TQ #17 & St. James Infirmary - Answers To Questions Unasked

New TQ issue is dedicated at length to the latest edition of the annual Tusk festival in Gateshead. Having never attended it since I live in less developed parts of Europe I like all these reports (one is this, the other one is from the semi-revived Radio Free Midwich); for one, when I was a child living in the non-Western part of Europe, and thus not being able to attend many gigs due to the high costs of transport for artists (= extremely expensive tickets), one of my favorite parts in reading rock and metal magazines was concert reviews. Secondly, with underground experimental music festivals, reading reports is a great way to discover new artists, and to slightly uncover the mystique of the No-Audience Undeground heroes you are never going to see live in your place of residence. A video of Smut during her impeccable Tusk performance was particularly such a good introduction. So we got live reviews of the great Vampyres and Liminal Haze, Lea Bertucci/Double Bass Crossfade, and the NWW Mail Art Action by Andy Wood of TQ and Chow Mwng accompanied by David Howcroft of No-Audience Undeground Tapes (I have referred to this project here), and of the Tusk film programme, interviews with Robert-Ridley Shackleton (check out his latest piece of junk gunk funk on Crow Versus Crow), G.W. Land (aka St. James Infirmary), and Ceramic Hobs, and a review of Drooping Finger's Arthur's Hell cd (Drooping Finger plays heavy ambient electronics, check some tracks here).

As always TQ comes with a giveaway cdr, and this issue carries St. James Infirmary's Answers To Questions Unasked. Never heard of the project before, so the cd and the interview have been enlightening; we're talking diverse experimental music, mainly on the heavy ambient/drone side with a strong psychedelic edge, as well as some surprising moments, as the weird black metal outbreak on track #1, and the fizzy electronic oriental psychedelia of track #3. Good stuff, will need to check out more.

You can land a subscription with TQ here to get all the goodies offered and learn more great stuff straight outta the N-AU.

Werewolf Jerusalem/Robert Ridley-Shackleton/She Walks Crooked - April Fools 3-way split CD-R (2014, Hissing Frames)

Werewolf Jerusalem's track is an exercise in HNW restraint and control, if there can be such a thing, whereas Robert Ridley-Shackleton is more untamed and bassy. As for She Walks Crooked's track it's a dense and grey slab of monotonous industrial noise. 2014 cdr on Hissing Frames.

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Posset / Robert Ridley-Shackleton ‎– Untitled split cdr

 
 

Posset is the Lord of the Almighty Dictaphone, an avid lover of drooling mouths sounds, and a central writer of the supreme Radio Free Midwich blog. His side ranges from the sounds most of us do after swallowing too much sea water combined with reverse cocaine snorting to gamelan-like sounds on the supremely titled "Tubular Balls." Robert-Ridley Shackleton is the owner of Hissing Frames label and another knight of the Almighty Dictaphone and for his part he starts by looking for something in his drawers (the precise sounds of how I used to search for things that my mother had criminally thrown out without asking) and ends up trying to make a portable generator on batteries. Great. 2014 cdr on Hissing Frames limited to 12 copies.

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