Back in stock: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: Sweden has so much to answer for in non-conformist music terms. And Gothenburg is responsible for plenty within that. Take Gustaf Dicksson's renowned Blod project, for example, and its formidable 2023 outing Ondskans Fro. As oppose to the preceding two albums, here we find the man in question flying solo on the mic having previously partnered with fair-voiced female vocalists, lending the record a sense not just of the personal and intimate, but solitary isolation. That may sound slightly sombre, but it shouldn't. In reality, while we often jump to miserable conclusions when we think of words like 'alone', there's no greater strength than our ability to be happy as individuals - self love being a prerequisite to loving anyone else. In many ways, that's a resounding takeaway here. Medieval ambient folk that is warm, inviting, peaceful, and often dreamy.

Review: Einsturzende Neubauten's description by label Potomoak - as a band that constantly evolves - is accurate enough. Over forty years on from their debut album Kollaps in 1981, Rampen appears as the latest and most unruly incarnation of their sound yet. Here, Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser and Felix Gebhard present their least predictable and conventional sides: APM is described as alien pop music; the songs therein have been specially crafted not only for our universe but for every adjacent parallel universe to ours, with every slight multiversal variation in humanity's collective tastes held firmly in mind. The album fully lives up to its billing as anti-pop as alien pop, its challenging twists and turns fully sating the difficult whims of society's outcasts and cosmic punks.

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 solo project of Swedish musician Sofie Herner, Leda is an experimental project mainly dedicated to roomy, claustrophobic freakouts, fashioned out of a distinctive form of guitar playing, among other tinkerings. Now a well-known name in the Gothenburg scene, Herner's proximity to her local DIY underground is abundantly clear. It feels just as reflective in the sound of her latest project here, Neuter, which sounds like a gargantuan woodwork project subsuming a collective consciousness. Building off the natural footprints trailed by not only her former output, but also her involvement in bands like Neutral and Enhet For Fri Musik, this LP comprises nine tracks of minimal guitar loops, layered oppressively with doomy vocals, all-encompassing percussion, and other oddball instruments. Movements one through nine guide us through uniquely dour worlds, all with the utmost creep factor.

Review: LA indie rockers Sprain are the latest fixture of their state's post-rock/noise rock zeitgeist and to celebrate (following their debut), they've now released their second LP, The Lamb As Effigy Or Three Hundred & Fifty XOXOXOs For A Spark Union With My Darling Divine. Adding to the ever-burgeoning sophisti-post-rock landscape of late - which has heard an uptick in spoken word and noise elements - the trio unleash their screamiest, most abyssal vocal and instrumental anti-prayers here, lashing out at God and Man over the course of a gargantuan, eight-track sonic judgment day.

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.