Track: Esben and the Witch - 'Sylvan'

I first saw the gothic post-rock trio Esben and the Witch in a draughty Manchester hall sometime around 2010. They were supporting The Big Pink, but easily upstaged them with their simplistic yet frantic paeans of despair and dark enchantment.

(Incidentally, does anyone remember The Big Pink? They were a Jesus Jones-esque electro-rock outfit who had a minor hit with 'Dominos' and then disappeared into obscurity. Although their debut album 'A Brief History of Love' was one I remember listening to quite frequently when it was released ... perhaps one to revisit, or visit for the first time should you feel so inclined.)

I was equally taken with ESTW's debut album 'Violet Cries', deeming it to be a foreboding and haunting well of mature compositions that conjured up images of Norwegian pine forests, Brothers Grimm tales and German silent expressionist cinema like 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'.

However, my interest in their following two albums never quite reached the same level; I deemed them incapable of moving beyond the sepia-toned field of woe they had ploughed very well on 'Violet Cries', and I gradually forgot about them.

So I was pleased, earlier this week, to hear their new track 'Sylvan' and find myself suitably impressed.

At 13 minutes-long, it ebbs and flows with the same plaintive vocals from Rachel Davies and atmospherics that swirl like a morass of ghostly fog. When it erupts though it is cataclysmic and epic, with the same kind of operatic dread that made 'Lucia at the Precipice' so enthralling. A good omen for further new material later in the year.

Have a listen to 'Sylvan' here...

The Comet is Coming - 'Channel the Spirits'

Nominated as the token 'wildcard' entry for this year's Mercury Prize, The Comet is Coming's debut album deserves, if not to win (Bowie's 'Blackstar' deserves to on its own merits rather than poignancy), then to achieve an awful lot of attention.

'Channel the Spirits' is an engrossing and captivating expression of energy and imagination on the part of the three London-based musicians who formed a loose improvisational trio and recorded the album in a matter of a few days.

The promiscuity with genres throughout the album is what drives the music on in an eclectic sense, allowing the tracks to melt into one another but at the same time move between psychedelic jazz, Afrobeat, electronica, tribal and funk.

The band have cited inspiration as being the cosmic jams of Sun Ra, but at times it sounds like a collision between the gritty bass grooves of Fuck Buttons and the blissed-out synths of old-school The Orb.

All the tracks though are scored through with acid saxophone attacks and flourishes that provide the album with its spaced-out, reverb-heavy vibrancy. 'New Age' embraces electronica to the extent that it doesn't sound far from Aphex Twin's debut 'Selected Ambient Works I', while 'Journey through the Asteroid Belt' harks back to bands like Harmonia.

In all, this is a piece of work that adds depth and colour with repeat listens, and which demonstrates a versatility and creative energy that can only mean following on the tail of this comet will be thoroughly rewarding.

Housewives / Massicot - Cafe OTO

Housewives / Massicot at Café OTO, London
24/08/2016

It's an evening taut with late-August heat, and as people begin to gather on the street outside Café OTO a release of rain falls from the bruised sky. There is a palpable feeling of tense anticipation among the collective, the sense that everyone knows they are about to experience something equally bruising.

Housewives are a South London 4-piece who have amassed something of a cult following due to their formidable live performances. They released their debut album 'Work' in October 2015, recorded on a farm in the remote French countryside, and have so far maintained an online profile that is refreshingly low (there are, for instance, barely any photographs of the band).

This air of mystique is only enhanced when the band arrive, dressed in disarmingly bohemian clothes - natty cardigan, suit blazers, black beret. It all adds up to an impression that this is a band carefully cultivating their own image, aware that people will find out about them but strictly on their own terms.

They start by whipping up a whirlwind of droning loops - from a didgeridoo of all things - before launching into as dense and abrasive a half-hour set as I have seen in a long time.

There's an industrial chaos that harks back to Einsturzende Neubauten, while having the propulsive rhythms and ferocious intensity, not to mention the barked vocal stylings, that can only remind you of early-Swans.

Indeed, with sweat dripping from noses, it's hard not to be reminded of the legendary Swans gigs in which the band would order the venue's air-conditioning to be switched off, so subjecting the audience to a sweltering onslaught.

The detuned guitars and percussive precision is at its best on 'Tele', which swiftly descends into the sound of a diseased church bell's death throes.

Thinking politically, there's something about 'Autarky', in which the mantra "Work harder! Hard worker!" is yelled to the approximate sounds of a collapsing factory, that makes this just about the most perfect sonic response to six years of Tory austerity and 'anti-scrounger' rhetoric.

By the end of the set, it is impossible not to conclude that this is a band that must be experienced in a live setting, simply because there's likely very few new bands in the country who sound quite so scathingly appropriate for these tense and chaotic times as Housewives.

Check out their Bandcamp page here - http://housewivesband.bandcamp.com/music

Massicot are a Geneva-based 4-piece who tread much the same musical terrain as Housewives, but eschew the same droning chaos in favour of tightly syncopated rhythms and jagged guitar work that fit together like falling pieces of Tetris.

The songs are built up around the spinal drum work, which shifts from motorik to funk to cowbell-inflected calypso, and back again. Around this is an exoskeleton of sparse guitar and bass - in this case a curious red mini-bass - weaving repetitive discordant riffs that, in same way as Housewives, you can't help but be swept up in.

Add into the mix a John Cale-esque electric violin sweeping and scratching its way across the taut structures and you have a band that display an impressive array of experimentation and potential. Check them out.

Check out their Bandcamp page here - http://massicot.bandcamp.com/