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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)

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")

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Album Review

Raime
Quarter Turns Over a Living Line Blackest Ever Black

Article written by Michael H - Dec 30, 2012

From label of the moment Blackest Ever Black oozes this primordial full-length from Raime, Quarter Turns Over a Living Line; an album of utterly stultifying dutch-oven strength claustrophobic unpleasantness. Neither a crack of light nor waft of fresh air graces its dusty decaying corners.

Beginning extremely promisingly with a panning rumble of throbbing bass like an enormous insect cruising past overhead, album opener ‘Passed Over Trail’ goes on to take in, what sounds like, the distorted final truncated scream of Lambert from Alien, an ominous organ drone, distant melodica parping and a nagging, persistent feeling that you’re completely alone in an indescribably hostile universe. This track also highlights the main problem with ‘Quarter Turns…’ a contentment to set an initial set of sonic preconditions and then loop them for an arbitrary period of time over a rhythm that rarely transcends the funereal. While the detail is undeniably impressive - sharp bursts of wooden percussion, the sighing of metal pipes, sharp whistles of steam, hissing faulty electronics, swipes of pixelated almost-vocals - the use of these elements seems at times limiting, as if the group is holding something back. The beast never reveals itself; the furthest part of the house’s attic retains its mystery and the inexplicable glyphs carved into the corpse’s face are never deciphered. The whole thing feels like an über-goth trailer. Raime should have stepped into the dark rather than just peeked around the corner.

That said, the group saves the best tracks until the end; ‘Your Cast Will Tire’ and ‘The Dimming of Road and Rights’ are both excellent, easily fulfilling the album’s early promise. The former is an entirely horrific head-nodding dirge; building from a middle-eastern sounding flutter of taut guitar strings, the song proceeds to march up a steepening incline of skulls to a peak of scraping metallic slow-motion riffing, the musician seemingly using a shard of barbed wire as a plectrum. The latter track is no less gripping, an exercise in patiently constructed tension and sudden outbursts of noise. Both tracks show a sophistication lacking elsewhere and promise much for their next release.

It is unfortunate that rather than plumbing the stygian depths as the end of ‘Quarter Turns Over a Living Line’ does, the rest of the album evokes Camden High Street rather than the Inner Ring of the Seventh Circle.

Links:
http://blackesteverblack.blogspot.co.uk/