Motorik Rehumanises Maserati

I was on my way to see Maserati last week until an emergency pulled me away - and another great gig was missed. I have been listening to Rehumanizer (out now through Temporary Residence on amazing Exploding Sun vinyl now - see below and buy here) incessantly over the past month. I have been becoming more and more obsessed with electronic music that either makes method out of nihilistic noisy madness, or creates a motorik mantra fitting of a retro-futurist dystopia. Rehumanizer is definitely of the latter. Insistent on molding classic rock riffs into a cyclical barrel roll, blown up to resemble cyber colossi, substance and style intrinsically interwoven. The 21st century hard rock amalgam of Trans Am and Goblin (with 'Living Cell' sounding almost 'Great Southern Land' era Icehouse?!), Rehumanizer is both a throwback and a pitch forward, synthetically confronting yet organically immersive.

Leafing Through The Daylight Library

There is an easy flowing metaphysical ambiance that permeates Daylight Versions, the new album from London dreamscapers The Leaf Library. The album is bookended by two long shoegaze excursions – the elastic, fuzz-fuelled languor of the excellent  ‘Asleep Between Stations’ and the cathartic yet contained maelstrom of ‘Evening Gathers’ – but in between are concise reimaginings of magisterial grace ('Slow Spring') and hushed, filmic ululations a la the most contemplative of Yo La Tengo's breathy moments ('Acre'). My favourite track is 'Pushing/Swimming', embodying the naturalistic percolating eloquence of Stereolab, the tapping, burbling permutations of stuttering instrumentation and a calmness aided and abetted by the hushed, sonorous vocals. It seems strange to call this Daylight Versions, as the sounds on offer occupy the gloaming, a time that is neither light or dark, nor is in between - it merely is. Patience is rewarded tenfold here. Grab the LP on white vinyl from Where It's At Is Where You Are Records (wiaiwya) here - hopefully we will see them on a show soon.

Natural Hive

The next four posts are for bands who I sadly missed their shows here in London in the past few weeks due to various powers that be. One of the launchships for excellent Bristol label Howling Owl Records, The Naturals have just released a great debut album in Hive. The Naturals exude a syncopated, synthetic menace that isn’t far removed from the black liquid-coated honeycomb on their cover art. Outside of the percolating, sinuous melodies that wind and entwine, a sleek boa constrictor of seductive tension, the mechanised, synthesised vocals are so manipulated and compartmentalised as to become the most unnatural element at play here (excuse the pun). The core of dub throbs within, the rhythms deep-rooted and insidious. You can find allegiances to all kinds of artists and genres – while the synthetic instrumentation and kinetic drums coalesce in a Battles-worrying intro on ‘Cold People’ or ‘Cauldron’, the experimentation is far more alkaline, feral, clean yet decayed. It plays in oppositions, crafting dark mournful metal whispers around a dystopian disco core. But like most hive-minded creations, Hive is very much a sum of its parts – a breathing behemoth, quivering in its own fetid field, giving birth to its own idiosyncratic spawn. I personally could have done without the closer, funnily enough called ‘Sum’, due to its wafting psychedelic flourishes that flirted too far out of their own crude force field and more akin to something Primal Scream would create in a particularly febrile fugue state, and especially as the penultimate track, ‘It’s Teeth’, is fuelled with a futurist minimalism/maximalism that a cyborg My Disco might morph into in a garish steampunk alternate future. But in all Hive is a hypnotic gem with so many facets winking and twitching in the tectonic shadows that you will forever be getting lost in its acrid slipstreams. Buy Hive here.