electronica
Thomas H. Green
British singer-songwriter Nick Mulvey’s new album, Wake Up Now, is one of the year’s finest. However, there’s a moment on the single “Myela”, a heartfelt Afro-Latin stomper protesting the plight of refugees, which can grate. The song suddenly stops and female backing singers begin a nursery rhyme chant of “I am your neighbour, you are my neighbour”. On record it seems trite; however, in concert at this eye-pleasing, airy Bexhill-on-Sea venue, it’s transformative. Mulvey and his five-piece band use the sequence as a launch pad for a cosmic jam, before settling into a brief snippet of Gary Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
80 Aching Orphans ought to be hard work. A four-CD, 80-track, 274-minute overview chronicling 45 years of one of pop’s most wilful bands should be a challenging listen. The Residents have never made records which are straightforward or were meant to be, and have never made records conforming to prevailing trends. Sometimes, they’ve chimed with the ethos of passing zeitgeists like punk but, when that’s happened, it’s been about the times themselves rather than anything intrinsic to The Residents.However, with its flow and internal harmoniousness the casebound box set 80 Aching Orphans Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Marilyn Manson, the man and the band, have maintained impressive global success for over two decades. Their albums – this is the band’s 10th - continue to shift by the bucket-load, and they can still sell out a worldwide stadium tour. Partly, their appeal is tribal. In the age of the beige hoodie and jeans, they don’t kowtow but continue to offer a studded, debauched black-splatter of Hollywoodised punk-goth kitsch. In recent years they’ve also undergone something of a musical renaissance. This continues on Heaven Upside Down.As with 2015’s The Pale Emperor, film composer Tyler Bates is co- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
September and October see a deluge of new releases. Everybody and their aunt puts out an album as autumn hits, so theartsdesk on Vinyl appears this month (and next) in a slightly expanded edition. As ever, the fare on offer is as diverse as possible, from black metal to Afro-funk via film and TV soundtracks. All musical life is here, ripe and waiting.VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Television Personalities And Don’t The Kids Just Love It + Mummy You’re Not Watching Me + They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles + The Painted Word (Fire)Usually theartsdesk on Vinyl has a rule that the VINYL OF THE Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Luciferian Towers, the third album since Canadian oddballs Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s 2011 reunion, is an instrumental psychedelic masterpiece that reflects our times without resorting to political bluster. Indeed, with two of its four tracks almost touching a quarter of an hour long, it’s also an album to sink into and absorb rather than a likely source of any radio hits.Godspeed You! Black Emperor are true sonic explorers, albeit with relatively traditional instruments, and in Luciferian Towers they take jazz, classical and electronica influences and wrap them in a post-rock blanket Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Gary Numan famously has a devoted fanbase. For this album he had a live video feed that allowed them, for a small fee, to watch him in the studio, working on it from conception to completion. Unlike any of his peers from the post-punk years, he draws new young fans to his contemporary releases. His 21st century career has seen him growing more and more gothic, heading far into industrial-electronic Nine Inch Nails territory, albeit with his own twist. He is many leagues away from the pristine synth-pop that made his name circa 1979-81.Numan’s last few albums have grown progressively more and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It’s telling that, on their 2014 debut LP, Ballad of the Ice, Dori Sadovnik and Niv Arzi covered Bauhaus’ epic proto-gothic ode “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”. The 1979 single, with its incessant shuffle, dubbed-out tape delay and post-punk guitars, straddled the worlds of rock and dance with perfect balance and fine judgment. It has, quite clearly, been an influence on Tel Aviv’s Red Axes, who, with their second full-length offering, The Beach Goths, have delivered a collection that shares a similar sense of poise and purpose. After a slew of single releases on labels including their own Garzen Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The brass band/electronica interface is not a seam which musicians have previously mined regularly. Or, for that matter, at all. Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia is probably – nothing else springs to mind – the only album teaming pulsing analogue synths with trombones, trumpets and tubas. Add in its creator Hannah Peel’s ploy of adopting the alter-ego Mary Casio, an elderly, small-town, north of England stargazer who travels to Cassiopeia, and it’s clear this is a high-concept album.It could, so to speak, be all concept and no trousers but Peel has form in this area. She’s part of the meta- Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Across their 17-year career, Liars have become renowned for both their genre-jumping and for making good music wherever their stylistic tent is pitched. With founding member Aaron Hemphill leaving the Los Angeles band on amicable terms earlier this year, sole Liar Angus Andrew was left with the task of maintaining their momentum, and with TFCF, he’s made a uniquely strange album that encompasses this stripped-down band in both its music and its production.Making almost unprecedented use of the acoustic guitar throughout, TFCF feels rawer and more intimate than their previous album, the dance- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Some Bizzare Album was released in January 1981. Compiled by DJ Stevo, it featured twelve unsigned acts he felt represented a fresh way of approaching pop – one enabled by the availability of synthesisers and rhythm machines. Stevo was playing the new music at the nights he hosted, putting the bands on and compiling the electronic chart for the weekly music paper Sounds. After being inundated with demo tapes, he chose the ones he liked best and issued the album.From today’s perspective, the Some Bizzare Album plays out as a prescient snapshot of what would enter the mainstream. The Fast Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
True to their name, Finland’s Man Duo are male and there are two of them. The better-known half is former Helsinki tram driver Jaakko Eino Kalevi. Born Jaakko Savolainen – the Kalevi nods to his home country’s epic tale, The Kalevala – his long solo discography stretches back to 2001. That year, he made a collaborative single with Sami Toroi, who traded as Long-Sam. Following a 2012 album credited to Jaakko Eino Kalevi & Long-Sam they’re back, but as Man Duo.Orbit isn’t going to upset those familiar with Kalevi’s most recent, internationally issued, releases. On these, he’s taken a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last year, the arrival of Close to the Noise Floor compelled theartsdesk’s Reissue CDs Weekly to conclude that it was “hugely important and utterly delightful”. A four-CD set, it was a thrilling, first-time overview of the UK’s early indie-synth mavericks from Blancmange to Throbbing Gristle and Muslimgauze to Sea of Wires. Now, it has spawned a follow-up.Noise Reduction System: Formative European Electronica 1974-1984 is another four-CD set. As well designed and well presented in its hardback binding as Close to the Noise Floor, it includes a crisply laid-out 52-page book with an Read more ...