Older writing – Page 2

Jamie Hutchings: The Golden Coach (2002)

June 18, 2014August 8, 2015 CaptainFezLeave a comment

This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

Bluebottle Kiss have, over the course of the past ten or so years, become stalwarts of the Oz indie rock scene. The Golden Coach is the first solo album from BBK mainman and prime mover Jamie Hutchings, and as such is a more restrained affair than his other works — certainly, it’s a little less histrionic than audiences have come to expect from the purveyor of intelligent chug-rock, though there’s still some floppy-haired pain to be found here, writ large. Continue reading “Jamie Hutchings: The Golden Coach (2002)” →

Oxbow: An Evil Heat (2002)

May 23, 2014June 18, 2014 CaptainFez1 Comment

Oxbow: An Evil Heat This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

Once in a while, a record comes along that makes you question the sanity of the people who made it — or a CD makes you feel that there’s something, at a basic level, terribly wrong. An Evil Heat is one of those recordings. Try taking the big guitar sound that was found on some Rage Against The Machine tracks, and giving it to the Birthday Party. Pour them full of crack and paranoia, and then make Nick Cave slur more, utilising a vocal technique that varies between the squalling of newborns, the ranting of mental patients released into the community, and demon wails.

Like The Jesus Lizard after a stay in prison, Oxbow‘s music is dangerous, in-your-face and utterly compelling. Their live act is described as “live cock fun”, which is pretty much what you get here: demonic cock-rockin’ riffs, corralled by someone who sounds like he’s working through some serious problems. It’s truly oceanic. Continue reading “Oxbow: An Evil Heat (2002)” →

Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen: Journey Through the Land of Shadows (2005)

May 13, 2014August 8, 2015 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen: Journey Through the Land of Shadows This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

Additional note: Jesus, is this a long review. There’s some video throughout to ensure you don’t die before reaching the end.

Since forming in 2000, Mikelangelo And The Black Sea Gentlemen have been gathering accolades for their superlative, part fairy-tale, part cabaret, part cautionary huckstering live performance. Playing a number of festivals worldwide – including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival – they’ve honed their approach and reeled in punters with an ear for the more curiously strait-laced (in a completely Victorian, bodices-and-waistcoats kind of way) side of the gypsy-folk spectrum. Continue reading “Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen: Journey Through the Land of Shadows (2005)” →

What Is Music? @ Annandale Hotel, Sydney, 13/02/2004

May 7, 2014May 30, 2017 CaptainFez4 Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbq-g3ZtMbI

This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

Experimental or avant-garde music is occasionally referred to as “difficult listening”. It’s probably a phrase that was coined by someone after they survived a Fushitsusha gig. Don’t get me wrong – there were many moments of crystalline brilliance – but this was a gig that was always going to require a bit of perseverance.

Fushitsusha are, is, essentially, Keiji Haino. He’s a gargantuan figure in the Japanese music world, though he’s probably got more in common with JD Salinger in terms of his willingness to meet the press or press the flesh. This band is basically his excuse to be the loudest man on earth. From behind wraparound sunglasses, dressed head to foot in black and sporting a haircut so severe that it suggests a goth Ramone pixie, Haino would spend most of this evening playing through a wall of amps pushed louder than any I’d ever heard. Continue reading “What Is Music? @ Annandale Hotel, Sydney, 13/02/2004” →

What Is Music? @ Gaelic Club, Sydney, 12/02/2004

May 3, 2014May 11, 2014 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Festival artwork, 2004.

This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

What Is Music? is a festival that’s been running since 1993 and aims to show gig-goers that there’s more to music than three chords and the truth. Judging from the mixture of baffled and ecstatic faces seen in The Gaelic Club this evening, the education continues.

As punters entered the room, Matthew Chaumont was already well under way. Seated in front of the stage, manning a couple of computers, a mixer, and what appeared to be a large speaker attached to a couple of metres of industrial ducting. Apparently called Metaphenomena, the piece was a series of bowel-shakingly low tones with a satisfyingly dirty texture. Continue reading “What Is Music? @ Gaelic Club, Sydney, 12/02/2004” →

Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (2002)

May 1, 2014April 19, 2016 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (re:) This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

Angel Passage is an odd disc. It’s a studio reworking of a performance Moore and Perkins presented as part of the Tygers of Wrath concert, presented at the end of Tate Britain’s William Blake exhibition. And as such, it sits in no-man’s land; it’s not a run-of-the-mill spoken-word album, nor is it a cast-recording album. It’s a weird hybrid, like reading Moore’s meditation on Blake’s life while ghostly music that’s not quite separate floats through the air. Occasionally, it’s problematic — I just want to hear what he’s saying, dammit — but for the most part, it adds a well-judged air of mystery. Continue reading “Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (2002)” →

Nerve Net Noise: Meteor Circuit (2002)

April 27, 2014June 18, 2014 CaptainFezLeave a comment

No two ways about it, you’re either going to love Meteor Circuit or think it’s the most annoying con-job going in electronica. Nerve Net Noise, a Japanese duo, take homemade oscillators and basically let them play themselves. They claim to be going for the middle ground between planned and unplanned, suggesting that there’s a kind of life created here. Then again, their liner notes also make links between the creation of the world and their music, in a display of whimsy that elsewhere would annoy, but here appears to fit entirely with the project: machines playing themselves, humans acting merely as scribes. Continue reading “Nerve Net Noise: Meteor Circuit (2002)” →

Dirty Three: She Has No Strings Apollo (2003)

April 22, 2014June 18, 2014 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Dirty Three: She Has No Strings Apollo This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

She Has No Strings Apollo arrives as Dirty Three celebrate ten years together, playing dives and festivals and introducing gobsmacked punters to their particular blend of distortion-fuelled neo-classical gypsy heartbreak. It’s the product of fatherhood, abortive recording sessions and long sojourns as backing musicians for luminaries such as Nick Cave or Will Oldham. And more than any recording before it, it seems to nail the sound — and, more importantly, the sense of communication between players, the “feel” of things — in a way that their other discs haven’t.

The disc’s feel could be put down to the fact that it was recorded — after a couple of months of live workshopping — in just three days at Les Instants Chavires in Paris. And it shows; the tunes have a sparseness in places that bespeaks freshness — these are songs that have no fat on them. They’re fresh from the source. Continue reading “Dirty Three: She Has No Strings Apollo (2003)” →

John Hudak & Jason Lescalleet: Figure 2 (2001)

April 13, 2014October 21, 2020 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Take one NY-based sound artist (Hudak) and one New England-based composer (Lescalleet). Give them a load of recording equipment, an audience and place the whole shebang inside a Massachusetts chapel in the middle of a snowstorm. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Thankfully, such preparations have resulted in a recording of such incredible beauty that it will make you believe that there are benevolent gods watching over those who explore what constitutes music. Continue reading “John Hudak & Jason Lescalleet: Figure 2 (2001)” →

Film review: The Proposition

April 5, 2014April 6, 2014 CaptainFezLeave a comment

This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

There have been few Australian films as hotly anticipated as The Proposition. The combination of director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave (who have created film clips together, and were previously teamed on the thoroughly disturbing Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead) and a cast including Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, John Hurt and David Wenham served to create quite an appetite. The good news is that the expectations created by such a gathering of talents are surpassed with this film. It’s a truculent, smouldering piece that, while managing to have a core story that’s straight out of a western, manages to address issues which still dog Australia today.

Continue reading “Film review: The Proposition” →