Not For Resale

VIDEO: Turbowolf - Let's Die

2012-02-16T19:52:00.001Z

Brand new video for the new single from the finest rock band the UK currently owns - watch this and have Turbowolf own you right back.

This is one of the most ferocious tracks from their album, and one of the finer examples of how they manage to cram so many great moments into such a short space of time - the burbling synth prologue to the slamming intro riff then BLAM into the meat of the piece, squiggly, squealing, imploding guitar solo (how do they make that sound!?), heavyweight intense breakdown, instant classic lyrics, all blasting along with that unbridled sense of momentum that only the truest Rock can deliver - and it's called Let's Die! It;s all about careening into oblivion and embracing every moment of it.

The video, directed by Casey & Ewan is a futuristic and thrownback as the music - 70's style stop motion animation, velvet shirts, Chris' absurd facial hair, all booted into the future with copulating Terminator robotics and chipboard bedsheets. Sexy what?

There's no reason to to love the whole of this with the whole of your being.

The 14 track album is less than a fiver from iTunes, so go get. It wasn't in my Top 50 albums of 2011 for nothing.

NEW TRACK: Light Asylum - Shallow Tears

2012-02-16T10:30:00.000Z

Finally, a new release! Shallow Tears is the lead 12" single from Light Asylum's long-awaited, highly anticipated self-titled debut album, due out in May on Mexican Summer. The two-track single comes on suitably fetishistic limited edition white vinyl.

Dancing over the grave of the not-even-dead-yet Grace Jones, with a vocal comparisons all too apparent to avoid a reference, Shannon Funchess and Bruno Coviello return with another visceral tear-streaked symphony to emotion-haunted back alleys and dry-ice cloaked dancefloors. It starts with a peal of thunder,as dramatic an entrance as they could make, then the drums start pounding. This music is something else out there on its own. Even without Funchess' remarkable intonations there's enough resonant affect being squeezed out of the synths that each time she really opens up her lungs it reaches right into your chest and crushes your heart. A less coked-up Cold Cave in introspective sensitive mode, Shallow Tears rolls forward in stately fashion, blowing up into alternating surges of drum crescendos and vocal multitracking that freezes time and blows out way before your ready for the affair to be over.

The B-side, Genesis, is far more restrained, with a creeping paranoid melody line picking its way over a jittery drum track that slowly slides into a silvery vocodered vocal climax. A little bit HTRK, but again, an entity all of itself. It's the perfect foil to the grander A-side, a flawless 12" dropping a twin assault deep into your sensual perception, and the ultimate teaser to the10 track album, due out soon.

Order now from Mexican Summer.

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REVIEW: Ourobonic Plague - Post Human Possibilities

2012-02-14T10:30:00.000Z

New six-track release from the darkest corner of Australia, Ourobonic Plague follows up last year's GAAP ep with a longer stretch of industrial umbral imaginings. The irony in titling this Post Human Possibilities is that the effect of this album is to suck away all the kinds of positive potentials the word Possibility might bring to mind. It's a grey aurad environment that is cast here, a shadowy landscape of futility, chaos, dread and paranoia. None of the songs titles suggest an album that would allow a slice of light in.

The opening Her Reptile Dysfunction begins with unsettling reverberating tones and a keening sound that sneaks in under them only to grow into a wavering foreground sound that plays call and response with wordless feral utterings that crawl out from between them. Slowly the dull thump of a beat drags itself through the swampy textures to dominate the speakers, it's funereal procession harried by a rippling kick.
By contrast, the following Lake Slasher is a far more sprightly piece, with melodic lines flickering between the branching synths like bats in the night forest, cycling round in rabidly fluttering patterns. Return To The Lake plays on the effectiveness of adjusting the levels of disorientation around a minimal theme before the drag-crawling pitch-downed take on Nine Inch Nails that is Connection Failed preludes the huge end-piece of Washed Up On The Shore. The album closes on this sixteen minute vista of bleakness that takes half its length to gradually evolve from a primordial state into an achingly paced tempo of dread pounding and haunted mechanics. The cover art being drawn into perspective fully with that blood red sun silhouetting a scene of deserted industry, abandoned, derelict and lifeless. The track rolls forward in waves of toxic drone, breaking on to a bed of gritty vibration like the yellowed waters of a poisoned lake, fizzing at acid charred rocks of its lifeless bank.

You can imagine a solitary figure staring hopelessly outwards, watching as a weak sun sinks below the horizon leaving them alone in an unforgiving darkness.

Order from the Twice Removed Bandcamp

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Last of the FM heartbreakers

2012-02-12T12:40:00.000Z

Stats time. The thread is mine.

01. John Talabot -105

02. Ectoplasm Girls -44

03. Turbowolf - 40

04. Run DMT - 33

05. Clams Casino -32

06. Pop. 1280 - 30

07. Total Control -27

07. SPACEGHOSTPURRPRVIDER KLVN - 27

09. Cobalt - 15

09. Lanterns On TheLake - 15

09. Wild Nothing - 15

1 –Deep-house techno noise

2 – Swedish sisternoise
3 – Hairy Bristol noise
4 – Waking dream noise
5 –Untouchable intangible noise

6 – Grey dystopiannoise

7a – Australiansuperband noise
7b – Can't crowbar Noise into here
9a –Relentlessly charred noise
9b – Pretty sleeptime anti-noise
9c– Habitual listening ends up in the top 10. noise..

totw:

Talabot brings the distortion

REVIEW: Ashan - To Return To (Inner Islands)

2012-02-09T10:30:00.000Z

Sean 'Gkfoes Vjgoaf' Conrad's side project Ashan follows up last years single track Peace of Joy album with four long pieces of meditative acoustic trance. Ashan differs to the Gkfoes material in being less concerned with the physical realm, instead submitting itself to themes of love, peace, emotional tranquility and transcendence. The album is inspired by the book Ashan: The Gentle Way, a spiritual tome about "The vibration of creation, of harmony, of unification, and of love." No matter how cynically you want to view these themes, Conrad's embracing of this kind of flower power ideology is thoroughly sincere, as is the music he creates in thrall to it, and musically the resulting pieces probably work even better than the Gkfoes material because of it. The vocals in this album bestow it with a greater sense of wonder, Conrad's partner Rosa Beach-Mason and Braden McKenna contribute additional chanting and campfire lullaby madrigals to the tracks. You can imagine this being performed in a circle, the three performers locked into each others eyes and deeper, lost in an infinitely stretching moment of communion. There's a tangible resonance to the pieces that recalls Incredible String Band at their most spiritual, and these tracks sound like some of that band's finer, most elegantly concisely moments locked into spiralling patterns and repeated until trance state is achieved.

I don't really know who's making music of a similar style to this at the moment, maybe High Wolf at a push, but his is all tropical and steamy, this just goes for the soul and there's no one coming close to producing the effect that Conrad is capable of inducing. If you're in doubt as to what any of the above means, just get playing the stream below and realise I'm saying it's far out amazing.

Order the CD from the Inner Islands Bandcamp HERE

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DOWNLOAD: Robel Synthesia - Midnight Polaroids

2012-02-08T10:30:00.000Z

Another new ep/mini-album from Robel Synthesia, this one's concept simply being a silky glide through a night-time - maybe one of his, maybe several fleeting episodes stitched together, and the result is his strongest material yet. As a general law of the world which I submit to, everything good happens after dark, and here on Midnight Polaroids nightfall has brought out Robel's punchiest beats coupled with his strongest hooks and sense of chiming melody to date. Across his three releases there has been a steady build of assurance and ability, experimenting with concepts and working out what he's doing with his craft and it's becoming a very interesting path to watch him follow.

This new release has more of a hypnogogic pop bent to it, along the lines of James Ferraro's recent Far Side Virtual, the playful melodies fizz with the effervescence of bright-lit daytime TV themes, blurred into life through a semi-conscious state of recollection - in Ferraro's case it's pretty much conjured from his own warped mind, but here's the a definite sense of inebriation and narcotic intervention serving as the dividing line between what is real and what is illusionary here. Robel doesn't go so far as to create an alternate world-view with his work, he is more concerned with documenting and reflecting his realities, as with his previous album Neon Island which which his musical analysis of his obsession with the sun.

Streetlamp Waves starts the ep off on a hyper note, late sinking into the slow cool of Polaroids, Light Echoes and Taxi Colours both take the dreaminess of his previous eps and let the moon cast them in silvery relief, collecting the giddy expectations as an evening begins, the social carousing of the night club and introverted back-seat taxi ride home in the form of glittery amphetamine beats, Ativan coded synths and dopamine rousing drones.

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VIDEO: Halls - Lifeblood

2012-02-07T21:10:00.000Z

This video is directed by illustrator Ben Symonds, using footage from the BBC's Planet Earth and Frozen Planet - beating them to the punch of using the music over their footage he's used their footage under Halls' glacially evocative electronics. Lifeblood is the second track on the beautiful Halls' new Fragile EP available as a download and 12" vinyl from the label Sound of Sweet Nothing.

NEW TRACK: Voltage Black - Glass Graphic (Zen Mix)

2012-02-07T10:30:00.000Z

London based producer Voltage Black has just thrown up another track to complement his increasingly great catalogue. He's been steadily releasing one a month for the last year and his production skills are developing tangibly with each piece, last month's heavily vocalled Blackbirds, and the older Hashiriya showing dramatically different sides of his skills to this new one. All his pieces play with a certain take on an epic structure, building towards expansive climaxes, the density of the production expanding as the track progresses dropping bass and beats patterns with palpable thrust and sense of chaos. This is surely one of his heaviest.

Last fm to Brooklyn

2012-02-06T09:49:00.001Z

This week's heavy listening double post off of DiS

There's a new 1 month chart available. Woo stats fans!

WEEK

01. Pop. 1280 - 63
02. Turbowolf - 42
03. Letherette - 28
04. Total Control - 26
04. Screen Vinyl Image - 26
06. Clair Cassis - 24
07. Ectoplasm Girls - 22
08. Everyone to the Anderson - 21
08. Ashan - 21
10. Pete and the Pirates - 18
10. Julianna Barwick - 18
10. Run DMT - 18

01 – Dirgy post-punk b-movie horrorcore dystopia on Sacred Bones. I'm have abiased predisposition to love anything off that label, but the reason is itjust keeps turning out to be good. Thisweek’s highest entry makes my top ten of the month too.

02 – Constant in-car rotation for the greatest British rock band alive. Even my3 year old gets it. Asks for all the songs they say “Hey”, shouts along with“Seven severed heads”.

03 – Electro fetishised soul. Just got the second ep, so I’ve been playing botha bit.

04a – Can’t stop playing Henge Beat.Half the songs sound like different bands (which reminds me, I need to get thenew Balaclavas album)

04b – Got a little bit of filler (or maybe I’m just not a fan of the slowerstuff) , but the wall-of-noise shoegaze stuff is almost overwhelming. Not quite A Place to Bury Strangers, but it’sa slightly sleeker thing.

06 – Had a luxurious velveteen black metal moment

07 – TxNis fantastic! Swedish girl/girl spacious,surreal industrial noise minimalism littered with hooks and beats.

08a – More heavy in-car rotation playing the ...Inside A Horsealbum. I need to put their earlier epson my ipod. Looking forward to this bandblowing up as big as an angular post-rock hardcore band can.

08b – Different project from GkfoesVjgoaf’s Sean Conrad that plugs into the same rural acoustic nu-age psychedelichypnotics. New album on Inner Islands is four tracks of deep and heavy lucidjam.

10a – Got One Thousand Pictures too late for it to make my end of yearlist, which I think it would have.

10b – The Magic Place.

10c – Still marvelling at this summery acid psych even while it snows outside.

MONTH:

01. Run DMT - 186
02. Pete and the Pirates - 121
03. Total Control - 116
04. Colin Stetson - 107
05. Turbowolf - 106
06. Matthewdavid - 90
07. Screen Vinyl Image - 87
08. David Thomas Broughton - 78
09. Cold Cave - 68
10. Pop. 1280 - 63

TOTW – Ectoplasm Girls – Sexodrone (or anything off TxN really)

DOWNLOAD: Golau Glau - Revenant Branch

2012-02-03T14:31:00.002Z

Brand new EP from the mysterious Golau Glau collective for National Libraries Day. This band always have themes and intentions with their releases, they don't just make music for the sake of it, which is an inspiring motivation. It's good to have purpose other than for your own sake, more bands should take note.

This is a creepy, slow crawling ep. Sparse spidery beats propel sounds recorded from libraries around the UK in fetishitic, Anglophile hauntological fashion, and as an extention of that, it has a pared down industrial post punk sound. Beguiling atmospheredelia from England's dark Satanic mills.

DOWNLOAD

Info from the band belowwwww>>>>

Revenant Branch is an EP by Golau Glau for National Libraries Day 2012 on the Pin Factory label. This is the sound of the revenant library branch, the ghosts of dead libraries returning from the grave to remind us not to close any more.

Many of the sounds on the EP were recorded in public libraries across England that have now closed down.

National Libraries Day is one day devoted to all libraries – public libraries, school and university libraries, prison, national, law, business and commercial libraries. A nation-wide celebration of libraries, librarians and library staff in all sectors.

nationallibrariesday.org.uk

Golau Glau are working on a book about public libraries. We passionately believe in them as sources of culture, information and lifelong learning, and places of non-commercial, accessible society and sanctuary for all.

golauglau.wordpress.com

VIDEO: A Place to Bury Strangers - So Far Away

2012-02-02T16:56:00.002Z

A Place To Bury Strangers release their first full EP since the devastating Exploding Head album from 2009. Onwards To The Wall is their debut EP on Dead Oceans, dropping February 6 on CD/12"/Digital formats..

The EP contains five new tracks, of which this is the lead. It's got a blisteringly paced Instagram collage video to go with the blisteringly paced noise pop squall. Not totally convinced about the video, thought we'd seen the last of the washed out polaroids last summer. No matter. This track is so huge you'd be best advised to close your eyes and take it with a little sensory interference as possible.

Download it as a preview track courtesy of the label HERE

VIDEO: Liturgy - High Will

2012-02-01T14:14:00.001Z

New video for Liturgy's True Will. Full of the same jump cuts as the Returner video, it starts of at thirty thousand feet which is an appropriate place for a Liturgy track to position itself. Later on it jumps out to space. It's also got a lot of kitchy home-mvie clips and religious iconography which is slightly less fitting becasue there's nothing ironic or kitsch about this music but it lends itself pretty well nonetheless.

Liturgy are playing a few shows in the US opening for Sleigh Bells and Diplo. Either that's a God-sized middle finger up at the hipster-hating flack they get by embracing it, or the same salute to the hipster crowds they're about to headspin. No idea how that's going to roll, but heads will either way, surely.

DOWNLOAD: Vortex Rikers - Oceanic EP

2012-01-25T10:35:00.000Z

New ep of expansive teutonic ambience from Dortmund's Vortex Rikers. The Oceanic EP channels the same shivery occult spirit as their previous work, deep in rich seam of creativity that is steadily casting up releases all of which hum with a misty atmosphere, stalked by ghostly apparitions and eeiry sihouettes.

Oceanic opens with an elegantly paced intro, the title track, that is like a camera slowly panning out on to a wide open vista of foggy shores or early morning forested mountains, whatever the scene it is thick and wet and obfuscated by something that makes you crane into it and wills you closer. The steady deliberate pace continues throught the EP, illustrating one of the band's strengths in writing and programming; that they can hold such a slow tempo yet keep the suspense, momentum and atmosphere rolling forward with a cool control of tension. In the huge lansdcapes of the music there comes a sense of searching, a character lost in the fog, picking their way blindly and slowly, in constant motion but never able to reach its goal. That's the sadness of the music, that what is being sought can never be attained, that with the hope of discovery comes the threat of loss, that that constant slow motion rolling forward will be infinite, like the tides of the sea, ceaseless, doomed strands of synth stretching forward to an unseeable destination.

DOWNLOAD

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DOWNLOAD: The Ash Eaters - The Cruel Side EP

2012-01-24T10:17:00.000Z

Umesh Amtey's latest Ash Eaters release- The Cruel Side EP - is a pair of older tracks shown the light of day. In being pretty trebly due to the more basic production it's less dark, claustrophobic and heavy than previous releases, but then it predates them. What really makes anything Amtey touches stand out is the shifting polyrhythmic guitar layering and the way parts just keep on sliding and crashing into each other, cycling over riffs, incrementally building up the density of the pieces before unloading another couple of passages of that reframe everythign prior. These two tracks are just as good in that respect even if they're lacking in the thick brooding atmospheres that ooze out of his Brown Jenkins albums. If you actually love the hot feeling of rawness burning into your ears you'll love this, and if you have a passing interest in the places black metal and doom can be taken then you'll, again, love this.

DOWNLOAD

Bandcamp

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Top 50 Albums of 2011

2012-01-23T10:00:00.000Z

Hello 2012. I'm not sure whether this will be my first post of the year or the last. You might have noticed things dipped off to flatline by December. Several factors contributed to it enjoyable and otherwise, and I'm not sure they've all been satisfied or assuaged to the point where'll I'll be doing this as intensely as before. Maybe I'll start up a food blog this year, who can say at this stage. I've got a huge pile of drafts that I really want to post though, so I'm not done.

First thing's first with a new year. Recap the last one and impress some kind of permanency on to it with the year end list.

There's always talk of these things needing new paradigms, how year-end lists are anti-artistic, consumerist, innately meaningless, pointless even. Nah. You could create all the artistically worthy paradigms you like, integrity intact to the finest grain, but the question would still arise - yeah all good, but what did you like out of them the best? It's a totally valid question even if it is nigh on impossible to answer. Every year I take that question on and every year I find it a wonderfully satisfying, exciting, concluding experience. In revising the albums throughout the year I get to relive everything that has happened to me and this year has been off the scale amazing. So here's its soundtrack, in the correct order, complete with omissions and oversights.

50. Civil Civic – Rules

Self-Released

Fan-funded debut release from London based duo that dropped aslew of incessantly addictive rock instrumentals from the abrasive to theeuphoric with a playfulness that belied the serious talents behind thesong-writing and musicianship. The tracks tended to cavort rather than progressacross their brief lengths, with no piece out-playing its own enthusiasm, conveyinginfectious attitude in the spirit of people like the Pixies, Sonic Youth,Andrew WK and even a dash of The Smiths.

49.Tree of Sores - Tree of Sores

Witchhunter
Trio from Leeds make epic ep of crushing shapeshifting doom. The productionmight need a bit of beefing to add some more weight, but it's not so necessary.The gnarly grunting basslines and sheer walls of guitar screed morph betweensolemn chugging and cyclones of kinetic fury with an intrinsically momentoussense of composition. No aimless drift between segments, just pure atmosphericbuild and howling release.

48. The Rosebuds - Louds Planes Fly Low

Merge

After a decade of writing albums reflecting their developingrelationship, The Rosebuds latest comes to some kind of conclusion indocumenting their divorce. It's a beautiful, painful listen with the ex-coupleswapping vocals over soulful guitar music and occasional flight into discofancy as they unpack their relationship out of their hearts and minds and ontoa soberly platonic plane.

47. Barghest – Barghest

Gilead Media

From one of the most consistently excellent labels of theyear comes the debut from Baton Rogue four-piece Barghest. Anunswervingly bleak and fast storm of metal that whips Death and Thrash into adomineering eye of Blackness choking the air from the speakers as its torridmass of aggressively writhing riffs pours forth across six relentless tracks.

46. Gkfoes Vjgoaf - The Joy of Awakening / Healing /Nature Eternal Striving (Inner Islands) / Spirit Dance (Full of Nothing) /Glacial Ways (Self-Released)

Rustic, naturalistic and for the most part, humid, except thealbum devoted to icy water, this Californian born globe-wanderer has foundhimself addicted to the myriad faunal landscapes of New Zealand and has stoppedthere for over a year now. Four of these five albums were his own solo work,one with his partner but all follow the same languid path of collagedtapestries of nature recordings, ambient sounds, ethnic instruments and guitarplaying into states of organic trance. There's no greatest among them, they all have distinct charactersindebted to the changing landscapes around him and the landmarks he picks outof them.

45. Dark Castle - Surrender To All Life Beyond Form

Profound Lore

Two-piece boy-girl doom band bring in a whole load of friendsincluding members of Nachtmystium, YOB and US Christmas, to expand their alreadyhuge sound into a progressively constructed record with a scope the same sizeas their riffs. The core guitar/druminterplay is the intuitive lead to follow through a course of blackened sludge,caustic noise and flights of melody, but the almost telepathic communionbetween the beats and riffs expanding and contracting , clashing andcomplementing makes for a truly great doom record.

44. Dirtbombs – Party Store

In The Red

A garage rock band – one of THE garage rock bands you shouldbe paying attention to - covers Detroit Techno classics, including Sharevari, purportedly the first everDetroit Techno track produced. Havingpreviously released an album of Soul covers, they're no strangers to eitherconceptualisation or recontextualisation and the result is no gimmick, comingfrom Detroit themselves the Dirtbombs already own the honours to bothsounds and restructure the icy electronics through amps and drum skins likethey own them.

43. Village of Spaces – Alchemy and Trust

Turned World/Corleone

Incredible psychedelic devotional acid-folk album from Mainebased collective that laced its psychotropic spirituality with a hauntingrevenant atmosphere that recalls Fairport Convention and Incredible StringBand. Sounds like both sides of the pond, both sides of the 60's and beyond.

42. Crystal Stilts – In Love With Oblivion

Slumberland

I get the sense that In Love With Oblivion is thealbum The Horrors tried to makewith Skying.They tried too hard and overbaked it, but CrystalStilts drive their psychedelic rock through a narrower stretch of darknessand come out with a set of songs that, as edgy and uncomfortable as they are,sit fluently together. The vocals arepitched perfectly with a melancholic distance that suits the reverbed bassjangle of the guitars, the retro stylings of the music flow out of the songsthemselves, and it's got a grinding Velvets rip-off that must utterly destroyon stage. Nothing forced or cynically reproduced here.

41. Matthewdavid – Outmind
Brainfeeder

Matthew McQueen runs the psyclobin-soaked Leaving Records butfor his own album his friend FlyLo put it out on Brainfeeder, which tells you alot about the musical territory of this album. A propulsive post-club world,drawn up from the ground with a bass-heavy bed of warped and foggy drones punctuated by shafts and shards oflighter electronic glitch and melodic throbbing.

40. Run DMT – Dreams

Culture Dealer

Released on his own Culture Dealer cassette imprint afterfloating about between prospective labels, Michael Collins' Dreams isa very aptly titled tape as it contains his most lucid stream-of-consciouspsychedelia to date. Doped out into another dimension it unravels longerepisodes of faded-bliss garagey-pop with almost glitch like vignettes of loopsthat cut in and out of the deeper tracts like the jumps in your hypnogogicstates.

39. The Men – Leave Home

Sacred Bones

In taking their loosely locked down starting points from bothSpacemen 3 and MC5 The Men kicked out some pensively drawn outnoise-rock, swapping between roaring kinetic riffs and taut threads of tenserepetition with a deadly penchant for unleashing killer climaxes out of themboth.

38. Wild Beasts – Smother

Domino

The UK's most sensitive mountain men makes their thirdprogressive foray into their own unique underworld of literate, eroticallycharged ambient indie. With barely any hooks throughout its reflective texturesit was almost the antithesis to the practically danceable debauched revelry of TwoDancers, but that was the key to its greatness. It was that close, slow, intimately swooningshuffle at the end of the night.

37. The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World /Leyland Kirby – Eager to Tear the Stars Apart
History Always Favours TheWinners

The master butcher eclipses all his previous work to date bydeveloping his soft and sensitive sides with two albums; The Caretaker'sunsettling waltz of warped tea-dance with its poignant reflection on theamnesiac loop, and Leyland Kirby's less (or ambiguously) conceptualsuite of degraded neo-classical ambience. Both utterly mesmerising.

36. Holy Other – With U

Triangle

The preturnaturally sensual slo-motion cosmic vapours of WithU cemented Triangle's reputation as a label and the mysteriousManchester/Berlin born/based artist transcended Witch House to produce a recordthat effected everyone it touched beyond the internet meme-machine.

35. Craft Spells - Idle Labor

Captured Tracks

Beauty Above All says it all. Another wonderful albumfrom a label that can do no wrong, this one as clear and sharp as cut diamond.No haze, no fog, no dirt, just beautifully clean pop songs loaded with gorgeousmelodies and heart-fluttering hooks.

34. Everyone to the Anderson - The Man Born From Inside Of A Horse

Unlabel
Brighton rock band destroys the scene with their long-anticipated fulllength that bridges post rock and hardcore with a twitchy sense of danger andsubtlety that sounds as unlike anything else as much as it does Shellac orFugazi. Spiky shards of guitar breaklow-slung bass rhythms, the beats keep their own wild signatures locked downand over it all Ben Gregory unravels dysphoria and wry observation in gracefuland invigorating union.

33. Wolves in the Throne Room - Celestial Lineage

Southern Lord
The final album from this incarnation of WITTR, the closing chapter to a trilogy of albums is also theirfinest, and a fitting way to go out, disappearing back into the ground thatbore them, waiting to be reincarnated in another form when the moment arises.Majestically invoking the feral, harsh, beautiful and feminine spirit ofnature, Celestial Lineage Many Black Metal albums strive for thisecological, environmental connectivity but fall way short of what this band canconvey.

32. Pure X – Pleasure

Acephale

Summer Sun soaked harmonic pop smothered with tape noise anddredged towards the unlistenable is my kind of Pop Music. Evoking a sense ofclaustrophobia in wide open spaces through the combination of it's propulsivelydank rhythm section and umbral take of surf riffing, the sunshine is cloudedover, the joy occluded as it was with the Paisly Underground psych bands whotinged their technicolour acid trips with a dark paranoia. Recorded with nooverdubs and a raw vocal performance, this is a brutally naked feeling album.

31. Vatican Shadow - Kneel Before Religious Icons

Hospital Productions

Dominik Fernow has had a good year as Prurient, in Cold Caveand as Vatican Shadow (and probably a whole load more). It's in thelatter incarnation that he produced his most awesome work, right at the startof 2011, and it came impressively presented too – 8 tracks across 4 tapes in areel to reel box, in no order, just there for random assignation to your tapeplayer. Playing games like that has me eating out of your hand, but then whenyou start flipping the switches down on them and a grimy minimal pulse starts oozingout the speakers, caked in the dust of collapsed industry, burning with thedystopian glow of mechanical failure, things really start to get fetishistic.

30. The Antlers - Burst Apart
French Kiss
Brooklyn's Antlers second album could never hope to continue orbetter the crushing heartbreak of their debut Hospice, so insteadthey have greated an almost-equal parallel, an inverted version of that swapsthe hopelessness of Mortality for that of Relationship. It's a highly sexualised record, that chokesthe throat of any optimistic romanticism with bitter folly and cold-light ofday realities in similar fashion to WildBeasts' Smother,with whom it also shares a similar sense of the ambient though it eschewselectronics in favour of the standard indie-rock kit.

29. Turbowolf – Turbowolf

Hassle

For nearly five years I have been waiting for this band to beone of the biggest in the country, now all those demos and singles that havebeen keeping me alive for so long finally get underlined with a full albumproper from Bristol's Turbowolf. The punk/rock/metal hybrid jams thisband kick out are all impossibly infectious stadium-sized cock-rock anthems inwaiting, as deadly serious as they are faintly ridiculous. 14 tracks whip past with barely a dip in theadrenaline pumping quality across them, lifted with some great song-writingtwists and winding trails there is more to this album than just satisfyinglysharp riffs.

28. Total Control – Henge Beat

Iron Lung

Featuring members of Eddy Current Suppression Ring and The UVRace this Melbourne based super-group of sorts has ample pedigree to be able todeliver a good record, but this is goes beyond the sum of its parts. Surfing awave of distorted electronics and feral guitar lines as its base, the tracksblend in elements of cold-wave, post-punk and garage rock across their courseresulting in a stone-cold classic in waiting.

27. Der Blutharsch And The Infinite Church Of The LeadingHand + Aluk Todolo – A Collaboration

WKN

Leave it to a cave dwelling black metal band and anindustrial folk outfit to produce the best industrial cave dwelling black dronealbum of the year. Unclear which band takes the lead in these four grimly tensetorch-lit forays into cavernous netherworld of sound, as the eerily forebodingclanging, chanting and dissolving rhythmic patterns could belong to eitheract's main works, contorting and igniting ideas planted by each other in ahypnotic procession of dark trance.

26. Hateful Abandon – Move

Todestrieb

Ex-Basilisk man Vin's post black metal band went throughanother significant shift in sonic direction leaving little trace of blackmetal at all, even any Metal of any kind except in the vengeful and aggressivevocals. Mixing post-punk and cold-wavetogether into a bleak treatise against the mentally corrosive materialist and corporate ownership of modernexistence, the relentless procession of ideas that unfold out of each trackresult in one of the year's most overwhelming experiences.

25. The Advisory Circle - As The Crow Flies

Ghost Box

Radiophonic experimentalism from the renowned Ghost Box labeldidn't get better than Jon Brook's second album for the imprint. A record oftwo halves, with the more propulsive explorations taking up a first halfcombining wyrd folk electronics, Delia Derbyshire hauntology and abstractedkosmiche, with a divergent set of shadowy, very English sounding ambient sci-fisoundtracking on the second, there was a lot to absorb from this – not leastthe fact that, public information services being core to a lot of Ghost Boxesartists, a Tawny Owl's legendary 'Twit Too-Woo' sound is in fact aShakespearian concatenation of both its alarm and territorial calls and thus, afalsehood.

24. A$AP Rocky – LIVELOVEA$AP
Self-Released

Blog-loved instant hit crew A$AP deserve all the attentiontheir leader A$AP Rocky isclamouring for. His changeablerap-styles bear the imprints of his influences pretty heavily but that doesn'tstop this album from having a character all of its own, be it from the ClamsCasino instrumentals or his in-house producer Ty Beats's own seething dronesand beats over which he lays down his high-living braggadocio. The othervocalists in the outfit – the awesomely named SpaceGhostPurrrp serve as foilsfor him to bounce off, and even though he maintains A$AP is foremost a group, the attitude all pretty much revolvesaround him as the main guy. The openingtrack is one of the biggest tunes of the year in my ears, with Brand New Guycoming up close behind it.

23. Aosoth – III

Agonia

Subterranean Satanic Black Metal from France. A nation so well versed in the most ferociousforms of devotional ritual it should require little further explanation tobeset the horrors upon you. Whilst including passages of misty industrialambience and space, both those elements only serve to enhance the extremelyviolent and unrelentingly claustrophobic atmosphere, which is again reinforcedthrough a murky production – progressing from the drier sounding first andcleaner sounding second albums. By taking their third full length down an evendarker more airless avenue they have found a voice and style that demandsattention.

22. Petrels – Haeligewielle

Tartaruga
Processed strings and disfigured electronics were the raw materials used tobuild this retelling and homage to the story of William Walker – a man who, from 1905, spent the best part offive years swimming through the black waters surrounding Winchester Cathedral,single-handedly replacing peat with cement in order to buttress the foundationsto prevent it sinking into the Earth. The near-mythological heroism of theundertaking, coupled with its futility (the sinking cannot ever be stopped) allinfuse the epic tone waves ebbing and flowing throughout this album, directingtheir course through murky passages, shafts of lightness and cruel eddies ofdistortion with an ever present sense of optimism.

21. The Field - Looping State Of Mind

Kompakt

Axel Willner's third album beautifully eclipses the previoustwo by gently widening the palette of sounds that make up his already mesmericmeditative minimal techno trance, resulting in an even deeper and morerewarding experience. Expanding the lush throbbing base of loops with thesunset atmospheres of Balearic house and gospel-tinged soul harmonies Willner'sorganic melding of elements has resulted in an album interwoven with a texturalsubtlety and density that allows the initial eye-widening impact of the tracksto slowly dilate into an even greater all consuming masterpiece.

20. Ssalvia - Thought Has Wings

Leaving
A treacly nostalgic psychedelic blur of woozy, smoked-up, 70's h-pophallucinogens blowing your third eye right out, glitter-bomb style into thecosmos, taped to VHS, converted to 8-bit rpg soundtrack. Released on the labelrun by Matthewdavid producerMatthew McQueen, solo Belgian artist François Boulanger's Thought Has Wings has kept metotally zoned out all year, sounding like Ferraro or Matrix Metals on a tightleash, this dropped an essential high of a loop, shimmered you briefly in thehaze until you were cooked then passed you on to the next trip, nothing everstaying too long to lose its sheen. Absolutely perfect Summer album, prettymuch essential at all other times.

19. Thee Oh Sees - Carrion Crawler/The Dream

In The Red

Possibly John Dwyer's greatest ever Oh Sees album,this just drips Cool out of every sweat soaked pore. Everything that soundswild-eyed and flailing is also the sound of a composed and measured creator –the looseness and spontaneity of it all belies the studied hand from whichevery note is dealt. Whether Dwyer conceived this set of songs during the sameepiphany or held on to them over time to load into a succinctly killer album isalmost not worth contemplating. Almost. Here's a guy who's totally in controleven when he seems to be about to lose his shit entirely.

18. Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2. Judges

Constellation

Distended, warped surrealistpoly-timbral/rhythmic/textural/tonal jazz, ColinStetson's second solo saxophone record blurs musical boundaries,limitations and expectations as much as the physical senses, and apparently thephysical realm in which it is performed. Featuring Godspeed's Efrim Menuck on engineering duties and Ben Frost atthe mixing desk, as well a Stetson's own inspired set up – microphones acrossmultiple amps, on the body of the saxophone for percussion and on the keys toproduce beats, on the mouthpiece to produce vocals multiplied by his circularbreathing technique – the result is a constant stream of sound that totallyconfounds the one-man one-take live set up of this album.

17. Wreck and Reference - Black Cassette

Self-Release

Old NFR indie-rock favourites Bison disbanded with one member forming this remarkable doomyblack metal duo creating one of the most bleakly euphoric albums of the year,eschewing guitars to produce thesejaw-dropping results with just synths and electronics. You might have to betold that the wall of roaring static pouring from the speakers comes fromkey-tones rather than steel string abuse so stylistically textural is thesound, yet in a similar way to how Servile Sectsuck up Metal and Atmosphere and produce something alien sounding out of thefamiliar, Wreck and Reference alsoproduce a parallel take on metal and subvert the pre-requisite set-up creatinga thick, tense and tangible threatening presence all of their own.

16. High Wolf – Atlas Nation (Holy Mountain) / AnnapurnaIllusion – Life Is An Illusion (Rocket)

Mono-monikered Max releases his two greatest moments of theyear across two projects, the former deepening his exotic explorations intoequatorial trance, the latter transcending the realms of hypnagogic pop, bothof which were firsts for each guise: Atlas Nation is his firstrelatively major release after a long string of obscuro label andself-releases, while Life Is An Illusion is his first major Annapurnaalbum. Both records resonate with a sense of mysticism, both very heavy intheir own styles. The synths from LIAI have a tangible physicalpresence, driven by a kosmische momentum, that make most other nu-age projectssound like pathetic hokum, and the tribal ritualism of the beat patternscircling the High Wolf guitar loops are as oppressive as junglehumidity. The true beginnings of amagical mystical tour start here.

15. Cold Cave - Cherish The Light Years

Matador
There's barely one black-clad band that has not exerted some kind of influenceon this album. Its heavy with the scent of kohl-stained eyes, dry ice andhairspray but it's even heavier when throwing imposing silhouettes against thewalls of beautifully wrought synth tones and enormous beats. This is a hugesounding album, compressed to the max, even the subtleties forced into yourface. They want you to be intimidated by even the smallest details, confrontingyou right in the face with their angst and disillusionment, emphasising everyexcess of Wes Eisold’s anthemically bleak new wave romanticism.

14. Altar of Plagues – Mammal

Profound Lore
The Irish black doom combo's second album developed their sound way beyondall expectations and the output of most other bands. A heaving mass of shadowy atmospherics thatincludes a passage of haunting Celtic folksong that grounds the record in a humanand naturalistic setting of craggy fog and bleak inhospitable landscapes. Perfectly produced with each instrumentsounding unlike any in either the Black or Doom metal genres, this straddledboth and went further beyond as magisterial passages peaked into ragingtorrents of ferocious noise. A bass tone that was warm and earthy whilstretaining a dirty grittiness for the drums to pound off – which they did withexceptional speed and ferocity, double kicking themselves into a textural blurfor the guitars to tear out shades of caustic drone over the top of.

13. The Psychic Paramount – II

No Quarter

The New York trio hone their instrumental mayhem into anunbridled beast of blown out psychedelic rock that starts of hard and harshthen spirals outwards and upwards in a kaleidoscope of pedal abusive riffingand pell-metal drumming. As frenetic as it is, the build of the tracks followintuitive paths, loaded with pay-offs like landmarks amongst the dense texturesthat you can cling on to and hold out for when the noise is threatening toswallow you; each release hovering on the edge of climax for the time-suspendedeternity of a moment and then you're in it, swallowed up and consumed in thrallto it and at the mercy of it.

12. The Skull Defects – Peer Amid

FatCat

The four-piece Gothenburg noise-rock combo's latest releaseadds Lungfish vocalist Daniel Higgs to their line-up and his presence hangs aheavy air of Current 93 over this – providing a sense of umbral religiosity,Higg's parables come intoned from a cosmic pulpit, a preacher-man citing fromthe Rock vernacular. From there the music bursts into whichever direction thevolcanic eruptions take it as free flowing buzzsaw riffs underscore unsettlingpassages of tribal voodoo, hand drums beat circles round tar-thick guitartones, showers of fiery noise rain down from sky and amongst it all thegrowling, snarling roaring voice of exultant euphoria channels it and gloriesamongst the carnage.

11. Deathgrips – Exmilitary

Self-Released

“I am the beast I worship” So starts Exmilitary, with a presence thatstamps its authority like Eugene Oxbow with just as much boiling violence. This is the essence of Metal burned throughthe back catalogue of righteous hip hop and out into the blasted wastelands ofa dystopian future. Fists into the faceof modernity, fighting against the slow erosion of values and integrities. But again; “Fuck where you're from! Fuck where you're going!! It's all about whereyou're at!!!”, and where Deathgrips are at is constantly upin yours, sonically the juggernaut beats and textures tear hot air from thespeakers as they exit, stuttering for space among the airless glitches andsteel-crushing gravitas of inhaled silences, sucking vacuums of power into thevoids between the noise.

10. Low – C'Mon

Subpop
There's an enormity to the sound in C'Mon,a vastness of space surrounding the sounds and harmonics between instrumentsand voice that makes the fact this was recorded in a church seem entirelynatural. The haunting reverence of Especially Me, the Old Testamentstyle vengeance of Witches, the consoling opener Try To Sleep,the choral coda to Nothing But Heart; all have a sense of hushedveneration about them despite the size to which the acoustics grow. Though theyhave an ecclesiatical background, the strength of this record lies not in theHeavenly, but the Earthly. It's an intimate paean to the travails of humanrelationships, of dark and beautiful moments and serves as Alan Sparhawk'sgrandest gesture not only to the listener, but to his wife.

09. The Weeknd – House of Balloons / Thursday

Self-Released
When compared to House of Ballons and Thursday,The Weeknd may have overplayed his hand with his relatively featurelessthird album at the end of the year, but that doesn't take any of thestreet-grimed glamorous shine off either of these two. I see House of Balloons in alot of charts with no mention of Thursday, but for me they arepretty much parallel in atmosphere, lyrics and hooks: That stuttering hauntedeuphoria of Lonely Star, the hollow-eyed metallic grind of Life ofthe Party, both parts of The Birds and the incredible Cocteau Twinscover. All that needs to be said about Houseof Balloons is that drop into Glass Table Girls. Musical momentof 2011. Ugh. Like the bass went down on itself.

08. A Winged Victory For The Sullen - A Winged Victory ForThe Sullen

Erased Tapes

Pianist Dustin O'Halloran and Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie meld their individual productionskills together into a hauntingly elegant album of string tones synthesis. Ablurred, slow-motion elegy to the Greek goddess of victory, it is characterisedby a triumphant sadness, leading the melancholic toward a state of euphoric,enchanted drone.

07. Tim Hecker - Ravedeath 1972

Kranky
Another church recorded album in my top twenty. The sonic results of Hecker's musings on decay, detritus,waste and decomposition – physically rather than musically – found their formthrough his recordings of church pipe organ, taken back to the studio for asecular styled celestial wash of synth tone and ambient flicker withcollaborator Ben Frost. Ravedeath is anything but decomposedthough it carries the fertile cloudy murk of silt heavy waters through itstantalisingly paced deliberate progression, it moves beyond beauteous drone andtexture, weaving rhythm and melody into the mass of sound which, due to thecore elements - the church organ being an instrument of God to instil a senseof holy awe amongst the pews – produces a genuinely awe inspiring record in thetruest sense of the word.

06. Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Sub Pop
Still relevant after all these years of slow refinement, Mogwai's latest is their greatest sinceCome On DieYoung and is the sound of a band heeding nothing but their owninstincts. It feels so good to have a Mogwaialbum back in my top ten and this record has smashed them back into the frontof my listening experiences with a hunger and power that has been somewhatlacking from their albums (yet which their live show consistently presents).Slow burning emotional tremors and seismic tectonic rock laced with vocals thatare finally beginning to hold a presence all of their own, Hardcore Will Never Die is the sound of a band hitting a gloriousnew plane of existence.

05. Pete Swanson – Man With Potential

Type
Minimal techno infused noise from one half of the disbanded Yellow Swans, Pete Swansoncontinues to make challenging and engrossing music that ensnares your entirebeing within its hallucinatory presence. Mixing ethereal, unnerving electronic elements with cables of earthynoise there's a paradoxically dreamlike and harsh reality to this record thatinspires images of long deserted subterranean Eastern block clubs – fainttraces of digitised euphoria pulsing inside mildewed analogue shackles. A spacehaunted the ghastly remnants of beautiful creatures that once writhedhot-blooded reanimated in discoloured organic hues, howling from theirdislocated corporeal plane.

04. Liturgy – Aesthethica

Thrill Jockey

As loose and free as it is rigid and constrained by its owndogma, Aesthetica is an album that lived up to its own hyperbole– a concept and mindset which underwent an amazingly high-profile degree ofscrutiny and bore extreme negativity for their leader's positivity-laced polemic.He doesn;t need to be sat down to explain himself, he has this album asdefinitive proof that his musings, however incoherent in the flesh, arepeerlessly visionary when pressed to wax. Challenging and non-conformist, two of the highest held values in ascene which has slowly forgotten itself, Liturgy are the brightest whitelight to ever blaze out of Black Metal.

03. Austra – Feel it Break

Domino
This album is too long by two songs, although I am never sure which two shouldhave got the cut – all I know is it has two endings, so the final orpenultimate pair of tracks could have gone and it would have been absolutelyperfect. That's my negative preamble,the rest of the record deserves nothing but exultant high-praise. A fantasia of darkly intoned psycho-analytical,psycho-sensual erotica, an 80's evoking synth-fest that sounds as futuristic asit does retro, as psychologically exploratory as it is physically inspiring,eliciting shivers of tension or elation, often simultaneously; I have to bite downhard when The Beat and The Pulse kicks in. The unsettlingly gorgeousvoice of Katie Stelmanis just finishes it off.

02. Ash Borer - Ash Borer

Psychic Violence
Black metal has been on another level this year, and I seem to find myselfsaying that every single year. It's the most rewarding addiction I've everinitiated. Epic in scale and grandeur,cinematic in scope and narrative, misanthropically violent and naturalisticallymeditative, this is a record that achieves and conveys so much without once concerningitself with the composed achievement of any such things. Ash Borer are a band that play outsideof themselves, that creates a sound that seems just that much further from thelimits of human potential than any group limited by the boundaries of physicalexistence could create. That's always the critical essence inherent in a trulygreat album, when you can drop the needle onto a record and immediatelystruggle to understand where any of it could have come from and how thoseenergies could have coalesced into the form in front of you. Ash Borer isthat kind of album.

01. Peaking Lights – 936

Not Not Fun
It doesn't always happen, but this year my top album is also the one I havelistened to the most, far more than anything else released this year. It's impossible to put this record on and getnothing out of it, it is always compelling and always affecting. No album this year could compete with thewarm intimacy and exotic otherworldliness the duo produce. Snatches of circuitbent sound burst apart and melt back into a mix of beautiful analoguepsychedelic successions, interwoven through each track's euphorically soporificspacial dub, with fading ripples of delay, echo heavy guitar vibrationsnuancing an intimate tapestry of muted arpeggios and descending melody linesthat cross each other like intertwined lovers. In 2011, this album was the divinity of sensual sonic experimentation.

DOWNLOAD: Sea Bastard - Great Barrier Riff

2011-11-28T10:30:00.000Z

Brighton four-piece granite-dense combo Sea Bastard lay down their debut demo, and it flat out destroys from end to end. Formed from the ashes of two of Brighton's heaviest joints, Jovian and Funeral Hag, this reformed entity enhances each of their own pure elements of doom and groove respectively, through three tracks of monolithic pace-changing guttural demoncy, in the vein and through the timeline of Black Sabbath, Electric Wizard and on. The vocals are sick - the higher-registered raspy nasty spiteful snarl in opener Aqua Vitae drops to a gut deep rumble in Taedium. The guitar riffs peal out of their bottom end up into squealing flourishes of solo squall - or in reverse; the epically held feedback swollen tone in Aqua Vitae morphs into a chugging buzzsaw riff that shoots bolts of lightning from it's peaks. Not just beholden to moments, the lengthy tracks allow plenty of space for offering up a relentless procession of awesome shapes, not least the shift in the aforementioned Taedium which has a sinister groove that lifts the momentum but allows not a shard of light into the bleakness. The half hour of torrential riffing is pinned to the floor by oppressively weighted drumming and peripheral synapse flooding bass from wall to wall.

In its rough recorded demo form there's every subterranean element you could want, but if this were to be given a thorough studio makeover it would have you gargling blood in awe.

Download for Name Your Price from their BANDCAMP and catch them playing live with Northern 'caveman battle doom' combo Conan Saturday 21 January, at the Cowley Club with Pus and Dead Existence.
&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://seabastard.bandcamp.com/album/great-barrier-riff"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Great Barrier Riff by Sea Bastard&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

VIDEO: ʄ≜uxmuℭica ft. c♦o♦c♦o ᴐaᴚᴃ☉ᵯᴃ - The Model

2011-11-25T10:18:00.000Z

New video from the hazardously challenging ʄ≜uxmuℭica, taken from his re-booted covers album. On another plane of existance this used to be Kraftwerk's The Model.

VIDEO: Seahawks & Autre Ne Veut - Don's Rainbow

2011-11-24T10:32:00.000Z

Seahawks' new 7" will be the first release on the newly minted Ocean Moon* imprint, and the teaser for their forthcoming live-band recorded full album Invisible Sunrise. Don's Rainbow is the lead track and it features Autre Ne Veut on vocals, adding his dissociative nostalgic croon to this retro-cosmic outfit, adding another luminous guest-spot to his CV alongside an appearance on Ford & Lopatin's Channel Pressure.

*When I searched for Ocean Moon on Google I discovered this mildly disturbing Japanese doll designer's site. Worth the visit.

REVIEW: Civil Civic - Rules

2011-11-23T10:07:00.000Z

The debut full length album from UK/Australian instrumental duo Civil Civic has arrived and it's killer. After teasing the world with a couple of singles, Rules reveals the band in their full glory as an outfit to get even deeper into and obsessed with. It's not just that the tracks are catchy or addictive - which they are, incessantly - more that subsequent listens continue to excite and surprise even though you know what's coming, a quality that marks a record out as some kind of classic. Familiarity often falsely lulls people into assessing an album as great over time, but the longer you spend re-spinning these tracks the more joyous they seem to become.

Deadly serious riffs and rhythm shifts are shot through with a sense of humour, starting off with Airspray's bastardised daytime tv show theme softening you up for the drop into ten tracks of guitar vibration that shake your core into elation. Run Overdrive lives up to its name with a freewheeling riff saturated in noise and an upward spirally melody. Urgency is they heartbeat of many of these tracks - Street Trap, Grey Nurse, Less Unless - all mid-to fast paced, none of them physically cantering along at breakneck hardcore paces, yet all of them carrying the momentum as if they were. It's the vapour trails of fuzz they leave behind that create the tangible illusion. Lights On A Leash sounds likes an Andrew WK party track minus the vocal exhortations to free-spiritness, but feel free to add the actions along too it. It's Krill displays the band's abilities at agile musicianship, built from sweeping melodies of danceably melancholic jangle it sounds undeniably like the kind of Smiths tune Morrisey's curmudgeonly outsider psyche forbade Johnny Marr to write. Mayfield presages the end with a small moment of distant countrified wide-blue-yonder stretching spacious calm before the gritty and somehow even wider-eyed Slack Year slowly, casually denoates and implodes slow motion stadium riffs one after the other, layering synths over guitars then guitars over synths in a sighing heap of cathartic resolution.

All funded by fan donations prior to pressing, the album is now out on digital d/l, 12" or CD all from their Bandcamp. Yes, self-released and unsigned, but surely not for long.

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://civilcivic.com/album/rules"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;RULES by CIVIL CIVIC&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

VIDEO / GIG PREVIEW - Pure X - Surface

2011-11-02T09:05:00.003Z

New video for the trail track from Pure X's album Pleasure released on Acéphale Records. Directed by Silent Diane mastermind Malcolm Elijah. This may have just missed Halloween, but the spirit lives on.

For all my Brighton readers, know that Pure X and Sleep∞Over play at Green Door Store tonight. Be there, be scared.

DOWNLOAD: Kультура Kурения - Рвота

2011-10-14T10:48:00.000+01:00

Here's a sharp littlethree-track self-released ep from Russian black metal band KультураKурения, with a title that translates as the succinctlydirty Vomit. The first track ends up as pure coldNorthern harshness – sky-scraping, star-gazing howls into theprimordial abyss, backed by fuzzy tremolo and the comfortinganti-fidelity beat of cardboard box drumming (a good thing) – butbegins in the post-punk tradition of much Depressive BM, sounding more like The Cure than anything grim and Scandinavian - 'Blackwave' as they term the sound themselves on their website. While the track quickly dismantles this latter genre framework, suffocating it in blasting beats, the second bridges the styles with a more finessed sense of experimentation – a looseand ragged piece with reverbed notes floating into a wide atmospheric space, before taught clean riffs arch into peaks of fiery distortion. The final track combines all elements with the greatest presence and success with a lead riff that slowly mutates without ever losing any punch. It's a pretty rocking number than adds in layers of textures through screeching vocals and extra guitar all the while hanging on to its potent initial riff but developing the track through expansion and contraction of the guitar figures.

Download for free from their Bandcamp

REVIEW: GuMMy†Be▲R! - Time (Disaro)

2011-10-13T12:30:00.000+01:00

GuMMy†Be▲R! drops another ep of his increasingly glamorous take on post-club electronics in the evolving collection of sounds of what was once called Witch House and is now not really known as anything, so disparate and far flung have many of its previously chief proponents been cast from each other. Time picks up where Herr Gummy left us with his last release Oakland but there's another level of development in the production - again, this guy just can't stop getting better. The beats are feeling more intuitive, the sounds becoming more substantial ad the tracks themselves bearing greater presence. Far removed from his first productions involving the garbled voices of children, gunshots and little else.

Among the highlights of the nine tracks the stuttering house of the opening Cognitive Ascension evolves as its name implies, adding waves of melody that push the conscious up into sweaty peaks; the crystal clear heat haze of Sleeping in Dubai and its infectious treble drop, Astroid's bass throb and glassy counter rhythm, Fractured serves up a soundtrack to a lazy Californian beach side drive and the dreamy Friendzone vocalled Can't Go Wrong is pitchshifted into a subtle state of bliss.

The physical release came out at the end of August (didn't realise I'd had this on repeat so long!) on Disaro Records, limited to 200 CD copies,so it's probably all gone - check the status - but you can still get it digitally from the Disaro Bandcamp HERE

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;lt&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;lt&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;lt&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;;a &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;href&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;="http://&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;disaro&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;bandcamp&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;.com/album/time"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Time by GuMMy†Be▲R!&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;lt&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;lt&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;lt&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

REVIEW: Sheer Ignorance - Conditioning (Self-Release)

2011-10-13T12:08:00.000+01:00

Scotland's Sheer Ignorance beganlife in 2011 as a crust punk/black metal, d-beat frenzied projectbetween Neil (of highly acclaimed death metal act ‘Nerrus Kor’)and Rick, the former bringing the vocals, the latter bringing themusic.

Their debut EP was released in September 2011 and canbe found on Bandcamp at sheerignorance.bandcamp.com for just £3.

This new blackened hardcore death punk band blast so manygenres into these five hyperfast songs it's barely worth trying toboil it down to anything if that indistinct tagging is the best I can come upwith. Imagine the kinds of taught blackened punk spirited bandsaround at the moment such as Deafheaven or Castevet then reconceivethem as more directly influenced by D-beat, Pig Destroyer and NapalmDeath then you might come up with their sound. Lead track Pay YourDues to Punk is so absurdly kinetic it blurs, as exhilirating as anyopener should be. Social Conditioning could almost be theircalling card, so diverse yet assimilated are all the influences: agreat hi/low twin vocal attack, gruff and rumbly countered by fiercemisanthropic shrieking, drums roll and boil locking the guitars downtight in savage switch ups between chugging and thrashing punctuatedby melodic passages. It's a tightly written and ferociouslyperformed piece, more than setting up the head-turning neck-snappingsecond track. Blood Sludgedoes what it suggests and slows things down to a doomier pace andatmosphere, those twin vocals playing off each other in even closerproximity as the riff churns up the dirt from the tarriest depths theband can reach, until half way through they draw up to a canter and blasttheir way out to the end. Militant Zombie Deathsquaddrops straight in at full speedslashing out the speakers with hot-blooded full-throated gutturalroaring and snarling – Zombies move fast these days and thisblitzes you to a ragged corpse in two minutes before grinding downuntil your bones are powder. The end comes through politicised meanswith Mind Control Airwaves whichfades out to finish, brilliant.I couldn't name another metal record that does that, the facetiouslittle oiks. Perfect.

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sheerignorance.bandcamp.com/album/conditioning"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Conditioning by Sheer Ignorance&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

NEW TRACK: Ewan Limb - Eye

2011-10-12T12:30:00.000+01:00

Ewan Limb is a producer with seemingly only four tracks to his name, and a video for his first piece Doppler Effect. It's a brand new project from the psuedonymed Russian, whose intent is to "lead the listener by hand, selecting all new color of road under his feet. I try to do something magic, atmospheric sound."

After that, you know as much as me.

DOWNLOAD: Adolescent - Leave for Summer

2011-10-11T12:30:00.000+01:00

Two new demo tracks for downloading from one of Brighton's most promising electronic producers; Adolescent. Following up on the excellent Run Away From Bad People ep released earlier in the summer this double whammy of killer atmospherics and shadowy beats sets out this artist's sound as one to get seriously involved with. The first track, Don't Feed Anger, builds up layers of beats, stuttering melodies, and vocals samples into a looping psychedelic peak. Second track Walk Free, Walk Fast has that Bristol dubstep sound that Joker once called Purple. An itchy, twitchy rhythm locked over a soulfully bruised ambience decked out with futuristic tone jewels. Amazing.

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://adolescent.bandcamp.com/album/leave-for-summer-demo"&amp;amp;gt;Leave for Summer (Demo) by Adolescent&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

VIDEO: VHS Head - Death Dimension

2011-10-11T10:13:00.000+01:00

Another great video as VHS Head get treated to visual accompaniments courtesy of SynesthesiaeFilms

DOWNLOAD: Robel Synthesia - Neon Island

2011-10-10T12:30:00.000+01:00

Neon Island is the second album ofequatorial chillwave electronica from Atlanta based Robel Synthesia.

It's a progression fromhis first album, defining his sound into something different to thetropical daze feelings permeating strains of the subgenre in theforms of bands such as Ducktails, USF (Previously Universal StudiosFlorida) and Gala Drop. There's a golden heat-haze shimmer thatcharacterises much of the album that starts warming up straight fromfirst balmy delay soaked trackSun Rave, whose languid vocalsample of 'Yeah yeah' melts in and out of the mix in intervals. Thealbum's concept follows the course of a day from dawn 'til sundown,so as the suns rays start to burn into the earth so too do the temposof the tracks that chart its progress. Ultra Magic Leaf,surely an ode to that firstsmoke of the day, followsit by bringing the beats; a clipped triplet marching towards the highsun of midday lead by a reverbed synth line, wordless (or at leastindecipherable) vocodered voice and glittering melody. BeachChairs gets blasted again,slowing things down to a foggy smoked out drone, then on toRainforest Kiss withits lush wavering backdrop of animal sounds and synths picked acrossby a thoughtfully pretty lead. Citrus Sunset'sconga shuffle heralds the twilight hours along with a soaring voicethat leads into the faster Liquid Stars anddown tempo again into the dreamily atmospheric MoonPotion.

Here's the artist's self-made video to go with Rainforest Kiss.

As with IndicaFloat, this is almostincessantly listenable anytime album that I find myself putting on atall hours. Robel still has some way to go before his songwriting andproduction matches that of Washed Out, but his ambition and ideas areapparent and he may only be a side-chained compression mix away fromachieving it.

Robel Synthesia: Neon Island - DOWNLOAD

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://robelsynthesia.bandcamp.com/album/neon-island"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Neon Island by Robel Synthesia&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

GIG PREVIEW: The Outer Church w/ Grumbling Fur & The Haxan Cloak + Die Farbe

2011-10-10T09:51:00.000+01:00

This month's Outer Church experience brings two Aurora Borealis related artists to town along with a screening of Huan Vu’s adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s The Colour Out Of Space.

Grumbling Fur is the collaboration between Alexander Tucker (Ginnungagap, Imbogodom, The Stargazer’s Assistant), multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Guapo, Mothlite, Miracle), andJussi Lehtisalo (chief Head from Finland's Circle). Together they conjure ritualistic clouds of blackened analoge motorik, THC soaked drone drawn from the similarly unfathomable depths scryed into through Lovecraft's cosmic weirdness.

The Haxan Cloak is the lone Bobby Krlic, who uses primitive percussion, strings and analogue modulation to channel experiments into "the very real potential and power of the actual physical properties of sound". His self-titled album is an abstract, hallucinatory trip through a dark subsonic netherworld. A transportive cinematic experience that is magically unsettling in its pure recorded sound form, it should be even more likely to effect your physical realm in the live setting.

LAST.FM: un sujet de conversation

2011-10-10T08:51:00.000+01:00

Last.fm listening stats. It's been a while.

THE NEED TO GROW TAKES YOU OVER

01. Zola Jesus - 63

02. Lanterns On TheLake - 45

03. The Field - 32

04. Death In Vegas -31

05. St. Vincent - 22

06. Twin Sister - 20

07. Youth Lagoon - 16

08. A Winged Victoryfor the Sullen - 15

09. The Rosebuds - 12

09. Jacqueline Wilson -12

1 – Can'tstop listening to Conatus. Amazing. Well worth holding out on WitchHouse for this to arrive. What? Yes it is. IT SURROUNDS EVERYTHING.

2 – They were good atEnd of the Road and the album is pretty enjoyable too. Nothingspectacular though but easy to throw on when I'm not payingattention, hence the plays.\

3 – Impossible toignore this when it's on, just sucks you in and zones you out.Psychedelic Swedish techno via Kompakt. The title track isunbelievable.

4 – Who knew they had a new album? Not me NowI do. It's no Contino Sessions.

5 – Strange Mercy has acouple of great tracks – Northern Lights especially – but it'snot that great. Not as good as the EMA album.

6 –Booooooorrrrrriiiiiing.

7 – Baroque, dreamy melancholicreverb-washed pop solo artist. Another one? Yes. This one seems likea keeper.

8 – Going to be one of my albums of the year. Sosensual. (incidentally, it's October – we have to get started onour AOTY about now don't we?)

9a – Loud Planes Fly Lowreleased in June is still getting a lot of plays, which can only meanone thing; it;s very good.

9b – free audio book with theGuardian on Saturday. Syd wanted to listen to it while he ate dinnerbut it;s all about some mother and a cat dying. Not really much funso he wanted to isten to Korn and Mastodon instead. Funny boy.

NEW TRACK: Gorgons - Faint Traces

2011-10-04T14:17:00.000+01:00

Another superb new slice of chilly beatscaping from Chicago's Gorgons, this one a gorgeous slow rolling
trip that builds itself up towards a delicatly pointeed melody.

Read my recent interview with Gorgons at the Sonic Router HERE.

DOWNLOAD: Twilight Owls - I've Never Been To The Sea

2011-09-22T06:18:00.000+01:00

Another deeply enchanting ep from Moscow's solo drone pioneer Twilight Owls. This one is picked out a little bit more than his previous locked tone movements, as he clambers over the rockpools on his first foray to the seaside. There's the humid air of Ducktails permeating the first part, a dense tropical twang rocking gently to the delay and reverb settings, along with that oddly East/West modal tone and sense of nostalgic aura that Real Estate creates so well too The picked notes eventually get washed into the waves of drone that form the second track, but like the action of the tide itself they are eventually pushed back to the surface and on to the beach for the closing cycles.

He also recorded an seemingly infinite loop cover of John Maus' excellent Cop Killer:

STREAM: Gnod - Vatican (DrumCunt Remix)

2011-09-21T10:45:00.000+01:00

Hydra psych collective Gnod's epic, monolithic lumbering beast of a track has been given an even bassier rescrub by the deviant production techniques of London's DrumCunt. Pitched down into the deep dark earth, exhumed and pulverised, Vatican finds itself rerendered as a slow motion drum and bass rumble that verges on the kinds of drag remixes that were pouring out of the walls last year. This is great.

VIDEO: Three Trapped Tigers - Reset

2011-09-20T20:50:00.000+01:00

Matt Berry fronted epic 11+ minute sci-fi video for Three Trapped Tigers' "pretty huge" Reset track.

This is actually incredible. Jaw-dropping, time-stopping head-turning. Not sure if you're watching a real sketch show, short film or one of the greatest music videos commited to tape. It helps that the music of TTT is so polymorphously perverse that it could be soundtracking any of those things - from 2001 to Look Around You. Deadly serious in it's tounge in cheek luminosity.

Play this full screen size if you can, and on the biggest one you can find.

VIDEO: Ghosting Season - Washed Ashore

2011-09-20T11:53:00.000+01:00

last.fm

2011-09-19T10:33:00.000+01:00

Weekly listening stats. YES!

Celestial Last.fm

01. Warm Ghost - 73

02. At The Drive-In -47

03. Allo Darlin' -29

04. A Winged Victoryfor the Sullen - 24

05. Robel Synthesia -23

06. Balam Acab - 21

06. Village of Spaces -21

08. Future Shuttle -18

09. Wolves in theThrone Room - 15

10. Andy Stott - 14

1 – stillcan't stop listening to Narrows. It's released next week and I expectto see it get hyped; Bowie / Numan retro style with nu-retrochillwave and more. Pretty addictive.

2 – playedRelationship of Command to my 3 year old. He went fairly nuts

3 – Got their album after End of the Road. It's quitenice, got some good lyrics and lovely harmonies.

4 –Incredible classical drone album from Stars of the Lid member AdamWiltzie and pianist Dustin O’Halloran, as you're probably alreadyaware. On Friday night I played this then Nest, Balam Acab, FutureShuttle and FRKWYS Vol.7 one after the other and I think I did somepermanent realigning of some neural networks.

5 – Chillwaveyelectronica that maps an afternoon in the life of. D/L for free:http://robelsynthesia.bandcamp.com/album/neon-island

6a– First couple of plays of Wander/Wonder and I think I might gethooked in. Doesn't sound like an electronic record at all, so lushand organic sounding; like he mic'd up a petri dish.

6b –Awesome psychedelic acid-folk album, similar if not better to allthose 60's bands from UK and USA. Sounds like both sides of the pondand beyond.

8 – First full ep from NY based synth-space duois a total trancer. Produced by Blondes, indebted to just about anysynth player ever and very heavy on the gorgeous vocals.

9 –New WITTR. OMG! USBM FTW.

10 – The title track on Passed MeBy is some kind of sublime elevated techno, no?

TOTW:

GIG PREVIEW: Be Nothing Presents: Sun Glitters @ Green Door Store

2011-09-19T10:32:00.000+01:00

New young promotions duo Be Nothing are putting on the liquid delicious Sun Glitters in Brighton town in just a few weeks. SHame we never got a sumemr hot enough to match the soporific heaviness the music this bad evokes. maybe turnign up to this gig will give you heatstroke from standing too close to the PA.

Support comes from Brighton's own F.L.A. - a solo female electronic producer making propulsive dreamy beats, in a similar vein to the more Balearic tracks from Memory Tapes and the lush shimmery beatscapes of Universal Studios Florida. Check out the F.L.A. Soundcloud for plenty more

YOUNG LOVE REMIX DEMO VERSION by

Be Nothing are also DJing with Fokkawolfe and Xanadu at new club/live band night Abuse, also at GDS on the 23rd September. Free entry so fill yr brain cells up til they turn grey with a night of red strobe light, witch house, dark wave, technicolour noise and what-not-gaze.

DOWNLOAD: I Am Blip - Sept 2011 live promo

2011-09-14T10:00:00.000+01:00

Been a fan of Glasgow's I Am Blip since the early days of NFR, regularly playing his smoothly exhilirating electro-techno out our club nights and featuring them on our monthly mixes. Here's a brand new live set to give you a taster of what he's currently coming up with.

Tracklist:

See These Two Fingers
So What?
Blockade
Jaguar

STREAM: Hind Ear - Space & Yellow Yellow

2011-09-13T12:37:00.000+01:00

Two new tracks from from Brighton's dreamiest post-rock outfit; Hind Ear - another winner of my title of Best Brighton Band. These are intended for a full album which will see a release as soon as someone agree to press them up for the band. Anyone with a keen ear and a label should be on that like a shot.

Previously named Revenge of Shinobi in homage to the release of birds in the ending sequence of the game, the music is introspective but expansive, whimsically evocative but never twee. Subtly building clusters of looped instruments and vocals usher in incremental progressions of the kind Italo-Disco overwhelms the senses with, and Hind Ear have their own parallel universe glitterball to serenade. The organ stabs and bass thrust of Spaces complement its rolling atmosphere, reminiscent of Holy Other yet more Earthly than cosmic. Yellow Yellow is an airy, ethereal, soul influenced dancefloor number that builds in density and intensity as it progresses, sounding hauntingly similar to The Antlers with celebratory whoops in the place of crushing dread.

Space

Yellow Yellow:

STREAM: Bernholz - Consequences 2 (Faking It) & Austerity Boy

2011-09-08T12:15:00.000+01:00

A while ago I reviewed the excellent debut release from Brighton based electronic producer Jez Berns, aka Bernholz. This is the second part in his ‘Consequences’ series asnd it comprises one long rehearsed improvisational loop jam titled 13. It was originally intended for the debut but Jez says it ran too long and was too rough to be ready in time so he's redone it in higer resolution and tweaked it. The title is a reference to this book he has been fascinated with recently, which questions the role of authenticity in popular music.

The track is available for free download from Brighton based label Anti-Ghost Moon Ray, a label you should be getting to know from releasing the stunning Gazelle Twin album - an artist who should really have had a much stronger showing on this blog by now.

Jez has mooted plans to release a limited cassette run of the two Consequences projects later in the year, which would be very nice indeed.

Secondly, there will be a new ep released in October titled Austerity Boy with brand new tracks - the teaser for which you can hear here. Keep your eyes here on on his Facebook for that
&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://bernholz.bandcamp.com/album/austerity-boy"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Austerity Boy by Bernholz&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

SONIC ROUTER: Roll The Dice Interview

2011-09-07T20:01:00.000+01:00

"...it’s a victory for us because we started out with no real ambitions for it. When we got the first two tracks down that felt like a victory, then we had an album finished then it took almost a year before someone released it and that felt like a huge victory..." - Peder Mannerfelt

My most recent piece for the Sonic Router is up now: An interview with Swedish analogue kosmiche outfit Roll the Dice. They have an inspired new album out on Leaf next week followed closely by a show at Cafe Oto in London - and on the basis of the interview, it should really be one far out event.

READ IT HERE

DOWNLOAD: Pictureplane - Post Physical (Ritualz Alien Trance Remix)

2011-09-07T12:30:00.000+01:00

Absurd. Brilliant. Pictureplane Vs. Ritualz.

GIG PREVIEW: The Outer Church - VHS Head + Anna Meredith + Mass Roman

2011-09-05T01:30:00.000+01:00

Morning you spawn.

This month's Outer Church preview, diligently repostedhere for your audio-visual preparatory pleasure.

Be there.

Doors: 7.15pm
Admission: £5.00

Tickets available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/130938

VHS Head is Adrian Blacow from Blackpool. Signed to legendary Manchester label Skam (Autechre, Gescom, Boards Of Canada), Blacow distills his vast collection of ex-rental videotapes into riotously funked-up brutalist dream collages demonstrated to tremendous effect on last year's Trademark Ribbons Of Gold and forthcoming EP Midnight Section.

VHS Head will be joined by video artist and long-time OC collaborator Jade Boyd, fresh from her live collaboration with John Carpenter associate Alan Howarth.

London-based composer Anna Meredith is building a reputation for her eclectic electronic work. She has supported These New Puritans and performed alongside James Blake, Seb Rochford, Broadcast, Max de Wardener and Mira Calix. Meredith plans to release her debut EP Black Prince Fury over the coming months. Live visuals will be provided by Eleanor Meredith.

Mass Roman is a Brighton based polymath with his fingers in many peculiar pies including improv shock unit Passiondale and the wistfully melodic Minor Sounds. For this event, however, he presents a solo set of wonked-out electronics. Sample his Mr PM album for deep - if disturbed - joy.

Last Chance by mass roman

DOWNLOAD: End of the Road Mix

2011-09-02T02:00:00.000+01:00

I'm off to End of the Road, so here's a mix for you to get us all in the mood.

DOWNLOAD

The tracklist can be a surprise for you.

I have thrown this together with the kind of wild abandon I hope to be experiencing. Don't let me down EotR! It's my first festival since having a baby. He's 3 next week so it's time to take him out. He is very excited to see Lykke Li, Woods, Wooden Shjips, Wild Beasts. Good boy. Tempted to take a 3 year old to see Mogwai, probably not a great idea. Not even the greatest ear defenders on earth could protect his fragile little ears from that.

Anyone else going? Tweet me, yeh.

REVIEW One Unique Signal - Hey Alchemist / Neuralgia (Genepool)

2011-09-01T12:30:00.000+01:00

One Unique Signal smashed straight into my foveal vision with their first full length album Tribe, Castle & Nation back in 2007, every year they have managed to put out one essential release every year, be it a two track download or longer EP (the Dismemberment ep, we at NFR put on the release party for. Hands up, I claim conflict of interest - I already love this band). Just ten seconds into any of their songs will illustrate why it took me approximately two seconds from receiving Nick's email to hitting the download link: A gritty grey-skied UK version of A Place To Bury Strangers apocalyptic noise walls mixed with Wooden Shjips psychedelic strung out eye-ball blazing transcendence. Plus those textbook touchstones when piling the sound high - MBV, J&MC, Sonic Youth; Whilst they are less heavy on the sheer volume than APTBS (but they do play ceiling collapsingly loud), they are no less intense, making up for painful levels with layers and layers and layers of textural guitar pulse, ebb & flow, drone and agonisingly ecstatic incremental shifts in the riff structure; there's the soul and distortion of those aforementioned bands, then then weight and nuance of a band like Sleep lurking about in there. Bass lines that possess your body, drum beats that replace your heart consuming your body's synchronicity and marching it around in thrall to the all consuming rhythm - and if that doesn't get you the sheets of guitar will envelop and constrict you into submission.

Some of you may get turned off on repetition, some of you might have just had all your switches flipped to On. Well, some of you Lose. To paraphrase Ripley Johnson's comments in the recent Stool Pigeon interview; the riff doesn't stop you just lock into it from the continuum in which it exists and morph it to your own requirements and desires, bend it to your will, release yourself to it, into it and with it, and that's exactly what One Unique Signal do: Bad ass, killer zoned out/zoned in synapse-frying head-rush mind-fuck trance

This new EP is being released by Genepool who have released four of the band's six releases - the other two being self-distributed downloads. This EP is two songs, the 6 minute Hey Alchemist! and the 7 minute Neuralgia - The melding of neurology and alchemy being this bands signature sound in a nutshell. The first track drops straight onto the riff, leading with a snarling brute downstroke that drives forward with malicious momentum boiling to a finish of feedback and warped vocal loops. The second track is more limber, elastic and loose, the Raw Power rock and roll of The Stooges stretched out and rolled over and over until the whole band stops it dead, leaving you suddenly alone in the empty cosmos of silence feeling all insignificant and quiet against the vastness of sound that just dumped you. Until you press play again and the whole thing picks up where it left off ad infinitum.

No links, previews, or edits to tease you with for this release, you'll just have to take my word for how good it is. Head over to the bands website to download their previous free eps for a taster and order this from the label now. Digitally released on 5th September for just £2 from iTunes, the Ltd Ed 7" will be out on Oct 3rd on Genepool. There is also an interview with Nick about said single on The Blog That Celebrates Itself, here.

On top of that there's an essential date for Brightonians diaries - OUS play the Prince Albert in Brighton on the 18th September with The Telescopes - another key influence to their sound and a band they have been working closely with as promoters and producers for the last couple of years.

SONIC ROUTER: Gorgons: Making Modern Sounds As Antiques

2011-08-31T21:00:00.003+01:00

"I don’t want to think of it as merely casting a filter over something and calling it old or dirty. I want the reworking process of certain gestures to find a balance between what you exactly hear in your head while creating and the serendipitous events that occur to reach that sound or feeling you want a sound to impart." Chris Vocchia - Gorgons

New interview by me with Chicago based ambient beatsmith Chris Vocchia, aka Gorgons is up on the Sonic Router site.

Over the last few weeks I've been chatting with Chris and getting deeper into the psyche of the mysterious producer responsible for the tracks I posted about in July. As in thrall to the ancient as he is the modern, this is a producer with depth.

READ IT HERE

REVIEW: Evenings - Lately

2011-08-31T12:30:00.001+01:00

Twilight descends once more, cast from the speakers in long drawn shadows, the light of the fading sun flickering across the room in its own . I've had the previous Evenings release, North Dorm ep on repeat since Nathan Broadus put it out last summer. It says a lot for the tenacity of the atmosphere he creates that I've been playing those five songs for ove a year and still haven't tired of them. It wouldn't be quite appropriate to say it's been a long wait because I've been so immersed in that release that I haven't really yearned for anything else from him, though often wondered how he would develop his sounds. This new release exceeds and confounds any expectations I had. This has been out a couple of weeks now and has been subtly dominating my stereo. Focussing on the ambient elements, losing the chillwave-comedown beats and bouyant patterns in favour of pure evocative vignettes, it is a romantic slowdance of an album that slowly bleeds into the darkest corners of consciousness inducing hypnagogic states and daydream paralysis.

Lately gently winds up with a music-box introduction that sets the scene for that half-asleep fabricated memory nostalgia that H-Pop is famous for, yet presenting it with a clear-eyed production that still somehow manages to retain all that hazy mugginess and an intimacy that makes you want to get even closer into it, let all those bulging bass bubbles surround you, swim your prone body trance-like through the amniotic pulses. There are snatches of vocals, beyond disembodied, barely human; a snatch of a laugh in Genève; in Lo-Vélo amongst the trembling melody they appear out the other side of elegent and ethereal, descending from an angelic plane, falling from the sky through the earth into a watery realm, through male and female, through refracted lights and colours; in [I] Softly We Go they are shapeshifted into avian coos; then the finale of [Lately] See You Soon brings in piano and a completely compressed voice that sounds like the softest pecussion to match the beautiful key note impact of padded hammer on string.

The track titles are all punctuated, accented, distorted and minimised. Not in a Witch House way, more of a Warp/Rephlex kind of abstracted yet almost meaningfully ambiguous fashion. It adds an aesthetic that worked well for Aphex Twin and it works here. The track lengths are equally erractic, the brief //// an 8-second murmer betwen two 3-minute pieces, there's an 8-minute micro-epic that begins with the sounds of the sea. It's actually a very rare and refreshing thing to see an artist capable of allowing the songs to develop and conclude within their own worlds; it suggests music dictated to the artist through the virtues of their own existance. Absolutely nothing of this album feels forced and that's a small but no means insignificant illustration of it.

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://evenings.bandcamp.com/album/lately"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Lately by Evenings&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

P.E.S.T – Black Metal Theory Symposium

2011-08-30T12:30:00.000+01:00

New black metal symposium announced for Ireland in November on the Black Metal Theory blog.

"This Black Metal Theory Symposium invites speculations, commentaries, reflections, archivizations, reconceptualizations and interventions on pestilence, decay, plague, decomposition, putrefaction, rot, corpses, infestation, consumption, perversion, cannibalism, necrophilia, flesh, feeding, worms, insects, rats, rationalism, plants, ecology, swarms, maggots, fever, vampirism, waste ... among other things."
Full preview repost here:

P.E.S.T. (Philial Epidemic Strategy Tryst)

… affirmation (acting as companion) of a non-survival-supporting life whose tentacles crack death open merely as a collective perversion, a philia, which progressively disterminalizes as the end of all becomings or the terminus ad quem of becomings; and is transmuted to a collapsing expanse exhumed, deflowered and scavenged by life (non-survivalist life: unlife), its netting, mazing and bonding philia: a space of becomings, so contagious and epidemic, which as Nick Land puts it, is a “Pest”, a “meltdown plague ... Death as a terminal expanse of coldness and a part of desiring-machine is messed up through the pestilential and wasteful (exorbitant) bonds of epidemic life (philia) which frantically composes new strategies of 'openness to everything' – by means of its ungrounding strategies, bonds of philia and affirmation – not merely openness as the plane of being open but rather being lacerated, cracked, butchered and laid open ... then, sewing and scavenging what have been opened through the bonds of philia and the interphyletic labyrinths of life through which becoming runs as a vermiculating, mazing machine or an engineer of labyrinthine inter-dimensionalities.

– Reza Negarestani “Death as a Perversion: Openness and Germinal Death”

Christ on the cross appeared to me ... then summoned me to place my mouth to the wound in his side. It seemed to me that I saw and drank the blood, which was freshly flowing from his side … At times it seems to my soul that it enters into Christ’s side, and this is a source of great joy and delight. … [W]e washed the feet of the women and the hands of the men, and especially those of one of the lepers which were festering and in an advanced stage of decomposition. Then we drank the very water with which we had washed him. And the drink was so sweet that, all the way home, we tasted its sweetness and it was as if we had received Holy Communion.

– Angela of Foligno, Memorial

To be this much in love is to be sick (and I love to be sick).

– Georges Bataille, The Impossible

Pest: any deadly epidemic disease; plague (now rare); anything destructive; any insect, fungus, etc that destroys cultivated plants; a troublesome person or thing. Pestilent: deadly; producing pestilence; hurtful to health and life; pernicious; mischievous, vexatious [Fr peste and pestilence, from L pestis, pestilential, related to perdo, to destroy, ruin, lose; cf. perditus, lost, ruined by love].

Black Metal and Theory meet in a place of mutual pestering, a dark star-crossed extra-section of their individual para-sites, a rendezvous for conspiratorial communication; unnatural and extra-natural participation. The pestilential bonding of the equally sick pair exposes and releases to the air an epidemic of openness, “not merely openness as the plane of being open but rather being lacerated, cracked, butchered and laid open” (Negarestani). Black Metal and Theory have proven to be mutually antagonistic, vexatious, and their conjoining has occasioned much annoyance on both sides: from fans of Black Metal and from ivory tower theorists. Black Metal Theory is a pest and Black Metal theorists are mischievous pesterers. It is little wonder, then, that Black Metal theory is para-academic, simultaneously beside, outside and inside the academy: “Meeting, communicating or touching the true pestilential bonds of Empedocles' philia or the contagious plateau of interphylum or epidemic openness, the resistance, any isolationist struggle, uncommunicative reaction or opposition to, remains unchanged (unmutated) becomes impossible (but appreciated as a strategy intensifying the mess, the waste of the process and engineering the exorbitant). Through the expanse of philia, everything should participate and participation has no end, nor beginning, nor horizon, nor a certain objective of participation. Infested by the epidemic (contagious and wasteful) bonds of philia, openness is triggered on all levels of its communicative lines but more on the plane of ‘being opened’ than ‘being open’ or ‘being open to’” (Negarestani, “Death as a Perversion”). Black Metal Theory perverts, infests, and invents strategies for philial deviation, cross-breeding philosophy with the love of black metal, mating orcs and elves.

Pester: to infest (archaic); annoy persistently. [Apparently from Ofr empestrer (FR empêtrer), to entangle, from L in in, and LL pāstōrium a foot-shackle, from L pāstus, pa p of pāscere to feed]

The space or plane where Black Metal and Theory feed upon each other and are shackled together is one of mutual pestering, a cascade of parasitisms where it is impossible to tell which is guest and which is host, to discern what is living and what is dead, what is natural and what is not. A philial epidemic strategy for the two-fold event of infestation necessitates a “pact with putrefaction”, the “moment of nucleation with nigredo” (Negarestani). Nothing beats the supreme intimacy of inter-laceration and mutual rot. It is the only way of being anywhere: “Infinite universe as silent as death / In this coffin I lay to rest” (Inquisition, “Astral Path to Supreme Majesties,” Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm).

Pestle: an instrument for pounding or grinding.

To find strategies, or schizotrategies, which would allow for the contagious tryst between Black Metal and theory, one needs to pound reason, to grind out a pestilential rationalism. “Intelligibility is the epiphenomenon of a necrophilic intimacy ... reason reanimates the dead rather than bestowing life upon it ... intelligibility is the reanimation of the dead according to an external agency. Reason grounds the universe not only on a necrophilic intimacy but also in conformity with an undead machine imbued with the chemistry of putrefaction and nigredo” (Negarestani). One strategy for grounding the mathesis of decay is the Etruscan torture ritual where a living man or woman was tied to a rotting corpse, “shackled to their rotting double” and “left to decay.” What the Etruscan practice demonstrates is that the decay which is normally associated with the outside is always already internal to the body, to the flesh. The binding of the putrefying corpse and the living body is a strategy for necrophilic intimacy. This necroeroticism also reveals that the living are always already-dead and that the dead are always-already reanimatable. Black Metal, which is often “characterized among its followers and opponents by its ambivalent relationship with death and decay to such an extent that it is often said that the only protagonists in Black Metal are festering corpses” (Negarestani and Masciandaro “Black Metal Commentary”), is in an ambivalently necromantic relationship, a philial relationship between the living and the dead. The strategic philial tryst between the immoderate commentator, “the one who loves thinking” and “the loved one (black metal)” (Nicola Masciandaro, “Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya”) is necrological, an erotic rotting open of the object that exceeds the correlational parameters of exegesis and interpretation. “It is the ambivalent relationship of Black Metal with death that gives rise to the most criticized aspect of Black Metal, namely, necromanticism. As a part of vitalistic investment in death, necromanticism involves a liberalist or hedonistic openness toward death in the form of a simultaneously econonomical and libidinal synthesis between desire and death ... Black Metal can also be approached from a more twisted and colder intimacy with death, an impersonal realm where the already-dead finds its voice in the living” (Masciandaro and Negarestani). This twisted nest of relations is an inescapable yet reversible catena, a black chain of being or necrophilic link of perverse (non)relations: “Love (philia) in all its forms entangles openness with closure, and ultimately closure with the radical exteriority of the outside” (Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials).

Parasite: an organism that lives in or on another living organism and derives subsistence from it without rendering it any service in return.

Black Metal and Theory are parasites and sites of para-kinesis: para-sites. For Michel Serres parasitism is a nest of relations in a chain of feeding on, a perpetual or persistent movement where the host and guest make a good meal for the other. Serres’ parasitic relation reverses the usual notion of semiconduction, a unidirectional arrow where one thing feeds on another and gives nothing in return. It is a multi-vorous, vociferous exchange: a reciprocal interference. Parasitism produces disharmony; it engineers noise in the system. Black Metal Theory as Philial Epidemic Strategy Tryst (P.E.S.T.) creates such a site for parasitic static, interference, black noise.

This Black Metal Theory Symposium invites speculations, commentaries, reflections, archivizations, reconceptualizations and interventions on pestilence, decay, plague, decomposition, putrefaction, rot, corpses, infestation, consumption, perversion, cannibalism, necrophilia, flesh, feeding, worms, insects, rats, rationalism, plants, ecology, swarms, maggots, fever, vampirism, waste ... among other things. “Let’s gather our contagious diseases and make love” (Negarestani, Cyclonopedia).

Keynote Speaker:

Reza Negarestani (via video link)

Live Acts:

Eternal Helcaraxe http://eternalhelcaraxe.net/

Wound Upon Wound http://www.myspace.com/wounduponwound08

Confirmed Participants:

Paul Ennis

Diarmuid Hester

Jan Los
Nicola Masciandaro

Michael O’ Rourke
Zachary Price
Karin Sellberg
Steven Shakespeare
Aspasia Stephanou

Scott Wilson
Ben Woodard

Confirmed Artists:

Vincent Como

[Image: Vincent Como, Hexe 001. Carbon paper, graphite, and invocation on paper, from a series of 23 works based on ancient defixiones, or curse tablets.]

STREAM: Halls x Sun Glitters - Swan / There

2011-08-26T12:30:00.000+01:00

The enigmatic London based electronic producer Halls releases new jams alongside Sun Glitters, and the two remix each other. World spins slightly slower at a more distant angle. Light refracts softly, time locks in a disembodied loop of your own inner experience. Beyond lush.

<a href="http://hallsmusic.net/album/swan-there">Swan / There by Halls x Sun Glitters</a>

DOWNLOAD: //TENSE// - Pleasure Games

2011-08-25T12:30:00.000+01:00

It's late, more than half cut, this is making a lot of sense. //TENSE// always tends to, but at the time of writing, it really does. Just let that throb dig deep into you. Like they say: "Drank a few beers. Got all sexy."

VIDEO: German Army - Pulling Lashes

2011-08-25T10:00:00.000+01:00

Vide to illustrate the proto gunk crunk German Army track Pulling Lashes, produced by Moduli TV. Taken from the DryR ep out now on Amdiscs:

last/fum

2011-08-22T21:12:00.000+01:00

weekly listening, a day late than normal but no less ~~pointless~~ ~~profound~~ ~~pointless~~ ~~profound~~

DiS thread

01. Robel Synthesia - 52

02. The Weeknd - 42

03. Code Pie - 40

04. Evenings - 38

05. Roll The Dice - 31

06. GuMMy†Be▲R! - 26

07. Jon Porras - 24

08. Field Dress - 22

09. Monsters Build Mean Robots - 15

10. Luke Abbott - 14

10. In the Shadow of the Mountain - 14

1 – Better than his first release earlier this summer. Updated chillwave. It's very nice indeed, and totally randomly has a song with a rainforest/jungle noises sample that is the exact same one that my baby's monkey alarm clock has.

2 – new mixtape/album is excellent. Full of great moments, phrasing, samples, soul and attitude. Kid could go far, whoever he/it/they/she is.

3 – Terrible name but good colourful pop music from Montreal.

4 – Not sure why this hasn;t registered more plays, it;s all I'm listenign to. Maybe the ipod's inconsistent scrobbling is to blame. Essential bedtime listening, totally dreamy. Lost a lot of the bouncy beats from last year's North Dorm ep, focussing heavily on the hypnagogic pop soporifics.

5 – An awesome band.

6 – New Ep about to be released on Disaro. His strongest yet for me, even bette than the Spectral Analysis ep.

7 – Undercurrent on Root Strata. Mesmerising.

8 – Crazy technicolour psych garage noise pop blow out. I think they literally threw everything the had at the wall and taped the results.

9 – I've been waiting 5 years for their second album, and they've finally dropped it: WeShouldHaveDestroyedOurGeneralsNotTheirEnemies. It's post-rock, if you couldn't tell from that title. And Lo it is good.

10a – Holcomb Drones. Up there with the Andy Stott album for electronic album of the year?

10b – Animal Collective / Deerhunter psych dream pop. Played it the last couple of mornings so not really got the chance hear it properly.

TOTW:

Weeknd's Cocteau Twins cover:

http://soundcloud.com/theweekndxo/sets/the-weeknd-thursday-1

REVIEW: Monsters Build Mean Robots - We Should Have Destroyed Our Generals And Not Their Enemies

2011-08-22T17:26:00.000+01:00

Self released on their own Nice Weather for Airstrikes label, Monsters Build Mean Robots have finally put out their long-anticipated follow up to their 2008 self-titled debut - number 5 in my albums of the year when it emerged not long after they did, a collection of subliminally arresting electronic post-rock tracks with a dark edge of political confrontation that focussed on global Government's warcraft. On this second album their titular and lyrical leanings are still well into the left but this time they include materialism and a more personal existentialism across the five tracks. As well as embellishing their vocal potency they have also changed their musical outlook considerably. In their new incarnation there are no longer moments of sparse ambient flicker and glitch to build and direct the tensions and emotions, instead where it was once sounds sourced from the databanks of Leaf, Warp, and Kompakt, ambient signifiers that glowed throughout the tracks, here all that psychic energy is channelled through the sheer rapturous power of the guitar with reference to bands like Sigur Ros, Explosions In The Sky, and Arcade Fire.

The album features all the prominent post-rock landmarks you could need (exhaustive title included) and embellishes them with instinctive structures in miniaturised forms. No 10 minute + slow growing epics, just mini ones, bottled into pop songs. Glockenspiel fills ripple up the soaring crescendos of Song for the Generals; the progress of Lament 77 is interspersed with detailed vocal nuances, spaces in the walls of guitars where inflections and backing can slip through. The composition of the songs is assured and confident which gives the band an air of authority important if your key lyrical stock is chastising those in power and standing up as spokesperson for the disenfranchised. Spearheading the band is the voice and guitar of Pete Lambrou - whichever update of Post.Rock.V.XX we're up to now, he's at the forefront of it, putting on bands around the South and fronting both MBMR and the more rock-centric Last Days of Lorca. When he suggests that you burn down your home, in Psalm 57, you're inclined to take his lead and go through with it. He's got a real lived-in sounding set of chords, got a bit of fire to his falsetto that sets him apart from the Jonsi's and Bellamy's of the world although he is capable of layering on the dreaminess and hollering up a bit of bombast when it suits, and more importantly, where it fits. Again: composition is the keystone to this album's success.

We Should Have Destroyed Our Generals And Not Their Enemies is being officially launched with a free-entry party is TONIGHT! at the Druids Arms, Brighton.

DOWNLOAD: Elvis Depressedly - Selfless Violence (Self-Released)

2011-08-18T12:30:00.003+01:00

Deep black trance from Los Angeles with a Bandcamp page header that simply says DEATH 2 AMERICA. The sombre tones of the music suggest she already died with this the soundtrack to the wake.

Recorded straight to tape then upped to the internet, there's a definite bedroom quality to these five pieces. Completely murky and garbled lo-fi productions, that peak into the muddied red on the final track Life Sentence, is an aesthetic that's been driven into the ground, yet it's still consistently compelling when it's used to swamp out good ideas and here,despite the unsophisticated equipment and sounds involved, things becomes all the more emotionally arresting because of the wounded nature of the recordings.

Opener Bummer Dreams starts off in muted coruscating form, then quickly pans out to a softer, choral vocal loop with a more melodic drift than it initially suggested. Boy Satan swirls about in holotropic eddies that wash over each other threatening to capsize the progression of the track with a grace approaching euphoria when compared to the weaker title track which is the least developed and thinnest sounding of all the pieces. Turn Blue redresses things by washing back out of the speakers in elegant form, then on again to the soupy murk of the closing track.

Very promising, if indeed there is more to come at all, which with a project like this could easily go either way by running over with improvisations or dry up and reform in another project.

Oh yeah, and that name. It's not Com Truise or Back Stabbath, but I like it.

DOWNLOAD from the Bandcamp

&amp;lt;a href="http://elvisdepressedly.bandcamp.com/album/selfless-violence"&amp;gt;selfless violence by elvis depressedly&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

VIDEO: Wooden Shjips - Black Smoke Rise

2011-08-17T12:30:00.000+01:00

Colour me psyched about seeing Wooden Shjips at End of the Road festival in a couple of weeks. A band that really makes more sense live - by virtue of smashing your own senses into fractal shards of blues rock repetition.

VIDEO: White Hills - Paradise

2011-08-17T10:30:00.000+01:00

A mighty wall of synapse collapsing sound meets...and ipod advert vs some plastic dragons.

Obviously.

REVIEW: Liquid Skulls - In Lungs (Self-Released)

2011-08-16T12:30:00.001+01:00

In Lungs in the third self-released album from Memphis based soporific ambient folk band Liquid Skulls. Woven from skeins of deeply haunting material, this record manages to be even more intricate and delicate than March's gossamer Dead In Yr Eyes. Extending my interpretations of the sounds I described in my post on that previous release, their quicksilver sound is hard to define, occupying a blurred landscape constructed in some twilight netherworld beween the ambiance of Grouper's deer dragging and Appalachian wyrd folk song structures - less campfire, more swampfire - a boggy and murky veil obscuring a comforting soul-warming centre.

All free downloads are now sold out but you can still pick this up for just $5 from their Bandcamp.

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://liquidskulls.bandcamp.com/album/in-lungs"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;in lungs by liquid skulls&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

VIDEO: Asian Women On The Telephone - pOHOTLIVAYA gORBUNIA iSCHET i nAHODIT

2011-08-15T12:30:00.000+01:00

New video and track from the ever excellent Asian Women On The Telephone in which the band dredge up tranced out chains of dungeon clank and cackle. The video collages together hellish visions and live footage to illustrate this somewhat more demonic slab of industrial drone.

llaasstt.ffmm

2011-08-14T19:48:00.000+01:00

weekly listening statistics. exciting!

llaasstt.ffmm

keepong it statted to the max for your best line in Sunday entertainment >>>
01. Liquid Skulls - 52
02. AK/DK - 41
03. Book of Sand - 36
04. Craft - 30
05. Sam Amidon - 23
06. Roll The Dice - 22
07. Wild Nothing - 17
08. Peaking Lights - 16
09. Barn Owl - 12
09. Stag Hare - 12

1 – New album released this month that beautifully develops, enhances and refines their ambient folk drone songwriting.

2 – Brighton drum/synth 2 piece released their debut cassette last week. I wrote something: http://nfrblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/video-review-akdk-dispatch-1.html

3 – Phenomenal – but subtly so – blend of drone, ambient and black metal. Vaguely similar to Nadja or The Angelic Process crossed with someone like Jon Porras.

4 – Swedish black & roll of the highest/nastiest order. It's not that high actually, but it's a hell of a lot of fun. My kind of fun music anyway

5 – Looking forward to seeing him at End of the Road

6 – Going to interview this band soon, just started listening to the album. All very interesting.

7 – Heard he/they're not so great live, but still, another EOTR excite.

8 – It's possible I play this too much, but at least one play a week for the last 8 months hasn't taken the edge of it at all.

9a – Love Shadowland.

9b – New album is immense, 4 huge tracks of involving biotrance: http://nfrblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/review-stag-hare-spirit-canoes-inner.html

Track of the week:

Hmm.. why not:

PREVIEW: Sounds from the Brighton Underground: Hereharehere, Bad Orb, Hobo Sonn, Blood Stereo, Bolide Splinter Group

2011-08-12T12:30:00.000+01:00

Sounds from the Brighton Underground
Cafe Oto, London
Saturday 20 August 2011

Doors: 8pm
Tickets: £6 advance / £7 on the door

A one night showcase of some of the main artists involved in Brighton's closely knit post-Noise weirdo-improv scene.

HEREHAREHERE

Robin Dickinson (who also performs solo electronics as Slow Listener) and Melanie Potter perform no-fi a'cappella vocal improv rituals.

BAD ORB

Bad Orb is the solo project of Sarah Albury (Polly Shang Kuan Band, Jettatura) whose audio-visual work lies in the blurry area between fact and fiction.

Bad Orb on Facebook

HOBO SONN

Solo joint of Ian Murphy (Gryn Brvs), uses a single sound source and dissolves it into the finest hiss and crackle.

BLOOD STEREO

Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance create thick, psychedelic audio-mulch with tapes, throats and objects.

"Blood Stereo... explores hand-cranked 20th century technology in combination with epiglottal gymnastics and free music modes inherited as much from punk rock's mutilated aesthetic as utopian art styles." David Keenan

Blood Stereo on Myspace
Dylan Nyoukis on Ubuweb

BOLIDE SPLINTER GROUP

Members of guerilla-Improv unit, Bolide, (Daniel Spicer, F. Ampism, Tom Roberts, Lewis Major) performing a free-style electro-acoustic jam with Dylan Nyoukis and Ian Murphy.

Bolide website

VIDEO / REVIEW: AK/DK - Dispatch #1

2011-08-11T12:30:00.003+01:00

Firstly, viddy yrselves blind on this hallucinatory stroboscopic video for the first physical release from Brighton based Drum/Synth/FX improv duo AK/DK Stand well back from this, here's a band that's about to go off! Seriously though, this is exciting. Imagine a stripped back Battles, Lightning Bolt with synth, DFA 1979...with synth, Holy Fuck with....out a couple of members? No guitars, just pulsing, oscillating, pumping, glitching, sweeping chaos propelled by a loose limbed beat frenzy. They have a regular visual expert with them at their gigs to capture and refract the stage chaos, the effect of which is replicated in this video. Disorientating.

The single is titled Dispatch #1 and comes on tape. Six tracks of what I described up there. their huge stage improv blow-outs condensed, but not tamed, into bite sized pop hits in waiting. In their words: synthpunknoisecrunk.

The cassette comes in a run of 250 hand numbered copies in either Red, Blue, Green and Yellow, and each has a coloured case. Each cassette comes with a digital download, so it doesn't matter if you don't have a tape machine anymore! But you should. Order it HERE.

Here's a monolithic forty minute slab of technicolour noise from their Soundcloud:

AK/DK at Concorde2 Sept 2010 by AK/DK

Catch them on stage on 16th September at The Hope, Brighton town.

Hit 'em up everywhere:

www.akdk.co.uk
www.soundcloud.com/ak-dk www.akdk.bandcamp.com
www.myspace.com/akdkgroup
www.facebook.com/akdkband

VIDEO: Roll The Dice - In Dust

2011-08-11T10:00:00.000+01:00

Roll the Dice trail their forthcoming album In Dust, with a teaser video directed by Frode Fjerdingstad featuring words written by Rory Gibb ( DiS / Sonic Router / Always Everything ) narrated by the gravel voiced Paul Bolderson and backed by some cinematic granite heavy drone from the duo. The result is a cross between Godspeed and a gritty Western, coupled with the visuals that illustrate and reinforce both those comparisons again.

The album is released on 12th September. Preorder at the Leaf Label HERE

DOWNLOAD: ĸŋüłł - Jesus Summer Camp

2011-08-10T12:30:00.000+01:00

ĸŋüłł
Jesus Summer Camp
DOWNLOAD

Discordant metalicised guitar drone and freak vibes from this Russian outfit. Another band in the line of people heading out of the tundra deep into ever more expansive terrains of infinitely expanding tone loops and riff cycles - think Twilight Owls, Mpala Garoo, Sunbells Fenimore, Asian Women On The Telephone.

<iframe width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=4055043201/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0">href="http://knutt.bandcamp.com/album/jesus-summer-camp">jesus summer camp by ĸŋüłłiframe>

DOWNLOAD: Sad Souls - Precious Paragons (Self-Released)

2011-08-09T12:00:00.027+01:00

Sad Souls
Precious Paragons
DOWNLOAD

Second release this year from Tom Autey's Ann Arbor, MI based ambient-folk solo-outfit Sad Souls Following January's Forest Loops, Precious Paragons starts off at a more Primitive folk angle, lonesome, wistful, melancholic then moves towards a rawer, rugged-trail form of feral and full of the gnarled vigour that instills. The success of this release rests on the contrasts: Just after the tumbling flutey centre of New Skyboxthere's a cover of Nico's These Days which is every bit as brittle and doomed romantic as the original, stripped even further back towards an ethereal minimalism. The two final tracks, Bull Men and Elf Ears combine the initial influences of Nick Drake and John Fahey and drop things off on the dust kicking route it began on. Very lovely indeed.

He also records even dreamier pieces under the name Cerulean Tapes
&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sadsouls.bandcamp.com/album/precious-paragons"&amp;amp;amp;gt;Precious Paragons by Sad Souls&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;

VIDEO / DOWNLOAD: Blissed Out - Drones (Ritualz Remix)

2011-08-09T10:00:00.000+01:00

&amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;nbsp;height="338" frameborder="0"&amp;amp;gt;

Where did witch house go? It just ate itself and regurgitated it into an pulse quickening collaboration with neon aacid vomit visuals. Gnarly retro-active blog music from the blistered fingertips of Blissed Out given a relentless rescrub by dark artisan Ritualz

Download from the Soundcloud or from Mediafire if that's all gone (which it probably has at the time of writing).

REVIEW: Honeydrum - Pleasures of the Sun (AmDiscs)

2011-08-08T09:30:00.000+01:00

Honeydrum
Pleasures of the Sun
(AmDiscs)

That cover art should clue you in to the sounds of Honeydrum: a romantic clinch, mid waltz, blurred out of focus, shaking with both emotional tension, erotic release and the furtive hand of the voyeristic cameraman. This six track album develops the band from their seven previous eps into a proposition less fierce than the likes of Ghost Animal, less murky than the handful of Beach Fossil bands yet muddier that the clear-eyed Wild Nothings, Honeydrum have a sound that is definitely of the now, with a distinct feel and tone that sets them out from their peers - in their own words; "Atmospheric mall jams". The way they shuffle their feet and hunch their shoulders gives them the air of a slouchier, grouchier Blank Dogs - by now you're getting into the references - a mix of John Hughes and John Waters films. Heavy 80's hangover.

You can download it for free, so you should probably just do that right now: Digital version out now on the band's BANDCAMP. Cassettes available from 15th August to order HERE

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://honeydrum.bandcamp.com/album/pleasures-of-the-sun"&amp;amp;gt;Pleasures Of The Sun by Honeydrum&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

ALBUM PREVIEW: Gimu - Crestfallen (Children Play Records)

2011-08-04T16:00:00.000+01:00

Gimu
Crestfallen
(Children Play Records)

I wrote about Brazillian drone artist Gimu in June when he released The Sacred and heaped praise upon the marbled shades of its granite drone. This new album is no different; Crestfallen is three fantastic pieces of piano bathed in mithril ambience. Stream the full album via Gimu's Soundcloud and order from ChildrenPlay Records now.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Review: Hateful Abandon - Move (Todestrieb)

2011-08-04T12:30:00.002+01:00

Released on Ipswich based black/dark metal/industrial label Todestrieb Move is the follow-up to 2008's Lungs which saw the duo of Swine and V/M drop the harsh black metal noise of their debut Neverending Black Torrent of Death (released under the name Abandon) in favour of cleaner guitar tones channelled from a new-wave, dark-pop and post-punk perspective. Heavily shaded by the shapes thrown by the likes of Dead Can Dance, The Cure, and Joy Division it almost annihilated their existing audience of knuckle dragging metalhead noiseniks and cast them somewhat adrift of definable categorisation. The definition of Hateful Abandon as a musical entity, and their position in regards to any kind of historical lineage or current scene is something mainman Mart Brindley (aka Vintyr) explained in assertive no uncertain terms when I sent him some questions for their inclusion in the UK Black Metal Week feature on the blog in December. Read that interview here.

Simply put, this band stand alone.

There's little trace of black metal left on this new album, and other than the vocals which can peak out into hoarse roars there's very little Metal here at all; there's more similarity to current band like The Horrors or Cold cave here than any of the recent strains of black metal bands. Yet despite that it is one of of the most violent, angry, aggressive and imposing albums to have crushed the air from my speakers in a long while. It's not about defining or submitting to genre tropes to aid the listener in understanding the themes of the record, instead it is all in the vocal delivery, the atmosphere that overrides all the instruments contributing to it. A heavy Swans atmosphere hangs over the record a well

The rise and fall of intertwined guitar/piano crescendos in Human Clockwork is like something from latter day Mogwai (and someone else can tell me the precursor to them). Overlapping doomy chug of bass in Copper Foundation overlaid by scrabbling guitar lines and alternate rasped and glowering vocal.
Huge throbbing momentum of Poundland that sucks up distorted debris and sonic carnage from the earth scorched by its approach. Has Godflesh written all over, shakes off the comparison, stamps a boot into its face then elevates out of the claustrophobia by adding an echoing choral chant into the final moments. The final track Lost is another of the album highlights, digging in to another emotive key lead finale that loops over into cathartic oblivion, retaining the hostility of the rest of the album, easing it out through a fading coda until there is nothing left.

The musicianship and song structuring in the album is phenomenal, the relentless procession of ideas is as intense as the music itself. A total experience.

LIVE VIDEO: Pseudo Nippon Acoustic Live in the Strawditorium

2011-08-03T13:00:00.000+01:00

Pseudo Nippon, live, with no power. But so much. As the man says:

"we no muscle beef egg band all the time, we like yoghurt and berries and do folk too xx

peace

Pseudo"

VIDEO: Deekie - The Wedding Song

2011-08-03T10:30:00.000+01:00

Really densely colour-warped, maxxed out super8 high-gain grainy clip for London based psych-drone duo Deekie's The Wedding Song, lifted from the Brickenden EP, which I wrote about here, and still available for naught over here: http://deekie.bandcamp.com/

Visit the deekie blog at http://deekie.tumblr.com/

REVIEW: Stag Hare - Spirit Canoes (Inner Islands / Hands In The Dark)

2011-08-02T12:30:00.001+01:00

New release from Utah, US based solo-voyaging bio-trance project Stag Hare, available on mixed colour 12" (including d/l) from Inner Islands and limited edition 50 digipack & poster CD run from Hands In The Dark

Arriving at the same time as the Gkfoes Vjgoaf album Spirit Canoes on the same label, this is another release that continues to exemplify Inner Islands as a force to reckoned with - the power of Mother Nature herself. Stag Hare's music is as equally infused with the sounds and resonances of the natural world as Gkfoes, and on Spirit Canoes he is trying to channel as much as she can through her music along the same transcendent plane. Composed of four long pieces of deeply hypnotic tranquility floated out over beats drawn from deep earthy tones, Stag Hare loses himself in directing the listener on a tour of the natural forces of the Earth, the vibe getting super heavy out there in the wilderness, bringing hypnotic tides of rhythm and drone crashing right over your head, threatening to wash you away with its flow.

Can't get enough of this biosphere meditative trance at the moment, and the summer is the best time for it - lying out under the evening sky, watching as the music slowly pull the stars out of hiding.

VIDEO: Turbowolf - A Rose For The Crows

2011-08-02T10:00:00.000+01:00

Classic rock powered up to '11 with a vintage video style to go with it, this is a brand new clip from Bristol's hard rock heroes Turbowolf. A Rose For The Crows is the first single from the debut self-titled album Turbowolf, to be released on the tidily numbered 11/11/11 through Hassle Records. Too awesome, as always. Too long to wait for that full length.

REVIEW: Gkfoes Vjgoaf - Nature Eternal Striving (Inner Islands)

2011-08-01T13:00:00.000+01:00

Gkfoes Vjgoaf
Nature Eternal Striving
(Inner Islands)

Sean Conrad is an exploratory sort of person. He is physically well travelled, having moved round the US and now residing in New Zealand, though his camp there is an equally nomadic one. His previous release as Gkfoes Vjgoaf, Glacial Ways found him take tentative steps towards the water's edge of a new sound - the element itself; Water. With titles that involve the words River, Mist, Clouds and Snow the main influence for Nature Eternal Striving is explicitly liquid and the album immediately starts with the gentle sway and rocking that echoes the waves and tides and continues to expound on the theme throughout. This new record comes with one of Sean's more insightful introductions which explains his disinterest in water and the fact he hasn't even been swimming for five years, then explains his realisation of it's importance to him and a new found connection to it. The music of Gkfoes has always been elementally obsessed, starting off with forest forays and campfire rounds ripened in the pine scented backwoods of his home state of California, albums strewn with birdsong and wind rustling leaves, tracks embellished with the sounds of the ambient nature around him. Now living in one of the wettest regions on Earth he has begun producing music that is in thrall to the rhythms and textures that make up seventy percent of the world's surface and the insides of our bodies.

On Nature Eternal Striving Sean has filled his sound out just that little bit much more and created his most cohesive and wholly consuming record to date. What he achieves is one of those masterly atmospheres that is not so easy to describe, yet so easy to sink into and be transported along with. Its apparent simplicity belies it's complex psychological effect and musical construction; a harmonising of alertness and deep slow breathing trance that will almost flat line your heart-rate with tracks like the 17 minute River Friends and closing Temple Of Snow. This is drone music with a lot of movement. There's a shimmering post-rock ambience to the way his use of repetition is pushed to subliminally affecting, physically arresting purposes, teasing out endlessly looping refrains of majestic beauty. This is new age trance music in the vein of White Rainbow's Prism Of Eternal Now without the ironic knowingness of what it's attempting, nor any of the crudity of someone like Dolphins Into The Future (though Ka Ala Ke Kua does convincingly refutes that).

In a harsh critical sense this could be viewed as practical, utility, flotation tank music, but that view would overlook the depth and sheer talent of the musicianship that enhance the album through the intangible elements of quiet euphoria that have always been there in his work. On ...Striving Sean has made these elements more pronounced whilst simultaneously immersing them into the body of the tracks with a more finessed subtlety that makes them much more consciously apparent, creating a coherent, transcendent, yet still elusive album that is always ahead of the listener, leading the mind into over-abundant landscapes of sonic fauna and flora.

Nature Eternal Striving is released on 12th August by Inner Islands and is available to order now. Comes on multicoloured 12" vinyl in a double gatefold sleeve, with digital download.

Here's the final track from the album; The Temple In Snow:

PREVIEW: The Outer Church 11th August: Strange Aeons with Ensemble Economique, High Wolf & The Wyrding Module

2011-08-01T12:30:00.009+01:00

Preview repost plagiarised straight from The Outer Church itself, except to say from me to repeat in case you don't notice....

High Wolf everybody! HIGH WOLF IS COMING TO TOWN!!!!!! >>>

As ever, The Outer Church brings you a line-up notable for its consistency and immersive potential, complementary layers of sound and vision offering a portal beyond the mundane. It's not just a gig... it's The Outer Church.

Starving Weirdo Brian Pyle presents a live performance in his solo guise as Ensemble Economique, touching on contemporary composition, electronic soundtracks and troubled drift. Last year's Psychical (Not Not Fun) drew plaudits from all quarters, and his forthcoming album for Dekorder is set to build on that album's uncanny success.

A modern psychedelic phenomenon, High Wolf - otherwise known as Max - has recorded for Winged Sun,
Not Not Fun, Moamoo and Holy Mountain and collaborated with Astral Social Club on the Iibiis Rooge project. Prepare for a dizzying demonstration of Pyramidal Meditation.

The Wyrding Module is a solo project from paramusician Christopher Gladwin, one half of Team Doyobi (Skam, ICASEA). The psychotronic sounds of the Module are inspired by Kosmische Musik, mantra-rock, post-industrial ambience and the occult.

The Wyrding Module Live @ Fuel 2 (mp3)

Visual Hex by James R Moore aka Black Mountain Transmitter

last.fm

2011-07-31T18:40:00.001+01:00

stats are back! think I've had a couple of weeks off.

DiS vs NFR Vs. Last.fm

FACEPALM!

01.Gkfoes Vjgoaf - 32

02. Sad Souls - 29

03. Hateful Abandon - 27

04. Washed Out - 24

05. Low - 21

06. Monsters Build Mean Robots - 19

06. Blackbird Blackbird - 19

08. The Caretaker - 15

08. Peaking Lights - 15

10. Honeydrum - 14

1 – new album from Sean Conrad. Heavy influence from Water this time round in the deeply transfixing hallucinogenic trance.

2 – a couple of free d/l albums of folky drone – laptop & loops. Has a lovely cover of Nico's These days on it: www.sadsouls.bandcamp.com

3 – Just one of the best bands around the UK at the moment. |Totally ditched the BlackMetal – almost all metal – for new album Move. Lots of 80s influence and very aggressive. Sounds like the Horrors if the discovered Swans, meant in the absolute greatest way possible,

6 – New album out to pre-order now. I've been waiting for this for about 5 years or something! Fantastic post-rock band from Chichester, sounding like Sigur Ros and arcade Fire on this new one. Good.

8b – I've also been greatly enjoying Faceplant – solo project of Aaron Coynes. Alien synth psych, just as dubby as Peaking Lights but leans even harder on the dancefloor groove

10 – Great occulty cold-wave guitar band just released a new ep on AMDISCS.

DOWNLOAD: The Outer Church - The Dark Earth Mixtape Vol. I

2011-07-29T12:30:00.003+01:00

Here's a euphorically creepy mix from the third eye of the psychotropic ghost-haunt-God-head over at The Outer Church . This is going to kick your Friday into party times, no mistake. Any mix that starts of with Velvet Cacoon knows what it's doing with itself - then when it goes on to include the likes of Haxan Cloak, Paavoharju, Demons and Old Apparatus you know you're in for a trip that will loose your conscious from its fluffy moorings out into the ravening wilds of...THE OUTER CHURCH, Bwah ha ha haaaaaaarrrgghhhh!!!

The Outer Church

Presents

The Dark Earth Mixtape Vol. I

DOWNLOAD

Velvet Cacoon Earth And Dark Petals

Idaho Forever

Coil Journey To Avebury

Current 93 & Thomas Ligotti Nobody Is Anybody

Buffy Sainte-Marie Dyed, Dead, Red

The Haxan Cloak Raven's Lament

The Contrarian Crimson Village

Demons Firewalk

Paavoharju Mistä Hän Oli Tullut

Kraken Duumvirate I Channel

Old Apparatus Zebulon

Hexentanz Profane The Twelve

DOWNLOAD: Gorgons - four demo tracks

2011-07-29T10:00:00.002+01:00

Four tracks from a mysterious US producer from Chicago uploaded to Soundcloud within the last two weeks and already picking up over a hundred plays each. Something very interesting happening here. Gorgons makes wintery, claustrophobic snowstorm beat ambience. Possibly like Burial would sound if he were from the Windy City, a soundtrack to a lost Guy Maddin film. Four considerably different pieces of music; The mst recent, The Midnight Trail / A Dark Token, a huge swelling disturbingly creepy wall of consuming noise; elsewhere, icy enchanted vocals drift hazily through the shadowy groove of Red Cloud; a deep resonant bass tone thrums through the heart of Films at 11-02's dark nightscape, beset by muted explosions of beats that sound like shoes softly crunching through snow, evoking a lonely isolated vista that leads to the pure snow-storm white-out drone of Models. All tracks are beautifully produced pieces with texture and detail.

DOWNLOAD: Daterape - Empress

2011-07-28T12:30:00.000+01:00

Daterape
Empress
DOWNLOAD

Free download 5 track ep from Australian group Daterape. Don't be put off by the name. We've been through this once before. Industrial undertones dancing over the witch house burial ground seance reflux. Broken ribs for drum sticks, hollowed out skulls for toms, deep beats carved from flesh and smashed upon the altars of darkness. They're an increasingly potent entity and these five tracks offer more in the same cold vein as previously, with both the title track and Arctic Gesture with 80's laying down cool slabs of 80's club beats and ominous synth backing that occupy a space between Ford & Lopatin and Light Asylum, a dry ice choked dancefloor lead by hypnogogic robotic singers. Behold is a flashback to the heady days of yesterday when the world was out-spooked by drag and Witch House Mk 1, Atmofukk is another crude title that doesn't do it;s cosmic trance any favours, the cold romanticism of it being far more subtle that fukking would imply. The final track, Risk It, it a dirty bass/clap stomping double hitter, using it's nostalgic 8-bit blips to populate a landscape of eerie minimal, spacious and creepy synth tones.

&amp;lt;a href="http://daterape.bandcamp.com/album/empress"&amp;gt;Empress by DATERAPE&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

VIDEO: Holy Other - Know Where

2011-07-27T21:00:00.000+01:00

Paranormal VHS feedback clip for Holy Other's Know Where, directed by MFKWorld. Watch.

VIDEO: Felt Drawings - Barriers

2011-07-27T12:30:00.003+01:00

Lovely grainy super8 clip directed by Julieta Triangular to illustrate the wonderful Felt Drawings' grainy super8 darkened electro pop. Taken from April's self-released Body ep (which I wrote up here), Barriers is just one of the many glittering industrial jewels in Dominic Tiberio canon.

Find him on Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

DOWNLOAD: Sparkling Wide Pressure - Fragments of a Sound I Can Not Erase

2011-07-26T12:30:00.000+01:00

Sparkling Wide Pressure
Fragments of a Sound I Can Not Erase
DOWNLOAD

Frank Baugh has uploaded all his recordings under his Sparkling Wide Pressure guise to Bandcamp. That's a helluva lot of abstract drone to sink your frontal lobe into. Nothing he produces may ever quite better the ethereally magnificent Tearing Rippling from 2008's Touching Pasture on Students of Decay...:

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sparklingwidepressure.bandcamp.com/track/tearing-rippling"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Tearing Rippling by Sparkling Wide Pressure&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

...but Baugh has a very evocative way with conjuring drone that always hooks into somewhere deep inside you. From the opening bars of The Time That Is Right - complete with buried vocal and suddering background rumble - there's a resonance at work that can only envelop the listener (prediliction for Drone not withstanding). The intro is concluded with an even noiser version at the end, titled When The Time Is Right; it;s a thicker, gnarlier fuzzier sister piece the the start and close sout the album nicely offering a real finish that doesn't always happen with ambient works such as this that kind of just disappear off - but this one leaves its mak and echoes its start which is a nicely considered flourish.

The tracks are between 4 and 17 minutes long; meaning some drop straight into their peak soundspace, work it briefly then depart whilst others gently nudge at ideas before locking onto a definite course and picking out the ensuing details - if there was any one word to describe his sound it could easily be Pretty. Heard Through Window's drifting central tone is embellished by cleaner guitar lines sparking into life, whirling out in eddies of notes offset by glittering piano: The effect is efferfescent, like the neon shimmer in tropical seas. Opposite to the gentility of that, the penultimate track Journey of Forgiveness involves an almost chugging tumultuous turn on the bass end of the guitar, slashing tones and sharp licks of the headstock strings piercing through the dense channel of sound churning along, many moments of which bob up with a splendour that doesn't contradict the claim to Prettiness, but does provide a glimpse into the darker, uglier underbelly of which Prettiness requires to exist in contrast to.

He's a pretty prolific artist which a trip to his Bandcamp will quickly enlighten you. Start here though and you will only want to dig deeper.

&amp;lt;a href="http://sparklingwidepressure.bandcamp.com/album/fragments-of-a-sound-i-can-not-erase"&amp;gt;Fragments of a Sound I Can Not Erase by Sparkling Wide Pressure&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

DOWNLOAD: Kunlun - II (Winged Sun)

2011-07-25T12:30:00.000+01:00

Kunlun
II
(Winged Sun)
DOWNLOAD

More delirious voodoo trance drone from France's globe-wandering psych shamen Max, aka High Wolf, Annapurna Illusion, one half of Iibiis Rooge and fully in control of the hallucinatory voyage he takes his listenes on. Kunlun is another project that bears all the prints of his fingers on the burbling synths and sparsely propulsive slo-mo congotronic beats. This is the second release after I that was reelase din November. It;s Max's most minimal project in all ways, with the album name II and tracks simply called A and B and a music that is equally minimal in its sense of single mindedness and unhurried development. There's a coolness to the way both 14 minute tracks open out from brittle beginnings into a more dynamic range of sounds, effected loops twittering away, synth lines moving steadily through an increasingly diverse range of hums that echo the strange biological starburst of the cover art.

Catch High Wolf playing at August's Outer Church at Brighton Komedia on the 11th.
&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://wingedsunrecords.bandcamp.com/album/kunlun-ii-wsr15"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Kunlun - II (WSR15) by Winged Sun Records&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

LIVE VIDEO: Ash Borer @ The Acheron, NYC

2011-07-22T12:32:00.000+01:00

From the Gilead Media blog: Ash Borer @ The Acheron, NYC, 16th July 2011 via (((unartig)))

VIDEO: Cults - Go Outside

2011-07-22T12:00:00.001+01:00

My Cults single d/l post from last year is one of the most read things of the last few weeks - is that all you naughty scamps looking for the album link? This is the song that hooked me into a state of obsession for a brief period back there. Turns out it's really the only song they have, but it's a killer and now it's got a proper video to go with it.

DOWNLOAD: Jef Barbara | DannielRadall - Cocaine Love (AMDISCS)

2011-07-22T09:30:00.025+01:00

Jef Barbara | DannielRadall
Cocaine Love
(AMDISCS)
DOWNLOAD

The hotly anticipated Cocaine Love EP from luxuriously talented 80's synthpop producer Danniel Radall and equally deliriously talented cohort Jef Barbara has arrived! Four tracks of heat saturated, narcotically intoxicating voyeuristic vicewave (don't worry, no one will ever say that again, promise...guaranteed!). Each one a soon-to-be-BBQ-hit; Crack Smoking Kids, Sexaphone Love , On Mirror and of course, Cocaine Love.

So loaded with drugs the LP's should get sent by mule, as sleazy as a tankini and hot enough to roll it's suit sleeves up, these are perfect summer party jams that sweat dirty street-level pheromones and high-life decadence in equal measure.

Download the ep free from Radall's Bandcamp, stream from the AMDISCS Soundcloud.