That’s right, I am delighted to say that my revamped website is now live, therefore this blog will no longer be updated and you should now point your browser to www.rarelyunable.com so you can keep up to date with the news, gigs, new releases and also check out my new press pages!
Thank you for your support!
Like a snake biting its own tail, time is circular, and with their upcoming tour, Ufomammut further corroborate ouroboric tendencies…
This autumn, Ufomammut will excavate items from their pliocenic past, keeping their third eye pointed at the future – the ‘Magickal Mastery Tour‘ is a journey through fifteen years of Ufomammut music, performing under a new light songs from Godlike Snake to ORO, as thanksgiving to people for their support and devotion.
The band commented…”We are very excited to come out and play material from across our album catalogue, whereas recent focus has been on ORO, an album which we are most proud of, we are looking forward to playing older material also, it’s been a while! This marks the last tour we shall do for a period, whilst we concentrate on writing a new album”
Watch the curtains being drawn back on the ‘Magickal Mastery Tour’ at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr85Xw20iA4&feature=youtu.be
MAGIKAL MASTERY TOUR DATES:
25 sept – Arena – Vienna (A)
26 sept – Stattwerkstatt – Linz (A)
27 sept – Kulturpalast – Wiesbaden (D)
28 sept – Het Depot – Leuven (B)
29 sept – Vera – Groningen (NL)
01 oct – The Fleece – Bristol (UK)
02 oct – Brudenell social club – Leeds (UK)
03 oct – The Underworld – London (UK)
04 oct – 4AD – Diksmuide (BE)
Great. 05 oct – Römer – Bremen (D)
06 oct – KB18 – Copenhagen (DK)
07 oct – Blitz – Oslo (NOR)
09 oct – Luttako – Jväskyla (FIN)*
10 oct – Kuudes Linja – Helsinki (FIN)*
11 oct – Yo Talo – Tampere (FIN)*
12 oct – Nuclear Nightclub – Oulu (FIN)*
17 oct – Progresja – Warsaw (PL)
18 oct – Bii Nu – Berlin (D)
19 oct – Keep it Low Festival – Munich (D
* Thanks to BLOW UP THAT GRAMOPHONE
With more dates to be announced, and support acts also, stay tuned because this is only the tip of the iceberg!
http://www.supernaturalcat.com
Constellation are proud to present the latest from Sam Shalabi’s Land of Kush ensemble, The Big Mango. Inspired by and dedicated to the city of Cairo (Shalabi’s home since 2011), the album rallies more than 20 Montreal musicians to create some of the most immediate, impassioned and profound work we’ve seen from Sam yet.
On an early listen, Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls and Sublime Frequencies said, “Sam Shalabi has raised the bar for modern psychedelic music by composing this epic suite for his 20-piece Land of Kush orchestra. By utilizing African, Middle Eastern, Indian, jazz, rock, and folkloric sources, The Big Mango weaves a seamless montage of styles in a transcendent way that is rarely, if ever, achieved…It will demand your attention from start to finish.”
The album hits UK/EU stores 30 September. See below for more album info, including an audio sample of album track “The Pit”, or click here for the full run-down.
Stream ‘The Pit’ here: https://soundcloud.com/constellation-records/land-of-kush-the-pit-edit/s-kJqnJ
Osama (Sam) Shalabi moved to Cairo in 2011, settling in an apartment one block from Tahrir Square, in the midst of Egypt’s ‘Arab Spring’. Shalabi describes The Big Mango, his new and phenomenal work for his Land Of Kush big band, as “a love letter to Cairo” framed by “the beautiful, surreal madness of the city…as joyous, horrific, historical events were unfolding”. The music was also inspired by time spent in Dakar, where in Senegal’s music scene Sam experienced parallels to another of his central aesthetic and political touchstones, Brazilian Tropicalia, in the sense of a “positivity, complexity and radicalism in art that was also playful and joyous and wasn’t necessarily part of a ‘revolution’ but seemed to be a form of innate radicalism”. In tandem with the relative openness of Dakar’s Islamic society – with the much more prominent role and presence of women in public and private life and the relaxed physicality and sensuality of the culture in general – Senegalese music offered a powerful counterpoint and feeling of promise for Egypt’s own future. “The Big Mango” is one of the many nicknames for Cairo, but for Shalabi it also evokes the succour and sensuality of southern hemispheric music more generally, in this relation to broader socio-political movements.
Montréal remains Shalabi’s home base and the city to which he briefly returned towards the end of 2012 to reconvene the troupe of players that have helped him realize his large-scale works under the Land Of Kush moniker. Working through The Big Mango score with these local musicians culminated in two ecstatic live performances and a recording session at Montréal’s Hotel2Tango studio. This third album by Land Of Kush is arguably the group’s most focused and immediately satisfying.
For Shalabi, gender and Arab culture has been a central theme, one he took up explicitly on the previous Kush album Monogamy (2011), and which similarly drives The Big Mango, where once again a series of female vocalists drawn from Montréal’s indie rock community anchor the work and convey what in most of the North African Arab world remains a profoundly unrealized though burgeoning spirit of gender equality, participation, expression and liberation. This promise is at the heart of Shalabi’s “love letter”.
The Big Mango opens with a bubbling Fauvist stew of balafon, flute, electronics and vocalizations which abruptly segue into solo piano and saxophone improvisations – an introductory set of musical mating calls that invoke the album’s deeper conceptual and formal preoccupations. The libidinal energy of rock n’ roll is then re-situated in a heterodox Middle Eastern context as the album’s centerpiece songs unfold: ”The Pit”, “Mobil Nil”, “Drift Beguine” and “The Big Mango” each marked by propulsive female vocal performances from Ariel Engle, Katie Moore, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic and Molly Sweeney respectively.
Underpinning each of these singers is some of Land Of Kush’s s most melodically and rhythmically compelling music, conjuring a post-modern psychedelia that is truly sui generis. The band delivers the grooves and soloists unleash excursions more fluidly than ever; for many of these players, it’s the third time around embracing Shalabi’s music, getting inside the spirit of the score, and following his conduction. In combination with the peaking intensity and electricity of Sam’s compositional vision, The Big Mango coheres, sparkles and soars: a distillation of the sonic trajectory Land Of Kush has been charting for the past six years.
Ipecac has confirmed the release of Mutation’s Error 500, an album willfully devious, devilishly out-of-line and sonically uninhibited.
Drawing musicians from a ménage of disciplines and repute, Mutation are a band unlike any other, counting amongst their ranks Shane Embury (Napalm Death), Ginger Wildheart (The Wildhearts) and Jon Poole (Cardiacs), with guest appearances from Mark E Smith (The Fall) and Merzbow. The resulting reaction, due for an Autumn release, is an eight man beast that exists to challenge the listener’s preconceived ideas of extreme music, steeped in volatility, and wholly unapologetic.
Mutation began as a need to hear an album that no one else looked likely to make. An album that wallowed in sheer grindcore brutality whilst allowing itself to be lifted by twisted talons of melodic majesty, and, with no loyalty to genre, delve into darker recesses of sonic experimentation. Error 500 strikes you first by its personnel, and then exponentially more by the music itself, rewarding your attention with a white knuckle ride that travels at blast-beat speed along rails of industrial mayhem, thrilling with break neck twists and hyper rhythmic turns, guaranteed to leave you breathless and baying for more.
Intense and entirely random, this is an album to be loved by fans of all genres of experimental and extreme music, but especially by the type of listener that needs the parameters shifted a little more to the left.
If you’re waiting for the next step in the evolution of extreme music then look no further.
http://www.facebook.com/mutationproject
The musical miscreants at Pitchfork are offering up the first sampling of Last City Zero, the forthcoming debut full-length from recent Neurot Recordings signees, CORRECTIONS HOUSE. A shadowy legion of lost souls, fused together by the impulsive forces of nature and altered states of consciousness, CORRECTIONS HOUSE is the maniacal creation of Mike IX Williams (Eyehategod), Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), Sanford Parker (Minsk) and their minister of propaganda, Seward Fairbury. Produced by Parker at Electrical Audio, Soma Studios, 60 Psycho Hum and Nodferatu’s Lair, Last City Zero offers up eight psychologically alarming hymns that span well beyond the traditional confines of sound. At once cold, mechanical, prosaic and pungent, Last City Zero is a full body experience rather than a casual listen.
In celebration of its release, Pitchfork is currently streaming opening track “Serve or Survive,” which they call “every bit as strange and unwieldy as its membership might suggest. ‘Serve or Survive’ opens as an oblong bed of noise, the circuits of producer Sanford Parker, struggle to catch their breath while Bruce Lamont broadcasts whale song by saxophone. Above the gray drift, Neurosis’ Scott Kelly intones his familiar doom.”
Comments Fairbury of the tune: “How can the choice be any clearer? The less Serving you do, the more chance you have to Survive. Serving is rarely a positive experience and Surviving, although a victory of sorts, is truly the most basic form of existence. Either way, you’re fucked.”
Make a choice. “Serve or Survive” (Direct link: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/15837-serve-or-survive/)
CORRECTIONS HOUSE embrace the worthless, the diseased, the forgotten, their sprawling anti-soundscrapes and acidic verses — at once beautifully hideous, graceful and terrifying — a manifestation of societal ruin and psychological decay. The transformation of time and space; death begetting life and veils being torn; an imposing dissonance too penetrating to dismiss…CORRECTIONS HOUSE systematically create and destroy through audio disease and transcendent musical deconstruction.
Last City Zero will be released in UK/EU on October 28, 2013 via Neurot Recordings.
Constellation Records and Rarely Unable HQ are excited to announce the next of the label’s Autumn 2013 releases: Mississippi Moonchile, the second installment in Matana Roberts‘ ongoing COIN COIN project. 2011’s COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres was an utterly breathtaking affair, met with widespread critical acclaim and featured on several year-end lists, and Chapter Two constitutes a triumphant and thrilling return of Roberts’ utterly unique voice. Released 30 September.
Listen to an audio sample of album tracks “amma jerusalem school” and “for this is”: https://soundcloud.com/constellation-records/matana-roberts-amma-jerusalem-school-for-this-is/s-l0exl
ABOUT THE ALBUM…
COIN COIN Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile is the much-anticipated new installment of Matana Roberts’ unique and forward-looking project. Guided by an aesthetic practice she has dubbed ‘panoramic sound quilting’ (partly in homage to the literal handicraft heritage of her patrilineal line), COIN COIN finds Roberts conjuring some of the most nuanced, thoughtful and substantial American liberation music of the 21st century.
COIN COIN has also been a profoundly generous and collaborative process for Roberts, who has been developing various chapters of the COIN COIN cycle with a wide range of musicians from diverse backgrounds over many years. The hugely acclaimed Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres was the culmination of two years of regular visits to Montréal and featured fifteen musicians assembled from that city’s out-jazz, experimental and avant-rock scenes. Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile was developed for a more intimately woven New York jazz sextet and was recorded with this group in late 2012, following several years of local and international performances of the piece with this line-up.
Mississippi Moonchile takes the next leap forward in Roberts’ iconoclastic and complex project of memory and recuperation, where historical and contemporary musical tropes, fragmentary spoken and sung narratives, and Matana’s cascading alto saxophone are supported by prodigiously talented players on piano (Shoko Nagai), trumpet (Jason Palmer), double bass (Thomson Kneeland), drums (Tomas Fujiwara) and operatic tenor voice (Jeremiah Abiah). While demarcated by 18 titles and track IDs, the album presents an uninterrupted, incantatory swirl of through-composed music, where thematic structure and free improvisation are propelled in continual and fluid co-existence.
While Chapter One was marked by more defined set pieces, stark juxtapositions, and the epic cacophony of a sprawlingly unconventional big band, Chapter Two unfolds as a cohesive album-length piece unto itself, channeling the drama and catharsis of Gens de couleur libres into something more measured and circumscribed, playing with notions of dignity, rarefaction and restraint. The inclusion of a male operatic singer contributes significantly to the tone and tension of Mississippi Moonchile in this respect, and operates as a fascinating foil to Roberts’ own voice, which alternates between splintered ‘wordspeak’ and deeply soulful singing. The six players are in a perpetual motion of coalescence and divergence, where melodic themes, occasional ostinato passages, and variously deployed literal voices (“There are some things I can’t tell you about…”) serve to rally the overriding theme of individual narratives and personal expressions as struggles with, celebrations of, and threads within collective history. The contortions of empowerment, pride, shame, suffering, eulogy, empathy, liberation and transcendence are Matana’s raw material in the broadest and most specific senses; she has given this raw material another beautiful and compelling shape in the second chapter of the COIN COIN story.
“Roberts is a major talent – a unique and easily identifiable saxophone voice who’s also a thoughtful composer capable of choosing empathetic and supportive collaborators.” – WIRE
“Within this short space of time her career trajectory has soared ever upwards…mightily impressive.” – JAZZWISE
“A modern exponent of the free jazz aesthetic…She makes an arresting noise – but not for the faint-hearted.” – RECORD COLLECTOR
“This utterly compelling album not only demands and deserves attention in its own right, but has serious potential to be the start of a truly masterful greater musical and cultural work.” – ROCK A ROLLA
Building up to the September 23rd release on Avalanche, jesu have released the first alluring details of forthcoming album Everyday I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came and understandably, there is good reason to be excited. We can unveil the album artwork (shown above) and tracklisting:
1. Homesick
2. Comforter
3. Everyday I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came
4. The Great Leveller
5. Grey Is The Colour
jesu have also revealed this audio sample from the album, which includes an edit for the powerful album opener, ‘Homesick’: (direct link: http://youtu.be/IxIZdQ8Hyt8)
ABOUT THE ALBUM…
Beginning with ‘Homesick’, with its guitar hooks, shoegaze textures and familar jesu sound, one can be mislead into considering that this new album will follow a familar jesu trajectory, but instead the following tracks use jesu’s aeshetic and take in dub, post punk and electronica along the way, to create maybe the most dynamic jesu album to date.
The epic ‘The Great Leveller’, at over 17 minutes, is the boldest statement of the songs here — featuring the album’s only other player besides Justin, Nicola Manzan, who commands a one man orchestra of strings, a new and welcomed feature. The song also lyrically deals with the existential drain that is early parenthood, since Justin became a father for the first time just before beginning work on this LP, and this life changing experience is mostly what this album examines thematically.
More audible treats to come in the following weeks as the album release date gets closer…stay tuned!
Following the recent album announcement, CAVE have revealed their first insight into their brand new record, Threace, which shall be released on Drag City, 14 October and today we invite you to watch the album trailer: http://youtu.be/qaar268H5zI
Hippies, flower people: now is the time! Turn off, tune in, get yourselves primed for this aid to self-knowledge, and free your body to access the unconscious mind. Reject societal law, and free your mind to access that subconscious body-vessel.
ABOUT THE ALBUM…
Recorded on a 1” 8-track Scully machine that may or may not have spent some quality burn-in time at Muscle Shoals, Threace was half-planned and half-jammed using different mic placements, building up from a basic set of as few mics as possible.
Threace not only rocks, but fuses in funktified jazz-jams amid jelly-tight guitar rave-ups, saving the keyboards for colour commentary among the beats. While Jeremy Freeze (guitar) and Cooper Crain (guitar, organ) explore their six-string relationship, twinning to gut-clutching effect, Dan Browning (bass) and Rex McMurry (drums) bring the heavy with poly-colouristic thickness, bearing the load and raising the arch under which everything happens in CAVE.
CAVE go out of their way to provide the keys to closed doors of the mind – that higher, meditative place in the expansive universe. Don’t believe researchers’ warnings when they say Threace is dangerous – at least, not without trying it for yourself, first.
THREACE TRACKLISTING:
1. Sweaty Fingers
2. Silver Headband
3. Arrows Myth
4. Shikaakwa
5. Slow Bern
And finally, a little note for their overseas followers, CAVE shall be hitting locales big and small across the Midwest, West Coast and South this Autumn, including stops at Cataracts Music Festival in Indianapolis, Cropped Out Festival in Louisville, Seattle Psych Fest and Athens Intensified Fest, with the promise of UK/EU tours early in 2014.
“Packed with mammoth jams which threaten to unscrew the doors of consciousness…Neverendless is one of the band’s most varied yet disciplined albums yet.” – CLASH
“With hit after hit of urgent-sounding synths and drums, CAVE never let up or get faster, either. That’s what they do best on Neverendless– they just keep going.” – PITCHFORK
“They’ve got the crisp chugging guitar licks, the ticking Dinger drums, the air of modernist aloofness…That is, until they suddenly and crazily wig out: the guitarist ramps up the fuzz, the synthist rides his knobs, the bassist begins jogging up and down his neck; everyone’s hair grows a couple of feet longer and the air is thick with nag champa.” – WIRE
The Melvins are set to release Tres Cabrones, a 12-song release that finds Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover reuniting with original drummer Mike Dillard, on Nov. 4 in the UK/EU via Ipecac Recordings.
“Tres Cabrones is as close as we’re willing to get to the Melvins 1983 line-up,” explained Osborne. “The best part is it’s all new songs. I specifically wrote tunes that would be good for these guys to play and it worked out great. We had no interest in rehashing tunes we wrote 30 years ago and chose instead to simply create NEW songs. It worked out perfectly.”
“Making the Tres Cabrones record was a real treat indeed. It’s a trip down memory lane complete with debauchery and ultra violence, ” said Dillard, who left the band in 1984 only to be replaced by Crover.
“After 30 years we release a record with the (almost) original line-up of the band,” added Crover. “I’ve always felt that drummer Mike Dillard was one of us. It’s great that he’s still a piece of the puzzle! Plus, I get to see what it’s like being the bass player in the Melvins! Tres Cabrones indeed!”
The Melvins annexed Big Business band members Coady Willis and Jared Warren in 2006 for (A) Senile Animal and the quartet has remained in this incarnation for four additional releases including Everybody Loves Sausages, a covers album released this spring. Not ones to relax, the Melvins introduced Melvins Lite, a version of the band that teams Osborne and Crover with Trevor Dunn (Tomahawk, Mr. Bungle). Melvins Lite released their debut album, Freak Puke, in 2012 and subsequently embarked on a 51 date/51 State (including DC) tour of the United States.
The Melvins are currently in the midst of their 30th Anniversary Tour in their ongoing four-piece iteration (father-to-be Jared Warren is on paternity leave with Butthole Surfers’ bass player Jeff Pinkus filling in).
The Melvins’ 30th Anniversary Tour (Honky opens all dates except FYF Fest):
August 13 Salt Lake City, UT Club Sound
August 14 Boise, ID Neurolux
August 16 Seattle, WA Neumo’s
August 17 Seattle, WA Neumo’s
August 18 Bellingham, WA Wild Buffalo Hall of Music
August 19 Vancouver, BC Commodore Ballroom
August 20 Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom
August 22 San Francisco, CA Slim’s
August 23 Sacramento, CA Ace of Spades
August 25 Los Angeles, CA FYF Fest
August 26 San Diego, CA Casbah
August 27 Pioneertown, CA Pappy & Harriet’s
http://www.facebook.com/melvinsarmy
Earlier this year, Disappears returned fully stretched out into the void with their KONE EP. Abstract and experimental, it erased any expectation’s people had about what Disappears sounded like or were capable of, as well as introducing new drummer Noah Leger – a pivotal force in what was to follow.
Era is the fourth annual report from Chicago powerhouse quartet Disappears which Kranky shall be releasing on 26 August.
Era sees the band further refining their love of dub, minimalism and repetition into their most original and stark set yet, venturing deeper into insular and dark musical terrain. It harks back to the early 80ʻs post punk period, when almost anything seemed possible with the classic two guitar, bass and drums lineup, and exploration and expansion of what could be done with these elements was at the fore. Dueling wiry and squalling guitars lead the way while a lock-down rhythm section provides the perpetual forward motion.
Era is Disappears at their most abrasive, contemplative, and paranoid – itʼs the sound of the void looking back – and the stark jam ‘Ultra’ is perhaps the best album track to exemplify this.
Available to download via Kranky’s Soundcloud, or via this direct link: https://soundcloud.com/kranky/disappears-ultra
TRACKLISTING:
1. Girl
2. Power
3. Ultra
4. Era
5. Weird House
6. Elite Typical
7. New House
THU NOV 21, 2013 – NANTES FR
POLE ETUDIANT
FRI NOV 22, 2013 – LAVAL FR
LE 6 PAR 4
SAT NOV 23, 2013 – VILLENEUVE D’ASQ FR
FESTIVAL
SUN NOV 24, 2013 – BRIGHTON UK
GREEN DOOR STORE
MON NOV 25, 2013 – MANCHESTER UK
DEAF INSTITUTE
TUES NOV 26, 2013 – LONDON UK
LEXINGTON
WEDS NOV 27, 2013 – KORTRIJK BE
DEKREUN
THURS NOV 28, 2013 – GRONINGEN NL
VERA
FRI NOV 29, 2013 – UTRECHT NL
LE GUESS WHO FESTIVAL
SAT NOV 30, 2013 – PARIS FR
POINT FMR
SUN DEC 01, 3013 – BRUSSELS BE
MAGASIN 4
MON DEC 02, 2013 – COLOGNE DE
KING GEORG
TUES DEC 03, 2013 – HAMBURG DE
UBEL & GEF AHRLICH
WEDS DEC 04, 2013 – LEIPZIG DE
UT CONNEWITZ
THU DEC 05, 2013 – BERLIN DE
TBC
FRI DEC 06, 2013 – OSLO NO
REVOLVER
SAT DEC 07, 2013 – BERGEN NO
LANDMARK
“With tensions at its core, Pre Language fuses white light with the darkness of anxiety.” MOJO
“…a more advanced take on the muscular post-punk Disappears introduced on Lux, and overall there’s an emphasis on clarity and precision instead of sheer volume. Disappears’ interplay is seamless.” ALL MUSIC GUIDE
“Pre-Language is a record of controlled thunder, of relaxed aggression.” THE QUIETUS
“For a city used to clawing their way ahead of everyone else, Disappears are the perfect aesthetic for the fight. They were able to bottle the pure raw power of the city on Pre Language, and now everyone else around the world can get a taste.” CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND
Rarely Unable 