psychedelia
Russ Coffey
“Tonight there’s no one else in the world – just us together,” announced Josh Homme halfway through the night. And it felt so. But it didn't seem like we were in the Roundhouse. More like we were sitting amid the heat haze of California’s Palm Desert, on a two-hour psychedelic trip, and the Queens of the Stone Age front man was our personal shaman. Sometimes it was euphoric, and other times it was dizzying. And when the volume was cranked really high it was like the top of the Roundhouse might blow off.This world tour is supporting the reissue of the band’s eponymous debut recording. As such Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Dan Kelly is rapidly becoming a big noise Down Under. His uncle, Paul Kelly, is a star of long standing in Australia, but Kelly junior's profile is also now rising fast. Judging from his fifth album, the only thing I've heard by him, such attention is well deserved. In truth, it's his second solo album as he usually works with a group called the Alpha Males. Details aside, though, he's a joy to listen to because he combines the whacked-out madcap lyricism of Julian Cope with a musical sensibility that falls between the Beach Boys and Seventies glam dons The Sweet. In other words, his way with Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It always amazes me that so many commentators dismiss drug experiences as somehow puerile, irrelevant, or even immature. Of course they can be all three but they're also integrally wrapped up in being human, in one's body, alive, so they can also be very much else.Gaspar Noé's film gets this, drawing a direct line, as Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and shamen for millennia before them did, between psychedelic drugs and the process of dying. Enter the Void undoubtedly drags, becoming increasingly turgid during the last quarter of its two hours and 41 minutes, but it aims so much higher than Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The self-titled debut album by London-based three-piece Rayographs is one of those surprises you hope for - a virtually unknown band referencing little that’s going on right now and capturing it in long-playing form with panache and a compelling vision. On this evidence, Rayographs are the spooked-out, somewhat cross third-generation offspring of early ballroom-era Jefferson Airplane.Opening cut “In Her Light” lays it out. The atmosphere is psychedelic, the mood vexed, the rhythm taught, the whole ragged. Throbbing out from under an oil-wheel light show, Rayographs would have inspired plenty Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For 30 years African Head Charge have been ploughing their unique sonic furrow, wandering hazy-dazed around the outer borders of experimental dub and super-mellow sounds. When they first appeared in 1981 on Adrian Sherwood's groundbreaking On-U Sound label there was no equivalent band to compare them to, except some of Brian Eno's global magpie studio excursions, notably My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with David Byrne which provided them with a sonic template.However, led by percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, who's based in Ghana and London these days, they found a wider, if still niche, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Without intending to, Fleet Foxes set a benchmark with their debut album in 2008. One that resonated. So much so that the release of their second album, Helplessness Blues, is accompanied by sell-out shows at top-drawer venues. The love of their sensitively delivered, beautifully crafted and emotive folk rock is clear. But anyone expecting a rerun of the debut on Helplessness Blues is in for a surprise. What’s known and loved is here. There’re also more than a few left turns.Fleet Foxes will keep the fans they have, but the broadened musical palette and new idiosyncrasies exhibited on Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sometimes it seems as though every bit of music from the past has been disinterred, no matter how obscure or outré it is. But, of course, surprises keep on coming and the Psychedelic Pernambuco compilation is a reminder that great stuff still lurks out there. Collecting material recorded for the Brazilian independent Rozeblit label, Psychedelic Pernambuco roams through weird folk, post-Tropicália strangeness, fractured instrumentals and more.Brighton’s Mr Bongo label issues Psychedelic Pernambuco next month. The specialist Latin imprint seems to be on a roll right now as last month they Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's something about this album that feels as if it's already existed for a long time. Full of post-apocalyptic images of smoke, dust, decay and weakness, and themes of struggling individuals and implacable political forces, it thematically fits with the works of a long line of acts who positioned themselves against the fear of nuclear armageddon and the seemingly immovable Conservative government in the 1980s. Its mix of Caribbean-influenced soundsystem culture and dub poetry with an edgy alternative experimentalism, too, harks back to the post-punk genre collision of Dennis Bovell, On-U Read more ...
joe.muggs
The music of Hype Williams is the definition of an acquired taste. It sounds ramshackle, thrown together, deliberately awkward – either deeply contrarian or the work of very, very messed-up people just playing around with archaic home recording equipment. But immersion in it reveals all kinds of layers of strangeness, and particularly a rich and emotionally resonant sense of melody that weaves through all the clashing rhythms and crackly recordings. Even the arrangements, it becomes apparent, are not random, but show real complexity – although what is deliberate and what not is hard to pick Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Drummers that sing lead are rare. Ones that sing while pounding away like Keith Moon are even rarer. Denmark’s Treefight for Sunlight are a talented lot, a four-piece who all sing, with three taking the lead. These are the vocals that drive the band and their melodies. Chuck in a wodge of psychedelic nous and you have an art-pop combo that can raise smiles and even the odd scream in hyper-cool Shoreditch. There’s little back story. From Copenhagen, Treefight for Sunlight formed in 2007. Their first single "Facing the Sun" was issued last May by Tambourhinoceros, the label run by a couple Read more ...
joe.muggs
Often at gigs by bands of a certain vintage, the fans can look like they're on a special awayday: like they've dug their T-shirts out of the back of the drawer and geared themselves up for one last canter round the paddock. Not so for Killing Joke. At the Royal Festival Hall last night, a very large section of the crowd had the look of still actively living very rock'n'roll lives, and of having done so for at least the last 30 years. “How many times have you seen them?” asked a shaven-headed gent in the seat next to me. “This'll be my 46th Joke gig,” he continued with obvious pride. This is Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Sónar festival occupies a very special place in the New Music calendar – and is this year expanding outwards temporally and geographically, with new franchises in Tokyo and A Coruña, Galicia. Now into its 17th year, the parent festival in Barcelona serves as a vital meeting point for those of all stripes who refuse to acknowledge the polarisation of avant-garde and populism, or of club culture and the mainstream music industry. With 10 or more main stages and untold off-piste club events around the city, it would be impossible to condense even a single day and night of Sónar Barcelona Read more ...