Still Corners - Creatures of an Hour

Dweem pawp

I'm really quite adverse to so-called dream pop, popgaze, shoepop, ethereal or whichever, but I was swayed into buying this because of its wonderful artwork and a sort of tug for some light indie in my life. I feel a bit dirty, as this is very Radio 2 (I think), very flash-in-the-pan and reminds me a little of groups such as School of Seven Bells and what I vaguely remember Tindersticks, Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil to sound like (and another band who I can't recall...). It makes me think of 4AD quite a lot, even though they're signed to Sub Pop.

I've always veered away from 4AD as a label as it appeared overly-Catholic about music that held no mystery for me at all -the whole roster (once) seemed very insubstantial, very misty and vapour-like. Dark, but not dark, murky, but not dungeon-murk. I just checked recently and they're releasing some of the best shit around and in genres/sub-genres that I like but consider otherwise unconnected: Spaceghostprrp, Zomby, Grimes, Ariel Pink and Joker (ferfuksake).

Still Corners are okay. The music is a kind of polite kosmische-rock with smoke machines, never gothic but not once silly and irreverent, Creates of an Hour has the heartbeat and heads-down jam feel of kosmische while Tessa Murray's voice, although thinly lovely, gleams like reflected light through the headfog. I'll update if I thaw to it, otherwise it's a perfectly inoffensive way to start the day, as I have done twice this week.

Front Line Assembly - Plasticity EP

This is part 29 (!) in your alltime classix collection!

Infacted Recordings are great. They've been reissuing all sorts of EBM/dark Techno dregs and tidbits for the last couple of years in a series that's as patchy as it is revelatory and wonderful. I picked up about half-a-dozen of these compilations in Stuttgart over Christmas as they're both cheap and temptingly limited (1000 copies of each).

Bill Leeb's FLA are by far the most high profile act to be receive the 'classix' treatment and these tracks were some of the first I ever heard from the group on their Hardwired album. I remember being a NIN fanatic and being in correspondence with some guy on the internet who agreed to sell me a CDr of the notorious Broken video (directed by sadly-missed Chris Christopherson of Coil and TG). He'd asked if I wanted anything else on the CDr as the video hardly took up much space. I remember asking him if he knew any other Industrial bands because, living in Tewkesbury, I didn't. He asked if I knew FLA and I drew a blank so he stuck Hardwired and some Skinny Puppy tracks (including most of The Process...yeuch) on there.

In Tewkesbury we had a small independent record store...I think it was called Hedgehog Records, or something equally glib and indie, and was run by a great guy called Adam whose Dad was a Drama teacher at my school. Anyway, Adam was an oracle of alternative music, selling me my 4th ever CD which was Ministry's Land of Rape and Honey not to mention hunting down loads of NIN odds n' sods for me. He was my Allmusic back then and I remember asking him what Front Line Assembly sounded like and he said "Well, the name sums it up pretty well" and then some comment about Skynet versus Robocop.

When Hardwired on CDr arrived (and after I'd barfed/laughed my way through Broken) I took the digestion of my 8th ever album very seriously: lights were off, PC speakers cranked up, door shut, Windows Media Player visuals primed. I remember sitting (not lying) on my bed, really trying to absorb this futuristic, densely layered and cinematic music. I loved the riffage -I was a Ministry/NIN head around this time, remember -dug the electronic noises, lapped up the samples (even the bleepy 'using a computer' ones from Sci-fi films) and was entirely converted to EBM there and then.

I wanted cyber-techno-robo-gothic-datawar-space-combat-body music with fat metal riffs, computer-voices, big dirty beats and sounds I couldn't place (Is that a keyboard? Computer? Sample? Voice? What?). FLA is the place.

This EP doesn't really offer anything new, although it is wonderful to hear (for me) fresh mixes of these great tracks, as well as some UK hardcore inspired versions of the title tracks that reflect Bill's immersion in the dance music coming out of England around the time.

Overall, I'll probably pop it on from time to time when I want 75 minutes of Hardwired style-dance remixes.

:Wumpscut: Women and Satan First

Extra points for being repulsive!

Yeeeeah, Rudy! Thanks for that one. Artwork so repulsive it outdoes the legions of Death/Gore Metal bands strenuously attempting to produce the ultimate 'most offensive artwork ever' and missing the point with their hand-drawn pictures of babies eating their own intestines (bored of that; more naked skanks needed).

I tried to buy this in Austria with my wife but attempted to do so on the sly, so that the Mother-in-law and, well, most of the Austrian family, didn't ask "What have you bought? Let's have a look at your CD" and then think I was some kind of pervert behind my back (my German is shaky at best).

No luck. In fact, my Uncle-in-law (in his 60s) is a fan of Amazon download store and, when it was revealed that I wanted to buy a CD but couldn't find it, bought a couple of MP3s to cheer me up. So, we sat round in Graz eating our breakfast with the Mother-in-law, the Auntie, wife and Bavarian visitors (also in their 60s, heavily conservative) listening to :Wumpscut:. Not an eyelid was batted -someone enquired as to why this man was saying 'Blutsturtz Baby' so much as it was odd, but that was it.

So we tried to get it at Saturn: fail. Tried Media Markt: fail. Eventually tried Amazon.au/.de and failed because of the hideous price. Eventually my wife ordered it so it arrived in England for when we got back: fail, back-ordered. I got it from Music Non Stop in the end and realised it was roughly 10 year since my first order there! (See previous post about FLA).

First Impression

Evil, mostly, in the vein of Fuckit (which I ended up loving despite heavily dissing it online...check the Amazon reviews) which is to say we're in Dark-Electro territory, not so much industrial or noise, but that's acceptable as I think Rudy's contemporary style of Gothic-techno, divorced of industrial, is fine. His lyrics are typically awkward but sincere with some vague WWII references ("Hitler would have melted you for soap" being my favourite lyric so far) as with Schrekk und Grauss. In my opinion the interesting, complex textures and one-off sounds/movements aren't as noticeable here as with S&G but, as it says above, this is only a first impression.

I'll listen to it on the way to work tomorrow and report back. Have been greedily eyeing up the Body Census, Bone Peeler and Siamese boxes on Discogs...thought of having complete :W: collection very exciting. Listened to Cannibal Anthem (an unloved part of Ratzinger's catalogue) on the way to gym earlier and decided it is great but understated; dramatic, brooding and introverted with a touch of the mystical as with Evoke but denser, less airy mixes and high-end synths. It is as if Cannibal Anthem is grislier, filmed on 8mm and grounded in reality where Evoke is pure fantasy, prone (and able) to take flights of whimsy and imagination. I like it because it has great instrumentals.

Second Impression

24/04/2012

Listened to this on the way to work and just now for a third time. Most of these tracks I like, none repulse me at all, but none stand out yet. I like Burial on Demand though, it has some very cool percussive thumps here and there and a sort of lo-fi, crunchy looped burp noise which is ok.

What I think I really like about :Wumpscut: and that makes Rudy a fucking G is that he manages to make music that is essentially pop music, i.e. catchy and with recognisable song structures but dark as fuck.

Interesting: Grobian includes a quotation from Hitler "Here I stand with my bayonets, there you stand with your Law. We'll see which prevails." and another from a Nazi who observed the behaviour of Jews in Babi Yar who co-operated with the Nazis and eventually sped up their own annihilation, remarking "The bastards are sub-human[my emphasis]."
    The song's lyric text recalls a confrontation with a person wearing "schwarze Stiefel" (black boots), being tall and a bully or slovenly person ('Grobian' is a coarse person, a rogue). It's ambiguous stuff, more typical of the neofolk provacateurs, that lends :Wumpscut: his edge and raises this above mere dancefloor fodder.  

Mastamind: The Mastapiece

Mastamind - The Mastapiece

One third of the legendary NATAS (Nation/Niggers Ahead in Time And Space -NOT Satan backwards...not Satan...y'hear?), Detroit's premier, original underground rap group, Mastamind has had a late start in the solo game but now, in his maturity, has burnished his skills, image and releases into a great, clear, dynamic update of the Acid Rap/Wickedshit template.

Acid Rap, so called because of both its corrosive and hallucinogenic content, was begun in the late 80s by Esham (East Side Hoes And Money) who, while still in High School, was recording and releasing a brutally graphic, scuzzy, pioneering form of lo-fi rap that melded the extreme, dark no-holds-barred unpleasant topics of other sick-genres like Black Metal and, to a less cartoonish extent, Industrial to the funk-boom-bap of early Hip-Hop.

It's full of illicit, nocturnal, morally defunct goings-on and OTT Satanic content (until Esham renounced that particular unholy subject, possibly from community pressure as well as personal reasons) set to distorted, trippy and harsh beats and, to be honest, it's all fantastic listening. Mastamind joined Esham and another rapper TNT to form the aforementioned NATAS, whose Doyoubelieveingod? LP is a great place to start with the genre, a group whose existence is in question now but produced some of the best heavy, fucked-up alternative rap of the 1990s. Mastamind has been absent from NATAS since he began striking out on his own and his own troubled relationship with Acid Rap brother/former mentor Esham.

I'll do a longer post on Mastamind (centre, front, Esham right and TNT back) later, because he's sickasfuck, but for now I'll stick to Mastapiece because, frankly, it lives up to its title.

So, Mastamind is hanging out with the Slaughtercore label crew recently (including the prolifically vile SCUM, who is determined to graphically out-revolt everyone else in the world) and their alumni feature heavily here. Whereas Acid Rap originally created an atmosphere of horror and evil through detailed, vivid report of the (hopefully) fictional activities of the group, Mastamind has slowly managed a careful move from this into a form of Horror-tinged, futuristic, death-obsessed, cinematic style whereby his beats (which have been of stupendous quality lately) reference horror's sonic cliches of Theremin sounds, doomy, rumbling bass synths and zombie-lurch rhythms without falling into anything as insipid or empty as, say, late period Universal Horror (Abbott and Costello vs Dracula vs Hitler vs the Werewolf, or something).
So, we're treated to tight, tidy Gothic hip-hop that of late has had a sort of cyberpunk leaning -see the cover art from last few releases below -which helps Mastamind carve his own niche and not be Esham II. The self-proclaimed Hellrazer has a distinct and purposeful style that's nothing but his own.

His bars are death and suicide focused here, with much talk of welcoming death and basically adopting the persona of the Pinhead of Hip-Hop (the cinematic incarnation of Barker's creation is heavily sampled throughout the album too). Mastamind doesn't have much of an audible sense of humour, nor is he able to tie his lyrics into the same metaphorical knots of meaning that Esham manages, BUT his dedication, consistency and personality more than make up for this. Look at the last few Esham albums which were sprawling and massive but varied and diluted to a fault -Mastamind knows what he's great at and works at making it better and better, constantly adding new tricks and bettering his old ones.

He's such a great presence on the beats, solid and practised with great imagery and sense of purpose that stands up beside the livelier performances of the other MCs. The aforementioned SCUM is a strange one as I find his flow brutish and unsophisticated but cannot deny that the way he bolts his lyrics together, i.e. the effortless (and endless) description of seriously unpleasant and violent images, is succinct, rapid and compact enough to make for enjoyable verses but exhausting at track and album length. The best contribution comes from Daniel Jordan, a young face in the scene, whose verse on Lay Handz (a standout track) plays with Mastamind's own history by referencing one of his older verses on an earlier album (I think it was Themindzi LP), giving Mastapiece the overall feeling of being a celebration of the history of the Acid Rap genre while simultaneously being packed with proteges, modernised beats and in cahoots with new labels that marks out fresh territory and a sense that this crew are onto something exciting and fresh, not just retrospective tribute.

An overall solid release, confident, polished and full of enthusiasm -my only complaint? Why make yer artwork so damn murky? Lighten up! We can't see the cool picture!

Although, it's good to see a right-on-time break from the (very cool) pattern of skulls/facemasks that was defining of Mastamind's new, freshly independent phase but had served its purpose by now.

I'm hoping that the Acid Rap template, far from falling into the depths of Gore-Hop (which is SCUM's grisly little niche), can actually emerge as a kind of mix of cinematic, Cyperpunk/horror aesthetics and use the breakthroughs made by recent underground rappers to newly stakeout previously lost territory, rather than pretend they're exploring it for the first time.

Record Store Day

Good times at Rise Bristol

Guided by Voices: Jon the Croc 7"

Geoff Barrow/Ben Salisbury: DROKK CD

Mark Stewart: Experiments Ltd 12"

I showed what, I think, was admirable restraint at Rise Bristol today for National Record Store Day. A superb idea that gets us all slavering over vinyl, writing wish lists and (most importantly) spending our money in real record shops.

My main target was the Babe, Terror 12" Knights but, alas, Rise didn't receive a copy (I doubt they're likely to, actually) and nor did the shabby Head Entertainment. It was only 200 copies nationwide so, hey hum, never mind.

The above, though, seem great. Although not really a Record Store Day exclusive, DROKK is amazing. A John Carpenter/Judge Dredd inspired work of future-sci-fi genius, referencing Tangerine Dream and sounding like an annoyed Zombie Zombie (slightly funkier variant on this style) on a bristling rampage.

Disgruntled sequencer pulses, chrome slabs synth and swinging mechanic-percussion make up most tracks, the emphasis being on Sci-fi dark rather than anything else. A solidly good release that has excellent packaging that really fits the music it encases.

Demdike Stare epiphany, or the first symptoms of.

Prejudice wearing off

I've explained below how I can't quite accept Demdike Stare and, after researching and adding some context and history to the duo, I still found myself feeling very neutral and unimpressed by them. There was something unconvincing about a minimal techno DJ and an indiscriminate crate digger joining forces and with Andy Votel hanging around too -I don't dislike any of this gang but I instantly imagined the zany, guffawing stickers that adorned most Finders Keepers' releases "20 hot slices of raw Romanian Horror Soundtrack Funk" being bandied around during the recording of these Demdike tracks. The music was dark as fuck, no problems there, but I had no feeling for the dude being the noise. Not like Cabaret Voltaire who, despite being wholly affable and reasonable chaps, seemed to be exorcising their sinister dark side on record or P-Orridge who is disarmingly charming and thus makes his recorded presence all the more uncomfortable and shirk-worthy.

No, these guys seemed like a pair of vinyl heads digging putting their zany discoveries together under a concept which, perhaps, seemed almost too cinematic. I've listened mostly to the first two parts of their Triptych the most and was left unphased (not to mention deflated after "Caged in Stanheim") and dissatisfied. So, I persevered and have been listening heavily.

Part 3 (2?) of the Triptych, Voices of Dust, is on the money. It's a great, dense, unfurling leakage of loop abuse and slow-motion disintegration. You know that scene at the beginning of Terminator 2 with Sarah Connor experiencing the playground apocalypse? Parts of this recall my imagined DJ Skrew remix of that scene.

It isn't noisy -as in flinchingly so- just a slow grinding morass of explosions happening in carefully plotted sequence and overlapping here and there.

So, Voices of Dust I like. My wife asked me to turn it off for being 'too challenging' (a good sign) and I also find this to be the release where the personalities of the DJs recede a bit, feeling less like two mates having a chummy muck about, more like an earnest bit of malevolent art.

I'll give Eternal a spin later in the hope it's in the same vein.

Wax pt 1

Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland: Black is Beautiful

The artists formerly known as Hype Williams have released another album of murky, contradictory bass music -though I'm loathe to call it 'bass' music as, despite being unerringly bassy, is doesn't fit in with that tag/sub-genre's dancefloor functionality so neatly.

*sigh* I could discuss Blunt and Copeland for hours, but I'll resist as you can ably visit Pitchfork, DiS or some other gatekeeper/tastemaker/mediator/validator and get the same intellectualised discussion of this fascinating band's music.

I like it because they sound like late 70s-early 80s Industrial without the grisly bits -just as Throbbing Gristle sounded like a poisonous cloud, all amorphous, billowing noise spores, Blunt&Copeland sound they're music has been infected or damaged by said emissions. You know how those early Industrial/electro records (like SPK and some Cabaret Voltaire) had a nasty, DIY hum (This Heat had it too...not distant from Hype) to everything that made it sound somewhere between brilliantly spontaneous and in-the-moment but was complex and pointed enough to reveal a degree of intention and preparation. Cabaret Voltaire's Red Mecca had a similar quality -I like Blunt&Copeland because they sound like a full on dub-hip-hop remix of Red Mecca...which is cool.

Can't help feeling that this record is a bit tidier, though fair play to them for pushing tentatively forward and not compromising on what they do. Despite the (slightly) trimmed edges, it is still a great unconventional record. People just doing what the fuck they want. In the zone and using it.

April Payday splurge

Went to town (metaphorically)...I'll divide the formats up:

CDs

Holy Other - Want U (Tri Angle)



I've been a touch suspicious of Tri Angle as I haven't quite sussed them out and they seem to be doing a lot in little squirty amounts, this is a 22 minute EP and the other recent CD I have of theirs (OoOoo) is a 25 minute EP.

Though, I've over looked the high quality of their albums: How to Dress Well are, in spite of the shit name, magnificent and I encourage you all to check out his album on Tri Angle as it is gorgeous...millions of blog-words have been written about it so shan't go on but, outside of the gruelling hype machine, it was actually dead good.

Oh, and that Balam Acab album isn't bad either...(the 2nd one, not the above) just imagine yourself crouching in a cave looking out into a forest that shares a colour-scene with Acab's first single and that, apart from it being wet, this is a lonely place and you're sad. To put it simply, this sums the record up. It is, lest we forget, also achingly beautiful in places and has some nice spooky atmospherics (but was a bit heavy on the whole pitch-shifted vocals...went a bit there a some points).

So, wait, Holy Other. Very similar to BC and OoOoo, really, sluggish house, disembodied, sexless samples loop, swoop and lament over the fuzzily chugging percussion and synths swell and disappear. Very good but in danger of being lost forever if it doesn't shape up and get an identify that would last 5 minutes outside of Tri Angle's cosy aegis.

(Really, go and buy that HTDW CD, it's wicked).

Demdike Stare - Elemental (Modern Love)


Not sure about Demdike...not sure yet at all. Haven't actually listened to this guy yet but have been preparing myself all day. I splurged on the Triptych set in December and was a bit put off...the opening track "Caged in Stammheim" contained a sample of some early electronics that had been compiled on the mega-cool OHM: Early gurus of electronic music (Elipsis Arts) boxset that I received for a B-day present when I was 20. It was a 3 CD +DVD +book thing of beauty and because I was in my early electronics/noise stage (Subotnick, Derbyshire, Oram, Oliveros, Cage etc) it was a massive joy.

I can't recall the actual track that Demdike sample but, sadly, it smacked me initially as "Cool sound -but you didn't make that, you sampled it", which I'm no stickler for -I love sampling, passionately, but because this sound has a direct connection to my youth AND self-education in electronic music, I felt like I was instantly in the presence of hangers-on, coat-tail riders or something.

I love Demdike's music, their aesthetic is great, their sense of bleak fun, haunted-carnival mirth and general narrative edge makes their tracks really intricate and enjoyable but, dammit, I can't shake that this is made up of beardy LP finds, magpie finds and doesn't seem to offer ANYTHING original. NWW, Nordvagr, even Der Blutharsch, Coil and PTV
have all done the dark ambient thing much better...although their humour was cruel and aloof, to be fair, while Demdike sound like they've had a couple of pints and are dicking about with a Oujia Board or something.

I'm working on it...I think there's a lot to enjoy and I've already invested in Elemental (and, guiltily, a live album) so I'm saturating myself with their music at the moment. My wife likes it instantly, so that's OK.

Vienna pt2

Das Ich!

They're so silly and serious.

Albums: Satanische Verse; Egodram and Antichrist




Das Ich are blessed with a great visual identity -Stephan, the numerically adorned pale gentleman in the middle, looks really weird. His bone structure, rubber face and lithe frame makes him look like a genuine demonic imp and, when in full crimson body-paint, is a real sight to behold. A band of personal lore who always used to show up on my Amazon recommends but I could never find any...basically, some top notch ebm-industrial clanking going on, great Operatic level orchestral samples and Stephan's barking, growled vocals -not Skinny Puppy gurgles, oh no -Stephan Ackermann has a strained, bloodied voice that's shrill, painful and oozing with charm when it needs to be. Perhaps best compared to a Blixa Bargeld if he'd smoked less.

The three albums haven't sunk in yet: they all contain high quality industrial programming from Bruno Kramm that's only fault is that it may be let down the CD mastering, and exhaustingly verbose German lyrics from Stephan -he's a real wordsmith, I think, as his words spills out with rhythm, feeling and are delivered with a good deal of emotion. My limited understanding of German puts them firmly in the creepy-black-metal-theatrical-Neubauten-existential business category.

Worth checking out at some point because their albums are usually quite cheap, I suspect they were deeply in vogue at some point and then a generation of part-time hip-goths turned their collections over to Second-hand places as I found their entire discography in a box for 7 EURO apiece and was only stopped from getting the lot because I'd already splurged about 150EURO that day on CDs.

Gulp.

Vienna

Elsewhere in Vienna I visited Rave up! records, near one of the train stations. Really good selection of out-there music with good taste and a great knowledge.

I picked up:

Muslimgauze: Untitled

Love a bit of Muslimgauze. My first actual CD of his as I was so terribly unable to get any, from anywhere a few years ago and couldn't face downloading commercially available titles (even if he is dead and it is guilt free) so I found out which albums were hopelessly out of print or impossibly expensive and downloaded those. I remember swamping myself in Muslimgauze at one point, to saturation maybe, but this was a welcome find.

The usual: rhythmic ethnic samples, low bassy drones, middle-eastern percussion and news samples...oh, and a good gurn-inducing noise spazz out that almost outstays its welcome.

Super chunk of noise, this.

Totem records, Vienna

Other purchases in Vienna include:

Nocturnal Emissions : Duty Experiment


I've only ever heard of Nocturnal Emissions on the liner notes to Front Line Assembly's Millennium album, where it is nestled inside a mini-NWW list of bands FLA liked. This list has, for many years, served as a shopping list wherever possible (best finds were Bourbonese Qualk and Cabaret Voltaire, though).

Picked up this disc of studio offcuts and rejects, really enjoyed it because it's truly corrosive -all acid synths, petulant drums, squalling effects and that great, disorientating feeling that these post-punk, early industrials albums have of genuinely throwing you off-balance because they shock and jolt the listener with their sonic leaps; drum patterns and structure one minute, blurts of electro-snot coughs the next, then a sample, then some funk, then some noise and so on.

What else?

Der Blutharsch - Der Sieg Des Lichtes Ist Des Lebens Heil!

Fucking cool. The 1st Der Blutharsch album (untitled) was great, a seamy mix of taboo-tottering German War anthems, skewed sampledelica and nasty noise with bombastic orchestral samples...really weird. This is no different, just better organised. Heavy on the sinister orchestral business, a Swiss-version of the WWII German song and some proper post-industrial neo-folky chanting such as "You are Odin's son" and "Be careful with your blood" (or something to this effect).

I also picked up the weirder:

Der Blutharsh: Everything is alright!

A bit of a change in tone, this is a collection of inaccessible one-offs, rarities and great lost tracks. The 'Everything is alright' no doubt refers to the relief of completists who're unable to hear any of these tracks because the 200 ltd 12" sold out or, more likely, because Der Blutharsch is proper fucker and leaves all of his songs 'untitled' so, when you hop on Discogs, you don't know if that £180 split 12" rarity you've never heard of is a track you have or not.

This rectifies that, though I only wanted it because it nearly sits between his brutally martial period and his new, psychedelic 60s freak-out phase of late. So, this is still focused on sample-manipulation and neo-folky themes, but with a lighter tone and the inclusion of some warped, skrewed rock/folk/soul-sounding samples (though, Jungle this ain't). There's more emphasis on vocals from Albin Julius (DB himself) and friends who're droning, chanting, repetitive lines in a spooky apocalyptic manner but with a bit of wry humour. Sort of if Crazy World of Arthur Brown hooked up with NON for a play fight.

Enjoyable and varied, if sometimes a bit too bonkers.

Rome - Die aesthetik der herrschaftsfreiheit

Recent holiday to Austria with my wife and we visited Vienna. Now, I was keen to get some Viennese CD shopping done and discovered a fantastic little shop called Totem, just off Mariahilferstrasse. A true dungeon of dark music, specializing in extreme/underground metal (predominantly black and death) and with a healthy drone/noise/industrial section (in which I was interested).

German speaking countries are the natural hinterlands for this genre, not just because many fine bands gestated and were born there, but because the reception and worship of English-speaking bands has been so thorough. Also, German and Austria CD shops (high street ones, no less) usually stock a fine selection of alternative electronic and metal music such as Suicide Commando, :Wumpscut:, Das Ich (of course) and whole litany of others who've likely never been stocked in a UK HMV ever.

The artwork for Rome's new triptych really caught my eye:

With parts II and III in really beautiful light brown and red, classy digipacks. So, with the name and intriguing artwork I had a brief listen and heard some doomy, Bowie/Bauhaus inspired folk with some apocalyptic drumming, dramatic incantations and fireworks of industrial noise...could only be one thing: neo-folk.

Happily, I was in a neo-folk mood (it is never stocked anywhere in the UK) and happily snapped up all three CDs eventually.

They're superb: Jerome Reuter has a great, deep voice that is firm and evocative while the music -acoustic guitars, light-martial percussion and very evocative effects -has depth, accessibility and a real breadth of meaning. You can tell the record has been laboured over while retaining a breeziness that the best folk requires. Lyrics are deep, intellectual yet accessible when they need to be (i.e. the historical weight of the subject matter, European traditions of revolutions and resistance, never gets in the way of a good tune).

All three albums are a mix of instrumentals, spoken word and vocal songs, split about 20:30:50 ratio respectively (I know that's not a real ratio).

A recommended band to investigate.

Rationale

Short reviews of my music purchases, a record for me really but you're welcome to comment.