Larsen w/ Little Annie w/ Coil

I love the way Little Annie says the word cigarette; she makes it an onamatopoeic word. This is a little bit like a Rollins rant, a slight detourn of Steven Jesse Bernstein. A No No Woman in the sub-basement of hell.

It's not as good as this one of course:



...but you could put it in the same box.

Full review of the Larsen album will appear at Freqzine fairly soon.

Barbara Panther

sourced of sorts from the bare bones of Fredgeogblog, which will apparently turn into a horticulture/music blog: what is the best music for mulching?

BP is clearly syntactically/visually related to Bjork , a slicing and dicing of some of her best popbits, with maybe a smile of Lykke Li about the edges...

Lyrics seem Bjorkish too... oddly-hinged flights of fancy and a fascination with tropes/archetypes

She dances better , though.

100 all time children's favourites

You know, the one with the proto Moon Wiring Club sleeve...


The Blind Mice are frightening. Like they've been drawn by Francis Bacon, like they've been speared in the eye sockets, or had methyl-blue dropped into them as part of some awful Mengele experiment...

Moonlicking, Ekoplekzing

Image stolen from the mad mentals of R.K.Sloane

In the middle of a mini-renaissance of new music listening at the moment, mostly a result of moonlicking as a reviewer at Freq, the evergood fulcrum loined from Richard Fontenoy - a guy it turns out is good friends with some old Yeovil buddies and who I've also probably met way back in the times when I'd hump up the road to that London to watch The Revolting Cocks or whoever... small small world - ironically, I'd sent a chance email because I figured my own little Twitter/Blog circuit had become a little self reverential and I fancied dipping into another circle, only to find there are several tendrils coming this way and that way, like some terrible cross-haired Nyarlotho-step beat beast...

Anyway, my first 2 contributions are up at the Freq site now:

1) a doe-eyed Kraut's Corpuscle take on the new Mist album (c'mon... it's the guy from Emeralds, you know...)

and

2) a gulping shudder at the electronic pastoralism and arcane (device) buzz of John Chantler's The Luminous Ground

I've just got a bunch of other goodies through the post to review as well, including what is shaping up to be a Hawkwind-tastic classic by a Pikacyu from Afrirampo and Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers...



Finally, a slightly smeared lump of white vinyl goodness in the form of Ekoplekz's Live At Dubloaded album came and I've been listening to it while typing... sounds more restrained than other stuff I've got from Nick, not a million miles off the gentlest Throbbing Gristle stuff... the backside of In The Shadow Of The Sun...

...some great textures though, and some odd squeaks and whistles, some bent shapes in there, Nikolai, some way bent shapes...

I'm one side in, so far...probably should accumulate more thoughts before really committing to the page but... since, my first Ekoplekz review was real-time blagging/free-associating...

...these gulps and electronic groans seem like Nick's consciously trying to play himself out of a psychic corner; not give in to the pulse that I'll bet anything he can feel himself resisting... he's an old rave guy at heart and you can feel him holding back on the beats, conscious that he's always just a light teckstep to the left from balls-to-the-wall techno and wants to rein those tendencies the fuck in...

I'm guessing wildly here, it's just an impression... maybe this is partly a consequence of playing somewhere so bass and beaty, big and bouncy as Dubloaded? Maybe there's a need to counterpoint, or else just a desire to move away from the early CDrs and tapes (which Cabbed it up with all those neat washes and wah-wahed drum patterns and organ tinkles)...

...whatever the wresting and hand-wringing Ekoplekz has been up to (maybe none at all, maybe he's in the zone, is oblivious to even the rush of his own blood), he's pushing his machines in interesting directions... not resting on laurels, hardly resting at all... he's poured an awful lot out into the records he's released so far... the well must be getting dry... and it's interesting that, so far, ever release has been distinct, despite the relative sparseness of his raw materials...

where's he gonna go next?

is he gonna give in?

Contact

Dismissed Wooden Shjips before (bit harsh perhaps, just not really noticed them before), but this cover of Gainsbourg/Bardot's Contact (surely everyone's favourite 'alien girl gets injured in space and needs to strip for a mercury transfusion' song) has a loping, electronica feel, despite it mostly being gentle chugggs and spacey guitars.

The sounds could be switched - synth buzzes for the guitars - and you'd get something along the lines of Ekoplekz... especially the stuff he churns over live, the longforms rather than the snappy Robert Rentals. You're not believing me, I can tell. I'll stop. Just listen.

Wooden Shjips keep things very simple, letting the thin pulse of the original tickover while they spread psych smears to thicken it...



The original, with a video of sorts that takes the space girl theme and runs with it, as you'd expect. Jules Verne imagined this, but never told anyone.

Underground Railroad & Ghost Rider

my inbox is taking on the hue of an abandoned betting office, a stockbroking floor after dark...but I'm picking my way slowly, laboriously through all the digital promos that have backed up and just thought I'd just stuff a few bands down some throats...

These guys are moving towards something, I think. Not there yet, still in SonicYouthAwe maybe but I can see something happening... there's something, I dunno, around the eyes, that makes me think this band will keep getting better... Like I say, it's not there yet but...

Anyway, I'm on a temporary hiatus from abstract electroni-canings and dwelling instead on guitar rocks and cover versions of old Suicide songs (Fave so far: Gavin Friday and Dave Ball's turn on Ghost Rider, followed by everyone else's take on Ghost Rider; Ghost Rider seems to be one of those tracks that no one can fuck up)

Still, these guys:



I like the video, too. And I like the fact that it's relatively pure sounding, no greasy retro wipes (or different greasy retro wipes), no queasiness, no hipstamatic sound...

Same here... like a French take on the Sister era



I dunno... can't quite put my finger on it... Not even trying to, to be honest.