Category: Text Review

Review of ÚATH – ÚATH

A perfect match between darkest ambient producer Ruairi O’Baoighill and folk experimenter Grey Malkin. What we have here is a very complimentary collaboration that sees the two approaches illuminate each other’s work.

Ruairi’s otherworldly production and soundscapes make Malkin’s contributions feel like musical spectres wandering through the sonic fog Ruairi conjures. Yet Malkin’s contributions make a distorted familiarity that creates a more relatable space.

With guest contributions and samples in the mix, it gives the album the feel of a strange journey. For some reason it makes me think of old Victorian ghost stories that revolve around train journeys.

I think by now you should know from my reference points whether this is your sort of thing or not. If they chimed with you then you should absolutely buy this folk horror odyssey.

review of MACHIAVELLIAN ART – INDOCTRINATION SOUNDS

we have rabidly reviewed this space sludge masterpiece

You can always count on Riot Season Records to bring something innovative AND heavy. Case in point – Machiavellian Art. A sort of sludge metal Hawkwind. So brutally heavy it could crush a skyscraper yet there’s this space rock core at the center of it. When he’s not doing a crust punk roar, the singer lets rip with some blistering saxophone. There’s fuzzy noises amidst the guitar tsunamis. The bass lines could make cheese on toast out of a goat and a sack of wheat in five seconds flat. Listening to this stuff on your headphones and you’d be able to make a third set of devil horns with your mind. The only question is which planet that devil occupies.

Review of CARLTON MELTON – RESEMBLE ENSEMBLE

earths most reliable sonic cosmonauts are back

First recording featuring the new four piece line-up so nobody has to multi-task now and the results feel very effective.  This one features some of their sweetest riffing yet and when it’s set to a huge, swirling sea of sound and pushed on its way by the crashing rhythms, it sounds positively heroic.

Carlton Melton have always made the most engrossing musical landscapes that a listener could possibly wish to lose themselves in but this time it feels both more focused and more spontaneous

This is the finest Californian headfood you could wish for. Sail on, everyone!

Laibach – Love Is Still Alive

We tuck into another wonderfully bewildering Laibach release

I’ve been following Laibach now for thirty years and somehow I keep on being surprised. It’s as inevitable as death and taxes now. Nothing could have prepared me for the song “Love Is Still Alive”. It’s a beautiful country pop song that makes me laugh and beam from ear to ear.

The song describes how the earth has been destroyed but love is still alive as the narrator and his beloved ride a rocket through the Universe in search of a new home.

It perhaps makes more sense given its original context in the soundtrack to the film “Iron Sky 2” (still not seen it but the original was a hoot) but still comes as a massive bolt from the blue and a devastatingly accurate one too. As for the video, well, I don’t normally post promotional videos in the middle of reviews but I feel like pausing a moment to flag this work of art

Of course the humble medium of ‘promotional video’ has always transcended its original purpose in the hands of Laibach, a multidisciplinary collective.

As does the concept of an ‘EP of versions’. Looking at the track list you could be forgiven for thinking this is a load of remixes or alternative mixes/takes but this being Laibach its nothing so simple.

What you’re actually getting are variations on a theme, radical rearrangements of the song taking it through disco, ambient, pop, Joe Meek, dub, Vega/Rev and club music. When there are vocals, they’re often different versions.

To befuddle the listener even further, these versions often segue into one another creating the effect of “Love Is Still Alive” as being one huge, epic, far-reaching suite of sound.

If Laibach had never existed and you wrote a fictional book that matched their real-life story, you’d be panned for writing something so far fetched and unrealistic. “Love Is Still Alive” is the latest outrageous chapter and it sounds fantastic.

Old Million Eye – Live at Beauty Supply

I love the idea of January 1st releases. I woke up to a new year and three essential new albums ready to download on Bandcamp. This one really raised my eyebrows as I’ve listened to a lot of Old Million Eye these last two years but never seen them live or heard a live recording before.

As I suspected, it’s a whole new angle on the project. There’s still that whole psychedelic drone meets deconstructed sing thing that I associate with the project but instead of the multi-layered sound voids, it’s totally stripped down. There’s clearly no backing tapes just a man, his tools and his creativity let loose on a very lucky audience.

Whats impressive to me is I can hear what sounds like an audience, the shuffle of feet and the snap of a ringpull but I dont hear any yapping. Which is how it should be. This might sound like an odd thing to say about a live album but this is really one to listen to on headphones (unless you happen to have a high quality P.A. system at home) so you can absorb all the details and ambience.

I always thought of Old Million Eye as being such a studio thing but now it’s on the record that this extraordinary sonic alchemy can be caught in the wild and on the strength of this album, I’m putting that on my bucket list.

 

 

review of SANTAKA – NO RIVERS HERE

A beautiful bed of warm bass supports an exploring stream of electronics and jazziness here. Imagine a nocturnal jam between Cluster and late period Talk Talk remixed by Adrian Sherwood as the score for some 70s crime flick. I know that sounds unlikely, nay unbelievable but that is what seems to be wafting from my speakers and enveloping my room. It makes perfect sense that this is a collaboration between two seasoned pros, one from the world of out there jazz and the other from the world of out there club music. A meeting of envelope-pushers you might say and this is neither of those things, but some utterly twisted chimera, spliced from them and gouged into something new.

If you like fresh music that puts you in a similar headstate then this one will take you there. It’s deep, enchanting, unique and exceptional.

Trevor Beales – Fireside Stories

Everyone loves a tale of lost genius that it can be all too seductive when a press release comes along promising such. Add in a dash of Hebden Bridge then wrap it up in the contemporary photographs of Charlie Meecham and the omens were so strong that anything other than a revelation would be a severe disappointment.

Thankfully it delivers on the promise and the vinyl is already on its second pressing before I’d even written my review. You’ve got the intimate ambience of a guy taping his stuff in an attic but then given the modern mastering by Andrew Liles. What he’s done with cassette recordings from the early 70s is nothing short of miraculous.

He really could play that guitar and sing with a full heart but the most surprising part is how his original compositions sound like they’ve stepped out of some classic songbook. You could imagine John Renbourn covering these songs with a cheery aside about “old classics”

Trevor Beales died suddenly at the age of 33 in 1987. Its taken all this time for his music to reach us but it’s found its time and it’s place.

Tokio Ono – Individuals

This is one of those albums that you need for stress emergencies. It’s the first album I’ve heard that’s made me think of 16 bit CD-Rom game soundtracks as it does Tangerine Dream.

There’s a beautiful sense of melody matched to a big, wide sound. The percussion is spacious, and the mood is very special. It’s hard not to imagine myself on an alien beach, having a wonderful time.

What we have here is someone who’s gift for composition is as great as his skill at production. Someone who can paint the walls with his music and make you feel like you’re somewhere else.

Review of Ben LaMar Gay – Certain Reveries

Walking an extraordinary tightrope between free jazz and song, this album us another testimony to the power of duos. Ben is mainly on his cornet, though he does add a little synth and vocals in there too, and matched perfectly to drummer Tommaso Moretti.

It’s a match made with searing chemistry, both artists expressing perfectly together. It hits all my favorite jazz adjectives: questing, nocturnal, spiritual, instinctive, ecstatic, experimental – sometimes simultaneously.

I never heard a cornet sing like this before and damn me if that ain’t the perfect drummer for it to bounce off.

Sweet sounds.

Salvatore Mercatante – Decas

If you like your electronic music big, dark and elegant then this is going to take you away. Think icy but elegaic synths, crisp drums and warmest, deepest bass.

It made me think a little bit of peak Biosphere. That high fidelity sound, the sharp minimalism and intense atmosphere. The rhythm providing more for the composition than the dance floor

There’s something immensely immersive about the sound. I called the music ‘icy’ but at the same time it has a really ‘warm’ analog sound.

If you’re looking for some electronic music with a soul and with a ton of atmosphere then this is it.