Coming Down In Sacred Bones' Church

I picked up This World Is Not Enough, the "solo" album from Iceage's Elias Bender Rønnenfelt under the moniker Marching Church, last month. It is a strange brooding beast - with slight echoes of Rønnenfelt's "day" band, but with far more contemplative, cantankerous and quietly chaotic measures floating through its veins. Sacred Bones has released something that is even further out in the fringes in the form of Coming Down: Sessions in April 12 (out through Sacred Bones), a haunting improv lurch from eye-scratching purification and soul fires to a coalescing caterwaul of cathartic free jazz emulsions (which featured members of Lower and Puce Mary among others). The slow drag-the-lake in harrowing monochrome flaying of the emotional mind. I absolutely love this. News that they are recording a new album is fantastic news. Dive into these immensely murky waters now - they play at London's Birthdays on Monday.

Blankets Of The Yung

Danish punks Yung are playing the Stag’s Head in London in a few hours – you should make your way down there (if you aren’t off to the Twerps show down in Brixton, that is…). They are following up ‘Nobody Cares’ with new single ‘Blanket’ (which is going to be on a 7” release through Tough Love Records, although it won’t be out until the tail end of July – pre-order it here to get a white vinyl version, there are only 100 available). They are young, having formed as teenagers and now only climbing into their twenties – which of course is perfect blasting grounds for mauled aggression and flayed tensions. However ‘Blanket’ also underlies the strength of this four-piece, as the melodies and songwriting are tempered and measured, the crystalline production perfectly molded to contain the fire until the glass is broken and all hell can break loose.

Pretty Hurts Make Graves

I'm not sure if the above is a deliberate play on word from this German band on Seattle band Pretty Girls Make Graves, but it's made my pun a lot easier... The squalling punk howl that Pretty Hurts carves out is on full display on their EP Make Graves (which came out in October 2014), six songs of writhing, uncomfortable tension that nonetheless is immensely cathartic, the release a cleanse for artist and audience alike. There are tracks like 'Everybody' that resides in a mid tempo chug with the occasional spike of release scattered throughout, but most tracks here are continually moving, an elastic tension that no amount of scratching can fully sate. Such coiled aggression is what underpins the best of post punk rock stylizations, and Make Graves is a testament to a band that are poised to spring, attack, and free us all.

Buy Make Graves here - it is bloody great.

The Age Old Perception Has Been Coined Once More

I have been meaning to do the fourth instalment of my drone explorations for months now, but to no avail. The thing is it takes so much time and effort to do those posts – hence why there haven’t been that many Hits From The Box segments either. I do love Everybody’s Droning On The Weekend though, so instead I thought I might unearth a few that I have been digging of late, just to show you drone acolytes that I still like delving into the greyzone.


Today I want to mention Perceptions, the debut release from Danes Simon Formann & Kristian Emdal (from Lower), here known as Age Coin. My favourite part about this release is that the white noise that is rolling back and forth in the first half of ‘Pt 1’ is undercut with a beat that becomes trancelike in itself – a deliberate hook that inexorably draws you closer to the abyss. ‘Pt 2’ winds this escalator grind to hell even further towards oblivion, but there is an undercurrent of a dancefloor underworld here – it’s as if Formann & Emdal surreptitiously want the listener to shuffle in time, a zombie flash mob of narcoleptic movement, the slow undulation of flesh controlled. It’s this sense of melody underneath the white noise and innocuous beats that is both the light and dark of Perceptions – at one moment an exultant exercise in zonal euphoria, at the next the exit music as the last beat pulses from your bloodstream.

You should get Perceptions from Alterstock here.

Rubbing Salt Into Your Sacred Institute

Institute are outta Austin, Texas. You'd be excused for double-taking at that, seeing as their geographical brethren would be more akin to the Scandinavian nihilist post-punk set. Lower, Iceage, Holograms - they all know how to remain seductively melodic even as they are stripping layers off the inner walls of your skull. They include members of bands such as Wiccans and Glue (who you will hear more of next week), and from the tense, tetanus-infused squalls of their initial demos to the more fleshed out sound of new EP Salt (out on Sacred Bones), it's clear that Institute isn't part of the system.

Pre-order Salt here.

Lowered Holograms = Higher Expectations

Lower

I'm spending my day writing for other publications - and bizarrely it's all on the heavier side - reviews for local punks Fat and resident scuzzbuckets The Melvins, as well as an interview with OM/Sleep's Al Cisneros (and another with OM/Grails drummer Emil Amos in the works). Yet the music I'm looking forward to listening to all afternoon is of a more Scandinavian bent, as two of the greater exports from Copenhagen gear up for new releases.

Holograms

I've spoken of both Holograms and Lower of recent times (have a read about and listen to their "older" stuff here and here respectively). Combined with the likes of Iceage and Sexdrome, the underground (well, not so underground anymore) music scene there is teeming with parasitic, grimy post-punk nihilism that rattles the teeth and widens the eyes, shortens the breath and quickens the heart. It's exciting times, heightened further with the imminent releases of Lower's debut as-yet-untitled LP through Escho, and Forever, Hologram's longplayer effort (out through Captured Tracks in September). And if this isn't enough, they have both dropped teaser tracks. And lo and behold, they are fucking stellar, particularly Lower's brutal sledgehammer that is 'Another Life'.

Spraying Paints Of Brutality

When Iceage's New Brigade hit in 2011, the face of post-punk was brutally gutter-stomped. For too long bands were labelling themselves post-punk due to the fact that they had sharp, angular guitar tones, regardless of whether they played disco synth or shiny happy themes, all the while glossing the fuck out of it all and force-feeding it to the masses. One of post-punk's most enduring factors is that it is more proficient musically, more complex, yet still upholding elements of the punk idiom. New Brigade was gritty, nihilistic, hungry, rabid, disaffected, infected - and whilst you wouldn't claim to have never heard this style of music played before, it was the confidence and arrogance that such noise was flung in the faces of all and sundry that made them an altogether exciting prospect.

Listening to Austin trio Spray Paint's eponymous LP (out through S-S Records), it's the first time I have felt that same rush outside of Copenhagen for quite some time (Holograms and Lower also kill). Two guitars and drums, noxious maelstrom. This is Wire and Gang of Four on nitrous oxide. This is Arab On Radar speeding through a night of rack and ruin. This is Saccharine Trust eating glass and laughing themselves to sleep. This is Rank/Xerox in the Twilight Zone. This is Spray Paint. And its goddamn killer.

You can and most definitely should get Spray Paint here.

Spray Paint - Jimi's Apartment
Spray Paint - Lap Swimming

Getting Lower In Copenhagen

Copenhagen is a crazy awesome hotspot right now, what with the emergence of Iceage, War and Holograms. Here is another to add to that excellent bill. More discordant wailing post-punk aggression, this time from Lower, whose short jagged 7" EP Walk On Heads is electric. Its already sold out through Escho, yet they are repressing it very soon. Get an order in, and get in on the ground floor. This is amazing stuff.