Thursday 12 June 2014

Short Reviews for Que Vida 2

There have been a lot of great new releases spinning in the home of Hell in May and June 2014, too many for longer reviews, so here are some short ones!

Swedish experimentalists Skull Defekts "Dances in Dreams of the Known Unknown" on Thrill Jockey is a spirited spiritual gothic masterpiece fueled by tribal drumming worthy of Killing Joke and Kukl and features some godly guest vocals from Daniel Higgs. Scandinavian hexen zone!

Yoshimi P-We is best known for drumming in Boredoms and battling Flaming Lips' pink robots but she has another all female band OOIOO and their "Gamel" album on Thrill Jockey finds them adding their idiosycratic take on gamelan rhythms to their funtime chants.

Former Come guitarist Chris Brokaw's "Now, Forager" on Dais is a soundtrack to a film about love and fungi. Judging by the finely picked guitar instrumentals mushrooms are American road movie fuel and the ambient noise interludes could be the sound of them growing through the cracks in the sidewalks to infest Wall Street with hallucinogenic music.

"Konokon" on Lancashire and Somerset is the second album from Nottingham trio Kogumaza and finds them at their most melodic and majestic, with no loss of slowburning raw power.

Goldring / Thomson "For All #1 Noises" on Lancashire and Somerset is a one sided vinyl only recording of some guitar strum and drone culled from an installation made by two men best known for their axe work in Enablers. One for hardcore Enablers fans maybe, more ambience, little rhythm. The only downside is that they could've included these guys recent Touched By A Janitor instrumental tape on the wasteful blank side.

Monkey Puzzle Trio "The Pattern Familiar" on Slowfoot is the second album from former This Heat drummer Charles Hayward's trio with Viv Corringham's portentous multi-layered electric voice and Nick Doyne-Ditmas electric double bass. It's a stranger beast than their debut, and that had enough weirdness for a whole gang of stooges. Their shoes were made for walking to the river, where it sounds as though some disaster is about to happen.

Mugstar's mighty "Sun, Broken" album has been reissued on beautiful black and white vinyl by Cardinal Fuzz and as there are only 500 of this latter day heavy psychedelic classic you'd better run to the record store!

Kreidler "ABC" on bureau b is yet another foot tapping dose of post-Kraftwerk synthpop instrumentalism from this long running and rather under-rated German group, this time with the subtle addition of a Georgian choir.

New York hardcore kids Big Ups came to Kraak Gallery and almost blew the roof off with their Gray Matter / Minor Threat inpsired blasts. I snapped uo their "Eighteen Hours of Static" CD on Tough Love; they needed the tour money and I needed to clear the wax out of my ears.

Prescott's "One Did" on Slowfoot is a quirky instrumental affair from a trio featuring former Stump bassist Kev Hopper. I'm not sure if I actually enjoy it but sometimes that can be a good thing.

 
 
 

 

 
 

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