Category: Sound
Three days later than scheduled, here’s episode eight of Enlarged Heart Radio, making up for last edition’s lack of metal with a whole noisy slab of it — plus a decent portion of newer tuneage from the promos I’ve been digging through.
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Make me want an oral history of all the key clubs and venues of the music underground. And not just in the US. #link
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I'm not a re-reader, but I didn't realise so much time has passed (I got it when it came out, which does not feel like 15 years ago). I think this one needs another go. #link
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Up early, accounting for the fact that I’ll be on coaches and trains for Easter tomorrow, here’s Enlarged Heart Radio number seven, featuring Racebannon, Guerilla Toss, Charalambides and no metal for a change.
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The noise musician's page for his prolific self-release catalogue. Bit expensive for digital vanity projects, mind. #link
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Tony Visconti goes back to the original master tape to talk the elements that make up the classic Bowie number. #link
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Yep. I find it hard to stomach even the obvious black humorous 'EC Comics gone extreme' vibe of early Cannibal Corpse, for instance. But that pales in comparison with some of the rubbish out there now. #link
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Because sometimes that's you need. See also: The Last Second Of Every AC/DC Song Ever Recorded #link
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Interviews about jazz and heavy metal by Hank Shteamer, the man behind the recent Craw reissues (which are fabulous, by the way, and I'd have a physical copy if I could afford one). #link
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D Boon's fiancée shares her story of that fateful night 30 years ago. This is from over a year ago but I only saw it via a tweet recently; some relief that no individual was to blame for what happened, though that was never what mattered. #link
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Justin Snow's a good man for heavy recommendations. (Even if I don't see what the big deal is about Bell Witch, sorry!) See also his similar lists for solo drone, collaborative drone and non-drone/metal. And there's Black Metal & Brews' The 25 Best Electronic, Experimental, and Post-Punk Albums of 2015. #link
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Bludded Head, NASA Space Universe, MoHa! and more in the sixth edition of Enlarged Heart Radio. If you’re listening and liking what you hear, please do let me know.
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My latest hour of interesting sounds for your ears, this time featuring Sonic Youth, Dead Neanderthals and Bosse-de-Nage among others.
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And what's more, there's an actual person named Leroy Jenkins. (Not Leeroy Jenkins, alas.) #link
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Wish I could add this to my Bandcamp wishlist but it seems to be broken 'cause the label's using its own domain. Anyway, this is great and I'll be buying it pronto. #link
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Just in time for their recent re-emergence, the Drainland back catalogue is now on Bandcamp, much of it for free download. #link
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Dark moods, danceable riffs, proggy noodling and more in Enlarged Heart Radio number four.
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Behind the scenes with today's jazz wunderkind. I need to give The Epic another go, as the lush arrangements on my first listen put me off (but I did appreciate it when the first track opened up a little and Kamasi started wailing on the sax). #link
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Bit of a sampler for Dead Neanderthals and their noisy associates. #link
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A third hour of interesting sounds for your ears to bring January to a close. No death metal this time! But still a little screaming. Also, I still have a very blocked nose.
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The second episode of Enlarged Heart Radio is now online for your listening pleasure. Went a bit guitar riff heavy with this one but that’s the mood I was in.
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Or a podcast. Or a mix. Whatever! It’s called Enlarged Heart Radio, and the first episode went up at the weekend.
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Derrick Bostrom continues his archeology of his erstwhile band's musical evolution. #link
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Looks like a decently deep discussion with the Soundgarden guitarist, who doesn't get the due he deserves. #link
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Lexicon Devil's Dave Lang remembers one of the lost SST classics. #link
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Bad headline for what's really an oral history of what it was like to work at the ubiquitous 'record club' in the '90s. What a crazy story. #link
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A visual programming language for interactive computer music. Filing this for future reference. See also: IanniX, a graphical open source sequencer. #link
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Nice feature on the best act at this year's Eurovision. And no, I'm not making an ironic joke. #link
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It's my favourite death metal record of the year, so it is. (Even if the solos are found wanting.) #link
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Had my best music writing day in ages yesterday, and this is one result. One of my picks for the year, this record, too. #link
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Forgot to post this earlier in the week; I reviewed the Aussie improv jazz trio on my first time seeing them (after three attempts!) as they closed the four-night 'pop-up' festival STRUT at the Peacock. #link
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For the usual reasons, alas. Dig a little deeper, though, and you'll find it's still an egalitarian culture, maybe even more so than ever before. #link
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The Jawbox vocalist/guitarist goes deep on his best-known band's final record for the AV Club. But reading him say that he "can't sing"? What the hell are you talking about, man?! You have one of the richest sounding voices in rock! #link
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The crazily prolific avant black metal act is refreshingly open and candid about his music and creative process here. #link
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Lots of important questions raised here. I feel like the closer any music gets to political (or politicised) expression, the more accountable it must be for its symbolism. It's also too easy for people to provoke real feelings of hurt in others yet absolve themselves from any guilt or blame as they hide behind a false curtain of nihilism or intellectual superiority or whatever. (In other words, feck off with your 'sun wheels' bullshit.) #link
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The instrumental titans return with a huge slab of a record. #link
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The Napalm Death bassist picks his favourites from the John Peel record library. #link
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Invisible Oranges traces the birth of second-wave black metal to... Colombia? Not as weird at it sounds, when you think about it; it's a bit western/colonial to assume Brazil was the only South American country to export/influence extreme metal in the 1980s. #link
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Ian Maleney's feature on what was essentially Britain's answer to SST -- and not only because it licensed stuff from the SST and Touch & Go rosters. Interesting to note that the label got its start in Nottingham, which would birth Earache (and the grindcore movement) a few years later, and that label head Paul Smith now lives in rural Cork, about as far from the industrial abrasiveness of the label's key acts as one can get. #link
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Melvins main man Buzz Osborne calls bullshit on the artsy Kurt Cobain documentary, including the tidbit that "there was absolutely nothing wrong with his stomach. He made it up for sympathy and so he could use it as an excuse to stay loaded." There goes the notion that he might've had undiagnosed IBS. #link
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The Guardian profiles Oscar-winning sound designer Skip Lievsay: "His expertise, fittingly, is what can’t be seen – sound, yes, but also everything else that sound is to the human mind: the way we orient ourselves in relation to spaces, to time, to each other; the way we communicate when language fails; the way our ears know, precognitively, when the dark room has someone lurking in it or when a stranger will be kind. He orchestrates the levels of human perception that most people either fail to examine or lack the ability to notice at all. His job is to make you feel things without ever knowing he was there." #link
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The latest episode of Fractured, a video series on Irish underground music by my friend John Mulvaney (of The Nostalgic Attic), focuses on the bleak pastoral blackened noise project From the Bogs of Aughiska, who I've seen live a couple of times now, an intense experience to say the least. (And I'm surprised to learn the man behind the mask doesn't like to play live, which is a shame as that presentation of his music, with accompanying video projections, really brings out its power.) #video
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Pretty sweet that a few lines of code can turn a web browser into a software synth. #link
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On women's alienation from rock. Or rather, the rock musical/critical canon, because there's plenty of room for women in more underground, niche genres. Still, there can always be more. (And the same could be said for every relative minority, ie anyone not a white male.) #link
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A compilation of nothing but covers of 'Louie Louie'. (You could probably make a similar compilation just of Black Flag's versions of same.) #link
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Best SoCal hardcore band since the SST days, I don't care what anyone else says. And most of their released stuff is here. #link
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At long last, the legendary Bay Area bruisers' discography (or most of it, anyway) for streaming and download. #link
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JG's recent live set of harsh noise from the co-op venue. #link
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What a strong visual sense that label had, too. Not uniform as the classic jazz imprints that inspired it but with a common sensibility nonetheless. #link
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Heavy on the repetition, distortion, Suicide-esque drum-machine damage. That kind of noise. Good stuff here. #link
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