VIDEO: Moon Duo - Fallout

Blazing new video for new single Fallout by mild back-of-the-brain-burning obsession Moon Duo, from their Mazes LP out now on New York label Sacred Bones.

VIDEO: Peaking Lights - Amazing & Wonderful

This should need no introduction for you: The greatest track from the album of the year.

Umesh Amtey Re-Presents Erebus Magazine

Umesh Amtey of Brown Jenkins and The Ash Eaters has restarted his blog Erebus Magazine.

http://erebuszine.blogspot.com/
 
You can also find it on Facebook

There's over 300 interviews, reviews and opinions in there to get into. Not only is the man a visionary black metal musician but he writes with laudable impiety on the vastness of all that encompasses the scenes of black and death metal.

The re-introduction to his blog starts HERE


The most recent article up is his full thoughts on the recent Ash Borer casette on Psychic Violence.

"If an artist doesn’t reflect his own life and strive to communicate his own emotions in his music do his creations have “value” in relation to musical tropes that relentlessly seek innovation and new mutations through the eye of novel, personal reflection? I don’t believe so. In relation to other concepts, tastes or desires for pleasure in music these creations of course have a different form of “value.” These concepts and tastes are in themselves entirely personal and subjective. This is why arguments about “value” in art are, at least in my opinion, almost completely superfluous as one tries to hint at or play with the seductive forces of what is, for most people, a concrete clarity and direction in a perceived objectivity. "

REVIEW: Nearone - Presents (Inner Island)

Nearone
PresentsInner Islands
BANDCAMP




Following the Wyld Wyzardz release is another new cassette from my current drone-crush label Inner Islands. Nearone is a possibly one-off project recorded live and straight to tape in New Zealand the duo of Sean "Gkfoes Vjgoaf" Conrad and Rosa.  Conrad usually haunts the woods of California but is currently out in the wilds of New Zealand soaking up the multitude of incredible landscapes they have out there and the difference is already informing his music.  An artist that has been distinctly influenced by his environment by design, this is an album of peaks, humid vegetation, slow streams and churning seas. These enormous influences are channelled across a peaceful meditative seven tracks of wildly differing lengths, allowing ideas to pop up like flashes of colour bursting from the undergrowth, or unfold and develop like tectonic activity. Some huge contemplative and ritualistic pieces such as Wood Be Rain and Gathering contrast with the fleeting visits of Bees and Behind The Cottage.

Lush and trancey and a must for all fans of folk-drone.

Sean Conrad has also recently given out an even more languorous and patiently meditative chime and drone one-track download by his new project named Ashan, titled Piece of Joy.

DOWNLOAD - Ashan - Piece of Joy
In his own words, Conrad says:

"Ashan is to be a place for healing, loving, and openness. the music of Ashan is to be given and received with an open heart. it is teaching from 'the gentle way', the way of Ashan. i would love to share these sounds with you anywhere: in the forest, on the beach, in a house, in the street, wherever feels right.."

VIDEO: Moths - Summer

New track and video from Ireland's electronic teen superstar (a title inevitable and fitting) Moths.  Video directed by www.feelgoodlost.me

Lovely vertiginous free-falling and floating feeling evoked by the relationship betwen visual and audio, a combination working in harmony exactly as it should be.

PREVIEW: Nice Weather For Airstrikes Festival

The Nice Weather For Airstrikes Festival starts this coming Friday at The Druids pub in Brighton. Part of the Brighton Fringe, the festival, now in its third year see some of the best Post Rock / Math / Shoegaze bands from around the UK and beyond come together for one mammoth free festival.

Keep your eyes on their Facebook page, Event page and the NWFA Twitter for all last minute news and bits...there will also be a secret guest performer announced later in the week.

If you can't make it down to the days NWFA will be streaming the whole event live at these sites:
http://www.facebook.com/l/81d2bx75ml0nsEiiRlKmYnp0QSA/niceweatherforairstrikes.co.uk AND http://www.facebook.com/l/81d2bq68hW0DdytyqDVCQjFKt7g/nwfafestival.co.uk

Here's the full final line up and stagetimes:

Friday 27th Brighton Electric Stage:

SHAPES 11pm
SILENT FRONT 10pm
ORDERS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 9pm
CROOKED MOUNTAIN, CROOKED SEA 8pm

Saturday 28th Bardsley's of Baker Street Stage:

THE CONTINUOUS BATTLE OF ORDER 11pm
THEO 10pm
DELTA SLEEP 9pm
Secret Guest Performer 8pm

Sunday 29th The Music Box Stage:

STRANGE DEATH 11pm
A GENUINE FREAKSHOW 10pm
MONSTERS BUILD MEAN ROBOTS 9pm
CROWNS ON THE RATS ORCHESTRA 8pm

Monday 30th Pixies Daycare Stage Alldayer:

NORDIC GIANTS: 10pm
EVI VINE: 8.50 - 9.30pm
JUFFAGE: 7.50 - 8.30pm
SLOW REVOLT: 6.50 - 7.30
SPEAK GALLACTIC: 6 - 6.30pm
DARK DARK HORSE: 4.45 - 5.15pm
KARHIDE: 4 - 4.30pm
SOREBONES: 3.15 - 3.45pm
LAISH: 2.30 - 3pm
KARL-JOHAN NILSSON:1.45 - 2.15pm
LOWLAND RUNNERS:1 - 1.30pm

Helvete Journal of Black Metal Theory - Call For Art

Repost from the Black Metal Theory blog for the Helvete journal.

Call for papers for the full Incipit issue still open, along with this new invitation:

Incipit: Open Issue
Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory (Vernal Equinox 2012)
Curated pages by Amelia Ishmael
www.helvetejournal.org

The curator of Helvete, a new journal of black metal theory, invites visual artists to submit works for the journal’s inaugural issue. Paralleling the thematic call for articles, the theme for this issue’s curated pages is open in two senses. Firstly, it is an open issue in that all submissions appropriate to the journal’s general theme will be considered. Secondly, the curator encourages contributors to consider the topic itself open just as the
first issue of a periodical publication is its opening. Thus, submissions that interrogate the problematics of beginning and genesis—or of openings, apertures, holes, etc.—at the conjunction of black metal and visual art will be given priority.Helvete is an open access electronic and print journal dedicated to continuing the mutual
blackening of metal and theory inaugurated by the Black Metal Theory Symposia. Not to be confused with a metal studies, music criticism, ethnography, or sociology, black metal theory is a speculative and creative endeavor, one which seeks ways of thinking that “count” as black metal events—and, indeed, to see how black metal might count as thinking. Theory of black metal, and black metal of theory. Mutual blackening. Black metal as a language of contemporary art practices a transmodality between sound and vision, mutually blackening both art and metal, and thus pushing the limits of contemporary academic genres by definition.


Schedule
Entries will be accepted through August 1, 2011.
Artists will be notified of decisions in November 2011.
The project is scheduled for publication in March 2012.


To Submit
Proposals may be sent to the curator at helvetejournalart@gmail.com
Each artist may submit 3 original images. Each file should be in jpg format, 1 MB, 300dpi, and at least 1000 pixels across. Files must be titled with your last name, first initial, "underscore" and the correlating number to match the entry form. (Example: IshmaelA_Blackened1.jpg)

DOWNLOAD: GuMMy†Be▲R! - Sleeping In Dubai

Gorgeous new track from GuMMy†Be▲R!, Sleeping In Dubai is another landmark in Gummy's output of steadily subtle and detailed productions hitting just the right place between club beats and beach daze. Totally sucking up the close feel of 100% humid 20 degree night air and slowly pouring it out over silky insistent beats and a salacious hook, this track is so seductively smooth and hot it has to be one of his finest.

DOWNLOAD: Mother Network - Interpretations of Empty Landscapes

Mother Network
Interpretations of Empty Landscapes
DOWNLOAD
Right off the back of the Polyverse split comes this solo album from Las Vegas based J-Sleazy, aka Jason Holmes. National Geographic rich vistas of lush naturalist scene setting love-ins with the rhythm and harmonies of the planet.  In his own words: "ambient forest-themed soundscapes I've had lying around for a while, with a crescendoing smash at the last track."

Go download over on Bandcamp and sign up to his Soundcloud

DOWNLOAD: Polyverse / Mother Network Split - Oceanic Dynamics EP

Polyverse / Mother Network
Oceanic Dynamics EP
DOWNLOAD


Split release from two electronic artists that seem to be developing significant shapes for themselves out of the nebulous but infinitely malleable soundworlds that drone has to the capacity to yield.  Three pieces each, of relatively/very short running times.


The Polyverse tracks offer up alternate universes in themselves; Younger Hours, Older Voices is beguiling ambience, all translucent irridescence layered upon each other, one side of the shell. Inside it is a flickering netherworld of beats suspended in the slimy flesh of the creature within. Very tasty, two quick slurps and they're in your system. Seductive and addictive.

The Mother Network tracks that add the shell, something hard and crusty. I wrote about his first savage Nintendocore release at the start of April (here), but this is something far more elegant and refined, but not as sub-zero chilled as he is capable of taking things. Dox Organica has a keening tone that offsets anything calming within it, the gentle expansion and contraction of it's undulating beat sequence regulating your senses to trance-inducing ends were it not for the recalcitrant jarring he deploys near the end.  There's a further remnant of the 8-bit projects this artists also works on in Spirocysts; hi-fi Zelda explorations and fantasy questing soundtrack, it's optimistically searching melody a paen to hours of absorption with controller in hand.

VIDEO: Blondes - Pleasure

Finally! After a week of waiting this video has been unlocked for public consumption. Here is the new Blondes track Pleasure from their forthcoming RVNG Intl. 12" Business/Pleasure.  More totally lush all consuming cosmic-Italo retro-modernity to bathe your synapses in.

The video has been made by Farley Gwazda. Assembled entirely from animated gifs - scientific diagrams, mathematical figures, representations of data, and renderings of simulated systems, this video appropriates images meant to serve as a rational demonstration of logical concepts and transmogrifies them into a cosmic trip.

In the same way that Blondes use analogue instruments to humanize electronica and create psychedelic soundscapes, this video explores irrational paths to knowledge and investigates how information is processed into meaningful experience.

VIDEO - Austra - Lose It

How gorgeous is this song? Appropriately detached video too. Pretty sure there's some textbook psychoanalytical issues being illustrated in here. The way they're all so coquettishly amused throughout is as endearing as the track itself. Layered up vibrato vocal finale? I just burst.

Austra's debut album Feel It Break is out now on Domino

DOWNLOAD: Wreck and Reference - Black Cassette (Self-Release)

Wreck and Reference

Black Cassette

DOWNLOAD

Read the article about this on the excellent Lurker and barely finished reading before I jumped to download it.  It's Metal of many kinds with no guitars, a “DIY electronic Doom band” crafting “wastelands of sonic chaos and despair”; it's digital noise formed into blackened metal shapes overshadowed by the hand of doom. It has a sense of the industrial about it, but not Industrial; the electronics providing electrical charge, thunderstorms of crackling intensity. The vocals sound a lot like David Tibet, a haunted nasal form of rhythmic speech, intoned with holy menace and latent grandiosity.  You might have to be told that the wall of roaring static pouring from the speakers come from key-tones rather than steel string abuse so stylistically textural is the sound, yet in a similar way to how Servile Sect suck up Metal and Atmosphere and produce something alien sounding out of the familiar, Wreck and Reference also produce a parallel take on metal and subvert the pre-requisite set-up for producing it in the process. There's shades of the shadowy Menace Ruine about the smoky shapes blown out of the atmospheres.  A thick, tense and tangible threatening presence.   

The dark storm of All The Ships Have Been Abandoned crashes waves of rousing noise against a titanic beat then stutters to a climax building a rockier groove into its spaces.  In Chains starts with furious drumming that smooths down to a thick bass tom beat for the veils of noise to descend over them, vocals and keys soaring upwards to meet another euphorically bleak wall of crashing turbulence.  The finale is one of the most powerfully stirring pieces of music you might hear all year; concluding the record's existential themes of human futility and finity in a simultaneous maelstrom of all emotion as waves of bliss stained bleakness crash and flutter into cosmic oblivion.

This release isn't just digital, and if all 50 copies of the cassette tape haven't sold out already listening to this should not take long to convince you to own it.  Tapes come in black hand sewn cloth sleeve with lyric insert. The band are currently working towards a full length album, but this release should easily sustain you for longer than they might possibly take to record it.

On another head-spinning note, it turns out that one half of the duo – Ignat - used to be in a band called Bison who pre-empted Women's post-Sonic Youth textural strung out rock musics by about two years with an excellent demo and the track Painted Gold which I played to death in the early days of NFR.  Amazing.

VIDEO: Mater Suspiria Vision - Seduction of the Armageddon Witches

One of my favourite - and therefore one of the greatest - witch house tracks to have started the whole genre gets a re-recorded makeover and lusciously hi-def video directed by Diego Barerra - Mater Suspiria Vision's Seduction of the Armageddon Witches. If you're not into that track title, or this piece itself this genre was never going to be for you.  Not in the reverb heavy minimalist ghost drone vein anyway.  The video is a beautifully shot dreamily azure-blue hued fairytale involving potions, incantations, and shadowy figures wearing appropriately unambiguous robes doing very alluring things with alluring objects. What is not to love?

MSV played London last night at a God Don't Like It show along with Story of Isaac and Drumcunt. I trust it was packed and people lost their shit.

Seduction of the Armageddon Witches will be available on limited 300 edition blue vinyl 7" through Мишка Records from June.

REVIEW: Wyld Wyzrdz - Free Magic (Inner Islands)

Wyld Wyzardz
Free Magic
Inner Islands
BANDCAMP

This is the third release from Californian naturalist psych label Inner Islands and it is from the solo project of label owner Braden McKenna himself, Wyld Wyzardz - chief propoent of the meditative Earth music his label personifies.

Three tracks of immersive oceanic flotation drone, all sun sparkles and fresh salty sea breeze. The twenty-minute opener Ocean Wind plays on a softly lilting motif that winds gently onwards like an ambulating river down towards the sea; three central themes, a deep undercurrent of thick tones, an almost birdsong like trebly refrain that calls from the tops of each wave of mid-toned synth thrum as it peaks. It sounds really clean and fresh, crystal clear waters swishing at the banks of a channel that drifts toward an increasingly open outlet and the expanse of the pacific. The second much shorter track, Forest Light, is beholden in thrall to the bird-song it samples, almost a pre-requisite for being released on the label, McKenna emphasies the subtly harmonic and rhythmic ways in which the accompaniment of nature can enhance the glowing energies of this nu-age synthesiser drone. There's the sense of a timeline being traced as the album progresses, the long slow dawn, through a hazy midday then a cooling down and darkening. The final track Dragon's Garden ends with the chirruping of crickets and the creak of frog song – dusk drawing in on the close of the album.
Free Magic is out now available as download or 12" & d/l

VIDEO: Mountains - Blue Lanterns on East Oxford

The new Mountains album is incredible, simply put. The duo of Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp have developed, and in some ways eclipsed the deeply resonant layes of textures that copiled 2009's Choral. Air Museum channels it's acoustic instruments through analogue pedals and hardware instead of the software previously used for an even warmer finish to the sound. The relationship betwen the layers of instrument is less about goading each other toward a peak and more about rhythmic interplay and coulouring in the details of the journey rather than focussing on the end itself.

Here's the promo video for Blue Lanterns on East Oxford.

Air Museum is out now on Thrill Jockey

REVIEW: Sealings - 'Untitled' (Italian Beach Babes)

Sealings
'Untitled'
Italian Beach Babes

Buckle up for the forthcoming ep from this Brighton based band of shapeshifting noise-rock fiends Sealings. It doesn't have a title because they "usually forget about those" but it does have four tracks of incendiary raw power with just a slight enough hint of subtlety to make you prick up your ears. It also has this cover! 

Fans of the clench-fisted sludge rock spewed out from the likes of Mayyors, Twin Stumps and Rusted Shut will take succour from this but there's a sleeker, darker sensibility lurking about within the shadows of its rhythm section.

Steaming oiled pistons push this machine along, rippling underneath the fiery buzz of guitars. Opening track King Shot is is howling salvo of leads, barking and squealing across each other. The steel gets stripped back off the second track, Swag Chandelier bringing in the street-wave pulse of a beat, eerie and menacing; Suicide by way of Brighton town. Cruel World rides the same rails even harder, accelerating the tempo and summoning sheets of smoke-damaged distortion to confuse your senses, throwing in some almost clear cut lead lines towards the end which lead nicely into the final Black Hole, which is the closest this EP comes to allowing your ears room to breathe, easing off the intensity and producing a half-light melody, something approaching prettiness against the backdrop of carnage still smouldering behind it.

The release will be limited to 100 light blue cassettes and ships on 30th May. You can order HERE, listen to Cruel World HERE

and stream/dnld King Shot here:





You can download a few of their previous now-out-of-print releases from the band themselves by pointing your clicker over these words, including the split that first caught my ear and burned it right off back in '09:

My Boyfriends Dead ep (Clan Destine)

Tie Dye Tapes

Split w/Lois Magic (Free Loving Anarchists)

PREVIEW: Outer Church May Edition - Old Apparatus / Embla Quickbeam / Kemper Norton

This month's Outer Church event is coming up on Wednesday. Another incredible selection of artists to open a portal through your mind and out to the other side.  Not sure who will be styling visuals for our ocular fixation but past events have provided approriately hypnotic accompaniment, so I'd expect nothing less this time round.  See you at Komdia on Wednesday.

Kemper Norton; "Cornwall’s foremost slurtronic collective" have recently begun playing live and will unpack the contents of their pagan soundboards to initiate proceedings. Dusty dreams downloaded from the Heavens, woven from the trees and moulded from the Earth before your very ears. Download several albums, eps and tracks from their website to get your synapses primed:  HERE




Second up is magickal mystery sound collage from Brighton's Embla Quickbeam; haunting, surreal experimental drone looped out of language and out-of-body.


 


A headline set from Old Apparatus looks like it might match the physically imposing set from Raime a couple of months ago. they both share a similar sense of crumbling civilisation to their sound, Raime conjuring the turbulent spectral imprint of a recently destroyed metropolis, Old Apparatus occupy a space slinking between the shadows, between streets, posessing the soul of the darkest recesses and corners.

VIDEO: The Oscillation - Future Echo

Future Echo is is one of the most entrancing phosphorescence streaked psychedelic night drives on The Oscillation's new album Veils. It's a record that swings between vintage 70's Kraut propulsion to baggy swagger through spiralling analog rhythmic ambience with psyclobic ease. A British group who have previously released on DC Recordings, home to the equally Teutonic The Emperor Machine and recorded with Death in Vegas' Tim Holmes.  This is a pretty cool video that highlights the darkened psychedelia to good effect. Trip out hard to this.

Veils is out now on CD and double LP on All Time Low Productions.

L*A*S*T*F*M

Weekly listening Last.fm/DiS stats time

Blackbirds & blue tits

01. Thee Oh Sees - 48

02. Food Pyramid - 44

03. Mountains - 31

04 Kemper Norton - 28

05. Mark McGuire - 18

06. Gkfoes Vjgoaf - 14

06. The Weeknd - 14

08. Altar of Plagues - 12

08. Vondelpark - 12

10. Harassor – 11

1 – 'Castlemania' is really good, as ever. Like the new sneery nasal vocal style, a couple sound like it actually is Rocky Erickson singing. Dwyer is one of my heroes, if I have any - was going to see them on the 27^th, have to go away for work. Fucking shit it.

2 – 'New Omni-Directional Healing Techniques' out on Debacle Records is insanely deep shape-shifting pastoral electronic hypnagogic drone.

3 – 'Air Museum' is possibly even better than 'Choral' – sends its acoustic instruments through analogue effects and a real studio instead of digital and a little home set up and sounds all the more lush and detailed for it.

4 – psyching up for the ritual of the Outer Church on Wednesday with a load of releases from the last couple of years. In their words: "Cornwall’s foremost slurtronic collective"

6b – I don't listen to 'House of Balloons' enough, it's awesome.

8a – Intensely heavy, ultra fast double kick laced atmospheric doom from Ireland. New album 'Mammal' out on Profound Lore – so that's one of the most interesting bands around releasing a record that eclipses their previous, coupled with one of the most consistently excellent labels. Good things.

10 – fucking nasty grimy blackened spite metal from California.

Track of the week:

Finding it hard to pick tracks out at the moment. Maybe Reach A Bit Further by Wild Beasts, or my 4am recording of the dawn chorus on Wednesday!

  4.30 Dawn Chorus at Patcham Village by Meatbreak

VIDEO: The Weeknd - Sundays

Happy Saturday, it's The Weeknd!!

VIDEO: Kam3L3iN - The Dirty

Here's a new video for fresh out the box Canadian electronic artist Kam3l3in from the ever compelling Synaesthesiae Films production team.  This clip kicks off with flickering cathode-ray feedback, slowly morphing into beat highlighting slices of neon emerging from the many intestitial spaces of expressive blackness.  As ever with the videos from Synaesthesiae, it suits the music sublimely, subtely enhancing fashion. 

The track is available to download as part of the two-track IN! ep from Bandcamp with a further third cut on his Soundcloud.

STREAM: Monolithian - Monolithian EP

Incredible EP of blackened doom metal from new Cornish duo Monolithian. Shades of the ragingly epic Charger abound in the first track Yog Sothoth's coruscating vocal performance, the claustrophobic tones of the piece crushing the air and light out of the room with a slow momentum that shifts forward in heaving movements. There's also the distinct imprint of Electric Wizard stamped into the slow moving grooves as clouds of smoke billow into dark shapes in the wake of each new riff pushing through.

There's no other web presence for this band other than their Soundcloud page - not even a Last.fm, but keep an eye out for an increasing profile, for it is sure to follow hot on the heels of this.

STREAM: Teeth - Deathbomb Arc Singles Club

Two newly uploaded tracks from London's black neon electro rock club corrupters TEETH. These tracks were released as part of the expansive, eclectic, hair-raising, spine-chilling foot-stomping Digital Singles Club series from Deathbomb Arc. You can get the full back catalogue, sign up for future releases and see some of the upcoming artists HERE. Each digital single comes with specially made artwork by Mario Zoots of Modern Witch.

REVIEW: Stick In A Pot - A Number More Than Nothing At All (Sad Sentry)

Stick In A Pot
A Number More Than Nothing At All
Sad Sentry

BANDCAMP

Stick In A Pot hit me up with this, his debut full length album months ago and I've been playing steadily ever since, constantly expecting to finish this write up, intended to get it before its release date in March but never quite squeezed it out. It's a grower as much as it is instantly likeable; took me a while to really recognise the subtle nuances of the vocals styles as something more than an amalgamation of Stuart Murdoch and Nick Drake; there's a real tapestry of sound weaving the songs together that might not be instantly noticeable - especially if at first you're presented with it being an album by one Piers Blewett, when in fact it has been recorded with a band of six people and more than twice as many instruments again beyond the expected acoustic guitars and drums, including glockenspiel, synths, drone machines and radio frequencies, mandolin and dulcitone, none of which are used arbitrarily. There's a great intuitive ear going on with the compositions, plenty of space to let notes hang when at other times there will be some neat tone or unhurried counter melody sliding through the opening.

Of the ten tracks on the album Synaesthesia is probably my favourite though I'm a sucker for the subject matter it helps that the song is a beguilingly layered up piece about psychological dissonance. Leaving folk structures and lyrics aside Procrastina features lovely humming loops of droning guitar melody overlapping and weaving round each other in long cycles of plangent elation.


Brighton has quite a wealth of folk oriented artists and a scene that has been in rude health in recent years with the Woodland Recordings and Wilkommen Collective groups alone offering a number of inspired performers and this album compares favourably to those established and seriously talented artists.




Here's the video to Navel Lint, the first single taken from the album in February:

DOWNLOAD: Harassor - Harassor (Universal Consciousness)

Harassor
HarassorDOWNLOAD

Debut full length album from the three-piece primitive black metal LA based Harassor.  Long time fans of NFR may remember me playing their stuff out at DJ sets a few years back whenever I felt the urge to go on the full-on-anti. This is equally as good as those early day demos, the production not being cleaned up in the slightest - just enough seperation between the instruments to make them discernable but keep them mulched together with murky primordial sludge. They describe themselves as “primitive black-sludge metal grind thrash savagery” and have precious little time for much else than doing just that. They say on their fb page: "We grimly demand the extermination of mankind" , grinding out appropriately nasty old school riffage as a single minded entity intent on pure annihilation.

The vinyl is released on Universal Consciousness but the band have also put up the digital version for free download from their Bandcamp.

DOWNLOAD: Felt Drawings - Body

Felt Drawings
Body
DOWNLOAD

Last year I posted up some of Dominic Tiberio's free Felt Drawings mp3s that he'd posted on his website, along with the links to two eps on his Bandcamp page. Hearing just the first few bars of his music insipred on of those urgent post immediatly responses. Something heavy is going on here and it needs spreading and my response to hearign this album has been no different. That he has released his first full length album as a FREE DOWNLOAD is an act of deviant generosity in the same vein of spirit that imbues all of the tracks on it.  Like rolling Cold Cave's Loves Comes Close and Cremations together into a darkane concoction of fizzing hissing sleek pop silhouettes. there's the shadowy presence of Blank Dogs lurking in the background, as well as all their own original 80's forbears - In My Room even buries an echo of the Knight Rider theme into its pulsing background synth strata.

Baroque and theatrical, shady and withdrawn; these tracks simultaneously sound bedroom-bound and theatre sized, the smells of grimy industrial sweat and musty velvet stage wings mingling as the effects of the songs shift mood, atmosphere and intent. Definitely an album that will be getting a lot of plays out of me.

Citizens of DiS! It is you civic duty to cast your words to the Last.FM thread

I started this one off this week.  Making up for not doing one for so long. Good to be back in my anally retentive obsessive mode. 

DiS Vs. Last.fm Vs. blog.

Been a while since I started one of these. Been a whiel since I've even posted in one - a whole month I think.

Hey ho. Let's go!

01. Wild Beasts - 51
02. Teeth Gnashers - 48
03. Miracle Fortress - 46
04. The Donkeys - 24
04. Felt Drawings - 24
06. Weyes Blood And The Dark Juices - 18
07. Sealings - 16
07. Peaking Lights - 16
09. The Fresh & Onlys - 15
10. Petrels - 14

1 – Surprised this is only 51 listens. Beautifully restrained, sensually epic, glacially cool and hotter than the sun.

2 – couple of dirty little ratbags making nihilistic punk flecked black metal like Bone Awl but taking the piss a little bit more and adding an LA take on Dead Reptile Shrine's folk wyrdness with it.

3 – new album is totally different to Five Roses, but also similar. Drastically similar? It's just as lush but a lot more electronic – sort of Chillwavey...sort of. Hold off the hounds.

4a – Brilliant retro rock that sounds a lot like the Stones. Each side starts slow, builds into some rocking riffy ultra-catchy numbers then slides out on a long sitar lead instrumental. Dozy, smoky ever so slightly dopey – but then they're called The Donkeys innit.

4b – think this guy is going to blow up big in a blog style (if that's still a thing to say). Noisy no-wave electro-pop. Think Cold Cave/Blank Dogs and an indeterminably intriguing something else.

6 – Ex Jackie-O-Motherfucker bassist makes folk music of her own, hibernates with spectral forces, re-emerges with a new album of ghost-loops and haunted chanting. NNF Power.

7a – Brighton based noise rock band about to release an EP on Italian Beach Babes. Got pulse, got riffs, got maxxxed up volume.

7b – Did somebody say we're not allowed to call records 'Summer albums'? Meh. This is coming into its own.

9 – Another retro rock band; garage psych, nicely chilled and less of a racket than previous releases. For me, this easily has their best songs on it.

10 – Very heavy, intense instrumental drone album – walls of tone. A Storm Petrel is a bird that can handle the worst the sea has to throw at it. Fitting metaphor.

VIDEO: The Soft Moon - "The Neighborhood" Interview (via Yours Truly)

"What started out as Luis Vasquez’ experiments with synthesizers became The Soft Moon, a San Francisco-based band whose synth layers and ghostly vocals create a raw, dark sound with an ethereal quality. You will find yourself haunted by this ominous post-apocalyptic sonic world."




Music media re-imaginators Yours Truly present an featurette on Luis Vasquez of The Soft Moon in their latest episode of The Neighborhood; a series of intimate interviews with local Los Angeles musicians and the music scenes in their neighborhoods.  If you haven't got hold of the self titled Soft Moon album on Captured Tracks, then you should rectify that immediately. It's an instant adreneline boos of strung-out, smoky post-punk noise & drone deviance, strobing repetition and milk-eyed euphoria. You only hear a tantalising glimpse in this video, so go jump on the clip for Circles after you watch this and be wowed.

DOWNLOAD: Teeth Gnashers - Leaves of Oak

Teeth Gnashers
Leaves of Oak
DOWNLOAD




New release from this Los Anglese duo who have been making anti-music for the last few years and have booted their four releases onto their Bandcamp to alternately download free or part stream. The newest, Leaves of Oak is a six-track affair of two characters- the first is a fiercly overdriven raging Bone Awl-esque riot of gnarly crust puink blackness, screeching violence choked from foaming lungs, riffs spitting spite on fire into the drum kit, the beats batting back with a blazing eyed nastiness. Subtelty isn't big on the agenda - Posessor starts off with the hoarse taunt "I'm gonna fucking rip you apart."  Their alternate foil, almost like their sheathed sword, is a bizarre form of subterranean freak folk, similar in mossy ritualism to Finnish outfit Dead Reptile Shrine, who share a similar provocative effect on listeners in the aggressive responses their music inspires in both high praise and flat-lining negativity.   They draw upon more of their acoustic weirdness in other releases, all of which are worth checking out if you're into anything remotely feral sounding.

The quotes Teeth Gnashers are proud to cite on their Last.fm page include "worst bullshit I've experienced all year long" and "terrible, absolutely fucking terrible" - which in their own way, and in this context are their own form of grandstanding bragadoccio; it's that bared teeth double fingered salute to any kind of positivity that is embraced by this ultra-harsh convergence of black metal and nihilistic punk.  The vocals really make it for me, I could listen to that rasping sneer all day, coupled with that almost D-beat two-two time signature drumming.

DOWNLOAD: Malibu Wands - Malibu Hounds

Malibu Wands
Malibu Hounds
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Four versions of Malibu Hounds reworked into altered states of consciousness by the God of Blues himself. For all the equatorial heat the repeated 'Malibu' may imply, this starts off with We All Wring Our Hands; a howling icy blast of chill-whipped distortion, a billowing gale of wintery atmosphere that blasts right out the speakers, deep into the marrow of your bones, followed up by 17 minutes of sparse beat spiked blizzard in the Fork It Over mix. The muted patter of beats doesnl;t have to move much under such harsh conditions in order to make its presence felt it's sinisterly effective and locks your attention into it for its full unyielding length. The third reworking is more spacious - Skeptic Sleeper bleeds heat and light in by chopping and glitching about a bit, fluttering clap beats batting gasps of air out of the suffocating chaos. The final 20 minuter Dreamstation begins ever so slowly, a space-crawl out into a glittering cosmos of suspended breath ambience. Clouds of vapour coalesce, as the starship begins its descent, burning and charring through the atmosphere before slowly floating down amidst smoky pallor. One of the heaviest and greatest of Malibu Wands releases to date.

DOWNLOAD: c0ld l▲k3 - Fashion Club 4 Eva

c0ld l▲k3
Fashion Club 4 Eva
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The art, the title, the music - everything about this is perfect subterranean two fingers up from the UK solo artist named (possibly) Johnny Walker. Over four releasses c0ld l▲k has been responsible from some pretty excellently hydra-headed carnage - the primal yet progressive combination of drone, noise, beats and feral atmospherics of Funeral Jah which I wrote about on its release being especially notable - and this is another totally warped string to his bow, losing off arrows that speed in uncertain paths, but all of which hit thir targets hard. There's three short swooning tracks of overly reverbed drag/screwed pop fantasia, loops to delirious infinity over their brief runnings, finishing on a 10 minute piece that sucks in jazz horns and piano into the melee. Moreover, again - That cover art!

VIDEO: Liturgy - Returner

Transcendental black metal gets its debut video, in the form of glass-ceiling smashing, looking-glass cracking stained-glass stroboscopic clip for Liturgy's Returner.  Will leave you breathless.  Directed by Zev Deans of Panorama Programming

VIDEO: Craft Spells - After The Moment

Brief, but by no means inconsequential post to present you with the video to one of my tracks of the year - After The Moment by Craft Spells from the exquisite album Idle Labor out on the equally spellbinding label du jour, Captured Tracks.  Clip is directed by Tyler T Williams. If it's not too disingenuous a statement, for me Craft Spells are this years Wild Nothing, who were last years Washed Out - and into that read that it's some of the most beguilingly compulsive listening released around the chillwave/80's nostalgia axis you'll hear.

VIDEO: Clams Casino - Gorilla / I'm God

Two videos for you from new TriAngle Records signee Clams Casino.  The first is the amazing glitterbomb video for the Rainforest EP's lead track Gorilla, directed by Jamie Harley who has also produced clips for How To Dress Well, Twin Shadow, Two Bicycles, Memory Tapes to name but a few.  Gorilla sounds bang in between the sludgy creeped-out sounds of oOoOO and the clearer eyed ambience of Balam Acab. The Rainforest Ep is out on 27th June.

Secondly, and even hotter off the presses is this unofficial video for I'm God from Kohnkepik made up of footage from Jean Rollins' Lost in New-York.



To whet your appetite further,Clams recently posted an instrumental hip-hop mixtape which you can download here

PREVIEW VIDEO: Khowi @ The Green Door Store, Tuesday 3rd May

New Brighton promotions duo Be Nothing are putting on US psychedelic dream-pop artist Kohwi as their first show at the Green Door Store tomorrow night - Tuesday 3rd May (it's fucking May already, how? and How?  The years are definitely getting faster - that's something to do with the Mayans, right?......anyway)

As opening statments of intent go, this is an excellent artist to put on - as high functioning a pop scientist as you could imagine - made all the more eye-catching with this actual video preview trailer for a gig.  You can't post it to lamposts and the backs of toilet doors around town like a regular flyer, but I can post it here, so here you go! The future, right here.

I raved wildly over Kohwi's album, Hidden Trees, in December never expected to see him performing in the flesh but here he is, in my own Brighton town, tomorrow night.  He's bringing with him his homemade new instrument - the Tangible Electrophonic Drumstick, which looks pretty incredible, as this video demonstrates:




Reason enough in itself to come along but I'm also really looking forward to hearing how tunes like this come beaming off the stage:. See you there.

DOWNLOAD: Bad Indians - Sounds From The Big Room (On The Make Music)

Bad Indians
Sounds From The Big Room
On The Make
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Must be something about the sun coming out that draws me into my garage rock spells; I am officially deep in thrall to one at the momentm, a fierce heat beaming onto my back and a pych-rock garage band version of Cheree blasting from the speakers. Hell yes.

The album was recorded to cassette 4-track in their empty Queens apartment but it sounds about as underground as you can get.  Acoustic guitar, organ, harmonica, bass drum, and tambourine recall all those dreamier sun-soaked acid-fried Nuggets comp tracks; Leavin This Place pulls the pace up until it starts reverse delay flipping its shit out, Moonchild of the Sabbath is a bit of a hollering beast that kicks shaopes out of its reverb duststorm, but mostly there's no teeth bared searing rama-lama here, just free-wheeling breezy heady slow-rolling ragged blues striped rock. For fans of garage rock, natch, but this should whet your appettite wll for the forthcoming albums from The Oh Sees and The Donkeys.

Download for $1, so effectively free to you. Get the tape from On The Make for $7