You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2009.
What a year for live music that was, a real curator’s choice. One in which Ornette Coleman curated Meltdown. In which the “fans” curated ATP. In which The Wire curated their own three-day festival in Dalston. And these haven’t even made this list. Neither have fantastic sets by the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Machinefabriek, Broadcast and Icarus (well, it would be a bit cheeky nominating a show you DJed at, no matter how good the headliners were). So what has? Read on… Read the rest of this entry »
It has taken longer than ever this year to get the votes in from the vast team of writers who it takes to “maintain” this “site” in this “condition”. Some would say that this is no doubt due to the jaw-dropping quality of 2009′s releases necessitating spectacular quantities of chin-stroking and hair-tearing. Others would no doubt suggest that I fire myself. Who is right? Maybe we should vote on it. Anyway, without any further ado: the “results” are in… Read the rest of this entry »
Right, as this is (probably) the last album I’m going to review this year, best make it a good one. A good album, I mean. That the review won’t be any good is “a given”. If there is a band which sounds more like the logical conclusion of 2009′s hypnagogic and hauntological strands than Oneohtrix Point Never, then I haven’t heard them. Which of course means that Oneohtrix Point Never are at once achingly now, and yet sound painfully like they are from another era entirely. The early 1980s, specifically. Read the rest of this entry »
Silence is an odd name for this record, given just how much is going on within its grooves. While Robert Henke’s solo works have an explicit focus on sound, his work in Monolake is equally fascinated with the creation of rhythm. Even with the current version of Monolake being a (virtually) solo one, with Torsten Profrock’s involvement much more limited than on previous release Polygon Cities, this remains the case, with Henke cannily assimilating current musical trends into his perfectionist vision. And he is the ultimate sonic perfectionist: I mean how many other people found the possibilities afforded to them by their software so limiting that they went away and invented Ableton Live? Read the rest of this entry »
Ten years? Has it really been ten years since the first ATP festival? I hate to think how many pints of brand-bland cider have been consumed in that time. How many tonnes of tangled metal-kid hair have clogged the filters of the swimming pools of Pontins and Butlins. How many members of holiday camp staff have quit after having been asked to unclog said filters. How many sets Shellac have played. How many people have had life-changing musical experiences in the holiday camps of Camber and Minehead – and, I guess, New York, Victoria and Sydney. Given their globe-straddling success, a pause for self-congratulation with a new movie and a rifle through their own back pages could be forgiven. Yet despite the predictability of many of the names on the line-up (hello again Shellac, fancy seeing you here) there were enough moments of surprise – and at least one of towering greatness – to make this a birthday party to remember. Read the rest of this entry »
Lawrence English certainly wasn’t treating this trip to the UK as a holiday. After playing with the Touch crew at Oto on Monday, he managed to squeeze in a couple of nights with his own Room40 label before the return flight to Australia. I missed the first night, which featured performances by Steinbrüchel and an Organ Octet, but the heavy pan-global lineup for the Thursday night show was irresistible: Poland’s Tomasz Bednarczyk, Belgiums’s Dolphins into the Future and Japan’s Tujiko Noriko, the last of those playing in a trio with the UK’s John Chantler and English himself. Read the rest of this entry »
In concert, as evidenced on last year’s live album Townsville, the Necks are masters of the painstakingly restrained build, working up economical sections of melody and rhythm, gradually sliding them together over the course of an hour long set. UK performances have seen them still nominally billed as a jazz trio, performing in the likes of the Vortex – yet such pigeonholing is increasingly awkward. Their last studio album, 2006′s Chemist, saw them experimenting on much shorter tracks, driving from the blocks at great speed, with fully formed and thrillingly propulsive pieces. Here they return to the marathon, with a one-track 67-minute epic, but continuing to try out new musical ideas – to devastating effect.
Read the rest of this entry »
It is the time of year when everyone (myself included, sadly) is thinking about making lists of their favourite records of 2009. Actually, about half of the music websites did theirs in November. I just don’t understand that at all. I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever that I’ve heard more than a tiny percentage of the great music that has been released this year; even producing a best of 2008 list feels somewhat previous to me. So I’ll probably (once again) be one of the last to publish one, almost apologetically still shuffling new discoveries into the pack at the very last minute. Take this, as a case in point: Nicholas Szczepanik’s The Chiasmus. It was originally released in June by the Sentient Recognition Archive label, but has somehow now just managed to flag down my ever-speeding attention span. How many albums as good as this are out there, desperately trying to thumb a lift into the critical consciousness? Read the rest of this entry »
Touch’s series of Atmospheres events, of which this is the third installment, has an increasingly loosely-framed agenda to explore the sounds of the natural world. In previous years they have set up camp in the Museum of Garden History in Lambeth, with its fine old trees and historic garden. The move across town to Dalston, with its fine old, er, well, lets just say that the move across town to Dalston has added a different dimension to that theme. At least one of the performers was to pick up on that more urban aspect during the evening, although the quality of the sets from all three of Lawrence English, BJ Nilsen and Philip Jeck was – naturally – of the highest order. Read the rest of this entry »
I went to the Warp 20th anniversary bash at the Coronet at the weekend. I’m not going to write a proper review of this as I was slumped drooling in a corner out of my face on ketamine all night I was too scared to take my notebook to South London never mind my camera I must confess that I treated it more as a social occasion, and wasn’t really giving it my undemanded attention. And also as others I was with were packing both notebook and D20. However, a couple of performances were so good that I can’t resist mentioning them: Read the rest of this entry »
Recent Comments