hunched over his laptop making incredible noises. Now, while this m
The Metro, Chicago
11th November 1998
There I was, freezing my proverbials off outside the Metro club here in da windy city. My cigarette was burning ridiculously quickly as the icy north breezes fanned it and made me all annoyed... but say la vie (as the French c'est). I was waiting in line to
Drag City
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
QT?/Alejandra & Aeron - Split
Label: Fat Cat Format: 12"
Thirteenth virus, this Split Series release is also called - quite appropriately for QT?'s tracks, which mix down bleeps and glitches into something which sounds like the record player's got a worm infection. With titles which progess
The Mean Fiddler, London
30 April 2002
Just in time for Mayday, who better to start the riot early than everyone's favourite shouty German anarchist popkid, Alec Empire? And, truth be told, he doesn't disappoint. Support Leech Woman attempt to get with the whole Empire thing by scowling a lot, b
Royal Festival Hall
South Bank Centre, London
19th September 2000
For their third live performance in a year after the seventeen of build-up, Coil arrive onstage dressed in unlaced grey strait-jackets, backed by a neon sign proclaimng the title of the night's performance, Persistance Is All. Th
Pica Disk
The May edition of Jazkamer's monthly series starts with an almost twenty minute long drone track. It's very deep dark and with mellow synth sounds to start with, moving about in my headphones, almost without recognising it, the track creeps upon me, moving more, being more intense and
Southern
From early avant-garde releases on the legendary Crass records as Annie Anxiety, to guest slots with artists as varied (and awesome) as Coil, Nurse With Wound, On-U-Sound and Collapsed Lung, to her current incarnation as Little Annie, Annie Bandez has been nothing if not prolific, apart
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
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
(Gravid Hands)
Leverton Fox have somehow largely cut themselves loose from contemporary cliches. Coming in a gorgeous Crayola-spattered cover, Country Dances is made of equal parts jazzy articulation and jagged electronic invention. Not that there’s anything obviously 'jazz' here, just heavily
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
(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
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
Sublime Frequencies
The third compilation of Omar Souleyman’s Syrian party music to be released by Sublime Frequencies doesn't require much in the way of context for new listeners. It’s a dance-pop album. All that really matters is whether it’s catchy and whether it makes you want to fl
