Aeternal Flux II

  The Liftmen, a post-punk/psych band from Bristol led by the prolific guitarist Neil Smith, has a new album out after a decade-long hiatus. The tracks sound fully formed, benefiting from slow development out of initial sessions at bass guitarist Jim Barr's J & J studio. It’s their third album and the first released on Space Heater Recordings. Golden Token is a departure from their previous Twisted Nerve releases where Rasha Shaheen took lead vocal duties over post-punk reminiscent of Young Marble Giants. The harmony vocal approach that Smith, Shaheen and drummer James Whitby-Coles adopt for this album is the sort of thing Ween may have done as a one-off song experiment, but only these Bristolians have the bottle to turn into an album-length practice. Psychedelic precursors of punk are lower-level floors lighting up in the elevator these pranksters have commandeered. The rinky-dink guitar loop at the start of opener ‘Will You See’ taps into a long and verdant strain of Engli...

    Michael Rother performs a mixture of Neu!, Harmonia and solo material for the final show of the retired MONA FOMA festival with Hans Lampe, Franz Bargmann, and Vittoria Maccabruni. The late Klaus Dinger, Rother’s original Neu partner and inventor of the duo’s influential motorik beat, is present in image; his hawkish features float in granular spectrality from photos projected behind the band. Lampe is the only other original Neu! member being one of two drummers on Neu! ’75 , the krautrock group’s final official release. (The other drummer was Thomas Dinger, Klaus' brother, who passed away in 2002.) Bargmann is rhythm guitarist to Rother’s lead, and Maccabruni joins in the second half of the set to contribute electronics and vocals.  The setlist is taken from the original trilogy of Neu releases – Neu! , Neu! ‘2 and Neu! ’75 – Musik von Harmonia and  Deluxe , the two albums released by Harmonia (Rother’s short-lived mid-70s supergroup with Hans-Joachim Roed...

  Codex Serafini’s second album Mother, Give Your Children Sanity builds on the stylistic foundations of debut The Imprecation of Anima while allowing new variations in tone and accessibility. The saxophone blasts of opener ‘Pitying Them for Giving Life’ immediately bring 70s space rock progenitors like Hawkwind and Gong to mind, but within a context brought up to date with elements from contemporary experimental metal. The mythic portends and ritualistic atmosphere of Belgian doom outfit Wyatt E. or New York’s blackened psych jazz-metal fusioneers Imperial Triumphant suggest parallels for Codex Serafini’s surreal heaviness. According to the band statement: “ This album grew from our shared, deep connection to one another and reflects both the power of nature and the struggles we all experience as human beings on this planet.” Lyrics have become progressively discernable since the group’s 2021 EP Invisible Landscape . The female lead singer (as anonymous as the other members o...

  Pack It in My Liege , the sixth album by Bristol-based avant-rockers The Brackish, exhibits the latest iteration of the multifarious instrumental rock first assayed on their 2014 debut Big Guys . In contrast with the freeform passages of Donor Zone , this Pig Records release demonstrates greater compositional rigour and the tightening of a quartet approaching reinforced steel levels of sturdiness. Brackish sound is ultimately a pliable material; if this release favours drones over jams, the next may see another reversal in polarity. Pack It in My Liege tilts the balance towards control, but with no loss in creative boldness. It features six tracks like surrealist paintings: epic yet contained visions of adventurous weirdness. ‘Welter’ opens proceedings in a suitably stormy fashion, operating from some nexus spanning post-hardcore, neo-psych and math rock; conjuring shades of acts as disparate as Sonic Youth and This Heat. The twin guitars of Luke Cawthra and Neil Smith pla...

    Sliders is a new Bristol-based group that teams guitarist Neil Smith of The Brackish with Chris Langton on drums, Harry Stoneham on bass, and Dan Moore on keyboards. Like The Brackish, Sliders use jazz – in both its compositional and improvisatory faculties – as a catalytic aesthetic to merge various categories of experimental rock (psych, prog, kraut, postpunk, post-rock). Both are instrumental groups that shift between and intermingle heavy and playful tones; there’s an enviable balance that allows grittier, shadier textures to keep the imagination engaged before light-heartedness drifts into mere effervescence. If there’s a significant difference, Sliders lean more into improvisational looseness on their self-titled debut album than the math rock-ish complexity The Brackish can indulge in. Moore is a member of the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble. His Moog Sub 37 Paraphonic synth lines on opener ‘Jumper’ – drifting in and out of the jagged intervals of Smith’s arpeggios – evo...

  The MONA FOMA summer series of concerts has succumbed to the economic pressures terminating many Australian music festivals. Although Dark Mofo remains to enliven the Tasmanian winter months, it’s lamentable to see the cessation of a program that had the advantage of a balmier season for performances on the Museum of Old and New Art’s spacious Berriedale lawns. Since its inception in 2009, organiser Brian Ritchie made it his mission to entice Hobart’s residents with an eclectic range of experimental artists such as Philip Glass, David Byrne, Ryoji Ikeda, Julia Holter, Pierre Henry, Tyondai Braxton, Mdou Moctar, John Cale, PJ Harvey, and Antony Pateras, among many others. The inclusion of renowned American free jazz and poetry group Irreversible Entanglements for the second last show is a fitting summation of the institution’s cultural ambition. While this penultimate concert has its languorous moments, the febrile Fire Music energy on display for at least two-thirds of its length...