Aeternal Flux II

  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...

  Avant rock duo Ensemble 1 from Brighton, UK have just released a new live video from a gig  earlier this year  at London's New Cross Inn. The piece performed is 'Guitar, Bass & Drums I', a reworked version of a track from their debut album.  Joe Potts: Guitar, Laptop Tom Way: Drums  The track is also available in an audio-only version on Bandcamp and can be found here:  https://ensemble1.bandcamp.com/track/guitar-bass-drums-i-live-at-new-cross-inn

  Hannah Louise Grasskamp’s songs are enigmatic Gothic pop confections, blending euphoric impressions of fairy tale magic with undercurrents of intrigue and threat. Fantastic motifs like ice giants and underwater kingdoms are invoked, but unlike most fairy tales, the songs do not present neat resolutions or a coherent moral didactic purpose. They follow a darkwave tradition wherein imagery from childhood fantasy serves to illustrate adult existential concerns – think Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure at their most conflicted and chilling.  Grasskamp’s Brighton-based band Jungfrau has acquired a new focus with its shrinkage from quintet to a trio featuring the vocalist, Matt McCartney on bass, and Timothy Cottrell on synthesizer, and live and programmed drums. Their new self-titled release features five tracks that herald a directional shift. Shades of hypnagogic pop and darkwave’s cross-fertilization with post-metal now overlay and complement the drone-oriented neo-psyc...