Describing a Thomas Truax gig is a difficult task that sometimes requires some serious ethical thought.

On the one hand they are magical affairs that capture the imagination, and you feel that everyone should know about him. On the other, they are magical affairs that you feel would be ruined if you describe them in too much detail or actually mentioned him at all. Maybe it’s just best for people to stumble across him.

With all that in mind, if you’ve never experienced Truax before, take my word for it – you’ll love it. Regardless what kind of music you like/prefer this is the kind of live experience that is impossible not to enjoy. Find a date, track Truax down and go see him, you won’t be disappointed. If it’ll be your first time you should stop reading now… Continue Reading

I was a relative latecomer to the sparkly synth-led delights of Baltimore native Dan Deacon, having only uncovered the marvellous Spiderman of the Rings at the tail-end of last year. A schizophrenic hodgepodge of lo-fi electronica and more complex, if light-hearted, keyboard-heavy compositions. His ambition sometimes exceeded his ability to deliver, but when it hit the mark it truly took the breath away. What it lacked, however, was focus. Ideas were flung all over the place without any real rhyme or reason, and as good as individual songs were, it didn’t hold up too well as an album. It’s an issue the follow-up has done much to address. As a result Deacon has created, not to put too fine a point on it, a f’in masterpiece. Continue Reading

Walking around last years ATP’s Nightmare Before Christmas festival there were an abundance of ghoulish people donning Zu hoodies, their emblem being a blood dripping axe. I’d foolishly already missed these guys in action. Luckily I’ve got a hold of their latest record. Carboniferous is a deluge of sound; murderous violence reaping out its revenge. Huge Godflesh like bass lines throb over psycho terrifying sax solos, whilst incorporating almost rave beats, like on opener ‘Ostia’; the heavy trembling bass is almost as if Lightning Bolt and Holy Fuck have gone to hell and back with a sax. So there is some definite heavy groove in there fleshed out amongst the strange, morgue lingering world. It is brilliantly experimental, in a John Zorn head fuck kind of way. There are no side orders of salad with this record, it is pure meat, dripping slabs of malevolence, and, what appear to still be living bits of gristle and sinew, bones and fingers, writhing in madness in front of you, and creeping behind. Continue Reading

One of the joys of being a full time stoner is exploring the virtues of conspiracy theories. One of the best ones involves the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Grove, and an Owl burning ritual. As you stick together skins on the gatefold, and start dropping weed into what will be a rough approximation of a Camberwell Carrot, consider this – why on earth are some of the most powerful men getting together in a forest clearing and worshiping at the sight of a fiery bird? Doesn’t make sense does it? I mean an owl is hardly a symbol that signifies power and strength – wisdom maybe, but wisdom’s never been high in the attributes of world leaders has it? So why not pick a panther? Or a tiger? Or a vampire bat? Those a far more the signifiers a group of power hungry lunatics are after. An owl? Apart from a pretty impressive twisty head and the ability to emit pellets, there’s not an awful lot going on there is there? Continue Reading

This double CD epic slice of Six Organ of Admittance grandness, RTZ, is named after the button on a Tascam 484 that “returns to zero”. This suggests that we’re looking backwards, rather than forwards here. It squeezes together several lesser-known pieces from Six Organs early years into a colossal arc of drone influenced folk that might test the patience of even the most hardened fan. I’m not sure I can delve into the guts of which track did what to whom and when… there’s plenty of explanation on the website. I’m just going to concentrate on the music. Continue Reading

The UK seems to be a hot bed for experimental music at the moment. Last year so the rise of Fuck Buttons from a promising live band to a full fledged, Guardian backed, wonder. Tweaking the same thread of electronic influenced experimentalism are Three Trapped Tigers. A mesh of poptastic drums and scutterling keyboards are all tightly woven around a fiercely rhythmic drive. The tracks on their Myspace page have been keeping me sane during this month of solitude and financial ruin. Track ‘1′ is available for download below whilst their debut EP is for sale direct from their Myspace page.

In a bid to find out a bit more about the bands roots and influences, we got Tom from the band to answer the following questions: Continue Reading

Photographs by Gregory Nolan

Animal Collective, thy name is pretension. Previously a niche concern, their star is in the ascendant with new LP Merriweather Post Pavillion already being hailed as an “Album of the Year” contender from mainstream and indie press alike. But the Baltimore-based avant garde psych-noise-pop outfit don’t make it easy for the audience at this much-anticipated release-date show, eliciting equal measures of bliss and bemusement with their relentless experimentalism. Continue Reading

Women exist somewhere that is nowhere, and they’re apparently going to be huge. Or something. Underground-huge. Cryptic and spindly and slanted and enchanted and inverted and noisy and warm and fuzzy and lo-fi and subtle. And everywhere, and nowhere all at once. Where are these songs even happening? The titles all so suburban and forgettable, and its impossible to tell how many members they have playing or even singing at any one time. Half of the songs seem like extended no-place guitar workouts recorded in a hole in someone’s garage. And its fucking brilliant by the way. Continue Reading

While it’s unlikely that Animal Collective’s ninth will be revered to the same extent as Beethoven’s, they both share a  healthy dose of boldness. About as weird as you’d expect of an album named after a Maryland outdoor music venue with a potentially headache-inducing optical illusion for cover art, Merriweather Post Pavilion is an early candidate for being one of the most discussed weird albums of 2009. Exploring the borders between out-and-out psychadelic chaos and pop accessibility, the album is rarely less than challenging, and isn’t neccesarily the kind of album you’ll be listening to on repeat – at least not at first. It certainly isn’t for everyone – those who like their music a little more anthemic and more overtly based on hooks may find it a frustrating listen, for example – and while that’s often a fair criticism that can be leveled at it, MPP will, conversely, appeal to many for exactly that reason. The album frequently uses more subtle ploys to draw its listener in. Continue Reading

My experience with the university town of Manchester, England is about as reductive as you can go without sounding like a complete outsider, or buffoon (take your pick). Links are few but pictures of students punting about the River Cam, Slyvia Plath’s motionless head in an oven, Nick Drake’s plaintive folk music, Pink Floyd, and Robyn Hitchcock don’t provide a particularly happy or fair picture of the place. Beyond that, in the contemporary realm there’s Muse and you know they love to sing about apocalypse don’t they? Just to make sure, I’m not slighting any of these people or Cambridge itself (well, maybe Muse just a little). I’m just setting up the dark and beautiful mood for Fuzzy Lights’ debut album. You know, they call it the introduction and this one is getting way too long. Continue Reading

It is always good to try something new, and I have to admit having never heard of The Uglysuit when passed a copy of this, their debut album. I’ve worn a few ugly suits in my time, but that’s about as far as it goes and these Oklahoma noise freaks were a very pleasant surprise. They do share some similarities with Oklahoma’s other famous sons, The Flaming Lips, as there is a psychedelic edge to their music. Thankfully though, this does not cover up the craftsmanship of their songs. There are some great melodies here, enhanced by the off kilter moments rather than smothered by them. Continue Reading

In our review of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s album Fordlândia, we called it his greatest work so far, high praise indeed for the Icelandic composer responsible for some of the most chilling and haunting pieces of the last decade. Fordlândia tells the tale of the Brazilian workers, forced into work by Henry Ford in the 1930’s to produce rubber on the plantation land bought for his company. The workers were treated as near slaves, all vices forbidden, their way of life threatened by the American way. We were fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to met with Jóhann, where we learn about his childhood in Iceland and encounters with the boffins at CERN. Continue Reading

“Black Carrot play fierce, abstract, improvised, experimental jazz/rock/folk music.” This is what I’m told. If you want to describe yourself as abstract, or even experimental (how do you experiment with music anway? And then how do you decide to give your “experiments” a release on an indie record label complete with deluxe digi-packaging?) you’ve got to really earn the right. Straight away Black Forest are presenting their case: the artwork is devoid of either the name of the band or the album, instead adorned by Quentin Blake-style cartoons, and bizarre non-sequiturs and nonsense phrases the likes of which Lewis Carroll himself would be proud of. “Flares? No – Cloven Hoof!” could almost be the fittingly abstract title of the album, instead it is merely the front cover’s caption.
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Photographs by Dan Austin

Post-rock giants This Will Destroy You tore up the Music Box in Manchester last month. Here, our photographer Dan Austin, gives you the view from the front.

This Will Destroy You on MySpace

Everything/Everything is the third studio album from London based composer and performer Leo Chadburn, under his nom de guerre Simon Bookish. Famously evasive in his influences and techniques, Chadburn’s output has skipped between dancefloor friendly electro-pop, ambient composition and abstract spoken-word infused electronica. 

Everything/Everything is a watershed; a long awaited reconciliation with the many facets of his musical character. The complex backing arrangements are played on saxophones, brass, piano, harp and Farfisa organ and scored so tightly that when played live, the musicians visibly break out in sweat. They swirl in rapid syncopated eddies, mimicking the busy bleeping of Chadburn’s previous work. This is electronic composition reinvented and reframed within a live context that relates to jazz as closely as contemporary classical and lounge crooning. Continue Reading

Right. I’ll put this out there, for all of you. I bloody love 60s/70s British TV Shows like The Sweeney, The Avengers, Man In A Suitcase and films like Bedazzled, The Rise And Rise Of Michael Rimmer and any James Bond film from that era give me a big old entertainment based lob on. There’s something about them that just seems so nostalgic, so perfect, even though i wasn’t born until half way through the following decade. Everything just seems so happy and full of cliched goodness. And the soundtracks, well, they’re just incredible aren’t they? Grainy by way of sound, well written, often instrumental but always interesting enough to hold focus. So when i put ‘4′, the new release from Dungen into my CD player and started it off, you can imagine the smile that instantly spread its way across my face. Well, maybe you can’t, as i haven’t reviewed this album yet. But you can guess why. Continue Reading

This is a great idea, this album. Zac Pennington’s coldly, chillingly close-to-the-bone, androgynously written-and-delivered lyrics atop a background of sumptuous pop-classicalism arrangements oozing like some sort of strangled 1950s housewife’s radio, Lolita and Bacharach all in one, ravished on the patio or the front lawn. A great *idea*, but sadly only mediocrely (is that a word?) realized. Continue Reading

NYC is Kieran Hebden’s (aka Four Tet) fourth collaboration with veteran jazz drummer Steve Reid and while I won’t pretend that I have heard the other three, the word in the blogosphere is that this is the most equal of their partnerships, with Hebden given much more license to stamp his mark on the record. Certainly fans of Fridge and Four Tet would be foolish to overlook this, a beautiful and intensely atmospheric mini-album. Although I didn’t have the cover artwork to hand at the time of writing it is impossible to listen to NYC and not picture a seething, rain-lashed megatropolis. It’s a murky, cavernous record easily redolent of old Scorcese films: steam rising from man hole covers, pimps lurking in shadows, dealers dealin’ (to borrow from Bobby Gillespie). The percussive energy and gently building tensions and atmospherics make it less wilfully difficult than such jazz-electronica collaborations might lead you to expect. Continue Reading

Virginia-based Pontiak showcase their heavy but slow sludge rock sound on Sun on Sun, which seems to be one of those neither-one-nor-the-other mini-album projects. Although this is a record built almost entirely around a fairly conventional guitar-based rock setup, there are lots of faces to the band displayed here – opener “Shell Skull” is a brooding, methodical slow-builder which vaguely brings to mind Black Sabbath, but immediately following it is “Swell”, a curious but ultimately pretty redundant instrumental piece which sounds a bit like what I would imagine being stuck in a U-boat during a depth charge attack would sound like – there’s something very nautical and yet mechanical about it, it’s like a jam at crush depth. Continue Reading