A chaotic mess of noise rock, jazz and metal, with no definition between the genres. Shining know exactly what they’re doing, and it shows. The songs are so precise in their off kilter, genre bending mayhem that it would be impossible for everything here to not have been crafted with excrutiating care.

A balls-out frontal assault on the ears. 2006’s best offering in the way of noise, Wolf Eyes literally remove you from your surroundings and place you in a dark room full of nightmarish creatures unseen to the naked eye. The creatures paw at you, tearing at your ears with razor sharp claws.

Once upon a time, there was a little prince who dreamed. In his dream appeared to him the most beautiful music he or any other man had ever heard. At once he knew he had heard what he had been searching for his whole life: the perfect song. Scrabbling around for a candle, he hurried […]

A solid collection of manic, schizophrenic hardcore that is more than worth hearing. Like Some Girls in 2006, Das Oath are likely to be the next big thing in hardcore this year. This latest EP is their third eponymous album to date. Not only does this make their discography somewhat confusing, but it makes it a complete pain in the ass to even track the releases down.

From ye wilde British west emerges Silver Pyre - hailing from a barn in Somerset and bellowing under “the light of George’s day”. G.S.Fawle presents an electronic archaic tour de force that evokes the ghosts of olde.

We are all Mohammed now. Mark Gergis, aka Porest has assembled a collage of worldly influences and cut-and-paste spoken word samples that will provoke like no other release in 2006. Pinning down precisely what it is about this records blatant and somewhat crude political grandstanding that has created such antagonistic responses is not so easy […]

With his third release on Illegal Art, Gillis creates an aural experience for the copyright cynics to devour. On Night Ripper, he manages to sample from over a hundred and sixty songs that range in genre from Top 40, hip-hop, soft rock, party classics, grunge, R&B, dance to rock anthems. One could suffer a catastrophic seizure from trying to piece together every sample used including the Ying-Tang Twins, Wings, Better Than Ezra, Pavement, G-Unit, Fleetwood Mac, Jermaine Dupri, DJ Assault, Britney Spears, Junior Mafia, Sonic Youth, and Mobb Deep.

One need look no further for evidence of Japan’s alternative outlook on life than Manglobe’s latest anime, Ergo Proxy. Also responsible for another iconoclastic piece of TV eye-candy in Samurai Champloo this time round the concept is Blade Runner gone cyberpunk in a piece of breathtaking cinema with not a little existential anxiety. It’s been called “CSI meets GitS” and is getting the full high-definition treatment which speaks 5.1 surround sound volumes for the level of backing behind it.

William Basinski’s trademark decaying melancholia takes a turn for the idyllic. Pantelleria is a simple piano loop, poignant as all of Basinski’s work is but this particular piece also carries something of a fonder, more blissful atmosphere- the melody carries a warm reminiscence rather than a lost happiness.

The Saint Etienne/ Throbbing Gristle post-apocalypse technoid TV soundtrack.

On unravelling reel to reel tapes in an old forgotten storage room came the unearthing of a series of experimental sounds by Halim El-Dabh recorded through 1944 to 1959. For all the dread induced by Sunn O))), the brew of scratched and distorted frequencies of Fennesz and the schizophrenic instrumental meanderings of the new weird folk movement, Halim El-Dabh amalgamates them all into a masterful tale of noise, predating it all by fifty years.

Strapped for funds? Not talented enough to write your own music? Why not cash in on the success of others with a tribute album? It is, dear readers, the sure-fire marketable gimmick. To be sold alongside the single-use cameras, lifestyle magazines and Dan Brown ‘novels’ at airport duty-free. Relying mostly on its sales pitch, they rarely require any actual talent on behalf of the creators. There are exceptions, however. Eureka moments when opposite poles of music’s rich diversity are combined breathing new life into familiar songs. Here we examine the many tributes to one of this generation’s most profitable brands: Radiohead.

Actor Richard Schaal awakes as the man in the cube, no doors, no windows, no nooks no crannies – only white panelling. He has no idea how he got there, he has no idea where he is and he has no hope or clue about how to escape.

One hates to eulogise about foreign film-makers (you invariably sound like a pubescent teenager rebelling against his parent’s traditions) but South Korea has been consistently producing the most challenging films for the last few decades. Chang-dong Lee’s Peppermint Candy and Hae-sung Song’s Failan are as fine examples of this blooming movement as any. What […]

The charm that’s generated by this release is largely due to the simplicity in the compositions themselves. It’s hard not to sing along with the marches, waltzes, and dirges and easily jump into what Beirut is offering up here. While the record is not perfect, it gives the listener an inspired transportation into faraway lands and gorgeous traditions.