(((O))) Tag: Thrill Jockey
It seems that Sally Anne Morgan’s message with Thread is – folk and modern music might seem separate, but they are actually more or less one thing – natural music.
David Bowes spoke to Alison Chesley of Helen Money about her latest album Atomic and the joys of being embraced by the metal community.
An inevitable consequence of the collaborative creative community that swirls around The Body, Sightless Pit is a tastily seditious inversion of the rock power trio.
What we get here is an uncanny valley version of Emptyset. Almost like it but somehow disturbingly blank and misshapen at the same time.
With Before You Begin, Sequoyah Murray at the same time breaks the rules and sticks to them, bringing some unique music along the way.
The finest Lightning Bolt album adds melody to the frenzy and I love, love, love it!
Eye Flys lives up to what I understand to be the purpose of noise rock. I for one can’t wait to see how Eye Flys’s blackened road kill version of noise rock evolves on future releases.
The front and centre wonk and distortion counter balance his remarkable knack for melodies so immediate you feel like you already know them.
Tucker’s voice is so sweetly charming that the content seems secondary, washing over you in a bubbling stream of vowel sounds, somehow both emotional and affectless, open and arcane, devotional yet ordinary it makes his dense abstracted drone into approachable pop.
The sounds they have collected are mostly as blank as plastic fragments washed up by the tide, yet they carefully collage them into colourful and revealing tableau.
Oozing Wound look around in dismay at the general levels of human stupidity, shake their heads and point and laugh the bitter laughter of the disappointed. Vitriol for all!
A set of beautiful, carefully structured, instrumental pieces. Not quite ambient, neo classical or electronica, it blends all three into low key patterns of comforting sound.
Snatches of world beating tunes bleeding through the squalls of noise and weirdness.
As the leaves turn and the temperature falls this record is as comforting as pulling on a jacket you’ve not worn since spring and as pleasing as finding £10 folded up in the pocket.
SUMAC have arrived at a wonderfully effective blend of long form structures and free improvised passages. They’ve harnessed that spontaneity to their own road map and found their way to their best record yet.
It’s possible to hear the last 30 to 40 years of American avant rock spooling through the background of this album; no wave and hardcore, math rock, post-rock, noise rock all feed into it but none of them overpower the band’s own voice.
Their name has often seemed odd to me because their music deals not in our physicality but in mental anguish and emotional torment. The unceasing existential horror of life. The Body conjure something truly apocalyptic and heart sick where lesser lights indulge in scary devil pantomime, somehow achieving a greater resonance and sincerity despite sometimes almost comedic levels of bleakness.
Wrekmeister Harmonies’ new album sees them playing against type, and against their own strengths, eschewing the shamanic bombast of their previous works to craft sombre ballads. It’s closer to Nick Cave than to Swans and whilst they feel lovingly crafted they sadly fail to convince.
Guitars are reduced to little more than ambience and occasionally strummed discordance as Keiji Haino exorcises like a priest with a satanic gym membership and a new years resolution that will NOT be broken this year.
Unimaginable pain and terror serving as a euphonic experience.
