Within a ten year period, Alter der Ruine have released five albums, various EPs, remixes, unleashed a inescapable dancefloor anthem, split up, reformed, and drastically changed their style – without apparently alienating their fanbase along the way. This doesn’t sound like a too difficult thing to do, until you look a little closer at exactly […]
Phil Barry has been involved in various musical projects for years, notably of course Cubanate, but nowadays his focus is on his Be My Enemy project. With the second Be My Enemy album released this week, along with a handful of gigs coming up, I caught up with Phil to talk about the past, the […]
Hurtling into summer, and nearly halfway through 2014 already (!), here are this month’s ten great tracks.
I’m beginning to wonder if the internet age has actually begun to do good things rather than being simply a drain on music (and the money involved). At least in the so called lesser corners, those where sales were less important, perhaps, and where creativity is paramount.
This week, I’m finally getting ’round to looking at a subject that I can’t quite believe I haven’t touched on before. There are countless songs about the sea, clearly an evocative subject that can have so, so many other metaphors and meanings applied to it – as the songs featured here do. In addition, this […]
After a couple of lean months, suddenly I’ve been deluged with new music worth writing about. I’m strict about keeping the Tracks of the Month list to ten, though, so some may be held off until next month.
Christ, 2014 is passing by in a flash. With Easter so late this year, it has resulted too in Resistanz and Whitby being on back-to-back weekends, which has left a number of us fearing for our livers during April, never mind an attempt to get any sleep. As I write this, the first of those […]
My third year attending Resistanz (I missed the first due to family commitments), and my first DJ set there (and my first time DJing in Sheffield in five years or so). I was DJing in the “trad” (read: old-school) industrial room on the Saturday night with Gadge Europa and Grenadier181. Thanks to everyone who came […]
These last few weeks have had a lot of thinking about time and the past. Be that looking at events in the past, anniversaries (of relationships, also of albums, of movements), or celebrating past lives. Needless to say, there are a lot of songs touching on the subject, some perhaps more oblique than others.
So, seven years – almost to the week – since I started this series, the Tuesday Ten hits #200. That’s 200 lengthy posts, and 2,000 artists, songs, albums, venues (hey, the subjects have got around a bit). New songs, old songs, favourites, ones I dislike, even recently music other people love. It was initially started […]
A second visit to Kerosene in Leeds.
Reviewing music is sometimes an exceptionally difficult task. On some occasions, the words will flow immediately, and the whole review can be completed quickly (something that actually I find easier with bad albums). On others, it might sit on the back burner for a while while I listen again and again trying to find the […]
Whatever your opinion on Laibach, it is perhaps hard to disagree that even after over thirty years active, anything they release is at least worth talking about. Over their career they have cast their critical eye over mainstream pop music, covering fixtures in the pop canon with, er, surprising results, uncovered hitherto unnoticed totalitarian leanings […]
After a bit of a slow start to the year gig-wise, into February and all of a sudden there is a short spell of a number of gigs. Time constraints and other distractions have meant I've struggled to finish full reviews, so here is a roundup of the gigs I attended during February.
amodelofcontrol.com: So, Seeming, introduce yourselves…
The television appearance is an important part of the promotional armoury. Not a video (I’ve covered these in various posts before), but simply a live* rendition of a current song that maybe gets a band out to an audience that otherwise might not know about them. I’ve also excluded TV-aired festival appearances, too. One thing, […]
A new month, so a new ten tracks of things that I’m enjoying at the moment. To be honest, we seem to be in a bit of a lull at the moment, after the flurry of releases recently (Seabound, God Module, Laibach, seeming and Aesthetic Perfection will all be reviewed separately soon, by the way […]
Of all of the top echelon of industrial bands, none perhaps gain such polarised views as Skinny Puppy. Right from their early days in the eighties, they’ve pushed boundaries with their sound, avoiding the obvious routes of dancefloor approval, creating nightmarish musical visions densely packed with samples and a visual image almost as impressive. This […]
Having controversial opinions, of course, sells records, but can also be a catalyst for change. So, here are ten artists who to varying degrees, have made controversial opinions, music and imagery talking points – and selling points.
Once again, recently, I’ve been struggling with insomnia, something that judging on some mornings on social networks that quite a few of my friends suffer from too. I go through phases like this – like many, I’m sure, connected to stress or work, or both – and indeed during much of my student days I […]
