I’ve written a lot of reviews over the years. This is the home of pretty much all of them since about 2003.
It’s been a relatively short time, slightly over a year, since Tony Young’s previous album, Love No Longer Lives Here. And, in that time, he’s clearly not been resting on his laurels. Each of the previous albums has shown a distinct progression from the last – not only in quality, perhaps, but also in the […]
It was of course the return of VNV Nation to the venue, and a big, big crowd – it can’t have been far from selling out – as there always seems to be whenever they come to ‘town.
I’d never even set foot in the Royal Festival Hall before, so I was most impressed with it’s spacious layout, and even during the very, very varied “support” DJ set from Ashley Wales of Spring Heel Jack the sound was impressive.
Yet another gig which was running horrendously late from the start. We didn’t see the whole set of any of the support acts – our need for food in particular saw to that. But then, some of the supports tried our patience somewhat, too.
It’s three years now since I first came across this artist, on the Glitch Mode compilation H0rd3z Ov Thee El33t!, as one of many artists that I first heard there that I thought “hmm, must check them out again sometime”. Some vanished, others I went and bought the albums. This was one, I’ll admit, that […]
Sometimes, it’s best to ignore all the writing and promo material about a band before listening if you’ve not heard them before. Which is what I did here – other than knowing the label that they were on. D-Trash records are a small label that I’ve not really come across other than their release of […]
In this age of the music industry constantly re-evaluating and repackaging it’s back-catalogues, I guess it was only a matter of time before we saw more of this in the industrial scene. Of course, some labels and bands that I’m sure I don’t need to name have been at this for ages, but I don’t […]
Last night took me to a small, back-of-a-pub gig for the first time in a long, long time. Those nice folk at Drowned In Sound have been running a small handful of “DiScover” gigs at The Harley in Sheffield’s university district over the past year or so, and this gig on the latest DiScover tour […]
It seems to be an unusual aim in industrial/IDM/whatever-you-want-to-call-it spheres to want to have any flicker of emotion other than rage and anger, although some artists do manage an impressive job of doing so, often by just the use of what would be termed soundscapes rather than including vocals.
After a night DJing at Autonomy, my girlfriend couldn’t make the next day, so one of my best friends joined me to head south to Sonisphere instead. I’d declined the recently-won tickets earlier in the week, but much to my surprise they arrived on the Saturday, and the decision was taken that we should go […]
It’s hard indeed to describe, or review, what would be termed ‘dark ambient’ in its purest form such as this. It ebbs, it ebbs some more, and doesn’t really flow anywhere except at a glacial pace. It starts out inaudibly, takes nearly two minutes to be heard… But then, when you have forty-one minutes for […]
The early start – doors at 1800 – meant that Leech Woman played to a half-empty room, which was a damned shame seeing as this was billed as their last gig in the UK for some time – main man Alex is moving abroad. There was no room for sentiment, though, as LW roared through […]
It took bloody ages to get there – two hours from Sheffield to Manchester, via Woodhead, thanks to Snake being closed and awful traffic in Manchester city centre, and I managed my first longer distance drive without any problems – but last night’s gig was worth every single minute and then some.
Samarkande are introduced on their website as an apparently experimental group that create by way of improvisation, and to “break the rigidity of electro-acoustic and electronic music”. Quite what the latter point means in practice is a difficult one to answer, it seems.
It’s sometimes been hard to reconcile the two facets of Chris McCall’s output. The seemingly ultra-serious music with the joyously insane (and whisper it, *fun*) live shows, but here, somehow, we may have the missing link at last. Like some kind of mad scientist (or inventor?) anything that may work is hurled into the mix […]
As one of a seemingly great number of promising industrial acts from the US, previous releases from this act have been of such high quality, that it was perhaps a little bit of a worry that expectations seemed to be too high for their new album when it hit at the tail-end of 2008. And […]
Last night’s Gothminister and Das Ich gig was pretty strange. The turnout wasn’t too bad, although as always the small room at Corp got uncomfortably warm over the course of the gig.
“A blend of old-school industrial and dark cyber-tek electronics” …so says the blurb, which gave me a little more confidence in what I was about to hear when I was first passed this release. The band’s name suggested to me yet another “harsh” industrial act who were as ‘evil’ as they could be. But maybe, […]
Anyway, last night was my first attendance at a gig at Corporation in some time, for IAMX supported by KIK. After meeting up with friends in a nearby pub, we headed down late enough, so we thought, to be able to avoid support act KIK, who I’ve seen a fair few times before and wasn’t […]
Arriving late is something of an unfortunate habit, but it doesn’t make too much different if the gig is running somewhat late anyway. But with the delays and then the waiting-an-age-at-the-bar-for-ridiculously-priced-drinks (some things never change, I see), I didn’t get any chance to catch much of Revolution by Night.
