Showing posts with label The Fall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Fall. Show all posts

Friday, 27 November 2015

To Infinity And Beyond...Hobart


I have written about some of the weird and wonderful noises echoing out of the Apple Isle that is Tasmania, dangling down across the Tasman from the Australian mainland, festering in their own fermenting juices, insular and exciting. One of the main bullhorns spouting the wonders of this places is Wrong Place Right Time Records, and a little while back they released a wrap-up of 2015 in Hobart called Neighbourhood of Infinity. It’s suitably named after a Fall track, and chronicles every facet of warped wonder to emanate from the place. A few you might recognise from these hallowed halls, such as the food-obsessed All The Weathers (the deliciously bent ‘Beans’), Heart Beach (the warmly forlorn buzz of ‘Tegan’), Native Cats (the lyrical staccato/soapbox scree ‘Scratch Act’), Bi-Hour (the downward broken-industrial spiral schooled by an insane headmaster that is ‘Truism’) and Treehouse (jangling and stumbling through the early dawn, a jocular jig and inebriated slip to ‘Hammer At The Door’). But the delights are just as gripping from other quarters – the slow insidious crawl and shadowed incremental cacophony of Wasted Idol’s ‘Seventeen’; the bubbling stargazing spectrum hum of Filthy Little Star’s ‘Keep On Whistling’ (reminding me somewhat of the pastoral experimentation of Soda Eaves and the aforementioned Native Cats in part); the ground-out post-punk bawl and plaintive moths-in-the-wallet despair of Naked’s ‘Beer’; the sneered punk squall of Powernap’s ‘Burn This City’. It’s all wild and weird and necessary. Grab it here.


Saturday, 19 September 2015

Oughta Know The Sun's Coming Down


Montreal's Ought (who also feature an Australian) brought out their second LP, Sun Coming Down, yesterday. I haven't heard it yet, although I have heard good things. In fact, I only have heard one song of theirs - this, the almost title track 'Sun's Coming Down'. The atonal modulated squall of Viet Cong or Women (admittedly they are also Canadian references, and the cacophony on display and off-kilter art guitar pop here is more akin to Sonic Youth, Talking Heads or Television, but I love the sinuous nature of those bands, and this, so there) with a Mark E Smith vocal delivery, over the top of a garish video that plays like Gregory Crewdson meets Alyssa Monks through the glossed lens of Battles' neon foodcentric artworks. It has blown my mind - I'm racing into town to pick this up NOW.


NB - I just found the whole album stream, so here it is for YOU! Grab Sun Coming Down (out through the excellent Constellation Records) here. Ought are playing the Mutations festival in Brighton 28-29 November, alongside Lightning Bolt, Om, Metz, Chelsea Wolfe, Vision Fortune, Jane Weaver and many more.

Thursday, 6 January 2011

Heil Marley! Sieg Heil Mark E Smith!


The first few seconds of opening track 'Brief Terror' was all it took for me to be permanently hooked on Teenage Panzerkorps (or DER TPK if you're so inclined to acronyise...) Formerly calling Siltbreeze their home, the German act via Los Angeles and San Francisco have unleashed, in new LP German Reggae (on Holidays Records), the kind of post punk that The Fall are infamous for, yet with more abrasive squalls of guitar white noise, trampling and fumbling paranoiac drums, insistent bass rumblings, and with Bunker Wolf's German at times laconic/at times ranting vocals over the top. It insists that you listen to it, again and again. Its lo fi production perfectly complements the claustrophobic feel of each angular hook. I thought January was going to be a cracker month for a few reasons, I just wasnt expecting it to start off with such an agitated bang. This is a great release, and the more of you that buy into this the better the world will be...I think.

Keep tabs on Holidays Records for release dates for German Reggae.

Now, everyone, pass the duchie on the left hand side, and do the Goosestep!

Monday, 6 December 2010

Best Bits of 2010...by Tunabunny


So, we are a bit slow off the mark here, but it is December! Exciting times for the most part, due of course to the upcoming festive season, the parties, the presents, the drunken mishaps - but also because it means its the impending end of 2010. This is always interesting in music circles as everyone huddles over a drum fire (or a kiddie pool filled with ice and beer if you are south of the Equator) and discuss your favourites of the year. We love lists - they are endless sources of comment, debate, outright outrage, and sometimes a gift of their own (as in 'Shit, how did I ever miss that? Ive gotta go chase that up stat!')

So not only are we going to be giving a bevy of debatable lists of our own (best songs/live shows/albums/EPs/new bands etc), we thought we'd rope in some outside influences to put their two cents/pence/pesos in. So this month, be prepared to hear from diverse corners, just to allow you to get into the mindspace of some of the people we think really made our 2010.

First up is one of my favourite 'new bands', Athens Georgia messups Tunabunny! Their debut LP Tunabunny was a nice mashup of lo-fi dirtiness and Ponytail-esque spazzouts - a worthy release indeed - so I thought Id ask them what they liked most about the year that has seen them rise up like a burning pile of rubbish shot out of a cannon...

Tunabunny’s Top Ten of TwoThousandTen: a Tribute To Terrificness


1. The Fall – Your Future Our Clutter

2. Brigette got a 25-cent raise at the video store where she works

3. Toy Story 3

4. David Mitchell – The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

5. David Shields – Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Actually, pretty much anyone named David. Did David Lee Roth write a book this year?)

6. Reading Katy Perry’s wikipedia entry out loud

7. Brian Eno – Small Craft On A Milk Sea

8. American Profile – In the early part of the 20th century Alexis d’Toqueville wrote, ‘In order to understand America, you have to undestand baseball.’ In the early 21st century, you have to understand American Profile, a weekly insert in most newspapers—a clusterfuck of feel-good americana, celebrity profiles, and shameless advertising.

9. Kristen Hersh – Rat Girl: A Memoir

10. Vampire Weekend – Contra


Interesting guff indeed! From today onwards, look forward to a new list as we close down 2010, and also celebrate the end of the 1st year of everything that is Sonic Masala...

Tunabunny - Gasmasks