Tag Archives: DRORE

DOES THIS MUSIC SMELL FUNNY?

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JANUARY REWIND: NEW EXPOSURES FROM NORWAY AND SOUTHERN LORD, AND A BRACE OF WINTER SOUNDTRACKS

If wild instrumentals are the way to blast those Jan-Feb blues, check this trio of wordless other-worldlies and set your radar to stun, scorch and shift. Verse-chorus-verse they are not. Don’t know anything about the bands (yet) so excuse mon ignorance and lack of detail, just feel the buzz instead. Much to trip on.

HEDVIG MOLLESTAD TRIO – First Thing to Pop is the Eye

STUN. Heavyweight new-jazz post/prog artillery from Norway. Dazzling. HM3’s First Thing… fairly fires up a wintry night with urgent, hypnotic bass loops and guitars that strike with small-hours cool. Musicianship absolutely not in question, neither is the r.o.k. attitude, and that’s more than enough to keep us happy BUT… check the drumming. Is that a player or what? New album Smells Funny is out now on Rune Grammofon.

CASPER BROTZMANN MASSAKER – The Call

SCORCH. OK, not new – 31 years not new, since you ask – but reissued right now on Southern Lord and, of course, Casper packs the same ferocious intensity on guitar as dad Peter does on sax. What comes to mind? A splatter of King Crimson Red to start maybe, but mostly a Killing Joke wall of fury roughed up by free-forming six-stringer squall. Primal psssyche out.

SONAR – Vortex

SHIFT. Why? Because of the mood. Because of the tension lurking from the opening Tortoise lope. Because of the pristine dark urban space conjured by metronomic polyrhythms, slow-rising urgency and part-glitch percussive energy. Get a shift on – enter the vortex with Sonar right here.

WINTER AMBIENCE FROM 2018 LEFTOVERS

By leftovers, we mean the 2018 music bought late last year – like ace albums by Clutch, Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood, Donny McCaslin and Pijn – that have fed the new year and which we’re only just digesting. And for some moody atmos on grey-day hibernations like these, you can do a lot worse than sink into these two highly-recommendeds. First, https://annavonhausswolffmusic.bandcamp.com/album/dead-magic Magic by Anna Von Hausswolff. Drones, possession (spiritual) and pipe organs (massive) from Sweden make for a gothic mood piece that signals a storm’s arrival, though it never does. The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra comes close, but its rock-solid haunt is more of a summoning. File next to your Sunn O)))/Ulver crossovers. Or Myrkur. Or your pipe organ collection. Or maybe even this lot …

….Low. Can’t get enough of critics’ favourite Double Negative at the moment. Even when you flick your hype-alert switch on after the gushing reviews, all that talk of noise, crackle and avant is just too seductive … can Low really be pushing it that far out, this far into their career? So you give it a go. And nothing prepares you for just how outside Double Negative is. Something very special, disorienting and rare at work here … semi lucid states, heavy distortion and fractured warps, cloaked by unshakable Low-floating harmonies. In and out of focus. One for dark nights, immersion and submission. The beauty is buried deep.

BULLY FOR DRORE AND DESERT STORM

Friday 1 February, 2019 – Drore and Desert Storm at the Bullingdon, who needs a headliner? Not them, but there is one anyway: Conjurer, on the Holy Roar label. Metal Hammer have said good stuff about their Mire album, let’s see what they’re all about.

’til next time!

P.S. Desert Storm and Drore review done, see next post

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

MUSIC FOR TWO-YEAR-OLDS

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SEPTEMBER REWIND: BIRTHDAY TRADITIONS, MORE DRORE AND STADIUM ROCK TOP-UPS

It’s probably not how Sam Evian wants his music to be known, but that new album of his, Premium? Music for a two-year-old.

At least, it was two weeks ago. That’s when I was in Truck Store, asking which albums came out that very week (thanks for your help and patience, Truck staffers). Why was I seeking a CD for someone too small to listen to CDs? Well, I started this thing when my daughter was born: I bought an album that was released the week she arrived, as a memento of the time. And then I thought, why not do this every year? One day, if she’s piqued by music, we’ll have a nice little story to share, so here are the trez complexico rules wot I made:

  • CD must be released in the week of my daughter’s birthday
  • It must come from my local music brewery, aka Truck Store

And this is how I stumbled on a never-heard-of Sam Evian. Not music for tots, but instead – to steal Truck’s sticker wordage – ‘…a strange yet seductive listen that adds synths and sax to his whispery take on downbeat funk.’ Sounds about right for what we want…Sam Evian, you’re in, following New Order (2015) and spelling rebels Deap Vally (2016) into the birthday collection. To be listened to again in about 10 years, no doubt.

OK, bit of a diverting start – let’s get some quickie first impressions on September newbies, and we’ll start by keeping it local.

DRORE

It landed. Tape Two, JOY OF FUCKING JOYS. Heavy post-Undersmile Oxon rage, streaked with non-Billy childish pranks… New Skids on the Block, anyone? YES. At eight minutes, New Skids is the sole squatter on side two of the tape, but all four of these Life Regrets do what you want Drore to do: drag you through sewer hell, just like Tape One did. A filthy racket. Nice tablecloth cover design, too. Tape Two here.

BLAWAN

Burial’s new release Rodent isn’t what you’d expect from Burial – and not in a good way. Tension-free dullness, no edge, no ice. But the track that followed Rodent’s tail on Mary Anne Hobbs’s Recommends show the other week – Calcium Red by Blawan – shuts the light right down, packing some dense night-time menace over unrelenting beats. You go for Burial, you leave with Blawan techno.

GREG FOX

That man Colin again. EX EYE crossed our ears last month, and now it’s the turn of Stetson drummer Greg Fox to push adventure our way. Restless, machine-gunning drum ‘n’ tenor sax here on By Virtue of Emptiness.

TRUPA TRUPA

Hazy, warped post-ish rock from Poland that comes off like Dead Meadow tripping through bogs with Holy Mountain. Or maybe it’s the drunkest, most arse-rough Sigur Ros wannabe you ever heard. Works for me, make your own mind up with To Me from the upcoming album.

NEIL YOUNG

At once familiar and fresh, like most of Young’s work, Hitchhiker shows him at his most solo and most urgent, chopping a rhythm off that acoustic like only he can. Certified future classic from 1976, available on the now un-unreleased Hitchhiker album.

GY!BE, Myrkur and Chelsea Wolfe among the other heavies making September sound waves – not caught them yet, some other time.

BACKTRACKS

Get the Van in. Not Morrison, not Der Graaf Generator, not a paraphrased Rollins book but Van Halen. The early gold, the Hagar dynamite, the unabashed stadium rocKAKAKAKAKA – that’s where we’ve been this month. Big harmonies, tasteful shred and many a heavier, sharper riff than you probably dare remember, there’s much to revisit on the first four albums. However, it’s two percussion-heavy Hagars that take top backtracks billing this month.

Mine All Mine

OU812. What an intro. Not industrial exactly, but not far off. Percussion and keyboard dominant, which ain’t exactly what you think of with VH, Mine All Mine is surely one of Van Halen’s best. Alex up front, urgent momentum and a half decent lyric for once.

Pleasure Dome

A long-time highlight from 1991’s F.U.C.K., Pleasure Dome sounds at least as good as it did back then. Proper songcraft and musicianship that is, again, rhythm-driven while Eddie’s guitar dives, bombs, twists and spirals through to a tough-nut finale. A beast of a hard rocker from a guitar-driven record. 

Sorry about the lack of proper reviews of late, just been short of time.

’til the next one, then!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

DRORE: Tapeone

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SPLASH METAL: THE BOG YEARS. Brutal sludge, straight outta Oxon

Tapeone starts with toilet humour. Literally. 40 seconds of what sounds like a giant piss, but if you ride it out then you make it into the lurching dirtball that is Skinjob, aka Tapeone’s track one. And at this point (piss excepted), Drore are probably what you’d expect – or at least, not un-expect – from a band made of two ex-Undersmile and a Crippled Black Phoenix: heavy, muddy, mid tempo business as usual. Until, that is, a ferocious double-kick screamcore blast, as unhinged as it is unexpected, shreds all preconception…. WTF???? Undersmile, gothic grinders of punishingly slow doom. CBP, widescreen purveyors of fluid spacebound psyche. Ne’er a gallop between ’em, ’til now. That’s Skinjob. That’s Drore. 

Drore Tapeone

So, compared to the parent bands, Drore are a very different kettle of scaly ones, packing feral sludge and noise overload into four concise scabs. Hippy Crack growls like … hell, I’m gonna bring the Big M in here: Metallica. Specifically, 2003 Metallica. St Anger Metallica. Great album (no, not joking) and, in the title track’s pre-verse riff, one of Metallica’s most primal moments … utterly monstrous, and Hippy Crack’s got the same growly churn going. Greys channels dank nightmare squalor, while Fukbags (the best Trainspotting character that never was?) even allows a sliver of post(ish)-metal to break through and ease, just for a mo, the full mettle racket that is Tapeone’s fetid stock.

When Drore opened for OHHMS last month, they came across as a band who make Massive Fucking Noise just because they like making Massive Fucking Noise, and the EP captures the MFN easily – listening to it after a live show is not a let down, not at all. The distorted scuzz-mammoth filth with the hostile slacker vibe is very, very much intact.

File somewhere near: Fudgetunnel, Godflesh, Greymachine, Louisiana metal, Part Chimp, Harvey Milk, St Anger, an open sewer


NEWS!!! Make space for Tapetwo, coz it’s just been recorded. NEW DRORE SHIT, ready to drop. Stand clear of the splash zone.



OHHMS: live review

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OHHMS / MAMMOTH WEED WIZARD BASTARD / DRORE @ THE CELLAR, OXFORD, 13/02/2017

What a bonus. Turn up at the Cellar for the OHHMS/Mammoth double-header and find that Drore are on the bill as well, making it a triple ugly. NICE. Except that Drore are not nice, not at all. Staggering out from Undersmile’s RIP with scabby song titles like Skinjob and Fukbags, Drore are ruff, scuzzy, sludgy grrrowly FILFF, and unlike Taz and Olly’s so-slo Undersmile, this lot play the mid and fast field with stacks of gear shifts and double-kick beatdowns. Always noisy and never melodic, there’s a thick grunge whiff but not in the Seattle sense … nah, this is grunge the Godflesh way, pissed out of toxic wastepipes and topped off by pained hell-o shriekage from Taz and Crippled Black bassist Tom Greenway. No doubt about it, Drore create a world all their obnoxious own and it’s a proper ugly thrill. No wonder they bagged a few Terrorizer column inches last year.

Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard made it into some end-of-year album lists in 2016 so this gig was always gonna be a chance to catch what they’re all about, but their static doom reps somehow underwhelm a bit tonight, ‘specially after Drore’s violent discharge.

No such underwhelm for Canterbury’s OHHMS though, a band who seem stupendously fully formed given that they’ve only put out two EPs, but if you came here expecting oceanic transcendence a la Bloom (massive) and Cold (even massiver) then you/we are out of luck because that version of OHHMS is not in the building. A mere half hour of stage time means it’s New Stuff Only tonight, and they hit it hard. With tracks like The World upping the pace and packing in some aggressive Pelican-ese riffs, we might have a bolshier, denser OHHMS heading our way … let’s see what The Fool brings in March, eh? The only thing lacking tonight is TIME: not enough. And for a band like OHHMS, that just ain’t right.

*update: just read that one of the gig highlights – drummer Stephen Frame – is Drore no more. Ach! News is over on the Drore bacefook page