Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti of seminal industrial act Throbbing Gristle have teamed up with Nik Colk (aka Nik Void) of minimalist UK dance/post-punk trio Factory Floor, under the Carter Tutti Void. On March 26 in the UK and March 27 in the U.S., will release a piece of their partnership in the form of the album Transverse.
The four-track album was put together in a somewhat unconventional way— it was prepared first in a studio and then performed and recorded live in front of an audience at the Short Circuit Presents Mute festival in London last year. Above, listen to a portion of the third track, “V3”.
Transverse:
01 V1
02 V2
03 V3
04 V4
live/////new//////like, last weekend
Roger Ebert: “I’ve looked all up and down these roads for someone to love me,” says Eunice, the tortured murderess and pilgrim whose story is told in “Butterfly Kiss.” Later she observes, “punishment is all I understand.” She is a gaunt, angry woman who stalks the roadsides of Britain, bursting into petrol stations to ask the women behind the counter, “Are you Judith?” Then she kills them.
Just an amazing slice of purely British film run through Hollywood - Tarantino played out by Mike Leigh.
As if from nowhere, Burial touches down with three more lingering moments of Burial brilliance. Opening number, ‘Kindred’, reveals itself under a shroud of distortion, virtuous-sounding vocals loosely elevating themselves over terse motorik bass and percussion. ‘Loner’ begins with a tense temperament yet soon picks the pace up a notch or two with a quick shuffling rhythm and oscillating synths, a half-way point pause providing respite and reflection. ‘Ashtray Wasp’ closes things with a sombre and contemplative gambit, driving rhythms pushing forward and crystalline touches adding light to a distortion-heavy freefall.
Pressed on high quality 180gram vinyl and clocking in at almost 30 minutes, this is an essential purchase for all Burial fans…The release date is yet to be confirmed.
We will ship all pre-orders the moment we receive the stock.
Played against the backdrop of the national liberation movements of the ’70s and ’80s, this lively documentary pays tribute to the golden age of cricket in the West Indies as the teammates set out to triumph over their former colonial masters and make a name for themselves on the world stage. This celebration of the power of sports as a vehicle for social change is set to a thumping reggae beat featuring Bob Marley, Gregory Isaacs, and Burning Spear.
Raw power, controlled aggression and once-in-a-lifetime talent. No cricket team in history was as fearsome, as intense, and as damn good as that W.Indies side.
Tony Grieg (South African-born England captain): “I intend to make them [the West Indies] grovel”
Bunny Wailer: “Like slaves whipping the arses of masters”
5. Fionn Regan – 100 Acres Of Sycamore
HVN228 Fionn Regan - For A Nightingale by heavenlyrecordings
After his ‘Bringing It All Back Home’-style second album, with a confused rockabilly shuffle grafted onto the sublime soaring folk of the Mercury-nominated debut, ‘The End Of History’, this album lifts the bar and takes it somewhere ephemeral and timeless. The sheer song-craft of the debut won’t be beaten but, like Laura Marling, just by paring down and focussing his sonic palette he has found a long-lasting and altogether more satisfying sound. Of course it’s essentially Dylan folk with a concession to modernity and the instrumental arrangements still seem hurried and similar-sounding, but lyrically he’s still as good as it gets and that voice is still spellbinding. He is becoming worrying close to a Smog-type artist - you’d be quite happy to hear a ‘Fionn Regan’ album every two years without any change in style. But we hope there’s plenty to come.
4. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
A deserved Mercury Prize winner in 2011 and one of the most ‘British’ albums to ever do so. The fact it has a much wider appeal than, say, Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Boy In Da Corner’, is the fascinating timeshift device Harvey uses to frame modern reference points. Evoking images of World War One, Constantinople, faraway loss and conflicts past, yet happens to perfectly bring home the reality of war today, despite our post-Gulf technological remove from the ‘theatre of war’. It’s curiously timeless, both musically and lyrically, with your ear catching 90s and 2000s indie twangs as well as the clever lyrical references making your mind leap forwards into the present day.
3. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
When that full, deep, expressive and powerful voice of Merrill Garbus is in full flow, it really feels like, in the nicest possible way, that you dare not stop listening, turn her off or do something else. From the thousand-mile-an-hour afrobeat of opener ‘My Country’ to the feminist-funk of ‘Killa’, this is important, empowering music that doesn’t feel serious - it feels goddamn fun. It also has something in common with another important album this year (that is next on this list) - the album delivers and encapsulates the singular and precise vision of the creator.
2. EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints
And so on to what was so very nearly my favourite album of 2011. That single-minded, intimate pursuit of an album seeming to pour out of a person - think of ‘Blood on the Tracks’, or the first Twilight Sad album. Getting the sense on every listen that there is an exact reason for every guitar sound, every vocal echo, every word and every silence. Not flinching away from the harrowing, not ignoring the possibility of release and redemption. And the feeling there are parts of the album that you will never understand, and aren’t meant to. For all these reasons and more, ‘Past Life Martyred Saints’ will remain a special album, and one countless people will delight on discovering.
1. Richmond Fontaine - The High Country
I was a middling fan of Richmond Fontaine before I attended their gig at Glee Club, Nottingham in September - I mean, I own ‘Post To Wire’ and ‘Thirteen Cities’, but I hadn’t got round to listening to ‘The High Country’, or indeed hearing much about it at all, despite my friends having got my tickets a while back. And, to make things much worse, I wasn’t able to drink that night, and going out without drinking is not a usual occurrence. “Brilliant,” my friend whispered to me. “they’re going to play the whole album in order.” Now I haven’t bought Uncut Magazine for years so didn’t even know it was a story song suite, a concept album if you like. But right from ‘The Chainsaw Sea’ I got into that rhythm, that pace of storytelling. WIlly Vlautin’s clear, concise writing pared with the most atmospheric of backing meant I had a completely unexpected riveting time, and of course the album has since remained so close to me that Angus, the kid, the girl from the auto parts store and the speed freak feel more like television or film characters to me now. And I hate concept albums.
10. The Horrors - Skying
9. Josh T Pearson - Last Of The Country Gentlemen
8. Peter Broderick - Music For Grace and Mercy
7. Isolée - Well Spent Youth
6. The Decemberists - The King Is Dead
Indulged to the extent that Marillion themselves may have thought about toning down the prog somewhat on previous full-length ‘The Hazards Of Love’, The Decemberists delivered exactly what makes them peerless - a literate, transcendent collection of oblique story-songs with a folk-country bent. And they remain untouchable at that.
Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence’s most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.
José Padilha: “When I watched the stock footage I realised that Sandro, who was my main character, had a turning point, because at the beginning of the hijack he was hiding his face, and then all of a sudden he decided to show his face and order the cameras around, so I had to explain why he changed his mind. Because of the huge presence of the media Sandro realised that he could overcome his invisibility, make the speeches that he wanted to make because he was being heard and I think that’s why he really went for it.”
Gold Panda - An Iceberg Hurled Northward Through Clouds (!K7 Records)
Sounding like the heyday of Border Community, think Nathan Fake and James Holden, Gold Panda puts forth a twinkling opus of chiming instrumental samples and glitch-heavy rhythm. Elsewhere, Not Not Fun’s Peaking Lights, those responsible for the incredible ‘936 LP’, unveil two remixes - one cut of vocal psychedelics worked around a tripped-out dance floor mechanisms and a dub cut that liberally unravels in a constantly surprising manner.
Factory Floor - Two Different Ways (DFA)
The synths draw huge, arpeggiated circles within circles, while metallic drum machines rattle in and around Nik Colk’s incantatory vocals. For a group that’s done well with abandon for years now, “Two Different Ways” impresses because of its sheer restraint, as Factory Floor take time to burn down what they’ve built so that everything evenly, excellently smolders.
Kenneth Anger by Alice L. Hutchinson - book reissue
A counterculture icon with a career spanning over 60 years - Kenneth Anger, arguably, was the pioneer of the pop video concept with his infamous short film, Scorpio Rising, from 1963. A career constantly in the shadow of controversy (indirect relationships with the Manson Family, interests in the occult and a sympathizer of Aleister Crowleys Thelema philosophy), Anger’s gritty, technicolor, violent, homo-erotic images (too strong for the America of the time) are those of one of the true innovators of the American underground film movement. From Anger’s bohemian existence in 1940 / 50’s Paris, to the psychedelic, late 60’s in London and his hometown of Hollywood (made infamous by his Hollywood Babylon books); Alice L. Hutchinson’s book focuses on his creativity from his first film ‘Fireworks’ (1947) to recent projects that have not been discussed in detail until now. Consolidating English and French texts as well as interviews with by Anger and commentaries from the likes of Anais Nin, Jonas Mekas and more.
She lives with her sister Helen in a small suburban flat in London: Carol is a girl who works as a manicurist at an elegant cosmetic salon. She hates the dead atmosphere of the place where she works and her old clients’ appetite for life. Her loneliness turns into fear: fear of life and fear of men. Her sister, far too preoccupied with herself and a married man, doesn’t notice the change that is slowly taking possession of Carol. When a young man wants to take care of Carol and enters her flat by force, she kills him and puts his dead body in the bathtub. When the caretaker comes to collect some money, she stabs him to death in the cruelest manner imaginable.
Kim Morgan: “Carol is not simply a Hitchcockian aberration of what lies beneath the “perfect woman,” she is the reflection of what lies beneath repressed desire — in men and women. Polanski has a knack for casting women who are nervously exciting (Faye Dunaway in Chinatown is a blinking, twitching mess), and therefore dangerous to desire. He makes one insecure about longing for them.”
Still Going In Offices compilation
Side One: CALL BACK THE GIANTS - We are Humbled / THE REBEL - Boston Toe Toe Rush / HOLLOW MEN - Never Again* / ELECTRICITY IN OUR HOMES - Here I Am / ADAM BOHMAN - Stirling Effort / THE PASSIONATE WINEMAKERS - Disintegrating Jellyfish**
Side Two: THE DOOR AND THE WINDOW - Come On*** / PHEROMOANS - Coffee Town / DESIGN A WAVE - Weird Lament / LA LA VASQUEZ - Bad Idea / HELM - Statuesque
Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse (Claire Drouot), young husband and father François (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda’s most provocative films, Le bonheur examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.
Agnès Varda: “Some people understood Le Bonheur. Women have become upset and asked, ‘How could you replace a woman with another woman?’ That’s what life is about. A man is replaced by another man in war. A woman is replaced by another woman in life. If his wife committed suicide, and he wants to feel good with another woman, he has the right! Do you think he should cry for twenty years?”
