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Pictures from some recent gigs we've hosted:

29 March 2013 - Brixton, London

Viv Albertine, VuVuVultures, Left Leg, Mickey Gloss, Big Wave, No Cars, Arthur Gunn, Simon Love (Pictures)

8 March 2013 - Lexington, London

R.Ring, Golden Grrrls, Slushy Guts and Equinox (Pictures)

On Our iPod

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (album)

Antony Harding - Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear (album)

Black Angels - Indigo Meadow (album)

Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin (album)

Still Corners - Strange Pleasures (album)

Savages - Silence Yourself (album)

Mikal Cronin - MC II (album)

Can’s Ege Bamyasi played by Stephen Malkmus and Friends(album)

Victoria and Jacob - Festival 7"

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City (album)

Sauna Youth - False Jesii Part II 7”

Lightning Bolt - Oblivion Hunter

Robyn Hitchcock - There Goes The Ice (2x 12")

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Album Review

Camera
Radiate! Bureau B

Article written by Michael H - Sep 19, 2012

One of the best aspects of 1970s German art rock and electronica is how resistant to nostalgia and still retro culture is. The music still sounds futuristic, weird and other-worldly decades after it was recorded. Various sounds have pervaded other genres since, most noticeably, the sleek propulsion of techno, the nervous agitation of punk, the noise of art-rock, and the ambient space of contemporary hynagogic synth noodling, but none have managed to combine everything in the way that bands of the era did.

Which brings us to Camera and their ‘Radiate!’, a band and album that could easily have existed in 1976, but shames the output of most 2012 bands. The soil from which ‘Radiate!’ grows is so bountiful that it proves krautrock/kosmiche is a musical zone that clearly stills leaves much room for further exploitation.

And exploit it, they do; Camera remake and remodel krautrock forms and (I’d like to retake this particular cliché from X-Factor) make them their own. ‘Ego’ opens the album with a growling menace; its ebb and flow of guitar noise and circling keyboards dragged along by a tumbling beat. After the unhurried, tense build of ‘Villon’, ‘Ausland’ is an explosion of exhilarating motorik, as joyful a piece of music as you could hope for, its six minutes desperately short; I would happily listen to a six hour edit. ‘Lynch’ is a blasted, rubble strewn, feedback wasteland. ‘Utopia Is’ clears the clouds with a heartbeat drum pulse and softly picked notes before the rhythm section wheelspins and heads off into the sunset on a stretch of sculpted guitar noise. ‘RFID’ is a Mogwai-like combination of garbled vocal samples and slowly revealed melodic intent. ‘Soldat’ has a great crunching scuzz rhythm that melts into ‘Morgen’, a lullaby closer.

‘Radiate!’ proves that continuing the work of bands decades in the past need not be limiting if handled with the passion and innovation of Camera.

Links:
http://www.bureau-b.com/camera.php
http://www.bureau-b.com/