REVIEWS

bruce gilbertBruce Gilbert's near 50-year career as an experimental musician has certainly been more influential than it has been prolific. Since his contribution towards Wire's art-punk antics back in the '70s he has produced a handful of solo releases, none better than the contemporary dance soundtrack 'This Way to the Shivering Man', which featured lengthy extractions of revolving synthetic textures that are challengingly static but reward with some zoned-out cathartic responses. Gibert's first newly recorded work of this century picks up where 'This Way...' left off. A meaty 25-minute monster featuring bent tones and an ominously distant electronic soundscape is book-ended by two shorter tracks. These two excepts have little effect on their own other than to clarify the mechanisms at work and the minimalist aesthetic intentions. It is a highly focused work with a fearless approach to reduction as the simple elements are spun washing-machine-like into a cold, hard and fully emaciated pulp. The guitar-sourced elements are inspected from every possible angle with the same approach to experimentation that made Wire songs so compelling. Emego really seemed to be on a roll this year and this release is another muscular addition to an already stunning catalogue. -- simon harris.

:: Bruce Gilbert/Oblivio Agitatum - Editions Mego/Groove Attack/A-Musik. 

surf solarI think I smell a Dj-friendly tune of which the 10 minute album version I can’t wait to play. This 7inch from Fuck Buttons is a teaser to enhance the anticipation for “Tarot Sport” their second full-length album, released to be on ATP records. The two tracks on it are tight, hedonistically repetitive and guiltily low-fi sounding and have been on repeat on my headphones for a while. In other words, very good news within the current stream of popular music where duos as such awfully often appear without any musical identity. In the case of Fuck Buttons and with this last release especially in accordance to the previous stuff we are witnessing the introduction of a potential favourite band of a lot of music lovers as the throbbing gristlelish minimalism, the danceability and the dominant distortion background that excuses everything form the perfect recipe for a tune you will want your friends to listen to and is worth having a place in your record collection. --xrys danai.

:: Fuck Buttons/Surf Solar - ATP/Indigo. 

tarot sportsHot on the heels of their debut album 'Street Horrrsing', Fuck Buttons return to ATP's in-house label for another comprehensive collection of star-gazing eurodrone. The internet hype machine has, of course, already overloaded their new album 'Tarot Sport' with massive expectations, especially since it comes with the golden stamp of 'Two Lone Swordsman's Andrew Weatherall overseeing the knob twiddling production duties. The album remains relatively true to the debut. Their kaleidoscopic new-age dreamscapes cross the triplicity of generic borders with gentle noise, synth drone and techno that to my mind most obviously recall the pulsating aquatic textures of Wolfgang Voigt's GAS project. Aesthetically the two projects differ wildly but the gentle rhythms that provide the spine of the pieces function in a hugely similar fashion. The repetitiously undulating patterns sound something like what would happen if ELO's entire back catalogue was amalgamated into a single wall of neon synth drone. It was always going to be impossible to live up to the hype, but that shouldn’t mean you have any less reason to give their finely crafted and spanglingly glamorous post-eurovision hits a go. -- simon harris.

:: Fuck Buttons/Tarot Sport - ATP/Indigo. 

groupshowQuirky track titles such as 'The Misery Of Thin, Weak Looking Hair' and 'Incredibly Comfortable Slippers' suggest music that is lightweight, frivolous, even disposable. Bad memories of the worst excesses of 90s 'trip hop' come to mind. Fortunately, The Martyrdom of Groupshow is much better than initial impressions suggest. The sound is warm and each tune exhibits finely-judged balance between repetition and change. Some of the melodies resemble High Places, but less frenetic and less liable to burst into complex polyrhythms. There are ghosts as well of such electronic music pioneers as Cluster, Harmonia or some of Brian Eno's work. The group, consisting of Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler, have created a record that has deep roots in the electronic music of the past, while remaining alive to the new possibilities available today. The pieces are more sketches than attempts at epic or grandiose grooves; but their conciseness, especially considering that this music is reputed to be whittled down from '200 Gigabytes of improvised jam sessions', frees the listener from any hint of self-indulgence. Like Moritz von Oswald Trio's Vertical Ascent, this is an attempt at bringing together the worlds of cutting-edge electronic music and free improvisation. Here, however, the feel is much looser and rawer than von Oswald's experiments. Where the sound of Vertical Ascent is as delicately and precariously balanced as a plate spinning on a stick, The Martyrdom of Groupshow allows the plates to crash to the ground and savours the tinkle of shattering China. The various contributions of  individual musicians is also more apparent than on Vertical Ascent, with each contributor taking a turn at catching the listener's attention. With cheap technology and accomplished ears for a detailed but uncluttered soundscape, Groupshow achieve one of the ultimate aims of electronic music. The sounds here seem organic, warm and loose, but a cold electronic heart beats relentlessly deep inside. -- nick ilott.

:: Groupshow/The Martyrdom of Groupshow -  Scape 

hunter gracchusThis Sheffield-based “anarcho-collectivist counter hegemonic succour“ as they title themselves on their home page, is a surrealistic and performative musical unit that features the Singing Knifes’s Jon and Fiona and Karman Ali alongside others. A lot of things occur while The Hunter Gracchus is on loudspeakers. “The Bolsheviks Shat In My Brain” starts off as an endless orchestra tuning during which some sort of inexplicable creature meddles with the metallic objects in it’s glorious walk of fame inside the music room. Eventually it takes over and reborn on stage, stretching out in screams delivered by the clarinet and feedback and vocals that sound like chocking on your lover. For the Hunter Gracchus arrhythmia is a means of diversion. A particular observation is the heretical arrangement of instrumental role-playing. Violin loops that don’t stop all through the tracks actually keep the continuation on which the stimulated chords, shouting metallic bangs and suffering vocals can hysterically dance. As it becomes more apparent in the debut album, the goal is to create a dark and unsafe trip, hence the Kafka borrowed band name, through a thrillingly reflective river to a scary place. On “The Pineal Eye” the psych kicks in and allows the following audio disturbance to attain a good reason of existence. “The Grater The Jibbah The Grater The Blessing” has an oriental, ritualistic nature with controlled cymbals that form a virtual dance to it. Lastly, “For Naguib Mahfouz” is a string sliding epic that manages without any predictability whatsoever to capture the anticipation moments of the music-to-happen and enlarge them into a hypnotic theme. The Hunter Gracchus is a surreal as it sounds. --xyrisafenia danai

::The Hunter Gracchus - s.t./The Bolsheviks Shat In My Brain - Chironex Records/Chocolate Monk.