Lookie lookie

oh, my giddy aunt, look who are coming to the Cube this Septempo....

All acoustic over at the folkhouse

Sat 26th July 8pm £6
Folkhouse, Bristol

Leave your ear plugs at home and come to the Folkhouse for a rare entirely unplugged show. No Amps or PA in site!

War Against Sleep (solo)
Having just released a new LP entitled 'Pleasure Complex' War Against Sleep’s Duncan Flemming appears at the Folkhouse for a rare solo show. Duncan is a genius of a songwriter walking a razor sharp tightrope between deranged humour and classic pop music. War Against Sleep is his ongoing battle against the absurd waking dream that passes for life, in which he plunders the hidden treasures of a thousand charity shop records, writing songs that tingle the spine, move the soul and lift the spirit.

Hacksaw
Local bog roll throwing, football anthem writing punk rock two piece appear for a rare unplugged show. There is talk of biscuit tin percussion, but aside from that expect a fun filled set of unexpectedness. The band describe themselves as a ‘no-talent geriatric punk rock band’, but don’t let that put you off!

Team Brick
Bristol noise monger signed to Invada records leaves the pedals at home for a piano centred set. ‘Live spontaneous joy-noise filled with throat singing, pedal-chain manipulation, song in the form of bellowed prayer and any number of instruments and found objects. A significant exception to both the timid floundering of improvised experimentalists and the stereotypical noise musician, Team Brick's live sets are eventful, intuitive and almost impossible to ignore.’ (ents 24)

The Great Park (solo set from gentleman from Blanket)
Stephen Burch's alter ego The Great Park began when he went to stay in a remote farm in southern Ireland. The music is built on a finger-picked vintage acoustic guitar, giving a threadbare backing for his densely-packed lyrics following the folk tradition. He has released a number of recordings through Brighton-based label Woodland

Kassette Kulture # 16 : The Space Goats - Inamorata and other tales

Remember seeing this lot in the streets of Portobello back in the early 90’s, jamming their hearts out in true troubadour stylee - a yob suitably blinged up, shouts 'get some proper tunes' from the sidelines... the band plays on regardless, burning up on that Mother Gong vibe... infectious, utterly ridiculous but strangely enticing... the type of thing that made me want to learn mandolin, which of course I never did...

...get on over to the archive and have a listen...

Dsic - Love City

A CDr choked full of quick fire data switch-a-tronics, a bizarre concoction of ideas frankenstein stapled, the ugly rubbing up against fleeting glimpses of beauty. Harsh, mind fucked sonics super-glued to chilled ambient shivers, everything’s constantly chopping or colliding, stabbed through with a dirty digital needle... dislocating and alive with possibility, like the overwhelming pulse of any city.

more info at Dsic's website

Duncan Bruce - New Glass Tapu

Straight from the fringes of the New Zealand free noise/drone/freak scene comes this baby - and boy it’s gleaming in introspective wonder... every listen unlocking new perspectives, embellishing first impressions...

For track one footsteps the stairwell is haunted, the graffiti floating on a spaghetti western swell. A shadowy Dot Cotton sucks on a cigarette, her paper thin cheeks showing too much skeleton , the issued smoke curling like the spasms of mummified cats. Below you can hear the slow transit of metal callipers dragging on concrete.

Celestial Vengeance is a multicoloured echo tumble… a washing line of incident feed into a buckling sausage machine. New shapes fly before the ears, chaos wrapped - collapsing sax apparitions, brief guitar plumbs, dismembered piano(?) … drum fuck-ups that would make Alex Neilson proud, full of drumstick smears and galloping muffles interspersed with karmic pixie dust... the spectre of a sax slumps over the landscape, the drums run from under its ominous gloom. Later, the sticks play voodoo dolly with the squeal, as it belches its last, stumbling out concussed into a static tide, full of Guernica edges.

Sumatra I is all haunted music box tingle, becoming all prismic, soaked in a prevailing otherness that creeps under your consciousness in a very bad way… Songs for a forgotten deity that’s back for revenge...

Glass Tapu is a sucked woodwind interlude marred in feedback scraping, like blowtorch winds scouring the inside of a grain silo, aglow with the vibrations of rivets.

Four#g - crippled Satie keys, multiple images of sound trickling through your ears, a glinting carousel of cold mirrors and stained glass shivers that letterpress themselves into memory.

Sumatra II – is an eerie lighted finger drone, breaking over the outlines of floating chairs. Itchy graphite edges licking the periphery as faces slowly fall out of focus. A birdcage spiral of twitching blurs trapped in the dusty miasma of doors endlessly closing to a muted classical refine, I swear I can hear glimpses of moan and gasp in there...

Salem’s Loft is the sound of desolation, as ghostly echoes call from room corners, sax vapours mingle , the dolphonic shrieks stretching like a latex skirt over silky pinions... stifled percussion erupts as chloroseptic spray snakes over bare bones...

Untitled, the screeching of brakes in differing tones like multi-stranded scream, bleeding out like the spokes of some semi-transparent umbrella...

Plane of Martyrs a giddy map of shifting radio interference, mixed with motor etched tin, and sander graze n grind – all hyperactive and twitching... totally wired Borneo death pipes gouging away at your inner ear...

what a finish!

available from LF Records.

The Big Naturals, Wooden Shjips and The Heads

Saturday 19th August - The Croft, Bristol

Shit I haven’t been to a gig for over a month, but what a great re-entry….Just couldn’t resist such a meaty line-up... really great to catch up with the Thoughtforms posse too; who were taking time out before a nationwide tour with Primordial Undermind this August...

... fantastic to see the Big Naturals in action again… locked into a dark corner of the Croft they chewed over some heavy vibes... They’re such a powerful combo… The drummer worked up some scattered forms, splicing them with really juicy Neofolk uniforms. His sticks arced over inverted cymbals, full of cut crystal accidents and shivering tension.





The bassist echoed along with the tally – the tools of his trade smeared in a belladonna of effects…then exploded in time to some truly satisfying slams... The floor literally quaked in buzz; I found kneeling was best, submerged in the incoming tide. The music left you rocking helplessly as the strings scissored everything up into serpent filled snowflakes, the bass transforming itself into a didgeridoo drone... the drummer following it around with slugs of forceful invention… Superb!





The Wooden Shjips upped the fuzz stakes with less brute force, but certainly sprinkled their fair share of psycho-active colours into the air. The vocals were half buried, mixing in a satisfying ambiguity as they floated out like distended globs of warm fat over the vibrations. The sound rocked, burning up on that San Fran vibe… gone were those soft Doors(ish) corners of their debut, as the organ/keyboard became suitably effects savaged... Real blink your eyes in pseudo-strobe, suntan mind music... That surprise bugle attack that they slipped in to the latter end of their show gave out a yummy ska tinge...





The last number worked around a comical looped organ romp – something like an acid drenched version of Old McDonald’s Farm, the guitar adding distorted animal noises to the rhythm locked sway... blissful.





The Heads were a mighty juggernaut, loud and lethal, a solid muscle foundation, choked full of spontaneous guitar spasm and stunning projections. A life affirming vibe, splattering inside yr mind, seemed like one continuous assault after assault that left my ears in a chattery smurf bubble...

Millions - The notebook behind your eyes

Here we have a trio of mantra flares that leisurely burn into your consciousness like a Coil 'Time Machines' excursion. The way these creeping sounds evolve beyond ambience is really trippy, especially the unexpected (meta) physical blooms they produce...

Kaleidoscopic Filmstrip Blues is a gentle thawing of sounds, to which the scenery is subtly shifted along. A journey where layers of macrocosmic detail are gradually stitched together to produce a hypnotic whole, stretched patterns endlessly forming and breaking up – steeped in a melancholy exhalation of accordion.

One Hundred Years starts as guitar conversation, each stroke falling leisurely out of sync with the other, pulled out of focus into slow-mo fireworks dropping from the skies. Slow organisms reach from within the sun bled blackness, a sleeping sickness enveloped procession eaten away by humming mandibles. Cries affix towards the sky, dribble down the walls and pool at the feet of a body slumped dead over the keyboard. Everything is drowned to a mono-tinted drone, punctured by a sparse piano key requiem that signifies the death of this track and the birth of the last.

On Afterimages keyboards are rebounded, mirrored, their boundaries nicely blurred, then gradually covered in a cloud of harmonium drone offset by some insect ambience... Everything gets heavier, as each developing layer combines with the next, the spaces between them contract as the sound expands, surging off noisily. The undercuts tilting in other directions, jostling, the depth of sound is incredible with the repetition of the prominent foreground balanced by the semi–opaque kinetics of the stuff underneath... mind mushrooms to saviour.

Self Self Self

for the doppelled one

Kassette Kulture #15 - Infinity Window / Axolotl split c30 (sick head 2008)

Axolotl’s opener clocks in at just over 12 mins - a dry clipped beat fringed by a mildly distorted keyboard overlay, a few oscillating textures sprinkled in there, spreading their sci-fi fingers across the mix... Later, dirty fx-ed vocals hitch a ride – humming in raspy kazoo flange, like hairy butter, whilst everything else wobbles along slightly chaotically...further on, warped calypso-like shivers break through and slide along the droning keys, like an apocalyptic cloak throwing harmony to the dogs, chased into a synth flat line sunset... The second instalment from Axolotl is really short in comparison - all watery bubbles with submerged Gamelan struggling below the surface... Quickly this is pushed through some restrictive envelopes until your head is full of road chippings. A tactile pleasure...

The Infinity Window side brings to mind Popol Vuh or Tangerine Dream circa Zeit sans cello. Lovely keyboard drones, lush and expansive, a freckled smile of a tune breaking over it periodically like a scatter rash. Warm and meditative, this track unfolds leisurely... a warbling underlay transit spread, pulsing to a soft and inviting percussive edge, widening in aperture becoming richer more majestic / saturated as the track progresses. Their second track is wrought in a slightly darker hue, sounding like the drone of aircraft, with flecks of silver spiralling around its foundation... This is soon thrown over to pulsing ripples as the scenery distorts, bends, flexes, like deep bodied kelp on an electric tide. Finally compressed air scars, shoots its load across the undulating flesh as the silence becomes hungry once again.

... grab a copy from the ever-expanding Sick Head label or the Volcanic one...

too much --> much more

There too much quality free music floating about on the web, not that I’m complaining... here’s a small round up

First up, two really groovy harsh harsh gigs from the Chinese underground including sets from the mind splattering Torturing Nurse
NOISe Shanghai X
NOISe Shanghai IX



hopefully one day I’ll get to see them barbecuing their machines live...

Lolita Vibrator Torture / Say No More Tongues
Some surprisingly mellow sounds from LVT and some wasp jar textures from Say no more tongues...

Afrirampo - Live at LadyfestBrighton
...regret missing these Japanese noisettes, when they spewed their madness across Bristol a few years ago… also there’s a set from the duo over at the Big-O, sadly inactive at the moment – Flood their inbox with resurrection requests! same for that eerie Death Ambient show

other mellower noise: Patel Pretal - Patel pretal



One of my favourite small labels Tanzprocesz has bolstered their free dwld section recently:

GreySkull - the long time deleted release from Tanzprocesz’s sister 'tape only' label Procession, is now available in mp3 cocoons - an incredibly evil blast-o-phonic workout that I reviewed here back in 2007.

Placenta Popeye - Le T. De La Haine - This curious collection of Placenta doodlings comes highly recommended from the Rottenmeats crew, what’s more it’s still very much in print, so get in touch (tanzmuzik ATttTttTtt hotmail DoooOT com) and grab yourself one...

Anonymous Tapes Series Vol.4 : Second Couteau - strange chipolatas of sound spurting into existence...

JKP - Sur Les Terrains Vagues - (a)nihil-o-tronics from the industri-nail greyness.



...they’ve also got some really interesting new stuff on release for you to splash your splash cash at... including some solo placenta musings and a dash of mutant hip hop chop...

... finally there's been an excellent crop of WFMU live shows recently from the likes of

Indian Jewelry
Mudboy and Pumice
...Oh Mooozaartttt , let me put a taaaaaaape on... LOL
Kemialliset Ystävät
Foot Village
Times New Viking

BBBlood / Toweringbreaker - BBBlood / Toweringbreaker

Caught in the lethargy of a Summer that just isn’t... the sonics of this split CDr make perfect sense, like viewing a projection through wobbly jelly laced with razors... throwing normality into chewed perceptions, leaving the mind to stilt walk on distended fingers... the landscape a pearling treacle, leaking from the wounds of trees... drenched in an unholy communion of machine innards and looped cul de sacs ----> void reaching ----> time breaching. I’ll be listening to this for years to come...

...hopefully still available on Transdimensionalsushi

Vocal Noodles

Do you Love Me?

Really enjoyed last night’s Nick Cave night over on BBC4, can’t remember the last time music TV got me this worked up. Great to see him back on form, looming across the stage, a hybrid of his old/new self - all cadaver gesturing, like a crooked caricature. Revelling in churning the sounds n lyrics up, lunging at the darkness from different angles, thankfully lite on that rose tinted balladry. I swear there was a moment in the 90’s I thought he’d lost his way completely.

I remember Giles getting me The Boatman’s for a birthday pressie.. and man, I couldn’t bear it at all! Honestly, it was like a betrayal... funnily enough, I’ve developed a real taste for this stuff as age is a creeping on... he’s such a great songwriter, showman... even if he refused repeated requests for The Carny...