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Samuel Kerridgelive @ Varvara Festival
'Samuel Kerridge may have only released one EP to date, the almost impossibly accomplished Auris Interna on Horizontal Ground, but youʼre about to hear a great deal more from him, beginning with his new Waiting For Love 12", which is about to be released through Regis' Downwards label. Bleak techno may have been attracting a great deal of press lately, but he's no bandwagon-jumper. Dripping with distortion, his is a slow and sensuous take on the genre that draws from classic 4/4 music, but also the tectonic drones of Sunn O))), the occult industrial electronics of The Haxan Cloak, and even Pink Floyd, all the while retaining a caustic and noisy edge. Kick drums are frequently squashed into the background, but that never seems to detract from the musicʼs forceful impact – sometimes it even strengthens it.'-- The Quietus
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Twisted Krister Monolog
'Twisted Krister is a young man living amidst a motley assortment of musical junk in the Töölö area of Helsinki. Krister´s was born in Sweden and has spent time living in some of the remotest locations in Finland. Twisted Krister also produces music under the names of Huuhkaja and Silmu. Krister´s conception of an ideal music: a combination of ‘excellently stupid’, simple rhythms and laconic observations on the current state of affairs of the world in which we live.'-- HIAP
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ContainerEject
'LP is the most explosive offering in the Container oeuvre, capturing the raw and unhinged essence of the live Container experience while exploring new compositional and sonic limits. The opening "Eject" wastes no time with it's instant feedback squeal backed by a barrage of pounding, distorted percussion. The concomitant storm of misfiring FX and derailed drum patterns set the stage the for aural pandemonium that this third LP delivers. Ten Schofield has enigmatically crafted his most insane Container album to be the most architecturally dextrous and club-minded, never compromising his fundamentals while evolving the project in an utterly satisfying fashion. LP is the most locked-in full length recording to date, long overdue and absolutely essential.'-- Spectrum Spools
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Kara-Lis CoverdaleIMGS /R
'Kara-Lis Coverdale explores and celebrates the multiple voices of the machine. Synthetic instruments sourced from VSTs, sound banks, and personal archives are arranged into holograms of dreams once inspired by physical origin. Through digital superimposition processes, instrument profiles mutate and take on new forms of articulation. Crystalline organs support and prop plastic voices and insistent water flutes dance with metallically chromatic snake-like motifs in vignettes of compositional schizophrenia. Absurd and delightful fusions seething through temporal portholes are unexpectedly swiped left, enveloped by dense clouds of lament and remembrance.'-- Sacred Phrases
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Odour TrailUntitled (A)
'Odour Trail – Feminist Performance Artist Challenges The Phallic Mythology Of Male Creativity, 1993. Comes in large envelope with pasted on artwork and includes insert. Limited to 80 copies.'-- collaged
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NoRevert
'For me, the centerpiece of No has always been the guitar-playing; if you've followed the UK hardcore scene of the past several years closely, you'll know Ralph's name from Sceptres, Satellites of Love, and DiE. He is a really fascinating guitar player--he has ways of putting together a riff that just boggle my mind--and No seems to be his band where he lets loose a torrent of ideas in frighteningly quick succession while the rest of the band does their best to keep up. And not that I haven't hyped up Ralph's guitar wizardry enough, but this record is really something else. You can tell that there are two guitar tracks on here that are slightly out of tune with one another (a distinctive technique he first deployed on the first DiE EP), and there's something about the dissonance of the two guitar tracks matched with the virtuosity of the actual playing that directly stimulates my musical pleasure center. At the end of the day No are quite cerebral--especially for hardcore--so I imagine that there will be plenty of people who just don't get this, but I think it is just staggeringly brilliant.'-- Sorry State Records
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CROSSS Interlocutor
'CROSSS is a Canadian trio who take inspiration from 70’s proto-drone, lo-fi indie, noise and metal. Their dirge, punishing volume, and composition intensity is offset by haunting and memorable vocal melodies. Prodigious drumming and ambitious improvised guitar create moments of complex prolonged trance and meditative phrase. The group began in Halifax, Canada in 2012 as a duo, but following several relocations and lineup shifts, is now based in Toronto, Canada and has grown into a trio.'-- Exploding in Sound
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Thomas BrinkmannOxidrot
'Thomas Brinkmann’s What You Hear (Is What You Hear) is the process of elimination at work par excellence. As an electronic music artist, Brinkmann is already familiar with and has utilized the many styles that fall between techno and ambient. Minimalism/isolationism is nothing new to him, his listeners, or people who regularly check out releases from the Editions Mego label. What Brinkmann has done on his collaboration with Oren Ambarchi and now on What You Hear (Is What You Hear) is he’s taken a deep, deep dive between minimalism and isolationism. The usual signposts are gone. Notions of climaxes and falling action are no longer there. Even the concept of a piece’s beginning and ending feel like they’re casually saying goodbye in the unfamiliar haze. What You Hear is sound without the shape. There are no artistic aspirations and no antsy need to communicate a theme. The Editions Mego website haughtily calls it “a strident development in the conceptual thinking of Brinkmann’s solid career[.]” But there’s probably something to that. What You Hear is purely machine-driven, underpinned by a feeling of detachment. If one of Thomas Brinkmann’s goals was to put no personal stamp on this recording, then bravo.'-- Pop Matters
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Chaos EchœsKyoraksuhugi
'This is a French group formed with the intention of expanding the thick, narrow walls of death metal by taking a improvisational, free form approach to the otherwise rigid structures of the genre. The album ‘Transient’ opens with bells chiming as dark, dissonant droning sounds builds up underneath creating a sort of ritualistic atmosphere, before turning into this slow churning marching beat, where a heavily processed, effect-laden voice is chanting, sounding like an otherworldly sermon. And though they tear through some brutal blast beats and evil riffing, I still think they owe more to free-jazz, avant garde composers like John Zorn (especially his ‘Moonchild’ series), and experimental rock and metal groups like The Melvins and Neurosis, than any of the current or former standard of death or black metal.'-- Metal Gallows
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Loke Rahbek & Puce MaryA Body Reimagined
'The Female Form is the second collaborative record by two of Copenhagen's most prolific experimental music personas. Frederikke Hoffmeier's Puce Mary project is known from several solo records on Posh Isolation and her collaborative releases with Sewer Election, as well as countless shows and performances all over the world. Loke Rahbek is probably best known as a co-founder of Posh Isolation and his projects under the aliases Croatian Amor, Damien Dubrovnik, Lust for Youth, Vår, and an impressive body of work manifested both as records, performances, and strange places in between. The Female Form picks up where The Closed Room left of, walking a path in between industrial, drone, and electroacoustic music. The room is still closed, the doors are shut, and windows covered, and whatever insight the listener is granted is the kind of insight you get peeping through the keyhole or the crack between the curtains. Every motion is obscured and the outcome uncertain.'-- Forced Exposure
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William BasinskiCascade (excerpt) live
'Basinski's work has always crept up on a listener only to emotionally erupt at their cue. But here, he’s stripped aside much of the theoretical sprawl, resulting in a work that feels both minor, even by his standards, and gargantuan, even by his standards. Here we’re adrift among crystalline shards of piano and minor chords, which work because they work, with little else to hold on to. We can grasp onto his craft for help — there’s no doubting that a simple loop wouldn’t yield the power his nearly-unnoticeable but methodic, thorough manipulation of timings do — but his craft is so subtle that it nearly eludes us. This stripping down leads to strange avenues — Does one feel cheated? Have we approached the terrain of the “merely cinematic”? What does it mean to feel this much when there’s no signifier to attach it to? (Those burning towers made it so easy for us, validated our misery, put a narrative to it.) Is a sadness for no one in particular merely a form of ego-love?'-- Jeffery Dunn Rovinelli
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GrasscutCurlews
'The band’s most live and organic album to date, Everyone Was A Bird sees Grasscut’s cinematic and immersive mix of electronica, post-rock and song augmented by live strings, drums, piano and guitar.The album is a search for identity and meaning, both through closely observing the places in which we live, and through digging around in the landscapes of our ancestors. Islander is set in the Jersey where Phillips grew up; The Field and Snowdown in the Sussex Downs, close to his current home in Brighton. The other songs are based in and around the Mawddach Estuary in mid Wales where his family comes from, and where he continues to spend much of his time. The album’s title meanwhile comes from the Siegfried Sassoon poem Everyone Sang. It concerns a moment of release in the World War One trenches, in which everyone bursts into song, and also reflects the album’s own journey from the landlocked Islander, via first single Curlews, to the soaring closer Red Kite.'-- Lo & Behold
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LocrianAn Index of Air
'Devastating drone metal unit Locrian have shared the first ear-rupturing preview from their forthcoming Infinite Dissolution LP. Though the song title "An Index of Air" may initially come across as safe, it won't take long to realize that the band are working with higher gale force winds. It's a slow build, though, as the song spends its first three-and-a-half minutes examining a cyclical thud of drums and what might be the angriest sounding tea kettle of all time. At its breaking point, it erupts into a swell of blast beats, ethereal guitar lines pushed deep into the red, and glass-shattering shrieking. The back end is played much more melodically, though the amp levels are still punishing.'-- Exclaim
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RSS B0YSYYXXTTRRYYMM
'The Polish duo RSS B0YS isn’t just an ordinary electronic group. It’s an artistic concept, an exercise in anonymity in the age of information overload, a total work of art. But the music of RSS B0YS is not as much an escape as it is an exit, the best part being the fact they don’t always follow the same structures. Sometimes the track will begin crumbling halfway in, at other times a track won’t even form a full rhythm or melody in favor of a series of glitches. It’s a bit similar to the approach of Actress’s Ghettoville, but while Cunningham’s effort was a downer urban panorama limited by concrete towers and cracked asphalt, HDDN is much more playful and experimental while retaining the same dark mood and lo-fi aesthetics. It’s an album that crafts a new sonic map out of hard electronic beats, distorted washes of synth, and occasional, vaguely exotic references dotting the landscape, never distracting from its own open-structured, loose ideas. RSS B0YS don’t really give a shit whether you like them or not; they just keep making music they enjoy — and if you happen to enjoy it too, all the better.'-- Tiny Mix Tapes
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Rectal Hygienicslive @ Permanent Records
'Sludgey noise-rock locals Rectal Hygienics welcome their brand-new Permanent Records release tomorrow night with two in-town shows, the first of which is an all-ages, free in-store at Permanent. The new record, Ultimate Purity, showcases the band's twisted, heavy-handed Brainbombs worship, and today's 12 O'Clock Track is the first public glimpse at the damaged LP, "Grandeur." Employing the "play one riff over and over until it hurts" formula, the band smashes out the devastating, one-part song, its crushing tones and bad vibes steamrolling everything in its path. On top of it all is lead vocalist Matt Ibarra, spitting mean, distorted depravity. No dynamics, no melody, no pop sensibility—this is plain and simple old-fashioned sonic punishment that can destroy moods and eardrums with the best of the noise-rock greats. Rectal Hygienics are one of the gnarliest, most confrontational bands in Chicago right now, so this release event isn't one to miss.'-- The Bleader
*
p.s. Hey. ** Saturday ** Nicola, Hi. No problem. ** Dennis Cooper, Morning. ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, I'm not sorry, ha ha. Sorry. What is that 'perfect' gif from? ** Tosh Berman, Thank you very much, Tosh! ** Misanthrope, Lyon was good. Kiddiepunk's work was great, no surprise. It was boiling hot in Lyon, and then it would literally pound down the best rain plus thunder and lightning ever. ** Thomas Moronic, Thank you very, very much, T! It means a lot! I would say congrats on almost finishing your novel, but I looked ahead and saw that you did finish the next day, so even huger congrats on that from the near-past! ** White tiger, Thanks a huge bunch, Math! You doing great? ** MANCY, Thank you, Stephen! I'm really psyched for your Kiddiepunk siamese twin zines! ** James, Quite a fantasy you have there. Thank you for the very kind words about my documentary. I was up all night until 6 am this morning finishing our film, so I would say this week has been even over-productive so far. ** Steevee, I don't know. Not on purpose anyway. ** Keaton, Hi. Wow, a lot of stink in that dialogue. Wind's good. Thank you! ** Alistair McCartney, Hi, A! Yeah, real excited about the Australia trip. We were just trying to start figuring out when we can go over the weekend. Thank you about my wind thing. No, the gif work is very separate from the text novel, but I'm just as serious about the gif work as I am about my text work these days. The Honore opera is very good! Very strange and tight and, yeah, Michael's visuals are amazing, and of course Christophe's direction is fascinating. A true winner, I think! Me too, re: LA. I'm pretty sure so. Take care! ** Monday ** Nicola, Howdy. ** Scunnard, Hi, J. Away was really good. It was too hot, only. You're going to drive? In a car? That should be really fun, if so. I've only done that betwixt thing by train, which, is you, know nice too. ** David Ehrenstein, Happy Tuesday morning. ** Cal Graves, Hi, Cal. Trip was very nice, fun, artistically rewarding, etc. By train. It's only two hours away by train. It's practically Paris's neighbor. Yay about your poetry rolling. Being a post is the best, in and of itself, and, also, I think being a poet is, like, an ideal stepping stone if you ever want to write novels or make films or, I don't know, make gif fiction or whatever. It's a much better place to be and also to start as an artist in general than centering your talent at the outset in a medium that has heavy conventions attached to it. I was in Lyon to see the premiere of an opera directed by the French film director Christophe Honore, who's also one of the producers of Zac's and my film, with video projections by Kiddiepunk aka filmmaker/ artist/ publisher/ etc. Michael Salerno, who was the head cameraman and Director of Photography for our film. Thanks about my gif work, man! Re-calibrating-ly, Dennis ** Thomas Moronic, And, now, at the right time, mega-congrats on finishing your novel! What now with it, man? Very exciting! Very awesome! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. That is very good news about Art101! Fingers crossed re: the seeming smooth-ish final sailing! And the zine project sounds very intriguing and fun! ** Steeevee, Interesting thing to make a documentary about. Interesting to think about how it will be handled. How did you feel about it? I was just looking at snaps of Grace Jones's topless perf. at the Parklife Festival in London. ** Armando, Hi, man. I'm good, but kind of out of it since I was up working all night, and I'm usually an early to bed/early riser kind of guy. Lyon was good and fun. I'm still wary of that new Larry Clark, but I will see it at some point for sure. Okay, yeah, I will keep you in mind should any me-related gig arise. Hugs, love back to you! ** Chris Cochrane, Hey, Chris! How very awesome to see you! Three foot surgeries?! Holy shit, man. Did that problem arise recently? You seemed pretty fleet the last time I saw you. I hope your recovery from that goes incredibly well. Excellent, excellent about the new music projects! Even the folky and sweet ones, ha ha! Yeah, it would be sweetness, key, and even necessary to get to see you sooner than later. I guess in New York? Buckets upon buckets of love right back to you! ** Keaton, Who's Mary Ellen Trainor? I'll go look. Fishing, interesting. Train from Lyon was pretty easy and uneventful. Waking up on a train entering a London wherein everyone is friendly to each other does sound like theater. Even like experimental theater. ** Right. I made a gig. Those of you who are interested in the gigs, please enjoy. The rest of you do whatever it is you do on the gig days. See you tomorrow.