GIG PREVIEW: The Men, Hookworms & Sealings - Sunday 19th Feb.

...so that would be tomorrow night, Brighton town - Prince Albert.  Three bands of slightly different stripes all great enough to warrant a rare gig preview from me.

The Men, as you probably already know, play their record collection as if they invented it, kicking out MC5 jams, Spacemen 3 doped repetition, gnarly snarly attitude of The Stooges and a whole load of 90's sonic fuzz and fury fom Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney and their like.  There's not a band quite like The Men around right now:




Hookworms are a  Leeds based trio playing a dark psych style of garage rock - loads of space, reverb, looping threads of riffs needling their way through time and space out to fizzing climaxes. Still a bit Spacemen, there's some Krauty Can influence rattling about inside the trippy frameworks of their tracks, and soem of the looser strung out Sun City Girls. 




Sealings are one of Brighton's loudest and volatile propositions, now pimped out with a live drummer their show are even more hi-octane takes on their hybridised rock/metal/punk noise.  Here's their brand new video for new track Out Cold

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

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.

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

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.

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

Morning you spawn.

This month's Outer Church preview, diligently reposted here 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 

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

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. 

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

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.

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

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.




Visual Hex by James R Moore aka Black Mountain Transmitter

GIG PREVIEW: Ghostlimb, Dopefight and more @ The Albert, 3rd August

One of Brighton's best bands of all kinds, let alone metal are back from gigs with Eyehategod to support US hardcore band Ghostlimb at the Prince Albert on Wednesday 3rd August.

From the This One For The Crew Facebook

THIS ONE'S FOR THE CREW PRESENTS...

GHOSTLIMB
Intensely aggressive melodic hardcore from Los Angeles. Releases on Level Plane / Adagio 830

BLACK KITES
Discordant chaotic hardcore from New Jersey. Ex-You And I / The Assistant.

DOPEFIGHT
The best band in Brighton right now. Ridiculously heavy stoner doom back home after their shows with Eyehategod + Hang The Bastard.

RESURRECTIONISTS
Power Violence / screamo from Munster, Germany. Ex-Apoplexy Twist Orchestra. They totally destroyed The Hobgoblin last time they were over.

LENTIC WATERS
Ferocious, bleak hardcore from Germany. Ex-Ding Dong Dead. New LP out on Moment of Collapse / React With Protest.

BATTLE OF WOLF 359 -
Chaotic, metallic hardcore / screamo from Kent. Totally destructive. Catch them on this rare venture out of living room.

7pm [sharp!]
Wed 3rd Aug 2011
The Prince Albert
Brighton

£6

PREVIEW: Nice Weather For Airstrikes Festival

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

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

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

Here's the full final line up and stagetimes:

Friday 27th Brighton Electric Stage:

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

Saturday 28th Bardsley's of Baker Street Stage:

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

Sunday 29th The Music Box Stage:

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

Monday 30th Pixies Daycare Stage Alldayer:

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

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

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

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




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


 


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

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

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

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

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




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

PREVIEW: Belbury Youth Club At The Outer Church

This month's Outer Church is something pretty special. The previous gig's have featured some incredible bands together, but this is the first time something of an event, nay happening, has occured and also the first time for many moons that Ghost Box have thrown some kind of collective jam, and this Outer Church is the convergence of these occasions -  live performances from the crypto-confusional Moon Wiring Club and the even less logical polymorphous transmutations of Pye Corner Audio, along with DJ sets and visuals from Jim Jupp & Julian House. A real Event for this night that now seems to be coming into its own, and a showcase for a label that is also getting a firm grip on hearts and minds.

To usher in the ceremony 20JazzFunkGreats posted a guest post with exclusive tracks from Moon Wiring Club and Pye Corner Audio yesterday.

Belbury Youth Club At The Outer Church

Thursday 14th April

7.30pm - 12.00 midnight

An evening of anomalous audiovisual entertainment

With special live guests

Moon Wiring Club

Pye Corner Audio

Ghost Box DJs Jim Jupp & Julian House

Plus a selection of arcane televisual artefacts, vintage Public Information Films and a screening of

Julian House's short film Winter Sun Wavelength

PREVIEW: The Outer Church w/ Raime (Thursday 10th March)

How can the lineups for The Outer Church keep getting better like they are? Apparently next month's may even top this one - Demdike, raime....hard to see where they can go from there to keep the trajectory inclined like that but we wait with baited senses, all 6 of them. Come to this on Thursday and see if you can't even find a seventh.

Thursday 10th March

7:30pm

Komedia Brighton

£5/4 on the door

The March edition of The Outer Church promises to be an adventure in bass-heavy murk and eldritch folk. Signed to up-and-coming label Blackest Ever Black, London duo Raime have been hailed as the new dark princes of British electronic music, with the likes of The Wire, Resident Advisor and NME all clamouring for a piece of the black stuff. According to FACT, "the duo deploy a number of obscure samples from goth, industrial and post-punk records, but these are placed in unique, bass-heavy arrangements that gesture at dubstep and techno without really adhering to either genre’s conventions."





New Mordant Music signing Ekoplekz produces what Boomkat have termed "gorgeously spooked analogue electronics" comparable to 80s industrialists Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and Robert Rental after some low-end surgery and a crash course in Radiophonics. This set will feature a specially commissioned piece of video art by Jade Boyd.

Alexander Tucker should require little introduction - rightly acclaimed for his expansive avant folk with electronic shadings, his forthcoming album Dorwytch (Thrill Jockey) is set to be one of 2011's must-haves. In addition, there will be haunted sounds courtesy of the OC DJs plus a selection of lurid visuals.

Soft Arrows

Soft Arrows is the surf-punk-wave-pop duo of Tom Denney (Lonely Ghosts and Help She Can't Swim) and Russell Eke (My Device), firing up some Graham Coxon-y sounding blasts of wired guitar and gently urgent staccatto vocals.  Last month they released this slew of songs onto the internet and will be playing their first live show with Former Ghosts and Fear of Men in Brighton at the Green Door Store, this Friday, March 4th. Fear of Men are also quite a beguling new Brighton proposition (check, out their Bandcamp) so this should be well worth attending.

PREVIEW: NWFA Presents - Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea & Remember Remember

Two great sounding gigs coming up this week for my home town Brighton readers, put on by the excellent promotions and label collective Nice Weather For Airstrikes.

The first of this weks shows is tonight at The Hydrant, headlined by Brighton's own Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea - a noisy post-punk/rock combo signed to SmallTownAmerica - home of And So I Watch You From Afar among others. They're joined by Axis Of - an Irish band playing similarly intense sounds of mountain razing magnitudes - and Tourist Killed In Shark Attack. The slightly less ridiculous name of new Brighton jazzist rockers who used to be called BYGRAYVPARTYNMYRYTARM.


  Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea - That Drums Discordant Sound by Music Liberation

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THEN on Thursday, there is another stellar line up culminating in a DJ set from Stuart Braithwaite, aka Plasmatron, of Mogwai fame and infamy.  This is on the same day as Demdike Stare, but there's nothing any of us can do about that, you'll just have to make a very tough decision.  The headlining band, Remember Remember are signed to Rock Action - they're a seven-piece orchestral kosmiche outfit playing simmering minimal(maximal)-epics that will make for some huge spectacle on stage.




Support comes fom two Brighton bands; Plurals - a collective collagist drone band including members of Ecka Liena, The Psyche Out Musikland Big Band, Me With Others and more - and cinematic soundtrack band Nordic Giants, who collaborate with filmakers to provide sonic backdrops to their artwork, along with interesting twists to their stage presence; part performance art, part film, part live band.