REWIND FEBRUARY: NORTHERN STORMY, RUSSIAN FRENCH CONNECTIONS AND RUSTIC LONGFORMS

As we find ourselves frosted up in a Siberian super-ice, what else is there to do but check a few curios and new sounds from the past month? Winter puns fully intended, and if you seek stately gothic grandeur to soundtrack the whitened vistas wherever you are, you can do a lot worse than try Paradise Lost’s Medusa – worked well this morn on a rare drive to work, especially track 4: The Longest Winter. HAVE IT.

EVIL BLIZZARD: FAST FORWARD/REWIND

With all eyes focused on the freeze from the east, we took our opticals off a blizzard from the north … Evil Blizzard. From Preston. With a two-track cassette. Trading in the kind of mania that pigsx7 revel in, these two tunes come off like a PiL/Heads space explosion fired by a Relax-ing Frankie bass thrust (Fast Forward/Rewind) and Killing Joke’s tribal fury (Knock Knock Knock). Sci fi clatter-psyche for 2018, check the Evil maskies right here.

Tapes of wrath: Evil Blizzard

SHORTPARIS: Beceno

From Russia with glove … shady flickers. Perfect. Hear the voice and recall Beth Gibbons, then it clicks – we’re occupying an electro doom crossover space not unlike Portishead’s Third, but with more scope for going right off the rails. Album downloaded from bandcamp, eager to hear what Shortparis do on a longplayer. Thanks to Mary Anne Hobbs for playing it in the first place.

ELEPHANT9: Actionpack1

Snowegian, innit? The Most Arresting Fusion Award for February goes to this Norwegian three-o who, like countrymen Motorpsycho, live on Rune Grammofon and do a heavy line in prog jazz fusion, at least on this track. You gotta check the drumwork. Cobham Billy, much?

DOPE: DOPE ON DRUGS

The latest escapee from Head Heritage is an album by Dope – that is, Julian Cope and a bunch of his un-usual suspects, including Holy McGrail, ploughing another Rite/Black Sheep furrow of elongation, lo-fi and hi-reps, but we know the slow-burn score for these things by now. Leave Yourself Behind starts with a s.t.a.r.c.a.r. excess but drops it for a quarter-hour chant over a reduced Psycho Killer bass line. The Binding of Loki digs a Rite At Ya groove for even longer but pulls you in, if you let it. Essential? No, not yet, and perhaps not ever, but your inner drude compels you to check and here it is. Decide for yourself.

URTHONA: DESTRUCTION RULES

A far more satisfying Cope-related excursion comes from Urthona and, as ever, they take you OUT … side. Their drone does not oppress. Their drone is Of The Land – frozen moor tops, rusted heath, jagged outcrops, grey-full skies and glacial – yes, let’s use that overused g-word – glacial carve-outs. Tantric, tundric ebbs, this time enriched with non-axe instrumentation. Can’t explain this stuff, you feel it or you don’t, so give Invocation of the Ghosts of the Battle of Roundway Down a go and maybe check these few words on a previous Urthona outing while you’re out-there.

STEPHEN O’MALLEY & ANTHONY PATERAS: iii

Can’t touch this: Malley time. This track, a colossal no-flow from new album Reve Noir, does cut-and-splice for a voyeuristic flit between crackles, hums, pulses and guitar fragments. Glitchy and insular and inhabited by ghosts, get the proper story and snatch an excerpt on Soundohm.

Right then, we’re done – some first impressions from February. Stay warm.

’til next time!