MUSIC FOR CAT AND FIDDLE

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WINTER SOUNDS FOR PEAK DISTRICT DRIVES

What do you do when a new 30-minute drive to work takes you through scenery so epic, vast, bleak and beautiful that it threatens to melt your opticals and steal your oxygen?

Try not to career off the road on a hairpin bend is the first thing, I guess – ultimate life-preserver move.

But before long, you get to thinking: what music could be the soundtrack to this?

It’s got to be more than something you like. It’s got to be something you love AND it’s got to fit – it has to be deserving of the jaw-drop views from behind this widescreen windscreen lens. Anything less would be a disservice to the gift outside.

This has been my nicely indulgent task on a new but short term drive to work. Having just moved to Buxton and got a temp role through December, my drives took me on Macclesfield Road, aka the Cat and Fiddle road.

It is spectacular. The road climbs into the official Peak District and splits the moors 1,689 feet above sea level by the Cat and Fiddle Inn, a former pub that’s the second highest in the UK. The highest is Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire who, at the time of writing, was caught in a snow-in.

The road then carves a winding, hair-pinning zig-zag descent to Macclesfield on the other side. The moors are vast in their brown-purple haze. Dense fog is common, even when it’s clear down below. When adverse weather moves in, the road quickly becomes impassable. It’s been closed across the last three days since snow moved in on January 4th.

Fortunately, my drives didn’t encounter any snow beyond an occasional light flurry but joining that road at 5.20 am in the pitch black dark is a little bit of a test. All you can do is lean forward, follow the dots and block out the drops to the side. When there’s fog, it’s milk. Tunnel vision. For this, there is no music. Got to focus.

But the return journey a few hours later is different. Music becomes a possibility so … what’s it going to be? Melvins and Metallica might well be massive favourites but such riff-heavy, beat-driven manna is not going to be on the cards, not for this – not yet, anyway. The newness of the views and shifting natural lights is too fresh. We’re looking for an emotional, more than a physical, response from our tunes. Something to swell hearts.

It’s a time/place thing, too. If you’ve ever chosen not to play, say, David Bowie’s Low because it’s the wrong time of the day or the wrong time of the year then you know what we’re talking about here. Some music has conditions attached, even if you’ve made them up yourself. And some environments have conditions too. This is one of them.

So, the next few posts are short rambles about music that matches up to the mother of mid-winter views. See what you think of their seasonal potential.

A clear view – but for how long?

MIDWIFE – Rock n Roll Never Forgets: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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DECEMBER REWIND: MANIAC THRASH, OCCULT-ISH FUZZ, METALCORE LOUNGE AND MORE

Welcome to the last Rewind of 2024 – not that there have been many to digest this year. What was once a monthly (give or take) post has slipped shamefully close to a flatline with occasional blips indicating ‘life’.

But, like a tortoise on an uphill grind into a tarmac-scraping headwind, we carry on. ’tis the season of goodwill and joy after all so the least we can do is share some new discoveries before the Xmas madness intoxicates. ONWARD. Slowly…

HELLRIPPER – Fork-Tongued Messiah

Nothing slow about this though, the most recent new blood from every metaller’s favourite Highlander. The track came out in August but it’s the bleak end of the year where such two-minute mayhem makes most sense, not just because the days are literally darker but also because Hellripper takes you back to times of youthful innocence when Kill ’em All and Killing is My Business ruled your fledgling earwaves and Bathory stoked fearful fascination. No stylistic breakaways at this point, thank satan – just riotous escapism at maximum speed. ALL HAIL.

EARTH TONGUE – Bodies Dissolve Tonight!

On Bodies Dissolve Tonight!, Earth Tongue – from Wellington, New Zealand – add a chanty, gonzo spook vibe to some wickedly fuzz-rocking riffage. On the one hand, it’s got the primitive no-frills edge you’d expect from a two-piece. On the other, it dances with the sci-fi occult grooves of the late 60s and early 70s underground, thanks to Gussie Larkin’s staccato vocal delivery. You could easily imagine this on one of those box sets of unearthed now-cult gems like I’m a Freak, Baby… where bands like Wicked Lady, Iron Claw and Devil’s Teabag* spread dank cheer. Listen to Earth Tongue, then watch the video for beach-driving high jinx.

*not really

THEODOR KENTROS – Trystero

7 minutes of ambient doomgaze and looped layering, anyone? Grab those headphones. Downbeat in tempo but not in spirit, Theodor Kentros‘s Trystero exists as some kind of shapeshifting heavy vapour, slowly unfolding and expanding over your world. Sparse guitars echo like cinematic Mogwai teasing an impending onslaught but here, they pull back, making way for swollen enormo-drones and elemental clangs to reveal themselves. When those same guitar lines reappear and repeat cleaner, brighter and bigger, it’s like the day burst wide open. Immersion time.

TENUE – Union

It’s not hard to imagine a band playing Pelican-ised post metal with screamo vocals and black-metal blasts, and that’s a rough marker for what Tenue do on this track – nothing wrong with that. But the real loop they throw is the mellow jazzy breakdown which has no connection with the rage either side yet completely belongs, snapping your focus into attention by showcasing deft musicality and prog tendencies. Intriguing? File under Spanish Metalcore Loungecore. Or something. Check Union here.

MIDWIFE – Rock n Roll Never Forgets

Calexico, Giant Sand and assorted Americanas make for supreme winter listening if you find the right tracks, despite the warmth and dust in the origins of their sound. It’s all about the openness and isolation they conjure and this gentle, dronesome hush by Midwife does exactly the same thing. Madeline Johnston inhabits the monochrome zone where distorted whispers weave through pedal-steel caresses and buried strings. Devoid of all bluster or hard edges, it occupies a space that’s permanently in-between – locations, hours, states of consciousness, whatever you choose. Lo-fi ambience for late night drifters, low-light hibernators and want-to-be-aloners… keep it close when Christmas gets too loud. Rock n Roll Never Forgets.

And that’s that. Tyler the Creator‘s Noid (and video) was dynamite and then 2024 year-end listmania was unleashed. So we’d better leap on some of that

if tortoise catches a downhill break.

’til next time – MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Rewind Xmas
A rock-a rewind the Christmas tree

FIRE-TOOLZ – To Every Squirrel… : TRACK OF THE MONTH

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SUMMER REWIND: MIND-MELTING MASH-UPS, TRANSCENDENT DRONES AND A NEW TYPE-O ON THE BLOCK 

In the previous Rewind, I said that my cassette deck coughed its last breath (clunked its last wind?) and that sad ending probably meant a hiatus for these Rewinds. Such Doomsday thinking came about because the thought of writing new-tunes blather without first taping those tunes onto a trusty blank was unimaginable. Which might sound odd because no-one needs a tape to write. 

Thing is, I’ve been taping for too many years to count. It’s built into the way I choose to do these posts because the tapes and the taping came first, long before any word outlet. Writing a Rewind is just a way to do something with a pre-existing activity. Capturing radio highlights in hard copy analogue has been a fixture since the late 1980s and it’s ingrained, like a behavioural tattoo. It might be fading but it’s still permanent.

But although not having a tape feels strange, the idea of letting those ear-pricker tunes drift by without any kind of note feels even stranger. 

So, let’s get back to business – ish – with a bunch of hot rocks and warped sonics from the vanishing summer stretch that’ll blow minds OR confuse the shit out of them (talking to you, Fire-Toolz).

Before that, a quick salute to Iggy Pop for a four-song sequence the other week that sounded like a plot to destroy the BBC Radio 6 Music’s RAJAR figures or get him fired. 

Did you hear it? Wombbath Conceal Interior Torment, Gorement Vale of Tears and Full of Hell Doors to Mental Agony around 5.30pm on the radio on a Sunday afternoon with only a bit of Anna Von Hausswolff to separate them. Brutal. And horrible. But great to hear such shitbombs being lobbed on daytime radio every now and then. Mary Anne Hobbs has good form on that front, too. 

She played this on her weekday morning show.   

FIRE-TOOLZ – To Every Squirrel Who Has…

For squirrels’ sake, what the flattened roadkill is this format-defying track title? Here’s the uncut version:

To Every Squirrel Who Has Ever Been Hit By a Car, I’m Sorry & I Love You

Say you’re not curious. 

But if you’re hoping to get the general musical idea from a quick listen, it’s not going to happen because there IS no general idea – not on first play. This is an avalanche of ideas in six and a half minutes: Prince-style euphoric synth intro, black metal screams, death metal chugs, hyper pop, triggered beats, glistening electro, ambient guitar, new age trips, the fckn works – a medley of fragments and attention deficits. Definitely not a genre but when the stylistic leaps are this wild and fleeting, it’s head-breaking stuff. It’s maximalist post-genre everything, like a multi-screen art installation with fidgeting technicolour flickers of Fantomas, Mr Bungle, Amon Tobin, Devin Townsend, Steve Vai and millions of others I don’t even know I don’t know.

I also don’t even know if I like it but it’s impossible to ignore – and the more you replay, the more the fragments stretch and the more you do find yourself being drawn in… give it a go.  

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI – Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom (ft. Julia Kent)

The very opposite of a Fire-Toolz assault, Rafael Anton Irisarri conjures meditative heavy weather with this enormous unfolding of drones, tremors and strings that lift off and up from terra firma. Tranquil and serene yet heavy with it, Control… seems to offer some sort of healing while still acknowledging trouble’s presence. Engrossing and enveloping. Breath taken.  

NEON NIGHTMARE – Lost Silver

Looking for a tribute to Type O Negative? Neither was I. But now that one’s popped up in true undead style as we welcome autumn’s gothic sensibilities, maybe the time’s right for a Type O mini me to slide out from a misty dusk. And this debut track from Pennsylvania’s Neon Nightmare is SO close to the Brooklyn Four that resistance is futile. Look no further than the artwork. It’s the exact same layout and typography (make your own pun) as every Type O Negative cover, so much so that you think someone from the original band must be involved somewhere. Surely.

Musically, there’s no new soil broken. Of course, the voice is cleaner but everything else – delicate piano/keyboard breaks, pick slides down the guitar, luscious Sabbathian mid tempo riffs, smooth as blackened silk finales – is replicant. It’s so brazenly and meticulously Type O that it just has to be the deepest tribute and for that reason, you have to love it. Perhaps not to death, but at least until Halloween. Lost Silver, the new green and black.     

‘til next time!

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MARK LANEGAN BAND: Here Comes That Weird Chill

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It seems absurd to place Mark Lanegan as a man of sunshine. And yet, so much of his music was made with desert scene players that he must have been drawn to it. 

Home is where the heat is? Maybe.

* * *

Anyone who knows Bubblegum knows Methamphetamine Blues. Alongside Hit the City, it’s one of the rock-action peaks from that 2004 album and here, on the preceding Here Comes That Weird Chill EP, it gets prime position: track #1. 

Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities

Driven by an electro-clank machine pulse, the Methamphetamine Blues groove is anything but bluesy. Fumes and distortion are the order of the day, more workshop grind than back-porch swing, with a sumptuous cast of backing singers teasing a gothic, seductive touch. Despite the huge cast, the loops and the near-constant lead guitar streams by Josh Homme and Dave Catching, it’s controlled … like a lot of Lanegan’s work. Containment, no histrionics. This one revels in taut compression.  

On the Steps of the Cathedral, a hymn-like confessional with surround-sound Lanegan choir and a muted beat, fades in/out with the ghosted air of a Masters of Reality interlude – fitting, given the presence of Chris Goss – before the amps strike back for Clear Spot. It’s a faithful cover, maybe even an unadventurous one given Beefheart’s many outer limits, but it lends itself to the same mechanised distortions as Methamphetamine Blues. For that reason, it works. Let’s rock.  

But from here, a looser vibe takes hold and the EP’s subtitle Methamphetamines, Extras & Oddities rings more true. Deen Ween brings the heat haze with his just-off-enough guitar solos through Message to Mine before the mood turns a 180 with this:  

“Break my heart and hope to die
before Lexington could slow down.
They say a chariot’s waiting
when you get cut loose.
The place starts swinging
when it’s me on the noose.”

When those words get spoken in Lanegan’s heaviest baritone over rain-sodden piano, they cut through everything. 

They sound too true. You believe. Lexington Slowdown is a double-take moment that reorients your listening and elevates the EP because this is where the already obvious quality shifts to next-level. This EP is what made Bubblegum a must-buy the following year. And this EP is probably why I’m more a Lanegan Band casual than a completist because, honestly, nothing else captures Mark Lanegan in rock mode as much to my own liking as fully as this does.      

If Lexington is pivotal then Skeletal History is definitive. The Voice leads, of course, but with alien interference crackling down the left side, desert dry riffs on the right and storm-brew bass and skittish beats locked down the centre, there’s no shortage of elements. No chorus, just flow, an ongoing slow eruption as a storm slowly builds. Explosions darken the track’s fadeout. Played like this, the music sounds less like a band than a telepathic convergence of forces. Vast, wide-open and ominous.

Wish You Well lightens the tone with a droning ebb and flow before Sleep With Me continues the Skeletal History vibe – but this is like the tentative calm after the threat has receded. Adrenalin slowing. Reprise extends Sleep With Me, softening further with immaculate bass lines while guitar distortions break the spaces around Homme’s dubby beat. 

In some ways, it’s harder to see this EP as the Mark Lanegan Band than the album that followed. His name is in the spotlight sure, but the smaller cast of core players – the desert hands like Alain Johannes, Dave Catching, Chris Goss, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri – knit together like low-ego equals drawing on more than just the music. Maybe it’s their shared histories that make the difference. Maybe the tunes with Nick Oliveri just turn out differently (he plays on more here than Bubblegum). Maybe it’s nothing more than presentation: a bunch of looser experiments being given their own space to run. Whatever it is, something extra comes through in the way this EP flows and hangs together. 

Is it a Desert Session in all but name? 

Possibly, yes. And if so, it’s the most consistent of the bunch – the lack of joke tracks and guest singers make for a darker, more focused mood – and the one that fits Lanegan’s voice best.    

If you lapped up Bubblegum but somehow missed this … track it down: a small trove jammed with riches.     

* * *

NEWS – Bubblegum reissue out soon, includes Weird Chill
Just found out about this by chance today – Bubblegum is being reissued deluxe-style in August with Here Comes That Weird Chill (and other rarities) included on bonus discs, all for the 20th anniversary. Timing or what? Check Piccadilly Records for more.

MDOU MOCTAR – Oh France: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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JUNE REWIND: BLAZING TUAREG PSYCHE, GOTHIC BM AND CHICAGO LEGEND ALBINI LOST

This could be the last Track of the Month Rewind post for a while because the very fine bit of machinery that makes them happen has just died on me…

…the cassette deck. Bye bye Technics RS-HD350. And while this doesn’t stop the showcasing of new music in this digital age, it will stop these Rewinds – or at least pause them for a bit – because the act of taping is where they come from. Can’t rewind without tape.  

Technics tape deck
Various radio tape 69 - on pause
The Rewind: on pause

So, apart from the death of the deck, what’s happened in the last couple of months?  

Record Store Day 2024 came, went and whatevered. English Teacher packed out and wowed the Bullingdon in Oxford. Jesus Lizard announced a new album. But bigger than all those was our new-found reminder, for the absolute worst of reasons, of Steve Albini’s inimitable presence in the music world. 

Reading the tributes, and re-reading and hearing his own words in articles and interviews, it’s staggering to see just how much music he touched – music that will continue to inspire listeners for a long time. It’s a vast repository whose tally is now abruptly fixed. 

Like many music fans, I guess, my knowledge of him didn’t really stretch beyond the bands he was in, the headline bands he recorded, the headlines he himself made (good and bad) and the principles he brought to his craft and The Work. 

But you realise that even the shallowest of skims through the albums he recorded will make for a highly rewarding experience. It’ll be different for everyone but the inevitable shitload of slept-on gems in the Albini backlist means we surely owe ourselves a dabble. And with Shellac being on the cover of Wire magazine just days before he passed, his sudden departure was made even more unreal. RIP Steve Albini.  

OK then, onto some new-ish sounds worth a poke.   

MDOU MOCTAR – Oh France

The Tuareg firebrand played Glastonbury this very afternoon so Worthy Farm is now surely the proud owner of its very own patch of scorched earth. As you might expect, explosive guitar hits hard from the start of Oh France, bringing spice and attack to Saharan flow, and the rhythm section is killer. Together, they wind up the pace and set the scene for shamanic frenzy that’s built for an end-of-set blowout. Feel the heat.

SUNNATA – Wishbone

More spiralling hypnotic psyche, this time from Poland’s Sunnata. Combining droning Massive Attack Risingson-style vocals with an upbeat looping riff, Wishbone trips along nicely before the chorus switches to a lumbering post/stoner groove and a tasty breakdown sets the geological bass loose. Check it here. 

EDO – Radiant Structures  

‘Black metal with a healthy dose of goth post punk’ is how Brad Sanders described this on Bandcamp’s The Metal Show and from the very first bars, the goth tag is unerringly precise – it’s not atmospheric, lush, electro or industrial goth but UK Dank Inc. goth: the guitars draw from the Banshees et al with sheets of thick, intoxicating textures enveloping the BM shred over 8 ever-shifting minutes.

KEVIN ABSTRACT – Blanket

Punk slacker vibes abound in Blanket, a loose two-minute sketch that sounds almost too slight to stand up but is so damned infectious it’s impossible to resist – and there’s more going on than you first think. With a descending chord sequence that’s a distant, non-violent relation to I Wanna Be Your Dog – no wonder Iggy played this on his radio show a few weeks back – it’s the semi-whispered breakdown in the middle that brings the hushed cool. It’s a fleeting tease, but of what? Dense lo-fi? Collage rock? Whatever it is, Blanket will find a place in the sun on your alt-pop carousel.   

‘til next time! (TBD by tape deck resurrection)

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GUHTS – White Noise: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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BROOKLYN NEW YORK, AUSTIN TEXAS AND CARDIFF CARDIFF SERVE THE RIFFS AND THE RAGE FOR THIS REWIND 

Before dipping into the new discoveries, have we got time to splatter the page with Melvins superlatives? 

New album Tarantula Heart is out THIS VERY WEEK which has, of course, prompted a massive Mel-fest in recent weeks. Question is, what would you choose right now for a Melvins reacquaintance?

Aside from a healthy Stoner Witch loop, it’s the Big Business double-drum era that’s done the business (sorry) round here. (A) Senile Animal, Nude with Boots and The Bride Screamed Murder, played in chronological order, makes for a shit-hot listening project: it’s Melvins with more crunch and pace than sludge and crawl, though we know they’ve always mixed it up pretty wildly. And there’s no shortage of rhythmic complexity on these albums either, cementing the notion that Buzz truly is one of the god-level riff lords of our time. Same goes for Dale on drums. They’re juiced and rejuvenated on The Talking Horse, warped and disorienting on The Savage Hippy and beat-shifting headfucks on Evil New War God, and that’s just three highs out of a possible 30. Monstrous stuff.  

That block of albums is the third of three ‘triples’, which is pretty handy for chunking some Melvins together in a vaguely cohesive way. The major label threesome of Houdini, Stoner Witch and Stag was first. Then there was The Maggot, The Bootlicker and The Crybaby trilogy back when Melvins first hooked up with an infant Ipecac. And finally, the Big Business years just mentioned. No doubt there are more trilogies, intended or not, lurking in The Melvins’ vast idiosyncratic sprawl but those three are huge anchor points.

Best wishes to Dale Crover’s continuing recovery from back surgery.

OK, let’s get back to the main gig with three new tunes.  

GUHTS – White Noise

8 minutes of post-metal lumber that mainlines Cult of Luna? I’m in. And I’m especially in for the vocals. This is the Cult of Luna sound you’ve been waiting for IF the CoL voice(s) sometimes gets in the way, though you might not know that until you’ve heard this. Amber Gardner brings more dimensions and she’s so right for this slow-paced slam that it’s the post-metal embellishment we perhaps didn’t know we needed.

And the drop at 3 minutes is to die for. Pure Isis. Fresh voice, new blood, more GUHTS. White Noise right here.

TRANSIT METHOD – Frostbite

Another 8-minute epic, this time from Austin, Texas, and it’s the kind of metal that goes full Mastodon. Taut 5/4 rhythm, mathcore drive, hyped drums on a permanent fill and cosmic space-scraping solos all build to a thrash pickup, more blazing leads and thunderballs kick work. 

Need a breather? There’s a beach-mellow breakdown and some pretty elastic bass to help you catch some rays … but not for long. This is an opus of sections, too wild and varied to detail, so check it here right the way through to the heroic punch of an ending.  

SHLUG – Grated Thumbs

Don’t know what’s in the Cardiff water these days but this post-hardcore shout/speed rager packs more than just relentless aggro into its dank industrial hardcore. A mid-track breakdown, all bass and space and woozy Fugazi, halts the hyperventilating charge for just about long enough to catch breath and let rip again. Buy it from May 8th or hear it on BBC Radio 6 Music’s New Music Fix until early May. 

Rock enough?

‘til next time! 

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The monthly music rewind

WINTRY METAL? TRY HELLRIPPER

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Is it too late for winter sounds and 2023 catch-ups? Probably. Then again, we’re not out of the darkness yet – not quite – and there’s still a stack of stormy gloom and wind chill to celebrate. For that, we need an unsunny soundtrack. And if a couple of moments from 2023 fit the bill, all the better.  

January/February is the year’s ultimate listening zone. Post-xmas hibernation means you can sink into those end-of-year lists and check what you missed (almost everything, it seems), spend a shiteload of time re-digging the old familiars that fit the season AND discover new-to-you old sounds that then become the foundation for winters future. It’s a cycle that repeats every year. Awesome.  

So, with icy blasts in mind, two albums leapt off the Metal Hammer end-of-year list.

HELLRIPPER – Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags

This is an absolute riot, a thrash ‘n roll explosion of blackened metal that pays homage to the old school – Metallica, Maiden, Motorhead, Bathory – but is fired by precocious Young Man Chops from the Highlands, Scotland. James McBain, aka Mr Hellripper, is pretty much a one-man studio band (sleeve notes: ‘Hellripper is: James McBain’) which means he shreds like a daemon at everything. Can you imagine eating breakfast with the guy? Cornflakes at 200bpm. Carnage.     

Anyway, back to the album and these words are more a reaction than a review because Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags puts such a demented headbanger smile on your face that you’ve just got to share the word with anyone who might not yet have found it. Solos blaze with melody through warp-speed thrash and black-metal throat while riffs groove and hook with anthemic potential. When Mester Stoor Worm closes the album down, it’s with an 8 and a half minute masterclass in epic metallic storytelling.

Disclaimer: it was actually Hellripper’s previous album, The Affair of the Poisons, that made the real first impression. After my must-order-Hellripper rush, Poisons was the fastest delivery. But I can say this: if you’re in for Poisons, you’re in for Warlocks. The Affair of the Poisons feels a shade more raw, Motorhead-ish/Kill ‘em All with Whiplash and Metal Militia vibes writ large. Warlocks Grim has classic speed/metal in its all-out attack but really, I haven’t got deep enough to know anything – too caught up in the frenetic energy, killer riffs and outlandish track titles (Goat Vomit Nightmare, Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, The Hissing Marshes, take your bloodied pick). Hellripper: a furious, glorious deathride. White knuckles mandatory.   

MYRKUR – Spine

Since dropping the Myrkur ball after Mareridt, the sight of Spine at #11 in the 2023 Metal Hammer list prompted a shameful wake-up. Myrkur is back? She sure is. And Spine brings all sides of Myrkur together into one. 

Spectral folk (Balfaerd), soft Scandi-pop choruses (Like Humans), melodic black-metal pace injections (Valkyriernes Sang), sweeping orchestral-vision (My Blood is Gold) and brooding goth-metal drama (Spine) are all present. Uniting every strand is, of course, Amalie Bruun’s ethereal vocals. Spine is her 33-minute musical tour through her new world of motherhood. 

As with the two Hellripper albums above, these words are only a reaction so no great finesse or vision, but excitability? Hell yeah. Next time you get slammed by snow drifts or chilled by subzero winds or blindsided by cold fog banks, reach for Myrkur or double up on Hellripper. Winter mood enhancers for sure.   

Hellripper: Warlocks Grim
Hellripper: Not at all grim

KIM GORDON – Bye Bye: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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DEAD BANDITS, ANNA CALVI PEAKY BLINDER AND KIM GORDON DO THE BUSINESS IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY

Belated welcomes to the new year in music. Am only just locating the new-tunes mojo after winter hibernation (and we’re not out of it yet but more on that, maybe, in a different blog, possibly) so let’s just plunge right in to this clutch of groundshaking 2024 newbies.   

KIM GORDON – Bye Bye

Kim Gordon reads a list of things. 

And?
And sets it to a depth charge called BASS. With one-note piano jabs, noise guitar influx and agitating keyboard chaospheres thrown together with cut-up panache, Bye Bye compels and arrests with a contemporary weight that almost defies belief. A controlled explosion of art rock and industrial hip hop beats. 

Kim Gordon reads a list of things.
Best thing you’ll hear this week? Yes.
BYE BYE. 

DEAD BANDIT – Memory Thirteen

Instrumental heavy warmth is the order of the night for Dead Bandit’s Memory Thirteen, its brushy drum shuffle positively inviting you into wherever brushy drum shuffles hang. Exploratory guitars draw on Mogwai’s cleaner panoramic angles but the bass here is looser and dirtier. The whole thing teases a climactic Rock eruption but it never arrives. Instead, Dead Bandit deliver a neat triple-time groove that moves in and passes by, just out of reach.    

ANNA CALVI AND NICK LAUNAY – Miquelon 

If a gothic garage band escaped their four-walled space and wound up playing some sort of wild west Americana drone and chant, Miquelon would be their name. The riff in this loose, bass-bending, ritualistic stomp made Anna Calvi’s fingers bleed from the hard playing she hit it with but look where Miquelon ended up – Peaky Blinders soundtrack.

Right, that’s it for now – a short, word-rusty Rewind but the tunes excelled. As always.

‘til next time!

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The monthly music rewind

THE SCRATCH – Blaggard: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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DEC/NOV REWIND: THE SCRATCH PLUS SPARSE SCOTS BEATS, JARMUSCH ODDITY, RUDE FUNK AND CHELSEA’S WHISPERS

Last-ditch scramble round a couple of new sounds before Christmas hits, even though we’re pretty much in the thick of festive mayhem already … no-one REALLY spends time digging brand new music two days before Christmas, do they? But these tunes have been lurking a wee while and are way too good to miss so let’s just get-the-f**k on with it and keep them on a low-lit back burner, eh?

LORD OF THE ISLE (feat Ellen Renton) – For a Burning World

Lapping waves and luscious Boards of Canada ambience form the hypnotic backdrop for Scottish poet Ellen Renton to speak her words and pull you in. It’s a gentle start but gradually, the beats emerge – nothing manic – and start to break. Electronica washes surge then retreat while a darker keyboard riff makes the hook. Could be a mood piece for the season, as remote or intimate as you want (or don’t want) it to be. Winter explorations abound.

SQURL – Funnel of Love

Hazy, supernatural Western vibes here (not a brand new track either), venturing way out west Americana-style with an unwavering boom-rat-tat beat anchoring satellite guitar fragments. With Jim Jarmusch at the helm, would you expect anything less than exquisite production? No. Check the deft distortion touches and all-round movement and orchestration. The spirit of Dylan Carlson passes by early on but really, Funnel is all about the lightly intoxicating space in which to create your own pictures.

CHELSEA WOLFE – Whispers in the Echo Chamber

Nine Inch Nails always did a good whisper. So does Chelsea Wolfe in this subzero hiss ‘n clank of midwinter gloom. Delicate yet far from broken, it’s a ghostly creep-crawl through Portishead’s emotional machinery while the bent riff, corroded piano and rhythm pick-up are pure Reznor and by the end, Whispers in the Echo Chamber threatens to collapse under the weight of its own distortion. Unfestive but very seasonal.

DON’T THANK ME, SPANK ME! – Sandy

With a taut, garage pop-funk strut grooving over fat bass and pure-funk chords, this infectious jam for Grease character Sandy Newton (yep, that’s what they said) never forgets that space has its place – a !!!-meets-Chaka-Like-Sugar hit with a lick of dirt in the knocked-back guitar fuzz. Can you resist the Sandy strut? Surely no.

THE SCRATCH – Blaggard

Oh yeah, this is it. Tune of the month. A twisting, churning noise-punk riff tangled tight with tom-driven beats whipped through a noise-rock blender, Blaggard’s signature is a piledriving wall of rhythm that threatens mania yet stops just short of falling apart. There are light touches too, it’s not all shout and rage – but a fair slab really, really is.

’til next time!

Stitch
Sketch of Stitch. Because I needed a picture

GEORDIE WALKER: THE OTHER VOICE OF KILLING JOKE

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PREMATURE R.I.P. TO THE SOUND THAT DEFINED A DEFINING SOUND

There’s been a defiant inevitability about Killing Joke in the last 15 years or so. They just seemed to keep going and getting better with (middle) age, fired by a different kind of impetus since Paul Raven’s passing pulled them back together and into the studio for a long, late-career golden run that started even earlier with Pandemonium. Seeing the reformed line-up deliver the live and recorded goods so constantly was almost one of rock’s certainties and there was never a sign it wouldn’t happen again. No talk of retirement. You just sort of knew they’d be back…on their terms. When the time was right.

But this isn’t on anyone’s terms, is it? Geordie Walker’s departure at 64, just months after the Royal Albert Hall gigs and the vital-sounding Full Spectrum Dominance single. Hell, it was only last year that we had the Lord of Chaos EP and the Honour the Fire tour. A full album was surely brewing.

Live, it was always Walker who captivated. The whole band did obviously, we’re not ranking players or anything, but the concentrated force of Geordie’s guitar won you over by wearing you down first. Every KJ gig has felt, to me, like slightly hard work at the start before submersing you into a strange state of battered awe by the end, and much of that comes from the hypnotic power of Geordie Walker. He doesn’t move and barely seems to even touch the guitar, yet whatever resonance/dissonance he conjures from those oversized chords and shapes just does something to your brain, shifting you from agitation to submission.

And because there are no solos, the fullness and volume of his noise is permanent. For all the right reasons, it’s no wonder he didn’t get the job with Faith No More when he auditioned back in 1994. Here’s what Mike Bordin said in Small Victories: The True Story of Faith No More:

“We liked how he played, we liked his texture within the music. We liked the fact he was incredibly aggressive with his tone, but wasn’t a soloist. He was cool, talked about jamming with Jimmy Page, smoked a lot of cigarettes…it was probably a bit of a long shot, even to get him to do it. But it was fucking fun.”

Billy Gould said, “He’s a great guitar player, one of the best I’ve ever seen. He would have been amazing, but he is so distinctive. I think he would have rendered us into a Killing Joke cover band.”

Even when talking about the genius of Trey Spruance, who joined Faith No More to record King for a Day…Fool for a Lifetime, Gould couldn’t quite shake Walker’s impact off, saying, “He [Trey] could do whatever he wanted and do it better, but he didn’t have the animal thing that Geordie had. There was a certain violence about Geordie. Trey doesn’t have a violent bone in his body.”

Distinctive is the word. Gould and co made the right call. Killing Joke was home, the only possible place. RIP Geordie Walker.

More Geordie:
The Damage Manual
Full Spectrum Dominance
Gig review from Hammersmith Apollo, 2022