Back in stock: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: Industrial music formed amidst the concrete decay of post-war Berlin, Einsturzende Neubauten emerged as pioneers of genre. Their sonic alchemy fuses unconventional instruments crafted from scrap metal and construction tools with traditional ones, creating a raw and unsettling symphony. Their new double album "Rampen (APM: Alien Pop Music)" showcases their sonic prowess. Despite the abrasiveness of their sound, the group's music is imbued with a sense of theatricality. Blixa Bargeld's stoic vocals narrate surreal tales of urban decay and existential unease, while the band's live performances evoke industrial rituals. Over the years, the band's music has evolved, incorporating elements of ambient and even pop into their sound. Yet, their core ethos remains intact: to challenge musical boundaries and create a sonic tapestry that reflects the harsh realities of the modern world. This album still helps cement the band moving forward but still respecting their past.

Review: Fred Frith is simultaneously a singular musical figure and a collection of musical lifetimes. He's the composer who wrote fragile avant-garde music in the tradition of John Cage and Earle Brown, the innovator who created new concepts of underground rock with his colleagues in the band Henry Cow, and the improviser who developed his very own language on the guitar. The many facets of Frith's musical oeuvre shimmer in vibrant and unique colors, but stand as one rainbow monolith of musical creation, never disintegrating into esoteric eclecticism. Always musically curious and unbiased, he develops his ideas in the moment, demonstrating in real time how his creative process, while free of old hat conventions and tricks, creates an immediate yet unrandom and committed music. At the core is his unique guitar playing, which is on full display across these two records. His debut, Guitar Solos (1974), opened up a space beyond rock and improvised music and now, 50 years later comes Fift (2024), a new solo guitar album that sounds completely different and yet familiar, adding to his monolith of musical creation with another new vibrant color.

Review: Ghost are sadly an easily confused band - doubly so, for the fact that there is now a wildly popular masked metal troupe of the same name, *and* because there is, uncannily, a 1984 film named Ghost, also rather well known. This confounding is apparently so prevalent that the obligatory Wikipedia entry on *this* Ghost is titled
'Ghost (1984 band)'. We wouldn't usually mention it, save for the fact that this perhaps not so wilful obscurantism actually works in their favour. With Drag City's reissue of Ghost's first album on griseous vinyl here, it's safe to say that this Japanese experimental psych/acid record's aura as a hidden gem feels rare to come by. It's almost as if Ghost (1984) is 'haunting' the other aforementioned cultural touchstones of the same name. Don't get it twisted, though: Ghost formed in the early 80s, but this debut recording didn't make it to the pressing plant until 1990. What explains the gap in their CV, you ask? Legend has it that the band led a truly nomadic existence - as a "band" should, in all senses of the word - roving, drifting from ruined ancient temples to disused subway stations near Tokyo. With that all checked, the album itself is truly free-spirited and eerie, and not what you'd expect from contemporary notions of space rock, with prepared tinkerings and strange readymade detritus seeming to fill each piece at every twist and turn.

Review: The Canadian post-rock instrumentalists return with a demand for revolution, soundtracked by just shy of 45 minutes of orchestral aggression. As with all of their work, GY!BE convey their ideas articulately through evocative wordless music. The opener, 'Undoing a Luciferian Towers' sets a tone for the album with a monolithic and militaristic march. Passages of feedback open out into anthemic expanse on the three parts of 'Bosses Hang'. 'Fam/Famine' balances between harmonic assonance and dissonance, ramping up the tension before the final triptych 'Anthem Of The State' takes a more optimistic tone, with the movement away from noise providing some glimmers of light in the abyss. 'Luciferian Towers' is an impeccable and polished record, and possibly Godspeed You! Black Emperor's finest to date.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


As part of a new looking back on German art rocker Nico's esteemed career by the indie label Domino, Desertshore chronologically follows The Marble Index, and is her third album, following the prior project's establishing her as an avant-garde artist with one foot in the mainstream, in stark defiance of the the prejudiced poo-poohs that followed her first (baroque pop) album, Chelsea Girl. Desertshore is more of a reconciliation of her prior two projects, bringing back the initial western pop sensibility while now firmly basking in a newfound weirdness-and-she-knows-it. From the opening dark waves of 'Janitor Of Lunacy' to the piano-balladic injection of sadness that is 'Afraid', this is another avant-garde masterpiece by the musician, never justifiably passed over.

Review: At 66 years young, Guiding By Voices main man Robert Pollard has a whopping 3,000 songs registered to his name with BMI, while outside of his primary project, he's released 22 solo albums as well as a plethora of lesser known works put out under obscure aliases. His latest alter ego, Rip Van Winkle, features a backing band shrouded in mystery on their debut EP The Grand Rapids, which redirects Pollard's eccentric and unique penmanship down the realms of neon-hued post-punk and frosted cold meets new wave machinations.

Review: Gothic songstress Chelsea Wolfe makes her illustrious return on the much anticipated seventh full-length She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. Following on from 2021's immense collaborative project with artcore auteurs Converge, the album shall serve as Wolfe's first solo endeavour since the minimal, folk-centric Birth Of Violence released in 2019, while serving as her first output since departing long-time label-home Sargent House (following a diatribe of controversies best saved for another time) in favour of Loma Vista; home to outsider artists of numerous sonic shapes. As this new chapter appears to be marrying elements of industrial fury with complex trip-hop motifs akin to Merzbow producing for Portishead, all the while maintaining her sultry, Wiccan hypnotism; 2024 looks set to be the year of the Wolfe.