Category: Music

Any decent record collection should have sounds to fit any mood that the owner might happen to be in. Nick Drake for when you want to chill out. Andrew WK for when you want to party. The Smiths for when you’re feeling depressed. Well, how about something for when you feel like smashing someone’s face in with a brick and you just want to feel the warm blood from their pulverized face running across your knuckles and down your arm? Then may I recommend ‘Violent Reprisal‘ by grindcore ‘Supergroup’ Lock-Up? Feeling angry sir? This is the perfect soundtrack to your violence.

Featuring an all-star grindcore cast of Tomas Linberg (At The Gates), Shane Embury (Napalm Death), Nick Barker (Bimmu Borgir) and Peter Taggren from Hypocrisy, ‘Violent Reprisal‘ features thirty tracks of screaming hyper-fast grindcore that harks back to the early says of ‘Scum‘ era Napalm Death and genre defining bands such as Terrorizer and Siege. Every track is as tight and vicious as you’d expect from a bunch of musicians who have played so much extreme metal over the years they can probably drop blastbeats in their sleep. Their enthusiasm for the music, however, seeps out of every bloody pore of this record and you can’t help but get swept up in the aural riot. Fucking hostile.

James Sherry

Where many punk bands splutter and run out of creative juice and energy after one great debut album, followed by a disappointing follow-up, Wire are the exception to the rule. Although the band surfaced as the first wave of UK punk washed over the world in 1976, they were always different from their many one-chord thrashing contemporaries. To this day their debut album ‘Pink Flag‘ is one of the most creative and energized albums of the early punk era. Short, sharp songs with weird off-kilter rhythms and strange structures are successfully fused with a brilliant pop sensibility that make ‘Pink Flag‘ a genuine classic of it’s era and a huge influence on everything from the DC hardcore of Rites Of Spring to the spiky brit-pop of Elastica (who robbed the band of everything they created!).

After Pink Flag they went further and further out into the unknown on subsequent albums, becoming more and more progressive but always making sure the pop hooks were still firmly clamped on.

And against all odds, the band are STILL creating good and challenging music. After a series of EP and single releases, ‘Object 47‘ is their first full new album since 2003’s ‘Send‘ and is far more melodic and song based than the fierce and abrasive brilliant middle-aged tantrums of ‘Send‘. Although there’s still an underlying creepiness to their sound and all of the band’s trademark creativity is still intact, songs like ‘One Of Us‘ and ‘Perspex Icon‘ are perfect odd-ball pop that recall some of the band’s later eighties material.

Winding up with the decidedly nasty, almost industrial sounding ‘All Fours’, ‘Object 47’ is the sound of a band still loving what they do and not willing to join the punk nostalgia circuit that so many of their ilk are stuck on.

James Sherry

Everyone who is anyone knows about the Scratch Perverts and their turntable manipulating, party rocking skills. And with this remix, they’re showing that they have the skills on the production boards too as they turn Rusko‘s ridiculously groggy track Cockney Thug into a bouncing electro banger.

Bleeps and basslines take the already huge beat in a completely different direction from the original whilst keeping Rusko’s trademark upbeat, fast paced nature securely in place. The Perverts add some extra dialogue including the brilliant inclusion of “you fucking prat” near the end.

Remixes ride a delicate balance – sometimes they bring something amazing to the table, turning a tune on its head, moving the tune into a completely different realm and sometimes they just bollocks everything up. Thankfully, this track lies proudly in the former category.

Abjekt.

‘UK Hip Hop is LIVE‘. This may well be a rather bold statement coming from the little, sky-blue skinned creature’s mouth; but surely someone with a knighthood wouldn’t lie to you? Not a chance. Especially when one of the notorious four horseman of The Colony, Sir Smurf Lil’ is packing solid evidence that the UK Hip Hop scene is not just heating up, but boiling over uncontrollably. All that in just four minutes with his new single, Candlelight.

Don’t let the obscure pseudonym discourage you either – Sir Smurf is the real shit. When a rapper is tipped by easily-the-best-affiliate-you-can-have-in-UK-hip-hop, Jehst, to be the next-big-thing then this is most definitely not a case for claims direct. You’re paying attention, right? You should be.

Candlelight is in no way the same shade as his moniker suggests. In fact, this track steers into the dusty path of jubilance: a road less travelled by the usually-bleak, hard-time-injected hip hop lyricists from these dreary shores. Smurf’s twang still treats your ears like an entry-wound, penetrating at bullet pace with the harsh phonetics of reality – the kind of accent that not only chases cars, but robs them, subsequently chasing faster cars with a never-ceasing acceleration. Lay that on top of joyful piano loops reminiscent of that wonderful early 90s hip hop era, and the result is Smurf serving up a dish of mad oxymoronic proportions. I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking gagging for seconds.

Joesigh