The best new albums this week
Our writers’ top albums out today
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Creep Show – Yawning Abyss (Bella Union)
Anyone who’s heard Creep Show’s 2018 debut album Mr Dynamite will think they know, ball park, what to expect from the follow-up, Yawning Abyss. Well, hold that thought. When the title track chimes in, you have to check you’re listening to the right record. Creep Show. Yup. Yawning Abyss. Yup.
But we’re jumping the gun. Creep Show is a meeting of musical minds, a supergroup of kinds. Wrangler, a maverick outfit consisting of Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder, Tunng’s Phil Winter and Benge whose extraordinary vintage synth collection forms its beating heart, first met Grant when they were playing Sheffield’s Sensoria festival in 2014. One thing led to another, they were invited to collaborate for a live show to mark Rough Trade’s 40th anniversary in 2016 and Creep Show was born.
Mr Dynamite was a snarling, rhythm-fuelled bunfight of a record. It went down well, critically acclaimed it featured in some of the more discerning album of the year rundowns and rightly so. With two towering vocalists sparring for centrestage, the technical fuckery made sure it was hard to pick out who was who and lent the whole thing a musical force of its own.
Five years on and with an EU exit, a pandemic, soaring living costs, political meltdowns and a war on our doorstep all under the belt, you’d perhaps expect Creep Show to capitalise, to build on the chaos, compound a winning formula. But in this post-everything world they hold off on the full bananas and go heavy on the tunes, with Mallinder and Grant in full effect.
The pair of them headed to Iceland (country, not shop) to record the vocals on their own (oh to have been along for that ride, you can still hear the laughter from here). Returning to Wrangler HQ, Benge and Phil set to work marrying it all up, but unlike ‘Mr Dynamite’ they hold back on the fuckery. The result is you can hear who’s who – not always, there are scuzzed-up moments, but for the most part the distinctive vocals of Grant and/or Mal are front and centre.
Take the title track. It judders to life and opens the doors for a sweet melody and, wow, that is clear as the nose your face the voice of John Grant. Back in 2018 the world was merely teetering on the brink. We’ve since tipped over the edge as the lyric points out – “Come sink with me into the yawning abyss / You’d have to be a crazy person to assert you never wanted this” Grant intones. An upbeat melody over end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it lyrics? This is Creep Show at their purest. At their finest.
The gentle blips and beeps of opener ‘The Bellows’ feels like ‘Radio Ga-Ga covered by Kraftwerk, while ‘Moneyback’ finds Mal’s “Pennies, pounds, dollar bills, signed agreements, death wills” line echoing Prince Charles And The City Beat Band’s synthfunk classic ‘Cash’. ‘Matinee’ also comes with a large dose of the funk, the vocodered-to-heck chorus sounds like Giorgio handing out the happy tabs while Mal is left to the ominous verses… “You are starting to breakdown / And it’s so fun for me to see / You should have thought of that / You should have come prepared / You can see what’s happening and you look a little scared”.
But it’s ‘Bungalow’ that takes Creep Show into pastures new. Sounding like something off Grant’s ‘Pale Green Ghosts’ it just happens to be what Grant does best, a dark torchsong, backed by Wrangler synths that are so warm they could heat a small town. It is glorious.
So have Creep Show bettered that well-received debut? Oh they have. And while it’s only June are we staring down the barrel of an Album Of The Year contender? Oh we are.
NM
Chocolate Hills – Yarns From The Chocolate Triangle (Obscure Records)
Dr Alex Paterson — the enigma — has always given us music with incredibly visceral qualities. Not least with The Orb, whose output over the decades is best described as highly immersive. The kind of stuff that pulls you into dense soundscapes, which are so vivid listeners can almost reach out and touch the little while fluffy clouds overhead.
Always opting to take the patient approach, seemingly disinterested in fame for anything other than innovation in the studio and live arena, while terms like ambient house have regularly been used to describe the outfit people would really be much better off simply saying their back catalogue ‘sounds like The Orb’. In short, unique. While not for a moment suggesting that Chocolate Hills simply opts for the same formula, there are clear similarities in the tone of this, Paterson’s project with Paul Conboy, and the groundbreaking act he co-founded and is best known for.
That’s particularly pronounced in the opening statements here. An album themed around a fantasy voyage into the Bermuda Triangle, we can only assume this involves setting sail from southern England given opener ‘Leaving Plymouth’. As with ‘Ace’ and ‘Saragossa Walls’ (which follow), the vibe is deep, lush, tranquil, opiate, leaving us sated on dreamy melodies, distant, echoed vocal samples, and dubby electronica that wraps around you – noises that establish themselves as totems for the record overall.
But there is also a quiet drama about this particular odyssey. ‘Centre of the Triangle’ introduces junglist elements, like sudden gusts of wind in an otherwise mill pond ocean, ‘Cracking Kraken’ invokes a sense of discovery and wonder, piano keys seeming to unfold, revealing more of the soundscape as things progress. And ‘Home (First of the Last)’ veers into a stepping, wobbly, downtempo leftfield house beat to guide us back to dry land.
MH
Chris Clark. You know his work right? Nine very fine albums on Warp and two soundtracks on Deutsche Grammophon. Over two decades at the coalface, releasing a pile of high quality releases on a brace of almighty labels is not to be sniffed at. And yet Clark does seem to be sniffing.
He talks about how Sus Dog is a culmination of everything that’s gone before. Everything! “It’s a lifetime of listening to songs and working out how to make them,” he says. “It feels like my debut, in a way.”
Well, where to start? First up, he’s singing on it. Properly singing with a soaring falsetto. And if that wasn’t enough, Thom Yorke is along for the ride. It seems Clark wrote (wrote!) to the Radiohead frontman telling him what he was up to and asking for “advice/feedback”. Yorke clearly got the memo. “I’ve been into what he does for years,” he says, “and I ended up being a kind of backseat driver.”
The official line for that is “mentored and executive produced”. I guess we’re all open to new experiences. But if this is a debut of kinds, who better to lean on than Yorke. After all, ‘Sus Dog’ is the sort solo offer he wishes he could turn out. It is, in short, pretty bloody brilliant.
The opening track, ‘Alyosha’ is a proper brain-melt, it drifts towards three minutes before exploding into life with what sounds like every synth he owns chipping in. The track that follows, ‘Town Crank’, doesn’t let the foot off the gas either. It rattles along, pulsing with squelchy synths lines before, well, it explodes too.
But it’s not all bangers. The shimmery soundscape drone of ‘Forest’ is a delight and on a track like ‘Clutch Pearlers’ he gets as close to being pop as he’s ever come. Think of the way an act like Everything Everything does pop and this is not far off. ‘Dismissive’ is a corker as it arpeggiates itself to another climax that makes you feel like standing up and applauding.
You worry that the Thom Yorke involvement (he plays bass and lends vocals on ‘Medicine’) might detract from this being the sound of a highly respected artist changing his direction of travel. Clark’s mantra has always been to keep on climbing. Here he arrives at a whole other level.
NM
Normal Nada The Krakmaxter – Tribal Progressive Heavy Metal (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
True to the name of this latest release, Kampala-based electronic music label Nyege Nyege are getting more and more progressive with it. Sounds we never thought would emerge from this label are now peaking through the seams, though that’s hardly to the discredit of their earlier releases, which were almost equally as wacky.
As the name ‘Tribal Progressive Heavy Metal’ suggests, this latest cut really takes the cake. Described as “one of the most eccentric characters to emerge from Lisbon’s underground”, Normal Nada The Krakmaxter sounds like the name of an interdimensional contraband smuggler able to apparate at will. In reality, it’s the alias of one Teteu, a longtime affiliate of the Lisboa-based Principe crew and former user of other nominal masks – such as Qraqmaxter CiclOFF and Erre Mente.
Coinciding with a return to his country of origin, Guinea-Bissau, a clear shift in sound has occurred in this artist’s oeuvre, contrasting to the more sparsely-defined ‘Transmutação Cerebral’ released on Principe way back in 2015. Whereas that project was jankier – sounding like a cuckoo clock being picked apart in a kuduro rave – ‘Tribal Progressive Heavy Metal’ is much fuller and more immediate in sound. Kraxmaxter amps up his often-heard theme of controlled, hollow chaos, exemplified by the nearly eponymous opener ‘Beautiful Chaos’, which equates the mood of listening to heavy metal with that of a grating, juddering bass, and splashy, fast drumwork to boot. The album leans much further into zouk territory, though the palette is unheard of for the genre; ‘Da Rage’ works massive, midrangey trance basses into an entirely new context, while ‘Batida 2 Dance’ is slippery and mad, refusing to stay “clean” and amping up the emphasis on raw sample-choppage (we think that’s a harp) and heavy effects use.
The title track restates the “heavy metal” influence, again using a god-knows-where-from feedbacky guitar noise that sounds to have been timestretched to oblivion in an algorithmic blender with biomechanic teeth for blades. There are also dreamier curveballs, with the closer ‘Dedicado ao sem abrigo esperanca ou quando a esperanca morre’ (‘Dedication to hope…’) comparable more to a lost Oneohtrix Point Never cut than anything else. This is a fearless exploration of the rough kuduro dance, one which recalls the industrial and post-punk experimentations of bands like This Heat as much as it does the jubilant grit of Lisboa.
JIJ
Incubus – If Not Now, When? (reissue) (Music On Vinyl)
When Californian alternative rock heroes Incubus originally dropped their highly anticipated seventh full-length in 2011, many were initially disappointed with the notable shift towards atmospheric and melodious song craft. Following on from 2006’s reliably excellent and slightly frenetic Light Grenades, as well as the Monuments & Melodies greatest hits collection, If Not Now, When? appeared as the dawn of a new creative chapter for the group, which over the last decade, time and fan appreciation have slowly caught up to, and for good reason.
While the project lacks the energetic grooves, they built their name upon, in its place was a batch of restrained, nuanced pieces drawing on elements of art and post-rock, as well as an embracing of West Coast balladry. Take the lush ‘Promises, Promises’ which channels retro piano rock whilst dealing with reflections on the passing of youth and life goals in the blink of an eye, or the ambient prog of ‘Thieves’ with its hypnotic hook and muted instrumentation.
Admittedly, the lack of a ‘Megalomaniac’ or ‘Anna Molly’ left fans interpreting the work as placid or boring, but expectation can be a dangerous mistress, and is primarily the root cause for the lukewarm reception. Nowadays, the album feels like a purposeful pivot towards cohesive and mercurial composition, with each listen revealing more hidden elements.
Take the near eight-minute ‘In The Company Of Wolves’, which is easily one of the group’s most underrated deep cuts, with its dividing chapters shifting from optimistic euphoria to menacing dread, while ‘Switchblade’ carves a slice of Morning View era alt-grunge before the echoing layers of standout lead single ‘Adolescents’ envelop the proceedings in reverb-drenched prog-pop.
Perhaps opting to restore and adorn the artwork with the original logo from their heavier 90’s heyday was a misstep in placating listener anticipation after such an extended hiatus, but now that the dust has settled, this glorious double LP reissue has arrived, and they gear up for a performance at the Eventim Apollo come the end of this month, If Not Now, When? is there a better time to reevaluate Incubus’ most misunderstood work?
ZB
Greg Foat & Gigi Masin – Dolphin (Strut)
From The Bees’ Warren Hampshire to British sax mainstay Art Themen and even Linkwood, Greg Foat loves a good collaboration. Prior to his prolific run with Athens Of The North, he was leading his own band for Jazzman and moonlighting on plentiful other recordings. Reportedly a long-time fan of Gigi Masin, Masin likewise appreciates Foat’s music in kind – an effective if somewhat unremarkable backdrop to a collaboration that might have been slightly unexpected.
Masin’s star rose pointedly in 2014 when Music From Memory lifted his decades-old ambient work out of obscurity, and we’ve since been gifted reams of solo, live and collaborative releases. At this point his gorgeous, aqueous sound feels canonical, and so it’s fascinating to consider how it intertwines with Foat’s jazz. Foat is also backed up by Tom Herbert on bass and Moses Boyd on drums, forming a delicately deployed trio responding to Masin’s initial compositions.
It’s probably no surprise to anyone this is a beautifully rendered record. From the brushed drums tumbling through blue-hued moods on ‘Love Theme’ to the suspended interplay between piano and drones on ‘Sabena’, gifted musicality pours out of every passing moment. At times that can make it a tricky record to grasp hold of – it’s rather something to engage with subconsciously as it diffuses around your chosen space.
Some of Masin’s more noticeable traits make a sizeable impact, such as the repeating phrase sunk in behind ‘Vento Calido’ or the all-consuming ambience creeping in around the chords on ‘Your Move’. But primarily, smoothness is the order of the day, and you’ll struggle to find any rough edges on this reliably stunning album of the mellowest jazz on the market.
OW
Fugitive – Maniac (20 Buck Spin)
Blake Ibanez of Texan thrash revivalists Power Trip channels his ugliest riffage yet into the newfound old school death-thrash beast Fugitive. Rounding out the lineup with members of Skourge and Creeping Death (another two reliably hideous modern metal/hardcore extremist outfits), their debut EP Maniac is a five-track 17-minute sonic assault of crossover bedlam, comprising of four blistering original cuts and an obliterating cover of Bathory’s ‘Raise The Dead’ to close out proceedings.
Vocalist Seth Gilmore leans ever further into his death-centric low growls whilst retaining a hardcore attitude that compliments the trudging heft and 80’s indebted soloing. From the breakneck pace of thrashcore opener ‘The Javelin’ to the unbridled fury of the title-track, there’s a notable sense of nostalgic fondness for an era when the metallic subgenres had yet to extend their disparity to such great lengths.
Take the standout midpoint cut, ‘Hell’s Half Acre’, which boasts a machine-gun tempo and stomping groove that sounds akin to if Slayer pursued their hardcore tendencies full on rather than their constant toe-dipping. And if Obituary’s John Tardy handled vocal duties.
In short, Maniac is a stellar display of retro-thrash, crossover hardcore and classic death metal, all delivered with a scholastic precision and metered aggression. It’s a fun, nasty and powerful collection of genre-less evil, crafted by some of the best names in the modern scene. Get in the pit. Get involved.
ZB
Gareth Sager – Maelstrom In The Bare Garden (Last Night From Glasgow)
Gareth Sager has done his fair share of cartwheeling through musical conventions in his career. Not content with being a fundamental force in one of Bristol’s most innovative post-punk bands, The Pop Group, he went on to form another straight after – Rip, Rig & Panic. The wild deconstruction of musical norms in both groups responded to punk’s destructive force with the expressive verve of jazz, pinging the end results way out in leftfield.
Sager has been plenty busy since those early days, also turning up in trippy rockers Head in the late 80s amongst many other projects. It would be nigh on impossible for him to make music quite as revolutionary as that which he started out with, given the very different circumstances of the here and now. But what Sager can do on his first solo album since 2009’s Slack Slack Music is inject his wayward creative spirit into the kind of mature songwriting that comes from someone who has spent their whole life dedicated to the craft.
‘Get Yourself A Lifebuoy’ sports some of the acute angles and ramshackle funk of The Pop Group and it careers through playful shifts in energy, but the structure has a clearer focus. On ‘Clapped Out On Cricklewood Broadway’ Sager howls and snarls with theatrical vigour, inescapably summoning the spirit of recently departed bandmate and all-round musical legend Mark Stewart. Elsewhere Sager plays the grizzled lounge lizard spinning cautionary yarns on ‘Friendly Fire’ or spits out invective aimed at Big Tech on ‘Jack Data Dracula’, and his music follows suit in chameleonic fashion. Flipping the bird to long-toothed vets trotting out the hits from their 20s to stadium crowds, Sager proves he can’t help but roll forwards on the whims of his muse.
OW
Thy Catafalque – Alföld (Season Of Mist)
Hungarian avant-garde black metal maestro Tamás Kátai, better known as Thy Catafalque, has been churning out incomparable projects of folkloric, blackened post-everything grandiosity since the late 90’s. Due to his reclusive nature with regards to live performances, the unassuming mastermind has been able to persistently focus on studio craft, leading to a bloated and intimidating discography, that can often leave newcomers at a loss as to where precisely to begin.
For those with Tarantino tendencies, or simply short on time, that prefer not to take the most natural approach of beginning at the beginning, Alföld is an ideal choose your own adventure chapter to begin one’s sonic pilgrimage.
Restoring much of the frosted and brutalised post-metal of his earlier work, yet unable to fully ignore the progressive and expansive tendencies which have emboldened the longevity of his project thus far, the material here often feels like a Venn Diagram intersection of two sonic worlds: Both a love letter to cold Scandanavian metallics and an ethereal display of the genuine fluidity the genre can harbour in the right hands.
From the grooving odd-time signatures of opener ‘A csend hegyei’, to the euphoric Ulver-indebted coldwave synths that underpin the post-punk meets blackened death closer ‘Néma vermek’, Alföld is a singular work of a singular visionary, continuously striving to exude the simultaneous artistic horror and beauty that can stem from the ugliest and seemingly impenetrable of musical avenues.
ZB
Steven Julien and Kyle Hall – CROWN (Apron Records)
We can only imagine the studio jams both Steven Julien and Kyle Hall have had over the years, and the incredible sounds they produced, which never made it out of those sessions onto wax or digital formats. While hailing from different cities — and countries — with respective back stories rooted in London and Detroit, the two share a clear mutual respect and appreciation for warm pads and slick, synthesised beats, seductive rhythms and sleaze-hued atmospheres. At once timeless and nostalgic, like opening a window to let the past and future in at once, this passion translates into expert execution.
Of course, there are clear differences in their individual output, but the points at which the two heads meet is hard to knock, as CROWN proves. Across seven tracks we’re given glittering weightlessness, compressed, strutting snare drums and summer evening keys, complex percussion beneath melodic pop sensibilities, and brass-synth overtures. All executed with aplomb. Two remixes included, adding more depth and scope — a very DāM FunK DāM FunK cut of ‘Page 3’ and the rich musicality of Reggie B’s ‘SciFonk Mix’ of ‘Page 5’ — CROWN swerves traditional dance floor sounds in favour of a sophisticated, often reflective and consistently sensuous electro experience.
MH
Jeromes Dream – The Gray In Between (Iodine)
Connecticut screamo pioneers Jeromes Dream were a pivotal force in the 90’s underground skramz scene with their name often included next to the likes of Orchid, Saetia and pg.99, as vital contributors to the movement. Originally disbanding a mere month after the release of their chaotic and seminal sophomore effort Presents in 2001, the trio would finally reform in early 2018 to deliver the cathartic LP, which restored much of the unhinged emotive powerviolence of old, yet with an aged and earned sense of melodious serenity.
With the addition of guitarist Sean Leary (of screamo revivalists Loma Prieta) following the departure of founding member Nick Antonopoulos in 2021, the newly functioning line-up return with The Gray In Between, their fourth full-length overall and second of their much-welcomed reunion.
Brimming with dexterous noise-rock manipulations and caustic odd time-signatures interpolated into their post-hardcore formula, cuts like the despairing ‘Stretched Invisible From London’, or the abrasive microcosm of anguish that is ‘On Holiday With Infinity’, feel simultaneously like they were plucked from dusty 1998 demos yet bear a modernist clarity, thanks in no small part to producer/engineer Jack Shirley (known for his work with Deafheaven and Jeff Rosenstock).
Clocking in at a reliably succinct 25 minutes, the project serves as an overwhelming re-instillation of everything 90’s screamo originally embraced; frenetic compositions, truly unsettling vocals shrieks, and post-rock sensibilities, all underscored and elevated by nuanced poetics.
ZB
This week’s reviewers: Neil Mason, Oli Warwick, Jude Iago James, Martin Hewitt.