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Archived content from Nemesis To Go issue 8.
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Interviews
from issue 8.
Click the images to go to the interview pages:
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Live
reviews from issue 8.
Click the thumbnails or red text to go to the review pages:
For photos from the above events, find the bands by name here.
CD/Vinyl/Download reviews from issue 8:t Nothing)
Trapped
Animal? There's something counter-intuitive about that title, for surely
The Slits have always been the epitome of unrestrained hedonism. As
it happens, the title track of this, the band's first album since the
80s, is a cross between a lament for the loss of humanity's noble savage
past, and a call to us urban moderns to loosen up and party.
And yes, this is very much a party album. It's full of buoyant, jaunty, pop-reggae tunes that only occasionally hint at the band's ramshackle origins in the first wave of punk, or their later excursions into the dubby left-field. The great Adrian Sherwood of On-U Sound is involved in the production, but he's on a short leash. There are only occasional bursts of his trademark out-there-ness: mostly, The Slits keep things more upbeat than Earthbeat, and always accessible. The Slits make a fine party band, and their new songs certainly pass the toe-tapping test - but they're not in the business of pushing rampant sonic attitude into your face these days, that's for sure.
The,
er, 'conscious' side of The Slits comes out in the lyrics. Ari Up, singing
in faultless Jafakean throughout, doesn't shy away from matters of great
import. Her lyrics are heartfelt but sometimes awkwardly naive - 'You've
got issues of child abuse/I've got 'em too, but not like you' she sings
on 'Issues', a piece of pull-yourself-together advice set to a smooth
reggae sway. I'm tempted to remark that it's probably not so easy for
everyone who's suffered such traumas to get out from under. Ari's 
boundless
faith in relentless positivism is touching, but it's not necessarily
the universal cure she thinks it is. 'Peer Pressure' is a rattling afrobeat
shuffle on the theme of being bullied at school, with Ari - whose own
school days must be several decades behind her - assuming the persona
of a reluctant schoolgirl. You'll have to suspend a certain amount of
disbelief on this one, but if you can, it works.
Inevitably, there's a song called 'Babylon' (every reggae album must have one: it's the law) upon which Adrian Sherwood gets to put his dub head on as Ari Up gives us the benefit of her counsel: 'Down inna Babylon/We all got to be strong,' she sings. The song has a splendid bottom-end lope, and you can't fail to be impressed at the way Ari enunciates 'inna' without a shred of embarrassment. Mind you, when she gets to the lyric 'Down inna Africa/We must all be strong', I'm tempted to take her aside and point out that while empathy is a wonderful thing, anyone who's actually from Africa might look askance at that 'We'. Nice thunderstorm effects, mind.
On 'Reggae Gypsy', an infectious camp-fire hoedown, the lyrics get downright silly - 'We are reggae gypsy/can make you feel so tipsy' - but by this time you will have already decided whether to cringe or grin. Throughout the album, Ari Up almost never relinquishes her sprightly, optimistic, all-pervasive empathy with everyone. Only 'Can't Relate' strikes a downbeat note, and in some ways it's a standout track. Certainly the lyric - 'I go solo when nothing makes sense/Think I'm coming down with can't relate' - is more oblique, more adult than the artlessly elementary stuff elsewhere.
I'll let my feet rule my head on this occasion. I like this album, even though the lyrics often seem like they're scrawled in crayon. If Ari's tenacious grip on The Positive sometimes seems as unrealistic as her faux-Jamaican accent, the music - infectious, bubbling, always nimble and animated - wins the day. If it's party time, count me in.
The
Slits:
MySpace
Find a review of The Slits live in London here.
Hate
In The Box
Under The Ice (Anti-You)
New
York horrorshow rockers Hate In The Box pitch the unwary listener into
a weird world of macabre sideshows and carnival-punk carousels, all
soundtracked by their sway-and-surge hurdy-gurdy sound. They sound like
they've force-fed a fairground steam organ with punched cards of punk
rock songs (something I've always wanted to do in real life, as it happens),
and then gone gleefully dancing to the resulting racket. It's as if
the band have tapped into something beyond rock 'n' roll, some spooky
underbelly of traditional Americana - you can imagine their music blaring
out around a fairground on the outskirts of some Stephen King-style
town in the boondocks, just before the inevitable grisly murder happens.
What better theme tune for a ghost train than 'Beautiful Monster'? What better marching song for an army of evil toys than 'Electric Dolls' - hear them clattering mechanically forward on that fast robot-rattle of a beat. Rainbow Blight's vexed, querulous caterwaul of a vocal darts about at the front of every song; Optimus Crime stalks behind with his keyboard thrumming forbiddingly, the sound of something bad that hasn't quite happened yet. The neon nightmares of Hate in The Box are kooky, spooky fun.
Hate
In The Box: Website | MySpace
Find an interview with Hate In The Box here.
Ulterior
Kempers Heads (Killer
Pimp)
Intended
to introduce the band to the USA, this CD brings together tracks from
Ulterior's recent vinyl releases, a few demos and remixes, a couple
of videos and even some photos of the band. The complete multi-media
package, in fact, although I think once you've experienced Ulterior's
son-of-Suicide pummelling onslaught you'll probably find the noise tells
you all you need to know.
'Fireships' is all assault-and-battery electronics and guitars ramped up to the edge of feedback; 'The Death Of Everything' thunders along on a kick drum that sounds like it wants to start a fight. 'Dream Dream' (surely a nod there in the title to Suicide's 'Dream Baby Dream') is a slowie by Ulterior's standards, but that still means it's a forbidding, fuzzed-out oscillation of a song, the vocals punching in and out in a flurry of reverb. Ulterior's world is all black leather jackets and mangled electronics, and guitars that frown at you from across the room. And yet, somehow, the band's techno-rock 'n' roll dystopia is a strangely enticing prospect.
Ulterior:
MySpace
Find
reviews of Ulterior live in London here.
Screaming
Banshee Aircrew
Sugar (Resurrection)
Kicking
out the post-punk jams, this album sees the Screaming Banshee Aircrew
make a further move away from the goth-ish sounds that characterised
earlier incarnations of the band. Now, they've hard-wired their heads
to the new wave, and while this piece of re-engineering didn't require
a massive stylistic shift (the band always was more punky and boisterous
than most of their goth scene contemporaries), this album is certainly
fuelled by more of that righteous post-punk juice than before.
'Cool Ghoul Band' is a Cramps-esque kickabout; 'Promises' sounds like the band are channelling 'John, I'm Only Dancing' - period Bowie. 'Sugar' is driven forward on a tumble of drums, the guitar breaking out in a rifftastic flurry during the chorus. I can only assume (or at least hope) that the mysoginistic lyric - 'Get on all fours you fucking whore...I've got a knife here with your name on' - is not the bizarre plunge into rampant-male fantasy land it sounds like.
If there's one song here that would get the Hoxton massive into the mosh, it's 'Shutter' - a veritable epic of dynamics, all squalling guitar and staccato drums, with vocalist Mister Ed getting sardonic and agitated over the top. I'm almost tempted to say that the band shouldn't have troubled with an entire album at all. If they shoved this song out on a 7" single, and spent the next six months gigging up a storm around Shoreditch, they'd have it made.
Elsewhere, the band's murky gothic past creeps back into the room. 'Saharan Stars' employs a wannabe-portentous (if rather skinny) church organ sound, with violinist Jo Violet essaying a folkie-choirgirl vocal. It all sounds a bit Laura Ashley, if not actually crushed velvet, and perhaps indicates that the band haven't yet shaken all the dust of the goth scene off their pointy boots. Keep necking the post-punk juice, is what I say.
Screaming
Banshee Aircrew: Website
| MySpace
Find
a review of the Screaming Banshee Aircrew live in London here.
Throbbing
Gristle
The Third Mind Movements (Industrial Records)
A
world away from their early excursions into noise and shock, this latest
release from Throbbing Gristle sees the band (I think we can call Throbbing
Gristle a band now, don't you?) get their ambient heads on. The
results are good - but we're definitely a long way from the TG we have
known and (sometimes) loved up to now.
Sounds flow and shift like nature and machinery entwined. Electronics and organics float like flotsam and jetsam on Chris Carter's sonic tides. I suspect, in fact, Chris Carter (billed here as producer and arranger, as well as co-composer) is the main man behind most of what we hear on this release. Vocals, as ever by the inimitable Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, are few and far between. When they do arrive, they're treated to within an inch of their lives and set back in the mix, behind loping beats and wayward electronica. For sure, Throbbing Gristle do unsettling atmospheres better than anyone, but the barnstorming band we saw on the recent TG tour is not represented here.
Throbbing
Gristle: Website | MySpace
Find
a review of Throbbing Gristle live in London here.
Faith
And The Muse
Ankoku Butoh (Danse Macabre)
Caution:
concepts at work. Faith And The Muse head east for inspiration on this,
their sixth album, which is infused with the art and music of Old Japan.
I mention old Japan quite deliberately, for I wouldn't want you
to think that the band have gone all dayglo bubblegum pop (that's a
concept we'll save for the next album, eh?).
Here, the band incorporate classical Japanese elements into both the music and the surrounding visuals - the album comes as a lavishly-presented package with a DVD and a book of lyrics, poetry, and artwork. But for all their excursions eastwards, there's no mistaking the fact that we are in the presence of Faith And The Muse. The band has an identity that cuts through the concept.
'Blessed'
is a barrelling anthem, the kind of straight-out-of-the-traps rocker
Faith And The Muse always do well. Singer Monica Richards lets rip a
powerful, yet precise vocal - she's never showy, never indulges in pointless
diva-isms. She just points her voice straight at your head, while multi-
instrumentalist
William Faith brews up a sonic storm around her. The lyrical theme here
- indeed, for much of this album - is the contrast and conflict between
the mainstream modern world in all its consume-and-pollute shallowness,
and a more meaningful future in which the outsiders of today find themselves
vindicated. 'We are the underground/This hell is what they've made',
insists Monica.
The theme continues in 'Battle Hymn', in which the face-off between the mainstream west and the mystical east is rendered as a metaphysical conflict, while 'Nine Dragons' employs drones and drums to dramatic effect, and this time it's William Faith staring out over the battlefield, yelling like a crazed shaman as he visualises worlds in collision.
Elsewhere, the band explores ambience and atmosphere - 'Harai' even features birdsong, very much the calm after the storm - and in 'She Waits By The Well' the band creates an affecting psychedelic folk song in which voices, sounds and rhythms ebb and flow as if tugged by the moon. By way of a contrast, there's a burst of unashamed, righteous rock in the form of 'Sovereign', which brings on the guitar army for an uplifting pogo into enlightenment. Here William and Monica reveal their inner core of punk rock - and it's this that prevents Faith And the Muse, even at their most out-there mystical, coming on like a bunch of frightful old hippies. Fortunately, they've got too much grit in their guts for that.
Faith And The Muse's characterisation of the east as the repository of all that is wise and green and good may seem like simplistic western hero worship - and would probably make Psydoll, a Japanese band which has conceptually embraced technology to the extent that they claim to be robots, give them some very strange looks. But there's no faulting the sentiment. In a way, Faith And The Muse are just as idealistic as The Slits (although fortunately their lyrics are better by a country mile). Faith And The Muse certainly have the same disdain for Babylon, and the same optimistic conviction that after the towers have fallen, a new, better, greener world will emerge. Well, let's hope so. Up the underground? I'll raise a glass of organic green tea to that.
Faith
And The Muse: Website | MySpace
Find
a review of Faith And The Muse live in London here.
The
Cursors
Alien (British Medical Records)
Crackling
and rumbling like the denizens of some bizarre blues-punk underworld,
The Cursors sound like every hangover Nick Cave has ever had rolled
into one. The guitars clang and buzz, the drums wallop implacably, and
the vocalist's crazed holler - she sounds like she's just seen something
very annoying from her apartment window - is enough to keep the
neighbourhood delinquents in line for a week.
Only two tracks here - 'Alien' and 'Hmmm Ha' - but if you like it feisty and fine, The Cursors will do the right stuff for your head. They're probably gigging around London even as you're reading this. Catch 'em live, because I reckon their ripped-up rock is going to sound great through an overdriven club PA.
The Cursors: MySpace
Mona
Mur & En Esch
120 Tage/The Fine Art of Beauty And Violence (Pale
Music)
If
you didn't know Mona Mur and En Esch were based in Berlin, you could
perhaps guess at their location from the swaggering cabaret of opening
track 'Candy Cane'. Mona Mur stalks assertively through the song like
a punk rock Marlene Dietrich, declaiming a lyric of fractured fatalism:
'If I was forced to live again/I'd take that rotten road/And if I had
my knife again/I'd cut another throat'. Marching alongside, En Esch
rips out guitar chords as thick and bloody as red velvet curtains. That
sets the scene for the album as a whole, for while not every song here
has the same surging, slash-
and-burn
rock 'n' roll theatrics, there's more than a touch of gandiloquent end-of-the-century
drama in Mona Mur and En Esch's sturm und drang.
'Eintagsfliegen' (One Day Flies) has a fine, stompy, boots-on-the-pavement beat, an incongruously jaunty little organ leaping about in the background, and plenty of that abrasive guitar, buzzing and humming like raw electricity throughout the song as Mona Mur gets feline and assertive on the vocal. 'Snake' is a slo-mo slither, built on a basement bassline rumble; and when Brecht and Weil's 'Surabaya Johnny' crops up, with the guitar skating around in the background like a threat, it seems only right and proper that it should.
In a way, Mona Mur and En Ech create the feel of a Brechtian punk cabaret far more effectively than the Dresden Dolls ever did. Maybe it's because they're closer to the source; maybe it's just because that ever-present guitar imparts an abrasive edge that you just don't get from a keyboard, no matter how hard you bash the keys.
At any rate, this is my kind of cabaret. Reserve me a table right at the front.
Mona Mur & En Esch: MySpace
The
Last Cry
Walking To The Edge (A Day Like Today)
'Recorded
in Lewes, England' says the blurb, prominently. I'm at a loss to know
why The Last Cry are so keen for us to know this (do they represent
the happenin' Lewes Sound, perhaps?) but it does set the scene in one
respect: we're in provincal England, a world away from gritty city rock
'n' roll. Maybe that's the reason The Last Cry's music seems oddly misplaced.
There's no hint of the scratchy tension that infuses so much independent,
alternative music these days: instead, melodic, middle-of-the-road,
mid-tempo gothic rock is the order of the day.
It's all impeccably played and produced, but ultimately rather worthy and dull. The band's principal influence seems to be The Cure at their most angst-ridden - certainly, The Last Cry's sound is often akin to a smoothed-out Cure, with Robert Smith's existential agony replaced by mere melodrama, and the sound ruthlessly polished to a professional sheen that's superficially impressive until you realise that the rough edges which might have made things interesting have been burnished into a curiously lifeless glaze. I remember seeing this band play live a few years back: they were a lot more exciting than this. They're an older outfit than they admit on their MySpace page, where we learn that 'The Last Cry as they are now formed 3 years ago' - the words 'as they are now' concealing a good many previous years and previous line-ups.
Listening to this album is a bit like eating an entire loaf of bread: no matter how skilful the baker, no matter how fine the ingredients, in the end it's still just bread.
The Last Cry: MySpace
Red
Painted Red
Colours (Self Release)
Wrapped
in a black parcel, tied with black string, the bright, strangely childlike
artwork of the CD sleeve itself emerges from its outer packaging like
the sun from behind clouds. This, the latest release from Manchester
duo Red Painted Red, completes a trilogy with the band's previous two
EPs. And, as with all their outpourings, it signals itself as something
singular even before you've even heard a note of the music.
Wide-screen ballads unfurl themselves like flowers touched by sunlight upon an inviting bed of lush instrumentation; yet there's always a sense of space and a measured pace about the music. You could call what Red Painted Red do folk, although the arrangements here are far more rich and comprehensive than the stark voice-and-guitar stuff the f-word might suggest.
The warmth and allure of the music is counterpointed by the lyrics, which hint at a heart of darkness lurking somewhere in the light. 'Will the silver stars come out again/And look at the sky?/Will they give me colour?/Bring me colour back again?' sings Yvonne Neve, with her trademark controlled grace, on 'Colours'. You feel the answer to her question, for all the brightness with which the music is surrounded, can only be 'No'. Indefinably unsettling stuff, but as compelling as ever.
Red Painted Red: MySpace
Näd
Mika
UFO EP (Idee Komitee)
This
release claims to be an EP, but with nine tracks I think we're really
in album territory, aren't we? Näd Mika certainly doesn't have
any problems with keeping the content coming. What you also need to
know about Näd Mika is that she's an electro-punk artist from Germany
with a neat line in warped 80s-style new wave eurodisco, like Grace
Jones if you put her in a room with the Lords Of Acid and wired the
lot of 'em up to the mains.
The beats stomp and thump; the electronics are a gloriously filthy noise. Näd Mika herself recites the vocals in an assertive chant, like a techno traffic warden advising you of the parking regulations. Her delivery has a delicious petulance, half way betweeen an imperious dominatrix and a stroppy teenager who's been told to go to bed early. I suspect only Näd Mika could deliver lines like 'Fuck to go/I told you so' and make the listener feel suitably admonished, even if we don't quite know what she's on about.
'Lecker Lecker' is a 100mph dancefloor rocker, the synths getting rough and the beat picking fights with all and sundry, while the title track is a thing of cool restraint by comparison. It's a tale of extra-terrestrial love - 'You aren't like a normal person/Sometimes you glow in the dark'. John Cooper-Clarke fans might reckon this to be Näd Mika's 'I Married A Monster From Outer Space', except in her case it's more a case of love 'em and leave 'em. Dirty electro brilliance throughout, anyway.
Xykogen
Musica Universalis (Free downoad only)
More
misadvenures in modern messthetics from this collective of electro-art
soundscape spooks. Xykogen's modus operandi (you see, I can do the Latin
thing, too) is to fling their music up on the web for anyone to haul
down, free, gratis and for nothing, thus instantly circumnavigating
the entire music industry. Although this strategy won't make the band
rich, the chances of the conventional music biz doing that are pretty
remote anyway. So, what the hell. Better to simply get the sounds into
as many ears as possible, and take it from there.
Xykogen make music as atmospheric and inexorable as the soundtrack to an outer-space swords and sorcery movie scripted by Philip K. Dick. Sweeps and beats compete; ambient interludes give way to moments of rampant noise. Disembodied vocals mutter darkly in the corners. Shudders and hums prod the unwary listener from all angles.
And yes, I did mention swords and sorcery. Titles like 'Fury With The Face Of Heaven' and 'Behold, The Silver Star' make it sound like someone in the Xykogen collective likes to curl up with a good fantasy novel (or, failing that, a fantasy novel). Xykogen like to style themselves 'future punks' but I bet they're traditional old hippies really. Go to their website, grab this music, and you'll be going home in a cosmic ambience.
Psydoll
10 Spyglasses (Psydoll Products)
Probably
the most accessible release yet from these Tokyo robotniks. Here Psydoll
exchange their surrealist cyberpunk aesthetic for something more steampunkish
- and trick out their music with guitar that at least nods to conventional
rock rackets as it passes in the corridor, even if it doesn't quite
stop to shake hands. But the great thing about Psydoll is that even
when they're trying to be accessible and conventional, they're still
gloriously, brilliantly, out there.
We
kick off with the latest version of 'Theme For Psydoll', the band's
introductory anthem that, in assorted guises, features on all their
releases. This time round it's an after-dark glam-stomp around Tokyo's
neon-lit streets, the guitar swaggering about like a whole platoon of
heavy metal hoodlums. 'Towers' is what you might call classic Psydoll,
vocalist Nekoi sounding entirely unruffled as the guitar c
ranks
up and the beat whomps and clatters. The interlude in the middle, where
it all counter-intuitively breaks down into an intermission of prodded
piano, is very Psydoll - as is the lilting pop melody, which Psydoll
deploy with effortless grace even on their most noisy songs.
'Kanashii Music' sees Psydoll going unashamedly, unequivocally rock - and while there's still plenty of the band's bizarre charm and effervescing musical ideas in the mix, I'm rather uneasy at the way the guitar seems to be auditioning for Rammstein on this one. 'Ghosts' sees the guitar unleash a veritable maelstrom of classic rock moves, and while I understand that Judas Priest are kinda hip with the kidz these days, I'm not sure that's a direction in which I want Psydoll to go.
It must be said that maximum heaviosity guitar - sometimes close to straight-up rock, sometimes bordering all-out metal - does feature quite extensively on this album, and maybe that's a wise move if it makes the band a bit more palatable to the rock kids. But I'm not a rock kid, and I like Psydoll best when they splurge the colours on their sonic pallette in other, weirder, directions. If the band loses its essential out-there-ness in a quest for mainstream rock appeal, that'll be a shame. Round here, we say Psydoll are good - but weird is good, too.
Noblesse
Oblige
Privilege Entails Responsibility (Repo)
Now
re-released with no less than ten extra tracks - two newies, eight remixes
- Noblesse Oblige's 2006 debut album does the business just as effectively
as it did first time round. My review of the original release went something
like this...
A cabaret duo for a post-everything world, Noblesse Oblige do dirty disco and tenebrous torch songs with an attitude that suggests they're equally at home in the gutter or among the stars. If you wanna dance, then you can certainly get a groove on to the delightfully sleazy boystown of 'Bitch' or the phat industrio-slam of 'Bite Back'. If you want to spook yourself, try the lope and croon of 'Was Keine Zeit Zers Toret'. Or if you want to capture the feeling of a wine-fuelled night in Montparnasse, then step out to the marching rhythm of 'Quel Genre De Garcon'. And if you really want to test your liberal sensibilities, try 'Offensive Nonsense', on which Noblesse Oblige express baleful antipathy towards Muslims, Jews, Christians, Tories, Communists...well, everyone, really.
It's
all delivered with a touch of raised-eyebrow wit and neat, minimal arrangements,
which, with only a small suspension of disbelief on the part of the
listener, conjure up velvet-trimmed back rooms and late-night dives,
partitioned cities and cars with yellow headlamps. It strikes me that
Noblesse Oblige are a very European band - a possibly superflous observation,
you might think, given that the vocals arrive courtesy of either Valerie's
dry French tones or the deadpan German accent of Sebastian. But there's
more to it than that. You simply couldn't imagine this collection of
left-bank sleazery and arch humour emanating from the USA. You need
a certain European perspective to come up with a song entitled 'Night
Train To Krakow' - and deliver it with a sympathy that creates the distinct
impression that Noblesse Oblige have caught that very train on many
occasions.and
All that's as true now as it was then, so please allow me to re-release my review for this re-released album (no remixes: the words are in exactly the same order). Noblesse Oblige were based in London then. Now, they're in Berlin, which was possibly always their spiritual home. But their baleful presence in grubby old London is much missed. We need their barbed humour and take-no-shit attitude.
Noblesse
Oblige: Website | MySpace
Find a review of Noblesse Oblige live in London here.
Email | LiveJournal | MySpace
Page credits: All
words, photos and construction by Michael Johnson.
Nemesis
logo by Antony Johnston,
Red N version by Mark Rimmell.