Tag: 2023

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 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.