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SoundsXP Presents

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)

Hard Skin - Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear (album)

Black Angels - Indigo Meadow (album)

Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin (album)

R Ring - Fallout and Fire 7”

Royal Headache - self-titled (album)

The Mariner’s Children - Sycamore EP

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

The Fall - Sir William Wray 7"

Lord Huron - Lonesome Dreams (album)

Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds - Conjure Man 7”

Lightning Bolt - Oblivion Hunter

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

Latest Forum Posts

Album Review

Laurel Halo
Quarantine Hyperdub

Article written by Michael H - Aug 24, 2012

Laurel Halo has created something special with 'Quarantine', in a crowded field of quality electronic music it stands out like a beacon. The album sounds, with distraction removed, like an enveloping, vertiginous plunge into deeply weird waters.

'Quarantine' is a fiercely individual work, one that belies the notion of there being nothing new under the sun, that our music culture has become an endlessly self-cannibalising Retrotopia. The music throughout is tremendous and shows Laurel Halo to be a producer of immense talent. Every noise is submerged in a thickly aquatic haze. It takes several listens to identify individual sounds like the feedback sighs of 'MK Ultra' or the spy chase dynamics of 'Carcass' under the albums spongiform amorphousness.

It sounds so other; its songs alien, its rhythms fogged, provoking the heart and mind from unexpected angles. This album exists in a liminal crack, in the imperceptible sliver between the familiar and the strange. This is the machine made human, intricate insectoid process welded to a deeply felt alienation and loneliness that only come from being human. These two opposing elements are sometimes in conflict, the machine notion of 'Light + Space' in the lyric, "words are just words" contradicted by Halo's beautifully unadorned vocals and softly rendered rainbow churn. Words are just words in the same way that sounds are just sounds; only, this album seems to ask: they're far more than that, aren't they?

This is an album concerned with semantic disconnection, the human condition reduced to missives of 140 characters and an endless parade of LMFAOs. Lyrics like, "travelling heart, don't go away" and "making eye contact, I will never see you again," describe a ruptured intimacy. "Just keep walking, one foot in front of other, forward motion is the only answer," and "I, carcass," emphasise the shell, a surface devoid of character. The repetition of "Jus wanna be with you," on 'Holoday', suggests an inertia uncured by the spinning proliferation of internet communication.

'Quarantine' sounds like a hand stretching out from a tide of meaninglessness and puerile banality. It shows that hell isn't other people; it's a picture of a cat playing a piano, with 128,000 'likes'.

Links:
http://www.laurelhalo.com/
www.hyperdub.net
www.myspace.com/laurelhalo/music