Review - Space Guerilla

Space Guerilla
Boundless EP

 This album is immense. That's the word that springs to mind, immense - there's just a bigness to this EP, a sense of size and weight that most rock music these days is sorely lacking. It's heavy, but not in an aggressive way - this is a joyful, uplifting kind of heaviness, closer to Jimi Hendrix than Godflesh. Space Guerilla are a jam band par excellence - the five instrumental tracks that make up this twenty-three minute EP all sound like something a band would bash out at a rehearsal, but they've been honed, perfected, as if the band have road-tested them considerably. There's something for everyone on here - stunning riffs, perfectly swinging rhythms, masterful solos. If you don;t like Space Guerilla, you don't like rock music.

8/10

Review - Azealia Banks

Azealia Banks
Broke With Expensive Taste

I would struggle to tell you what most of the songs on this album are about - I was so caught up in the music I missed most of the lyrics. That very rarely happens to me. In fact, I can't think of another album this year that's had that effect on me. Then again, this was bound to be something special - anyone who heard "212" (ie. everyone) already knew Banks had serious talent. What noone could have predicted was just how good it would be.  This album is a perfect storm; it takes a rapper who would sound great over any backing track and pairs her with backing tracks that would sound great regardless of who did the vocals. The result, as you can imagine, is a hell of a record. It's full of those moments that make you pause the track and stare at the computer screen, thinking, How the fuck did she do that? Hell, there are about three of those moments on "212" alone.

The best word I can think of to describe this album is "euphoric". It's just...fun. I can honestly say that this was one of the most enjoyable albums I've heard all year. It's fast, energetic, with Banks' lyrics piled up on each other against frenetically upbeat music - basically, you should buy this.

9/10

Review - FKA Twigs

FKA Twigs
LP1

"I love another / And thus I hate myself". Those are the words with which FKA Twigs starts off her phenomenal new album, and right from the start you know this is going to be something different. It's difficult to describe her sound, but the most obvious point of reference is Prince. Just like the Purple One, Twigs' music oozes sex from every note, but without Prince's swagger. This is slow, dark music, like Burial producing Nick Cave, and on top of it all she has the dancing talent and the decidedly English phrasing of Kate Bush. But all these wild associations still don't fully describe her sound. To be honest, I don't think I can describe it. It's minimal, but layered; sweaty and claustrophobic, but with the glacial chill of Kraftwerk. And then there's her voice. FKA Twigs' voice is a unique instrument, with a sound like a human theremin. She manages to combine braggadocio, creepiness and vulnerability not only in the same song, but in the way she sings a single word. This album is like nothing I've heard before, and it's one that I know I'll be listening to a lot in the near future.

9/10

Review - Shellac

Shellac
Dude Incredible

Steve Albini's current band kick off their new album with a song about monkeys trying to get laid - this is completely unsurprising. That's the kind of guys we're dealing with here. I've got to be honest, Shellac has always been my least-favourite Albini band, and this album hasn't changed that, but they're still better than ninety per cent of the other bands out there, and Dude Incredible is a solid album. As always, Shellac know their way around a groove, and most of the songs here are built around repetitive, swinging guitar lines and rolling drums that give the album a great drive. The whole thing could be the soundtrack to some epic battle scene in a war film. In a lot of ways, Shellac are a jam band, but without any of the self-indulgent noodling that that implies - they know how to take a riff and run with it, while ensuring that no song overstays its welcome. This is an album that definitely deserves repeat listens.

Rating: 7/10

Armistice Day poetry

The French Woman

She was not young

Nor was her flesh as faultless as the smooth sepia girls of French postcards

A soft, round-arsed woman in a warm room

The wallpaper peeling

At her hips and stomach

Age and three children had lined her

As deeply as the Flanders countryside

He undressed nervously

Fumbling, clumsy from apprehension and Dutch courage

He had never before been naked in front of a woman

He was half afraid she would laugh

He took a quiet pride in her orgasm

As he would in a medal

Or a successful bet.

1915

When he ran through

Air filled with machineguns’ ratatatat

Bodies slumping over folded in half like broken shotguns

Limbless as department store mannequins

But mannequins don’t scream

                                    leave red patches in the mud

                                    call for morphine or their mothers

                                    shit themselves

                                    and go mad

When the shells sent up showers of mud and men

He saw the French woman.

No Mons angel

but her inviting big-arsed nakedness

hung before him in the bullet-blistered sunlight.

When he woke in the night to the sound of a sniper's bullet

colandering a skull

and the night air burned his lungs like chlorine gas

it was from dreams of her that he was roused.

And when he returned to that same town

that same bed

that same round, sagging body

he saw the face of a German he had bayoneted and stamped into the mud.

The French Woman’s Soldier

He looked faintly ridiculous

A young man

                        barely more than a boy

in an ill-fitting uniform. Not so much older

than her own sons.

He approached her body like all virgins,

first tentative, then insatiable,

his flesh a live wire under her hands.

He trembled like a frightened animal.

She put her mouth on him and drew out the fear

                                                                the homesickness

                                                                the thoughts of looking down to find

                                                                      his legs

                                                                           sheared

   off

                                                                           like

                                                                           daffodils

The longing for his mother

and crumpets dripping with butter

a warm bed with time to sleep in.

By the time he came that way again,

she had forgotten his face.

But she treated him with the same kindness she showed to all her soldiers.

Like a priest performing the last rites.

Home

The London streets were stranger to him

than all the bloody yards of France.

He met a girl there

who let him think he was her first.

At his proposal, her eyes filled

with the realisation that she had something else to lose.

Then back to where the guns

were louder than church bells,

and her face faded

like the light in the eyes of a dying man.

He sought out other women, whose paid-for bodies

did not remind him of his comrades’ shattered limbs.

It was easier to replace love with a transaction;

money for flesh. The fighting had taken away

his appetite for complicated things. And he built

a little jar in a corner of his heart,

to keep his love in. So it could be

kept fresh for her,

like something frozen.

Walls

He slogged through the war-churned mud

And wondered

At how many heroic dreams he once had had.

How strange that seemed,

Among these corpses clustered in each ditch

Like moths might gather round a candle flame.

He learned to separate himself;

To build up walls secure as any bunker

Around the part of him that still dreamed of Camden Town.

He kept it walled in

Like a countess.

He became as simple and blunt as a club

And old thoughts of courage did not trouble him

Anymore than they would trouble the rats he caught

With cheese on the end of a bayonet.

Against the flies, the lice,

The flag-charged dying of the place

He held the French woman

And all the facsimiles of her he had sought

In a dozen cheap whorehouses

And so he did not mind

That he woke each morning to the smell of cordite and rotten flesh.

Secure within his walls,

He saved the part of him he would bring home.

And leave the bloody soldier in some foreign field.

Walls (2)

He was silent as a shell-hole

Beneath the guns’ harsh syllables

His rifle barked its orders

Like a major

All at once the walls fell

Swiftly as death

No

Not death

For death is a lazy thing,

And all too often drags its feet.

            He had seen

            Death

            Move slower than a cloud on a breezeless day

            Crawling over the broken living shells of men

            Long since past saving

           

            Death the malingerer

            Arriving hours after

            The crashing of a bullet into some vital place

            The bowels strewn like confetti

            The howitzer’s inarguable command

Something else, then;

Some image more fitting

The dropping of a kestrel

Fast and simple as a stone

Thrown down from the sun-choked sky.

The walls came down.

Out poured the Camden boy

                  the love of home

                  of tea and toast by the fire

                  and other unheroic things

For the first time in three years,

He was seized with the urge to live.

He lay in the hole for three days

Before they found him,

Swollen and black with decay.

He would not live to see his soft, comfortable grandchildren

Wave flags

Wear their poppies like medals

And talk of the glorious dead.

Lou Reed - Lulu revisited

One year ago today, Lou Reed died. A year or two before that, he released his final album, which he described - in his own inimitable way - as "maybe the greatest thing anyone has ever done". That album was Lulu, a fusion of metal, poetry and nineteenth-century German drama, made in collaboration with Metallica. The responses from reviewers were predictable - they were baffled at best and outright scornful at worst, as they always are to anything outside their comfort zone. Hell, even I hated it when I first heard it. But now, a year on from Reed's death, it seems like a good time to revisit an album that, even if it didn't quite live up to its creator's hyperbole, was still a major work by one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century.

Lulu kicks off simply, with the strummed acoustic guitar and sung/spoken lyrics that kick off "Brandenburg Gate". After a few bars of that, it explodes, with James Hetfield playing a simple yet stunning chord progression that would not have sounded out of place on Set the Twilight Reeling. The lyrics are difficult to decipher at times, but overall the song paints a picture of someone arriving in a new town, with a lot of history behind her. Lulu, the eponymous protagonist of this album, has arrived. If she is a stranger in a strange land in that song, in the next she's moved up the ladder quite a bit. "The View" presents Lulu as a deity, a creature of immense and destructive sexual power. It also contains some of Reed's greatest lyrics - "I am the truth, the beauty / That causes you to cross / Your sacred boundaries / I have no morals / Some think me cheap / And someone who despises / The normalcy of heartbreak / The purity of love / But I worship the young / And just-formed angel / Who sits upon the pin of lust". That is pure poetry. She possesses all the dark power of a character in a Howard Barker play - hers is a sexuality that destroys all those drawn into her orbit - and yes, she is the table.

The next track, "Pumping Blood," is "Venus in Furs" turned up to 11. This is no longer sex as a weapon - this is pure sex, albeit in a uniquely Lou Reed way. The opening to "Mistress Dread" drags a little - well, it drags a lot - but once Reed starts singing, it's worth it. "insert a fist, an arm / Some lost appendage / Please open me I beg" - those lyrics, man. This is something beyond simple submission - like Sarah Kane's Phaedra, Lulu is a character who wants to be completely subsumed into her lover. This is love as self-abnegation. "Iced Honey" is about the impossibility of that kind of love, and the pain that all love entails, and as such it's an incredibly moving song even with James Hetfield groaning in the background. "Cheat on Me" has another overlong intro which, coupled with Hetfield's desperate attempts to hit the notes, makes it weaker than the preceding songs. There are some great lines, though, and it's a pretty effective song of self-loathing - Lulu has hit rock bottom. "Frustration" switches the perspective around, giving us the point of view of one of Lulu's jealous, obsessed lovers. There are moments that remind me of nothing so much as Scott Walker.

"Little Dog" is chilling, though I'm not sure where it fits into the narrative. Are we hearing Lulu's voice, or that of the previous song's narrator? It seems as though we're getting a new part of Lulu here - she's become a prostitute and returned to her position as sexual force and agent of domination from "The View". But there's a sadness in this song that I can't quite figure out. "Dragon" gives us the other side of the coin - the spurned lover condemns Lulu over a serviceable metal riff. But throughout the vitriol, there runs a thread of love - despite all, this man cannot help but care for Lulu. "Junior Dad," the album's final song, is a climactic outpouring of desperate love, and one of Lou Reed's finest songs.

In conclusion, Lulu was one of Lou Reed's best albums. If you're a Lou Reed fan, buy it. If you're a Metallica fan, get your parents to buy it for you (also, you can read! Well done!)

His week still beats your year.

Review - Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen
Popular Problems

Leonard Cohen has never been one to put too much thought into his album covers - most of them just consist of a picture of his face - so it's no surprise that the cover of his new record looks like it was put together using ClipArt. Still, when you spend decades working on a single song, I guess you don't have much time left to worry about the packaging, and when the songs are this good, what does it matter what the album looks like? And the songs are great. Over his last three albums, Cohen has moved away from the dense, symbolically rich language that has been his trademark, and towards a sparser, simpler lyrical style more reminiscent of his poetry. Compare, for example, the following lines from "Sing Another Song, Boys" -

His fingernails

I see they are broken

His ships,

They are all on fire

The money-lender's lovely little daughter

She's eaten, ah she's eaten with desire

With the following, from Popular Problems' "Did I Ever Love You?" - 

Did I ever love you?

Did I ever need you? 

Did I ever fight you?

Did I ever want you?

Like Beckett, Cohen is condensing his language, trying to strip it back to the absolute bare minimum, and the same could be said of the production. Gone are the lush strings of Songs of Leonard Cohen, the synth-pop pomp of I'm Your Man  and the jazz arrangements of Ten New Songs. Instead, the arrangements on Popular Problems are, for the most part, simple, to the point where - if not for the backing singers - this album sounds like it could have been recorded in someone's living room. In fact, I'm pretty sure some tracks were - there's one song in particular where the clacking of the keys on Cohen's electric keyboard is clearly audible. But don't think that that is a criticism - like the lyrics, the bare-bones production is that way because that's the way it should be, and what would sound half-arsed on any other record sounds perfect here. Simplicity is an art, like everything else - Len does it exceptionally well. 

One of the best things about this album is the vocals. Since the '90s, Cohen has proven that he is one of the best vocalists on the planet, and his singing has never been better than now. Whether he's growling out the ominous "Nevermind" or singing the wistful chorus of "Samson in New Orleans," his voice is a formidable instrument despite - and because of - its limitations. From a technical point of view, he has the vocal range of a kazoo, but that's why he's so great - because he can't hit so many notes as other singers, he has had to become really, really good at the important part of singing - the emotion. And noone puts more feeling into a vocal performance than Leonard Cohen.

All in all, this is a great album. 

Rating - 10/10

Lars von Trier Part 3 - Nymphomaniac

A word of advice for anyone thinking of watching this film - don't come into it expecting to be turned on. This film is not only unerotic, it is anti-erotic - the sex in this film is not the sex you'll find in pornography, any more than the violence in this film is the same as the violence in Die Hard. This is not a film about sex - it is, rather, a film about sexuality. Also, make no mistake about it, this is one film. Nymphomaniac may be split into two volumes for the sake of marketing, but it is one work and should be viewed as a whole. Don't let the length put you off (to use a rather apt phrase) - this is on Trier's longest film yet, but it feels about half the length of most of his other works.

I said before that this is a film about sexuality - more precisely, it is about the transgressive, destructive potential of sexuality.  At one point, Jo - the main character - is forced to attend a support group for sex addicts. She introduces herself with the words, "My name is Jo, and I am a nymphomaniac." She refuses to identify as a sex addict, insisting instead on the older, more romantic term. But there is also a qualitative difference - Jo does not fit the stereotype of the poor, innocent woman with daddy issues who sleeps around to get approval and a sense of self-worth. She fucks because she loves to fuck. When she is pressed by the support group to admit that there is something wrong with her, she retorts, "I love myself. I love my cunt. And I love my filthy, sinful lust." Throughout the film, Jo insists on the validity of her sex drive, although of course her character is not that simple. She carries a great deal of self-loathing with her, judging herself very harshly for her faults, but she submits no noone's judgement but her own. The only exception to this is the self-proclaimed "asexual" played by Stellan Skarsgald (and if you're wondering why I put the term asexual in quotation marks - watch the film). Ironically, Skarsgald's character does not condemn Jo, instead validating her own argument that "all that makes me different from other people is that I have always demanded more from the sunset". The centre of the film is Jo's status as a transgressive individual - her excessive desire for sex is part of it, but more important is the fact that this is sex divorced from love and procreation. The idea of a character who is fundamentally at odds with society is a running theme in von Trier's films - his characters are often isolated, be it by social circumstances (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville), by mental illness (Melancholia, Antichrist) or, as in Jo's case, by uncontrollable sexuality. Von Trier seems fascinated by the outsider, and over the course of this film Jo is an outsider on many levels. At school, she forms a club of girls who use promiscuity as a weapon against the social codes of love and procreation; later, she becomes involved in the outlaw sexuality of the sadist K, to the eventual destruction of her family life. Finally, she becomes a debt collector, an outlaw of the classic, criminal variety. She is another of von Trier's existential rebels, but what makes the film a cut above von Trier's other work is that she is far more complex than that.

In his other films, von Trier's protagonists - while well-written - have been there to serve a role or illustrate an idea, and as such they tend to be quite one-dimensional. With Jo, though, he has created a character who is complex enough to be a real person - analyse her how you will, she is impossible to pin down or categorise, and that is what makes her special. I could go on for hours about this film, but I'll leave it with one final word - this may well be von Trier's crowning acheivement.

Israel's Anti-Semitism

What if I were to tell you that an inherent part of Judaism is the mass-murder of innocent people? What if I told you that it was impossible to be a Jew without supporting the massacre of civilians in refugee camps? What if I were to say that all Jews support the displacement of millions of people, the torture of children, the destruction of an entire country?

If I were to say any of that, I would quite rightly be called an anti-Semite. Those are incredibly anti-Semitic things to say. So why is it that when the Israeli government says those things, it is those who argue against them who are labelled anti-Semitic? When the pro-Israel lobby says that their opponents are anti-Semites, and that their many Jewish opponents are self-hating Jews, then what they are saying is that to be a Jew is to support apartheid and war crimes. Those of us who abhor anti-Semitism, and indeed anyone who knows anything about Judaism, knows that this is not true. A vast number of Jews - including Holocaust survivors and former members of the Hagannah - have condemned Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people. David Rovics is an anti-Zionist; Emma Goldman was an anti-Zionist; Primo Levi became more and more critical of Israel as time went by. Obviously, noone in their right mind would accuse those people of hating Jews. But Zionists do.

Articles such as this one have tried to accuse the anti-Zionist movement of anti-Semitism. The claims made in this article are ridiculous, but they warrant examination. The central claim is that many of the organisations targeted by the BDS campaign are Jewish organisations. Let me make this abundantly clear; any person or group who gives material support to Israel is a legitimate target for anti-Zionist action. Saying that we should exempt Jewish organisations from this campaign in order not to look anti-Semitic is like saying that we should fight terrorism, but not Islamic terror, because that might look racist.

On to the more serious topic, then, of actual anti-Semitism. No, as someone who grew up in a largely Muslim area, I am well aware that anti-Semitism gets worse whenever Israel starts to kill Palestinians at a higher rate than usual. But why are the anti-Zionists the ones who have to fend off accusations of anti-Semitism? We don;t blow up schools in the name of Judaism - the Israelis do that. We don;t torture children in the name of Judaism - the Israelis do that. If someone bombed my house, imprisoned my freinds without trial, destroyed my farmland, and starved my people all in the name of Judaism, then I'd be pretty anti-Semitic too, just as I'm sure that if I had lost a loved one in 7/7 I'd hate Muslims. And if you saw, every night on TV, people being butchered in the name of a religion - and if that was your only encounter with that religion - who could blame you for hating that religion?

The Israeli government are the ones who are committing atrocities in the name of Judaism; they are the ones dragging the name of the Jewish people through the mud. Jews should hate Israel just as Muslims should hate ISIS. And if you think that's anti-Semitic, you an go fuck yourself with a cactus.

No gods
No masters
Free Palestine
Free Gaza

Live review - Tom Robinson, Best Boy Grip

I've been going to see Tom Robinson every year or two since I was about fifteen, so I pretty much knew what to expect last night. I was not disappointed. He came out swinging with a blistering version of "Don;t Take No For An Answer" that proved that, at the age of sixty-three, he still knows how to rock. The first of two forty-five minute sets was made up of the hits and so was inevitably dominated by material from the Tom Robinson Band. That's not a bad thing, though - TRB were the best band of the punk era, and watching Robinson rip through "Bully For You" and "2 4 6 8 Motorway" it's clear he's as good now as he was then, if not better. Adam Phillips, who has been a constant feature of these gigs for some time, is always good, but last night he was phenomenal. Versatile, soulful and with a perfect command of tone, you could put his guitar playing up against Danny Kustow's and he would not suffer by comparison. As for Tom Robinson himself - he was exceptional. I've seen less-energetic performances from musicians a third of his age. After a blistering run through the songs everyone knew, the second set was reserved for fan favourites - so much so, in fact, that I only knew two of the songs he played (and I normally know them all). It was softer than the previous set, mostly acoustic and with Lee Griffiths providing excellent backing vocals. Robinson finished the second set with a rousing rendition of "One Law for the Rich" that got the entire crowd singing along, despite its relative obscurity. The encore consisted of "Martin" (of course) and "Never Gonna Fall In Love (Again)", both excellent songs, performed fantastically.

Best Boy Grip, last night's support band, play the kind of faux-emotional "I'm being sensitive please fuck me" singer-songwriter pap you'll hear at any open mic night anywhere on the planet. Fortunately, they're energetic and they've got more chops than a butcher's window, which made their set enjoyable. Still, they need to add some balls to their songs - we've already had one Scouting for Girls, we don;t want another.

Review - Morrissey

Morrissey
World Peace Is None Of Your Business

This Charming Man. That was a good song, wasn't it? I mean, that was one of the greatest pop singles of all time. The Smiths were a fantastic band, and half of their brilliance was down to Morrissey's lyrics. You'll have to keep reminding yourself of that as you listen to this album, but it will be hard, because listening to World Peace Is None Of Your Business is like listening to Paul McCartney's entire solo career - it's so toxically bad that it seems to retroactively ruin everything good he did. I mean it's really, really bad. The band he's got backing him up play very well, and that should make it better, but it doesn't for the same reason that all the unnecessary ornamentation on Billy Bragg's last album actually made it worse; it just emphasises that no matter how many session musicians he hires, Morrissey can't hide the fact that his lyrics - otherwise known as the only reason anyone ever gave a shit about Morrissey - are terrible. I tried to type in some examples of these lyrics just now, but my hand spontanaeously rose from the keyboard and tried to gouge out my eyes in some kind of reflexive act of self-preservation. How Soon is Now, though - that was good. That was a really great song. This is hard for me to say, because I like Morrisey. His views on the Falklands are misguided and reactionary, and he may be a racist, but he's also one of the few to have the balls to tell the truth about the meat industry, and that is something I respect. Still, all the good deeds in the world couldn't make this album any better. If Nelson Mandela had made this album, they would have put him back in prison. I hear Marie Stopes clinics have given up conventional abortions, and started just playing this album to pregnant women in the hopes that foetuses will hang themselves with their own umbilical cords. Playing Mozart to children is supposed to make them smarter. If you play this album to your child, it will grow up to vote UKIP. Still, The Queen Is Dead was a great album, wasn't it? Really great.

Rating: 1/10

Heaven knows I'm miserable now.

Review - Death Grips

Death Grips
Niggas On The Moon

Sorry it's been a while since my last post - various things have been getting in the way. But I've got a hell of a post to come back with - Death Grips have broken up. While the world may have lost one of (if not the) greatest hip hop group/s of all time, they've left behind yet another flawless album. Niggas on the Moon is the first half of a double album set to come out later this year, and it is exactly what you'd expect from these guys. Crushing walls of noise, vicious hooks, jarring rhythms, an all-pervading atmosphere of paranoia and violence - all the things that made Death Grips great. Unlike the disappointing Government Plates, Niggas on the Moon has that sense of urgency that characterises all good hip-hop (some might say all good music); that sense that the musicians have something that they need to say, whether anyone's listening or not. In fact, this album feels less like something the band put out, and more like something they have finally failed to restrain - it's a beast of a record, and this is only the first half. Needless to say, this is the perfect swan song for a near-perfect band.

Rating: 9/10

Top 5 Albums of the year so far

Ok, it's been a hell of a six months, and it's now time for me to post my top 5 albums of the year so far. Here we go:

5. Phyllomedusa - Local Grey to Green Rendezvous 
Phyllomedusa is a one-man grind/noise project with a love of frogs that straddles the line between charmingly eccentric and genuinely creepy. Earlier this year, he put a frog on a peice of paper and let it hop around, then used the resultant pattern of wet patches to guide his composition of a peice of music. What resulted was this, a forty-eight minute minimalist epic that is probably the most beautiful peice of music that I've heard this year. Check out Phyllomedusa's other work on Bandcamp (there's more than forty albums to choose from, so you might be there a while. That's ok. I'll wait).

4. Behemoth - The Satanist
Back yet? Good. I'm surprised that I haven't seen Behemoth's new album on more mid-year lists. It really is a monster - crisp production, great artwork, crushing grooves and phenomenal riffs. If you like your death metal with high production values and a fair bit of black metal influence, then check this out.

3. Elbow - The Take Off and Landing of Everything
And now for something completely different. Elbow are one of my favourite young bands, and once you hear their last record, you'll see why. The lyrics could work on their own as poetry, and several of the songs could function as instrumentals, and their are precious few artists writing songs like that.


2. Tori Amos - Unrepentant Geraldines
Those of you who read my review of this album will not be surprised at it's inclusion. Neither will those of you who've heard the album. Tori Amos is awesome - melodies that make me gnash my teeth with jealousy, great piano playing and fantastic lyrics. Tori Amos is one of the best songwriters out there, and she's managed to turn out a true late-career masterpeice (unlike certain others I could mention). Even if it does get a little Guardian in places, I'd still be very surprised if it doesn't make my top 10 at the end of the year. It'd take something very special to top this.

1. Gridlink - Longhena
Oh, look, something very special! Gridlink's final album will go down in grindcore history as a truly original development the likes of which have not been seen since the 1990s. This is a grind album that does not aim for heaviness at all costs; that manages to be beautiful in the same way as a Mozart concerto, but with blast beats and screams. This is the future of grind.

Review - Mayhem

Mayhem
Esoteric Warfare

Well, I'm currently on a working holiday in the wonderful Norwegian town of Kvinesdal, so what better time to review the new album from one of the original Norwegian black metal bands. Mayhem have been putting out bleak, blistering albums since the '80s, and Burzum helped to create the entire sub-genre of black metal, so I came into this with high hopes, and I was not disappointed. The vocals are the standard raw, black metal shrieks; the band plays like a finely-tuned machine, shifting through different riffs, tempos and rhythms with ease; the lead guitar chimes like the bells of some unholy church - in short, this is everything one could expect from Mayhem. Every track on this album is a monster - every riff, every scream and every blast beat will strip the paint from your walls. The one downside is that towards the end of the record, the vocals become a bit intelligible, which is not something I look for in metal, as it's not a genre known for producing great lyricists. Still, other than that, det er en fantastisk album.

Rating: 8/10

Review - Behemoth

Behemoth
The Satanist

This is one hell of a record. It kicks off with one of the best riffs I've heard in some time, and continues in that vein for the next forty-four minutes. The Satanist is like some unholy union of Facebreaker and Burzum - the groove and high production values of up-market death metal mixed with the atmosphere and sheer aggression of black metal. Also, it features the first good metal lead guitarist since Tony Iommi. There are fast parts that will knock you on your arse; slow passages that sound like some ancient seige engine rolling up to your front door; a crunchy low end mixed with shrill (but never too abrasive) lead playing; and a vocalist who seems very serious about the whole Satanism thing. Because, at the end of the day, this music is every bit as religious as anything by Mahalia Jackson - it's just a different religion. And I can tell you, if churches played music as epic as this, maybe we would actually live in a Christian country.

Rating: 9/10

Review - Neil Young

Neil Young
A Letter Home

What is it about the "getting back to their roots" album? As soon as a musician starts getting a few grey hairs, they seem to feel obliged to make a folk record. Of course, pop musicians don;t have the faintest idea how to make a folk record, so they normally just turn out some semi-acoustic shite that the papers will call "stripped down" even though it's got twenty fucking musicians on it. If anyone reading this ever becomes a famous musician, then please listen to my advice: if you want to make a bare-bones album, get an acoustic guitar,  sit in your bedroom and do it properly.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, there's a new Neil Young record out, and it has a pretty cool gimmick. Basically, in old-timey fairgrounds they sometimes had a booth where you could go and make a recording of your voice onto a record. As you'd expect, the quality wasn't great. So Young has got his hands on one of those booths and decided to make an album of covers in it, because he was worried that Trans might go down as his most idiotic concept album, and he can do so much worse than that.

I'm a big Neil Young fan, and I'm also a big fan of lo-fi recording, but this is a terrible record. It's not because it sounds like it was recorded in a tin shack in the middle of a hail storm (that's not always a bad thing) - it's because he sings the songs badly. Young isn't a bad singer - he can sing fantastically, despite his voice - but he doesn't even sound like he's trying here. The main problem is that he hasn't thought, "I'll do a no-frills folk record because that will force me to give a great performance rather than hiding behind a band". He's thought "lol an old recording thing, I'll make an album in it lol". There's no reason for him to record this album in an antique recording booth, he just thought it would be cool, and what he's managed is folk karaoke of the most mediocre kind. There's an astonishing performance of "The Needle of Death" on there, but other than that this album can fuck off.

Rating: 2/10

Review - Tori Amos

Tori Amos
Unrepentant Geraldines

Alright, so I don't know what that title means, and the cover of this album looks like something Gwyneth Paltrow would post on Instagram, but people keep telling me Tori Amos is a genius, so I'll give Unrepentant Geraldines a go.

*Just over an hour later*

Ok. This is what Kate Bush would sound like if she were any good. Amos' voice is like a cross between her, Dido and Joanna Newsom (and comparing anyone to Newsom is a pretty huge complement in my book); on "16 Shades of Blue" she demomstrates that she can combine bile with melodicism as well as Jarvis Cocker, if not better; on "Weatherman" she displays a poet's gift for language, and an ability to make any line scan that most songwriters would kill for; throughtout the album - alongside the aforementioned - there are flashes of early Bowie, Circulus, Baydelaire, Rhianna, Transformer-era Lou Reed and more, but Amos never once sounds derivative. Every note and every lyric is unmistakably hers, and if you're not hooked by the third song, there's something wrong with you.

My one criticism of this album is that at times the production is a bit flat. "Promise" is a fantastic song both lyrically and melodically, but the arrangement takes the lustre out of it, making it sound a bit too dull. That's a problem common to the slower moments on Unrepentant Geraldines, and it could ruin a lesser record, but thanks to Amos' way with words and her fantastic ear for melody that's never a danger. The most boring moment of this record is more interesting and engaging than the vast majority of music out there. I am officially a Tori Amos fan now.

Rating: 9/10

Review - Swans

SwansTo Be Kind

I only got into Swans recently, but they've fast become one of my favourite bands. Not only do they make some of the heaviest and simultanaeously the most sublime music I've ever heard, they've managed to stay together and keep their standards up for three decades. When I first started listening to To Be Kind, though, I was worried they'd started to slip. It sounds like a poor imitation of Tinariwen, and Michael Gira's vocals are extremely obnoxious - not in the good, aggressive way, but in a way that sounds like someone trying to do a Swans song and failing. Fortunately, things quickly pick up from there. That Tinariwen sound permeates the album - songs like "Just A Little Boy" have that strange desert drone that seems almost stereotypically "exotic" - but on most of the songs, it's done right, and mixed with that Swans mixture of vitriol and profundity, it works pretty damn well. "Toussaint L'Overture" is the stand-ou track, a half-hour epic that starts out with a relentless yet uplifting barrage of guitar, before simmering down to the same desert drone we've been hearing throughout the album, complemented with strange, otherworldly chanting from Gira. It gradually builds to a crescendo and then holds it - just holds onto the momentum, riding the riff, as if Gira is seeing how far he can ramp up the tension before the listener's brain explodes. Then, it drops off, and you're left with skittering rhythm lines and harsh, distorted guitar chords. From there on in, I won't ruin it for you, but it kicks some major fucking arse.

The downside of having such an amazing centrepeice is that it kind of overshadows the rest of the album. It's still a great record, but the gap in quality between "Toussaint L'Overture" and the other songs makes them seem lacklustre by comparison. Still, when listened to on their own, rather than as part of an album, songs like "Oxygen" and "A Little God In My Hands" are fantastic. If you've listened to Swans before, you know what to expect - jarring rhythms, sneering vocals, and a heavinness that seems almost meditative, as if the band are trying to induce a spiritual experience in the listener through sheer force of sound. It's great, basically - buy it.

Rating: 8/10

Also, this will be my last post for a while, as I'm going to be extremely busy with various things for the next month or so.

Review - Elbow

Elbow
The Take Off and Landing of Everything

Guy Garvey is unquestionably one of the best lyricists this country has produced.  "The way the day begins / Decides the shade of everything / But the way it ends depends on if you're home / For every soul a pillow and a window please / In a modern room / Where folk are nice to Yoko" - Garvey belongs in the same category as Joanna Newsom and Bill Callahan, among those few who write lyrics that can be read as poetry. His lyrics are similar to fellow Manc song-poet Morrissey in their everydayness, but without the melancholy or the arch wit - rather, Garvey's literary voice (much like his singing voice) is warmer, less distant.

As far as the music goes, it's the same thing we've come to expect from Elbow. Somewhere between Radiohead and Coldplay, it lacks the experimentation of the former but avoids the unbearable blandness of the latter - these are tunes with soul. Basically, this album is another Elbow release - quality music and fantastic lyrics by one of the best songwriters of his generation.

Rating: 9/10

Film review - The Amazing Spiderman 2

Well, they've rebooted the Spiderman franchise - I don;t know why, seeing as the original three films were fantastic, but then Hollywood logic is beyond the understanding of us mere mortals. This one stars Andrew Garfield as Spiderman, Jamie Fox as Electro and some emo kid as Harry Osbourne, Norman Osbourne's slightly androgynous daughter. Garfield quite wisely doesn't try to compete with Toby MacGuire's brilliant performance of a vulnerable, awkward Peter Parker, and chooses instead for a cockier, more confident take on the character - basically, a realistic portrayal of a teenager who's just discovered he has super powers. He plays it well, but I can't help but think that his is a rather shallow interpretation, nowhere near as dramatically interesting as McGuire. Aunt May is more interestingly written, and a more ambivalent character, in this film, so it's a shame she's played by an actor with the emotional range of cheese.

I was pretty excited when I heard that Electro would be the villain in this film - in the TVseries (which I loved as a kid) he's interesting as he's pretty much invincible, and the only way Spiderman beats him is by tricking him into beating himself. In the film, though, they've decided to turn him into a stalker who gets his powers when he's bitten by a radioactive electric eel (because fuck it, why not). They also decide to remove the whole near-omnipotent demi god thing, and make him basically another supervillain who uses electricity to blow shit up and lift up cars etc. So we can add electricity to the list of things that the makers of this film don;t understand. Also on that list: cinematography, character, plot, basic physics, and the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound (there's a scene where a song starts playing on the soundtrack and Spiderman says "oh, I hate this song". Fuck you, whoever wrote that. Fuck you so much.) - in fact, it'd be easier to list the good things about this film than the bad. So - Andrew Garfield's sexy accent, Gwen Stacey's legs, the first fight scene with Electro, and the last twenty minutes. That's the really annoying thing - the film's ending is great. The final fight scene, and everything that comes after it, is excellent, and that somehow makes me hate the film more, because I left the cinema feeling like I enjoyed myself but knowing I didn't. You can't make an hour and a half of mediocre, poorly written shite and then give it an awesome ending to trick people into thinking they liked it.

The plot is this: Harry Osbourne is dying of MacGuffin-itis and needs Spiderman's blood. Spiderman refuses to give it to him because it might kill him, which understandably pisses Harry off. Rather than doing what he looks like he'd do - listen to My Chemical Romance and write something bitchy in his diary - Harry makes a deal with Electro to kill Spiderman, and steal his blood. Oh, that's after the terminally ill kid who looks like he has the muscle mass of custard overpowers two security guards and breaks into a high-security mental asylum staffed by the German/Russian/European-or-something mad scientist Dr Kafka. Read that again. Doctor. Motherfucking. Kafka. That one name sums up just how retarded this film is, or at least it comes close, because nothing could possibly sum up the monumental stupidity of everyone involved in making this ridiculous, badly written, poorly plotted, terribly filmed abortion. And no amount of Andrew Garfiled's sexiness can change that fact.

Review - Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash
Out Among the Stars

Ok - the good news is, there'sa new album of previously unreleased songs by Johnny Cash coming out. The bad news is, the songs are from the eighties, that sad time in between cool, rebellious, young Johnny Cash and deep, soulful old Johnny Cash. So, mixed expectations coming into this.

It starts out well - the title track is a well-written story song that points the way towards the Cash of the American albums, pretty much universally regarded as his greatest work. It's not quite up to their standard, but it's still a decent opener. Things go downhill with the next track, a run-of-the-mill duet between Cash and June Carter, and they don;t get much better with "She Used to Love Me A Lot". This song sounds as if Cash was reaching for the profundity that he had acheived before, and would acheive again, but what comes out is just a rather boring love song. The next two tracks aren't really worth commenting on - they could be by more or less anyone, and I probably won;t remember them in five minutes' time. "If I Told You Who It Was" is awful, just cringe-inducingly awful. "Call Your Mother" is actually a pretty good song, but the saccharine Nashville production robs it of any real power. The same cannot be said for the rest of the tracks on this album. Ultimately, there's no reason to buy this unless you absolutely MUST own everythiong Cash ever released.

Rating: 2/10

And now I'm going to go listen to American V.

Lars von Trier Part 2: Antichrist

Ok, first of all, let m admit something: this is actually the second time I've seen Antichrist. The first time around I didn't really know what to make of it (which is a polite way of saying that I thought it was a pretentious pile of shite) but now, I get it. This film is a masterpeice.

It' not without its weaknesses. Charlotte Gainsbourg's acting is rather weak at times (someone really needs to tell her that there are ways of talking other than a whisper) and her dialogue sounds like it was written by someone who has only recently learnt English. Despite that, though, this film is incredible. When I finished watching it, I felt physically drained - it's an emotional and visceral ordeal, particularly the last half hour. The plot of the film is deceptively simple: a greiving couple go to a cabin in the woods, where psychologist Willem Defoe tries to cure his wife of her psychological problems. Much like Melancholia though, Antichrist's true themes are far larger and more complex. First off, it is - like Melancholia - an allegory for depression. Charlotte Gainsbourg is Lars von Trier, Willem Defoe is everyone who's asked him what he's so sad about. Secondly - and this is the big one - it is, like Melancholia, a film about what happens when a rational man (Keifer Sutherland's scientist, Defoe's psychologist) is confronted with something utterly irrational - in this case, the idea that the world is inherently evil. Not in some vague, it's-a-hard-life way, but actively malign. In this way, the film has parallels with the stories of HP Lovecraft - it is, fundamentally, a horror film. Von Trier clearly intended this to be the case, and he makes use of a fair few horror tropes. There is the scene where Charlotte Gainsbourg's character hears the crying of a baby, a sound which seems to come from nowhere, and the acorns that fall onto the roof of the cabin are reminiscent of the showers of stones said to accompany hauntings.

Defoe plays a character who is defined by his rational outlook on life; it is this outlook which first destroys his marriage, and then destroys him. When his wife begins to exhibit symptoms of mental illness, he decides to treat her himself. From that moment on, he is unable to relate to her as a human being, but rather sees her purely as a patient. It is this coldness, this detatchment, that begins to drive the two apart. Once they get to the forest, this rationality begins to fray at the edges, as Gainsbourg's character is gradually proved right; the world is evil, and it does want to make you suffer and then kill you. And that, really, is a very frightening idea.

This film was one of the most intense that I have ever seen, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Lars von Trier Part 1: Melancholia

I've heard a lot about von Trier - he's a filmmaker who inspires adoration and vitriol in equal measure, one who delights in confounding the expectations of his fans. Some think he's an iconoclastic genius, who follows his muse whereever it may take him; to others, he's a novelty act, the cinematic troll extraodinaire. So I recently decided (recently means this morning) to watch all of his films. At first, I wanted to start at the beginning, but Kirsten Dunst was naked in his last film, so I watched that one first. I guess I'll work from end to beginning.

Melancholia

This film is many things. It's a refutation of cynicism; it's an allegory for depresion; it's a poetic disaster movie; but most importantly, and most fundamentally, it's a story. A story about people's lives, the unravelling of them, and a big fuck-off planet that's going to kill the crap out of everything. 
Melancholia is a hell of a film. It's got a stellar cast - Kirsten Dunst, John Hurt, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Keifer Sutherland all turn in excellent perforances. Lines that could have sounded overwrought or cheesy in the hands of less talented actors come out sounding exactly right. The cineatography is also top notch; the lush, almost aggressively opulent colours should be terrible,digital at its worst, but somehow von Trier makes it work, so that the film looks like a Caravaggio portrait, though rendered in far colder colours. The story is great - it starts out as a Pinteresque account of a wedding gone disastrously wrong, but what I love about it is the complete lack of attention paid to the conventions of stortelling. Standard filmmaking logic tells us that if a film starts out as a moving account of marital and familial strife should end the same way, whereas von Trier logic says that if a film starts out as a moving account of marital and familial strife LETS THROW A PLANET AT EVERONE. Seriously, this is a great film. Watch it.

Film Review - 12 Years A Slave

So yesterday, I finally got around to seeing 12 Years A Slave, the film that's so great you don't even need to see it to give it an Oscar. And....it's not that great. Don't get me wrong - there are some really good things about it. The performances are uniformly fantastic, the sound mixing is perfect - diegetic sounds are amplified and the music is loud and intense, reminiscent of The Excorcist and old fashioned film scores - and it's pretty well shot. But overall...well, first things first.

It starts out very well. It's genuinely affecting when Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose name I copied and pasted from IMDb, because fuck trying to spell that) is kidnapped and sold into slavery, and the first hour or so of the film is very well made. The soundtrack is the real star of the film - the combination of amplified diegetic sound and non-diegetic music that is far more intrusive than in most modern films creates a rich atmosphere, enveloping and uncomfortable, like a really humid summer day. The cinematography is great as well - less stark than in Hunger, McQueen's first film, and closer to the opulent textures of Les Miserables. By the looks of this film, directors are finally learning how to make digital look good.

The problem comes about an hour in (I think it was an hour - it's the first quarter of a film that seems about four hours long). Basically, what happens is...nothing. Nothing at all. There's been a fantastic build-up - characters established, horrors of slavery presented in a way that is just realistic enough to be disturbing, but not realistic enough that Guardian readers won't like it - and then it just...keeps going. Northup keeps having a hard time, the slave-owners keep being dicks (as slave-owners tend to do), things keep being generally awful for the slaves, but there's nothing else there. No drama, no tension, no reason to keep watching. Now don;t get me wrong - I love slow cinema. Hunger  is a masterpeice, I loved Drive, and The American is one of my favourite films. But this doesn't have the great writing of Hunger, the meditative beauty of Drive or the emotional drive of Papillion, which I think is the best film to compare it to (and not just because it has the other Steve McQueen in it). Like Papillion, 12 Years A Slave is long; like Papillion, there is no defining plot, just story - the actions of characters, as opposed to the problem-solution line of Hollywood; like Papillion, the film focuses around a free man (McQueen is free in spirit; Ejiofor is literally a free man sold into slavery) trying to escape from a brutal situation (a penal colony in the former, slavery in the latter) and the aproach to sound is very similar. Thing is though, in Papillion, there's some substance - I genuinely want Steve McQueen's character to escape, because the film has an emotional efect on me; I want Northup to escape so that the film will be over. 12 Years A Slave is not some slow-burning, brutal masterpeice of the kind that one might expect from the director of the masterful Hunger. Instead, it's dull, self-indulgent, and really not that shocking. There's a flogging scene that's pretty nasty, but compared to what happened to slaves in real life, it seems like a lot of the horrors have been toned down to appeal to the tastes of white liberals.

Basically, watch Papillion - it's much, much better.

Theatre review - The Forty (Howard Barker)

Howard Barker
The Forty
 Lurking Truth

So, today was a big day for me - I saw my first Howard Barker play. Unfortunately, I came on the wrong night to meet the man himself (he came to the first night, yesterday), but still - I got to see one of his plays at least. I've read dozens of Barkers plays, most of his poetry and all of his theoretical works, and it was a great experience to see what was the first professional production of The Forty. The most recent of Barker's compendia, The Forty is made up of forty self-contained scenes. There is no overarching narrative, but the scenes share certain characteristics. They each focus on a moment of intense emotion, and present it either wordlessly, or through very minimal language - the wordiest of them has two sentences in it. The Forty really is an actor's play - the script requires tremendous attention to the details of speech; a single phrase might be repeated five times, each time with a completely different meaning. The cast of this production were more than up to the task, and they each gave bravura performances. Devon Baur was exactly what I thought a Barker actor would be - her every move seemed perfectly calculated, and she had a certain poise that seemed like the physical equivalent of Barker's intense, pared-down language. Sam Harris and Richard Lynch also deserve a mention - it is difficult to imagine any actor delivering those lines better.

David Ian Rabey's direction was excellent, and the lighting was something really special (it never occurred to me that one could use lights at the side of the stage like that). All in all, this was a fantastic evening, and I'm glad my first experience of Barker on stage was tonight.

Review - Phyllomedusa

Phyllomedusa
Puddle Dependency

Oh my frog. This is really something. I...I don't even know how to describe this album. There are elements I recognise - slamming, pit-freindly riffs from metal, gurgling vocals from goregrind, extreme speed from grindcore - but over the top of it all, there's this layer of slimy, sickeningly compelling weirdness that makes the record sound like nothing you've ever heard before, unless you're into the very nastiest areas of noise.

Phyllomedusa is a one-man noise/grind/metal project that produces exclusively frog-themed material, and if you don't think that sounds like the best thing ever then I don't want to know you. Seriously, this guy really loves frogs. Here's an excerpt from his bandcamp page:

Why do people take themselves so seriously? I want nothing more then to shatter you and all of your being. Anything I do is not for you, but for them. I just post stuff because I can. Otherwise I'd have nothing to do with you. This is for them.
And just so it's known, Los Langeros had an EP and a song entitled "Killing Frogs", so I took it upon myself to cover it and change it to the correct way. Killing them instead. Fuck them.
I also re-recorded some older Phyllomedusa tracks as well, but whatever. I've croaked too much. Download it, don't download it. Leave me alone. I'm more concerned about my puddle dependencies. You know, like all the streams that dry out, or deep enough pools of rain water disappearing when it gets too dry. What the fuck are they supposed to do when they lay eggs in those puddles that dry out?

Yeah, it's green. Frogs, motherfucker. 

Ok, the music. First off, this will be the heaviet thing you listen to today. I like to think that I'm not easily shocked, musically speaking, but it's been a long time since I heard anything as brutal as this. First off, the most obvious thing - the vocals.  There are recognisable harsh vocals in there - high screams, growls, a lot of fry - but mostly Phyllomedusa deals in the kind o rumbling-stomac gurgles that you'll find in most gorenoise. If you like that, then cool - most of the time I'm not that into it, but here I think it works. Secondly, the bass - I haven't heard bass this crushing since the last Gets Worse album. This is as heavy as it gets - it's really distorted, much more than I've ever heard from any other artist. This album is intense - no matter what kind of music you're into, nothing prepares  you for a listening experience of this kind. 

 9/10

Breaking Bad and Women

First of all, I’m not here to slag off Breaking Bad – it’s one of the best TV programmes ever made. The acting is phenomenal, the writing is brilliant, the storylines are always engaging, and the characters are brilliantly thought-out and developed. There’s a problem, though – the women. Let’s check out the female characters in the show: there’s Walter’s wife, Skyler, who initially appears to be a solid, dependable person, not to mention extremely likeable, but gradually deteriorates into a neurotic mess; there’s Skyler’s sister, Marie, whose heart is in the right place but who is shrill, nagging and, in the words of her husband, “not exactly an example of perfect mental health; there’s Jesse’s landlady/girlfriend Jane, who originally appears to be a clean-cut, trustworthy recovering drug addict, but who backslides (with Jesse’s assistance) and leads Jesse into a spiral of drugs and self-destruction, culminating in the blackmail of Walter, following which she overdoses. Finally, there’s Gus’ old methylamine provider, whom we meet in season five – she’s a complete mess who gets several people killed through her paranoia and instability. Are you seeing a pattern here?

The word “hysteria” derives from the Greek word “hystera,” meaning uterus. It comes from the belief that mental instability in women is caused by the womb moving around in the body. In Breaking Bad, every major female character is hysterical. That’s not an exaggeration – literally every single one is mentally unstable. The male characters have their fair share of problems, but none of them are quivering wrecks like Skyler. Mike never breaks down, Walter just becomes steadily more aggressive, Jesse has serious wobbles but always gets back on his feet, Gus is a stone-cold badass who it’s impossible to imagine on a psychiatrist’s couch – the list goes on.

To clarify, I’m not saying that the writers of Breaking Bad are misogynists, but there is a misogynist undercurrent present in the presentation of women in the programme. Its always annoying when a TV programme falls back on stale clichés, but especially so when the clichés are sexist, and especially especially when the programme in question is something like Breaking Bad, which is never clichéd in any other way.