Gig #145: HYPER GAL, sunn o))), The Black Warhols, Tyler Friedman, My New Band Believe, Asteroid Ekosystem, MEMORIALS, Vic Bang, ezcodylee, Gong Slayer, Annie Hogan

HYPER GAL
SUNN O)))
The Black Warhols
Tyler Friedman
My New Band Believe
Asteroid Ekosystem
MEMORIALS
Vic Bang
ezcodylee
Gong Slayer
Annie Hogan

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HYPER GAL [Mere Wisp]
‘Springing from Osaka, Japan’s cultural center and historical heart, comes HYPER GAL, a two-piece band consisting of visual artist Koharu Ishida on vocals and noise artist Kurumi Kadoya on drums. The minimalist duo make maximum impact – stripping music down beyond the bare essentials, to create shimmering, no wave pop from blastbeat drums, glittery keyboard loops and ethereal bubblegum vocals – laced with velvet and firecrackers.’ — botanique

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sunn O))) Butch’s Guns
‘“Sunn O))),” the eponymous, twenty-somethingth album from the long-running Seattlian duo Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, could be categorized as jazz or classical or avant-garde much more readily than rock, even though its only instrument is that most rock of objects: electric guitars — Gibsons, no less. There’s no percussion, vocals or seemingly any single notes; there’s song structure (or at least compositions) but you’d be hard pressed to identify it. It’s just massive power chords and feedback, droning and shifting into different shapes in a way that recalls a randomly generating video image, or Mark Rothko paintings like one on this album’s cover. When you sit and stare at one of Rothko’s massive paintings in a museum for several minutes, it feels and seems like it’s moving, although that’s impossible. While that’s not a direct analogy, it’s what this album feels like.’ — Jem Aswad

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The Black Warhols Choke
‘THE BLACK WARHOLS is the long-awaited project from Detroit-born, Berlin-based creative polymath, former Underground Resistance member, and Spirit of Detroit Award recipient for exceptional artistic achievement Alan Oldham aka DJ T-1000. But this isn’t techno. At all. Inspired by Oldham’s longtime immersion into Berlin’s legendary art and music scenes, THE BLACK WARHOLS is a weird mix of dubbed-out, trip-hop beats, shoegaze textures, a bit of industrial, and a smattering of Suicide/DAF-style electro-punk. A slowed-down, trip-hop cover version of “Rock On,” a glam rock anthem originally released by David Essex in 1975, is even on the sonic menu.’ — traxsource

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Tyler Friedman Štoniljid
‘Drawing on the legacies of downtown minimalism, METLASR connects avant-garde composition, aspects of global traditional musics and advanced synthesizer technique into an ambitious and singular hybrid. Animated by generative modular sequencing and grounded by undulating bass, the album focuses on an endless cascade of pirouetting geometric melodics, which are spread across a spectrally fused ensemble of crystalline FM and sampled pitched percussion – specifically gamelan orchestra, marimba, mbira, vibraphone and tingklik. The assemblage of voices interlace in fractal mirrors, aggregating into pointillist harmonizations heightened by multiple layers of dub processing. The use of alternative tunings — primarily 24-note per octave just intonation — infuses the poly-modal progressions with lush radiance, staging tension between the strange and the beautiful through neon inflections of subtle dissonance.’ — Days of Disorder

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My New Band Believe Kick Me
‘Careening and hallucinatory, it is fitting that My New Band Believe – the shapeshifting collective led by former Black Midi bassist and occasional frontman Cameron Picton – originated in a fever dream. The band’s name was one that lodged in his mind as he battled serious food poisoning while touring China with his former band in August 2023.’ — Patrick Clarke

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Asteroid Ekosystem Off Axis
‘The brainchild of avant composer, pianist, and ARIA Award winner Alister Spence, Asteroid Ekosystem brings together an extraordinary ensemble: guitarist and musical pioneer Ed Kuepper, improvisational upright bassist Lloyd Swanton (The Necks), and drummer Toby Hall (The Catholics / Mike Nock). Together, they create a hypnotic, genre-defying sound world where jazz, rock, psychedelia, and improvisation collide.’ –– Alister Spence

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MEMORIALS Dropped Down The Well
‘All Clouds Bring Not Rain is the second album from Memorials, the duo born out of two of the more quietly canonical acts in British underground music: Electrelane and Wire. The territory they cover is vast, traversed with the ease of people who have earned their passport stamps. It sits downstream of the Canterbury continuum; Kosmische drift bleeds into Stockhausen abstraction; Tangerine Dream sequencers into Radiophonic static, bleeps and bloops that feel lifted from a forgotten BBC education programme.’ — Hayley Scott

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Vic Bang Synthesise
‘Composer and sound designer Victoria Barca combines bleeps, crunchy percussion and chirping electronics on her albums to create music that blurs the line between acoustic and synthetic, laboratory-created and field-recorded. Her fourth album, released by Mondoj, has the power to create musical worlds. It combines electronic, electroacoustic and acoustic sounds, juxtaposing exotica-style sounds, quasi-folk forms, vocalisations and snippets of recordings. It also shows the potential and possibilities that sound offers. This album was created almost entirely without leaving home. Imaginary folk, futuristic folk, freak folk, weird folk – these labels evoke specific connotations, and I mention them to show how vast a conceptual and associative resource music can have when it is not assigned to a specific place or tradition.’ — Jakub Knera

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ezcodylee DON’T BE SCARED!
‘STUNT 4 LIFE is the clearest distillation of rapper ezcodylee’s punk-inspired ethos to date, neatly buffing out intergenre seams in pursuit of cathartic clarity.’ — Vivian Medithi

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Gong Slayer @ Bingo Art Gallery & Studios ABQ
‘Low end and midrange drones sure to vibrate the walls of your skull 💀🔥 48″ WIND GONG, 32″ WIND GONG, 18″ SOLAR GONG.’ — iron gnome

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Annie Hogan Death Rituals
‘Annie Hogan is something of a quiet icon of goth and post-punk. A longtime friend of Marc Almond, she put on early Soft Cell shows and played with his dark cabaret side-project Marc and the Mambas. She appears on Barry Adamson’s seminal Moss Side Story and has worked with Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave, and several members of Einstürzende Neubauten. She’s also been releasing evocative solo music since the late 1980s, the latest of which, the six track album Tongues In My Head, strikes an elegant balance of light and shade.’ — Claire Biddles

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p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi. I probably mentioned this before, but when I was a kid I was so obsessed with magic tricks that I subscribed to four Magic Trick of the Month Clubs, which were these ‘clubs’ where they’d send you a magic trick every month in the mail. Bliss has maybe never again come to me so easily. There’s an actual real stately home where the manga is set? Maybe bring a taser? I do very much want to go to the ABBA holographic concert. I was thinking I’d go when we went to London to screen ‘RT’ but it looks like that’s not going to happen. So I need to find a good excuse to take the Eurostar, and I probably need to be reasonably quick about it. ** Laura, Yes, that Imaad Wassif. Obviously he had to be on set when we were working with his son, and he’s super nice. He even agreed to be an extra. You’ll never remember this, but in the scene where the haunted house is open, three boys dressed as werewolves escort the first person in line to the entrance, and that’s Imaad. Lyricism can be a magic trick. I use it that way all the time. Magic tricks were like owning an amusement park. I had no problem explaining the tricks’ tricks. I’ve never been protectionist when it comes to suspense. I’m actually on my toes today. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Your test comment worked, did you see? I’m so sorry. I hope the blog is fully absorbent again today. Grr. ** Adem Berbic, Drat. Surely there’s some magic shoppe still extent somewhere in London of all places. But, yeah, probably in the boonies at this point. I’d be in the army of the magic people. Just tell the venue it’s going to be immersive and then do whatever the fuck you want. What are they going to do, sue you? My week looks reasonably okay if my instincts are operating properly. Yours? ** _Black_Acrylic, I don’t know Mr. Benn, of course, but that is a lovely title sequence. AI couldn’t make that if it tried. Thanks, pal. ** Carsten, Haha. Disneyland used to have this really great magic shop in Fantasyland, and when I went to Disneyland, which was many multiple times each year, I’d end up spending half my visit in the shop looking around in awe, and there was one guy/employee who did tricks for the customers who was really good, and it was only years later that I realised he was Steve Martin who worked there before his career took off. I don’t buy my Christian friends’ beliefs either, but, at least in their cases, the belief does something to their thinking that I find very interesting at least in short bursts. Yes, I went to that concert. Well, it was in 1968, so I would have been 15. My mind was seriously blown, mostly, in retrospect, by Nina Simone, who was at her most intense and angry at that time. ** Bill, The Paris Magic Museum! Located in the Marquis de Sade’s former basement! Love that place. Cool, Zac and I are going to Berlin soon to show ‘RT’. I’ll check that shop out. No, wait, both of those shops. Thanks, scout! ** Malik, Hi, Malik! Happy … what is it … Tuesday! Believe it or not, Criss Angel actually commented on this blog once years and years ago. I used a vidclip of him in some post, and he swooped in. He seemed friendly. Awesome about the congenial Furry Convention. They hold one here, but I’ve never gone. I think I will next time. I’ll look up those movies, especially ‘American Stream’. It sounds intriguing. Fond memories are overwhelming me about the New/Next Festival, which must be coming up soon. How are you? I think the last time we spoke you were preparing for a theater project, no? How did that go, if I’m not wrong? Best week to you, my friend. ** Steeqhen, Hi! Well, I’m very glad your colon is still in there doing its job. The human body is so packed they should call in the fire marshals. Promising sounding job prospects/hunting. Being a cultural critic isn’t bad — I did it — but I don’t think that job will pay your bills these days, but I could be wrong. Don’t let that stop you. Thanks about ‘God Jr.’. As I’ve said, the last section of that novel is my favorite thing I’ve ever written. ** Charalampos, Hi. ‘Arcana’ it is then. I know the new Dumont is premiering at Cannes, but I don’t know anything about it. Hi back from pleasant seeming central Paris. ** Steve, Hi. No, the gig was just a one-time gig. I assume it happened because all of the artists involved must have been excited to share a gig with each other. They were all at absolute peaks of their work at that point. Pretty mindblowing. Wow, that was a particularly awful scam festival that guy blew the whistle on. ** HaRpEr //, Yeah, I loved gag gifts as much as I loved magic tricks. Sigh. ‘Worsted’ is crazy good. Christine Schutt is very good. Her writing isn’t daring or innovative on the level of Lutz, but her sentences are excitingly worked and nailed. I should put a book of hers in the blog’s spotlight. I will. Thanks, I’ll try the Friko album. Cool. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Exactly. I’m like a curse on the people standing behind me. The best part of growing so quickly was being able to buy alcohol and cigarettes and porn and impress my childish looking peers. Wow, I just peeked at the first bit of your mix video, and what a thrilling beginning. I could stare at that giffy image forever, and I will. Everyone, The mighty and unimpeachable ꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡ has made a music playlist with Jen from the Dark Crystal as the background and involving enchanted sorta songs from the 60s-70s, and I just tested it, and its promise is highly notable. Go be amongst it here. Amazing! Have a gooder than good one. Make that many. ** Sofeea, Hi, Sofeea. Thank you very much, and it’s lovely to have you here. Unfortunately, no, I don’t remember who wrote that essay or what it was called, I’m sorry. I wish I did. How are you? Who are you? ** Right. Today I made another one of my gigs featuring stuff I’ve been listening to and interested by of late. Perhaps something or other up there will find favor with you. See you tomorrow.