Category: Sound

Without music, life would be a mistake. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Devil Sold His Soul [Live]

Then, coming to the end of a great set, disaster strikes. “This is our last song”, announces Ed. We’re treated to the opening guitar line of what I suspect was ‘Darkness Prevails’, before...

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Basinski/LCO [Live Review]

The story of these Disintegration Loops already carries great emotional weight. Basinski completed the work of producing new originals from his damaged tapes on September 11th, 2001 and spent the...

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Blur, New Order [Live]

New Order. Their set is fuelled by absence’s tension from the outset but Bernard Sumner is making light of this. After the group are introduced he quips “apparently we’re New Order, we’ll do...

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Swans: The Seer

The Seer may well be a grower and may accumulate more power with time, but I find it striking that after listening to it the Swans songs I hear in my head are mostly those from much earlier. Time...

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Electric Eden [Album Review]

Electric Eden has surprises in store for folk enthusiasts, however would not intimidate any listeners wanting to dip their toes into the water. ...

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HEVY Festival

When your guitar feedback section is so long that your guitarist has time to have a crafty check of his iPhone, maybe it's time to just get on with the song already. HEVY Festival is HUGE. This...

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Matmos: Meltdown 2012

Rather than understanding Matmos as a quirky part of the nineties electronica wave, maybe we should actually be interpreting them as a continuation of a much older tradition of musical comedy, albeit...

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30 shades of WOMAD

Despite the 'small is beautiful' ethical basis of the festival where buying a branded plastic bottle contributes to a distant solution, offering an option to feel good without getting personally...

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Graingerboy: Shadowformerself / Vintage

Echoing Moroder, Graingerboy’s (Simon Grainger) tasteful keys compliment the dense bass groove adding glamorous polish to this pulsing anthem to 80s insouciance. With Vintage, Grainger has created...

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Cambridge Folk Festival 2012

As I helped what could only be someone’s Gran onto a chair so she could get a better view and was hugged by a crazed hippy forcing me to eat some one of her love heart sweets, I could only think...

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Queer British Paganism: Meltdown 2012

Opening with Derek Jarman's Journey to Avebury the scene was gently set. A super 8 movie. Almost a travel document. A visual diary, a diary which continued throughout the night, for this wasn't a...

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Arrows Of Love + Bank Of Joy

Even in the venue itself, there's the swimming event taking place on the big screen. Thankfully for at least an hour, all attention was briefly shifted for some live music. Because of the club...

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Oscar Mulero: Black Propaganda

With Britain in the grip of near-compulsory enthusiasm for a militarised circus of corruption on an epic scale, there can hardly be a better time to be listening to an album entitled Black...

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The Sun Explodes: Emergence

'this ballsy new convergence of metal/rock/prog/post-hardcore/electronica'...

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Constellation des Carpates: Eglise de Seignosse le Penon [Live]

Writing about live music on the Capbreton-Hossegor-Seignosse strip of South-Western France has the tendency to become a 'What I did On My Holidays' essay. An essay featuring more blonde-dreadlocked...

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Peter Broderick: These Walls of Mine

‘…composing and playing music is just a pretty sophisticated way to do those things we do, but why? Because we were separated in the big bang – and are now endlessly trying to find...

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Mutiny on the Bounty: Trials

Here is a band with a ceaseless work-rate, an impressive touring/gigging record and Facebook and Twitter pages filled with adoring fans ...

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Mostly Autumn: Ghost Moon Orchestra

The Ghost Moon Orchestra is either the ninth or tenth studio album from York rock band Mostly Autumn, depending on how you count them, and the second since Olivia Sparnenn replaced the much-loved...

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Sarin Smoke: Vent

Recreating the gurgling dry-retches of Dawn French’s back passage during a virulent bout of random-onset dysentery using the medium of guitar feedback may seem a concept album conceit too far...

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Loitered Lens: 999

‘999 played the type of set you’d expect from fat middle aged old school punks with slightly squealy guitars. All well and good but you felt that they should be in a spit and sawdust pub in...

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Civil Civic + Umez: The Macbeth

As with many gigs around this time of year, this was something of a competition: bands versus football. One end of The Macbeth was rather dominated by a projector and screen (showing an entertaining...

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Preview: Cambridge Folk Festival sets sights high!

Eclectic and expansive, as the Cambridge Folk Festival should be, the list of acts is now immense. Among the ones to look out for ar June Tabor and the Oyster Band, especially if they play that Joy...

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Trebuchet [Album]

Trebuchet, the band… Trebuchet, the album… The name seems familiar, but I just can’t place it… Comprised of four experienced hands from California’s underground indie and post-rock scenes,...

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Viva le Rock/Gypsy Hotel: The Garage

I’ve always found Highbury Garage (I’m still refusing to call it Relentless Garage) a rather sterile venue, but when the evening began with a male unicyclist, Count Adriano Fettuchini, stripping...

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Kangding Ray Monad XI

Monad XI is the latest in the Stroboscopic Arfects label's ongoing experimental series and marks a further development in the label's thoughtful aesthetics....

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Bob Wayne and the Outlaw Carnies [Live]

A Retro-rock night and musical fashions, anachronism, mending old ground, conversational racism and phenomenal guitar playing.  Let’s burn something. The Borderline is a place where Rock and...

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Kitsune Soleil Mix

Much in the same vein as the earnest would-be intellectual stilting the atmosphere at an after hours house party, Intelligent Dance Music (for all its worthy pseudo philosophic concept and eagerness...

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La Sera [Live Review]

Yes, they were all very competent musicians. Yes, her voice was crystal clear and soared above the music very nicely indeed . It was easily to imagine some of these songs being used in some sequences...

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Baddies: Camden Barfly

Ahh, The Barfly, Camden. A little place dear to my heart. The scene of many a crime, mass alcohol consumption and general shenanigans. It’s compact, the lighting is bad but the sound is good,...

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Panic Room: Skin

Over the past four years, Welsh rock band Panic Room have established a strong reputation both on record and as a live band. Their dynamic mix of rock, pop, metal, folk and jazz manages to combine...

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