Remember when Roger is getting close to his transformation into mindless flesh-eating corpse, and tells Peter to blow his brains off only when he is one hundred percent sure that the change has taken place, because it might not happen, as he is going to try not to come back?

Well, you could say that much of the music  covered in today’s review is precisely that, music that died. And came back, a subtly, or not so subtly altered replica of its former, breathing self, still scintillatingly beautiful, but with a strange glint in its eye, a snake of black smoke nested in its fractured rib-cage, these are nice songs that spent an evening buried in the rocky grounds of the pet sematary, and awoke and returned up the lost path to envelop us with the seductive scent of their putrefaction. Many people out there do not understand our fascination with such things, they do not realise that when we behold through the ghastly gashes on the side of the emaciated visitations that our FEAR ballads are, we see things, and we hear things that come from beyond, we can’t help ourselves, we are people with that inclination for the supernatural.

Addendum- Heaven is a place where Francine blows up the head of the Hare Krishna zombie with an incandescent flare.

Two stars have shone blacker than the velvet foreboding sky this 2009 of blood-curdling shrieking and hands raised towards the sky in a feverish plea for deliverance. First come Portishead, subjects of an astonishing musical reinvention, teletransported to a nebulous zone of bone-shattering kraut-rock riddims, cadaverous country and beautiful industrial dirge, Machine Gun is probably our fave tune of the year, they also took our breath away live at Primavera Sound.  And then Salem, engineers of a fiendish genetic thief escaped from the frozen tundras of Antarctica to arrive in the abandoned-hive like streets of Alphabet City becoming what, a hybrid of dirty (gothic) south opium nightmares and phantasmagorical shoe-gazing turbulence. John Carpenter would be proud, also of fellow travellers Young Cream and White Ring.

Crows danced in the sky to the powerful pulse of Black Mountain’s agit-mystical  stomp, and Mirror Mirror drew us spellbound inside a mesmerising zone of magical glamour, an opalescent time-machine of sensual wizardry harkening back to the best pysche folk of the 60s.

Spectral chanteuse Zola Jesus will surely continue sending shivers down our feeble vertebral spines with her necromantic balladry, nostrils and mouth agape project ectoplasmic tendrils that melt into an auditory rorschach ink-blot where we hear echoes of Motown and Kate Bush that fiery warlock, wandering lost in a hall of  shadows full of rabbit-holes whence we access misty treacherous moors, solitary urban back-alleys where memories of dreams dance to the cruel rhythm of a wintery wind.

Zola Jesus- Rester

You know that synthetic spirals let loose in the misty spaces of a Dario Argento tableaux never fail to turn us on in a death-pervert kind of way, well, this year we have had our fair share of such dirty thrills, by the hand of, amongst others, one master of darkness Mr. Steve Moore whose remixes of David Rubato and Genghis Tron made us think of apocalyptic sunsets populated by night gaunts spreading their leathery wings from shattered windows, nay, hollowed eyes of leprous high-rise buildings standing up to be counted like the corpses of behemoths in the sprawling graveyard of a nuked Wahington D.C. landscape.  Meanwhile, Dissident records have continued unleashing upon the discotheque pumped up italo slashers, leather glove cast in iron brandishing serrated steel implements. Brassica, Naum Gabo and Truffle Club deserve special mentions in this unholy front, as do Chicago’s finest purveyors of goulish EBM electro carnage, Gatekeeper.

We kneel by the (thing on the) doorstep of Thisisnotanexit manor for three main reasons, namely Spectral Empire’s Jan Hammer slaher new beat gorefest,  Detachments’ skeletal post-punk and Brain Machine’s vanishing point style trip across the cyclopean canals of a dead world. Just listen to Eternal Night, perfect Tangerine Dream-esque soundtrack for the eerie convolutions of Event Horizon’s Space Drive, a trail of fractal tears mark the spot where Jesus wept.

Brain Machine- Eternal Night

The long winded cycle of an ominous drone is the loop of a hangman’s noose which pulls us from freezing waters in a cruel paradox of asphyxia and salvation, Pocahaunted, Caldera Lakes, Oneohtrix Point Never, Teeth Mountain and Little Claw have risen like translucent revenants to stand in the murky background of forests captured by the camera of one Mr. Dan Nixon, a frightful zone we wander in a simultaneous delirum of joy and dread.

It is this wonderful gentleman Mr. Nixon who brought to our attention Fever Ray’s nebulous dirge. We are talking about the new project by Karin Dreijer Andersson from the Knife, so you know we are talking about some special business. An album shall be coming out in March, for now we revel in the abyssal depths of ‘If I had a Heart”, a macabre D. Lynch style trip across river Styx over the decrepit bridge of a rumbling bassline which could have well been produced with a medieval siege engine. If Genesis P-Orridge or Alan Vega had had a go at remixing Silent Shout, the outcomes would have been of this sort, i.e. astonishing.

Fever Ray- If I had a Heart

And before we go to sprinkle an orderly corn-field with virginal blood, we leave you with a message from Chris Upset the Rhythm. It has to do with Foot Village’s new album, sweet stuff, do get involved.

FOOT VILLAGE WANT YOU TO BE IN THEIR NEW ALBUM

Foot Village – yes, them of the thunderous drum-n-shout circle from Los Angeles, are recording their new album ‘Anti-Magic’ for Upset The Rhythm in the studio right now. It’s day two and the roughs we’ve heard so far are a total brain-wrangle. It’s going to be a terrific record but only you can help finish the album as the band demand your involvement with the final track called CHICKEN AND CHEESE.

CHICKEN AND CHEESE is a celebration of requited love, a call to arms, an espionage and also an ever evolving loop about the world uniting through music – hence the inspired idea to throw the song open to everyone. Foot Village are going to start the loop and then every few measures it’ll get passed on to another band/artist/human to display their interpretation of the part.

To get a feel for what the loop will sound like at the beginning check out this practice-space recording:

SOUND SAMPLE OF THE LOOP

Feel more than free to write and record your own version, I mean really go crazy, change it as much as you like, take it to places only you can reach and send it on to the band here:

dbombarc@gmail.com

They are going to take every contribution and edit it all together into a colossal parade of bands that will pretty much destroy your mind. The deadline for all contributions is THURSDAY 15 JANUARY 2009 and for those of you who might want to know the lyrics, here they are:

“We write love songs in a secret language that no one can resist”

Brilliant! Have fun and we hope you can join the party!
UPSET THE RHYTHM

I saw a tree shaken by the wind furious, its branches stretching feeble into the air like the bony hands of an emaciated white witch begging for a miracle from the elements. A trembling ray of sun was granted, and in the pool of light it created there was a glittering, but for an instant. I found a small stone of a green hue lying on the grass at the foot of this tree, which I put to my ear like it was a seashell far away from home, lonely.

This is what I heard.

Aja Rose Bond- The Flood

Perhaps the echo of a melancholy tale whispered into the green stone, sad surrogate for the ears of a lover, a long time ago, buried into the earth with other sediments, every single one of them hurting to tell a story. But this is the one I found, only because a finger of light pointed me in its direction. I put the stone in my pouch and walked away from the tree, I looked back afterwards and saw it standing uncertain in the grey distance, like a mourner grieving silent at a funeral for dead memories.

The sky stretched wide populated by a tumultuous army of clouds. I surveyed this battlefield from a vantage point at the summit of the smooth hill, and commanded my forces with a stick like the ghost of Napoleon, surrounded by a squad of scarred hussars, or a deranged orchestra director trying to harness the crazed winds into a symphony.

We fought to the last man, I remember with fondness a renegade corsair which sailed redoubtable towards the enemy lines, a lightning bolt fractured the sky when it crashed against their mighty formation. Repelled every time, its crew scanned the daunting opposition for a crack, grim eyed and dry lipped like mathematicians chasing after the tail of that elusive variable that would solve the ultimate equation. Defiant and proud they howled and roared, pulling ropes, unfolding sails, mopping blood from the deck and loading cannons, busy aides making their lady presentable for a date with the maker, one date for which she was running late.

They sank to find what they they were going to find, and this is what they sang as they dissolved into the mysteries beyond.

Medicine and Duty- Going Down With The Ship

I walked into the woods, but my path was interrupted by a forbidding fence of black barbed wire. I walked around its perimeter searching for some hole or gate, to no avail. I eventually came upon the fallen, rotting tree where I had started my circumnavigation, and accepted that if I was to continue this way, I would have to climb over spikes wicked like badly shaven hairs bristling demonic jowls, and this kiss would spill my blood. I was pondering upon what to do when I noticed the strange pattern in the fence. Odd objects, dead birds and flowers of faded colours, yellowed carcasses, mysterious debris lay impaled in it like notes purposefully arranged in the rigorous reticle of a music score.

I noted down those signs into a crumpled piece of paper which when reproduced into a player piano gave me the following song, and I present it to you now.

Zola Jesus- Nativity

This is both a message and a symbol of what must lay in the misty highlands beyond that fence, beautiful corruption I should avoid visiting now, least I never be able to return to this side of the world again.

The moon had spread silvery fingers over the woods when I found myself treading the ground of a cemetery with gravestones raising in crooked angles as if they were standing on tiptoe so as to better behold that stranger leaving a trail of comically white footsteps in a soil the consistency of ash, what began on stone continued pale bone inside the mouldy coffin down beneath. A crow croaked from its turret on the trees above and jumped into the still air drawing the silhouette of a crow on the white moon a beacon in the blackness of the night, and I saw less for an instant.

At the end of the cemetery stood a cabin and inside it a pile of books shrouded in dust, I went through their crumbling pages, my fingers tracing down family lines like a shadow lagging behind death, turning them into dust erasing the memories of those who had been born and lived and loved and hated and come to rest under this ground, still together and guarded in their sleep by silent inhabitants of the woods who would never forget, I am giving you their song now.

Revenge of Shinobi- Two Clutch

– - – - – - – - -

Aja Rose Bond is a mystery, we first listened to her in Art for Spastics. Most excellent Vancouver label Isolated Now Waves release her music.

Medicine and Duty are a fucking legend. Their new album, Flags and Cannons is the best yet. They will be playing in Le Malterie in Lille on the 22nd of March with John Fucking Sinclair. Finally someone they won’t be able to outstage? I doubt it.

Zola Jesus hails from Madison, Wisconsin and she has bewitched us. She is releasing 7”s in Die Stasi and Sacred Bones. Must. Hear. On. Black. Wax.

Revenge of Shinobi are frankly astounding. They are also based in Brighton and we shall see them supporting Black Dice at Audio on Sunday.

BEFORE THAT

Tell Sofia and It Came from The Sea tomorrow. Power to the awesome now delay.

20Jazzfunkgreats Night on Saturday at the Penthouse (see above for a photo of Stuart on a strut to fetch a pint of sider), 8-1AM, Free entry, super-special guests and the usual bloody pastiche of noise, disco and 20-sided dice. You know how we roll.

AFTER THAT

Get tickets at Resident, Rounder or Edgeworld. Total winner.