So, this one has grown on me quite a lot since I wrote that review back in July.

In the cold light of day, it might not exactly be the strongest Comet Gain ever waxed, its missteps and indulgences may stand out bulbous and unflattering, but since when has this particular band ever thrived on clear-headed, “just-the-facts-ma’am” type critical listening?

More than ever these days, when their appeal lies in a woolly mixture of sentiment, personal nostalgia and cultural comfort, CG are a group whose music you’ve got to live with, and whose records must be allowed to interact with (your) life as it is lived.

Maybe I’m a tad biased, as disliking a Comet Gain LP at this stage feels like disowning a family member, but try throwing ‘Paperback Ghosts’ on in the background when you’re packing a suitcase for a long holiday, or after a few drinks when everyone else has gone to bed but you’re left awake with a bit of surplus energy, and I believe the virtues of even its ostensibly least successful songs will shine through loud and clear - a background burner, like all those lackadaisical classic rock albums you got frustrated with as a teenager, sitting there waiting for something exciting to happen, but that you now love dearly through some strange process of drunken osmosis, adulthood grit and emotional dust collection.

The virtues of the best songs here meanwhile are plain for all to see, and, due to the particular place they fell in my life, seem likely to always stay with me.

Listen to ‘Long After Tonite’s Candles Are Blown’ on Soundcloud, after which you will undoubtedly want to buy the album from Fortuna Pop.

Labels: best of 2014, Comet Gain

Who the hell are these guys? I didn’t know when I bought this record, and I still don’t really know now. They’re based in Fleetwood in Lancashire, but that’s about as far as my knowledge extends. Under normal circumstances, I doubt that the album’s title or cover art would really have grabbed my attention. It sort of looks like a 2nd division metalcore album (that font), or else some angsty post-Isis kind of thing. Not my bag, man.

But, a few words in the Norman Records write-up piqued my interest, and a 30 second streaming clip later, the LP was on the way. Two days later I'm holding probably the best bit of proper psychedelia to have emerged from the UK in recent memory, wondering WHO? WHY? WHAT? WHERE?, the general feel of the music within laying a million miles away from the tableau of chilly industrial gloom implied by the cover. Sprawling, maximalist, potent and mysterious, Earthling Society quite unexpectedly veer closer to the webs of gold-leaf gossamer obscuring the entrance way to some subterranean opium den housing a breakaway sect of the Golden Dawn than they do to a bracing morning walk through England’s industrial heartlands. Needless to say, I ken dig it.

Opening with tamboura, tablas and a bit of gentle guitar meandering, opener ‘Aiwass’ gradually builds into venerable psyche-drone monster, multi-layered fuzz guitar skree, pounding toms and knob-twisting electronic distortion building into a rich fog of menacing black mass ambience to rival Belgium’s legendary Sylvester Anfang II, even as a distant, high-pitched vocal chant evokes a open-skied grandeur and sense of momentum rarely encountered in the work of those particular basement-dwellers.

Building on this more fresh-air inclined sensibility, ‘Tortuga’ opens with heavily chorused electric finger-picking, mysterioso reverbed vocals and a rubbery, Floyd-ish groove, as intermittently decipherable lyrics speak of spectral piratical adventures on the Spanish Main. A whole other variety of beautiful, distinctly British psychedelia is in evidence here, taking us back to the glory days of Flying Saucer Attack, and to my mind pretty much surpassing anything they ever did; an astonishingly evocative track, suggesting aerial views of glassy, Ballardian landscapes fading into an ultra-verbed storm of amp howl as the rhythm section ebbs and flows like the tides and the studio’s much-abused Space Echo starts giving off clouds of black smoke.

Amazing as it is though, all this is merely a build-up though for the album’s real centrepiece: a bold cover of one of my all-time favourite pieces of music, Alice Coltrane’s ‘Journey in Satchidananda’. Instant sale for me right there, pretty much. Therein, Cecil McBee’s indelible bass line is dutifully recreated and Pharaoh Sanders’ initial soaring sax riff is picked out on shrieking, overdriven guitar, whilst an electric tamboura stands in for Alice and thick blankets of heavy fuzz and apocalyptic, dive-bombing feedback cover all else. Further florid written appraisal seems surplus to requirements really, so let's just say if you think an endeavour like that wasn’t going to crack my annual Top 5, you clearly don’t know my music tastes very well. Total bliss.

Not sure how to conclude really, except to cattily suggest that if Goat’s much-talked up communal jamming sensibilities were half of what they’re cracked up to be, they might be, perhaps, say, one third as certifiably awesome as these glorious and learned Northern gentlemen – current wielders of the finest fuzz & astral incense on these shores, or I’m a dutchman.

Listen and buy from Riot Season, or visit Earthling Society here.

Labels: best of 2014, Earthling Society

A darker and more driven descent into the abyss than Mike Vest’s Blown Out project, Haikai No Ku nonetheless stays true to the guitarist’s ideal of formless, eternal sprawl. Clearly very much informed by the pitch-black, ‘crushing nihilist white-out’ vibe of classic Japanese psych-noise, Haikai are wise enough to retain the ‘feel’ of Haino and Mitzutani’s work without directly imitating them.

Instead, ‘Dead in the Temple’ sets the tone here with an evilly plodding, lock-step groove, over which Vest drops a gargantuan pure doom riff that could have been lifted straight from his work with Bong, instigating a solid ten minutes of black-hearted head-nodding as multiple layers of echoing vibrato lead shred and carefully manicured feedback shriek-drones accumulate, occasionally pulling together into a deafening, primordial uber-riff of malevolent awesomeness.

Subsequent tracks march forth with little in the way of variation - dense curlicues of manicured feedback howling at the desert sun as thunderous clouds of bass-heavy mega-skree throb and bleed beneath, the rhythm section pounding away in the distance, regimented and swing-less as a military parade trudging from the centre of some chaotic, Elder God-infested black hole.

In spite of all this apocalyptic jollity though, the slightly ‘shiny’, reverb-heavy production here sat rather poorly with me during my first few listens to this one, sounding rather too distant and well-scrubbed to really do justice to this kind of sonic blitzkrieg. But, as Vest’s label name so clearly implies, volume provided the key. Rescued from laptop purgatory and whacked through a mono guitar amp on the upstairs turntable, this shit hit big-time – as devastating a dark-noise blissout as you could wish for. If it lacks the overblown, beyond-the-red clippage of ‘Heavier Than a Death in The Family’ or Fushitsusha’s ‘Live 2’, the sheer density of sound that is revealed here when pushed through some appropriate speakers is almost as mighty.

More than anything in fact, ‘Ultra-High Dimensionality’ reminds me of Birchville Cat Motel’s classic ‘Our Love Will Destroy The World’ set. The pace is slower maybe, the riffs gnarlier, the basis in power trio rock more tangible, but the same power is there; that same sense of being sucked through a giant, cosmic vacuum cleaner, that same exhilarating vision of every self-described ‘shoegaze’ band in the world cowering in abject terror as their matchstick sonic cathedrals crumble to dust amidst the hundred-stack hurricane of some proper fucking cosmic noise.

In summary then: 2014’s best headcleaner / ear-wrecker – no contest.

Listen and buy from Visual Volume.

Labels: best of 2014, Haikai No Ku

Unexpectedly blundering into two live sets by these guys during the Static Shock weekend last month was a bit of eye-opener, I can tell you. Without wishing to front-load expectation too much, Rakta are definitely one of the most exciting new bands I’ve seen/heard this year.

Basics you need to know, as pasted over from this post to save me repeating myself too much:

“An all-female Brazillian band playing moody, ambitious sci-fi-inflected punk with loads of harsh noise and extreme use of effects, […] with a solid base of relentless pounding from the rhythm section and a relentlessly imaginative skree from the guitar, bits of unidentifiable echoing racket whiplashing around the place, and just a hellish energy and sense of weird, unholy evocation going on…”

Though a somewhat murky / naturalistic recording somewhat lessens the full spectrum blare I witnessed live, this 45rpm 12”, recorded in 2012 and pressed in ’13 (again, complaints to the usual address if you care) does a pretty sterling job of capturing Rakta’s particular ‘thing’ on tape, and quite a trip it is too – forward-driving, late night joyride distorto-punk interlaced with early Zola Jesus-ish neon goth power-angst, frequently tipping over into full on descent-into-the-maelstrom noise freakout, rescuing those Boss delay boxes from the hands of tossers who like to just set them to 33% and stare at them hoping somebody notices, and twisting those fucking knobs like the Tech-priests intended.

There are big ideas at play here, ripped through with paint-stripping ferocity and a getting-shit-done DIY aesthetic that keeps pomposity firmly at arm’s length. Future-punk? Digi-psych? An early ‘90s 2000AD bad trip sequence recreated in musical form? I don’t know. It’s fucking brilliant, whatever it is, and I can’t wait to hear more of it.

Listen and buy from Rakta on Bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2014, Rakta

Like many records in my Top Ten this year, this tape’s title and approach raise an affirming two fingers to the flow of weak buzz-band fake-psych acts currently busy ruining the ‘P’ word for those of us who’ve been happily using it to describe actual, good music since time immemorial.

Unlike the other records in my Top Ten this year, this tape contains ten equally affirming songs by the most vital and self-determined bunch of chancers to hit the jangle/indie circuit in some time.

Back in March, I said:

“..dealing with the constituent components of this music, it’s difficult to put your finger on what makes City Yelps so pointedly removed from all the other nostalgia-nourishing jangly guitar types doing the rounds. From the 10th generation Byrds-y rattle to the strummy bass lines to the Hamish Kilgour type homemade-motorik drumming with that little ‘catch-up beat’ every four bars, it’s all here present and correct, all stuff you feel you’ll never, ever get sick of again when it’s banged out this splendidly. The playing is excellent & varied […] the recording is bright and the songs are simple and appealing, leaving only Shaun A’s parent-proof slurred bark (“thass not singing, I’m telling ya”, quoth some who should know better) and a strange, indefinable blanket of smudged, smothered otherness to explain why City Yelps sound so inherently separate from the mainstream, so alien to the streets of large population centres, so utterly and gloriously removed from anyone who deals in ego or money or music, so much of a potential OUR BAND (NOT THEIRS) moment for any/all scruffy, over-smart kids lucky enough to hear them.”

Nine months later, sufficiently calmed down, that questionable sense of identification with this music and its makers remains intact. My band, not theirs. Maybe yours?

Listen and buy from City Yelps.

Labels: best of 2014, City Yelps

A much under-appreciated album this year I think, Habibi have unfortunately had the poor grace to release a neo-girl group guitar-pop record at precisely the point when that particular idiom has entirely fallen from favour amongst the indie-cognoscenti, and I fear they may have suffered from this poor timing, irrespective of the fact that this is the best example of the form I’ve heard since the great 2010-11 goldrush.

So, even if you (mistakenly, IMHO) cringe at your prior enthusiasm for the Vivians and Dum Dums of yore, and now listen exclusively to mogadon death-rave, obscure hardcore and compilations of African keyboard funk, I would still defy you, or anyone with the slightest love of pop and strumming guitar business for that matter, to listen to cuts like ‘Detroit Baby’ and ‘Sweetest Talk’ and not be touched on some level by their sweet, measured, bad-ass perfection. The Velvet Underground quotation in the latter makes for a particularly killer moment, I feel.

Minus one or two songs in the middle that don’t quite do it for me, this is just a great LP – proof positive that reverby guitars, stand-up drumming, nebulous Flying Nun-type influences and marginally ‘sassy’ American accents can still hit the bullseye when executed with sufficient class & panache.

I was going to dig up the bit I wrote about Habibi in that ever-helpful March blog post, but frankly it was rubbish, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Listen to Habibi’s stuff on Soundcloud, and buy the record from Burger.

-----

On an entirely different topic, I can’t help but note that this – somewhat inappropriately – is the 666th post on Stereo Sanctity. Not much of a score when you consider I’ve been going since May 2004 or something, but hey. Maybe I should have lined up an Electric Wizard album or something. Thanks for sticking around.

Labels: best of 2014, Habibi

If Stereo Sanctity were to award some spurious “musician of the year” award or somesuch, it’s safe to assume Mike Vest would be a shoe-in for 2014. One year ago, I knew Vest simply as the name credited with ‘guitar’ on the sleeves of Bong and 11 Paranoias records - which you’d think would be enough of a commitment to noise-making for most sane individuals, but Mr. Vest, operating primarily through his Visual Volume bandcamp page, seems to be on a quest to single-handedly colonise every conceivably corner of heavy guitar music.

As the prime mover in a frankly humbling array of currently active groups, Vest seems keen on maintaining a level of productivity that would be downright suspicious were the results not so consistently excellent, and the first of no less than three Vest-related records to feature in this year’s top ten comes courtesy of Blown Out - an open-ended psyche-rock jam band that sees the lad himself letting rip alongside a rhythm section apparently recruited from a band named Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs.

From the name on down, Blown Out’s sister band Haikai No Ku seem to be signposted as Vest’s most obviously Les Rallizes Denudes/Japanese noise-inspired project, but for my money Blown Out is the one that actually gets closest to the classic Rallizes sound, largely thanks to the valiant efforts of the bassist and drummer, who trudge manfully through these two 20+ minute extracts of endless, formless repeato-groove, swinging slow and loose like a particularly unthreatening rubber wrecking ball as Vest lets it all hang out on top, indulging all of his best/worst humbucker-mangling impulses in what appears to be an eternal rolling revue of wrecked, thug-psych fuzz-power.

In the hands of lesser players, this could easily have been a pointless mess, a “hey, let’s be Acid Mothers Temple this afternoon” piss-take, a complete waste of time. Thankfully though, these guys, in the parlance of our times, fucking rip, and four or five minutes of bandcamp head-nodding was all it took to get me on-board the star-freighter for good, and damn the consequences to my bank account if they keep sticking out every bedraggled live set as a limited edition release of some kind.

If space-rock can broadly be divided into music that aspires to take you somewhere, and music that defiantly DOESN’T, then Blown Out are definitely in the latter category, irrespective of their galaxy-travellin’ song titles. ‘Drifting Way Out Between Suns’ is nothing less than a sprawling, aimless journey to the bottom of the sofa, with guitar textures recalling nothing so much as early Bardo Pond, as sustained chords bend into raga-like dissonance as they decay and ghostly, sticky-fingered leads tumble across the top like sonic questions marks, banks of hissing, fuzzed out amp noise rising & falling in the background as Vest busts through every trick in his repertoire to keep things ticking over across a solid 45 minutes of formless drift.

Like all of Vest’s bands (with the possible exception of 11 Paranoias), Blown Out are breaking no new ground here, attempting no daring deconstructions of genre expectation, but no matter: for those of us who dig this shit, it’s pure bliss… one of the best blasts of utterly indulgent proper-psyche grue I’ve heard since Purling Hiss’s ‘Hissteria’.

Two thumbs up, raised v-e-e-e-e-ry slowly, and I hope you’ll all appreciate the fact that I got through this review without using the ‘S’ word, or throwing in any tired, haven’t-touched-a-joint-in-a-decade drugs references. Thirsty work, I tell you.

Listen and buy from Visual Volume, or get the vinyl from Riot Season.

Labels: best of 2014, Blown Out

Lazy blog recycling goes meta here, as I quote from a September review of Slum of Legs’ single that in turn quotes from a bit I wrote about their demo tape back in March;

“I said of Slum of Legs’ demo tape earlier this year that; ‘..the three tracks [here] do function VERY MUCH as a demo […] giving only a fleeting, muffled impression of the kind of rampant creativity this unit is capable of’. This single then can be seen to represent the full realisation of this Brighton collective’s potential – a stew of wildly disparate (some might say contradictory) elements, successfully boiled down to a perfectly imperfect essence. A kind of fiendish, exploratory outsider pop music that recognises no limitations, imposes no boundaries upon its members’ divergent impulses, yet somehow works toward the same functional totality. It is a lovely thing to hear.”

[...]


“Weird, dissident, homemade, different from anything YOU’D make – these are some of the key notion that spring to mind where Slum of Legs is concerned I think. I may have bandied around an unpalatable number of dubious band-name comparisons in the preceding paragraphs, but perhaps SOL’s true spiritual predecessors are – naturally - outfits that sound more or less nothing like them. In particular, I’m thinking the sort of feeling that can be found lurking in the obscurest corners of unacknowledged female creativity in the murkiest years of post-punk era. Androids of Mu, The Fates, that sort of thing. Basically, both this single and the demo tape sound like what pop music might have become in 1982 if William S. Burroughs had been writing the script and a stern regiment of well-drilled Raincoats/Au Pairs partisans had been carrying it out.

Even in 2014 – perhaps especially in 2014 - it is exhilarating to hear a band making such imaginative, evocative and open-ended music whilst still remaining ostensibly within the realm of song-based ‘pop’, trawling for thrills in the shallows of the avant garde whilst happily avoiding its tendency toward alienating abstraction. This is Weird Music, no doubt - taking risks, posing questions, demanding attention. But it is also very giving music - a lot of fun for creators and listeners alike.”

Both releases are still listen- & buy-able from Tuff Enuff.

Labels: best of 2014, Slum of Legs

I’ve been meaning to do a post on this one for much of the year, but somehow it never happened. Just one of those things where it’s hard to find enough to say to hang a decent review on, so self-evident are the fact of the matter: Primetime are a great band, and this is a great sounding EP, whose four tracks have wormed their way into my brain through repeated exposure to the point where, on the rare occasions when I’ve actually sat down and tried to come up with a song recently, it’s usually an immediate rip-off of ‘Last Night’ or ‘Right Track’ that emerges.

Each cut here represents a perfected expression of rhythmic, riff-heavy mid-tempo punk, as built around exquisitely off-the-cuff gang chants that sound like probably began life pre-song as whatever the grown up, in-head equivalent of playground taunts might be. Instantly memorable – the kind of thing you can comfortably shout along with halfway through a first listen.

Largely rejecting the nervy, post-punk moves that dominate much current self-taught, quasi-riot grrl type punk, Primetime’s more straight-up, instinctive riff-rock approach hits my caveman brain just right (think maybe The Zeros' ‘Wimp’ or Eddie & The Subtitles ‘American Society’ for a good, back-in-the-day reference point, leavened out with a bit of Sham 69 call & response magic). At the risk of getting a bit gender essentialist about it (oops, too late), this the kind of thing that could so easily get all plodding and thuggish in the hands of men (how long before uptight practice room chats about pedals and Led Zep usurp any actual exploration of innate musical ability?), but, channelled and refurbished by women, this chasis of crunched up Marshall stack chords, floor tom pounding and fist-in-the-air vocals remains direct, fun, honest, open-ended, welcoming, slightly weird and… did I mention fun? Fucking hurrah!

Clearly I’m just drivelling on here filling space with barely thought-out notions that I’d prefer no one quote back at me at some point in the future, so let’s just back to the facts and conclude with: Primetime are a great band, and this is a great EP. I actually *dare* you not to like it. C’mon, it’s bloody brilliant. I’m telling ya.

Listen and buy from La Vida Es Un Mus Discos Punk.

Labels: best of 2014, Primetime

Until they finally get some recordings out there, this passed-among-friends live bootleg remains the closest those of us in the Western hemisphere are going to get to one of Tokyo’s, and dare I say it (hey why not) the world’s, most exciting rock n’ roll bands, the incomparable D/i/s/c/o /s.

A totally wrecked, dictaphone-in-pocket document of an unspecified live set, cranked up and compressed to the nth degree, this CD-R presents a gloriously indecipherable racket. Nailing their colours to the mast via covers of The Oblivians ‘N*gger Rich’ and ‘The Gories ‘Thunderbird ESQ’, the D/i/s/c/o/s duo make the garage-punk gospel sound more vital and violent than it has for years (on record, at least), recalling the glory days of The Mummies, Coachwhips and Teengenerate, and making me pause to reflect on what’s gone wrong with the world to render such a racket the sound of some vaguely defined yesteryear, rather than the sound of NOW, then, and every other time in between. Full-spectrum distorted blare and snarled/shrieked amp vocals render songs largely irrelevant, but instead give us a motherlode of Kato-san’s exhilarating John Lee Hooker-via-Lightning Bolt guitar moves and Akatsuki-san’s thoroughly complimentary take on the traps, balancing swing and bombast with rare aplomb.

Basically, this is just a totally unhinged pile of good ol’ headache juice that’ll have the majority of today’s nervous citizens hitting the ‘off’ button in seconds, but will make the true believers light up like a pinball machine. ROCK A ROLL!!!!, as D/i/s/c/o /s’ esteemed countrymen taught us to say back in the day.

This music is not currently available anywhere. Sorry about that – proper recordings due out in some form next year, I'm told.

Labels: best of 2014, D/i/s/c/o/s

Bloody hell, it’s like mid-period Black Flag and Discharge got trapped in an early David Cronenberg movie and started growing bulbous, bio-mechanoid body parts. Gnarly.

I was really impressed when I saw Perspex Flesh play last month, but this album (subsequently obtained) is something else. Of their live show, I said:

“Perspex Flesh BRING IT, in capitals, proffering a vile, monstrous wall of aggro that’s something like the sonic equivalent of a musclebound, green-skinned mutant stalking toward you with a spiked bat. This is nasty stuff, building a sense of total unease and impending catastrophe solely through the noise dripping through the PA stacks, and without the need for the band to start strutting or getting in people’s faces. Not that they could if they wanted to, bless ‘em – the vocalist looks so exhausted after each song, he can barely bring himself to stagger a few steps and mutter incoherently before the next maelstrom commences.

I realise that describing somebody’s guitar tone as “totally sick” is a teenage punk/metal uber-cliché, but in the case of Perspex Flesh I mean it in a fairly literal sense - the sheer level of screeching filth this guy lays down is remarkable, occasionally breaking up the near-Skullflower-ish skree with a few of those evil little tri-tone riffs that will, until the day I die, always remind me of the music that used to play when the Decepticons were stomping about in the old Transformers cartoons (not a complaint). Rhythm section keep it together with a brutal, lumbering swing that puts me in mind of the kind of guys who might be playing in a new line-up of Black Flag in an alternate world where Greg Ginn isn’t a dickhead, and there you have it – a fucking beast of a radiation-damaged hc/grind nightmare, reminding me (more through sheer atmosphere than actual musical similarity) of ‘Scum’ era Napalm Death and early Earache stuff in general… and there are few higher compliments than that.”

On the evidence of this (insert superlative here) LP, I’ll stick by that. Fucking shattering stuff. (Insert “so, not much like Perspex then?” gag here.)

Listen and buy from Static Shock.

Labels: best of 2014, Perspex Flesh

Back in March, I said of this one:

“…I’ll just give in to this record’s function as a hyperbole magnet and just say: holy fucking shit. This is the most purely devastating, world-swallowing thing I’ve heard from the realm of black metal in years. The sort of music that’s so overwhelming it just… make.. all… words.. stop, like the stuttering, ellipsis-filled end of a Lovecraft story, as ill-judged metaphors flail hopelessly, aware of their inability to ever really capture the totality of.. this.. goddamn… thing. The bone-shattering, practice room brutality of ‘80s Napalm Death, the gravesoil-caked pagan tape-hiss of the most funereal BM, the cosmic/hypnotic maximalist wipeout of The Boredoms or Oneida in their prime – all of these things are here, sublimated into something new and staggering.

For a long time now, many metal bands of a more forward-thinking variety seem to have been lost in bombast, endlessly trying to recreate that uncomfortable, tummy-churning Surround Sound OOF that comes from watching a giant monster lay waste to a city in some epic 3D folly. Irkallian Oracle are no exception, but where most contenders just end up creating the sonic equivalent of a Michael Bay Transformers headache, these guys actually walk the walk, conjuring the sound of the stars aligning as Cthulhu himself breaks the waves. And they do it themselves on fucking TAPES. None of this bloody drivel really does it justice, but… just… [speechless].”

So, there ya go. Get it while it’s hot.

Listen and buy from Nuclear War Now!

Labels: best of 2014, Irkallian Oracle

Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be some serious Lovecraft reading going on within Newcastle’s underground music scene at the moment. In addition to Bong’s frequent tributes to the Old Man of Providence, the same city now brings us one Joseph Curwen, a producer of monolithic bedroom eeriness whose recording name could well have been chosen with an eye to the fact that there is ALREADY another Newcastle band performing as Charles Dexter Ward. I’ve not spent a lot of time in Newcastle, but on the basis of this plus the vast amount of good music seemingly germinating there at the moment, the thought of heading up there to rent an unfurnished attic and start cracking the spines on a few paperbacks momentarily seems mighty tempting.

But anyway: Joseph Curwen’s bandcamp self-description of “HP Lovecraft inspired Post-Rave Hauntology Rituals and Radiophonic Occult Synth Horror Soundtracks” clearly pushes enough try-hard buttons to seem instantly suspicious, and may indeed prompt those with less tolerance for these kind of aesthetic clichés than I to do a sick in their mouths and swiftly turn their attention elsewhere. For the remainder who do indeed harbour a bone-level love for some or all of the notions he’s crammed together in that little sentence though, it is difficult to argue with the titanic sonic doorstops that comprise ‘Shunned House’s two digital ‘sides’.

Admittedly, Curwen’s initial methodology, focussing as it does on recording of ‘90s dance music slowed and echoplexed to point of abstract oblivion, sounds so similar to that employed by V/VM / Leyland Kirby’s ‘The Death of Rave’ and Tim Hecker’s ‘Ravedeath 1972’ that it’s tempting to mark this guy down as a mere copyist trying to muscle in on an already thoroughly marginal & tightly delineated aesthetic gimmick. Stick with it though (because admit it, you LIKE this thoroughly marginal & tightly delineated aesthetic gimmick, however snotty the tone of this review), and the sheer weight and breadth of the sound Curwen builds up across 88 solid minutes of foggy cloud chamber nightmare-haze is actually pretty beguiling, moving beyond the tiresome ‘haunted house’ puns of the piece’s initial concept as he builds up seemingly endless layers of sonic detritus into a blinding, maximalist reshaping of his source material into a jerry-rigged cathedral of amplified silence and alien, angelic ghost-vocals that in its heaviest passages recalls nothing so much as the mass guitar epiphanies of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. Transcendence through fear and alienation would seem to be the game here, at least to a certain extent.

The opening ten minutes or so of the second half is my favourite bit here though - a stunningly malignant piece of work, providing just about the densest and chilliest masterclass in spectral chain-scraping, subliminal attic-creaking and rolling graveyard fogbanks one could ever wish for. Subtle it ain’t, but the cliché is laid on so heavily it’s actually pretty unsettling, like the sound design for a blow-your-mind ultimate horror moment in a ‘Ring’-type movie looped across infinity. Later on of course, the inevitable angelic vocal tones fade in like a beam of light from the heavens for that full, blissed out euphoria/funeral rave-death effect – which is nice and all, but it’s the proper ‘Legend of Hell House’ kinda stuff I like the best.

Basically, if you’ve ever watched that film and wished that Brian Hodgson & Delia Derbyshire would stop pussyfooting around with their ‘electronic treatments’ and just go full on ELP arena tour with the whole thing, ‘Shunned House’ is quite possibly the record you’ve been looking for. Just don’t go rinsing it too enthusiastically when there are other family members around, or you’ll be back in that unfurnished attic with the paperbacks before you know it. Actually, could be a plan…. I wonder how Newcastle rents are looking these days…

Listen and buy from Joseph Curwen via bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2014, Joseph Curwen

Matching utterly furious feminist invective with a full strength crust/noise punk assault, the tracks Dregs have up for download add up to one of the most exhilarating bits of racket I’ve heard out of London in ages.

Illness and poor planning have contributed to my failure to see them live thus far, but, making it a priority for the near future.

I can’t really think of much else to say at the moment. I mean, I’m a pretty quiet guy. I’m happy to just stand at the back. I hope they won’t hit me.

Check these tracks out anyway, they’re brilliant.

Labels: best of 2014, Dregs

Into every year, a little pop-punk must flow, and if 2014 hasn’t exactly been a banner year for the form (round these parts at least), it’s nonetheless good to have a group as efficient as The Love Triangle working the mill.

A classic Brit-punk proposition, variously recalling Alternative TV, Buzzcocks, The Adverts, Wire, Sham 69 and even a dash of early TV Personalities at different points in this LP’s run-time, one may legitimately wonder how the band manage to hit these well-worn bases without ever sounding tired, irrelevant or subject to accusations of pastiche.

The answer, basically, is that they just bloody get on with it. There’s no winking at the crowd here, no strutting, no style – just a breakneck, heads-down tempo, clear no-nonsense recording, fierce, clean-toned chord-riffing and lyrical themes that emerge as both personal and contemporary once you get a minute to pick them apart - but kept subservient to the musical momentum, where they belong.

It’s there if you want it, particularly on the two closing tracks, which crack the shell a bit to offer reflections on mortality and depression (cf: TVPs comparison). But, largely, subject matter sticks to the basic perennials of bad sex and eating toast, music offers a solid kick up the arse, and if you’re just looking to find a soundtrack for getting to the post office very fast on the cold morning then rest assured, you’ll find few better.

Listen and buy from Static Shock.

Labels: best of 2014, The Love Triangle

As I said when speaking of Brazil’s Rakta in a post here last month: given the multitude of decades people have spent grinding away at the basic guitar/bass/drums rock band template without ever ceasing to find exciting new variations to explore, just imagine how many years more mileage you’re gonna get when you throw a few intelligently employed Boss delay boxes into the mix.

Such a sentiment applies perhaps even more so to Notes Terriveis, another band featuring Rakta’s guitarist Laura, alongside three male dudes if their bandcamp’s header pic is to be believed. She must be handling a good 75% of the vocals on this tape though, because to be honest, this is some veeery Rakta-like shit right here. Occasional interjections of man-voice aside, I’m not sure how well I’d do differentiating short bursts of the two bands in a random taste test. But, given how nuts I am on Rakta at the moment, that’s no bad thing. The same neon nightmare distorted guitar roar is right here, and the same ricocheting delay too – the latter perhaps employed with even more riotous abandon.

What most clearly differentiates the two groups I think is the absence here of Rakta’s more intense moodiness and kinda doom-wracked sense of musical ambition, which is instead replaced with a focus on more basic / playful punk tropes, faster and looser tempos and general sense of chaotic fun and non-damn giving.

By and large, I welcome this, and though Notes Terreveis’ grubby little mixtape can’t really hold a candle to the more calculated assault of Rakta’s LP, it nonetheless makes for a great, complimentary listen – like, Rakta in the playground, letting off steam before lessons recommence, or something.

In conclusion: both of these bands are awesome. Unexpectedly discovering them over the past few months has been awesome. I hope whatever they come up with in 2015 will be more awesome, and I hope they come back to the UK, which would be triple awesome.

Listen and donate via Bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2014, Notes Terriveis

I only just got hold of this one, but what I’m hearing so far, I’m liking.

I first encountered The Blind Shake a few years back, backing up the great Michael Yonkers on his more-robust-than-you-might-expect comeback album ‘Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons’, and indeed the influence of the more outgoing end of Yonkers’ oeuvre continues to be a key reference point here, as they step out on their own for their third, or fourth, or possibly hundredth, full length, but the first I’ve happened to stumble across. Which is not to say it sounds like anything in the Yonkers canon (it doesn’t), but… you know the way those solo Crazy Horse records don’t really sound like Neil Young, but they nonetheless make perfect sense when viewed as some music a bunch of Neil Young’s pals might make..? Similar deal here I think, though The Blind Shake would no doubt be rightly miffed at my flippant denial of their individual vision.

Anyway, needless to say, this is a right old heap of ugly, thunking mid-west weirdo-rock, infused with diesel-powered rustbelt sci-fi abandon and a dreadful determination to slay the audience in some regional dive bar. Little sense of any distinct personality emerges from the songs or their vocals, but hey, that’s ok – instead, wild, unguessable noise and unhinged stunt guitar fuzz/wah moves infect each track, delivering exactly the kind of synapse-fizzing skree I’m always a sucker for. Slower numbers invoke a kind of crawling Scientists/Elevators hoodoo, whilst moments elsewhere recall ‘Frankenchrist’-era Dead Kennedys or more marginal, rock-orientated punkers like The Weirdos or The Pagans. Perfect xmas sounds for the disgruntled bald man in your life, in other words.

It’s perhaps a tad too spiffily recorded and ‘competitively’ played to really compare with the chaotic grue of, say, Simply Saucer or Red Transistor in the retro-futurist outsider punk dirge sweepstakes, but nonetheless, what can I say – I kinda dig it, and if the myriad reference-points I’ve thrown out above have got your attention, maybe you will too. Track 7, ‘Young Carnival Waste’, in particular is a stunner. Further immersion needed.

Listen to some bits and bobs on the band’s site, buy from Goner for the full international  vinyl shipping experience, or maybe just give in to the budget option and get the mp3s off Amazon like I did.

Labels: best of 2014, The Blind Shake

Yes! December 2014, and this blog’s still hanging on to life by a fine thread. Rejoice!

About the only thing that is predictable around here is the inevitable records-of-the-year run-down, and, in beginning this year’s edition, I was planning to drop a bunch of fatuous, “well, what a year it’s been huh music fans” think-piece style blather addressing the mutation and abuse of the term ‘psyche’, examining the shaky foundations of my own persistent fetishisation of ‘exotic’ instrumentation within rock, considering the continued ossification of the ‘music industry’ even on the indie label level, and suggesting techniques that might be used to avoid having to look at its rotting flesh for too long when you could be doing something useful instead. Also, belatedly demanding that you all go and read Neil Kulkarni’s extraordinary Eastern Spring immediately.

Thankfully though, time is short and I’m knackered, so instead I’m going to skip all that crap and just get on with it. On a personal note, let’s just briefly say that 2014 has been one hell of an eventful year for me, and one that has shifted the foundations of my life around in ways both positive and negative. As such, my range of listening during the first two thirds of the year wasn’t what it could have been, but when I emerged blinking in the daylight a few months back, punk rock and its myriad off-shoots were waiting, and since then, there have been amazing times.

Practical notes before we begin:

1. Extending my already pretty flexible rules for formats applicable for this main “records” list, I intend to welcome with open arms the overdue death of the “you-must-make-an-album” mentality, and thus am going to be including for consideration *pretty much anything I feel like* that consists of more music than, say, a regular length two song single.

2. Some of the things on my list were released in 2013, because that’s just the way it is.

Hope that’s clear. Countdown commences TOMORROW. New posts every day until the new year if yr lucky. Hurray and hurrah, etc.

Labels: best of 2014, series intros