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...