Zu Format

Another from LFTWY, we're up to 2009 here.  The 2010 issue is out now, if you have a couple of quid doing nothing.

ZU – CARBONIFEROUS (Ipecac) 

16 or 17 years ago my friend James announced he’d booked Italian heavy prog-noise act Zu to play in Oxford. It was a last minute arrangement, he’d missed the deadlines for mention in publications, but he threw up a poster or two in the venue. It was a Sunday night. About 12 people attended. James lost loads of money (somehow, the fact that he’d bought the three of them towels for their rider tickled me more than is reasonable). Still, despite that unfortunate red entry in his ledger, the other 11 punters and I had a wonderful time with their baritone sax-led chunk punk action (it was a baritone, but I seem to recall that they, or possibly James, called their style “death bassoon”). 

This 2009 album is as good a way of experiencing their sound as any, and a fascinating sound it is, lead-heavy but fleet-footed simultaneously, squealing sax flayed above fat rock rhythms spattered with digital detritus. They can thump, they can churn, and they can, on occasion, even boogie, dropping discoid hi-hat rhythms into the midst of the bludgeon (and listen to the bass in ‘Beata Viscera’, it’s positively funk-adjacent). ‘Cthonian’ is typical, sounding like a rusty android stretching in the morning whilst a pile driver smashes concrete just outside the window. But, then, maybe ‘Carbon’ is also typical, foregrounding the snorting sax to create a hyperactive grot-jazz hoedown in hell. It’s a surprisingly varied album, with a track like ‘Axion’ being both a head-down speed-industrial pummelling and a pensive film noir cue. 

‘Soulympics’ may have an unforgivably naff title, but the glossolalia void growls are gripping, and the pylon-thrum bass sounds equal parts Fugazi and (very early) Therapy? There are even some nearly melodic vocals over the top. ‘Mimosa Hostilis’ sounds like a forklift with diarrhoea. ‘Orc’ sounds like a canine mage casting a spell on some crabs in a rubber glade. I can’t judge sounds any more. The record has destroyed my ears. Play it again. Turn it up. Pass me the towels.  

Rodent All Terrain Armoured Transport?

 The 2008 issue of LFTWY might be my favourite, it has a couple of very interesting pieces, plus this...

RATATAT – LP3 (XL Recordings) 

I’m sure we all have mystery records on our shelves, for which we can find no provenance. Did I buy this? Did someone give it to me? Did I bag it in a forgotten tombola? I own no fewer than 4 CDs by Ratatat, despite having no idea whom they might be nor any recollection of procuring them. At best guess, they were promos sent out for review (though not to me, of that I’m certain). They’re pretty decent, mind, which is why they’re still on the shelf today. This album – I'm guessing their third, but I’ve been caught by that particular Wilbury trick before, so I’m staying non-committal – fits in a post-trip-hop world, having down-tempo groovy sections, glossy bouncy pop sections, and the odd ersatz rock move. It’s not very serious, but neither is it actually funny; it’s referential, but not really satirical or critical; it’s like library music for reluctant readers. 

There isn’t really much depth to this album, but the surfaces are most attractive. ‘Shiller’, the opening number, sounds like someone trying to play the X-Files theme on some toys (imagine if someone had described a Plaid track to someone who just woke up from a 40-year coma, this is probably what they’d come up with), but then some cheeky chorus guitar comes in, and it sounds like a section from the very end of Tubular Bells. Similar studio-bound unrocking guitar sounds crop up regularly across the album, nasally insistent, and sometimes with purring flange effects, and it all gives an unusually handmade edge to what is ostensibly a machine-made record. Random aside: the name ‘Shiller’ makes us imagine Sean Connery appearing on Blind Date. 

Some tracks feel like market-trader knockoffs of contemporaneous dance acts, with ‘Falcon Jab’ giving us restrained Nile Rodgers guitar and sort of Frampton-talky-guitar-thing sounds over a chunky beat recalling Daft Punk, whilst ‘Flynn’ is a slinky confection, halfway between vintage soundtrack cues by Roger Roger and winking dancefloor pop by Röyksopp. ‘Dura’, with its harpsichord and ambling beat seems like a clear nod to Dre’s Eminem productions. 

There are occasional tunes with rhythms featuring clipped percussion and arpeggiating bleeps, placing them somewhere between an Eski-era grime beat and the Donkey Kong 64 soundtrack - check out ‘Mirando’ and ‘Bird Priest’ for examples. Other tracks lean on less electronic references, such as ‘Mi Viejo’ with its tabla, acoustic guitar and Herbie Flowers-ish bass, or the Western chase theme played by a baseball organ which is ‘Gypsy Threat’, whereas ‘Imperials’ is more atypical, coming across like an RnB jam in a bamboo junkyard, and ‘Mumtaz Khan’ sounds like Mothra doing Boyz II Men, before a that guitar comes in again, and threatens to go into the ‘Hotel California’ solo (I promise I’m not making this up).  

This is probably not the favourite 2008 album of anyone in the whole world, including Ratatat, but it’s a breezy, colourful bit of fun. I just listened to it twice in a row, and enjoyed it even more the second time. If that trend continues it will be the greatest 42 minutes in the history of humanity by next weekend... 

Planet Municipal

My second review from the latest Nutshaft. I'm listening to Rossini's Armida, of which I'd never heard before. I think I know why, it's not essential. Still, Callas, innit?

WARRINGTON-RUNCORN NEW TOWN DEVELOPMENT PLAN/ U/ CITIES & MEMORY, Divine Schism, Bully, 19/3/26 

Cities & Memory is more a global field recording fellowship than a musical act, though founder Stuart Fowkes (previously of The Evenings, Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element, Listing Ships and other inventive bands) shares his own material from the vast archive. The tagline is “remixing the world one sound at a time”, but this set might surprise casual listeners with its smooth cohesive electronica: yes, the stories behind the sampled elements are fascinating, but the elegantly spangling synths would work in isolation, from the controlled crunch of B12-style techno at one end of the set to the 80s Tangerine Dream sequencer swirls at the other. 

Turns out we’re not the only people who missed U’s presence on the posters for this gig, mistaking their credit for a painterly squiggle in Divine Schism’s house style. Anonymity probably suits them, though, as the shadowy U controls the sonics from the darkness of the crowd, whilst a laptop independently projects some impressive visuals. Musically it’s one long collage of folk tunes, archival documentary discussions, abstract tones, and a few oddities – we certainly don’t expect extracts from 14th-century allegorical poem Piers Plowman at electronica gigs – with similarly smooshed together vintage images giving a Ghost Box vibe. There’s a spectral feel throughout, both from the hauntological vintage TV snippets and the tales of actual paranormal jiggery-pokery, and the set is somewhere between a British take on Irish folk-doomers From The Bogs Of Aughiska and a 70s schools programme broadcast from Borley Rectory. 

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan continue the visual immersion, treating us to a non-stop barrage of colour-saturated film clips showing that brief period of Modernist urban optimism from the 60s and 70s: brutalist architecture, shiny automated factories, and social projects, many of which are now crumbling, literally or otherwise. Fittingly, the music is all Tomorrow’s World techno, big clunky beats underneath stately and slightly sinister synth lines and arpeggios. At its best the music captures the retro-futurist mystery of Aphex Twin’s ‘On’, or sounds like the Radiophonic Workshop having a crack at EBM, but by the end of a very long set one more slab of mid-paced John Carpenter industrial plodding does become wearing and we feel like we’re stuck on an endless concrete ring road . The austere aesthetic is strong, but we wish that this plan had included a bit more development.  

  

 

 

 

 

 

DScalations

As it's the penultimate issue, I have done two reviews for the May Nightshift, here's the first.

HARESS/ CARAUSIAS ARISE!/ CODIAD Y MÔR, Divine Schism, Common Ground, 9/4/26 

Codiad Y Môr is Ibs, a member of Spaceman & The Spaceband, space apparently being the driving force behind his acoustic guitar pieces. Each delicate instrumental is sparse and simple, referencing British 60s folk and US mountain plucking, but also perhaps the calm stillness of composers like Satie and Mompou. We’d call the spare opening piece the bare skeleton of a John Fahey number, except this makes it sound too sturdy and resilient. Maybe it’s American primitivism’s lymphatic system. Some will find the music too elementary, and a broken string seems to break Ibs’s concentration, but on this quiet, chilly evening the "If John Renbourn studied ikebana” vibe fits perfectly. 

At first Carausias Arise! continues the cold elegance, windswept synth sounding like a diffuse Vangelis piece. But it’s noteworthy that Dafydd Roberts resembles Harry Hill as Geography teacher, because there’s a lofi surrealism to the set. We get the approachable abstraction of 90s ambience à la Pete Namlook, and playfully wibbly improv electronica – a lovely section sounds like pitch-bent babies gurgling – but this is only half the story. One minute Roberts has a patch cable in his mouth, another he’s rubbing a handheld spring reverb device on a piece of slate, but it’s the vocals that are truly mystifying, being tremulous, high-pitched and stately, like a monk swallowing his tongue. When he intones “Take a seed, expose it to the sun” it’s like Scott Walker played by a Gregorian gonk. Two extra-musical moments sum up this set: someone takes photos from the crowd with a Nintendo DS, a self-consciously odd hardware choice, and at the set’s end an eerie drifting tone is drowned out by the venue’s creaky toilet door: absurd, yet slightly sinister. 

Shropshire’s Haress apparently open with ‘Variations on a Toilet Door’, a thicket of bowed cymbals and softly grating guitar tones, but they settle to a more straightforward post-rockers-do-folk structure. This is not to say that they are not excellent, layering malleted drums and entwined guitars over shruti drones – the second track boasts a lovely intricate guitar halfway between English folk dance and gnawa blues, a sort of Moroccan morris. Elsewhere we have folk rock with doom logic, as if we're at Zombie Cropredy. Vocals are added sparingly, and all the stronger for that. The last song’s the live debut of an outstandingly noisy bluster, dropping to a haunted but jaunty coda about “Somerset girls” which sounds like Bellowhead in the underworld. Get us a flagon of spectral scrumpy and a demonic DS charger, we don’t want this unusual evening to end. 

What Do You Mean, Myth?

If you're following along (which you're not), you may have noticed (which you didn't) that this is my review for the 2007-themed edition of LFTWY, but we've not yet had the 2006 review. That's because I haven't got a copy of the 2006 issue, though the editor will get me one some time, I hope. Obviously, I could still upload my review, but I like to do so once I've read the whole magazine. So, the 06 review will pop up at some point in the future, don't worry (which you already don't).

 !!! - MYTH TAKES (Warp) 

I’m never quite sure about artists who are celebrated because their work is primarily of interest to their peers – you know, a comedian’s comedian, a poet's poet. Nobody ever heard “Oh, he’s a great chef, but only other chefs like his soup, everyone else thinks it tastes like surgical stockings in brine”. Not trying to be a reverse snob about it, but every time I hear about a guitarist’s guitarist all I unearth is someone with honed chops and no musical sense. So, whilst I could say that this album lives on the strength of the bass, it’s not just for Pastorius anoraks (I actually like Jaco Pastorius, though, even if some of his fans are tedious, so let’s say Mark King). 

!!! claimed their name could be anything you wanted so long as it was a single syllable repeated three times. My friend Mark called them Jeff Jeff Jeff, whereas my proposal at the time is not for publication in a polite zine. Bloody stupid concept, really, but they were a good band, taking the punk funk that was so influential in the noughties, but keeping it sleek, psych, and danceable – more ESG than Gang Of Four, in short. This album, as befits a Warp signing, is controlled, rhythmic, and inventive – though when I saw them live at a Swiss festival around this time they were surprisingly lackadaisical and silly, one of them spending as much time waggling one naked boob at the audience as playing.   

The title track has plenty of groovy no-wavey NYC cool but takes it to a midwest prairie, complete with eerily calling fauna, and Morricone-ish guitar chords. ‘Must Be The Moon’ is a thin pseudo-hip hop beat, a bit like a Tone Loc tune played by a payphone, with blowhard sex-conquest lyrics which are a bit like ‘Cool For Cats’ crossed with early Beasties. Then the slimy, eel-like bass comes in, slinking along and the magic happens, ushering in an industrial dub second half with reverby clangs that are like asthmatic aluminium catching its breath – a few tracks on the album do this, coming off like Jamaican 12” tunes, with a standard first half, and a “version” tagged onto the end. ‘Bend Over Beethoven’ pulls a similar trick whilst nodding towards 23 Skidoo (and is a brilliant title, you have to admit). 

‘A New Name’ has falsetto, but is otherwise a bit generic. ‘Heart Of Hearts’ is a rigid rhythmic grid, but there’s lots to unpack: perhaps it’s like a sonic nonogram puzzle (in which case, solving it would probably reveal a tin of Pabst and a beanie, perfect for the noughties hipster). There’s a lattice of guitar and synth, with that bass somehow anchoring things and shifting like sands at the same time. Really nice left-hand clav too.  This is one that’s most like LCD Soundsystem, who were trendy gods at the time.  

The vocal on ‘Sweet Life’ is a bit uninspired, and the cymbals clatter somewhat messily, but the pointillist synth bass is lovely. ‘Yadnus’ has quite a “standard” guitar strum structure, like it’s related to a Stones tune on some level. ‘Break In Case Of Anything’ boasts spacy wah-wah guitar, and maybe a smidge of Can in its relentless round-the-toms rhythm. There are really nice horns, coupled with dub-siren bleeps. The record rides into the sunset with ‘Infinifold’, uncharacteristically groove-free, with male and female vocals in unison. It has a little touch of melancholy, though not too much... nothing to stop some light boob-jiggling if the mood took. 

I would heartily recommend this album, as well as the others they made for Warp around this time (I have no idea what later releases are like, apparently the last was in 2022). !!! may not be a band to change your life, but is this highly enjoyable, tactile and intelligent music? Yes yes yes.  

Two For Just Over A Tenor

Kind of an odd one, this. I thought the EP was basically nice but harmless, and had a review sketched out in my head, but when I gave the record the final (virtual) spin before writing, I found I really liked some of it. Had I given myself pseudo-Stockholm Syndrome? Or was I confusing familiarity with enjoyment? Or had I just listened long enough to let the artistry seep through into my consciousness? Bit of all three, probably.

ALTO ALTO – ALTO ALTO (Self-release) 

This EP pulls an enjoyable trick, sounding restrained and sinister yet also coming off as energetic and emotional. ‘Broken Fin’ opens the collection with a metronomic rhythm, wheedling lead guitar, and vocals that are somehow both an impassioned cry and a sneering playground chant (“I am running out of air”), giving a strong flavour of Psychedelic Furs, with an aftertaste  of Echo & The Bunnymen. ‘Honeycomb’ also starts with everything under tight rein, building on a hobbled yet sprightly beat which might remind Oxford pop archivists of Spring Offensive, though it lets go a little more as the song progresses, ending with some insistent guitar riffing.   

The rest of the EP doesn’t quite live up to this pairing, but ‘Mediterranean Sun’ and ‘Spanish Procession’ are still warmly winning melodic indie tunes, although the latter doesn’t have the fleetness of foot of the former, and the lyrics to both sound as though they were cribbed from a Hoseasons brochure. ‘Lift Your Heart’ is a suitably rousing/ not rousing finish, a discreetly churning guitar pop tune with long wafting lead lines like the work of an introspective British Wannadies. Despite this being a self-titled release, it feels as though Alto Alto never quite show their full hand, and the record is all the better for it.  

Motion Colour Seen

Some of this was not published in the latest Nightshift, presumably for reasons of space. Inevitably, it was the more negative elements that were omitted, so if you're craving some light criticism, you're in luck, bucko.

MOVEMENTS, Bully/ Truck Store/ Library/ James St Tavern, 14/2/26 

Mount St Helen open this multi-venue all-dayer, but they may also have opened a black hole in the corner of The Bully, so huge and dense is their sound. From a rich drone swelling behind malleted cymbals at the outset the music continues to build constantly, as do the blinding and intricately programmed strobes. The ostensible reference point might be the blustery noughties indie of Editors and Interpol, but really they’re more like the most intense chunks of Mogwai colliding epically with the vastest peaks of Waters-era Floyd. Talk about stadium-ready, Mount St Helen make Kanadia look like a back-yard skiffle combo, and in Aris they have a born frontman from whom it’s hard to look away.  

Down the road at Truck Store, Philippe Nash’s mournful grunge-influenced balladry is a strong contrast, with spidery guitar twisting around sepulchral cello. Their final number reminds us of Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’, and is rather lovely. Later in the same room, Mazawattee’s stripped back acoustic pop is also delightful, with a brace of excellent vocalists, and if their breezy songs are only an artisanal macchiato away from ‘Kumbaya’ they’re still the band whose tunes we’re humming at the bus stop hours later. Genevieve Miles offers a similarly light and airy set of pop tunes at the Bully, albeit in a somewhat chunkier format, with plenty of guitar and keyboard to bolster the sound. She has a pleasingly pure, smiling voice that reminds us of Edie Brickell, but the overall effect is cloying after a while. Perhaps this is music best experienced in a sunny festival field, not on a cold February afternoon, even one warmed by the romance of Valentine’s Day, as about a third of the acts jokily point out (you’re right, this does get old very quickly). Joining them in camp Fine But Forgettable are Fawlers, who open The Library’s stage with a set of cohesive and well played tracks with a mid-90s feel – are they Foo Fighters playing Shed Seven, or Cast channelling Semisonic? - that would probably make someone’s day but which fails to make any meaningful impression on us. 

Objectively, Slow Lane and Suspire aren't as good, being messier round the edges and less fully formed, but both have enough character to make them far more fun. The former bring a shoegaze fuzz and just a dash of Stone Roses swager to their chunky rock whilst the latter bundle through their songs with the energy of a good-natured punch-up behind a youth club. No such criticism could be made of Premium Leisure, probably the most skilled set of musicians on the bill, who could doubtless play anything. We suppose with that much talent on tap they might stretch further than lightly countryish jams and 70s AM rock that falls between Gram Parsons and Three Dog Night, but it’s still an enjoyable ride, especially the breathy vocals which evoke both Marc Bolan and Evan Dando. Bristol’s Grack Mack & The Pack could challenge Premium Leisure in a battle of the chops though, and we love the complex but restrained jazz patterns the drummer brings to their smooth folky pop, as well as the strident yet soft singing which is pure Dolores O’Riordan. We just wish the band could let themselves go and be a little less bloody nice and bleeding tasteful. Hopefully they popped down to the James Street Tavern to see Max Blansjaar, another act peopled with technically top-notch musicians, but whose set is, as ever, bursting with tunes and charm. 

Also at James Street are Shock Horror, a band we’ve loved watching evolve from grunge slobs through slacker experimentalists to the assured act we see today, making music that is spacious and controlled, introspective but in your face, angular and enveloping by turns. At one point a taut, chilly rhythm reminds us of cerebral post-rockers Ui, which we never would have predicted from the band’s early shows. Tonight they surprisingly have more in common with Baby Maker than you might expect. Ruairi Kester has added a second member to the band – it takes two to make babies, as he points out – but the set retains the understated wit and low-slung grooves of the solo shows. Sometimes the music sounds like a bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived take on industrial - Up-All-Nightzer Ebb, perhaps – whereas at others there’s an impressive head-nodding groove under the lo-fi, nerdy exterior, and crowd favourite ‘Rather Be In Berlin’ sounds like a band we’ve invented called Sebadub. More explicitly infectious dancefloor action from a very different duo, No Worries If Not, who meld sleek French house and vibrant Italo disco with very English smut and irony. Every onstage movement, every eyebrow arch is meticulously planned and choreographed, but they still exude joyful energy. 

A contender for favourite set of the day comes from Manchester’s Sweet Gene. Their drummer sports a Geese T-shirt, and like that feted band they take vintage Radiohead vibes, throw in a bit of Talking Heads artfulness, and then hone the resultant alloy ruthlessly to a razor’s edge – if this set were a physical entity, you wouldn’t be allowed to take it through airport security. We love exciting, unexpected new music forms, but sometimes a rock fourpiece playing like their lives depend on it in a tiny pub basement is more than enough. We’re not sure exactly what the name Movements implies, but Sweet Gene certainly made our heart beat faster (you’re right, a Valentine’s Day joke here would have been cheesy).