Review: Dark Entries takes it back to New York City in around 1982 for this previously unreleased record from Ike Yard. This cult crew was made up of Stuart Argabright, Michael Diekmann, Kenneth Compton, and Fred Szymanski and they worked in their own realm somewhere between proto-body music and No Wave peers in New York. They disbanded just a year after forming having dropped an EP on Les Disques du Crepuscule in 1981 and then a self-titled album for Factory in 1982. Using the Korg MS-20 and the Roland TR-808 they cook up plenty of hybrid electro-acoustic sounds and ramshackle rhythms that are underpinned by moody baselines and perfect to get bodies moving in the club. Whether you're a post-punk fan or lover of weird electronics, this is well worth checking out.
Review: Inner Cop Avoidance is a cult supergroup that is already surrounded by plenty of discussion and conspiracy despite only having played their first gig in 2022. Made up of Krisitan Poulsen on guitar, Mathias Saedrup guitar, Sebastian von der Heide on drums and percussion, Max Stocklosa on synth, xylophone and vocals, this self-titled album from the group lands as the inaugural drop on their own label. It is a brilliantly cacophony of electronics and percussion with twisted rhythms, post-rock guitars and a fiercely experimental approach that results in brilliantly beguiling music that somehow combines the futuristic and avant garde with bird calls and ancient shamanic ritual.
Review: Rhode Island post-metal avant-garde duo The Body have made a name for themselves due to their caustic maelstrom of harsh, brutalist experimentalism as well as their prolific output and collaborative nature, releasing collab albums with the likes of Full Of Hell, Thou, Uniform, and most recently, Dis Fig. Their latest endeavour sees the pair link up with another duo of musical extremity, Toronto, Canada's recently reformed industrial two-piece Intensive Care. Was I Good Enough? has been on the cards since the artists first began making plans as far back as 2018, trading, warping and ruining mutual sessions with layers of loops, distortion, samples and even dubs, constantly striving to find the ideal haunting balance between both of their sonically hideous, oppressive worlds. For all of our ears' sakes, they just might have succeeded.
Review: Italia 90, named after Italy's football team in the 1990 World Cup, are a post-punk band from London. Their debut album 'Living Human Treasure', released on Brace Yourself, showcases the band's politically charged lyrics and taste for wonky rhythms, channelling the band's anarchic, no-effs-given influences such as The Fall and Gang of Four. Fans of angular guitars and ironic '80s not-stalgia will appreciate this debut, and one could easily make comparisons to Still House Plants or Gentle Stranger.
Review: Oli Heffernan's ever-evolving project, Ivan The Tolerable, joins Riot Season for two captivating albums that explore the beauty of entropic drift. Recorded swiftly as a quintet, Heffernan enlisted Christian Alderson on drums, John Pope on double bass, Kevin Nickles on flute and saxophone and Ben Hopkinson on electric piano. The first album was Vertigo, a dense and disorienting work reminiscent of Sun Ra meets Exploding Star Orchestra. In contrast, Water Music evokes serene landscapes with sounds of waves, creaking hulls, and gentle winds, blending influences from Laraaji and Natural Information Society. Bob Fischer of Electronic Sound Magazine describes Water Music as a "beautifully soothing psychedelic jazz album" perfect for a summer daydream.
Review: We find ourselves lost in kosmische textures, dark jazz motifs and brushup drums, as Ivan The Tolerable (Oli Heffernan) edges us ever deeper into his singular sonic world with An Orphan Form, where wide scapes and underbrushed moodiness leaves us in an identifiable yet not entirely placeable place. There's a sense of constant movementicircular rather than linearias the music unfurls like a dream slipping just out of reach. Synth lines wobble and stretch, field recordings emerge from the mist, and the sounds of nature act as subtle anchors amid the abstraction. It's a spiritual detour after the cheekier tonalities of his various earlier cassette albums for the likes of Cruel Nature and Ack! Ack! Ack!.
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