If the original Hafler Trio performances and releases of How to Slice a Loaf of Bread can be seen as full meals, Colin Potter’s reworking is a compact collection of ideas shoved into one of those toasters that squish the sandwich into a condensed snack. A Pressed On Sandwich doesn’t cover the depth and breadth of the original releases but Potter does augment the material into a worthy piece in its own right. |
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If the original Hafler Trio performances and releases of How to Slice a Loaf of Bread can be seen as full meals, Colin Potter’s reworking is a compact collection of ideas shoved into one of those toasters that squish the sandwich into a condensed snack. A Pressed On Sandwich doesn’t cover the depth and breadth of the original releases but Potter does augment the material into a worthy piece in its own right.
9401 Hits
Sheffield label Singing Knives have gathered together some of the city's more appealing noise/folk underground (and their peers) here showing that it's certainly not a city still in thrall of Warp's legacy and output. The similarity between these acts is pretty loose, but most appear to work within or around the use of traditional forms / instruments, improvisation and drone or a combination of the two styles.
10180 Hits
With their latest album of pastoral folk pop, Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn seem determined to let everyone know where they're from, in case there were any doubts.
7707 Hits
The selection of butcher knives that adorns this lathe-cut's cover isn't really an apt representation of its contents. Anyone expecting great slab splitting chunks of noise will be sorely disappointed, this is a far more in-depth and busy release. Creating a no-mans land between noise and psychedelic crystallised drone, this is a restless listen where a thousand Catherine wheel cogs of sound sync and separate.
7474 Hits
One of the most underexposed and exciting reggae vocalists today, Paul St. Hilaire delivers the kind of album his associates Rhythm & Sound should have produced this year.
8436 Hits
Dressed in black, as ever, this Prurient lathe sits more easily alongside his recent Load release Pleasure Ground than his circuit board slaughter. This track leans a little less on the ripping-out-throats-with-teeth style and more on a knife edge tension tip. This is more like slow insidious mental torture than someone merzbowing your face into a pulp.
5793 Hits
The world is shockingly louder after hearing Andrew Chalk's work. This is true of many of his pieces, but seems most applicable to the reissue of East of the Sun. Originally released in 1994 on cassette by OR (Ora's label), the album is as quiet and reserved as they come, teeming with invisible life that always seems just beyond the reach of the human ear. There's plenty going on in these washes of sound, but everything seems consciously subliminal from the second the album begins.
11365 Hits
This fascinating record shadows an apparently murderous concept with more than enough themic ambiguity, musical invention and sly humor, to make repeat listens essential, if not exactly desirable.
8021 Hits
By my account, both at the time and retrospectively, List of Lights and Buoys was the best album of 2004. This follow-up reprises that exquisite debut's delicate melancholia as minimal, often radical, re-interpretations of classic and, at times, even sacred material. How well it accomplishes that is another story altogether.
9297 Hits
Although this Heatsick release starts out nice and normal, it doesn’t take that long before it gets taken over by the warped half of sole member Steven Warwick’s brain; melodic acoustic guitar work gets layered and then drowned.
14996 Hits
This, possibly sperm influenced, off-milky white seven inch is the latest between album output from Massimo and Pierce of the Black Sun Productions collective. Sex Magik seems to play a lesser part in these two pieces, being noticeably shorter than their recent material on their last few long-players.
11583 Hits
This lathe captures Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club and ex-Vibracathedral Orchestra) and Sticky Foster, both, A-Band alumni, somewhere in the world making sound together. Allegedly containing material that could be about ten years old, this release squeezes (what I think is possibly) four tracks onto a clear seven inch vinyl.
8265 Hits
It is nice to know that there are still people out there with very strange ideas, sufficiently demonstrated by this album, the second collaborative effort from Tony Wakeford and Andrew Liles. However, in a world in which Nurse With Wound is working on a HipHop album, and David Tibet is both a professed Christian and a cabinet member of the OTO, perhaps the word "strange" needs to be redefined.
12207 Hits
This is a competent but ultimately uninspiring release from the French group Cowboys from Outerspace. Too many bar room rock clichés make it hard to enjoy this album on a plane any higher than a background beat to tap your foot to. It’s not a bad album, it’s just not exciting.
9790 Hits
Originally self-released in 2003, Graves at Sea’s short album of sludgy stoner doom peaks in all the right places. While their approach may not be shockingly different from their peers, they don't waste any opportunities to pummel the senses.
10623 Hits
Tracking down Graveyards releases is like taking on a part time job. Scattering their music across miniscule private press labels blink-and-miss-it editions, the current threat level of incoming albums is always elevated. Being a trio with a sax player, they’re often tagged as jazz or scumjazz, but their reach goes much further that the remit of those genres.
10641 Hits
With this very brief album the Japanese duo drum up 16 songs in just less than 16 minutes. It may be extremely short but this CD contains bucketfuls of energy.Their noisy, angular interpretation of punk is a little different to the norm and most importantly fun.
5187 Hits
This compilation is meant to be an audio and visual experience. As well as 16 audio tracks there are four videos for the computer. They could have saved themselves the bother of including the videos as they are awful examples of video art. That being said, none of the music inspires much confidence either.
5509 Hits
Ultralord try their hardest to be heavier than thou, sometimes it works but other times it comes across as juvenile metal posturing. It’s hard to draw the line between serious metal and the tongue in cheek and with Ultralord the line is blurred.
5683 Hits
Sprawled over two discs, this album from New Zealand’s Mrtyu! is a lumbering behemoth of rumbling bass, feedback, and layers of distortion. It’s a gloriously unholy mess, suggesting subterranean rites held far from the light of day.
9776 Hits
