MAY REWIND: GODSPEED MAKES LIGHT, BORIS CUTS LOOSE AND TAMAR APHEK ROCKS HARD

Queens of the Stone Age have been on the playlist a fair bit these past few weeks. Must be the time of year. Or the appearance of new single Emotion Sickness and their fresh announcement as Glastonbury headliners. Or the Homme-sized wormhole started by a couple of top-drawer Kyuss reactions (NASTY!!! FLY!!!) from the groove-loving Lost in Vegas fellas Ryan and George. Or all of the above. Anyway, if Glastonbury is anything like their 2018 Finsbury Park show, QOTSA will surely win over the world.

Let’s start with a couple of typographic opposites. Just because, for one month only, we can.

First is the upper-case underscoring of ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT, aka Efrim Manuel Menucke and Ariel Engle, whose Waiting for the Light to Quit‘s drones-and-violin (is it?) shimmer teases a huge motorik explosion that never arrives, leaving you suspended in rays instead. Beautifully orchestrated, as you’d expect from a GY!BE/Silver Mt Zion spirit.

Second in this desperate, horribly contrived typo pairing is the lower-case/no-spaces charm of West Yorkshire favourites worriedaboutsatan. New album The Pivot takes a more varied detour from the consistently ambient/twilight electronica routes sometimes followed, and that’s mykindaworriedabouts – see the icy, metronomic pulse of Stop the Car for evidence. Go check The Pivot right here.

OK, a couple more awesome discoveries before we shut this dribbling tap of words OFF.

BORIS & UNIFORM – You Are The Beginning

Confession: after following them pretty devoutly for a few years in the noughties, I’ve dropped all Boris balls. Haven’t bought a new album of theirs since D.E.A.R. because that album continued a sequence that just didn’t quite land in the way that Feedbacker, Akuma No Uta, Altar, Smile and the like did. But this is part of the Boris trip because, as we know, there are very many Borises. It all depends which version(s) push your buttons.

Given all that, You Are The Beginning may well be the sound of a door re-opening – and if so, it’s a noisy, ripped-off-its-hinges door because this track starts like an uptempo kicker with harsh vocals and then loses its shit, winding up to a pummelling, chaotic clatter. Carnage from the neck up.

TAMAR APHEK – Crossbow

Primitive, repetitive bass and ultra-taut drums build the hyperactive motor behind Crossbow’s urgent, twitchy rhythm – until, that is, Tamar Aphek’s guitar howls voodoo across the joint. On this track she channels the free-thinking spirit of Savages and Fugazi, meaning space is the place – and it’s between the instruments. Not quite new, this tune and album came out in 2021 but it’s easily the most arresting new encounter from last week. And that’s why we’re talking about Crossbow.

’til next time!