Mark Hjorthoy – ‘Future That Never Existed’ – ZeroK Mark Hjorthoy’s The Future That Never Existed arrives steeped in the ideas of Mark Fisher, the British writer who spent his career diagnosing the strange temporal condition of late capitalism. It wasn’t an immediate draw to me either, but bear with me. Fisher argued that we […]
Runes Order – No Future (Eighth Tower Records, 2026 Reissue) Some records don’t return so much as seep out of the firmament like a will-o’-the-wisp, never quite burned out, finally drifting back into view. ‘No Future,’ first released in 1993 in a run of just thirty hand‑numbered cassettes, is one of those artefacts: a tape […]
Various – CBGB – A New York City Soundtrack CBGB mythology tends to calcify around the same five names – Television, Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, Talking Heads – the pantheon that debuted within fifteen months of each other between 1974 and 1975. Some I love (Ramones, Suicide, The Cramps), and some I’d happily never hear […]
Various – Steppin’ Out: The Roots of Garage Rock 1963–1965 Rock ’n’ roll was still a toddler when the kids on ‘Steppin’ Out: The Roots of Garage Rock 1963–1965’ started treating it like a battlefield. That’s the image that kept coming back to me while listening to this sprawling, 94‑track set: one of those World […]
Various – ‘Analog 2025’ – Unexplained Sounds Group ‘Analog 2025’ arrives with tape flutter, slow pitch wobble, spring reverb that sounds like a corridor, and the soft, humanised clipping that turns a tone into an animated corpse. It’s not nostalgic in the cosy sense; it’s in the same world as hauntology, a catalogue of misremembered […]
Various – So High I’ve Been: A European Rock Anthology 1967–1973 3CD Set – Cherry Red For decades, the story of rock music has been told as if it were a transatlantic conversation between Britain and America. The mythology is familiar: London and Liverpool, San Francisco and Los Angeles, New York and Detroit. Yet while […]
Martina Testen / Simon Šerc – ‘Nokturno’ – Pharmafabrik Recordings Some field‑recording projects try to soothe you- those old hat/New Age faffing about that convinced those who lived on the muesli belt that a groaning whale was good for your aura. Others are more fun, though often feel unconvincing – cannibal tribes supposedly mid-ritual, but […]
Always the same – you wait oodles of years and two Headcoat/Headcoatee albums come along at once. In fairness, it makes a wallet-relieving change from them releasing an album every other week. Thee Headcoatees – ‘Man-Trap’ – Damaged Goods Longest out of action, by a long chalk, are Thee Headcoatees, but the full headcoat count […]
Nerthus – ‘Love Songs via Echlon’ – Eighth Tower Records Echelon was the codename for a global surveillance network developed during the Cold War by the Five Eyes alliance – the likely suspects of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. Originally designed to monitor Soviet military and diplomatic communications, it evolved into […]
Various Artists – ‘Codex of Pleasure and Pain – A Sonic Tribute to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser’ – Eighth Tower Records Given the somewhat torturous history of the actual Hellraiser score, offering another perspective seems entirely reasonable. As much as Cenobites remix flesh, these 11 artists from across Europe dig their hooks into their chosen chunk […]
