Three years have passed since Pelican celebrated their 10 year anniversary with the release of the LP What We All Come to Need. But that was also the year that saw the quartet finding full-time jobs outside the band due to the subsequent downturn in the US economy and “decline in sales in the music industry”, according to guitarist Trevor de Brauw.

They are now very much realists about changes within the music business, having been a full-time enterprise during the albums of The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw (2005), City of Echoes (2007), and What We All Come to Need (2009). Despite touring for a sizeable portion of the year during this period, half of the band had already relocated to Los Angeles. This is when they began recording in their own spaces and without scheduled rehearsal time. Any workable compositions and ideas would be forwarded to each other via the internet, and then eventually put together and finished off in a studio in Chicago.

If City of Echoes was shaped by the intense experience of touring, then Ataraxia/Taraxis was formed from the ability to compose in near-solitude, in an place away from pressures of studio time. Yet this long distance relationship hasn’t disrupted the creative flow of the band, who still seem to be facing in the same direction. As Drummer Larry Herweg has put it, the band are able to “kind of get a game plan of what to do so that when we are together […] we’re all on the same page right away”.

Without doubt the middle two pieces ‘Lathe Biosas’ and ‘Parasite Colony’ are very much what listeners would expect from Pelican. Multi-textured and heavy, this alternative “post-metal” echoes much of their previous work. Track durations on this release have shortened, which will be good news for attendees who find a 75min live set of 5 or 6 tracks a little too much to handle at once.

It’s the EP’s title tracks ‘Ataraxia’ and ‘Taraxis’ that offer a fresh dynamism to their sound, and it is perhaps these two that most reflect how the band are growing towards a new creative line. As well as the droning “aeroplane” intro to ‘Ataraxia’ (the sound of which remains throughout the remainder of the track), deft layers of acoustic guitar are juxtaposed against a few stabs of synthesiser and a brief stint of electronic drums. ‘Taraxis’ continues this theme with an even greater number of acoustic sounds being cleanly picked and ringing in your ears. A warbling electric lead guitar struggles to get its voice over the top of the eventual crescendo of overdriven chords and string bending riffs. These two tracks do pose a problem for the band, though: how would they incorporate the acoustic and electric live on stage?

[Originally published on TLOBF]

The gap between Black Breath‘s 2010 LP Heavy Breathing and this year’s Sentenced to Life album seems almost instantaneous. Heavy Breathing was a massive release for them, and managed to turn heads in some surprising corners of “music’s” reviewing community. The band who ended their 2010 Euro Tour with a wallop, took only a few months and several thousand miles before ending up back in Kurt Ballou’s God City studios, with a pressurised atmosphere of time and tension the background to this short and crusty record. Even their most recent Euro tour back in 2011 gave the band a chance to air a couple of new tracks. It literally is non-stop for these guys.

You can decode Black Breath’s work by simply splitting their music into 2 camps: “rippers” and “jammers”. As particularly defined by the band, “rippers” tend to push the BPMs and concentrate on speed; “jammers” tend to be a little longer and more progressive in the arrangement. Where Heavy Breathing had a balanced offering of both, Sentenced to Life is mostly full of 80s death metal infused punk “rippers”. Maybe this is due to the reaction of the crowd during the bands recent tours. The hot and sweaty basement shows filled with hardcore kids and metal-heads finger-pointing and moshing their way through the sets. This band thrives on the energy from the crowd and perhaps this is reflected in the increased extremity of this release.

Their new cobwebbed logo and album cover illustrates the renewed link to the past, with bands of the 1980s from thrash to death metal, but within a modern sort of d-beat hardcore that Southern Lord seem to thrive on. Just look at that album cover; it’s as if the film Warriors went to a whole new level. The first trio of tracks are pure headbanging filth – thrash riffs and tremolo picking dominate throughout, and “Sentenced to Life” steps into anthem mode with a sure-fire fist punching chorus. Yet somehow, the band delve into an even darker sound, one of buzzing monolithic riffs and harmonious intros interjected with huge stabs of guitar noise. This aggressive dirge allows some meticulous lead guitar playing which is bathed in chorus FX and sounds lusciously 1980s, such as on “Obey” and “The Flame”, where the latter sounding very similar to Slayer. Less punk ‘n’ roll, more thrash Sentenced to Life isn’t a game-changer as such, but a perfect accompaniment to their past releases.

[Originally published on Onemetal]

It’s only in recent times that I have realised why Chimp Spanner’s 2009 LP At The Dream’s Edge sometimes didn’t sit right musically. The juxtaposition of 80s hair metal solos / cheesy soundtrack to one gurning riff after another often felt awkward; at times I would love it but on another listen I would want to immediately turn it off. However, after witnessing Chimp Spanner (Paul Ortiz) on 2011’s Lowering the Tone tour, the tracks fell on my ears in a different way, and somewhere along the line Ortiz’s work started to click. This release also dips Basick Records’ toes into the “doomed” world of vinyl.

The bonus tracks that accompany this release feature the winners of the Chimps remix competition. They are not entirely inspiring, and reach the fringes of glitchy downtempo and antagonistic tech-step drum and bass.

All Roads Lead Here continues where 2009’s At The Dream’s Edge ended. Futurism prevails, though Ortiz’s musical cosmic bubble is only given limited time and space here. There are immediate similarities between the two releases; the three part ‘Mobius’ passage on this EP can be compared with a similar transitional piece that appeared on At The Dream’s Edge i.e. “Terminus” Parts I, II, and III. Ortiz has even said that the EP was an “opportunity to try a few things out I didn’t get to on the full length.” However, the narrative structure of his releases continues to remain.

The EP’s start and finish (not counting the bonus disc) have a similar vibe going on, with each of the tracks offering a greater sense of dynamism and vibrancy to his work. Percussive bass playing combined with glistening and intricately worked picking parts create an enormous wealth of texture. Ortiz has expressed an interest in the inclusion of some more jazzy leads, but without consciously putting them in, it would be unwise to label it as “fusion”. It’s more of a medley of styles.

And this is exactly what you get with the heart of this EP, the 14mins of sublime prog noodling that is ‘Mobius’ parts I, II and III. Lashings of cleverly worked riffs are whipped out during parts I and II, whereas part III delves into the stuttering and percussive sound. Ortiz succeeds in creating a degree of tension within the recording, and keeping the listener for a prolonged time in a suspended groove – a bit like fellow label mates Uneven Structure. With a keen awareness of just how much the “sound” of his work could be influenced by “the four dudes that play on stage” since Chimp Spanner‘s recent evolution from solo recording project to touring act, this EP tries to bring together what works live and what exists inside Ortiz’s writing mind. I wonder how this struggle is going to continue.

(Source: onemetal.com)

Emerging from a politicised music scene in England’s capital city, Senser dipped into the genre-blending alternative punk/metal pool of the early 90s. Although they don’t specifically enjoy being referred to as rapcore, they perhaps surely paved the way for other UK acts such as One Minute Silence and even stretched out to third-wave skacore bands such as Capdown andSonic Boom Six. After the relative success of 1994’sStacked Up the band somehow fizzled out. Under the gaze of New Labour they meandered through the latter part of the decade and early 2000s at a time where rap rock/metal was at its corporate zenith and symbolised by that red baseball cap.

Everyone liked Limp Bizkit at some point (yes, you did), but instead of banging on about fast cars, your “homies” around the world, or getting caught up in “millennium shit”, Senser’s early music combined the aggressive political stance of Public Enemy with guitars from metal and psychedelia. They pointed their fingers at the failures of the Conservative government, and covered various issues such as gun crime and racism alongside other bands as diverse as Asian Dub Foundation. This is a reason why the band decided to record Public Enemy‘s “Don’t Believe The Hype” with its beat-boxed drums, and the “Angel of Death”-sampled “Channel Zero” for this EP. Musically this sounds similar to their early output, punk-tinged but with heavily-saturated guitars – especially on theEric B and Rakim cover “Follow The Leader”. The dark guitar sound and deep bass is punctuated by subtle strings or synths, and coupled with the turntable scratching and explosive chorus, it brings back memories of early (hed) Planet Earth. The band maintain that “this is really the music most of us grew up with, to us early hip-hop represents a parallel with folk music, or the jazz standards – a lexicon of classics”.

Biting Rhymes serves as an aperitif to Senser’s 5th full-length, which is destined for release at some point in the future. 2009′s How to do Battle didn’t totally rekindle interest in this genre (grabbing an uninspired 1/5 from Onemetal in the process), so it would be an upward struggle to create the same kind of following as they had just over fifteen years ago. Just don’t call it a comeback…

[Originally published on Onemetal]

“Plastic, hollow shells that focus only on the in-the-now grooves or keeping in line with trends.” This is how Martyn would describe some of today’s DJs. He isn’t necessarily finger-pointing particular individuals, the Internet can take care of that — just look at the polemic Skrillex. But his general view is that DJ superstar culture coupled with rock star marketing has created a host of vacuous producers for whom he has rubbed shoulders with during his own travels. For Martyn, they lack in any culture or history of the foundations in the music they promote and create, and easily jump on the nearest development with a brash ignorance. On Ghost People the Dutch producer would like to invoke not only nostalgic memories, but the rapport of Paradise Garage DJs and hedonistic club nights of the past.

It’s not the first time the once drum and bass DJ has taken a side look at the social and cultural aspects of his work. Great Lengths although not explicit in its delivery, had a very sombre and melancholic feeling. This release “has definitely a lot more drive, from being on the road, from being unhappy with a situation perhaps.” Martyn certainly seems to have an acute perception of the “scene” and the ebbs and flows of DJ life, and as one critic has commented on the landmark Fabric 50 mix: despite being a “temporary moment”, it nonetheless could not “taste fresher, […] unifying house, techno, dubstep and UK funky to such a glorious extent; the first to portend the possibilities for coexistence between disparate scenes and sounds.”

Ghost People essentially transcends “House music’s nomadic memory”, a deep influence that remains throughout a multitude of artists in recent years, springing up in the futuristic and dystopian techno of Gatekeeper, or to take a huge step back, an album complete of House music’s earliest influences in the shape of 2562′s Fever LP. Every sound on the latter had to originate from a 70s or 80s disco record.

This album doesn’t put such a self-imposed limit onto itself, but just as 2562 is keen to delve amongst the building blocks of house, Martyn is equally willing to explore the melodies and emotions; the fizzing 808s and the cold synth stabs, passing through Detroit and Chicago on ‘Masks’ and ‘Horror Vacui’. It is heavy on the 4/4 beats and somewhat more aggressive than Great Lengths. “It’s similar to how Erosie’s album artwork is intense, an overload of thoughts, instead of an easily digestible image” comments Martyn, who insisted on the elaborate installation piece for the secret album release launch in east London late last month.

Notably, this reaffirms Martyn’s break with the confounds of two-step, and as his mind wanders through the worldwide scene once more, just where will he go next.

[Originally published for TLOBF]

That’s enough nay-sayers. I certainly didn’t expect to see Les Claypool resurrecting Primus from such a long hiatus, especially considering the time he has spent furthering his ambitiously sounding solo projects. The brief stint at getting Primus back in the swing of things earlier last decade hit a musical wall; they just weren’t the same energised band as they were in the 1990s and Claypool would be the first to admit it. “I have always said that I would only do Primus as long as it was fun. And it wasn’t fun anymore,” says Claypool. “In fact, it stopped being fun in 1996, when drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander left the band.” This awkward moment in the band led to what many fans argue is one of their better albums and ironically one that Claypool isn’t particularly fond of, 1997s The Brown Album, and after that the polarising Antipop, a record that embraced a more metallic side with a host of guest producers and musicians. Maybe the band looked at themselves and thought they shouldn’t be on the big metal tours of Ozzfest and Family Values.

Green Naughayde is Primus’ first studio album for 11 years and reunites drummer Jay Lane with the quirky bassist and long time collaborator and guitarist Larry Lalonde.

In typical self-deprecating humour, Claypool described the sound of the new album early on by saying:

“For those of you that enjoyed the new song, “Last Salmon Man”, that we played New Year’s, you’ll love the record because every song basically sounds exactly the same as that one. In fact, we just kept recording the same song over and over and I would just change a few of the lyrics around. I hear that’s the way Pink Floyd used to do it and those guys are no slouches.”

In a sense that isn’t too far off the mark. Green Naugahyde travels along in the various criss-cross directions of Lane-era Primus as well as the distinct but simple sounds and production of side-project Sausage. Tracks such as “Eyes Of The Squirrel” even have a Pink Floyd feel to them, with loops, atmospherics and ethereal textures. Above the plodding bass lines (reminiscent of The Brown Album‘s “Fisticuffs”, and Tales From a Punch Bowl‘s “Da Anza Jig”) are Lalonde’s upstrokes and volume-swelled layers. Yet for some of this album it is often engulfed by the dominant nature of Claypool’s wobbling and wet bass, coerced by an old Korg multi-fx unit that even he doesn’t recall – equipment somehow “ends up in his possession” rather than him being a FX fetishist.

Green Naugahyde is the reflection of past experiences coupled with a social critique of the present. As Claypool has said recently, “Jilly’s On Smack” couldn’t have been written earlier as they hadn’t lost a friend to heroin, whilst “Eternal Consumption Engine” focuses on the everlasting materialism within society – “Everything nowadays is made in China” sparks Claypool through his bullet mic’. All this of course is delivered with Primus‘ unique and bizarre demeanour and lyrical content. What I did notice from seeing them live at Brixton in July was that the newer material begged to be loosely extended, improvised and redefined, yet their “hits” of yesterday only truly worked in the context of an album. If anything, this album makes me what to see them again.

[Originally published on Onemetal]