It would be easy to say of any new release from Norwegian sonic pioneers Ulver “Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting!”, but I have long come to realise that it is far easier to leave all expectations at the…
View More Ulver – The Assassination of Julius CaesarAuthor: Roger Trenwith
Big Hogg – Gargoyles
Following my eye-catching review of their debut album, how could those strangely comprehensible Glaswegians Big Hogg fail to be noticed by the big boys down in That London? Quite easily in all probability, but in the real world these winsome…
View More Big Hogg – GargoylesRichard Barbieri – Planets + Persona
Richard Barbieri is a name that needs little introduction, but on his occasional solo albums he calls on his long career in synthesiser technology and sound design to craft highly intricate ambient works that never fall into the trap of…
View More Richard Barbieri – Planets + PersonaRichard Barbieri / GRICE
Phoenix Arts Centre, Exeter 16th March 2017 Article by Tony Colvill This was an evening for dispelling ‘Ghosts’. I say this for many a reason, all with little logic. The eighties were not my decade, musically I did not feel…
View More Richard Barbieri / GRICECzar – Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal
What is this and where did it come from? Landing here with its Beefheartian swagger via a long stay on Planet Speed Metal and with a math-jazz calculator set to stun, this shit is weird and it’s curdled my custard.…
View More Czar – Life Is No Way To Treat An AnimalPaul Morley – The Age of Bowie
Back in the days of the tabloid-sized music weeklies, or “inkies” as they were known, for a period from the mid ’70s until the early ’80s the NME was my music Bible. It was The Guardian to the Melody Maker’s…
View More Paul Morley – The Age of BowieO.R.k. – Soul of an Octopus
Two years after their first album, Inflamed Rides, this rather thrilling gathering of enquiring musical like-minds return with Soul Of An Octopus, their first for the always interesting Rare Noise label, and it seems that no little development of their…
View More O.R.k. – Soul of an OctopusThinking Plague – Hoping Against Hope
It has been over four years since the relentlessly foreboding Decline and Fall, and Colorado state’s favourite avant rock collective, the marvellously uncompromising Thinking Plague, are back, this time dredging optimism from the depths of black despair at the perverse…
View More Thinking Plague – Hoping Against HopeLa Bocca della Verità – Avenoth
I have had this album a while, and it was only thanks to a Facebook friend raving about it that I remembered it, and it was a darn good thing I did, I can tell you. Formed in Rome in…
View More La Bocca della Verità – AvenothShamblemaths – Shamblemaths
Further proof to my contention that everyone in Scandinavia is in, or has been in a band is offered by the glorious duo Shamblemaths, who hail almost inevitably from Trondheim in Norway. Simen Å. Ellingsen on guitars, saxophones and vocals…
View More Shamblemaths – Shamblemaths