Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division are, hands down, one of the greatest fucking bands of all time. Their debut, Unknown Pleasures, set new benchmarks in alternative music, and is without a doubt one of the finest and most influential records, ever. The fantastic album art describes it to a tee really, nothing before or after, only an erratic yet channelled burst of creative genius in the middle. 

So, It's 1979, and punk is pretty much dead - all the energy, bravado and balls it had is seemingly on life support. Enter Joy Division - four Mancunian lads who manage to paint a musical landscape that mirrors their own existential dread. This musical landscape, although a product of its time, sounds like nothing that came before it. 


You have driving, muscular basslines and a formally dressed vocalist singing in baritone (but never indulging in vocal theatrics) taking the centerstage; always in the company of  motorik percussion and an atonal, minimalistic guitar that sometimes growls, and at others provides texture; seemingly mimicking whatever demon it is that was consuming Ian's soul at the time. Martin Hennett's austere, dub-influenced  aesthetic recognises the importance of space in a work as bleak as this, and it all sets the stage for telling the tales of alienation, disorientation and despair during Thatcher era UK, in an entirely original way - a driving, metronomic opener in 'Disorder', the haunting, hellish lament of 'Day of the Lords', the maddening riff and subsequent explosion of 'Shadowplay', the chilling, hypnotic bass propelled illustration of epilepsy in 'She's Lost Control' as well as the cathartic build and release of 'New Dawn Fades' which foresees Curtis'  losing struggle to maintain his lifestyle - "a loaded gun won't set you free, or so you say." There is also the vacuous anti-anthem in the closer "I Remember Nothing", by this point all corporeal relevance seems to have been uprooted and shot calluously into deep space, leaving behind only echoes of sorts - "Me in my own world, you there beside; the gaps are enormous, we stare from each side"


Raw, relentless and visceral, Unknown Pleasures is much more than an insight to a restless soul bearing the brunt of decay; it's also a definitive segment of alternative music history as we know it. You just can't go wrong here.

A loaded gun won't set you free, or so you say

Pram - Gash

Pram are an experimental band based in Birmingham. Originally from Yorkshire, Rosie Cuckston and Matt Eaton went to school together. Along with drummer Andy Weir, the three then moved to Birmingham in the late 80's. A chance meeting between Rosie Cuckston and Sam Owen at a local supermarkets Singles Night started off the unique band. They began gigging under the name Hole in 1988. The only sounds included her eerie vocals and a home-made theremin. Matt Eaton later joined the band playing multiple instruments. Keyboard player/sampler Max Simpson also joined, with Sam playing bass and Andy Weir on the drums. The band's first album "Gash" was self-released and sold by mail order and at gigs, and is now completely out of print (sells for about $500 on Ebay). 

This as a debut marked Pram as one of the most innovative bands in the UK in the 90's. Filled to the brim with mind bending experiments in deconstruction, Gash has a near psychedelic nature in its delivery but never flirts with pomposity or wank. It's a very intriguing world of sound that Pram have conjured in Gash, one could say the chaos within is meticulously detailed, and once a while it's possible to witness the myriad of musical cornerstones that Pram use to decorate their tunes; ranging all from free jazz, ambience, usage of toys and toy-like instruments (that well compliment the child-nightmare themes that the songs portray) and the part-controlled/part frenzied krautrock drumming that gives the songs a really cool, rough edge, like a yacht getting rocked by the mighty ocean in the dead of the night (we would in fact be lost at sea if it wasn't for Rosie Cuckton's sweet, soothing voice that adds a semblance of 'normalcy' to the whole affair). 

All in all, a bizarre barrage of sounds on this one, every song is unique, from the industrial mutant pop of 'I'm a War' which climaxes into a serious funk workout, the calm solitude of 'Pram', the grotesque 'Flesh' which possesses a frantic punk spirit and some violent, noisy guitar lines that show that these guys were good at just about everything. I'm not sure how analogies work in reviews, but at this point in time I think it's fair to say that Pram were the heirs to the kind of thing This Heat and Can were doing decades before them - pushing the boundaries of sound in ways not thought entirely possible without sacrificing any of it in quality. Sorry if I'm gushing, I fucking love this record.

Nightmares and dreamscapes

Slowdive - Just For A Day

At this point in time, you all should know that Slowdive are probably my favourite band of all time. No one crafted soundscapes like they did, no other band I know (other than probably Joy Division) has such a flawless discography, outtakes and extras included. I don't have much to say that won't be said in my review, except for the fact that I fucking adore these guys and wish they have a far larger audience than they currently do. So without further adieu, here's their debut.

Before I make any sort of attempt to review this record, I request that you bear with me, while I tell you a bit about myself. That may also serve to explain a lot of the hyperbole that would follow on for the rest of this monologue.

I am a hopeless romantic. I'm not even going to lie. Daydreaming, yearning, walking around with a stupid smile on my face, these things seem to go hand in hand with my nonchalant, happy-go-lucky personality. And when these things finally come together with the actual event of falling in love, then, just wow. It's intoxicating. Everything else around you doesn't only seem lacklustre, but it actually is a lot less important than you once felt it to be. And yeah, anyone reading this can attest to that.

Life's a funny thing though - it paves the way for the other side of the coin. The heartbreak. The end of a good thing, that despondent feeling, the works. And for the hopeless romantic, this usually means that he's going to turn into one pensive motherfucker, and for a while, life becomes one huge daydream. I'm here, but not really. I see everything around me, but for whatever reason, I cannot relate to it. Or maybe I just don't want to. 

Either way, like everything else, it all comes full circle. It's a cycle, and what some would call vicious, I call life-affirming. It defines a certain part of my character, and despite everything else that goes on in my head, it's great glancing at the bigger picture - the ability to love without condition and to be able to completely surrender yourself to your instinct and dream; in a sense it is the very essence of youth. And I'm unabashedly proud of it.

So it is with a rather romantic fervor that I attempt to review Slowdive's "Just for a Day", a tiny little album that dropped in 1991; the great 1991 when the already pregnant alternative music scene exploded, and this gem was lost somewhere in the washes of everything else that was overwhelming the music press at the time. It was a key part of the much misunderstood shoegazer movement; the idea that you didn't need to scream or be abrasive to voice your rebellion, but rather drench and drown it amongst the countless waves of sonic bliss and the hushed voices that lurked beneath. The Valentines stood above their peers during this era with the monolithic 'Loveless'; and why the fuck not - after all, Loveless was a beast, an example of the beautiful and the ugly coexisting in harmony in a way none had imagined before. I hadn't been old enough to appreciate the scene at the time, but man, it was certainly my kind of rebellion. 

And then, there was Slowdive. From day one, you could tell that these guys were inspired, and to an extent it's fair to call them soundchasers. There's evidence littered throughout their career that shows them to be playing around with the proposed conventions of shoegaze and dreampop; most of their early EPs and singles show them experimenting with ambient soundscapes (perhaps inspired by Victorialand era Cocteau Twins) and psychedelic dream-pop. Their debut 'Just for a Day' illustrates this - it's a record that was made with a certain memory in mind, as it sets out to pursue this memory, this sense of longing and capture its essence with their own impressionistic aesthetic.

And it is with this release that they managed to bring out their youthful romanticism and merge it with their own dosage of bliss. The whole record conveys a feeling of lysergic haze while never being devoid of melody, even though the melody is usually hidden under layers of sonic waves that create a pulsating ripple through most of the songs over here. There’s the glacial single ‘Catch the Breeze’ that brings out a sense of nostalgia with its gentle, subdued vocals and a memorable hook that is soon avalanched by Halstead’s guitar, there’s the blackened, mournful ‘Ballad of Sister Sue’ that tells a tale of loss and desensitisation solely through the atmosphere it invokes. The lyrics are nearly completely inaudible, they only exist to further augment the white-noised, borderline morphine like quality that the music induces in you. The lush, ambient instrumental ‘Erik’s Song’ forms the perfect bridge between the first and second halves of the record, paving the way for ‘Brighter’ and ‘The Sadman’, the closest you get to straightforward pop on this record; the latter having a sublime choral daze that brings to mind a feeling of being washed over by emotion, courtesy Rachel Goswell’s heavenly voice. But where Just For a Day is concerned, there’s absolutely nothing better on the album than the bookends; the funeral march-like opener in ‘Spanish Air’ sets the tone for the record in magnificent fashion, a haunting lament accentuated by Goswell and Halstead’s sombre vocal harmonising, topped off by what is probably the sweetest acoustic arpeggio you have ever heard in a Slowdive song. And the closer, oh lord. Primal is a song that utilises the signature sound on this album and stretches it to a breaking point; at its climax it may be the most euphoric thing you have ever heard. 

What is even more admirable about Just for a Day is the wonderful 2005 reissue, that compiles ‘Blue Day’, a collection of material from their early EPs to really illustrate the creativity behind this short-lived band even at their early, maturing stages. The aptly named ‘Albatross’ is an example of soaring ambience being used to create a mood behind some furious drumming, ‘She Calls’, ‘Slowdive’ and ‘Morningrise’ all showcasing the band’s heavier side and signalling the archetypal shoegazer sound that they had already perfected and were going to move on from – quiet, steady drums, an omniscient soothing guitar drone and washed out melodies buried within an aural vortex. They also delve into psychedelic and ambient respectively with ‘Avalyn’ and ‘Losing Today’, the two perhaps being amongst the best of the lot here – the former being propelled by a deep underlying bassline and Goswell’s voice to hypnotic effect, and the latter using a slow tempo and gently strummed guitars to create an aura of introspection, something the band would go on to master a couple of years later on Pygmalion. Also included is the single ‘Shine’, a breezy, rich pop song that serves as a soundtrack for a quiet day on the beach, as well as a dark, haunting interpretation of Syd Barrett’s ‘Golden Hair’. 

Slowdive would soon grow up and move on. They would reach for the clouds in their quest for creating and mastering the dream-pop sound on Souvlaki, and they would hurtle toward outer space in sparse, delicate and almost alien-like fashion on Pygmalion; both records serving as milestones of pioneering, consistent achievement for a band that boasted of steady sonic evolution and maturity on every release. But it was on Just for a Day that they had their feet firmly rooted on the ground, and that they unabashedly wore their hearts on their sleeves and dared to dream. And where people find flaws with this album is where I find peace within it; it reminds me of what it is like to fall in love and be imperfect, in the best way possible.


Screams that seem unreal

Burial - Untrue

Burial is a dubstep producer from the UK. Notorious for refusing to appear live or engage in celebrity theatrics, he's remained true to his ideals by releasing two of the most groundbreaking records electronic music had heard in ages. 2-step has never been this introspective, nor has it conjured late night urban landscapes like Burial's second album Untrue does. A review from a fellow rymer, the_sound_reigns: 

"Yeah, this fucking album. I've listened to it while baking in the scorching heat of a Canterbury nor'wester and while walking through the rain on a late Seattle afternoon while the sky grew dark and heavy. It sounded just as wonderful in either situation. Contrary to what some might say, this isn't an album that takes life from its surroundings; it's an album that gives life to its surroundings. There are songs that stand on their own as stunning tracks ("Archangel", "Raver") but by and large, this is one bleak and beautiful symphony. Perhaps bleak is overstating it somewhat: take the moment in "Shell of Light" around 3:30 when it all melts into a gloriously uplifting smear of heat-hazed piano and strings. And who would have thought a track called "In McDonalds" could be so knock-out gorgeous? But again, it's when you take the album in its entirety that you get the full picture of how wonderful it is. Try to disassemble it into component parts: murky aquatic funk beats, the deep-bass thrum of dub, neon-on-pavement ambient bleed, the ever-present hiss and crackle of the city speeding by, vocals lost and whirling in the void. You could add these up over and over again and never get close to the beauty and darkness that Burial coaxes from the strands he(?) weaves. Sometimes it's hard to explain why one particular album stands out from the clamouring throng; what's the magic ingredient that takes this particular record and elevates it until it takes hold of me until I can barely breathe with the intensity of it all? Why do I keep circling back to it, wanting to lay back and sink into the sound, fall beneath the hum and clutter of it and lie submerged, listening to the voices leading me down dark and echoing paths. How can something so dystopian be so beautiful? Something that conjures images of cities dissolved in a chemical fog, the only flickering signs of life the voices of the dead still travelling lonely on the airwaves, broadcasting their final messages into the emptiness. It's a transmission from the end of the line, soaring out into the endless void opening up at the death of the universe. This music should play among the burned-out husks of the stars when the human race is long extinct. Still telling our stories, baring our hearts, singing our songs."


cigarettes and nightwalks

Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind

Swans have been an immensely influential no-wave act who have gone through various transformations, sort of like a shedding skin and maturing with absolute class without sacrificing any of their quality. 


Michael gira is an enigma. Raised and fed on a diet of the experimental and largely noise oriented new york scene, Swans is practically his vehicle for expression, one he's guided through the years and has been its only consistent member, from the inception of the band to date, where we await their new studio album almost 20 years after the band formed. 

Early Swans material, was in a nutshell, absolutely fucking brutal. Tape loops, heavy riffs, guitars completely detuned and atonality are pretty much commonplace here. This is basically some of the most aggressive music that ever existed. Case in point, shows were so loud and dissonant that people were reported to have ended up passing out and occasionally going dizzy, from sheer volume. Cops would regularly shut down and ban them from playing in certain areas (Gira returns his love for the authority on the wonderful release 'Cop') But it wasn't harsh for the sake of being harsh, the time signatures were reminiscent of Gira's love for jazz influenced 'rock', the minimal chord structures seemed to be a nod to early, minimalistic blues based rock and roll.   

Swans themselves are a study in evolution. From the violently noisy beginnings in the now legendary no-wave scene, they carved out a really unique path for themselves, seeing them morph ever so slowly, but surely, into a more melodic juggernaut, paving the way for 2 of their finest efforts - White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and The Great Annihilator. What was to follow was anyone's guess, but really, nothing in the world prepared anyone for the masterwork that was Soundtracks for the Blind. Soundtracks adds up to nearly two and a half hours in length. It's a sprawling effort, one that changes mood and tempo on every possible turn, but still retains its character alongwith its devotion to an unique, sinister atmosphere that is always seductive and hypnotic. Dissonance is the modus operandi here, you are literally compelled to understand music as you know it as a different kind of instrument altogether. 

They meddle with a frenetic punk aesthetic on "Yum Yab Killers" which is layed out deliciously over Jarboe's ferocious vox, they travel into warped techno soundscapes on "Volcano" and even feature a medieval harpsichord swirl on "Red Velvet Corridor". The drones exist to serve as psychoactive rather than a foreground mechanism, slowly lulling you into a lucid daydream, evoking ambience that brings to mind desolate industrial landscapes, war torn fields and ruins of ancient civilisations. Maybe they are allusions to the dark recesses of the human psyche; "Prisoner in Yr Skull" and "Final Sacrifice" seem to be the sound of personal ghosts being exorcised.  There also seems to be an undercurrent of carnal sexuality to the rhythms that pulsate under each selection, from the thunderous tribal drumming to the beating of primal overtones that permeate the drones. But the two key highlights on the record are definitely the epics, 'Helpless Child' and 'The Sound'. The former being a cinematic ode to a obsessively dependent relationship that glides effortlessly into the atmosphere as it builds to it's climax, and the latter is just about the best fucking song there ever was - a monstrosity that predates the 'post rock' movement by at least 3 years and is arguably the watermark for Godspeed you! black Emperor's career and every other derivate that has followed since - 'The Sound' stands as a milestone in 'build-and-release tension' finesse in music; a solemn orchestral dirge that marks Gira's omniscience on the record to fantastic effect. 

It's quite hard to believe they bowed out with this, even for today's standards. A disjointed, double disc ode that compiles nearly every manifestation of Swan's career and more; tape loops, mournful drones, samples, field recordings, distorted guitars, ambient keyboards and Gira's lovely baritone - the result is spectral, to say the least, there's not a wasted minute, and the album is so unstably unfocused that trying to allocate a narrative to it is almost invariably bound to be futile - it has to be heard to be believed. Soundtracks for the Blind stands as a testament to one of the best bands of our time - Swans were so far ahead of their time that most of us are still catching up. I recommend that you give it a listen because it could possibly change your life.


Lose your eyesight

Bark Psychosis - ///Codename:Dustsucker

So let me kick things off here. I'd like to start off by posting the album that the blog name is derived from. Let it be known everywhere that Bark Psychosis, the pioneers of the 'post rock' genre in 1994 (with the magnificent Hex), came back ten years later to show the competition how far ahead of the game they still were. Master innovators who use texture and form to fantastic effect. Listen closely and you find enough enigma and intricacy in this record to qualify it as a musical puzzle, one that reveals more every listen. Check out this review from Nick Southall from the now defunct Stylus Magazine.

Vapour trails of distant airplanes turning orange in the sunset, a smear of royal umber bruise. Universes appear within your iris, tremulous rumbles consume miniscule worlds. Glass and metal are pushed beyond physical limits, bend and break. Bark peels like skin from trees. Points of water evaporate under immense heat. Whispers drown out coils of industry. Forward motion is reversed and progresses faster. The church walls begin to close in again, and so you swing aside the oaken door and step outside into the buzzing orange half light another time, people still moving, still alive, even at this time of night, and you melt into the tarmac, the brickwork, the sulphur, the pallid strip-lights… 

Shrouded in ten years of mystery and disappearance and elusive ‘other projects’, it’s easy to feel that ///Codename: Dustsucker doesn’t really exist. Bark Psychosis as a band don’t exist anymore, certainly not in the way they did a decade ago. John Ling and Daniel Gish have long since gone, and Mark Simnet exists on ///Codename: Dustsucker only in the form of ‘found drums’. By the time “Blue” was released and the band put on hold in 1994, Bark Psychosis had fallen away, leaving only Graham Sutton. When he put Boymerang aside in 1999 it was only natural to pick up where he had left off: resurrect Bark Psychosis and once again make a music different to that of those elsewhere, everywhere. 

Use of shape, space and sound betray ///Codename: Dustsucker’s lineage and creation from the moment a corrupted, familiar melody bleats from the speakers as if it were a forgotten joke. Time is blurred for fifty minutes, topography altered, positions changed, rules of deportment completely unconsidered. It’s clear that ///: is the work of the man behind Hex and the singles compiled onIndependency, but it is not simply a retread of the past, or even a direct continuation of what was left ten years ago. ///: has a decade of space and a lifetime of experience between it and its predecessor; it is necessarily a different beast. Five years of creation have ensured that every detail is deliciously agonised, every note placed with purpose, nothing left to chance except chance (a guitar is knocked over, ruptures sound like fractured bone; a flippant voicemail message given space within the minus seconds). No significance is attached to passing time; dates are ignored, anniversaries forgotten, temporal shifts unnoticed; “From What Is Said To When It’s Read” floats over you on hypnotic waves of guitar and suggestions of electronic noise, before pausing and crashing back with the force of a tidal wave, hushed, devotional vocals subsumed beneath a gorge of sound, absolute calm within absolute intensity. This is just the beginning. 

Delayed organs, mouthless do-do-dos and a cascading guitar riff form the bedrock of “The Black Meat”, talk of standing on “black sand” and trees, “one for you / one for me”. Hesitancy, a clock is broken, someone closes a door. A guitar groans and signals the birth of a trumpet, slowly melting into gaseous synths and a whiff of melodica; it comes in two parts like The Isley Brothers through the looking glass. “Miss Abuse” is a cavernous, sinister cloud of dub space, a bassline crawling for a handful of notes every few bars and no more, a kick-drum with arrhythmia, an eptopic heartbeat guiding the song’s progress through vortices of sound towards the moment when a 303 begins, seizing the songs arteries and windpipe and strangling life slowly from it. ///: is uncategorisable, even neologisms fall short now that the old words have been warped. It exists in a space outside of rock, post-rock, jazz, pop, dance and avant-garde, in a nothingness zone, unfettered by genre or gatekeepers. 

“Dr Innocuous / Ketamoid” rips apart the fabric at the centre of the album, a distant stamp and tear, Lee Harris using hi-hats and cymbals in a way that makes them sound like broken glass, building an intensity before stop. begin again. piano. count to three. brushed guitar strings. “Did you ever hear the one / About that bird-girl?” A pipe organ breathes for a second. “Burning The City” is an escapist dream, rebellion touched with an elegiac sense of yearning and a wry smile, warm in tone. As is “400 Winters”, caressed by a woman’s voice, tiding on acoustic guitars and falling into piano. “INQB8TR” crawls through infinite dub-space, glades of synth and destructive passages of rich, beautiful noise. “Shapeshifting” tears itself apart with electric guitar scree, filling your head before backwards loops and perpetual-motion drums guide the song through an estuary of found-sounds. “Rose” guides us home under a swell of Germanic trust and nothingness. 

///Codename: Dustsucker has been a long time coming (it seems an age since its existence was first even rumoured) and it will not please everyone because it is not a simple relation of Hex. But taken on its own terms it is an outstanding record, multi-hued and consuming, concerned with invented realities and blurred lines in much the same way as Magritte’s pipe and Borges’ invented facts. Agonised, fearful, compelling, beautiful and measured with infinite precision and chaos, ///: is close to miraculous. 

Headphones: Recommended

well, hello there

well this is my first blog, and I`m most likely going to be promoting and discussing what i consider exceptionally good music (and occasionally, cinema as well). Hope you enjoy your stay. 


 ps - if you`re wondering who the profile picture is, it`s French chanteuse and style icon Francoise Hardy, who i consider the most beautiful woman of all time. I`ll dedicate a post to her and share her music at some point, but for now, take my word as granted.