Tag: Current 93

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Many influential artists and characters once played at renowned and long-defunct clubs like CBGBs, Max’s Kansas City and others during the mid-to-late 1970s — including a now cult-favored local-born artist Annie Bandez, who known as Annie Anxiety (and later as Little Annie) was the frontperson of punk act Annie and the Asexuals. After several years of attempting a series of unsuccessful creative pursuits, Bandez relocated to the UK, where she would up joining the famed anarchist commune Dial House, led by activist Penny Rimbaud. And while a member of Dial House, Bandez quickly established herself as an artist with a singular voice with the release of her solo debut single “Barbed Wire Halo,” which was released through Crass Records.

Interestingly, when Bandez relocated to the UK, a number of punk rock artists including Bandez herself had begun shifting towards a much more diverse, multicultural approach, exploring dub, rocksteady, ska and other Caribbean genres. In the summer of 1983, Bandez along with legendary dub producer Adrian Sherwood and members of Crass, Family Fodder, African Head Charge, Flux of Pink Indians, London Underground and Art Interface went into the studio to record her stark, industrial dub-based solo debut Soul Possession, which would be released by Corpus Christi Records in 1984. And it resulted in a number of lengthy collaborations with Nurse With Wound, Coil, Current 93, Swans and Marc Almond.

33 years after its initial release, Dais Records will be re-issuing Soul Possession on January 6, 2017 and the re-issue’s first single “Burnt Offerings” is an ominously apocalyptic and minimalist bit of industrial dub featuring mechanical clang and clatter and twinkling keys paired with Bandez’s half-spoken vocals that manages to bring to mind Annika Henderson‘s solo work and her work with Exploded View — and in some way it wouldn’t be surprising if Bandez’s work influenced Henderson and producer/collaborator Geoff Barrow at some point.

Bandez will be on touring Europe throughout the Spring with Swans. Check out tour dates below:

Tour Dates, Spring 2017:
3/08  Rockefeller – Oslo, Norway
3/09  Kraken Sthlm – Stockholm, Sweden
3/11  Grey Hall – Copenhagen, Denmark
3/12  VoxHall – Aarhus, Denmark
3/14  Fleda Club – Brno, Czech Republic
3/15  Taba Ka Kulturfabrik – Kosice, Slovakia
3/17  Legendos Klubas – Vilnius, Lithuania
3/19  Sentrum – Kiev, Ukraine
3/22  FORM Space Club – Cluj-Napoca, Romania
3/23  Control Club – Bucharest, Romania
3/24  MKC – Skopje, Macedonia
3/25  Dom Omladine – Belgrade, Serbia
3/27  Pogon Kulture – Rijeka, Croatia
3/28  Rote Fabrik Ziegel oh Lac – Zürich, Switzerland
3/29  FZW – Dortmund, Germany
3/30  Kompass Klub – Ghent, Belgium
3/31  Paradiso Music Hall – Amsterdam, Netherland

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Originally formed by its founding duo Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and video director Peter Christopherson after the breakup of Throbbing Gristle in the early 1980s, Psychic TV (also known as Psychick TV or PTV) was conceived as an experimental video art and music project. Throughout each of its three incarnations, the project has included a diverse and rotating cast of collaborators including Coil, Current 93, Hafler Trio, The Cult, Soft Cell, Fred Giannelli, XKP, Master Musicians of Jajouka, Matthew Best, Abino Brolle, Daniel Simon Black, William Breeze, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Derek Jarman, John Gosling, Timothy Leary, Rose McDowall, Stephen Kent, Vagina Dentata Organ, Andrew Weatherill, Larry Thrasher, Z’EV, Zef NoiSe, Jeff Berner and a lengthy list of others. Interestingly, the project has a long-held reputation for relentless experimentation with its sound and aesthetic, and at one point for being incredibly prolific — with the release of a monthly series of live albums starting in 1986, the band earned an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for most records released in one year.

Psychic TV’s latest effort Alienist can trace its origins back to 2009 when the project’s creative mastermind and primary member Genesis Breyer P-Orridge proposed that the band cover Funkadelic‘s “Maggot Brain” as a musical interlude while on tour. After that tour, the members of the band went into the studio to record their interpretation of “Maggot Brain,” that lead to the band recording a series of 12 inch records annually which included the band’s interpretation of a classic song on the A side and a new song on the B side. Mostly chosen by drummer and co-producer Edley ODowd, the band has covered Hawkwind‘s “Silver Machine,” Can‘s “Mother Sky,” and Captain Beefheart‘s “Dropout Boogie” among others. Alienist is the latest effort in their 12 inch series and the album includes the band covering Harry Nilsson‘s “Jump Into the Fire” and 60’s British psych rockers, The Creation’s “How Does It Feel to Feel,” one of Breyer P-Orridge’s all-time favorites, along with two original tracks “I’m Looking For You” and “Alienist,” a trippy, dance-floor friendly song that sounds as though it drew from Evil Heat-era Primal Scream, Zooropa-era U2 and house music, while also channeling the project’s acid house experiments of the late 80s.

 

 

.