IF you were a teenage metaller in the early 90s but you didn’t fancy the double denim and patches look, Helmet were a hell of a lifeline. Loads of teen musical epiphanies involve a glimpse […]
Category: Album review
Pharmakon’s Contact is pure electronic body-horror music
Well here’s one album you can judge by its cover. As Pharmakon, New York noise artist Margaret Chardiet makes a sort of electronic body-horror music as oppressive and invasive as the oily fingers pulling at […]
Clark’s Death Peak sounds like ‘a boulder bouncing down a hill with birds tweeting around it’
For years Clark has been a relatively unsung hero on Warp Records, hidden in the long shadows cast by cult electronic poster boys Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards of Canada. But English producer Chris Clark […]
Machine learning: Fjaak nod to classic techno on debut album
Fjaak may look like three young H&M models, but they make machine-tooled techno with plenty of old-timer grease under its fingernails. Childhood friends from Berlin, Felix Wagner, Aaron Röbig and Kevin Kozicki have been an item […]
William Basinski’s droney, disintegrating Bowie tribute — For David Robert Jones
Of all the tributes, cover versions and live celebrations of David Bowie around the anniversary of his death, this meditative piece by avant-garde composer William Basinski taps into Bowie’s unrelenting obsession with experimentation and reinvention. Referencing […]
Mr Tophat & Robyn’s loose, snaking disco — Right Time
Two tracks this week have punctured a few peepholes through January’s general grimness, and they’re both 10-minute disco-house belters — The Black Madonna’s He Is the Voice I Hear and Mr Tophat & Robyn’s Right […]
Mapping out infinity: Brian Eno – Reflection
Brian Eno will always be known the ambient pioneer who made Music For Airports, and his new album comes with more baggage than an international airline. The fact that it’s a new ambient LP called […]
‘Sharp and strange sonics’ from Irish techno artist tuuun
Irish electronic producer tuuun describes his first release FINESTEXPORT as “the sound of instruments and ideas being pushed into their discomfort zones” – a perfect one-line primer for his shape-shifting abstract techno. The six-track FINESTEXPORT […]
Dog-eared sci-fi psychedelia from The Pattern Forms – Man and Machine
The song title Man and Machine might evoke images of sci-fi and cyborg technology, but The Pattern Forms is a parallel universe away from the cold lines and minimalism of Kraftwerk’s Man Machine. If the […]
Don’t be afraid, it’s only blood: Jenny Hval – Period Piece
“Don’t be afraid, it’s only blood,” says Norwegian artist Jenny Hval in an interlude on her new album Blood Bitch – surely the only concept album touching on menstruation and female vampires this year. The line […]
Rainy day woman: Laura Ann Brady – Masterpiece
The first time I heard Laura Ann Brady she was at Dublin’s Sugar Club supporting Canadian country singer Lindi Ortega, and making the headliner seem like an afterthought. Playing solo with an autoharp, the Dublin […]
Geburt Einer Nation: How Laibach turned Queen’s One Vision into a totalitarian anthem (1987)
Laibach are probably Europe’s most grossly-misunderstood band, but they don’t make it easy for themselves. In an age of offence-ometers permanently in the red, there aren’t enough trigger warnings for the veteran industrialists. Laibach emerged […]
Gonjasufi – Callus: ‘America needs to hear this fucking record’
While 90 per cent of the internet lost their shit over the weekend to the new Frank Ocean things, another release was also howling from a different corner in black & white. Gonjasufi has just […]
Beyond Stranger Things: SURVIVE – A.H.B.
Half the internet has been losing the plot in the last week or so to Stranger Things – the biggest TV binge epidemic of recent times. Stranger Things is a supernatural chiller set in 1983, […]
Sums it all up: MathMan & Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Where I’m From
Any time you’re on the lookout for some hazy summer hip-hop, your classic safe bets are the likes of De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, and maybe even Chance the Rapper in […]
Moo Kid 