Monthly Archive

And so to the second instalment of My Life Inside A Beer Advert (first part is back here; note that by the time of this second instalment the price of said beverage had risen to an outrageous £3.90 for 330mls; approaching £7 a pint…I thought this was a celebration of Brazilian not Norwegian culture).  I arrived to near-Brazilian sunshine, and in plenty of time, so much so in fact that I was able to indulge in a quick game of Mornington Crescent (tipping my hat deferentially to Willie Rushton’s blue plaque on the station), and to have a cheeky non-sponsored pint in the pub next door to Koko; the entire King Creosote entourage appeared to have had a similar idea by the look of the place.

This did mean that I missed the solo set of Tony Da Gatorra - more of him later - and another capoeira demonstration.  The first act I saw was Sao Paolo’s Romulo Froes, who did an interesting job of blending classic tropicalia’s wistful bossanova with more modern influences.  The band were a bit mid-period Radiohead in parts, with particularly squalling and proggish guitar, but Froes’ vocals fitted perfectly into that gorgeous Gil/Veloso/Gilberto lineage.  Most interesting.

I’m not even a fan of the Super Furry Animals, but I appear to have accidentally seen Gruff Rhys twice now in just over a week.  He appeared helmeted, as is his wont, and accompanied by the aforementioned Tony The Guitar, who looked fresh from playing at some small venue somewhere in, um, the late 1960s, and who was jabbing at some sort of home made electronic guitar-shaped synthesiser whilst shouting “Peace!”.  Quite often.

The logical progression from this madness was for the remainder of Rhys’s set to take place inside a television set diorama.  Oh, and in some airplane seats for the epic narrative of the closer which set some story about aircraft terrorism to the bass line from (appropriately enough) Os Mutantes’ “Bat Macumba”.  I particularly enjoyed the track they built from lots of looped samples until it became a cacophony of screams and noise, and the one which went “we’re driving driving driving driving driving driving driving”.  But in Welsh.

King Creosote was given the task to follow this, and did so with a surprisingly raucous band which featured fellow Fence artist Johnny Pictish.  They played some new stuff from forthcoming album Bombshell, and some tracks from last album KC Rules OK, including “Bootprints” and a marvellous “Not One Bit Ashamed” which featured Romulo Froes adding shiver-inducing Brazilian harmonies to KC’s melancholic Fife burr. 

Inevitably, Tony Da Gattora stumbled back on stage, prompting a cheeky chorus of “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” from Johnny Pictish, prompting fits of giggles all round.  By the end of the gig, pretty much everyone was on stage at once (about ten people, all very Earth Wind and Fire) for a cover of his brother’s band The Aliens’ “Happy Song”, including a bewildered-looking Gruff Rhys stomping from side to side of the stage shouting into everyone’s microphones.   It all seemed a suitably happy conclusion to a very happy evening.  At least until I left to get the tube home, that was…

A fairly rum thing this, I couldn’t decide if I was attending a gig, or had descended Tron-like into the bowels of a beer advertisement.  A certain Brazilian beverage (£3 for 330mls, if you please) was sponsoring a few days of gigs in London, plastering their name all over the tube and (with epilepsy-inducing flashes and colours) all over the innards of the Kentish Town Forum for this one. 

There was a display of the Brazilian is-it-a-dance-or-a-fight capoeira (a square dance or a square go?) beforehand , with two men tumbling about in an ever-decreasing circle for an ever-decreasing number of viewers.  By the end probably only about six people got to see any more than the occasional flash of foot emerging with admirable dexterity from the crowd at over head height. 

Brazilians Bonde De Role had a rapper touching herself in all her rude places and shouting at us over a selection of naff records, including the Grease soundtrack.  Really, I thought to myself, did Salt’N'Pepa die for this? 

Os Mutantes were rather more enjoyable.  Featuring original members Sergio Dias and Arnaldo Baptista, although not original vocalist Rita Lee (who has denounced this comeback as an attempt to “earn cash to pay for geriatry”), they cantered with good humour and confusing ‘twixt-song banter (did I really hear a song being dedicated to Henry V?  And what was all that stuff about Tony Blair?) through their catalogue, with “Tecnicolor” and Mendes tribute “Cantor De Mambo” being personal favourites.  

They saved the big ones for last, with a bafflingly sludgy “A Minha Menina” and a gloriously batty “Bat Macumba” sending the whole audience batshit.  It has been about 40 hours since the gig has ended, and those crazy cross-cut lyrics are still arguing with themselves in my head.  Batmacumba ê ê, batmacumba oba!

Self-titled albums, eh?  Why go to all that trouble to write and record your new songs, pick a lovely cover photo, and then don’t bother to give it a title, annoying shop assistants and reviewers everywhere (should the title of a post such as this be Band X, Band X (label Y) or just Band X (label Y)?  I’ve never been sure)?  Leaving aside your pompous serial offenders on whom I’d rather not waste any words (your Gabriels, your Seals) I reckon the usual reason - whether stated as such or not – tends to be that of trying to create a sense of importance to the album it may or may not actually merit.  As if to say: “We are this album.  We live these dusty grooves.”  Which kinda makes sense if it is your first album, and the record is very much the summation of your life to date i.e. you are The Clash.  It is a bit different a few albums in though, and to me feels a bit like your previous records are being disowned somewhat.  And that is a tough thing to do when you are following up a couple of terrific records.  Which is where Liars come in.

So is this to be their flag-waving manifesto?  Nah, but there is a definite repudiation of their past.  There is a noticeable lurch to the centre ground, away from the witchy fragments and voodoo churn of their preceding two records.  Liars positions the band somewhere in a distant and discordant corner of the pop universe; using their elbows to make some space amongst the likes of the Jesus and Mary Chain (“What Would They Know”, “Pure Unevil”) and even Gorillaz (I kid you not, check “Houseclouds” or “Sailing to Byzantium”). Digging themselves a trench.  Or a grave.  Is this self-titled thing a monument?  Or a tombstone?  Vote with your feet when this thing is released in late August.

I was quite pleased with a recent transaction which took place in the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall, in which I exchanged 3 GBP (in the form, I believe, of 3 x 1 GBP coins) for a 5” cardboard box and disc.  This was a super super limited Matmos tour CD entitled A Paradise of Dainty Devices (interludes, micromedia and sound edits), with a cover compiled by Drew Daniel himself (as confirmed by the initials DD in the lower right back corner).

I’m not going to waste too much of your time on a record you will have some difficulty in actually procuring, but there is some neat stuff on this.  Amongst the aforementioned interludes, micromedia and sound edits festooned all over the disc’s surface, there are a couple of  brilliant tracks from their soundtrack to a BBC World Service radio version of Bram Stoker’s “Lair of the White Worm” (check the elegant reverse of “Mercy Farm”), and two from their first-ever cassette in 1994 (including the quite frightening collage“Living In That Wire House”).  Oh, and I almost forgot: it includes a couple of jingles Matmos wrote for a shampoo commercial (entitled, amusingly enough, “Frizz” and “Puff Puff”), which despite clocking in at a combined 43 seconds are more than worth 3 units of any country’s currency.

Featured in photos: Tinariwen, Hot Chip, Tiny Dancers, Daddy G

Featured in photos: Super Furry Animals, Junior Boys, Malcolm Middleton, Fujiya and Miyagi, Dark Captain Light Captain, Sly and the Family Stone.

I’m tired, partially deaf (two loud ringing tones dominate - one high and shrill, one slightly lower and a bit crackly), a bit dizzy (probably due to said deafness), and feel a bit sick (probably due to said dizziness).  It must have been a good night.  In fact the only thing that lets down these Upset the Rhythm events is the cock quotient: the event was held in the trendy Old Blue Last, with its too-cool-for-school bar staff, roadkill hairstyles, ridiculous clothing (good news!  It appears that the vest is in!), stupid hats and sunglasses worn indoors.  The lineups for their events are rarely less than extraordinary.  Even if something is rubbish, more often than not it is so rubbish that it is funny.

Which leads me to the support acts, and first to the cleverly monikered female foursome Back Stabbath.  They were a bit angsty - “This next one is about the normalisation of abuse in the family” (oh, aren’t they all?) - and shouty, with the lead singer wandering the crowd yelling in our faces.  Thankfully, with a set of about six songs, none of which were longer than 90 seconds, they could hardly be accused of outstaying their welcome.

The cock quotient was about to rise dramatically.  Whitehouse were next, revelling in their Wire-sponsored return to the limelight by fiddling with their nipples and swearing at the audience in a manner that was probably very controversial and confrontational twenty years ago, but just put me in mind of a swingers party for pissed-up cab-drivers.  Their equipment - laptop and air synth - worked fitfully; their performance did not work for me at all.  Oh, for heavens sake, put it away.

Thankfully, Wolf Eyes were so good that they almost burnt out my memory of the preceding nonsense as well as blowing out my eardrums.  Did I mention it was really loud?  It was really loud.  Commencing with “Driller” from last year’s fuck-me-I’m-scared Human Animal, they didn’t really let up for the next hour.  

All the elements of this, this, I don’t know what it was, became tangled in a ball of sound.  Nate Young’s vocals, John Olson’s sax and single-stringed bass, Mike Connelly’s guitar, and all manner of devices in boxes, they all became enmeshed in steel wool feedback, which scoured the Old Blue Last with masochistic delight. 

I was reminded of the quote by Don Ayler about how to listen to the music he was making with his brother Albert: “try to move your imagination toward the sound. It’s a matter of following the sound”.  Amongst the dense undergrowth you could make out trails to follow, such as metal riffs or sick distorted pulses - you just had to trust your instincts. Wolf Eyes were following theirs, and to awesome effect - gig of the year so far, i reckon (judge for yourself: here is an mp3 of the whole damned thing).

The pictures look better at flickr; there are a few more there too.

Pleasant surprise, this.  With his fourth album – two as the unhandsome and dickless Manitoba, and now two as Caribou – Dan Snaith has delivered a fabulous and unexpectedly poppy little principality.  Andorra may have its footballing credentials questioned on a regular basis, but the musical credentials of this are unimpeachable

Right from the no-messing, pounding, so melodic, opening track “Melody Day” – which may be the finest thing Dan Snaith has signed his name to - this is up there with the best experimental pop.  While electronic in nature, there are a whole lot of other sounds therein.  I’m hearing a lot of Nuggets in this.  Love’s ambition, with the flutes, strings and a certain Arthur Lee quality in the vocals too – check “Sandy”.  There are echoes of psych-rock guitar and some heavy Tintern Abbey drumming.  More modern hints of The Beta Band, even a shared song title in “She’s The One” (aficionados of the rom-com genre may protest that this is much more likely to be a reference to the Aniston vehicle of the same name).  A couple of low key electronic tracks serve to build atmosphere for the nine brilliant and unmistakeably Who-influenced minutes of “Niobe”.

Available in August.  Check Merge or Caribou’s Myspace page for more.

Where N-Collective family members Ultralyd’s Conditions for a Piece of Music luxuriates in its epic languor, Moha’s Norwegianism acts up like a particularly hyperactive and itchy child playing two shoot-em-up arcade games simultaneously whilst texting their mates about how they got thrown off the bus for shouting and throwing chips at their fellow passengers. 

On a typical (well, typical for them) piece like “Daily Three”, Anders Hana’s distorted guitars and electronics howl whilst Morten J. Olsen’s drums tumble thrilling all around a core of spasmodic Lightning Bolt twitch.  Tracks are generally fleeting (and ludicrously misnomered – nothing could accurately be described as “Jolly” or “Gay” here, unless they mean those words in their lesser-used senses of  “face-melting” or “laced with explosives”); just enough time to rip into your brain and mischievously swap a few connections around. One a couple of occasions, such as on “Ibiza One” towards the end, a hole is briefly smashed in the sky through which Ultralyd’s monstrous groan emerges, and as undeniably exciting as Norwegianism is, it may be to the Ultralyd album I think I’ll find myself returning more rather than this; Norwegianism leaves my synapses sparking and burnt out.

Norwegianism is available from Rune Grammofon.  Listen to more at their myspace.

Two fractions distilled from Norway’s N-Collective – the stable long-chain of  Ultralyd and the more volatile short-chain of Moha – have spilled on Rune Grammofon.  Despite Moha’s two members Morten J.Olsen (the J disambiguating him neatly from the head coach of the Danish national football team) and Anders Hana forming a crude 50% of Ultralyd, you would hardly know it, so different are the resulting albums.

Ultralyd’s Conditions for A Piece of Music is far less frenetic than their most recent release proper Chromosome Gun, a place where the 4/4 drum beat of “Saprochord” would have felt a bit underdressed.  The influence of so-called stoner-rock bands such as Earth is obvious in the metallic drone undercurrent, to which can be added fiery space-jazz (“Comphonie III”, featuring honks from the notably restrained saxophonist Kjetil Möster, borrows from Joe Henderson’s classic “Earth”), and the lop-sided dark funk of This Heat (the brilliant “Low Waist”).  Conditions for a Piece of Music is a hugely impressive dark and slow-burning record.

Conditions… is available now from Rune Grammofon.  You can listen to more at Ultralyd’s myspace.  A review of Moha’s Norwegianism will, as surely as a red sky at night brings shepherds’ delight, appear some time tomorrow…

My fascination with Finland has now reached such a stage that I’ve had to go and take my fitful world tour there next month.  In Tampere, Helsinki, Turku, Saimaa, Aland and Lapland, preparations have already begun, with locals building brick barricades to protect themselves from a rising tide of unnecessary alliteration and faintly ridiculous water-related metaphors. I need to try to find out just what it is that is about the country that is giving it such a strong esoteric musical tradition.  Is it the weather?  The scenery, with its forests and lakes?  Or is it – my guess, after a shot or two of it at a recent Fonal gig - the Salmiakkikossu?  Already this year I’ve been unduly excited by albums by Islaja, Kemialliset Ystavat, and Pan Sonic.  My internal adding device tells me that this must therefore be the fourth.

It was out a wee while ago, and stocks are probably lower than North Sea cod by now.  However if you can see a copy then buy on sight.  This record hangs in the air like heat haze, and it just won’t shift;  one seamless shimmer, with Rhodes keyboard burbling amongst percussive shuffle and twinkle.   Tower takes the rhythmic-yet-languid feel of “Shh/Peaceful” from Miles’ In A Silent Way, and of Can’s “Future Days”, and stretches it in the air until it cracks and chunks of light break through the holes.  They are unfeasibly prolific, and will no doubt have another record along any minute, but do not let this imply dispensability.

Listen to “Gättö” here.

Being on 12k, I can probably be economical with the word count here, as the following can be taken for granted with each of these two releases: minimalist, microscopic attention to detail (extending to the moody landscapes on the covers, as you can see below) and fanatical obsession with the qualities of sound.

Jodi Cave’s record is the more nature-fixated and minimalist, overlaid with all manner of tiny scrabbly sounds, a few of which I’ll somewhat misguidedly try to describe.  “For Myria (One)” sees him cooking bacon in a tent on a rainy day (probably), all delicious crackles and spatter.  After this comes “Rara A” during which Cave takes label heid bummer Taylor Deupree for a stroll through the park, kicking stones at birds as they go; stopping off for an ice-cream (of course). “Untitled” is a churchy drone, while “For Myria (Two)” features beautiful music box tones.

Pjusk’s electro-acoustic sculptures are buried under vinyl crackle and tape hiss.  Amongst this quiet noise, instruments play slow, sad stabs of melody – guitar in “Rim”, piano in “Kontur”.  Stunning mournful choral and classical splinters emerge through cracks as in a less abrasive Philip Jeck performance.  Towards the end “Anelse” and “Rom” feature muffled beats, vocal fragments and keyboard sounds not entirely dissimilar to those you would find in a Boards of Canada record.

My instinctive preference was for the lusher Sart, but I can feel that the subtleties of For Myria mark it out as a grower.  Both are available from the 12k shop.

A fine weekend of tennis and Tour De France –related excitement, most of which I spent in the red polka-dotted jersey, was brought to a close by an unforgettable concert at the Royal Festival Hall.  I had seen Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton sharing a bill here not long before the place shut for refurb, but here they were to actually share the same stage contemporaneously, for the first time ever.  A fact I found quite hard to believe given the hulking shadows these two cast across the free jazz field.

Although such a heavyweight line-up barely needed an undercard, surprise special guests  Polar Bear were given the task of warming us up.  Arriving 5 minutes late due to Rafael Nadal taking Roger Federer to that fifth set, I found them pootling away fairly inoffensively.  The longer they went on, the more Leafcutter John got stuck in and got his hands dirty, and it was this wild card element, along with some pretty lithe drumming from the colossus of ‘fros Seb Rochford, which raised them far above the mundane.  “Te” in particular saw Leafcutter John playing a squeaky balloon solo, before working with Rochford on reimagining the track as Can’s “Oh Yeah”.

Cecil Taylor danced on stage to begin an intermeshed piano/drum entrée with Tony Oxley, a man who drums with the casual manner of a geography teacher pointing out areas of deforestation on a map of the world.  The first piece stopped-and started, with Taylor pushing out some neat melodic phrases for Oxley to pat into rhythmic shape, the second piece was longer, flowing, and a bit boisterous.  It was very much like listening in to a conversation between two old men collapsing into bickering over who was first to court the affectations of some girl (called Penny…no, called Dorothy!) in some year (1947!  No, it must have been after we went fishing in the lakes, which was 1948…no, wait a minute…).  But with a bit more purpose.

Following a muscular William Parker bass solo, the group including Braxton were on stage together.  After my previous introduction to live Braxton (classical, mathy, swing-free), he was a revelation to me tonight, tearing up the first half of the concert with lengthy fiery excursions on sopranino, soprano, and tenor saxes, and contrabass clarinet, which had the others scrambling at his heels. I could barely hear Parker, that bear of a bass player, amongst this brutality.  As it went on, Taylor caught him up, playing some battering cross handed runs up the keyboard which probably earned him the maillots a pois rouges to Braxton’s maillot jaune.

Music on the Touch label is often fixated with environmental matters – not in the Al Gore solar panel powered TV standby button sense, but in the sense of their regard for the music which exists in or is created by the environment (note their forthcoming Atmospheres event at the lovely Museum of Garden History).  Hence while this latest release is billed as a duo record featuring Lasse Marhaug on electronics and Nils Henrik Asheim on organ, the contribution of a third body is as important: the Oslo church in which this was recorded.

An engineer friend was talking to me about the complexity of installing a church organ.  Admittedly, a lot of stuff went over my head, all about load bearing and so on, but I did get the impression of the serious enmeshment of organ and building.  This concept is key to the success of Grand Mutation, in which the embranglement of all the three elements becomes absolute – the organ notes are swallowed up by the resonance of the room, which merges with Marhaug’s electronic waves, drones and feedback.  While I was occasionally reminded of the interlocked Sten/Storlokken axis at Supersilent (re-interpreting some Bach, perhaps) the terrifying quasi-religious feeling induced by the likes of “Bordunal” is akin to that I get listening to Ligeti at his most serious.  I obtained idiosyncratic light relief during the moments when the constituent parts were fractured by the punishing organ at the end of “Phoneuma”, and on into the brief “Magnaton” – my mind inexplicably entertaining the Simpsons scene where Bart replaces the organist’s sheet music with Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.

Explore the colossal spaces of Grand Mutation for yourself with purchase from the Touch shop.

I’d been looking forward to this.  Following the enthusiasm I lavished upon Nina Nastasia and Jim White’s recent You Follow Me album, the chance to se them perform it live in the gorgeous Union Chapel in London’s swanky Islington was too enticing to miss.  Her voice and that drumming, with those ecclesiastic acoustics - it couldn’t fail.  Could it?  Well, actually…

Twilight Sad’s was a more acoustic performance than usual, so I’m told.  They may have told us this fact themselves, I’m not sure, and I certainly could not tell you the names of the songs - there was an impenetrable language barrier.  Extravagantly Glasgwegian, and resolutely downbeat, this was like watching a stripped-down stage version of Taggart, but without all the dead giveaway clues that have you yelling “The priest is the killer!” within the first five minutes.  Which probably wouldn’t have been the most appropriate thing to shout in these settings anyway.  Still, they were perversely enjoyable, and the last song built to a cracking shouty climax.

Then we were to hear Jim White playing with Nina Nastasia.  Only Jim White couldn’t hear Nina Nastasia.  And then a vicious hum from the speakers began to render her guitar inaudible to all.  She then appeared unable to tune her guitar by ear, resulting in an extensive embarrassing pause.  Finally another unholy buzz not only wiped out the guitar sound again but threatened to deconsecrate the church itself.  Only after the guitar was unplugged for the last couple of songs did we began to get anything approaching listenability, although by then the moment had passed, and the atmosphere was a bit flat.  Nina Nastasia clearly recognised this; the audience’s fairly half-hearted cry for more being met with “You have got to be kidding me!”, and then after the briefest of encores she really couldn’t leave the stage fast enough.  What a pity.

The sense of being lost I feel when trying to make sense of the rate at which Machinefabriek spits out CDs and/or collects and repackages them in more user-friendly combinations and compilations is nothing compared with the sense of being lost I feel when tumbling through the surfaces of Weleer and drifting off and forgetting to leave space for the reader to draw breath.  Breathe now, and breath deeply.

Machinefabriek is such an apt name for Rutger Zutdervelt’s work: as I’ve already mentioned, this is a record very much about surfaces.  Simple wood-and-string structures are covered in layers of gauze, before all manner of abrasive devices are used to scuff it all up.  Songs are anchored by drone as they are buffeted by electronic winds and rain; through the dense horizontal weather conventional shapes can be perceived – the perishing piano in “Roes 9”, the doomed choir in the magnificent, turbulent “Hieperdepiep”.  Occasionally, sunlight permeates briefly (as in the Tape-like “Oi Polloi”), its reflections scattering to the horizon pursued by the ever-rumbling dark clouds.  It is that anchor which not only keeps the monumental Weleer from being ripped to firewood by the elements, but which also lashes this all together into a huge and hugely addictive listening experience.  Breathe this stuff in.

Available now from Boomkat.  There also appears to be a remix album due soon featuring the likes of Xela, Alva Noto, Greg Haines and Pita.  Wow.  Check Rutger’s website for more news.  You can listen to other tracks including “Wintervacht“, “Donderwolk“, “Bye Bye Boat Bye Bye Building” and “Ryan“ from Weleer - you could be there for hours, mind you don’t get lost…

Much more like it.  I got the impression at this show that the Royal Festival Hall was getting back up to speed after those initial teething problems I experienced upon its re-opening.  I doubt that Matmos, who were surprisingly - to me at least, if not the large Japanese contingent in the crowd – on the undercard act tonight, ever have an off night.

They came out of their corner swinging, with a mammoth piece (written with Terry Riley, apparently) similar to the opening to Faust’s “Krautrock”, undulating and throbbing with malevolent intent, guitarist Nate Boyce in their corner to smear feedback over the raw cut surfaces. 

The arrival of any beat was delayed until the following piece, when some latin-flavoured percussion arrived to douse the near subsonic bass that pushed the RFH’s soundsystem – and our ears - to the limit.  The earthenware mid-section to their translation of sections of Verdi’s Aida raised my one disappointment of the evening: that they didn’t sample anything that could not be found outwith the aisles of a mid-sized B&Q garden centre.  After a pounding “Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan”, they closed with a low-key Robert Ashley spoken word piece, and were gone, all too soon.

So it was Cornelius, or should I say the – prepare yourself for this - Cornelius Sensuous Synchronised Show - who headlined the evening.  A curtain dropped to show the luxuriantly-ennobled foursome in matching grey outfits.  The music was fine, mainly from his punky new album, with the fidgety drumming of his classic “Point Of View Point” being my musical highlight.  But with a name like that, it was never going to be just about the music was it…

The visuals were astonishing.  My notebook is littered with what now seem chunks of arrant nonsense, but which described scenes which at the time wowed me: “tessellated teeth”, “flying geese turn into stars”, “dancing sugarcubes”, and my favourite, “woman riding elephant fights dung beetle”.  It was better than all that though, and I kinda regret my comment on leaving to the guy from his entourage who was making some sort of movie of the event: “Yeah, Cornelius was great…but I really came to see Matmos”.  I suspect that one will be left on the cutting room floor.

A release by an artist going under the name of Elegi on the Miasmah label was highly unlikely to be a set of Disney covers, was it?  I think this (highly rational) prejudice may have coloured my first exposure to Sistereis.  I swear I spent an hour picturing squealing puppies being taped to the deck of a sinking ship.  I couldn’t imagine wanting to listen to it again.

I did listen to it again though, whilst walking at dusk through an alien park in a foreign town.  From the second “Despotiets Vesen” sneaked (snuck?) from Deathprod vaults (think Treetop Drive) to the moment “Spill for Galerie” counted down to the end of its existence somewhere on a gloomy grassy heath, I found myself warming to the record’s icy charms.  The immaculateness of the execution (bad choice of word, oh those poor puppies!) can’t fail to impress; every brush of string, every breath of brass seems placed there just so, and just so as to interfere with the more nervous parts of my nervous system.

Listen to some tracks and buy it at Miasmah