Emptyset – Medium - January 2012 January 7th, 2012

Emptyset are a Bristol duo who pressgang techno’s subsonic bass into a dub-inflected abstract sound. Medium is a record of them using that sound to push air around the sensitively mic’d spaces of a supposedly haunted Gloucestershire pile, Woodchester Mansion, abandoned untouched since an abortive 1870s refit. The packaging sets the scene, with black and…

Stewart Lee – Carpet Remnant World - January 2012 Hammy (Not The Hamster)'s Blog - By Hammy (Not The Hamster) - January 5th, 2012

Last night my lovely girlfriend took me to see Stewart Lee in his new stand up show Carpet Remnant World at the Leicester Square Theatre. I’ve been a fan of Lee since I was very young, following his career from the days of Fist of Fun and This Morning with Richard not Judy, so was…

Juke Joint Pimps – The Gospel Pimps - January 2012 January 4th, 2012

The Juke Joint Pimps are a duo of a decade’s standing, who play fifties style Chicago electric blues with garage punk surface noise. Deacon T thwacks out tantalizingly truncated licks whilst the Reverend Mike blows harp and hollers enthusiastically from behind a stand-up kit. Only the occasional misplaced vocal inflection reveals the duo are in…

Bloodloss – The Truth Is Marching In - January 2012 January 1st, 2012

This still-active Sydney combo’s third album, from 1989, exemplifies a peculiarly Australian jazz-punk hybrid (see also Ed Kuepper’s Laughing Clowns). Mangrove swampland licks gutter in the loose-limbed shadow of Albert Ayler and his ecstatic ilk; saxes squawk over driving bass; a snowstorm of flailing drums blows grunge blueprints West to Seattle and into Mudhoney’s laps.…

Black Sheep VC – Orcadia - January 2012 January 1st, 2012

Two pseudonymous hairy biker types, Vybik Jon and Common Era, travelled to the Orkneys in the Summer of 2010 to sit unselfconsciously in Neolithic chambered tombs and improvise appropriate responses, using only their mouths and things they found on the floor. Seasoned vocal extemporists like Phil Minton or Yamantaka Eye might have pulled this off.…

Acid Mothers Temple And The Melting Paraiso UFO – The Ripper At The Gates Of Heaven’s Dawn - January 2012 January 1st, 2012

The Japanese commune rockers’ seventieth album focuses the usual free-form freak-outs into a flowing suite of sound. Chinese Flying Saucer is twelve minutes of hard rock riffing doused in disorientating swooshing; the quarter of an hour of modal blues droning and octopus poly-rhythms that comprises Back Door Man Of Ghost Rails Inn sounds like Jim…