Supersilent are just about my favourite band of the last 5 or 6 years, and so it was with huge excitement that I unwrapped this DVD and put it into the machine.
Just like the rest of their recorded output, this DVD is packaged and presented in the most minimal way to allow the music every possible space to breathe.
In fact the DVD is minimal to the point of not even having a menu – you put the disc into your player and the film begins. You can scan between songs but that’s all.
I guess this is basically Supersilent’s 7th album with added images.
Made up of 6 pieces of music performed at Parkteatret, Oslo on the 16 August 2004, the film is shot in black & white and is wonderfully evocative.
I remember once trying to explain to someone of just how wonderful Supersilent are and in the end taking them to see the band perform at the Purcell Rooms – an hour into the show they were convinced.
Therein lies the beauty of this DVD – being able to watch the four band members working off each other, Arve Henriksen on a wooden chair centre stage surrounded ominously by keyboards and drums, taking the size of the stage and reducing it to the bare essentials for the band.
Supersilent make improvised music that by turns glows, terrifies, enlightens, excites, but above all fills me with joy. Theirs is the sound of fjords in creation, glacial shifts of noise bursting from contemplative phases of subtle sound.
This release then is the perfect introduction for newcomers to the world of Supersilent and easy access into their live world for those already fans.

After the successes and failures of the last Name That Tune post, I thought I’d point out a project that Mrs. P started a couple of weeks ago. It’s called Pop Idle (the inspired title was my idea – it’s a pun, see?). The format’s simple: she posts a mystery mp3 once a week, and five guys who generally don’t know much about music (or anything else – me included) try to review it in our own unique, ham-fisted and uninformed way, without knowing who it is. After we’ve all slated it, she reveals who it is, and we all hang our heads in shame as it turns out that it’s someone really famous and the ‘popular music press’ love it, thus revealing how out of touch we are with modern culture.

So, come along and join in – comments are open and welcome and you can all join in and play along, and call us rude names when we say bad things about your favourite bands.

It’s hard to know exactly what superlatives to use to adequately review this album. Snowblood are a band from Glasgow and this is their second album, barely a year since their debut. But how far they’ve come on. In the space of eight tracks spanning just over an hour, they finally manage to match the intensity of their live appearance (recently glimpsed in a full-blooded tour of these isles) and give notice of their likelihood of becoming one of the UK’s most interesting and aurally satisfying bands currently operating.

Snowblood are one of an increasingly bountiful crop of bands exploring the space between ridiculously heavy metal music and the more minimalist and experimental side of “post-rock”. That is, their contemporaries can be named as bands such as Isis, Pelican, Mono (or even Botch and Converge) and how many other million bands that seem to be emerging from the woodwork of late, but comparisons to these fuckos hardly seems fair. To start with, each of these bands I have mentioned have always seemed to run out of interesting ideas (or if you’re Mono, never actually started out with any). What sets Snowblood apart for me personally at least is the fact that they are not afraid to keep pushing at any kind of normal expectations. You might read this, listen and draw comparisons to Neurosis, but it’s not like that’s a bad thing. And this is one hell of a sophomore album from a young and exciting band.

The album’s first two tracks are both sparse and quiet, creating a real sense of foreboding that manages to be earnest without being embarrassing, and when the crushing riffs finally crack open the sky and descend the power of their rage really is affecting. I don’t know how they’ve done it, but somehow Snowblood manage to keep this mood up for an hour without falling into the trap of coming across as po-faced. For someone as jaded as myself, it really is hearteningly sincere and all the for better for having the gall to be so. What’s even better is that they’re not all just foreboding and looming catharsis. Though the epic tracks – such as the all-conquering ‘Black Stars Over Glasgow’ – are probably the main thing to get all hot under the collar about, the unexpected thrashout of ‘The Year of the Bastard’ and some lovely mucking around with textures and sounds throughout the record are what makes “Being and Becoming” so compelling a listen for me.

A quick mention that this CD will also be coming out as a double LP on heavyweight 180gm vinyl in a very limited edition of 500, which I would thoroughly recommend splashing out on.

www.snowblood.com

Sweaty, dumb and vacuous fun – Influx are fit to burst with ambition.

Their recent single ‘I Got Held Up…’ finds the band apparently fired up by secrets, lies and traffic. Oh the complicated joys of car ownership and dating. A not bad effort, it doesn’t shine as brightly as the band achingly want it too.

B-Side ‘When It Got Light’ is a much closer realisation of the band’s strengths. Fast, vital, but still rough round the edges, it is the soundtrack to the best half-remembered great lads nights out. It is (almost) as satisfying as getting off your face, stopping your mate starting a fight he couldn’t finish and falling in love with your best friend all over again.

Influx

As far as explorations of sound and spontaneous music go right now Volcano the Bear are where it’s at.
For this album VtB are a duo, the songs recorded at various different venues in early 2004.
What grabs me most?
Rhythm.
Yes, sounds shift in and out of focus as you might expect with this kind of music – atmospheres drift, there are vocal yelps and sighs punctuating animal asides – there are even what appears to be the occassional lyrical structure.
And it’s all being underpinned by rhythm pure and simple.
Sometimes it’s tribal tinged, sometimes it reminds me of no-one other than The Shaggs.
And it’s so damn refreshing.
I like Hans Benninck of course.
I like improvised drums that rumble and shout and fall over and make you laugh or frown or cover your ears, but sometimes that’s just wandering in the darkness.
I’m not sure exactly what it is I’m trying to get at except that this is spontaneous music that drives like rock’n’roll and WE ALL LOVE rock’n’roll.
Did I mention wandering in the darkness?
This album is blazing in the light.

These guys hail from Canada though as soon as the s-l-o-o-o-o-w opening track, “The Large Glass” starts you’d swear they lived in the swampy deep south of the USA.
I guess that’s not such a strange thing when you consider it – Cajun music and the music of French-Canada must have roots in some pretty similar history.
If I’m missing something obvious here please let me know.
Anyhow, I digress.
Mon Electric Bijou then make some good, sturdy, less-chords-is-more rock’n’roll.
There’s some nice vocal harmonies going on too. Just enough to add flavour rather than showmanship.
I’m not making much sense am I?
Let’s try again. The nearest comparison that springs to mind is the Magic Numbers though that’s based solely on the one song I’ve heard by that particular musical unit.
I’m listening to the record for the first time as I type this and the further into the album I get the more I like the understated nature of it all.
Any of the songs on this record could be BIG rock numbers but MeB hold back in just the right ways. The bass is nicely overdriven – just enough to create some dirt without becoming dingy. The guitars are all recorded pretty clean but still they rock.
You know what? I think I like this.
Buy one from them I guess: www.monelectricbijou.com

Now this is where it’s at.
I know absolutely nothing about Like a Stuntman – I’ve not bothered googling them even. I don’t really care about the details.
All I know is that this is an astonishing record.
Let’s get the usual lazy journo nonsense out of the way: Like a Stuntman nod towards Pavement circa “Brighten the Corners”, but it’s only a nod. There’s so much more.
The opening song, “We’re not in Brazil”, comes over all post rock tunefulness. It’s playful, the lyrics daubed across the melody like a Jackson Pollock (Jeez, look at me coming over all pretentious!), a good song.
But then it does something interesting.
There appears to be a glitch-core geek hiding in the corners of the studio feeding everything the band does through his little laptop and messing with it.
While ‘the guys’ play on this nerd breaks everything up with clicks and splutters and IT WORKS!
This album then is the sound of Pavement at their most avant or Gastr at their most tuneful mixed by someone who prefers Ratser-Noton releases to anything that’s ever come out on Drag City.
Further into the album the glitch takes over.
For a short time, as on “Kingkongs”, the nerd seems to be winning the fight only to have control wrestled back by the band.
I don’t want to find out more about Like a Stuntman.
I want to carry on believing that after recording, the band hunted their studio space for the little sod who fucked everything up.

Long overdue.

YES PLEASE
Blood Red Shoes 7″ on Jonson Family
Little White Lies magazine
The onset of massive autumn gig action
Last.fm – Get with it already

NEIN
Learning the hard way that being an office temp is no fun at all
ATP still being about a year away
The end of film as we know it

I joined a tribute band. Its only for one gig. Maybe two. I can’t decide if this is lame or not but I’m looking forward to it. My friend Phill is John Paul Jones in a Led Zep tribute and assures me it’s a blast. This conveniently allows me to inform anyone in or near Nottingham to keep December 20 free and then they can make their own minds up. Not only is it Gareth Hardwicks birthday it’s also Sneinton Stooges at Junktion 7. Plug over. And out.

With this sharp, stylish and dark collection of techno-house Simon Heartfield has produced a record to be proud of. With splintered confidence Permanent Way provides an atmospheric journey through backstreets, basements and bedsits. At times haunting, at others exhilarating, the listener is treated to a story of restlessness and resentment, told only through textured beats and buried samples.

Mixing elements of break beat, electro, house, techno and punk Heartfield has produced dance music that is very much of the moment. There are flashes of retro house that take me back to basement raves I’ve never been to alongside outstanding fractured drum patterns that I expect to be dancing to in the near future.

seatmanblisterhfield
Hackpen Records