The venerated leaders of the ‘free’ world are arguing like babies, whilst distant dictators can’t seem to stop blowing the shit out of each other. Another colourful month of suffering the human condition.

Nevermind, there’s still a whole bunch of cool music to escape into and lately MEANS have been listening to…

weeds

by whin

Pleasingly avoiding the trappings of genre, Weeds potters from one spot to another, ever loitering on the lip between sound and music. What begins as the sort of scrappy din produced by an abandoned zoom recorder making its way through the postal system, soon morphs into the rhythmic tock of dislocated clock, the sort of interlude that feels like its going somewhere but doesn’t. Indeed, its a good 5 minutes before the album truly begins to reveal more recognizable form: raised in the form of a lightly distorted lonely guitar, some half-speed slow core jam.

It’s as if the compositional logic extends to little more than placing one idea directly after another, a deconstructive simplicity that is nonetheless beguiling. Field-recorder scraps fall into half-built drum loops, half-built drum loops into choir stabs, then on to minimalist guitar staccato. The fractured nature of Weeds leaves the door wide open for some pretty creative remixing – a task taken on by artists with exciting names like LADYfingers. Across 5 further tracks we get to experience just how far this material can be taken in a myriad of different directions – at times morose, at times borderline funky, all demonstrating great affinity with the curious mood of the album as a whole.

Abur

by Pothamus

(pelagic)

I have genuinely no recollection of Ever stumbling upon this band, and yet there they sit, occupying a vacant spot in my Bandcamp library and being all kinds of awesome. Riding on the coat-tails of my weird fascination with the post-metal collective The Ocean, Pothamus offer up an admittedly slightly less cheesy feast of the same general vibe – huge power-chord guitars and drums whacked so hard its like they mean to break them, a sludgy concoction of metaphysical proportions.

The fact the album has literally the worst press release ever written (“the band stay true to the fundamentals of music: sounds, instruments and bodies coming together just as they too drift away. To experience Pothamus is to open yourself to an immersive, out-of-body experience that transcends the ordinary and delves deep into the profound”) shouldn’t put you off: this sort of stuff is, after all, deeply silly at its core. But it’s a silliness I am wholeheartedly there for, a brutal, trance-like foray through distorted baselines, chanting reverb-soaked vocals and guitars with such an inhumane tone that they sound more like synthesizers. Indeed, Pothamus double-down on the pagan, ritualistic tendencies of their genre in a way many of their peers never fully commit to – resulting in an album that often eschews metal tropes in favor of consuming walls of distortion and otherworldly wails.

Myriad Sounds

by Claude Cooper

Michael Conboy

This just kind of dropped into my ever-expanding inbox, must have been a Bandcamp Friday delivery that first caught my attention, the “Claude Cooper DJ Sets Friendly Festival 10-05-2025” with profits from the sale of the cassette going to War Child.

I purchased the digital version without really reading the small print, the digital version is only a 59 second teaser, I better get back to Spec Savers (again)!  Unfortunately, the full fat physical cassette version has now sold out. The teaser blew me away, love a bit of old school break beats and scratching in a mix.

I fell head first into a rabbit hole after just 59 seconds and went on to discover “Myriads Sounds” Claude’s debut album which followed his debut single “Tangerine Dreams” which sold over 800 copies on its 7-inch vinyl release, impressive to say the least.

We may as well jump right in with the debut single which is track 2 in the album running order, the track starts like a 1950’s jazz piece, then attacks you with an obscure break beat and a very funky sax, all a little off kilter with some “space” to flesh proceedings out.

There is a modern short form sonic jazz  style weaving through much of this album, samples a plenty but nothing glaringly obvious. All the tracks are less than 4 minutes long all fresh, funky and exciting with “St Nicks House” providing a psych-reverb sound to further mix things up. “Stone Bridge” has a sexy bass riff, Gil Scott Heron style vocal with an Amen Break thrown in for that 80’s hip hop sound.

Put the headphones on, turn up, tune in and emerge yourself in some crazy modern electronic experimental funky jazz.

Secret Rites of the Kilim Mosh

by Kilim Mosh

Does this sound an awful lot like Ensemble Economique? Does it matter? Kilim Mosh serve up some thunderous doom-mongering electronics, a heady wash of industrial tinged beats and aggravated distortion. It’s moody, moody stuff, a melting-pot of bad dreams and kitten-punching aesthetics, as if The Body had grown up on electronica instead of suspect metal bands. It’s like a Justin Broderick remix album, but marginally less cheesy. It’s great.

There’s not a lot of deviance between tracks, but there really doesn’t need to be, Its the sort of thing designed to overwhelm you, to lock you into a deeply uncomfortable groove and watch you squirm. Teals of Mistrust is the standout track – a deeply tense 10 minutes of wavering harmonics and freeform oscillators, all held down by a clattering array of erratic hi-hats. It’s not a very nice album, conjuring a faintly noxious air, a blistering, sickening wooze. I’m sold.