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dustedmagazine · 5 months

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Dust Volume 10, Number 1

Finnoguns Wake

Wow, it’s been 10 years since we started Dust, our monthly collection of short reviews. During that time, we’ve covered hundreds of records that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks — from obscure CD-Rs handed off at live shows, to long-lost reissues dug out of attics and basements, to the maniacally focused output of the micro-labels we love to even, occasionally, semi-major releases. Our conclusion: It may be hard times for music criticism, especially the paid variety, but it’s an excellent era for listening to music. Here’s what we’ve uncovered to kick off the next decade. Contributors include Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Andrew Forell, Justin Cober-Lake, Bryon Hayes, Patrick Masterson, Alex Johnson and Christian Carey.

Dave Bayles Trio — Live At The Uptowner (Calligram)

Good things are happening around Milwaukee. That’s where Dave Bayles practices his crafts as a jazz drummer and educator (actually, he teaches in Kenosha). This recording documents his foray into band leadership, which was hosted by the Uptowner, a neighborhood tap that’s been serving drinks since the 1880s. The recorded evidence suggests that despite it being the kind of place where you can holler at the Packers on a screen, when the music’s playing, people listen. Bayle, trumpeter Russ Johnson and bassist Clay Schaub justify their attention throughout this collection of mostly original, bop-aligned themes, which they execute with a little early-Ornette flexibility and healthy servings of direct, swinging lyricism. Johnson in particular does yeoman’s work, drawing out nuanced, patient solos that are likely to induce you to forget to open your mouth, just like the audience on this entirely ingratiating live recording.

Bill Meyer

Cy Dune — Against Face (Lightning Studios)

Very late on Seth Olinsky (from Akron/Family)’s dance/noise/punk experiment, but holy wow, what a belching, squelching, head-whipping sharp turn it is. If Akron/Family took gentle folk songs right off the rails, Cy Dune starts in chaos and ends in angsty cyber-age freefall. The trip typically takes one or two minutes, though the unironically named “Don’t Waste My Time” extends for three. Within that time frame, bass note bobble, snares snap, guitars twist and Olinsky shouts in terse syncopation, breaking occasionally for non-Jude-like “na-na-na-nahs.” “Against Face” wallops hard and fast, pounding toms tethering wild squalls of guitar. “No fun, no fun, no fun,” howls Olinsky periodically, but it definitely is. Fun.

Jennifer Kelly

Dual Monitor — HARD19 (Hardline Sounds)

Say what you might about Rinse FM, the station’s leadership (read: they of the coffers) continues to do a service to the UK’s ecosystem of independent radio by way of keeping afloat other institutions. One such example was its buyout and relaunch of the old pirate station Kool FM; another was its unshuttering of beloved Bristol station SWU.FM last April. Part of the latter’s reinvigorated lineup is the duo of Fliss Mayo and Zebb Dempster, aka Dual Monitor, and their latest release caught my ear for its attention both to percussion amid propulsion and to its high-grade bass weight. “Level Up” might be the winner for me, but the pitch-black plunge of “Left/Right” and “Quattros Oxide” are grooves to behold, too. The airy D&B twist of “Switch It” is also unmissable, a lovely bit of work to close out the four-tracker. Good for a run of 200 from a label worth watching, it looks like you’re still not too late if you do a little running of your own to go grab it.

Patrick Masterson

Eluvium — (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality (Temporary Residence Limited)

Matthew Cooper has made and released plenty of music since 2016’s False Readings On (much of it under the Eluvium name) but in some ways the compact, masterful (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality feels like the first capital A Eluvium Album since that one. As with 2007’s Copia, it leans into the orchestral side of Cooper’s work (this time remotely collaborating with various musicians over the last couple of years), resulting in everything from the phantasmagorical choral/vocal work on “Void Manifest” and the dense arpeggios of “Vibration Consensus Reality (for Spectral Multiband Resonator)” to the solo piano miniature of “Clockwork Fables” and the whirling swells of the closing “Endless Flower.” At this point Cooper’s work is often too varied and colorful to be described as drone, and too active and involving to really be ambient; it’s just Eluvium music, and it’s wonderful to have more of it.

Ian Mathers

Finnoguns Wake —Stay Young EP (What’s Your Rupture)

Stay Young is a debut four-track EP from Australian songwriters Shogun and his mate Finn Berzin who rejoice in the name Finnoguns Wake. You’ll find no knotty linguistic experiments but for lovers of energetically melodic indie guitar bands, there are joys to be had. The pair, who share vocals, guitar and lyrics, meet somewhere between the concise attack of Shogun’s former band Royal Headache and the anthemic end of Britpop. The first three songs zip by with guitars abuzz, the rhythm section driving hard and the voices high in the mix. “Blue Sky” manages to feel satisfyingly loose atop its rigid drumbeat. “So Nice” reconfigures the riff of Husker Dü’s “Terms of Psychic Warfare” to good effect, with Berzin sounding tonally like young Dylan. “Lovers All” moves along like a rougher version of The Buzzcocks. The one misstep “Strawberry Avalanche” aims for Britpop grandeur with the misguided self-belief of late Oasis. Shogun takes his “melting ice cream” metaphors as seriously as Liam treats even his most absurd attempts to top big brother. Thing is you can picture the song working for an audience, so hats off. Stay Young is a promising introduction from a band that feels it like has more and better coming.

Andrew Forell

Lamin Fofana — Lamin Fofana and the Doudou Ndiaye Rose Family (Honest Jon’s)

New York-based producer, DJ and visual artist Lamin Fofana had a big 2023, with two releases on the famed Honest Jon’s imprint and a third for the illustrious Trilogy Tapes in addition to a Resident Advisor mix. That second Honest Jon’s album came in the form of this collaboration in early December with the Doudou Ndiaye Rose Family, an mbalax group of some notoriety in Senegal and descendents of the Dakar drummer, composer and band leader best known as master of the sabar drum family. It fits, though the exact nature of the collaboration is unclear — this is very much a percussion workout of the highest order with only a deft tinge of Fofana’s electronics providing light, cosmic buoyancy to the music, a quartet of meditations ranging between four and 12 minutes long. The most frenetic of them, at least for a spell, is “Bench Mi Mode III: Spectrum,” but even that one has its share of field recordings to lend a more immersive, consuming quality to the listen than pure rhythmic impulse. If you’re unfamiliar with any of the parties involved, you’ll thank yourself in short order for giving this a go.

Patrick Masterson

Fortunati Durutti Marinetti — Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean (Quindi (ITA) / Soft Abuse (USA))

Dan Colussi’s latest release under the Fortunato Durutti Marinetti moniker, Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean, is eminently listenable, engaging and, if paid proper attention, engrossing—although not always comfortably. His vocals never stray far from sprechgesang and the instrumentation tends towards warped mid-tempo. There are bright washes of keys; flute and string inflections; careful, elastic bass lines with steady, shoulder-danceable drum patterns. It’s easy to be lulled by the rosy, if somewhat baroque settings, until an ascendant burst of synthesizer or dramatic pause intrudes to break the spell. You may find yourself unsure, rewinding to find out what you might’ve just missed. In this way, the experience of the album can feel akin to a single, continuous performance with brief variations, rather than a straightforward collection of songs.

One such variation, adding perhaps the most friction to Eight Waves… is “Smash Your Head Against the Wall,” which, while not concussive, does make your ears perk up at its clawing guitar chords and the stark imagery that Colussi nearly spits out: “it’s a nest of vipers pissing on each other…and anyone else who’s around/would love to fuck you over if they can/and this community’s request/for the presumed benefit of all/is smash your head against the wall…a delta of corrosion/disorder/and decomposition.” I quote at some length, but there’s plenty more. Though a sonic departure from its surroundings — think Bill Callahan’s “Diamond Dancer” dropped into Destroyer’s Kaputt — “Smash Your Head…” is emblematic of a record that rewards the delayering effect of multiple listens.

Alex Johnson

Ghost Marrow — earth + death (The Garrote)

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There is a patience to the songs on Aurielle Zeitler’s third record as Ghost Marrow, but it’s the patience of a predator stalking its prey. All seven songs here started as improvisations on the Juno-60 synthesizer, but by the time they’ve been arranged into these shapes (almost entirely by Zeitler, who adds effects and guitar as well as her voice) they feel focused and intent on the listener. The Bladerunner-esque sweep of “mother of the end” and the increasingly un-gentle blasts of static breaking into the title track both land somewhere between unsettling menace and a kind of holy severity. By the time the closing, ten-minute “microcosm” erupts into clouds of guitar and distant screaming, suddenly sounding a lot more like Sunn O)))’s Black One than the rest of the LP might make you expect, it’s clear that Ghost Marrow is intent on honoring both sides of her title.

Ian Mathers

Brian Harnetty — The Workbench (Winesap)

Composer Brian Harnetty has created memorable work by digging into cultural archives. Shawnee, Ohio (2019) uncovered layers of memory from Appalachia, while last year's Words and Silences drew on recordings of Thomas Merton for sustained contemplation. For his brief EP The Workbench, he takes a different approach, mining deeply personal moments for a individual revelation. He begins with items that his father had repaired — a watch, a radio — and adds in voicemail messages, all in conversation with an evocative quartet. Eventually he ends the piece with his father's breathing as he sleeps in hospice, a quiet outro that finds mournful but understated peace.

The 11-minute track moves so smoothly that singling out key moments almost misses the point; it's a single movement to honor a relationship while reflecting on the brevity of time and the artifacts that persist amid mortality. When a repaired music box overtakes the musicians for the final lift, it feels natural, because of course the reparations done in life will outshine our ability to articulate their meaning. Harnetty's compositions before that never falter. His use of bass clarinet (here played by Ford Fourqurean) provides the essential gravity. Violin and cello weave through the piece with his own piano lightening the composition as needed. A reworked instrumental track allows for a wordless exploration of the same topics. An accompanying video covers the workbench itself, the artifacts presented in themselves, a tangible and visual part of the legacy. It's a short statement from Harnetty but one that lasts.

Justin Cober-Lake

Nailah Hunter — Lovegaze (Fat Possum)

Nailah Hunter plays lots of instruments on this lush and twilit debut full-length, but two define its sound. Her voice, to start, is cool and effortless and strong, prone to flowery embellishments and capable of soaring crescendos without strain. She might remind you of Sade, in the poised, unruffled quiet bits, but she can belt, too, filling cavernous sonic spaces with bright untethered flourishes. The other instrument is the harp, more common certainly in classical music but not as unusual as it once was in rock and soul. But unlike Joanna Newsom who laces her tunes with folk-echoing arpeggios or Mary Lattimore who finds a celestial drone, Hunter employs the harp to scatter pizzicato shards of crystal in velvety nocturnal textures. The harp litters her moody atmospheres with star light, cold, glimmering pinpoints of sound. It contrasts in a striking way with the warmth of her voice and the pulsing, irregular syncopations of dance-like drums. These are oddly shaped elements that ought not to fit as snugly or as wondrously as they do, but they do.

Jennifer Kelly

Ernesto Diaz Infante — Bats In The Lavender Sky (Ramble)

Bay Area guitarist Ernesto Diaz Infante has always been a restless sort. Nonetheless, this album feels like a bit of a curve ball, albeit a welcome one. The improviser ensconced himself in a San Francisco recording facility named Next Door To The Jefferson Airplane Studios, but did not take the trip you might expect given a choice like that. Instead of a west coast psychedelic vibe, he has gone natural, nocturnal and New Zealand-ish. Put another way, this album mines territory similar to Roy Montgomery’s mid- to late-1990s work, with a little bit of user-friendly Mego thrown in. Repetition leads to contemplation; this music won’t move you at bat velocity, but if you happen to be floating on a slow-moving air mattress while they fly overhead, it’d make just the right soundtrack.

Bill Meyer

Joy Orbison — “Flight FM” (XL)

flight fm by TOSS PORTAL

Getting married and having a kid really seems to have opened Peter O’Grady up over the past few years. After starting his own label in 2017, he came out with an album (2021’s Still Slipping, Vol. 1), has dropped a handful of singles exploring various strains of UK dance music, and even mined the archive of his glory days for a comp of loosies long thought lost or forgotten (last year’s Archive 09-10). Far from the reserved, elusive producer he broke so big with “Hyph Mngo” as, Joy O has instead blossomed into an approachable, seemingly well-adjusted guy who just wants you to enjoy music the way he does — and what better way to do that than with this heavyweight cruiser that rolls as deep as his best material from the SunkLo days. Concocted in a car on the way to a festival, it took some badgering from Four Tet (who has some unreleased work of his own to wrap up, while we’re on the subject) for him to finish it… but thank goodness he did. The best part about this is that we skipped the Aliasizm radio rip and the endless speculation on what it was called and got straight to the release. A simple, speaker-wrecking ode to the pirate station from which it takes its name, you couldn’t start 2024 (or 2012) any better. Variation on an oft-repeated refrain lately: It’s a shame Fact isn’t around to report on it.

Patrick Masterson

Matt Krefting — Finer Points (Open Mouth)

Finer Points by Matt Krefting

Students of the northeastern U.S. freak scene know Matt Krefting for his endeavors both written and aural. His critical ear has spilled ink across the pages of The Wire magazine and Byron Coley’s Bull Tongue Review, and his sonic exploits harken back to the turn of the millennium with the studied quietude of Son of Earth. These days, Krefting makes surprisingly musical constructions using cassette decks and other tape-adjacent curios, coaxing murky melodies from spools of ferric material. Finer Points comprises layers of dusky fuzz, sandblasted environments and warmly lit instrumental passages. A lonely organ features prominently across many tracks, its doleful moan warbling slightly as Krefting’s malfunctioning tape deck motors strain to maintain a constant speed. Standing out from the nocturnal scenery is “A Double Request,” in which multiple plucked string instruments coalesce into a swampy dirge. There’s a sense of evolution at play as the parts cycle through, forming melodies that shift and tumble before falling apart entirely. This is a common theme throughout Finer Points: Krefting subtly and gradually alters the scenery. The slow unfolding creates an intoxicating glow that permeates the entire experience.

Bryon Hayes

Thomas K. J. Mejer / Uneven Same — Saxophone Quartets 1 2 5 6 7 (Wide Ear)

Uneven Same – Saxophone Quartets by Thomas K.J. Mejer

If you’ve heard of Thomas Mejer, it’s most likely because he is a rare specialist in the contrabass saxophone. In that capacity, he’s contributed tonal heft and textural complexity to the music of Phill Niblock and Keefe Jackson. But for this album, which was mostly performed by the all-female saxophone quartet, Uneven Same, he applies a nuanced comprehension of the potentialities of other saxes founded upon the advances made by improvisers to composed music that operates that is carefully textured and glides more than it grooves. Manuela Villiger, Eva-Marta Karbacher, Vera Wahl and Silke Strahl realize his long, layered lines and carefully buffed sonorities with exquisite poise. Mejer also uses overdubbing to realize four more pieces, all part of a series entitled “Resonating Voids,” on his own. By turns rough, thick, and aquatic, its elemental earthiness balances Uneven Same’s more airborne performances.

Bill Meyer

Melted Men — Jaw Guzzi (Feeding Tube)

Melted Men are an enigma that no amount of online sleuthing can crack. The only information about them online is their Discogs page and a live show review from 1997. In that bizarre performance, Melted Men was a duo from Athens, Georgia. Apparently now, 25 years later, they’ve swollen their ranks, even roping in members from as far afield as continental Europe. With Jaw Guzzi, the anonymous outfit offers up a pair of side-long audio head trips. Warped, heat haze-distorted cassette detritus sidles up to blown out exotica and disjointed Martian funk beats. There’s a hefty dose of collage on display, with mutant vignettes that serve as rickety bridges between more tuneful passages. It’s these doses of song form that will extract bobbing heads and wobbly bottoms from the most adventurous listeners. Melted Men imagine a world where the jump cut jumble of Seymour Glass intersects the ethno-punk chaos of Sun City Girls and the junk shop proto-industrial bleat of early Wolf Eyes. It’s a world that this writer wouldn’t mind visiting frequently.

(Note: Melted Men are such a mysterious bunch that they’ve asked Feeding Tube not to post any audio on Bandcamp or elsewhere on the internet.)

Bryon Hayes

Nehan — An Evening with Nehan (Drag City)

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Nehan is all-star Japanese noise/drone/experimental ensemble led by Masaki Batoh and drawing members from Ghost, Acid Mothers Temple and the Silence. The disc in question presents two side-long improvisations which use as a starting point the 9hz brain wave emitted from a test subject. You can get a sense in the video above of how the experiment worked, as a dancer’s synaptic impulses feed into an elaborate synthesizer set up, turning whatever was in her head into long, pulsing drones. It’s a bit austere in its pure form, but the record elaborates, adding percussion, especially gongs and bells, and a wizened-kazoo-like wind instrument, something that might be a bagpipe and other sounds. It’s not entirely clear how much of what you hear comes from the brain waves and how much comes from the free interplay of the musicians, but maybe it doesn’t matter. The result is slow-moving and mysterious, with dramatic surges of drums and wandering threads of blown sound. The human brain is a notoriously mysterious organ but who’d have thought it could general all this instrumental turmoil? If you’d told me this music was sourced from sun storms or tidal currents or tectonic shifts, I’d have believed that, too.

Jennifer Kelly

Colin Newman and Malka Spiegal—Bastard (Swim ~)

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Colin Newman’s Bastard created quite a stir in 1997 when first released. This nine-track, all-instrumental album, leaned heavily on a still mostly underground drum ‘n bass aesthetic and was a far cry from Wire’s terse, melodic outbursts. It also was Newman’s first project after Wire went on hiatus, billed as a solo effort, but actually a close collaboration with his partner Malka Spiegel. This expanded reissue gives Spiegel due credit and fills out the context with 12 additional contemporaneous tracks.

The original album still sounds fairly austere, with clean, clipped drum cadences, locked-tight guitar loops and abstract surges of synthesized sound. The amusingly named “Slowfast (falling down the stairs with a drumkit)” allows the use of distorted guitar, but only in quick, percussive blots. The guitar sound becomes an element of percussion, but not the important one—an antic skitter of drum machine dominates the cut. “Spiked” strips a funk riff down to cubist blocks, a bass sliding woozily between sharp-cut breakbeat drums. None of this is so surprising now, in the wake of techno, house and all its variants, but people weren’t expecting it, least of all from a post-punk progenitor, in 1997. The reissue adds a bunch of other tracks, many of which hew much closer to how you probably think of Wire. “Automation” adds a sinuous, down-in-the-mix vocal to its pop-locked rhythms. “Voice” bristles with guitar dissonance and bobs with dubby bass. “Tsunami” floats euphorically on sawed-down guitar feedback, a good bit like My Bloody Valentine but dancier. And “Cut the Slack” sounds like a Wire song, deadpan chants running into shouted aggressions and layers of guitar shimmering around undeniable hooks. The extra tracks make Bastard sound less like a 100% departure and more like a gradual evolution—and they are very much worth hearing all on their own.

Jennifer Kelly

Ethan Philion Quartet — Gnosis (Sunnyside)

Gnosis by Ethan Philion Quartet

Here’s a welcome surprise. As a rule, bebop-rooted jazz is not the place to look for excitement in 2023, but the rules change when Ethan Philion is on stage. On this record, his second as a leader, the Chicago-based bassist helms a quartet that combines high energy with rhythmic grace and a thorough commitment to the mechanics of the music being played. The latter point might not sound so thrilling, but it is key, since it results in performances that can be appreciated for their cohesion as well as their outward-bound vibe. Philion’s debut was a tribute to Charles Mingus that felt a little too polished; this time, the soloing by all parties (alto saxophonist Greg Ward, trumpeter Russ Johnson, drummer Dana Hall) evince both vigor and rigor.

Bill Meyer

Rick Reed — The Symmetry Of Telemetry (Elevator Bath / Sedimental)

The Symmetry of Telemetry by Rick Reed

The Symmetry Of Telemetry is Rick Reed’s pandemic album. Methodologically, it’s hard to say how much that matters, since the Austin-based electronic musician’s practice already involved patiently collecting and sifting through shortwave broadcasts and then combining them with performed electronics. But the slow-motion uneasiness of “Dysania,” the alternately abraded and bulked-up bumps that introduce “Leave A Light On For Tony,” and the disconsolate, fizzling tones that occupy most of “Space Age Radio Love Song” certainly feel like that time felt. But there’s more to this music than downer vibes. Reed knows how to layer and arrange sounds so that an apparently static passage yields event upon event anytime you decide to listen into his compacted constructions. He also knows how to make waiting pay off, and while it would be spoiling things to tell you what he does, suffice to say that if you listen, you’ll know it when it happens.

Bill Meyer

Jason Roebke Quartet — Four Spheres (Corbett Vs Dempsey)

Four Spheres by Jason Roebke

When bandleaders like Mike Reed, Jorrit Dijkstra and Jason Adasiewicz have needed a bassist who could toggle easily between swing and abstraction, they’ve called Jason Roebke. Such calls, along with everything else a person has to do to maintain a life, mean that years might pass between Roebke’s turns as a leader. But when he does, you can count on them to be deeply considered and not quite like anything else going around. This quartet applies his trademarked fluidity to investigations of the tension between fixed and changing elements. Cassette recordings of electronic noise and metronome beats form nodal points within these pieces around which Edward Wilkerson Jr’s reeds and Marcus Evans’ drums surge and churn in overtly expressive fashion while pianist Mabel Kwan and Roebke shift their weight between fixity and flow. The sound is occasionally reminiscent of the more skeptical, interrogative side of the AACM, and particularly Roscoe Mitchell, but Roebke’s points of inquiry are purely his own.

Bill Meyer

Ned Rothenberg — Crossings Four (Clean Feed)

Crossings Four by Ned Rothenberg

This is some understated, shape-shifting stuff. On clarinets and alto saxophone, Ned Rothenberg matches a tone that’ll make you want to let your ear linger to phrasing sufficiently fluid to motivate them to get up and follow the music. The other three musicians in his Crossings Four are Mary Halvorson on guitar, Sylvie Courvoisier on piano and Tomas Fujiwara on drums. They and Rothenberg are well-matched in attitude, since everyone has chops to flex, but no one flashes them gratuitously. Although this is the quartet’s first recording, there are decades of shared experience and a myriad of interconnections between its members. This enables them to realize a variety of improvisational approaches, from droll and grooving to fractured and abstract, with ease. The moments when a signature lick pops out tend to be lures, inviting the listener to follow them as they disappear into matrices of brisk, nuanced interaction.

Bill Meyer

San Kazakgascar — Too Many People (Lather)

Too Many People by San Kazakgascar

The album title augurs misanthropy, but that’s not borne out by the sounds. This Sacramento seven-piece spares little time for sonic bleakness, and the sounds they choose to make reveal a robust curiosity about the music of other places. Disciplined west coast psych guitars converge with skronk-willing, souk-conscious reeds upon rhythm frameworks that suggest someone’s spent some quality time listening to Gary Glitter, the Meters and wherever it is that Chris Forsyth bottles his choogling spirits. The lack of vocals keeps them from saying anything you really wish they’d take back, and the commitment to a steady groove makes this a record you’ll want to hear on the go, so cash in that download code! But there are also lulls founded upon dust-blown acoustic picking, making this just the record to play when your Firestick won’t load and you’re back to watching that all western, all the time station, but you can’t stand to hear that bullshit cowboy dialogue anymore. Yeah, make up a Western in your own mind where the land defenders win and finish the day celebrating to the tunes of “Crockett Creek.”

Bill Meyer

Secret Pyramid — A Vanishing Touch (BaDaBing!)

A Vanishing Touch by Secret Pyramid

Amir Abbey often writes songs, but on A Vanishing Touch, he composes ambient music inspired by J Dilla’s Donuts. The two seem like strange projects to associate, but it is more the inspiration of Dilla’s jabbing beats that Abbey reconceptualizes to enliven the texture. The best track, “Whim,” is built around soaring textures amid just such rhythmic punctuation. Abbey also moved away from the long gestation period afforded his songs to greater immediacy. There is an improvisatory sensibility here that, rather than moving Secret Pyramid sideways, seems like a useful development.

A Vanishing Touch includes a wide range of synth sounds and doesn’t stint on yearning dissonance. As the ambient revival long exceeds its initial incarnation, it is up to artists like Abbey to reconceive it. Mission accomplished.

Christian Carey

Setting — At The Black Mountain College Museum (www.settingsounds.com)

at Black Mountain College Museum by Setting

Setting is Jaimie Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors), Nathan Bowles (Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) and Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone), and At the Black Mountain College Museum is the trio’s ultra-quick follow-up to their debut album. Recorded at the end of the brief string of dates that celebrated its release, it dives deeper into their blend of propulsive grooves and not-too-plush, not too rough textures in almost aquatic fashion. This music moves a bit like an otter might, drifting when the current does the necessary work, and then pointing head down with a vigorous kick into deeper and more turbulent eddies. The three multi-instrumentalists stick together, sonically speaking, so that you’re less likely to tune into their interactions than into the place the sounds take you.

Bill Meyer

Strinning & Daisy — Castle And Sun (Veto)

Castle and Sun by Strinning & Daisy

In a sax and drums duo, there’s nowhere to hide. If a musician lacks ideas, stamina or reciprocity, a duo will lay their deficit out for all to hear. Alternately, if they have what it takes, tuned-in listeners will know. The latter scenario is the case here. Swiss tenor saxophonist Sebastian Strinning and Chicagoan drummer Tim Daisy have known each other since 2019, when the former resided for a spell in the latter’s city. But they don’t have a lengthy shared history, so there’s an element of trying things on for size in this session’s dynamic. Each musician draws upon his diverse approaches in a series of mix-and-match explorations as tumbling lines meet steaming forward energy, hushed, textured tones part a curtain of metal sounds, and animal utterances confront circuitous patterns. Captured with three-dimensional palpability and spaciousness by engineer Nick Broste, their exchanges connect with both mind and gut.

Bill Meyer

Tiger Valley—The Celebration (Hausu Mountain)

The Celebration by Tiger Village

Cleveland based producer Tim Thornton’s latest album Tiger Village album, The Celebration, collects ten cheerfully constructed pieces capturing the chaotic joy of domestic life and music making under a feline regime. Random cat energy infuses Thornton’s music; languid relaxation gives way to manic activity, while parcels of affection turning into aloof, spiky demands for attention proffered with claws and cries. Both “Cat’s Up” and “Cat Chew” celebrate the beasts’ mercurial nature. The former is an insinuating strut constantly distracted by random shiny objects, sudden noises and those odd moments of fixation upon unseen emanations. The latter slinks about, looking you in the eye as it knocks your stuff off the desk and tramps across your keyboard. Across the other eight tracks, Thornton juxtaposes eight-bit squiggles, snatches of ambient melody, treated samples of his daughter’s voice, techno beats and machine detritus into a sometimes delirious delight. Quite lovely, though prone to scratching.

Andrew Forell

True Green — My Lost Decade (Spacecase)

My Lost Decade by True Green

Nine clever, loosely strung songs from Minneapolis novelist Dan Hornsby buzz and rattle like lost cuts from Pavement or Silver Jews. “My Peccaddilloes” is especially slanted and more than a little disenchanted, a rambling picaresque of guitars, drums and wheedle-y vocals. The chorus, if that’s what you call it, hits hard, though, “It’s a dog eat dog/said the dog with the taste for dogs/every man for himself/said the man for himself.” The music dissolves in your ears, mess of things that sting and bash and hum, but the lyrics are sharp and packed with reference. “You’re a hopeless diamond, and it’s rough,” yowls Hornsby in his kicked dog tenor, and that about sums it up.

Jennifer Kelly

Michael Zerang & Tashi Dorji — Schiamachy (Feeding Tube)

Sciamachy by Michael Zerang & Tashi Dorji

Sciamachy is named for the practice of fake fighting; if you make it to theater school, you might be able to take a class in it. The cover image augurs metal, but this mock battle between Tashi Dorji and Michael Zerang is improvisational to the hilt. What else can one do when faced with an instrument that’s one of a kind? Zerang is generally known as a percussionist, but on this occasion, he played something called Queequeg’s Coffin, which was devised to be both instrument and prop for a puppet theater performance of Moby Dick. It is a coffin-like box with a crank on one side, somewhat like a hurdy-gurdy without keys. It’s not precise, but it kicks up a great, raw racket of higher and lower pitches that sound like someone sawing open said coffin. Dorji’s response is to lean into texture, complimenting the coffin’s abrasive protests with Sonic Youth-like chimes, chain-in-the-skillet clanks and blinking feedback cadences. This music will have you picking imaginary splinters out of your clothes for the next week; how many records do you own that can make a similar claim?

Bill Meyer

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aprilsrymblr · 2 years

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punk-funk

not all projects are meant to be, it seems... I spent quite a bit of work on a genre submission for RYM recently that wasn’t able to make it through the queue, as many people thought it may not be well-recognised as distinct from its parent genre, dance-punk. I, however, think this is a really unique and interesting style within the development of post-punk and early blending between post-punk and alternative music with dance elements... so here is the description I submitted:

Punk-funk is a style of dance-punk which is based around incorporating funk rhythms into the minimal, angular sound of post-punk. Consequently, compared to other styles of punk, punk-funk is typically slower and groovier with a strong focus on the rhythm section, in particular emphasizing instrumental interplay and the bass guitar as a lead melodic instrument. Electric guitar is used more sparingly, typically played in a scratchy and rhythmic disco-influenced style. Some punk-funk groups also incorporate other rhythmic influences outside funk, most commonly the offbeat rhythms of reggae and dub; the complex percussive style of Afrobeat was also influential on some artists, most notably Talking Heads. Though less common, some punk-funk groups have also incorporated horns or saxophone. The punk-funk style emerged effectively simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic in 1979, in large part out of a desire to break from the white cultural norms (and racism) within the existing punk movement by prominently embracing Black musical influences. British punk-funk was primarily developed by Northern bands like Gang of Four (Leeds), A Certain Ratio (Manchester), and The Pop Group (Bristol), with a more reggae-oriented variant emerging from London's The Slits. Also notable is Public Image Ltd's "Death Disco" single; its title and "funk noir" became alternate names for the genre in the UK, emphasizing its darker tone compared to the dance styles it was inspired by. In the US, punk-funk emerged out of the art punk scene and closely related No Wave movement in New York City, with artists like James Chance and 99 Records' ESG and Liquid Liquid serving as a more rock-oriented counterpart to the mutant disco trend, which punk-funk sometimes crossed over with (earning it the nickname "mutant funk"). NYC scene mainstay Talking Heads swiftly incorporated a less angular variation on the style into their arty brand of new wave, serving as a major influence to bands in the emerging Athens, Georgia scene like The B-52's and Pylon. Interest in the punk-funk sound declined by the mid-1980s, by which point many of these groups had broken up or moved onto new styles, but at the same time it was a major influence on New Order's emerging alt-dance tendencies and the proto-funk metal of Red Hot Chili Peppers (whose self-titled debut was produced by Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill). Happy Mondays, innovators of the baggy sound later in the decade, also started their recording career as a punk-funk group. The style was revisited in the early 2000s by a number of groups associated with the post-punk revival and electroclash scenes, leading to the innovation of newer forms of dance-punk that build on and diverge from punk-funk with an array of influences from contemporary electronic and dance music to the aggression and intensity of post-hardcore and sasscore. However, some groups in this dance-punk revival like !!! still emphasized funk influences and can be seen as a modern continuation of the punk-funk sound. (fin)

you may espy the submission, discussion, and sourcing if you have a RYM account by accessing this link; the information primarily comes from Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up and Start Again (2005) and Tim Lawrence’s Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor (2016), along with a smattering of web sources. both books are great, and I’d highly recommend checking out them or the listed artists if this music is of interest to you!

to end this, here’s a song from the LP that spurred me to look into this little movement in the first place, Pylon’s 1980 album Gyrate:

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#punk #punk-funk #dance-punk #1970s #1980s #no wave #art punk #funk rock #post-punk #gang of four #a certain ratio #the pop group #the slits #public image ltd.#james chance #talking heads #pylon

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savage-kult-of-gorthaur · 1 year

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"ROCK AND ROLL IS OVER. DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?..."

PIC INFO: Resolution at 2048x2949 -- Spotlight on a Jamie Reid promotional poster design titled "Never Mind the Bans, the Sex Pistols Will Play," c. December 1977. These were the last gigs the band played in England until their demise the following month while touring the USA.

"Rock and roll is over, don't you understand? The Pistols finished rock and roll; they were the last rock and roll band."

-- JOHN LYDON, formerly "Johnny Rotten," vocalist/songwriter of first wave UK punk rock band, SEX PISTOLS

POSTER OVERVIEW: "Produced for their last British tour, known as "Nevermind the Bans" and proclaiming that "Sex Pistols will play." The poster incorporates several letters of cancellation from promoters and councils; in the event, four of the eight original dates (Bristol, Rochdale, Wolverhampton and Birkenhead) were cancelled through illness, or police and council pressure."

-- SOTHEBY'S (London, England auction house)

Source: www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/the-sex-pistols-the-stolper-wilson-collection/jamie-reid-never-mind-the-bans-the-sex-pistols.

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c-40 · 2 years

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A-T-2 249 Y Records Pt. 2

Second look at Bristol's Y Records (pt.1 here A-T-2 049.) Y was set up in 1980 by The Splits and The Pop Group manager Disc O'Dell, it would fold in 1983. Here are a few more of my favourites from their catalogue, all released in 1982

This cover of Bali Ha'i from the 1949 musical South Pacific became a cult mutant disco favourite. Optima Music picked this up for reissue https://optimomusic.bandcamp.com/album/bali-hai. On the bandcamp page they point out Captain Sensible (The Damned) had recently had a number 1 in the UK with Happy Talk, which is also from the musical South Pacific. Angela Jaeger provides the vocal, she was soon to join another Y act Pigbag

Disconnection - Bali Ha'i (UK Discomix)

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Mouth - Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. Winter 1982 Y released The Birth Of Y compilation on it was a new track form Mouth called Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. Mouth has released two singles on Y, they're most notable for having Paul (Nellee) Hooper in the band. Mouth's output was repackaged and issued by Emotional Rescue in 2016 https://emotional-rescue.bandcamp.com/album/voyage-to-the-bottom-of-the-sea

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Nellee Hooper was also a member of Maximum Joy. The band were formed by Janine Rainforth and included members of two Bristol post-punk bands The Glaxo Babies and The Pop Group. I shared the extraterrestrial single White and Green Place (Extraterrestrial Mix) on my previous post. Maximum Joy released their only album in 1982 Station M.X.J.Y. Adrian Sherwood was involved in its production, here's one of his Let It Take You There. These post-bunkers are all over bandcamp https://maximumjoy1972.bandcamp.com/music

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One of the acts to go on and have success after Y Records is Shriekback. In my opinion they release their best record (albeit too short) on Y in 1982 My Spine Is The Baseline https://strut.bandcamp.com/track/my-spine-is-the-bassline

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R.A.P.P. featuring Archie Pool. Archie Pool is an actor known for the films Pressure and Babylon. Dennis Bovell is producer. R.A.P.P. was collection of musicians including members of Matumbi, Creation Rebel, and Jeff Scantlebury. Oh Africa

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theresas-sound-world-blog · 7 months

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Artist/Gig: Crywank

Genre/s: Folk-Punk; Anti-Folk; Acoustic; Singer-Songwriter

Venue: The Lanes

City: Bristol, England

Date of Performance: 14/11/23

TSW Review retrieval Hashtag: #tswcrybris

This was a stripped down headline performance of Jay Clayton on acoustic guitar & vocals, later supported by bass and drums, then switching back to solo, an approach I’ve seen before…think Evan Dando of The Lemonheads, (who has performed in a similar fashion) but in reverse, solo-band-solo over a live set rather than band-solo-band. The natural blend of lyrics & poetry half-sang, half-projected, with a guttural yell sit perfectly with gentle arpeggios, then abrasive Punk-Folk guitar. Vocal delivery is somewhere between AJJ and Jake Thackray. Jay Clayton’s guitar-abilities mesh with his vocals…percussive guitar conjuring up a full band, think Rodrigo Y Gabriela meets Sonic Youth, that builds in intensity and drops or skyrockets to serve the song. There were different tunes from various Crywank albums that generated a warm buzz amongst the audience, emotional ear worms burrowing as song after song gushed from the stage. Jay has a command of his emotions, with a great range in his creative pallet linked to his feelings and is able to distil these into visceral acoustic songs that resonate timelessly with the fans. Jay’s empathy, humility and humanity manifest in Crywank, part folk-rebel, part beat-poet, part kitchen sink dramatic storyteller, an emotionally hardcore spokesman for the misshapes.

🇬🇧🇮🇪Crywank UK & Ireland tour 2023: https://linktr.ee/crywankband?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=3437c6ad-615c-423b-bfd9-64c3eb5a216a

⏯️ Listen to Crywank in Bandcamp: https://crywank.bandcamp.com/album/just-popping-in-to-say-hi

#alternative music #underground music #theresa’s sound world #punk #music blogger #uk #tsw #music blog #indie #Crywank #crywankers #folk punk #anti punk #acoustic #acoustic punk

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buttonpusherdiy · 11 months

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5 bands you need to see at 2000 trees

The legendary 2000 trees festival celebrates its 15th anniversary this weekend and we can't wait to be back on site for one of the best weekends of the year.

With an absolutely stacked lineup and the weather looking like it's going to be another year of sunshine these are our top 5 acts you simply cannot miss on Upcote Farm this weekend.

THE ST PIERRE SNAKE INVASION

TSPSI return for their sixth appearance at trees in support of their astonishing new album Galore, expect noisy post hardcore, mixed with punk and metal elements and plenty of banter and gun flexing from frontman Damien Sayell. This band deserves way more attention so be sure to catch them on the Main Stage this Friday

SUGAR HORSE

Bringing a slab of misery to a sunny day - Bristol based harbingers of doom will be bringing their unique brand of post-metal/shoegaze to an unprepared trees crowd. Expect lots of noise mixed with some beautiful etheral moments this Thursday on the NEU Stage. Their latest EP featured lots of guest vocalists so who knows they may even have some surprises up their sleeves.

PROJECTOR

We first stumbled upon Projector at Bad Pond Festival and were captivated by their stage presence and raw power. The Brighton based trio make a big racket with plenty of angular guitars and dual vocals and remind us of some of the bands from the grunge era like Sonic Youth and Pixies - You can catch them on the Axiom Stage this Thursday

THE SCRATCH

We were recommended The Scratch by someone at last years trees and damn were they right as it proved to be possibly one of our favourite sets from the Forest Stage last year as they managed to get the crowd in fine form. So, If you need a bit of energy in your life and fancy a jig you won't want to miss them as they return to the Forest stage again this year on Friday night. Expect to leave with a massive smile on your face.

LAKES

Another Forest stage set we're super excited for is Lakes, the Watford based Mid West inspired emo band have been on the rise as of late having supported American Football on their most recent tour and also just completing their own run of headline shows around the UK. We're very excited to see them again in the gorgeous surroundings of the Forest Stage this Friday afternoon.

2000 Trees Festival 2023 takes place next week at Upcote Farm, Cheltenham. The final tickets and additional information can be found here.

#2000 trees festival #Cheltenham #New Music #Festival #Emo #Grunge #Post Hardcore

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k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9 · 3 months

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Chaos UK - Kill Your Baby

#Chaos UK #Stunned To Silence #Format:#CD #Reissue #Kill Your Baby #Released:#2020 #punk rock #punk #UK #UK Punk band from Bristol.

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whatsonmedia · 2 years

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Music Monday: Music with the event, and food & drink!

This week’s music Monday brings you a blend of music with food & drink in and musical event. WhatsOn editorial Adam Humphrey has selected some musical events a music lover must go to! Here is all info with a review: A Unique Night of Exquisite Food and Music - Comes to London this December Calling all music and foodie lovers, if you want to know what's cooking both in the kitchen and on the dance floor then look no further and the Special music and food extravaganza coming to London this December. Organized by spotlight live UK this event showcases the very best stand-up coming in food and music. For further details please see the link below https://spotlightliveuk.com/ Sample the latest food delicacy and enjoy the latest music beats. It is December after all, so go on with not treating yourself Camilla Sparksss - brings her energetic live show to the UK for six special dates this November! Swiss-Canadian DJ and producer, and all-around music maestro, is bringing her musical talents to a new audience in the UK as part of her tour this month. For anyone who has heard her music before will definitely know what to expect with a mixture of synthwave, breakbeats, and bass, and to top it off she shows just had talented she is by adding herb calls to the mix. Anyone who was aware of her music, as well as her DJing, said she will know that she isn't afraid to mix things up a bit and throw it out there and keep the audiences wanting more. When it comes to music Camilla has got that DIY Punk type attitude https://youtu.be/q09ccEMmmgU She's definitely a much-welcome release of fresh air to the DJ dance synth world 25.11 | London - Boston Music Room 26.11 | Bristol - The Crofter’s Rights 27.11 | Preston - The Continental 29.11 | Glasgow - Bloc 30.11 | Coventry - The Tin Music & Arts 01.12 | Margate - Elsewhere SOHODOLLS - release stomping rock banger 'Bad'! Your favorite London rockers, SOHODOLLS, are back with a brand new single, Bad, and it definitely packs all Manor of rock beads from gothic to rockabilly. Now for a band being away from the circuits for a decade, they are definitely reclaiming their elements and their stance. Leading front-woman, Maya van Doll, proves that she is definitely not lost her touch and she's still got what it takes to make a great frontwoman. Her voice is sharp yet still full of femininity she demonstrates in her song that she is still a force to be reckoned with. https://open.spotify.com/track/6tNTd8uoQNeVcM3l1uE5fT?si=OV7_aOqCTNGuw557bFD_yQ&utm_source=copy-link https://youtu.be/0XzzS3BJ7Hc Read the full article

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dustedmagazine · 1 year

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Listed: Violin Sect

Photo credit: Steve Jinks

Formed in 1980 and disbanded in 1981, the obscure Welsh post-punk band Violin Sect left behind just one seven-inch, “Highdays and Holidays/Rivals,” documenting their brief existence. In fact, they’ve flown so low on the radar since then that they were even overlooked for the Messthetics compilations, the CD series that brought the sounds of the many forgotten and amusingly-named UK DIY bands of their time and ilk to a (relatively) wider audience. This started to change in 2019, however, when Sect bassist Steve Walker posted a couple of previously unreleased songs that he’d dug up to Soundcloud, where Minimum Stacks label head Joe Piccirillo heard them as his label was just getting off the ground. Fast forward to 2023 and we have the Vile Insect 12-inch, featuring all four songs from the band’s short life transferred from the original ¼" tapes. The result, to Andrew Forrell of Dusted’s ears, is a mix of “dubby rhythms, scratchy post-punk guitar, whimsy and skepticism,” able to stand with Scritti Politti’s “Skank Bloc Bologna” and Swell Maps “Read About Seymour.” And thanks to this release, it’s finally in a position to reach the audience it deserves.

Although Walker’s bandmates — Steve Jinks (guitar), Phil Rimmell (drums) and Hywel Pontin (percussion and backing vocals) — were unavailable to take part, Walker has assembled a list of some of his favorite music, art and literature from his 67 years on earth for Dusted. “A snapshot within a snapshot,” if you will.

The Raincoats

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I was lucky enough to catch a London gig by the Raincoats in 1979 around the time they released their first single. This year Gina Birch (bass/vocals), also 67, has released her first solo album, I Play My Bass Loud, and it’s been worth the wait. Here’s an early one from the first Raincoats LP, though.

Mica Levi — “Lips”

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I got the same sort of excitement when I first heard Mica Levi, together with their bandmates in Micachu and the Shapes. Their work has continued to grow and encompasses other genres such as film soundtracks (e.g., Jackie).

Sufjan Stevens — “Video Game”

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I first became aware of Sufjan Stevens with the release of Illinois and caught him at the end of his UK tour promoting it at King’s College London with a pared-down (although still with those wondrous wings) extra gig. In later years he was in Bristol on the Carrie & Lowell tour. Sublime. Here’s a later track with fabulous dancing.

Saul Leiter — In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life

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I’ve spent a lifetime as a specialist nurse supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities to maintain and develop their independence together with practicing as a part time psychotherapist for the general public, within the UK’s National Health Service. During this time, I’ve drawn, painted, made music but mainly taken photos (since I was a kid with a darkroom). Maybe there’ll be an exhibition of my own one day but, like Saul Leiter, I’m used to “postponing things and seeing no reason to be in a rush.” For me, his exhibitions and photobooks have a magical quality that validate and inspire all at the same time.

Ivor Cutler

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Ivor Cutler always had my heart but here’s an epic that didn’t feature on his own albums.

Angeline Morrison — The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience

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In 2022 Angeline Morrison released an astonishing album… I’m afraid that I can’t stop myself recommending it to people! If you get a chance…

Paul Wright — Arcadia

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Arcadia is a short film that explores Britain’s relationship with the earth, its secret pasts, hidden histories and collective amnesia using old film and TV footage in an exhilarating fashion.

Wet Leg — “Chaise Longue,” live at the BRIT Awards, 2023

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A performance from the here and now, incorporating the past with the present in a truly WTF moment at the Brits!

Gretchen Gerzina — Black England

Books… so many books! So, here’s what I’m currently reading.

Anthony Gormley — Another Place

Finally… if ever in Liverpool, visit Crosby Beach and experience Antony Gormley’s sculpture. It consists of 100 cast iron figures facing towards the sea, (gradually becoming encrusted with barnacles, etc.) all modeled on Gormley’s own naked body.

#dusted magazine #listed #violin sect #steve walker #the raincoats #mica levi #Sufjan Stevens #saul leiter #ivor cutler #angeline morrison #paul wright #wet leg #gretchen gerzina #anthony gormley

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musicblogwales · 2 years

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BERRIES - HOW WE FUNCTION

Gritty garage-punk trio BERRIES pack a punch with debut album ‘How We Function’, out today via Xtra Mile Recordings.

Through tight, crunchy guitar lines and puncturing melodies, BERRIES deliver an album ostensibly about mental health struggles and how to overcome them. Nearly four years in the making, the band explain the themes that came to define their fierce new record, saying:

“The album is about strength and growth and recognising the dark times and how you get over that. We’ve got over a lot of mental health struggles, but we wanted [the album] to have an empowering vibe to it as well. This is our journey to growth. Mental health is not a shadow over what you’re doing — this is really healthy and we can talk more about this stuff.”

With praise for the punchy debut already piling in, Louder Than War awarded ‘How We Function’ four out of five stars and dubbed the record “a really well put together debut album that rocks hard and gets its message across succinctly, with a bristling beat and an intelligence that it takes some bands a few albums to achieve”. Elsewhere the record has gained glowing reviews from the likes of The List and The Crack, with the latter saying: “their jagged tunes have those all-important hooks — certainly enough to keep that fevered mosh-pit a-jumping.”

Including each of the band’s earlier singles, from the infectious and angsty “Haze”, to the catchy, convulsing melodies and noise-driven instrumentals on “We Are Machines” and the craggy, layered noise-rock of “Wall of Noise”, the album explores the band’s musical and emotional DNA — revealing what it takes to not only overcome personal problems, but to set yourselves on a path to being truly independent in sound, ambition, heart and mind. “We really couldn’t have put more into it,” adds Holly, “we are so proud of the end result.”

Following a recent run of shows across Europe with The Subways, BERRIES are now looking to take their new album to a series of UK live fixtures later this year. Including a headline tour that kicks off in Nottingham on 19 October, there’s also support dates with Jim Bob and Slothrust, plus a smattering of festival dates - including an appearance at 2000 Trees TONIGHT! Full dates and details below:

BERRIES - UK DATES July 8 – 2000Trees Festival 11 - London, Garage + 31 – Kendal Calling

September 17th – Lost Evenings V Festival in Berlin

October (Headline) 19 - Nottingham, Bodega 20 - Bristol, Mr Wolf’s 21 - Hull, The Adelphi 22 - Leeds, Santiago Bar 25 - Manchester, Gulliver’s 26 - London, Oslo

November 9 - Newcastle, Cluny * 10 - Glasgow, Drygate * 11 - Sheffield, Leadmill * 12 - Manchester, Gorilla * 23 - Oxford, O2 Academy 2 * 24 - Birmingham, O2 Academy 2 * 25 - Bournemouth, Old Fire Station * 26 - London, Islington Assembly Hall *

* w/ Jim Bob + w/ Slothrust

#Berries #Xtramilerecordings Sonic Pr

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louisupdates · 2 years

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Louis Tomlinson, Yungblud and Franz Ferdinand pull Russian tour dates

Louis Tomlinson and Franz Ferdinand are the latest music stars to pull gigs in Russia due to the conflict in Ukraine.

US band Green Day and pop punk star Yungblud have also cancelled dates.

Tomlinson said his shows in Moscow, and in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv - which has been under attack from Russia - are postponed "until further notice".

"The safety of my fans is my priority and my thoughts go out to the people of Ukraine and all those suffering from this needless war," he posted online.

The singer had been due to appear at Kyiv's Stereo Plaza and Moscow's Crocus City Hall in July.

Other acts already confirmed to have scrapped performances include US noise rock band Health and Russian rapper Oxxxymiron.

'Unanimous opposition'

While announcing the cancellation of their summer gigs in Moscow and St Petersburg, Franz Ferdinand noted their love of Russia culture but condemned the state's attack on its neighbour.

"We love Russia," they wrote. "This great country has inspired our band through its art and literature and since we first played there seventeen years ago, we have built a rich and deep relationship with our Russian fans.

"Since Thursday morning, we have spoken to many of our friends in Russia via social media and have encountered unanimous opposition to this violence and solidarity with our Ukrainian friends," they added.

"We know you see the madness of your country's leadership. We know you do not want war. We do not want war."

The Glasgow act went on to say they looked forward to the day they could return "in a time of peace".

On Monday, the Russian State Ballet of Siberia cancelled its remaining UK tour dates "due to the current shocking circumstances unfolding in Ukraine".

Theatres in Bristol, Wolverhampton, Northampton, Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Southend and Peterborough had already cancelled visits by the ballet company.

#louis tomlinson #ltwt22: ukraine #ltwt22: russia #louis article

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molkolsdal · 3 years

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Beyond disco: the Pakistani Brummie siblings who made a lost 80s synth-pop classic

Michael Lawson

Nermin Niazi and Feisal Mosleh were teenage immigrants blending their Pakistani musical heritage with Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode – and their punchy disco LP has been rescued from obscurity.

(9 Feb 2021)

Opening its doors in 1970, Birmingham’s Zella Studios played home to a who’s who of the city’s musical greats: Black Sabbath, Band of Joy, the Spencer Davis Group. But the Bristol Street institution was also home to one of the most remarkable and unfairly overlooked albums of the 1980s: Disco Se Aagay, by teenage British-Pakistani sibling duo Feisal Mosleh and Nermin Niazi.

“When I look back now I’m surprised at how much confidence we had,” Niazi says. “I remember walking in and feeling absolutely at home. The smell of the studio stays with me even now. There’s something very comforting and secure about it.”

Recorded in the summer of 1984, Disco Se Aagay – released under Niazi’s name – sought to combine the siblings’ Pakistani musical heritage with the disco, new wave and synthpop that enchanted them in the UK. They married Urdu lyrics and post-punk ingenuity, Hindustani melodic scales and state-of-the-art synthesisers, to make an LP that perfectly harmonised east and west – but failed in both markets. “Even after all these years I haven’t really come across anything else that’s similar to it,” her brother Mosleh admits. “And that includes music we’ve made ourselves! It’s a very unique snapshot of a certain time in our lives and our intake of both cultures.”

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Now, 37 years on from its release and instant obscurity, Disco Se Aagay is finally re-emerging. Discostan, a radio show and club space dedicated to celebrating the music of a region they term as Swana (south and west Asia and north Africa), is reissuing the album. Founder Arshia Haq recalls stumbling upon it in a second-hand record store on New York’s Lower East Side. “When I first saw the record sleeve I thought to myself: is this gonna be good, or so-bad-it’s-good?” she laughs. “When I dropped the needle on the record I was blown away by a feeling of: what is this? It’s in my native language but there’s also this new-wave-synth, kind-of-bedroom feeling to it and it’s a little bit more experimental than other south Asian music that I’d heard.”

“It’s a British classic,” adds Discostan’s Jeremy Loudenback. “It’s a record that should be re-evaluated and celebrated and brought into the conversation when we think of that great heyday of British new wave.”

Born in Lahore, Mosleh and Niazi are the children of Pakistani musical royalty – their father a prolific Lollywood composer, Moslehuddin, and their mother an adored singer, Nahid Niazi, who would often perform in films scored by her husband; together they became the nation’s first ever children’s TV hosts. “Some of my earliest memories of Pakistan are being in film and TV studios,” Mosleh recalls. “Then we came to England when I was six years old, and it felt very different not having our large extended family around us.”

Settling in Birmingham in the mid-1970s, music continued to be the backbone of family life. When their parents weren’t touring the UK (performing at London’s Royal Albert Hall and Barbican among a swathe of notable venues), they were rehearsing in the family home or hosting the biggest names in Pakistani pop for their visits to the UK. “I remember being young and sitting with very famous people like [south Asian pop star] Nazia Hassan,” says Mosleh. “We thought this was quite normal until we got to a certain age and it dawned on us that our parents were slightly unusual.”

On the other side were myriad European influences (“groups like Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Japan and even Abba”) that had just as big an impact on their sound. When they finally took to the studio to record Disco Se Aagay – Niazi aged 14 and Mosleh aged 19 – the idea was to bridge these two worlds. Translating to “beyond disco”, the album is a candid expression of the dual personality millions of members of the diaspora are forced to address during their teenage years. The Urdu lyrics and south Asian pop stylings represent the comfort and familiarity of their upbringing; the synth-driven energy signifies the allure of western culture and desire to break the mould.

With Niazi singing and Mosleh responsible for an array of instruments and hardware, a liberated quality permeates the record. “We were doing a lot of crazy things when we were just school kids,” Mosleh enthuses. “And we were using the same stuff that some of the top bands were using at that time: the X7, the DX1, the DX5, some of the Yamaha and Roland series.”

Laid down in Zella Studios, the standout track Sari Sari Raat (translating to All Night Long) channels the punchy dancefloor energy of Italo disco and hi-NRG; Dil Mein Dil Mein (In My Heart) has all the glossy synth opulence of Spandau Ballet; Hum Tum (You and Me), the album’s most experimental track, weaves and overlaps Niazi’s vocals in a way that was completely unique for the time.

Despite the abundance of talent, innovation and youthful exuberance, they lament the absence of any real promotion or marketing campaign from Oriental Star, the local label that released the album. But as Mosleh says: “Even if it had got UK plays I think people would’ve been asking: what is this? It didn’t fit into the traditional Indian and Pakistani sounds nor into the UK pop of the time because of the language.”

When Niazi returned to school after the summer holidays she was reluctant to divulge her creative endeavours with any of her classmates. “I just thought, ‘They’re not going to understand.’ The 80s was a different world to the broad-minded one we live in now.”

The album did generate interest in their native Pakistan, resulting in TV appearances and a flurry of magazine front covers, but there was also a backlash from some of the more conservative pockets of society. “I was a 14-year-old Asian girl singing about love,” says Niazi, “which some people interpreted as me encouraging children to date.”

Mosleh adds: “The Islamisation of Pakistan had started and that’s where this negativity came from. I’m kind of surprised that a lot of conservatism has remained in these communities – it always seemed very backwards in the way they were treating music. Nevertheless, we ignored it as we thought we were doing something great.”

The LP was to be their only release, not because of religious pressure, but rather life getting in the way. Mosleh started a new life in the US while Niazi, after dabbling in TV and radio after leaving school, eventually joined the Metropolitan Police in London, where she has remained ever since. “It’s true that life just takes over but if I’m honest, deep down, I lost a little bit of hope due to our album pretty much disappearing into obscurity,” she concedes. She says the experience left her “feeling like I was in this no man’s land in the middle, and I found it very difficult throughout my teens. But as I got older I realised that it’s not actually a battle. It’s about choosing and embracing the positive elements from both sides.” A tactic, of course, that she and her brother had already mastered.

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secondhandnewsradio · 3 years

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SHN INTERVIEW: Sleep Walking Animals

by Claire Silverman

photo: Ryan Hall

Sleep Walking Animals, the indie-folk alternative rock band from Manchester, England, have just released their self-titled debut EP. Since SHN first interviewed the band at the start of the year, they have released two more singles, started playing live shows again as restrictions opened up, and have announced a co-headlining tour around the UK in October. At their EP launch gig at the Fiddler’s Elbow in Camden on the 20th of September, they performed their new music to a sold out crowd.

CS: Congrats on the EP coming out. When we spoke back in February, you mentioned your plans for the EP, so it’s very exciting that it’s here now. How are you all feeling?

Tom: Like it's about time.

Jack: “Angus’ Fool.” “Wild Folk,” and “Dance Laura Dance” are on the EP, so we started recording this EP in October 2019. So it's been a big process, and the EP is kind of about that process.

Tom: We didn't want to release things until we were happy with everything, because we did record enough songs back in 2019 to go on an EP. But in post [production], we were a little bit concerned that they weren't all up to the standard that we wanted. It was our first time in a studio together as well when we recorded those songs, so we needed to practice, we needed to get together more and get more experienced in the studio. Then we ended up going up to Stockport and using a studio called Green Velvet Studios and we laid down five tracks, three of which are on the EP.

Jack: So, yes, excited.

photo: Ryan Hall

CS: Is there an overarching theme across the EP?

Tom: It feels like it's very much about things that have happened to us in the time it took to put the EP together, and things that have inspired us enough to write about, you know, various introductions to people, to new experiences, illnesses, life events that sparked something within us to try to make a good song out of.

Jack: The whole EP spans across when we started the band in 2018 right up to now, so a lot of the songs are about growth and change. But the songs are about our growth musically as well, which is a nice kind of coincidence.

Tom: “Angus’ Fool” was the first song we ever wrote together, so the EP spans from our first song together to things we were writing in lockdown. So like Jack said it’s a span of two and a half years.

Alex: “Native” was written after we played Farm Fest [this summer].

CS: So now that you have more music out and have started to establish your sound, how did you figure out what genre of music you wanted to make?

Alex: It's funny, you just mentioned “Native” and I think that was the point that pushed us to fatten up the sound a little bit. I mean, the style of the song made us realize that we can push it a little bit more. And we have a few like one recorded songs, which are definitely a lot more rock-y.

Tom: We're inspired by all sorts of different bands as well. And, you hear it said a lot but a lot of great artists steal from other great artists and that's how they become great, so we're taking influences from people that we all listen to. So this is why it's hard whenever anybody asks “so what kind of genre of music do you play?” I can never really answer that because it’s changing all the time.

Jack: But I was saying to Bill the other day, (he's not officially in the band yet but he kind of is. He's the drummer who played with us on Monday) we've never really spoken about what genre we want to write. We didn't speak about influences, particularly.

Tom: We're just going with ideas. We all have our own little pockets of interest that we bring to the table and I think that’s what makes out sound quite unique

Alex: When someone brings something and then all of a sudden there's so many layers on top of it, which are coming from all kinds of different directions. And it's just hard to put your finger on what it actually is. But it's cool and we like it.

photo: Ryan Hall

CS: It seems as though COVID restrictions are kind of mostly lifted here in England. At least, concerts are happening again. What's that been like, through the pandemic till now, and being able to play live shows again?

Tom: It’s been a massive relief, really, it means that we can get out there and get some gigging experience, start playing our stuff live. It's a completely different beast to be in the studio, it’s a completely different skill to have. And the more we do it, the more we’ll improve, and the more people will respond well to our gigs. There is such a massive impact from a live gig that you don't get from sitting down and putting your headphones in and listening to the Spotify track. You get the performance, you get the live engagement with music, and with the people on stage. That's just palpable.

CS: Since you're all performers, you're all actors, how do you think your other stage experience impacts your music?

Jack: That's an interesting one. Because I think the three of us are definitely coming out of acting and want to follow music, solely. Obviously, Tom, you both really well. [Laughter] And Nuwan’s also still following both. It's just something that when we are playing live, and it's going well, and there aren’t any technical issues, that we can just give ourselves completely to that moment. And I think that's easier for someone who has trained to do that, which is kind of what we did at drama school, I guess, to give yourself to the moment,

Tom: Yeah, there are great artists and performers, actors, musicians who haven't haven't gone through a formal training process. I think it's actually more important than training. Personally, I find the two things very different, being onstage as a member of Sleep Walking Animals and being on stage or on screen and being an actor in a role. I think the only similarity for me really, is the fact that when we go on stage as Sleep Walking Animals, I feel myself put on a character. I'm not Tom, I’m whatever else that is.

Jack: John. [Laughter]

Tom: I think we all do that whether we realize it or not. Because we'd be crippled with anxiety and insecurity and all the other horrid things that sort of flood into you when you're onstage performing in any way, you know, those don't happen or they sort of diminish if you put on that guise. So I guess that helps in that sort of transition.

photo: Claire Silverman

CS: You mentioned Farm Fest a bit earlier. What was it and how did it come about? And how was it?

Tom: So Farm Fest is a new, upstart festival that myself and my girlfriend Lottie host and organized. It's on her childhood farm and it's something that Lottie had wanted to do for a long time, to use that land to provide a space for a festival, entertainment, camping. We started it a couple years ago. There was that little bit of time between lockdowns where we got a weird freedom in the summer of 2020 and people felt like it had kind of gone away. Luckily, we all collectively know a bunch of musicians and comedians. It started small and then this year, we did it again. We charged a bit more money for tickets, and we are getting bigger and better. It feels like it's sort of gaining a bit of momentum. And it was the highlight of our year, we got to perform on a mainstage with a great sound set up. For us it was a big crowd to play to who all knew the songs and were singing along. It felt like a real festival, right.

CS: You guys are pretty active on social media, at least on the Sleep Walking Animals account. You guys don't always take things super seriously, which I like. What’s your approach to using social media? What do you think of it?

Jack: I wish we didn't have to. I think we probably all do realize the importance of it because Instagram is pretty much the only way of promoting anything, which is so fucking sad. Yeah. And I thought today, because Joe and I are reading a book about Joy Division and the start of the punk scene stuff, and they didn't even have t-shirts, because they wanted to stick it to the man and that kind of thing. But you just can't do that now. It's just like times have changed and there’s so many bands and so many artists that you have to be on it. Like, it will only be a matter of time before we go on to TikTok.

Tom: As an unsigned band without management or label yet, you know, we're left to do it on our own. Like Jack said, it's our only way of letting people know about our music. We might as well try and enjoy it if we've got to do it.

photo: Ryan Hall

CS: Now that the EP is out, what are your future plans for the band?

Tom: World domination?

Joe: Recording.

Tom: Yeah, more tunes. We've got quite a few unrecorded ones. Keep doing what we're doing, really, following the footsteps of the people and bands and artists who have inspired us. Just keep going with it and see what happens. We're not putting immense amounts of pressure on ourselves. We do it because we love it. We do it because we think our music is worth pursuing. Yeah. Just see where the wind takes us.

CS: And you've got a tour coming up in October.

Jack: Yeah, a UK tour. It’s a co-headlining tour with Polary and My Pet Fauxes. So we're playing in different cities and we're all sharing the headlines slot and supporting each other at the different venues.

Tom: The 17th of October we're playing Leeds at Oporto, then on the 18th at Dublin Castle in London, the 19th we’re in Bristol at Crofters Rights and then the 20th at Night & Day in Manchester.

CS: Good luck for those shows and again, congratulations on releasing your debut EP.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Listen to Sleep Walking Animals’ debut EP here

Follow the band on Instagram Twitter Spotify YouTube

sleepwalkinganimals.com

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